ALBOTAT: using up the scraps.

Sometimes when a project is finished the scraps and 'rubbish' left on the desk are too nice, colourful and interesting to throw away.. so its nice to make something out of them...

I don't tidy my desk very often so there were quite a few scraps on my desk from various projects & class samples and they tied together nicely - pink and green is always one of my favourite colour schemes!  I built this page in my art journal on a page where I'd glued a piece of starry tissue paper thinking it would be a great background for something at somepoint! lol and its a perfect background for this spread.

This took very little time - lots of gluing down, a touch of stamping and some neon pink scribbles and its done!

I encourage you to try this - gather the 'bits' on your desk and play with them - if they came from a project where the colours coordinated then it makes sense that they'll work again in another setting.. win win

Have fun!

ALBOTAT: Spring is blooming!!

This journal page was inspired by the garden and the arrival of spring and, hopefully soon, summer! (fingers crossed lol) Our garden has been getting more colourful by the day and I love the surprises it throws up.

I like to keep some white space on my journal spreads but on this one I scribble wrote all over the page on top of the original sketch

I really like how it looks when you paint over it - just about visible but not legible.. its not interfering with any added layers...

Once I'd finished reinstating the design with paints and a Posca paint pens - love those A LOT!!) I scanned it on the computer. I cleaned up the scan by removing any background marks leaving only the scribble flowers.  I printed it out on my toner printer onto a vintage book page - ooooh that was a good print!  such a great image it was hard to cut it up!! lol

I carried on sticking and colouring- I'd originally planned to stick the printed flowers over the matching ones on the journal page but decided the spread needed more flowers (are there ever enough flowers!) - and I also kept thinking 'its needs more colour'  - until finally, with the addition of swipes of neon pink gel pen, I was finished!

I really like that the pages are bright and colourful but also still have a lot of 'white' space.. space to 'breathe'.

Thanks popping by

ALBOTAT: Doodle Flower....

I'd been wondering what the big blousy doodle flowers from on JOFY64 would look like if the two parts were combined to make an even BIGGER doodle flower...

Well, they'd look like this:

REALLY like how this looks!   Created with four of the 'half' flowers underneath one of the complete flowers, raised on 3d foam with the little background flower used on the centre....  the leaves are from JOFY61.

 Sometimes you just have to play BIG!!

ALBOTAT: Sometimes you just 'need' to make something...

.... and today was one of those days... the lovely postman delivered my Eileen Hull Sizzix Travel Journal die and my (small) to-do list was sidelined for a while as I set about making a 'simple' version of the journal - I call it simple because I made it out of basics to create a 'working' version - something that I could refer to when I make more later on.. and I will be making more later... I can feel a version with corrugated cardboard covers coming on... lol

I made this journal out of kraft card and I cut and glued & sewed two layers together to give the covers more strength (and sewed the centre join).  I painted it black (to keep it clean - its a travel journal, & will be in my handbag so may get grubby), stenciled on the letters (a That's Crafty stencil) and sewed on ties - I really like using ribbons to wrap around and keep the journal closed.
There weren't any directions about how big/thick the books should be that fit inside so I made mine 10x21cm (20x21cm folding at 10cm) which made them nice and easy to cut out.  I cut 3 books of 6 pages each - different types of paper giving it a junk journal feel.

Because I cut the pages from larger sheets of paper I ended up with lots of smaller pieces which I used to make little journals...

Can't have too many books ready to be painted & doodled into, can you?

Looking forward to seeing what everyone else is creating with their dies.

x

ALBOTAT: A day with Seth Apter...

... a couple of weeks ago I went to a workshop with Seth Apter, organised by PaperArtsy.  Such a lot of fun, and learning...

I lost count of how many layers were used to create this. :o)  All done with Fresco Finish paints.

Detail of front cover... mono printing, stamping, painting, stenciling, doodling - you name it, we did it! lol

A great day.  If you get the chance to do a class with Seth - take it!  You won't be disappointed.

ALBOTAT: Birthday card & present....

... for Mr JoFY..

I'd been trying to find a big metal 'M' to go in Matt's 'man cave' for a while and found these cardboard marquee letters by Heidi Swapp...  Started off as white cardboard, I painted it in a mix of grey Fresco Finish paints (Concrete, Slate, Elephant (now discontinued, sadly) mixed with white) and finished with a top coat of Metallic Glaze.  The treadplate in the centre also started off as white cardboard which I embossed with a Cuttlebug embossing folder and painted in the same way.

It looks great with or without its lights on, and hubby loved it.

I couldn't resist painting 2 of the Tim Holtz crazy cats to resemble our two furry family members - the shapes and facial expressions were spot on!  Makes me smile.

sad, neglected little blog of mine....

...I'm sorry little blog - I promise to do better! and do better for you lovely people who stop by this blog and see the same picture/blog post... apologies to you too....

so, to go some way to making amends, over the next few days (maybe a week depending on how many worthwhile snippets I find!) I'm going to share some of the Instagrams I've posted (and some I didn't, thinking they'd make it to the blog, but didn't...).. and other stuff that I hope you'll like....

