Where did January go?

 

So far I have managed to keep up with my art journal calendar…yay!  I know it’s not quite the end of the month, but I’m sharing them with you now so that I don’t forget.  The whole plan with this is that I’m always ahead of myself, I’m hoping it means I’ll keep it up. 

I’m using an A5 sketch book so each page is a is big enough for a week.  Below is the end of January running into February.  yep – February is all ready to go, and I’m working on March! Told you – determined to keep it up.

Paints & ink sprays: Dylusions from AFTH.

Stamps: Sassafrass Lass, BasicGrey, 7 Gypsies, Paper Artsy

Image in February: Itkupilli

Chilly Beach Days

Last weekend we headed to the beach for a couple of hours. We didn’t realise that this could bring out the premature teenager in Jamie who was fed up after five minutes of being cold.  It seems that zipping his coat up properly wouldn’t have made and difference….until he did zip his coat up properly and lo, he was much happier and able to start a new rock collection. 

Rosie on the other hand was perfectly happy to be outside, climbing over rocks, collecting sea water in her bucket and holding hands.

One word...awesome

Bouncing off around the internet I came across this shot taken by Andrew Smith from Cuba Gallery .

All I have to say is "awesome"

Sketch scrapping

I rarely ever use sketches for scrapping. I just have an aversion to them, even though I have started to create sketch challenges for my local crop, but just recently I they have started to grow on me, and more importantly means quick scrapping when the mood takes me.  Yesterday I spent a couple of hours meandering through blog land and at one point landed on Shimelle’s blog and found her sketch of the week.  I loved the big blocks of patterned paper and promptly printed off an A4 sized photo from our trip to New York in November 2010.  I trimmed it down and then pulled out a couple of virtually untouched GoGo kits and set about chopping them up.

I know it doesn’t follow the rule of thirds, but to print the shot out smaller just felt wrong. I just love the simplicity of this layout and feel inspired to get stash busting.   Just need to get some photo’s printed out now and hopefully I’ll then be able to justify the pile of unused kits currently hiding in my cupboard.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

When you are running late

Getting the kids ready to get out the door in the morning is no mean feat, but it annoys me even more when my chaotic mornings are made worse by the door bell ringing.  It’s not that we have such a huge house it takes an age to get to the door, but it’s the moments standing there whilst they ask me my name, followed by how do I spell that (short term memory problems from looking at my name less than thirty seconds ago – it must be an affliction suffered only by delivery drivers), followed by sign here, are precious moments that I should be using to pull on socks or brush teeth so that I can then bundle the kids out of the door.  Still it gives me yet one more reason in my day to rant about something.  Not least, as was this morning, that fact that I then didn’t have time to open the parcel!  Arrgh.  I hate that.  I have very little patience especially when I know what’s in it.

So what was in it – this little lot to start with… Caran D’ache Neocolor II crayons….dozens of them.

 

Don’t they almost look good enough to eat? 

I have fallen in love with the set of 15 I have, which were then topped up with some flesh colours when doing the Willowing course.  Well now I have almost every colour, admittedly only almost because they were out of stock on some colours, but that’s ok.  Why do I love them so?  They have a creamy texture and blend beautifully with acrylic paints while wet, are vibrant and so damn easy to store.   I know it seems rather excessive to buy so many but they will last me a lifetime.  I consider them an investment, just like my watercolour and inktense pencils.  Any besides, I wanted them! LOL.

I also now have a huge pot of white acrylic paint, some texture paint and a tube of interference paint to play with.  Guess who’s running out of storage space again.