Bobby Dazzlers

Yes, check out these little beauties! Heather came over today and the first thing she did was to hand me a bag containing this pair of scrumptuous socks. She has been knitting away and told me that as many as five needles are needed at once which rather made my brain hurt...I can knit a plain scarf and that's about it.

So, not only are they a perfect fit, comfy and wonderfully warm, they are also in my favourite colours. It was a pure coincidence that I was wearing my "new" sweater and that I was so very nattily co-ordinated! Thank you Heather, I love them and so do my tootsies!

We spent much of the day together, went to visit our mum and then called at a nearby carvery to have lunch. It was a mixture of sunshine and dark gloomy skies but now the temperature has dropped like a stone and it's bitterly cold. At least my toes are warm even if my fingers are cold. Isn't it awful that we have to weigh up being reasonably warm with the worry over whether we can afford to keep the heat on? Don't get me started on that one! I've come down with a bit of a cold now, so I'm definitely more inclined to leave the heat on at the moment. Fingers crossed that the paracetamol and hot drinks will do the trick and send the sneezes on their way.

Thank you for all the comments about the garden progress. I'm terribly impatient and always want instant results but I'm learning to think about the long term - though I have got some little Pansies to brighten up the expanses of brown soil everywhere! 

In response to Mark - sorry I don't have your email to reply personally - and the queries about my journal....I really don't worry too much about what I use in there. The Moleskine papers (in the lilac banded one anyway) are pretty tough and are, as you said, very smooth. If I use Promarkers they show through on the reverse of course, and the options are to either stick two pages together (waste of a page!) or to disguise the bleed through. I coat the page with Gesso, paint it with acrylics or glue book paper over it...any of those work well. If I use book paper I sometimes spread a little Gesso over the surface leaving some areas exposed to show certain words or images. Then some inks sprayed over or I'll use acrylics or Neo Colours to add colour to the surface. I don't usually have much of a plan! I'll often make a background and then decide where to go with it - other times I know what I want to do and then do a background to suit. I do like a smooth clean page though, so I can sketch onto it and then work the drawing up into a completed page. Hope that helps! Any gardening tips would be welcomed by the way!!! Lol!

Well, the heat's on but I'm still cold, so I think it may be time for a bite to eat and another hot drink to get warmed up from the inside out.

Goodbye 2011

Hello all. With just about 45 minutes left of 2011 I must say that we will be very glad to say goodbye to what has been a year that's been memorable for all the wrong reasons. I hope that some of you have had a happier one, though most people we know seem to have also had a bad year one way or another.
So, time to dust off the sadnesses, difficulties and annoyances and usher in a fresh start that we can only hope will bring better things for us all. We'll be starting 2012 by going outside to view the fireworks (not ours!) and raising a small glass. I have always disliked New Year and usually find it rather depressing, but am looking forward to this one.
Hope everyone had a good Christmas - ours was quite strange with all the recent events and changes, but we had a lovely quiet time.
With all the recent sadness I did forget to tell you that there was a happy moment when we were moving....thanks to some positive thoughts sent my way, and despite my having previously searched in the exact same place, my Art Journal reappeared much to my absolute delight and relief! I will certainly have plenty to add to it now.
You'll have seen that we have knocked the Rant Blog on the head. I had so much to have a good moan about, but just never seemed to have time to sit and type it all out. Oh well, please feel free to have a grumble on here anyway if the urge strikes you!
Okay then, about half an hour before the clock strikes twelve, so I will sign off with good wishes to you all from both of us.

A mixed week

Hello all, especially to the ladies and gents that I met in Crewe and Fleetwood over the weekend. I did take my camera, but complete forgot to take photos as I was rather busy! Still, here's one picture of a tag which I made for a good friend of ours and which has now been received so I can show it! I used some Ice Stickles in Gold Ice, to edge the tissue tape flower and frill though you can't really see it here...shame as it is a really pretty, almost vintage looking shade. On the good side of the "mixed week" of my title, I received a small package today which contained the three Autumn (Fall) limited edition Distress ink pads, and, especially as one of them is a purple shade (Seedless Preserve) I am looking forward to using them!
As this has been a mixed week, you may gather that all has not gone smoothly, and I am feeling really sick at the moment. I have been too busy to work on my current Art Journal recently but, as I am working on new stamp designs for next Spring, I decided, on Monday, to have a look through it to get a little inspiration for some of the quirkier things I have in mind. That was when the bad part of the week started.....I cannot find my journal anywhere. I have an awful, sinking feeling that it has gone forever, as I just cannot recall when I last had it with me when I was out and about. I've been taxing my brain to visualise where it could be, all to no avail and I have looked in every bag, box and on every shelf that I can think of. We had some things stolen from the cellar a few weeks ago and I am beginning to think that it must have been in one of the boxes that was taken, either that or I have left it behind somewhere. My last hope is that David moved some of my things to make more room for me and that the journal is somewhere hidden, but neither of us can find it. You may imagine how upset I feel about this, so please send me some "finding lost things" vibrations in the hope that it will emerge from somewhere!
I don't want to dwell on miserable things though, so just a reminder that I'll be in St Helens this coming Saturday, at Crafts 4 U 2 Do and then will be back there on Sunday to teach two workshops. Both classes are the same and we'll be making cards "that surprise and delight". There are a few places still available, so, just send me an email or contact the shop directly if you fancy coming along.