These little bites of ALBOTAT (A Little Bit Of This And That!) are going to be in no particular order what so ever.....  (well, I'll put some thought into their order of appearance but not too much - lets just get them out there shall we - less overthinking! lol)

Lets start with this:

It was Mr JoFY and mine's wedding anniversary last week - 11 years - and each year he buys me a lovely bouquet of flowers which includes ornamental cabbages as they were in my wedding bouquet...

The cabbages are gorgeous - and not just the tops - look a the fabulous colour of the stems! (and no they don't smell, people ask that when you tell them you like cabbages as flowers)

.... and this morning I changed the water in the vase and threw the 'dead' leaves in the sink - look at the gorgeous colours!

How's that for a colour scheme!

Lush!

ALBOTAT.. making the most of mail..

.... I'm talking about junk mail. 

I seem to receive mini brochures from clothing companies - most of which go in the bin but some of them are worth a quick flick through - you never know what gems might find and cut up...  The Boden catalogue is always full of great page titles (very useful for junk or art journaling), the Made (furniture company) catalogue is a great little fold out brochure and then there is...

the Hush catalogue... I like this one: nice paper, nice clean layout and the model in it has such a beautiful ethereal face - like an innocent yet cheeky fairy - (if Shakespeare's Puck from a Midsummer Night's Dream were to arrive in the 21st Century, or Tinkerbell from Peter Pan, then this is her) and so when the catalogue arrived recently I couldn't resist giving her a quick makeover... I let her spread her wings and take her place on a toadstool...

This is how it looked after five minutes with a Sharpie pen.... 

When I look again at the photo on the right, with the toadstool, - her expression seems to be saying "really! you sat me on a toadstool! I expected a throne!"  lol

Might as well make the most of the junk mail that comes through the door.... now where did I put the Boden catalogue and my scissors.....

x

ALBOTAT / Holiday makes..... Part 3

... so this post is less of a 'holiday make' & more of a 'holiday take' .... this is a picture of taken of me with Morgan the monkey who each week visits the hotel we stayed at to 'promote' the sanctuary where he lives...

So adorable!  He was so light! I hardly felt him sitting on me and his fur was really soft... an excellent ambassador for the sanctuary (& would do anything for snacks/treats).

I passed on having my photo taken with a HUGE iguana the next day, and the bird of prey the following day.... if its not cute & furry I'm not interested! lol

x

ALBOTAT / ACP:2 Stamps of a different kind....

... little mini works of art..

I raided the vintage stamp albums that I have gathered/been given and searched for bits and pieces for moodboards...

What I learned from the search is that stamps ...

*  have lots of lovely shades of colour

*  are mini works of art

*  are not many stamps issued in yellow... from any country!

Anyone else think that this stamp album would be better repurposed into journal pages...

I think this was my favourite from the search - love the aqua/teal/turquoise against the dark backround.

xx

ALBOTAT: A little festive something.....

.... to brighten your day!

This has to be the BEST christmas advert in the UK so far this year - its going to take some beating!..
Its adorable, schmaltzy, & funny in just the right amounts!

Enjoy

Though I may be biaised because I have a chubby tabby similar to the one in the film lol

(not sponsored by Sainsburys (unfortunately), other supermarkets are available! lol)

ALBOTAT: Gelli prints meet doodles...

I have a backlog of little projects to share - little bits and pieces that I created over the summer when I was taking a break.. and here is the first:

These are basic prints I made with the Gelli® Plate, and when playing around with a Gelli® plate I end up with lots of prints (as I'm sure we all do) so I decided to doodle onto a few of them...

In the centre is the first print taken of a gelli plate with a stencil laid on (using pink & orange (fresco finish) paints). On the left is the 2nd print, and on the right is a print of the stencil itself... sometimes I find the second print more interesting as the paint is less solid so more texture is created.

The print below was created by pressing a stamp onto the Gelli® plate (thats how the white lines you can see were created) and doodling on top and around that print/ image when dry (the black lines).. I like the white & black lines - a shadow and/or a highlight??  Its similar to a screen print where the registration is a little 'off'.

x

(Gelli® used with permission. Owned by Gelli Arts® LLC)

ALBOTAT: Last minute decisions....

...are sometimes the best.... 

The National Theatre screened a live performance of Hamlet last week on Thursday night to thousands of cinemas across the country and around the world - no pressure on the cast & crew... eeek
I knew that the National Theatre has a program of streaming performances across the country/world and I was curious to see a performance shown in this way... and I liked the idea that across the country there were lots of people sitting down to watch this same live performance, sharing the experience.  (our cinema has 8 screens and 4 of them were showing Hamlet.)

