Thank you Scotland....

Yesterday I found a letter waiting for when I came home from the dentist's. (Don't ask what it was like, I don't want to spoil your day....) It was a letter from Aberdeen in Scotland, from Suze Bain. Recently I wrote about the *dead mouse* - which turned out to be a dried up leaf! that I found one morning in my kitchen. Sue found this story funny, and made me a little Scottish souvenir to remind me of this memorable day, a card, a tag, and some beautiful ribbon. all wrapped in some sparkly paper that will definitely be put to good use; but see for yourselves:

I am just not quite sure if she meant me or the mouse with the *wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie*. Okay, you can't really describe me as *wee*! The beautiful tag with the Burns quote and portrait reminded me of holidays spent in Rosslyn as a child, together with a school friend, whose Granny and Aunt never tired of reading Burns to us to make up for the *English rubbish* they might be stuffing our heads with at school. Not true, though, as our primary school teacher was a Scot and a great lover of Burns. Thanks to Sue for the lovely surprise, and this time it would not be fitting to say, *“The best laid schemes o' mice and men Gang aft a-gley; And leave us naught but grief and pain For promised joy*.

Once again, I am amazed at the kindness of the blogger family; this was a little surprise that really made my day!

And I would like to share a tag I made at the weekend, using one of my favourite stamps, although I don't know who made it; I just know that I bought it at the stamp-mecca in Hagen two years back. I have made lots of tags with this stamp, and never seem to tire of it - sorry!

Well, that was enough for today, hope to see you all again tomorrow! Have a great day, take care, and thanks for visiting

Portraits

Good morning everybody. You will be happy to know that my dentist is back from his vacation, and that means my treatment will be carried on today - I can hardly wait!
The promised storms were not much yesterday evening, just a bit of thunder and lightning, at least here. Hope nowhere else suffered damage again either!
Over at *The Cheerful Stamp Pad* the theme this week is *portraits*. The challenge is open for 2 weeks. For my DT piece I have made an altered canvas, perhaps rather unorthodox for this theme. The canvas was one which had already been used and *stripped* to give it a new lease of life. I made a background of torn paper which I painted with gesso. There was some gold leafing round the canvas before, so I left some it as it was, and painted the rest with gesso, which turned it a nice greeny grey colour. For the main picture I have used a postcard of a self protrait of Stefan Lochner, which is one of the wonderful pictures in Cologne Cathedral, painted in the middle of the 15th century. The pictures of the woman and the hands underneath it are part of some wonderful carvings in Bamberg Cathedral, carved my the great master Veit Stoss at the beginning of the 16th century. I used different embellishments - lace, sack-linen, some torn pieces of a map, some prima leaves, a flower made from antique book sides and coated with Utee, and two Rafel Angels. And of course, one of my little leopards is running through the picture. At the top I have used a silver brooch, which has a small piece of Roman glass in it, bought from the Roman-German Museum shop in Cologne.

That was all for today, now I need to prepare myself for the dentist! Have a nice day, take care of yourselves, and thanks for visiting!

Storm clouds and postcards

Hi everybody, it's weekend again, just in case you hadn't noticed....I had a bad night, got very little sleep again, so will be taking an afternoon nap today....Hope you all did better!
The storms I was telling about yesterday must have caused a lot of damage. Here it wasn't too bad, just the usual flooded roads and cellars and damage to some trees and cars, but just over the border in Belgium it must have been very severe. A lot of people were at a huge open air rock festival, and many were severely injured and five died. The next storms have been forecasted for Sunday, so I hope nothing like that will happen again. These are the pictures I took when it was just starting, afterwards it was too dark to take any photos, at least with my camera.

Yesterday I did some more work on my sketchbook, but I am not at all happy with what I have managed up till now, so I am hoping it will get better.
And I made a card for the *Just for fun* challenge, where they want to see the colours black, white and silver this week. I have used stamps from Scrollsworks, combining three images, which I stamped with archival black, and embossed in silver. I used a silver Edding pen and some silver stickles for more sparkle. I mounted the card onto a piece of silver printed card which was part of the packaging of some Anna Griffin embellishments.

And my last 2 postcards from the *Liberate your Art* postcard swap came today. The photo of the Vespa was taken by Kat who organized the swap, and the old cart photo came from the 2 Buds in Raleigh, North Carolina. Many thanks to both of you!

Okay, that was enough for today. Have a great day, take care, and thanks for visiting!

