Monday morning.....

......and I have a stack of ironing to do.  No not the boring kind this.....

deep in the depth of my freezer I found a packet of Summer Fruits, now the summer for this particular pack passed long ago, I was just going to out them when I had a little "I wonder?". I thought I may be able to make some sort of pink paper (not something I really feel a lack of) but no nature and chemistry produced purple.

I put the berries  in the pan, added water and boiled them for about 15 minutes. I squashed the berries to extract as much colour as possible and then I strained them and put the juice in a foil baking tray. I then added a stack of assorted papers, one sheet at a time making sure each one was fully immersed. When I was nearly at the top I spread some of the pulp in between and that produced the pink   I left them overnight.
Not a nice day today so no hope of drying them with solar power so I popped them one sheet at a time into a low oven which is why they are a bit crinkly.

The variation of colour is interesting, the darkest ones are tracing paper and the lightest ones were only left for a few minutes this morning when I had taken out all the others.

What fun, now to do the kind of ironing I don't mind.

Where am I????????????

??? ...was my thought as I emerged from  Victoria Underground Station.

This is an area of London that I is not very familiar to me and the last time I was here, this wasn't.  They are upgrading the Underground station and the whole area has been transformed.  The old Victoria Palace Theatre looks as though it is being completely rebuilt to house "Hamilton" late this year, very late by the look of it as the moment.

The theatre was in need of a re-vamp I saw the Crazy Gang there in about 1956 and it was dingy then. When I had orientated myself I found my way to Shepherd's Bookbinders which used to be Falkiners and near the British Museum and much easier to find and with a lot more character.  There was a group of ladies waiting for a class on coptic binding which I heard one of them announce was the "in Thing", that's me out of it then. The tutor was late presumable still orientating herself.
I bought some hideously expensive linen tape and a few nice pieces of paper.

then it was off to this

Which was fun. My day was made when Osi Umenyiora

and Jason Bell

appeared on stage. The NFL show on the BBC is one of the highlights of my week, along with Mark Chapman they present a funny and informative programme.  Osi and Jason didn't disappoint yesterday.
Look who stood next to me. They were tall.

As I said a lot of fun, as was this.

Flag football is a way of interesting young people in the sport. These guys were really little but enjoying it so.

 the young man in the "hoodie" was enjoying it so he kept taking turns in both lines and he was really good, I may have seen a future star.
I took my "proper" camera yesterday, I haven't used it in a while and I am seriously out of practice but two photographs I liked, the first I am calling  "Conversation piece".

 and this was while strolling through Green Park

Remarkable because there were so many tourists around outside Buckingham Palace a few yards away that  I thought something was happening.
A good day.

Days are full.....

........Le Tour de France and Wimbledon, well that takes half the day at least. I love watching the Tour for the scenery, sometimes places we have visited, more often stunning views of places from the helicopters which you would never see in a car ride.  My brother introduced me to watching the Tour and we used to discuss on the phone, I miss him.
 
Weather back to normal British summer, every day is different, Saturday was a can't-make- up it's mind day and we took a little trip down the Darent Valley forgetting it was the lavender season.

Can you smell it?

Another sight was a flash of red as we were driving and I had to go back to catch the most glorious field of poppies I have ever seen.

I really needed a ladder to do it justice.

 Apart from TV my other occupation has been to play with tea bags and paper. Just look, it was such fun.  I bought the cheapest fruit teas that I could find and made up three bowls.

This was liquorice which I thought would give me light brown but in fact it remained a very pale yellow. The other two I used were blackberry & blueberry and masala chai.

I arrange the papers and for once had patience and left them overnight. Whoo!

 

  One has an embellishment of a leaf I walked in from the garden.

It was interesting how the different types of paper absorbed the dye.

I actually have dozens more but won't bore you, I used the last of the dyes to make book pages. the Blackberry made a lovely grey. You can see them behind these little journaling cards I have been making.

Did I say that after initial reservations I am now deeply in love with Tim Holtz's Oxide Inks.

Sun shining, what to do first?  Oh, housework. OK then.

Wk14

Wk 14 for Documented Life was Write your name and embellish it. I am not a fan of my handwriting so I chose an alphabet stencil I bought at the V&A with no clear idea of what to do and this is what happened.

Don't know why I should connect the letters with barbed wire?????

I treated myself to Sherrill Kahn's Mixed Media Master Class book

 and for the last few weeks I have been trying out some to the techniques I hadn't tried before. This is using textured copy paper and paper cord. 

and this was following a tutorial combining techniques.

It remind me of sailing into St Petersburg in the morning mist. I am so pleased with the book. it really gets the juices flowing.
This was something I meant to put up a while ago.  I collaged all the bits of paper that were lying around  my desk top and this rather Lord of the Rings landscape just appeared.  Well that's what it look like to me.

Al the mounts are digital to give me an idea of how or if to frame them.

Desk top is due for another tidy so who knows?