The performance was Thursday evening and I booked the tickets on Thursday morning (the last minute decision of this post title), and I'm soooo glad I did

I've never seen, or studied, Hamlet (I have a basic knowledge of the plot).. It was a brilliant production - Benedict Cumberbatch was amazing in the lead role... the set design was clever, interesting and beautiful (and made me want to repaint our lounge wall dark blue).

It was interesting to watch- the production was soooooo slick that you forgot that you were watching a LIVE theatre performance - but I suppose that is the point.

(image: National Theatre)

If you have tickets to see it at the theatre you are in for a brilliant night - but if you can't get to a theatre (ticket are like gold dust) check cinema listings because this coming Thursday (22nd) lots of cinemas are showing it again ('Encore' NT Live)... I'm tempted to go again!

x

ALBOTAT: Colouring in....

... don't mind if I do!

Colouring books for adults.. 101 ways to keep a person quiet and focused and a fun way to practice colouring within the lines... lol..

ALBOTAT: From little acorns....

... lovely dibbers are made.

I'd like to tell you a story...

Once upon a time, not so long ago- back in the mid 1970s - a little girl planted an acorn in the back garden of her parents house....

Fast forward forty (OUCH) years and the little girl (thats her in the photo above in the garden, on her first day of school) has grown up and so has the tree.  The garden and tree, in the rear right of the photo below, have blossomed and the tree is big and strong....   gone is the 'Good Life' vegetable patch, now replaced by lawns and flower beds...

The not-little-anymore-girl now has her own house & garden and asked her Dad to make her a dibber to help plant seeds....
So he used a branch that had needed to be trimmed from the tree, turned it on his lathe and created lovely dibbers...

And that is how the acorn that I planted when I was five, grew big, and became my plant dibbers!

How great is that!

Love that my Dad thought to make the dibbers out of a branch of the tree I planted - circle of life, personal history/attachment...

x

ALBOTAT: accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative...

.. is exactly what this well cropped photo of our garden does!

The view of the alliums, gates and aquilegia in the background focuses on the good part of the garden - and makes me happy!  Pretty!
(fyi if you widen out the photo you'd see a big pile of wood and building materials/supplies - but we'll just ignore those! lol)

oops sorry - this post may appear twice in updates because it was deleted by accident and had to be reloaded! ggggrrrr
and HELEN, yes the grass needs cutting but we can't because of the previously mentioned pile of building supplies! lol  ah well - long live the weeds and the wilderness! lol

x

ALBOTAT: Bloomin' lovely...

... each week I try to buy flowers to have on the lounge table.. not expensive flowers just so there's something 'living' in the room... supermarkets all have flowers a good prices..  Lidl have lovely lilies at a really good price, and tulips too -  I bought two bunches a few weeks ago - one pink and one purple.. loved the colour of the inside of the pinks:

It faded from pink to a pretty pale teal colour - camera not really doing it justice..

The purples started life like this:

and gradually as they started to turn fade and gave these lovely purple/ lavender tones - nicer/more interesting ???

Last week I bought Peonies - £6 in Tesco, guaranteed for a week - love how these started off as tight little balls of buds and then burst (slowly! lol) into wide delicate flowers - similar to a waxy tissue paper..

They started to turn and became floppy and fragile, and the colours faded to different shades of a peachy pink - so pretty..

Its inspiring to have the flowers in the house and watch them change... and the colour combinations & shadings that occur naturally.   Its the same in the garden - everything is waking up after the winter - some plants are growing nice and quickly - others not so much... I'm a bit of an impatient gardener!

x

ALBOTAT: Messing about with a gelli plate again....

... and this time with the large plate - roughly A4 size....

'inked' up the plate with Tinned Peas and Chartreuse Fresco Finish paints, lifted some paint with doily masks and pulled a print.  I then covered the plate with Bougainvillea and another stencil and using the doily print pulled this:

.. its not perfect but I'm really enjoying playing with the plate - building layers, creating contrasts between delicate prints (the doilies) and a block print (the flowers) -  for me its about embracing the imperfections of the prints...

I removed the stencil from the gelli plate and there was still enough wet paint to pull a final print.. which I doodled onto (when dry) - spots had been left on the gelli plate after removing the stencil and so I highlighted/used these and made them part of the image...

This was fun to do - reminding myself that 'its just a piece of paper', gelli prints at this stage are almost 'disposable' aren't they - playing around with the process...

ALBOTAT: Brayered background card...

... that I made for my Mum-in-Law for Mother's Day...

The long white flower/seed stems are a Clarity Stamp stencil - I thought it worked really nicely with my bull rush stamp.

Here are the colours I used to created the brayered background - unusually they are all opaque which built the background up to be quite textural and similar to a matte pottery glaze.

 I cut it in half and edges the panels in different colours to see how it changed the look...

Fun card to make, and interesting to see how you can change the look of the pieces at the last moment by colouring the edges.

x

(PS - the colour change in the brayered backround between the first and last photos is caused by change in lighting - I either turned the lights on or off ... not sure which, sorry!)