On the edge

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.

Hello folks, especially those who have blamed me for hair loss, bags under eyes and furrowed brows after I posted my quiz! Don't forget to email me your answers by next Saturday night (9th)...I've had some already but I'm not saying anything about how many questions anyone has got right yet! I'll definitely be repeating the quiz idea though as quite a few people have requested more of the same. Coming up with new fiendish clues will give me something to do on my train journeys!

Meanwhile, here are some cards that I've been making for this Saturday's demonstration at A for Art in Chesterfield....this one uses stamps from Darkroom Door's Art de Fleur vol 2 as well as the MS punch all over the page butterfly. The ribbon is from the Tim Holtz Lavish Trimmings pack - it's a lovely soft, silky ribbon which has a real vintage feel. I dyed it using Colourwash Dyes and lots of water to tone the colour down. The soft background is Bundled Sage and Aged Mahogany gently blended over 300gsm card with the flower stamped in Bundled Sage. The next card has the gorgeous roses from the same trimmings pack, again spritzed with Colourwash dyes and water. Confession here: I had just enough of a length of the roses to fit down the card if I slightly stretched the backing mesh as I stuck them down. I got a bit carried away though, and somehow managed to rip them! So, I stuck the short length at the top and the longer piece at the bottom and added the sentiment over the gap! I preferred how it looked, so it was definitely one of those "happy accidents"! The butterflies are Darkroom Door stamped directly onto the card (covered with paper from a Lost and Found stash) and then identical images stamped and cut out from acetate were overlaid. I used some of the new Stickles colours on the bodies. I also used more papers and the MS Vintage Lace PATP edger and corner to add to the Victorian feel. If you'd like to see these cards more closely (and more besides of course!)do pop along to A for Art on Saturday. There are some pictures from Sunday's workshops on my computer, however, because I couldn't find my camera, David took them using a different one and I can't find where they are! Still, here are a few cards from the day.....this is one of the Steampunk cards that we were making. I have been trying to use different colour combinations than my usual favourites and really liked the orange and aqua tones of this one. The stamps are a combination of Tim Holtz and Andy Skinner. You can't see it here, but the background does have some Perfect Pearls Mists on it to give a subtle shimmer. The other Steampunk card was the one that made the class overrun by ooohhh, only about forty minutes! There was lots of cutting out of Grungeboard by hand...I loved the Ranger canvas that was one of the projects at Stitches this year, so decided to make a small version of a mannequin. The clock face should be hanging down, not bashing that poor chap on the head! Didn't realise till after I'd uploaded the picture that it was stuck behind his hat!

The next two cards were made by David who joined in the workshop this time! I think he's made a good job of them...note the artistic flicky pen border on this one!This one took him all day (and about a pint of Glossy Accents! In joke for the workshop ladies there!) as he was making it for Rena's birthday/retirement. Sorry about the chopped off piccie but this was kindly emailed over to me by Sheila as I didn't have a picture, and, for some reason, it decided to snip the picture. The funny thing about this card, which caused much hilarity, was that I had pre-stamped the words "Spread Your Wings" to save time for everyone. David chopped them into the three little panels to attach them to the card, but he mislaid the "wings" one. We searched everywhere but there was no sign and I had no spares. So, the card bears the message "Spread your"! Oh well, good thing Rena has a sense of humour! We had a lovely day and the workshops had a very calm (mostly!) yet fun feeling which ma de for a very creative time. After we'd finished David and I went to Rena and Stephen's house where they were holding a party to celbrate Rena's retirement and her forthcoming birthday on Tuesday. The house was full of family, friends and what seemed to be about 83 children (but was probably only eight!) having great fun both inside and in the garden. It was a lovely evening (check out Amy's blog for pictures of the amazing cake that Rena's sister Julie made) but I know that everyone will really miss seeing Rena at the shop.

I'll finish with a page from my journal that I did after my trip to Whitley Bay. I used Gesso and NeoColour pastels for the background. My lady doesn't look quite how I wanted her to, but the page does remind me of my paddling in that cold sea water, so I don't really mind! Well, that's all for the moment, but I'll be back soon with more pictures. Oh, by the way, you may possibly find one or two of the answers to the quiz in this latest post! Oh, what a tease I am!