Paint Party Friday, Spare Parts & Thunder Storms

Yesterday started out with sunshine. Well, on the one hand, a nice thing; on the other hand, it showed up how much dust was flying around here. I know there are black holes somewhere in outer space, but it looked like one of them was here! So, don't be shocked, I will have to use a very dirty word - H*******k was necessary. I hoovered and mopped and scrubbed till it was more or less clean, and then had to take a break and a shower before I was fit enough to go and do the shopping. And while I was in a work mood - doesn't happen too often! - I did the washing, which is a lot of running up and down the stairs, as the washing machine is in the cellar and I live on the second floor without a lift.
Anyway, I spent the rest of the afternoon working on my sketch book for the Art House Coop, and I'm not showing it yet, as I would like to keep it till it is completed.
And that's the reason why I have decided to show you part of my collection of spare body parts for Paint Party Friday, which is, as always, hosted by Eva and Kristin. They are white plastic heads, torsos and butts for displaying clothes in shop windows etc, and they have been sprayed and painted to make them a bit different. I did show some of them before, but here they are.

I sometimes just have the urge to paint on something other than paper or canvases....

And then, at about 7 in the evening, the sky went a nasty greeny colour, the wind lashed the trees, and it rained in torrents, with loads of thunder and lightning flashes. It was pretty to watch, but I was happy not to be out in it. The thunder kept grumbling and rumbling all evening, and the lightning illuminated the night sky, but it seems to have blown over now.

Well, that was more than enough today. Here's wishing you all a great day, take care, and thanks for visiting.

Stung

Yesterday I spent the day with my friend Inge We followed our usual time table - breakfast, chatting, gossiping, playing cards and eating. But yesterday Inge had to save me. I was attacked whilst playing cards - no joke! A particularly nasty and sneaky wasp stung me in my neck - ouch! After cooling it, Inge went on a wasp hunt, and managed to kill quite a lot and drive out some more - a real heroine! I hate the beasts, and this is going to be a bad time for me, because we have a record number of the nasty beasties hunting us down this year. Our weather was evidently ideal for them, and for some strange reason, although I don't like them they all seem to love me! And it is still red and swollen this morning.... How lucky that I don't live somewhere where there are real nasties to contend with! Apart from that, we had a nice day!

And at the Blog Challenge Garden, Rebecca wants to see a tag with a vintage photo.


The postcards I made for Lenna's swap are now sunning themselves in Floriday, the lucky things. If you want to view them on her blog, they are here

Okay, that was it for today. Have a great day you all, take care and thanks for dropping in!

We had a nice summer yesterday....

Well, much to my suprise, the weather stayed nice all day. I even managed to walk into our little town, and had a coffee and a croissant at the baker's - it was their special offer of the day, so I didn't need to get too bad a conscience. And I discovered a little charity shop that belongs to the hospital. It's only opened 2 or 3 times a week, and up till now it has always been closed, but this time it was open. I made a bee line for the place where I saw lace, and found a whole load of hand made lace, which I just had to buy. So what with the coffee and croissant, my shopping money for this week has gone, but I have a few tins and packets here, so will not starve. And I have enough coffee for the week, too, so it should be OK. All in all I have about 12 meters of lace, so I have enough for my next tags, collages and LOs,

And these 2 pieces of sequin waste and a beaded pendant were thrown in for good measure!

And when I got home I decided to make another Family LO. I used the same technique as the day before, stamping with resist ink, inking, spraying, wiping it off to leave just a touch of colour, and then putting on 2 more layers. I stuck to Victorian Velvet, Forest Moss, Ancient Paper and Garden Fairy Spray, as I want the LOs to match. I want to do one more,as I have one more picture to use, and then it will be good. I used a transparency of my Mum with me when I was about 1 year old, and decorated again with lace, sugared vellum, flowers, and leaves etc.

So, that was all for today. Hope you have a great day, take care, and thanks a lot for dropping in!

A family LO

Sssssssssssssh! Don't tell! The sun is shining! I'm holding my breath so as not to disturb it! Wonder where it came from?

Sometimes I don't really know why I bother making things about my family, as they couldn't care less about me, but I suppose I do it because I need to remember them. For this LO I used a photo of my Mum and my eldest sister, taken about 1939 /40. For the background I have used a sheet of 12 x 12" ceramic card - a speciality stamping paper. First I stamped the rose and the owl each twice with resist ink, and let it dry before rubbing over the paper with a mixture of ancient paper, Victorian Velvet and Forest Moss inks. I sprayed it too with some garden fairy green from My tattered angels, before wiping the colour away, leaving just a faint colour and the images showed up white, Then I stamped again, using Victorian velvet for the roses, and Forest moss for the other images. The roses have been embossed with bridal embossing powder, and the owls and clocks with perfect pearls in gold. After they were heat set, I wiped the rest away with an old nylon stocking, it gets rid of the excess powder in no time! You can't see too much of the resist printing, as the light is not ideal, but you can see the white shadows. I used different embellishments - netting, flowers, lace, some prima leaves and some acetate butterflies and a corner. Was relatively quick and easy to make! was ma second DT piece for *the cheerful stamp pad*, where the theme still is petals.

Okay, that was it for today, had another lazy day yesterday! Have a great day, take care and thanks for visiting!