R is for..

..rust and recycling. Well I just made this page for my A-Z Art journal, and I thought I would combine my A-Z with the Mixed Media Monday prompt which was Recycling. This is not much of a page really. The recycled bits are the netting from a bag of oranges, painted a rusty colour with acrylic paint, some old washers found in the garage, and a bit of applique from an old Tshirt, stained with walnut ink.




This afternoon we went to Dowick Botanical Garden. This is a truly beautiful arboretum, with the most stunning variety of trees. I took some photos:

A New Layout

This one was done for a challenge at Scrapperie. I was only allowed to use card and patterned paper, and had to use paint (the lines in the background), embossing (the pattern on the title, and the stamped words), ribbon, paper tearing, and a tag. I was quite happy with this LO-especially with the tag. I've always had a problem using tags-but the tag looks OK on this LO!

Here's a joke for you:
A man came home from work and found his three children outside, still in their pyjamas, playing in the mud, with empty food boxes and wrappers strewn all around the front yard. The door of his wife's car was open, as was the front door to the house and there was no sign of the dog.
Proceeding Into the entry, he found an even bigger mess. A lamp had been knocked over, and the throw rug was wadded against one wall. In the front room the TV was loudly blaring a cartoon channel, and the family room was strewn with toys and various items of clothing.

In the kitchen, dishes filled the sink, breakfast food was spilled on the counter, the fridge door was open wide, dog food was spilled on the floor, a broken glass lay under the table, and a small pile of sand was spread by the back door. He quickly headed up the stairs, stepping over toys and more piles of clothes, looking for his wife. He was worried she might be ill, or that something serious had happened. He was met with a small trickle of water as it made its way out the bathroom door. As he peered inside he found wet towels, scummy soap and more toys strewn over the floor. Miles of toilet paper lay in a heap and toothpaste had been smeared over the mirror and walls.

As he rushed to the bedroom, he found his wife still curled up in the bed in her pyjamas, reading a novel. She looked up at him, smiled and asked how his day went. He looked at her bewildered and asked, 'What happened here today?' She again smiled and answered, 'You know every day when you Come home from work and you ask me what in the world I do all day?' '
Yes,' was his incredulous reply.
She answered, 'Well, today I didn't do it.'

Another

..piece following the prompt from Mixed Media Monday. This time the prompt was numbers. Being light on stamps- (I can feel a spending spree coming on)- I have to think a bit laterally. So thinking about numbers made me think about lottery tickets, and how people say-'when my numbers come up I'll..." So I downloaded some images of lottery tickets and applied them to a painted background by doing image transfers. The woman waiting by the phone is clipart. Then I stamped the text. I really love these little alphabet stamps by Inkadinkadoo. They make anything look good. There is also a gold embossed stamp in the top corner saying Illusion, which I thought appropriate to the topic.




And if you haven't already been over to The Creative Type, please take a look and be inspired!

TOOT

I am so excited because I have been asked to be on the Design Team of a new inspirational blog site-THE CREATIVE TYPE. This is going to be such a cool site with prompts and challenges geared to the world of type, story telling, design and all other creative aspects. You will be inspired to look at journalling in a new way, to use lettering as an embellishment in all sorts of ways, and not just on scrapbook pages either. I know this blog will challenge me and stretch my creativity-and that is fantastic!! I have been having a little blog hop around the other designers and there is some great talent there! There is one prompt up so far, but the whole thing really takes off on September 1st. I hope all you people who visit my blog-(and I know you do, even if you don't leave comments)-will come on over and join in the fun.

And here's a little story that made me laugh!

A tour bus driver drives with a bus full of seniors down a highway, when he is tapped on his shoulder by a little old lady. She offers him a handful of peanuts, which he gratefully munches up. After approx.15 minutes, she taps him on his shoulder again and she hands him another handful of peanuts. She repeats this gesture about eight times.
At the ninth time he asks the little old lady why they do not eat the peanuts themselves, whereupon she replies that it is not possible because of their old teeth, they are not able to chew them.
"Why do you buy them then?" he asks puzzled.
Whereupon the old lady answers, 'We just love the chocolate around them.............

another attempt...

...at mixed media. I found the Mixed Media Mondays blog and decided to try to do something relating to the prompt which was 'Fashion'. I tried to do a graffitied brick wall. I used acrylic paint that I heated until it bubbled (for a bit of texture). Then I cut up some household sponge into a brick shape and used ink to make the brick texture, added the graffiti, the image and the quote. I think I will try to do the weekly prompt challenge on MMM as it wil be a way of encouraging more experimentation and get my grey matter ticking over- and that has got to be good! This week the prompt is 'Numbers'- and I have an idea brewing.

