Wednesday 4 January 2012

Christmas post from Mexico

Yoohoo, my Christmas post from Mexico arrived. Poor Donna had almost given up hope that it would arrive here, but today it did - when I went down to my mailbox, I found a big and very decorative envelope waiting for me. Inside I found a beautiful Christmas tag and loads of sheets of ephemera, which are especially welcome, as I haven't been able to print anything for ages thanks to my not-so-wonderful Lexmark printer, which has steadfastly refused to work for many weeks.



I especially like what Donna has written on the envelope!



So now, at a time when other people are taking down their Christmas decorations, I have just put a new one on the wall in my arty kitchen....

I thought very seriously about doing the H*******K yesterday, and went from room to room, inspecting the mess. Then I decided to close the doors and not think about it anymore till Thursday, in the hope that I will be able to find somewhere to start.

I had a try at making a book with a sewn coptic binding, and managed to sew 6 signatures together. I covered some cardboard from the back of a drawing pad with some hand-made Indian paper to make the covers. I just added a brass name-plate to the front. I will definitely try this again, BUT I need a larger needle and some embroidery thread or fine twine to sew it together. As I can't see very well, it was very difficult for me working with a small sewing needle, and I almost sewed my fingers to the binding! But it is an interesting Technic, and I like the way the pages all lay flat




Have a nice day you all, take care, and thanks for dropping in!



Tuesday 3 January 2012

More Journal Pages and Tags

Good morning you all! Yesterday I really had to give myself a kick in the butt to get going and do something. I started off by trying to clear masses of bits and pieces from my table, as my AWS (available working space) had shrunk to less than inchy size. There were loads of paper scraps there, leftovers from Christmas crafting, so I cut them all into neat pieces and decided to use as much as I could in my journal to avoid moving them from one corner to another over the next weeks. I painted the pages with brown, yellow and white acrylics. Then I used part of a paper napkin for the image on the left side, before *framing* it with the scraps, making a mosaic. On the left hand side I added a postcard, as it had the right colours! and the text *When hands reach out in friendship hearts are touched by joy*.




The tags have been made for a new blog, *Tag Tuesday*. Our theme this week is snow. I have made 2 tags, using black cardstock from last year's calendar. The tags have been stamped with a LaBlanche script stamp; one has been embossed in white and one with silver. I have used TH's fence and branch tree for both tags, and added some stars, birds and snowflakes for embellishments. On the silver embossed tag I used a flourish stamp in the background, too, which has also been embossed with silver.




Do pop over and have a look at the blog, there will be lots of snowy tags to see!

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

Monday 2 January 2012

Calendar Challenge January

The calendar challenge over at *The Kathryn Wheel* is continuing this year, and this is my effort for January, which I forgot to post yesterday....I have used *my* faces again, one looking back to 2011 and one looking towards 2012. The clouds have all been outlined with a silver Edding pen to make the silver lining!






And while I was clearing off my table, I decided to use a piece of Graphics 45 paper which was lying around. It was just big enough for 2 tags, I just turned the paper to give a different front each time. I have used my umbrella man again, this time he has been cut out of the cover of an ancient paper back book.




Hope you all had a good start into the new year. Have a good day you all, take care, and thanks for dropping in!

Sunday 1 January 2012

Happy New Year

Happy New Year Everybody!

Thanks for being there, for visiting, for all your encouraging comments and for being good friends.
I wish you all health and happiness, and a creative new year filled with happy moments and lots of crafty goodies.


(Image from the Graphics Fairy)

Friday 30 December 2011

The Last Day of 2011

It's always a strange feeling when one year ends and another begins, but this year it somehow doesn't really seem real. However, it really is the last day of the year, and the last chance to blog in 2011. I have not made any resolutions, as it's just depressing when they all get broken. Hope you will all have more success with yours!

I just have some journal pages to show today, once again, more or less the same as always but different....Sorry that the photos are not good; the light was just bad all day.




And here is a little story which Narda sent me; I think it is something we can all take with us into the new year.

Garbage Truck of Life.
One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport.
We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us.
My taxi driver slammed on his breaks, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches!
The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us.
My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy.And I mean, he was really friendly.
So I asked, "Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!"
This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, "The Law of the Garbage Truck."
He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump itand sometimes they'll dump it on you.
Don't take it personally.
Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don't take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets.
The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so:
"Love the people who treat you right.
Pray for the ones who don't."
Life is ten percent what you make it
and ninety percent how you take it!
"What lies behind us
and what lies before us
are tiny matters
compared to what lies within us."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I would like to wish you all a very happy and healthy New Year 2012. Take care of yourselves, have a good day, and thanks for dropping in!

Paint Party Friday Week # 42

It hardly seems possible that this is the last PPF in this year; where has the time gone? Thanks to Eva and Kristin for hosting this challenge.

I have made a mixed media canvas for this week, using photos of me taken at various times, and pictures of London. I grew up in London's Docklands, more or less in Jack-the-Ripper-Land, and the predominant colours were grey and black, which I have used in my painting. Many of the buildings were not only soot blackened but also scarred and damaged by the *Blitz*. I cut away part of the photos I have used along the bottom of the picture, in order to make them merge better with the background. The pictures show places with which I was familiar during my childhood and school time. We lived very near to the Tower of London, where we often played as kids.






Hope you all have a great day. Take care, and thanks for visiting!

Thursday 29 December 2011

The Same but Different....

Yesterday I made some tags to enter into a few challenges. The theme over at *Take a word* is print this week, and this was my inspiration for the tags I made. They have all been made with the same combination of a *sandwich-man* stamp from Scrollswork, and TH's umbrella man. I used tags cut from waste cardboard, which I covered with paper from an old book. After distressing the background, I stamped the motive, and added the umbrella-man, twice as a die-cut, using old book covers, and once sponged with ink using the *waste*. Although each tag is basically the same, the look has been changed each time by using different colours and positioning of the images, and different *accessories*. I am also entering the tags into the challenges at the *Craft Room*, and at * Everybody Art* and at *Sunday Stampers* where *anything goes* is on.





I started some new journal pages, too, but they are only half finished just now.
Thanks to all who left me nice messages yesterday, it did me good to see that other people care. I still feel very down, but am trying to give myself a kick in the butt to get back into my routine again, and hope that it will help.

And before I close, another joke from Narda:

An Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman, a Welshman, a Latvian, a Turk, a German, an Indian, several Americans (including a Southerner, a New Englander, and a Californian) an Argentine, a Dane, an Australian, a Slovakian, an Egyptian, a Japanese, a Moroccan, a Frenchman, a New Zealander, a Spaniard, a Russian, a Guatemalan, a Colombian, a Pakistani, a Malaysian, a Croatian, a Uzbek, a Cypriot, a Pole, a Lithuanian, a Chinese, a Sri Lankan, a Lebanese, a Cayman Islander, a Ugandan, a Vietnamese, a Korean, a Uruguayan, a Czech, an Icelander, a Mexican, a Finn, a Honduran, a Panamanian, an Andorran, an Israeli, a Venezuelan, a Fijian, a Peruvian, an Estonian, a Brazilian, a Portuguese, a Liechtensteiner, a Mongolian, a Hungarian, a Canadian, a Moldovan, a Haitian, a Norfolk Islander, a Macedonian, a Bolivian, a Cook Islander, a Tajikistani, a Samoan, an Armenian, an Aruban, an Albanian, a Greenlander, a Micronesian, a Virgin Islander, a Georgian, a Bahaman, a Belarusian, a Cuban, a Tongan, a Cambodian, a Qatari, an Azerbaijani, a Romanian, a Chilean, a Kyrgyzstani, a Jamaican, a Filipino, a Ukrainian, a Dutchman, an Ecuadorian, a Costa Rican, a Swede, a Bulgarian, a Serb, a Swiss, a Greek, a Belgian, a Singaporean, an Italian, a Norwegian and 47 Africans all from different African countries all walk into a fine restaurant...
The maître scrutinizes the group one by one, and bars their entrance saying, "Sorry, you can't come in here without a Thai."


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