Monday once again....

Good morning you all! I just looked at the calendar and saw that 5 weeks today the new year will have already started - yikes! And I am still nowhere ready for Xmas yet, either! Oh well, why should this year be different to all those before it....
I spent a lot of time with my journal, once again just having fun messing around and seeing where the journey takes me. I used some book-pages for the background, covered them in gesso, and then started with some dry transfers, and later adding some cut outs. From there I progressed to stamping, and then after that just used pen and ink and water colours pencils to add some foliage and a bit of colour.

The picture is a mixed media piece I made some time back, and re-discovered under a pile of other things. I used Scrap-book paper from Anna Griffin, which has been drawn on, stamped and painted. I'm not sure if it's finished either, perhaps I will spend some more time with it!

I am linking again to AEDM at Creative Every Day
Hope you all have a great Monday, whatever you are up to! Take care, and thanks for visiting!

Sunday

Good morning everybody! Hope you are all well and fit, It's a cold, grey day here, so good crafting weather! I just have a few things to show you; my journal pages, this time in blue, and a picture I drew over a *waste Page* - I had wiped the colours on my brush off onto the paper, and later decided to use it as a background for a drawing using pastels. I just started out sketching and shading a face, while watching TV, and it looks just like my Mum as a young woman, which totally surprised me. The third piece is a little wooden bird, painted white, edged with inka gold and turned into a tree hanger. And the very last piece is a tag I made last week for the *Cheerful Stamp Pad Challenge* and forgot to show....I am linking again to AEDM at Creative Every Day And to Blue Chair Diary

Have a good day you all, take care and thanks for visiting!

Saturday and weekend

Hi everybody. Hope all those in the USA are still enjoying their Thanksgiving weekend, and that everybody else is also looking forward to a relaxing weekend.
I will be spending time with my friend Inge, and I am sure we will be following our usual program of chatting, eating, playing games, coffee and biscuits, in no particular order and with lots of repeats.

Yesterday I crafted like crazy all day, had to get it in before the weekend began! I started off with journal pages again, which really give me a lot just now. I open the book, and then just start, and it seems to lead a life of its own. I started off my painting the pages with gesso, so the colours don't go through the paper, drew the faces, added some stamping, some magazine cut outs, die cuts and bits and bobs that were flying around my kitchen making the place untidy. At the end, I decided it looked like it was about dreams, added some of my favourite dream quotes, and did a bit of colouring with some pastel chalks. That was it. But I am sure I am not dreaming of things like that every night!?

And I finished another maze book that I started some time this week. I used paper from 7 Gypsies for the pages, and some scraps from the DCWV Christmas Combo Stack for the covers. I made some tags out of the same scraps, and added a few small pieces of lace to some of the pages. The pictures were hard to take, it was such a dark day that I needed the flash for some of them although it was just mid-day.

I am linking to AEDM at Creative Every Day. I am really happy that I have kept up every day! Perhaps I will join the December challenge, too!
So, here's wishing you all a lovely day. Take care, and thanks a lot for stopping by!

Paint Party Friday Week 37

Another week has flown by, and it's time for PPF again, hosted by Kristin and Eva. Do hop over and take a look at the work of the other participants if you can! I have painted a mixed media piece. I started off with my momentary favourite colours, 2 shades of blue, yellow and white, which I applied with a wide brush. Then I took some of the strips of Embossed paper and a small piece of ledger paper which were in my parcel from Donna, and fixed them to the painting with Golden gel before partly colouring over them. I used Inca gold to add the gold highlights. The wings have been die cut from some old book pages, embossed, and also coloured with gold and blue. The picture in the middle has been cut out of a prospect which I got in a previous parcel from Donna. I added a feather for texture, some lace, some non-woven fibre material, a few remnants of *gold* leafing and some buttons. Then I melted some candle remnants and used the wax to pour over the paper strips, spread it with a plastic card, and stamped into it with a script stamp while it was warm. I then rubbed more Inca gold over it to highlight the stamping and the texture. The pictures show the beginnings, and then the finished work.

And I made some rather crazy pages in my journal, using lots of different techniques, just having fun, just picking things up,and colouring and pasting without a plan. Just seeing what happens. I think I will call it *Fragments of my mind*

I am linking to AEDM at Creative Every Day

So, that was it for today. Have a good day you all, take care and thanks for visiting!

Post from Mexico

(Image from the Graphics Fairy!)


Yesterday the postman rang, and brought me an ENORMOUS envelope from Donna in Mexico. My postman was really excited - he said he had never seen such a big envelope, and there were sooooooooooooooo many stamps on it etc. He seemed to be reluctant to hand it over, and I think he will be back in a day or so to ask for the stamps, as he collects them.
The envelope was so big that I had to put it onto the floor to take a picture. Inside the envelope was another one, beautifully decorated from both sides. And inside that one were lots of smaller envelopes and packages, containing a plethora of good things for crafting and collaging - die-cuts, ephemera, old ledger pages, Mexican postcards, photos of Donna's work, a beautiful card, a lovely flourish stamp from LaBlanche, embellishments galore, little dolls, tickets, fibres, envelopes stamped with Donna's self made stamps and and and! Look at the pictures, & you will see why my crafters heart beat faster and faster!

What a haul! Thank you Donna, I have taken a large box and labelled it *Mexico* to keep my things together!

And I spent some time in my arty kitchen. I have started a picture - using some of the paper out of Donna's parcel, but I am not showing it till Friday, when it's PPF! But I can show you the altered notebooks I made. They are larger than the ones I made yesterday, but were just as fun to make. I have used papers from the DCWV Christmas Combo Stack, and decorated with ribbon, lace, cameos etc.

I am linking to AEDM at Creative Every Day

Happy Thanksgiving to all celebrating today! Have a good day, take care, and thanks for visiting!

Wednesday

Good morning everybody, hope you are all well. I feel better today than I did yesterday, although I still have a cough. Hope it soon goes away, it disrupts my crafting! Yesterday I didn't feel like doing much, so I just altered some notebooks, and finished off a maze-book I started the day before. And I have some Journal pages to share with you, although I think I still need to do some work on them. The maze book has been made from Kaisercraft paper again. I used beer mats covered in red metallic paper for the covers, added a die-cut bird and some holly-leaves for decoration, and some Christmas tags in the diagonal pockets.

The notebooks have been covered with different papers, and decorated with ribbon, lace, TH branch-trees, and vintage images. They are quick and easy to make, and will, I hope, make nice little presents.

And here are the journal pages, in which I have evidently been thinking about Christmas...

I am linking to AEDM at Creative Every Day.

And I have another joke from Narda:

Hospital regulations require a wheel chair for patients being discharged. However, while working as a student nurse, I found one elderly gentleman already dressed and sitting on the bed with a suitcase at his feet, who insisted he didn't need my help to leave the hospital.
After a chat about rules being rules, he reluctantly let me wheel him to the elevator.
On the way down I asked him if his wife was meeting him.
'I don't know,' he said. 'She's still upstairs in the bathroom changing out of her hospital gown.'

Have a good day you all, take care of yourselves, and thanks a lot for visiting!