Remedy for a wintery day...

... a wintery day in JUNE!!  The heating has kicked in and I'm wearing a cardigan and socks! (and other clothes obviously but those noted are the NOT usual clothes for JUNE! in the UK!)... what is going on!!

Aaaanyhoo as a tonic to the dismal weather I sketched, stamped, painted and doodled this summery journal spread in my large Dylusions journal.

Stamps: in background, flower from JOFY77
Paints:  Cerise, Butternut, Snowflake, Stone, Caribbean Sea, Hint of Mint.
Pencils:  Faber Castell Polychromos


Thanks for stopping by

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

Thank you Mother Nature

When things seem a bit gloomy you can always rely on Mother Nature to bring something that will lift the spirits..

Look at those colours!! aren't they beautiful - dark rich pink on the outside and peachy orange on the inside - fabulous!!

I like pink flowers - we have peonies (had peonies - last week's wind battered a lot of the blooms) I love the big multi-petaled flowers 

 and these that have 2 colours on the flower - I just wish they'd last longer!

Here's one of the few not pink plants in the garden - I think this clematis is fabulous and I'm really proud of how strong and resilient it is because its sharing the gates with a VERY boisterous honeysuckle plant - grows like a thing possessed! lol

Please don't let this blog post give you the idea that I'm a master gardener or anything.. far from it! I'm really not! but I'm trying :o)  

I'm waiting for the agapanthus to flower later in the year (some are flowering later than usual) - really looking forward to those...

I hope these flowers have brightened your day - I know they brighten mine.

x

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!

The freedom of going LARGE!!

Recently I had the urge to make something BIG!  Usually my projects using my stamps are quite small - and I always lean towards making small things (my C&G tutor would testify to that) but I just wanted - no, needed, to make something big.. or lets say bigger - going really LARGE is something I will have to build up to.

So I attacked the stash and pulled out some 6x6in patterned paper and cut 3 circles of different sizes - yes I cut them.. by hand.. with scissors.. not die cut.  You might wonder what the big deal is but for me if its a circle I like it to be accurate and round so normally I would die cut it  - but not this time!! This time I was liberating myself from neat and accurate - the piece would be 'better' if it things are not 'accurate'.. more organic...
I didn't have a plan - I was just going with the flow... making BIG JoFY flowers - they're my flowers so they can be any shape I choose - in the same way as if you were cutting out flowers/shapes they would be any shape you choose!

So three lovely circles, and 3 leaves later (I drew the leaves before I cut them out... I can only improvise so far! lol) I chose a board canvas to work on - 12 x 9 in - might not sound big to you but it is for me... all that white space.. but I embraced the space lol - painted it in shades of blue - Lake Wanaka, Inky pool and Blue Oyster.  Then I stuck on the 3 circles, shaded around the edges, drew stems, added the leaves.. a bit more shading and voila:

At this point (without any of the white pen work you can see) I liked it but kept thinking it was missing something - needed something 'more'.. but not too much.... (JoFY-ing it up as my OH calls it)... so I got busy with the white pen....

Now I love it - the simplicity, its joyful and the colours make me smile - luscious and ... well, juicy! ... especially the deep pink flower on left..

and now I want to go even bigger!!  which is good because I 'need' to make a firescreen for the new fireplace in lounge.. (40x90cm!)..... watch this space...

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

Bunting, bunting & ....

...  lots of cards were created at the Stamp Attic this weekend by 2 groups of lovely ladies... here are the bunting ladies (without Fiona who left before the photo call) (so busy creating on saturday I didn't get a chance to round them all up and take any photos! lol)

Lovely to see the different colour variations that were created...  I love that aspect of teaching classes.

I couldn't resist this pack of MyMindsEye paper - love the grey/blue/mustard colour scheme

Came home, and had a quick wander around the garden to find that the honeysuckle had, at last, started to flower - how lovely are these delicate blooms:

It was fun weekend - lots of laughs and creativity - looking forward to returning in September..

x

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside....

...oh I do like to be beside the seeeeeeaaaaaaa...  the sea in question this weekend was Deal in Kent where I had a fun day teaching a workshop at the Swanstitch shop....

... to a lovely group of ladies- Anita and her customers made me welcome and we spent the day creating a canvas and a couple of cards...

We laughed, painted, stamped, glued, sang 'happy birthday' to Kate, laughed a bit more and were creative all day.  Here are Anita's photos of the projects, now on display in the shop in among all the lovely paint and mixed media products:

Thanks for having me, and thanks to everyone who came along- hope to see you all again soon (well, November actually, if you're around and in the mood for a bit of Christmas themed creating!)

For the first time Matt came with me on a teaching trip (thats him peering through the window of Swanstitch in the top photo) - he stayed at our very lovely b&b in Deal while I went to teach.  We stayed at NumberOne B&B run by the lovely Nicky & Mark, who made us very welcome. I'd definitely recommend this b&b if you ever need somewhere to stay in the area - its lovely and close to the seafront, and a short walk to the high street with all its interesting shops, pubs and 'bits and pieces' to see.
Deal is a lovely relaxed town - I really enjoyed our weekend..

We drove down on Friday.. got settled at the b&B then went for a walk along the High Street..

(I love hollyhocks - so quintessentially 'English cottage garden'.. I just wish I could grow them like this in my garden!)

(worn flagstones at the information centre - how lovely is the texture!!)

.. we had a lovely meal and walked home- just as the wind changed and it got a 'little bit' stormy! (not as much as it had been in Essex the night before when we had an AMAZING storm!).

After 'work' on Saturday (too enjoyable to be called work, surely!) we walked along the seafront... a lovely relaxing way to end the day... I couldn't not take photos so here's a few:

the weather worn look of these railings on a building facing the sea caught my eye, I preferred these to the recently painted ones on the adjacent balcony - I like how it accents the detail.

We made it home on Sunday afternoon before the rain arrived, in what can only be described as torrential amounts, accompanied by thunder and lightning, so we were at home to bail out the patio and garage which were quickly ankle deep in water...  I hope you were all ok and relatively unaffected by this crazy weather we're experiencing at the moment here in the UK.... and now we have sunshine again! lol

gotta love the English summertime!

x

Dahlia's...

 .... glorious luscious pompoms of colour!! I really enjoy having them in the garden and watching them bloom... I thought I'd share some floral inspiration/eye-candy with you- colour (hot pink & orange!!) and form...

love how the colour is different on the underside of the petals:

(hahaha do you like how my nail varnish unintentionally matches the flowers!)

and even when the flowers have turned and are dying off they are still striking and interesting:

 lovely crinkled petals drying out in the sun..

xx