Jeudi Journal - Understand

'It was a lovely Autumnal day when Sheila went walking in the woods and met up with her friend Brenda.  Brenda was wearing the most peculiar clothes and looked as if she was about to take a train ride somewhere as she had lots of suitcases with her.  But the most peculiar thing was that she had a can of cider in her hand.  

Now that might not seem strange to you but Brenda was known to be totally tee-total.  She never let a drop of alcohol pass her lips.  She had been known to refuse communion at church if she found it actually gave wine out, preferring the "more decent drink of Blackcurrant".  To Brenda anything alcoholic was "the drink of the devil himself".

So you can imagine Sheila's face when she saw her with the cider.

"What on earth are you doing?", she asked, "surely you are not going to drink that, that cider?"

"Of course I am" replied Brenda, "I am dreadfully upset and have done it at last, I have turned to drink."

Sheila smiled and told her friend that one can of cider did not make her a drinker, in fact the particular cider she was drinking was not even of a very low alcohol content, it was alcohol free and it was basically only like drinking a soda.  But she added "But why?"

"If you met my family you would understand" said Brenda, "you have no idea what they are like and what they are doing."

"Oh dear," said Sheila, "Come on, let's sit down on that log over there and you can tell me all about it.  Maybe we can even share that can of cider," and the two of them walked over to the log and sat down.'

The words for this week from Tim's snarky comments are "If you met my family you would understand" and the theme at Art Journal Journey, chosen by the lovely Elizabeth and the handsome Bleubeard, is "Collage Fodder, Food and Drink".  

So my page began life with my using several yellow shades of Distress Oxide Inks and then a couple of the orange ones and more yellow on top.  My new favourite stencil was used with a couple of the shades of orange as I do like tone on tone.  To finish off I put some ivy across the bottom of the page through a stencil and then drew a squiggly border on the other three sides.

I do hope this is acceptable to AJJ (and particularly Bleubeard whom I admire so much) and so this is my page for this week.  I included some Collage in the form of the two cut out figures and the can of Toffee Apple Cider, alcohol free of course.  That is using something from both Elizabeth and Bleubeard's choice of items for the theme.

I do hope you can join in with this theme during November, there are lots of things you can do with that title.  But, as Elizabeth points out, it must be a blog page - I suggest you read the rules carefully and enjoy creating.

WOYWW 700

Well, what do you know it's the 700th Edition of of WOYWW.  What a milestone!  Well done Julia for giving birth to what must be the longest running blog in existence (well, I imagine it is - apologies if this is not so).  700 weeks of blogging! Well done.

On Monday it was Halloween and the witches were out and about but none came knocking on our door.  I guess most parents are just too worried these days to let children out for a bit of Trick or Treating and the tradition has not been going that long here in the UK.  

I have noticed, however, that there are more and more houses with a bit of decoration, or a lot, and I passed a yard where something exciting was obviously going on on Saturday.  I would have loved to have stopped and nosied around.  

This is as far as we got - my Halloween display has grown and grown and now, this year, has the pretty picture I did with Jo Rice in a workshop as centre stage.

Here is our window sill in all its scary glory

I am hoping you can enlarge it - it is so dark and small but it is a big display and not easy to photograph.

Prior to Halloween, I went to the Hellaganza at Lavinia's in Ruthin.  Imagine my surprise when I was walking across the car park and I heard my name being called.  I turned and wondered who on earth was shouting - then I spotted someone getting out of a car and it was Angela (Crafting with Jack).  Angela had never been before and so she discovered her only vocabulary for the first few minutes was "Wow".

If you have never been you don''t know what you are missing as far as a shop's interior is concerned.  It is beautifully decorated, every room is a real pleasure, it really is like a journey through an enchanted forest.  And it even smells lovely.  I'll leave Angela to tell you about it.

There were lots of demonstrations going on and I managed to sit in on one of Jo's and she passed me one of her demo tags - so it is in my journal now and I just need to do some decoration around it.  I also went to see Sarah and she was doing the cutest little folders using lots of papers she was making with a stencil and some spray.  I'll make one and show you.

In the meantime - here is my desk - and all the goodies I bought on Saturday.  Rather a big spend on stamps but oh those hares!  (LLJ watch out)

Spent all morning (it's Tuesday here) sorting and cleaning one tiny bit of my craft room.  Well, it was a bit more than just morning.  Intended throwing lots of things out, filled a bin up but only with junk papers etc.

See you next week.