Apologies that I haven't blogged for over a week but I've been caught up with family things and haven't really felt chatty enough to post anything. You know how it can be sometimes, when you just want to batten down the hatches for a while. Anyway, I thought I'd pop on here before bed time, so am sitting here at just gone 11pm with windows open and the fan on, it's still so muggy!
Hello to new readers and followers that I met last weekend, or do I mean the weekend before?! A week last Saturday I was at Crafty Addicts in Chorley where I had a really fun day as everyone who comes to this shop seems to have a great sense of humour! The day just flew by and I didn't even get chance to take any snaps.
Next day was spent at Stamper's Gallery in Tarleton where I had another very busy day. This time David took a few piccies and here's one with some very concentrating faces...and David's finger too! It was another scorcher of a day, so it was lovely to see so many people choosing to come along rather than stretching out in the garden with a long cool drink! Actually, I think that everyone here was just wishing that I'd spritz them with cold water instead of my card! 
Last weekend I had a trip down to Farnham, in Surrey which turned out to be a very pretty town full of lots of lovely buildings and little nicky nacky noo lanes....he he, my sister Heather laughed so much when I described the roads like that, that she told me to include it on my blog! I had a nice journey down on the train and had a good look at a teeny fox cub staring up at me from the verge along the railway line. He was quite bold! I spent a good few hours wandering round Farnham in the afternoon and evening, including the very pretty park where there were lots of children in the water with those colourful fishing nets...a really nostalgic sight that made me feel like joining in! I did take pictures of a large family of downy ducklings with their mum and dad, lots of fish in the stream (yes, the water was so clean that I could see them) and my first ever real life sighting of a beautiful Grey Wagtail, which is much more colourful than its name suggests, being a lovely lemon yellow beneath a soft grey head and back. Unfortunately, the photos are too blurry to be worth sharing!
Next day I was at Squires Garden centre as part of their Craft Live event. This was held in a large marquee - great fun!
Here's a shot of my table with a huge display of Idealogy goodies to the side. Hello to everyone that I met there and hope to see you again next time I'm down that way. 
Here's one of the cards that I made on the day....I don't always finish cards on the day, but this was one that I worked on with a few different techniques and then put together bit by bit. The rosette is made using Tissue Tape of course...I've found that the rosettes take some practice but the results are worth the effort I think. A bit of talc behind the frills really does help to keep the shape and stop the tape going flat. Sorry about the rather dodgy backdrop!
I've been working from home all this week and have done a little bit more journalling, though nothing's completed yet. I've gessoed a few pages and coloured some backgrounds so am now seeing what develops. I don't often have an idea until I start - I like to just let my hand, complete with pencil, start wandering over the pages and surprise myself! 
This background really pleased me, though you can't see the colours and textures too well here. What started to emerge was a watery feel and this Mermaid soon followed. I am still in the process of colouring, with pencil crayons this time, and then will add some more details, though not too many as I want the page to have a dreamy quality. I may well add some gilding at a later stage. I'll be sure to post a picture of the finished page.
Today was nice as I saw my new Christmas stamp sets for the first time. I'll be sure to give you some sneaky peeks as soon as I'm allowed to!
Well, I had better sign off as a refreshing shower and then bed are calling. Hope to see some of you at Card-io, in Wigan on Saturday!
Hello all, it's been a week and a half here for one reason and another, so I'm sorry not to have properly posted for the last few days. I have some snaps to share with you, though not quite as fancy as the video which Andy made for me I have to say! I've been having some trouble with my photos, or getting them to the computer at least, but David has sorted things out now so, fingers crossed, things should work properly now.
Tomorrow I'm going to be at Crafty Addicts at 58 Pall Mall, Chorley in Lancashire....it'll be nice not to be trolling across the country for a change! Here's one of the cards that I've been making today, using the Kraft Resist stash, Distress Stains and an EK Success Retro Flower punch (which is huuuge!). I punched two flowers from the Kraft stash, inked them with a few colours of Stains and crumpled them up. When I had partly "unscrunched" them, I heated them to help set the creases and then bradded them to my inked Kraft Resist background. I trimmed some thin strips of inked Kraft paper and twirled them round a brush handle to make little curly trims to pop under the petals. Of course, I inked the ribbon....I hardly ever use pre coloured ribbon. The final touch was to give everything a light spritz of Perfect Pearl Mist in Perfect Pearl (white) and add one of my verses stamped onto the reverse of a scrap of the Kraft paper. It does look very dark here, but the Pearl spritz just lifts it. Hope to see lots of you there tomorrow and I'm looking forward to seeing the new shop (Heather has moved up the road and changed the shop name too!). 