A-Z Art journal

I am a bit behind in uploading my A-Z art jornal pages. Now you need to understand this is all new to me and I am experimenting with different media, loving every minute of it and learning lots. And when we experiment we make mistakes right? And that's how we learn. It doesn't matter if it's perfect if we have learned from it. One thing I have learned is that this type of art is very forgiving-if something doesn't work you can paste or paint over it and often the build up of layers leads to more interesting pages.

So here's N:
N for newsprint, numbers, napkins and negatives. first I pasted on some newsprint, and black and white napkin flowers, then stamped the numbers over with acrylic paints, then stamped the wee red numbers.

Here's O:
O is for orange and office supplies and openings. This is done on an office envelope, with an opening at the side. I painted the envelope orange, pasted on an invoice, inked in shades of orange, then pasted a picture of an orange cut from a napkin. It was looking beautiful and then I decided to add the quote by printing direct from my computer onto the piece. BUT (and this is what I learned from this piece)-it wasn't completely dry and as a result the ink ran. Now in some circumstances this might be an interesting effect, but not on this piece! Actually, that whole waiting thing with mixed media is challenging for me. I want to be able to plough on and finish my bits and pieces, and all this waiting for things to dry or set is SO HARD!


Here's P:
P is for paint, and pattern and patina and purple. I have tried to build patina by the layering different colour paints, stamps and different translucency's. Purple-well I started with purple, but it's not a colour I feel comfortable with, so it has been toned down with blue and gold. A stamped pattern was applied, but much of it has been covered by the paint layers, but it does show through from time to time. Finally, I added a quote about paint.

What happened to summer?

I am getting so fed up with rain! We had rain on holiday in Italy and France, and it has virtually rained every day here in Edinburgh since. I went out to take some photos of the Festival the other day, but the rain won in the end. I feel sorry for all the tourists and the street performers too! On the other hand I have been doing some scrapping so it's not all bad. Here's one I did from out holiday.

I am really happy with the main photo-I think that angle works so well.

Did some art..

Tonight I messed around doing some mixed media stuff. I would love to be able to do all those fab art journals that you see around. BUT I am quite pleased with my beginners efforts. First I glued on some ripped up paper doilies, then pasted them on card, gessoed over the top, added some soft green acrylic paints, did some gel medium image transfers and some tape transfers, then did some stamping, added a quote, and this is the result:

What do you think?

Don't you just hate it when...

Your internet provider is unreliable? We have been having trouble getting online and staying on line for 2 days now. When we do manage evrything is so slow...
So just a quick update with a layout I did for Scrapbook Sisters using Scenic Route papers. this is Emily the day she bought a SKIRT! She has worn only jeans for years now, so it came as a bit of a shock when she bought this very girlie skirt.

Today I took her out for lunch, to Howie's restaurant, and we had a lovely time. After I went to the Art shop and bought a pen and some nibs to experiment with, as well as some beeswax to use in some collage work.

A-Z Art journal

It's a while since I uploaded any of my A-Z journal of techniques and materials. I am really enjoying messing around with different art supplies. Mostly I have made lots of mistakes- but that's OK because we learn by our mistakes don't we?

Anyway here are a couple of pages.

OK- This one is J for Japanese. I had some Japanese origami papers that I bought at a thrift shop a while back, so I used that for the background, then tried my hand at painting a Japanese style cherry blossom and some Japanese style characters. Now these are not true Japanese characters- or at least I hope not, because if they are I don't have a clue what they say!

K was a bit of a struggle, and the only thing I could think of was K for Kaleidoscope-I made this from tissue paper and sequins:

It's pouring down today- so I have been messing around doing some arty bits-preparing some art journal backgrounds, making some image transfers-with varying degress of success, and scrapping. I am now up to date with Shimelle's 'Scrap Your Day' class although I am not really using the class prompts.

I'll post some more of the A-Z journal tomorrow-must go cook tea. Oh and tomorrow I pick up my new car-just a little Fiat Panda, for use around town. the rising cost of petrol has made us think carefully about the size of the cars we drive, so I've traded in my Nissan for a dinky little town car.

My First...

.....magazine commission! It was a thrill to finally see my first magazine article in print in the newest edition of The Scrapbook Magazine. It came out on July 17th, but because I was in France I didn't actually get my hands on a copy until last week. I have another commission in the pipeline too. creating the LOs is the fun part-writing the copy is another issue. But I like a challenge!

Today was exam results here in Scotland-and thank goodness both the kids did well. Jack should get a university place with his results, and Emily did exceptionally well in her Standard Grades, so will be able to do the subjects of her choice next year. It really was an anxious wait though, and I'm not looking forward to going through it all again next year!

I did some catching up with the A-Z art journal today, and also with the scrap your day challenge. I'll upload in the next day or two.

So here's my magazine article: