I'm Back .....................................

Oh my goodness it took me a while to dust this down and clear out the cobwebs.  Its been a long time.

I felt encouraged to perhaps give blogging a go again after reading about Julie Kirk from Notes on Paper  and her mission to leave 300 comments in 30 days on blogs.  It made me realise that I have missed my fix of blog reading which I always think is a great way to have a nosy into like minded folks lives.

I seem to have got a bit lost in recent times as there have been a lot of changes at work and in my Dads health.  Her has actually been in hospital following a bad fall for the last 4 months and we are just trying to get him into a Nursing Home at the moment.  He fell whilst out for a walk one evening and suffered a small bleed on his brain which has really affected the speed at which his vascular Dementia has accelerated.  He doesn't even really know who we all are these days.

I'm still crafting away although much less on the scrapping side and more on the art journaling and arty side.

I do intend to take scrapbooking up again as my son Fraser has been to Indonesia this year on a Queens Scout trip and wants an album of his trip so that's something to keep me busy over the winter months I guess.

Much less arting has been going on due to the amount of hospital visiting and I'm way behind on the year long arty course "Lifebook" which I have been taking this year.  Plenty of time to catch up soon though as I'm off for a much needed 10 day crafty break at Lochhouse with the girls.  I absolutely cannot wait.

In the meantime I will leave you with some pages from my Inspiration Wednesday journal.  I'm loving this class by Donna Downey which is once a fortnight so easy to keep up with.  She's fearless and just encourages you to go for it and enjoy the process and not to worry about the outcome.  Some of the pages I like much better than others but these ones are a few of my favourites.

First up is the cover of the book which was made by my lovely friend Dee from Donna's tutorial.  I totally love it.  I've treated myself to a sewing machine and Im hoping to get started with it soon but I haven't been brave enough as yet

Some of the pages so far

Hopefully I will be back again with you soon and meantime I'm off to do a bit of blog reading and commenting.

Finally ........ a bit of scrapping

I must admit my scrapping has been put a bit on the back burner recently as I seem to be all consumed by the inky painty side of crafting.

However, that is now creeping into my scrapping and I'm finding it hard to do a layout without adding some inky painty element to it

I did this one at my recent retreat as my entry for my Scrap a sketch group I'm part of

The main piece of "patterned paper" on this is actually a setion from the mop up paper on my desk,.  Its amazing what you get when you lift your work up and I got several fabulously painty and inky sections during my week away.  I sprayed some dylusions through a plastic canvas circle, I use this a lot as I love the effect it gives.  The stamps I used on the edges were from Kate Crane's latest set and make fab borders.

The photo is of Lisa and I, well our painty hands mainly.  We were getting down and dirty with the paints one evening whilst enjoying a glass (or maybe two) of wine.  Wine oils the wheels of creativity don't you know!!

I just realised after I had taken the picture one of the letter stickers in the title had fallen off - I have now rectified this before putting away in my album.

This one is my entry for the weekly challenge on UK Scrappers set by the Bijoux Belles.  Photo of is my daughters kitten Maisie Lou or as she is mostly known by us as Maisie Moo!!! and a right little moo she can be at times. Fi was trying to get Maisie to pout while she took a selfie of them both - silly girl!!  I used a fab new set of stamps I got from Angela at Angel Crafts, Simple Stories DIY - I thought they would be great in my planner but used them at the crop on two layouts so I think they are going to be well used.

Finally I managed to do the house challenge on UKS for the first time in ages.

Photo is me on my first beach walk of the season at Beadnell in March - boy it was cold but so good to be walking along the waters edge again. 

I used a stencil with some blue paint, some texture paste through another stencil and some stamping for this one

I'm hoping my scrapping mojo has re surfaced as I really haven't had the notion to do much scrapping in the last year.

The Documented Life Project - March catch up

I am still loving this fab year long project and managing to keep up to date with it hasn't proved a problem at all so far.  Any week where I have less time than usual my pages are just kept to very basic and on a week where I find myself with a bit more time and energy I spend more time making my pages a bit more detailed.

Here's a wee round up of my March pages

The prompt was "What makes you, you"  Im not great at journaling about myself but I gave it ago this week with a tip in page double sided and with two little flaps underneath.  I made the little person using a scanned piece of a Katre Crane tag which came with some of her stamps as the body and used a stampotique stamp for the head and legs and a Kate Crane Leaf stamp for the wings.

The background this week was made using a technique demonstrated by Terri Kahrs on a You Tube video gessoing your page first and then using inktense pencils and a baby wipe.  I love the depth of colour it gives.




Prompt was to draw a bird.  No I am not good at drawing at all but I had real fun with this week.

I used the Terra Kahr's inktense background again and then made my tip in from a gelli printed background which I gave a wash with watered down gesso to knock back the colour a little.  I built up my quirky little bird using gelli prints for the body, wings, eye and crown and drew in the stripey legs.  On the planner side of my page I took inspiration from Roben-Maries Smith's take on a Jodie Ohl collaged bird.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     What a great technique and one I will be trying again.  The whole page is collaged, then the outline of the bird drawn in pencil then outside the bird the collage is painted over so that the bird itself is made up of the original collage.  Very effective and not difficult at all.

This was the week we were on retreat at Lochhouse.  A grungy background with layers of paint being brayered on to form the background.  Lots of photos of us and incorporating some of my mop up paper into the background.