On Sunday I'll be at Stampers Gallery in The Boskins, Tarleton, Preston. It's always a busy day here, and I'm looking forward to seeing some familiar faces. Here's another card that features the Pearl mist, although this one looks more sparkly in the picture due to the flash! Sue has asked me to recap my "straw blown trees", so I did a very sparse, slightly eerie one to go with some of my little fairy stamps. Thought I'd make the effort not to go all blue, pink and purple for a change! The blown trees are really easy to do but, as I haven't done any for a while, I had forgotten just how long Distress Re-inker stays wet for! Needless to say I had black ink on my fingers, hands, arm, knee (?!) as well as making mucky fingerprints on the card, my worksurface, a ruler, my scissors......oh dear, what a mess I made! If you come along this weekend you can see for yourself just how well, or otherwise, I managed to disguise most of the sooty marks on this card! 
Here is a peek at my latest project for Crafts Beautiful. I know that quite a few ladies who bought my Castle, Flags and Keep Smiling stamp sets in the last few weeks were wanting to know when this project would be in the magazine, so just to let you know that it's out now. I haven't seen it yet, but a friend who has tells me that it has been described as "Steampunk". This is nothing to do with me....I'm not losing the plot! Seems to be just one of those errors that occur from time to time. Anyway, if you have the stamps, this project will give you some ideas for using them. The gorgeous ribbon, by the way, is from My Mind's Eye, Lost and Found Party Collection. (I love distress looks, but I do appreciate a little bling as well!) 
One of the comments left after I posted the video clip was from Sonia, who asked if I could post some Journal pages. I haven't had much time to work on these, but, coincidentally, I had made the effort to alter, or finish a few that I had got to a part done state.
This first one is probably the longest running page in Journalling history (slight exaggeration I know!) as it started as one that went horribly wrong and has since been altered several times but never to my liking. There must be five layers of Gesso, half a dozen collaged images, loads of masking tape and I don't know how much paint, pen and glue on this page now! It's gone from really deep, dark maroony browns to....oh, there's a surprise....blues and purples! It's definitely going to be a rather sombre, brooding page and I'll post a picture when I have eventually finished it. 
However, here's a page that I have finished at last! This was just a rough background and a very simple ink drawing with some colouring on it. I've now added more texture and movement using Neocolour II soluble crayons and am quite happy with the effect now. A simple page, but it captures what I wanted it to. I am just deciding whether to add two figures to it....I think I should, but there's no going back if I do! 
The last page has also taken forever to complete. I drew the designs with my ink pen when the fantastic series about Madagascar was on TV some months ago! I've always been fascinated by Madagascar, or should I say Madagascar's wildlife. Gerald Durrell was one of my heroes and he managed to convey the magic of this place through his wonderful books. The TV programme brought it all back to me and I just wanted to make a happy, colourful page. I had started colouring it ages ago, but I set to and finished it this week. I especially enjoyed making the rainbow border and trying to disguise the Chameleon! Hope you, and especially Sonia, enjoy looking at them.
On the edge is the title of this post, and refers, not only to how I've been feeling this week, but also to a certain little character who has been showing off how clever he is...as well as how cheeky! We have been clad in scaffolding - which I hate, but the local wildlife has found most entertaining. Once they got over the shock, the pigeons decided that all the poles and planks had been placed there just for them, and now seem to be performing some sort of co-ordinated stage act, posing themselves at various levels in avian tableaux!
However, the star of the show has been Mr Squirrel, who took less than a day to figure that he could now get up to see what all the birds are eating. We first saw him zooming past the window along one of the steel poles at a rate of knots! I looked out of the bathroom window and, as soon as he spotted me, he shinned up a vertical pole, along a plank, up a ladder.....I wished I could have videoed it (complete with Mission Impossible theme music!) as it was quite a daring feat! As you can see, he made it right up to my eye level....
....and then moved in for a closer look and took some monkey nuts from my fingers. I even got to stroke his bushy tail and his back. So cute!
Well, I hope you enjoyed this eclectic post - I do try to mix things up a bit! Before I sign off, just a reminder that my new workshops are filling up quickly, so do email me if you'd like to come along and join in the creative fun. Hope to see lots of you this weekend and for those of you further south, I shall be in Farnham next weekend - more details about that next week! Welcome to new followers and hope everyone has a great weekend.