The prompt this week was to cut something out of a magazine and I found this fab image in an old issue of Somerset studio, I added some torn pieces of mop up paper, a bit of stamping and I thought the quote suited her perfectly

Background I have posted about previously from a Limor Webber video.

Prompt was to have someone draw on your page and finish it and my tip in was the result of a round the table timed collaboration with Dee and Donna.  At the end of that week I attended one of Kate Crane's workshops with Dee and Lesley so I added a couple of photos from that to it.

Spring Break - Lochhouse

Well as I might have mentioned in a previous post I was lucky enough to spend a whole week in March at Lochhouse Farm near Moffat in Scotland with my crafty besties.  Now before you think a whole week retreat is a bit of an expensive luxury its not.  We hire two wee cottages which includes the use of a room for scrapping in and cater for ourselves.  Its cheap and cheerful and we always have an absolute whale of a time. We are there for seven nights and there are five of us so each of us makes the dinner one night, Saturday night is the fish and chips night and on Sunday we actually have to drag ourselves out of our pj's to go to the carvery for Sunday lunch.

 Once lunch is over though its back into pj's to partake of our Lochhouse tradition of double pud Sunday, we are always too full after our visit to the carvery so we buy some puds in the co-op and eat them for our Sunday tea

All five of us are taking part in the Documented Life Planner project this year and it was fab to look in each others planner and see all the fab artwork, each of the planners is so different even though we are working to the same prompts.

The prompt for the week we were away for the tip in page was to have someone else draw on your page and then finish it so Dee, Donna and I decided on a round the table collaboration which was great fun, if a teeny bit stressful.  We set a timer and each had seven minutes to work on a page before it had to move round to the next person.

This is how mine turned out.  I love it

I even managed to convert Lisa to a dirty girl with inky hands during the week, teach her to sit next to me!

Wine o'clock on a Friday  is much more fun in company and with inky messy play involved, its sheer bliss. You know you really are a dirty girl when your wine glass can be picked out of five identical ones with the words "Oh this one with the gesso on must be Suzy's!!

I loved painting these quirky wee birds even though it took me nearly all day to get them done.

The week flew past in a blink of an eye so its just as well we have another one booked for October this year. Let the countdown commence.

Junk Key Round Robin

Hello there, right I resolve this moth not to neglect my blog as much as last month so today we have my Junk key for a round robin swap organised by Lou on UK Scrappers.  There's five of us in each group and the keys will travel round and each person will add something to them in the theme requested by the owner.  Well I bought myself a rusty key from ebay.  Lets just say it was larger than expected when it arrived but I love it so I'm using it!  It looks like a giant among some of the more delicate ones in the swap

No surprise that my theme is anything coastal.  First of all I thought Id jazz up the key itself and I wondered if some frantage would work on it.  Yes it did but oh my how hot does the actual key get while melting the embossing powder!  I used some shabby teal.  Next up I wrapped a piece of vintage book paper round the key and attached with some rusty wire.  I then added a tiny bottle with sand from the beach at my beloved Beadnell (yes I do have a glass vase of the sand along with some sea glass from Beadnell on display in my downstairs loo) and a seahorse charm with some turquoise beads which came from an old earring which was broken.  Its off in the post now to Karen and I cant wait to see what everyone adds to it as it goes off on its rounds

I have received Lou's key in the post and her theme is vintage sewing room.  Thinking caps on as to what I might add to this one.

See It, Pin It, Do It (March)

My goodness me.  I have been neglecting my little blog a bit of late.

Its been a busy old time to be honest between my Dads health increasingly failing, a lot of changes at work and two crafty retreats away- yes two I am a lucky girl I know.

So first up in my blogging catch up is joining in with Fiona's See it, pin it do it feature on her blog which is here.

Its a great way to ensure you actually do some of the lovely projects you pin on pinterest rather than just gaining boards full of pins

When I saw the link to this You Tube video by Limor Webber I knew instantly I wanted to have a go at it.


I didn't have the gelatos she used so improvised with acrylic paints.  I think the gelatos look easier to blend but I am trying to make do with things I have at present so with a bit more work I got the acrylic paints to do the job quite nicely.

This formed the base for my diary pages for the Documented Life Project for the final week in March.  The week we came home from Lochhouse but also the week I was meeting up with Lesley and Dee again to attend Kate Cranes workshop in Middlesbrough arranged by Jean.  More of that in a separate post.

I love the way my pages turned out and the little circles are filled with a mx of stamping and rub ons.  Its a bold page and quite different to the rest of the pages in my planner but I love it and its a style I will try again maybe in a more muted colour scheme

See it, Pin it, Do It

When I saw that Fiona was running this new feature on her lovely blog here.  I knew I wanted to join in.

I am taking part in The Documented Life Project (see my earlier posts for details) and I have been pinning things like a fiend for inspiration for my weekly tip ins.

I loved this pin here when I saw it and knew I wanted to do my own version of it for one of my tip ins

Here is my version.  the background is layers and layers of collaged bits, inks and paints, I just kept piling on the layers until I was happy with it.  I drew out the bird shapes and wings on papers I had made using my gelli plate and stuck them on and outlined the edges.  I loved the words which I stamped with one of my tiny alphabet sets and then tipped it into my journal using the bird and bird cage washi tape.

Hop over to Fionas and have a look at this new feature of hers.