are you flowin'?

My first attempt at Steampunk

2013-05-01T22:52:00.000+01:00

I'm always late to the party, me, in fact sometimes the party is almost over by the time I get there!

And so here I am, having a go at Steampunk for the first time, when for everyone else I think it's pretty much yesterday's news... :)

The reason? This month's "Having A Laugh" CJ has the theme of Steampunk/Ladies/Grunge

Now, I was tempted to go with Grunge and do a page on Pearl Jam and another on Nirvana, but I didn't think this was quite what the book's owner had in mind, so I went with Steampunk and Ladies:

First of all, we were asked to make an ATC as our sign in ..... mine is above. The little propeller spins :) Trouble is I wonder if it still actually looks much like an eye .... I think I preferred it before I added the hardware:

Ah well, never mind.

Next up, we could do either one or two 7"x5" pages for the book, I'm greedy so of course I took two!

First up, my steampunk girlie.

I cheated a little with this one, and used an online doll dress-up programme to design my lady - it's a lot of fun if you want to try it yourself: http://www.dolldivine.com/mega-steampunk-dress-up.php

(NB when you first go in it loads up an advert, you have to click the "play game" button in the bottom right hand corner which activates after the ad has been running for a few seconds)

<----
This is the "doll" I ended up with

I printed her out and traced her onto some watercolour paper, and then coloured her in with watercolours, in a slightly more subdued palette than the original

Half coloured in:

Fully coloured in and cut out with my trusty X-Acto:

And here is the finished page - I used a gelli print for the background, with stencilled cogs - and typed up the wording on Erika, my beloved 1980s typewriter:

For my second page, I dropped the steampunk angle and just went with "ladies" - well, one lady anyway:

That's another metallic gelli-plate background, with a face painted with acrylics straight onto the page this time rather than cut out and stuck on

I took some step by step photos as I was painting the face, so I could refer back to them to remember how I had tackled the shading in the underpainting, here they are in case they are of any use to anyone else wanting to try the same technique:

Face sketched straight onto the page, firstly in pencil then with a black POSCA paint pen

Colour in the whole face apart from the hair with a very pale skintone colour - then referring to the reference photo, use a white paint pen to shade the areas with the lightest highlights (side and tip of nose, above top lip, whites of eyes....)

Block in the hair with a mid-brown paint, and then with the same brown paint mixed 50:50 with glazing medium, shade in the parts of the face that are mid toned in the reference photo

With a darker shade of brown, start adding some texture into the hair , and also block in the darkest shadows (top of the nose, under her chin etc) - don't panic that all the shading looks really harsh at the moment

Add some pinky red to her cheeks and lips

And this is where all that work with the shading starts to pay off - you need to mix up a semi-opaque skin toned glaze (I use a touch of the brown I used for her facial shading, a tiny touch of white, a touch of red and a fair bit of glazing medium - you can see the resulting glaze in the tub at the top of the picture), and paint over everything except the whites of her eyes and her hair - there, that looks better doesn't it :)

All that's left to do are the finishing touches - some colour in her eye and on her lips, some wisps of hair around the hairline (and some little highlights in the hair too), add her eyelashes and darken her brows. Plus I added a little more glaze under the chin as I thought the shadow there was still a tad too dark. And I defined her outline with a watersoluble graphite pencil to make her "pop" a tad more against the background

Th-th-th-that's all folks!

Until my next blog post anyway (which really ought to be a Rocking Your World Monthly post as I haven't done one since March!)

Please avert your eyes if bad language might offend....

2013-05-01T21:57:00.000+01:00

I've just realised that I blogged this CJ entry over at Collabor-ART but not on here....

So it's Desert Island Discs time again and this month I have Sian's CJ to work in.

Right from the very beginning when Sian first published her list of songs, I was hoping that one particular song would still be available when the CJ reached me - and it was - woohoo!

Like Sian, I have certain songs that I love to play at volume when I am in a baaaaaaad mood, my angry songs, and this track by Korn is very much one of them. In particular, shouting along to the chorus is a great stress reliever!

Trouble is, there's a rather rude word in there, but I checked on the Collabor-ART Facebook group to see if anyone would be offended by me posting it uncensored, and nobody said not to, so here goes, brace yourselves :) :

The main image on this page was a real labour of love - it's a hand cut, 4 layer stencil of the band's lead singer, Jonathan Davis. I am beyond chuffed at how well it turned out and how much it looks like him.

(original photo by user Cliseu on deviantART)

For comparison, as I expect that most of you probably wouldn't know him from Adam, here's the reference photo I used:

Now I am trying to think what else I can use that stencil for as it was a lot of work for a single use! I thoroughly enjoyed making it though.

On the reverse side of the flappy bit is an image from one of the band's live album covers that fit the space rather nicely:

It wasn't until I'd finished all this bit that I realised I was supposed to use that area for my sign in and thoughts about why I had picked this song etc, oops! So instead I wrote all that stuff on the reverse of a tag decorated to match everything else, and I tucked it in behind my main page:

So that's my own page done, I hope Sian likes it as much as I enjoyed making it

Next stop - tweaking the previous entries

I didn't do something to all of the previous pages this time, only the ones where I had an immediate idea of what I wanted to add

To Pat's entry - the Wonder of You by Elvis - I added a quick sketch of a someone extending a helping hand, inspired by the lyrics "you touch my hand and I'm a king":

On Sian's own entry for the love song Butterfly by Lenny Kravitz, I gave her girl a heart. Well for a love song she needs one, right?

And to Virginia's entry, for Snow White Queen by Evanescence, I added a coat of arms to her warrior queen's shield:

Roll on next month, I am enjoying this CJ so much!

Artful Readers Club April - Pursuit of Liberty by Glenn R Petrucci

2013-04-26T07:34:00.000+01:00

My book for this month is Pursuit of Liberty by Glenn R Petrucci, the sequel to Timecachers which I read, enjoyed and reviewed back in 2011

As with the first book, the author was kind enough to send me a copy, and it arrived just as I was putting my reading list together for the Artful Readers' Club, so it just had to go on the list

Those of you who know me well will know that geocaching is one of my hobbies - and that's what attracted me to these self-published books in the first place, as the heroes of the stories are fellow geocachers - that and the cool mix of two of my favourite genres - sci fi and historical fiction.

In a nutshell, the stories centre around the invention of a device called a LANav - which is just like a normal handheld GPS but with one rather useful additional feature - time travel!

The first book saw the four lead characters - male and female boffins, a historian (handy), and a wide boy who brings the funny - very unexpectedly transported back to 1830 and witnessing / taking part in the Cherokee Trail of Tears. A lot of the dramatic tension in the first book was based around the fact that the four had no idea the LANav was a time travel device and therefore were entirely unprepared in every way for suddenly finding themselves in the past.

I did wonder how this new book would generate the same kind of suspense etc now that the story has moved on a year, and the characters now understand full well what the device can do. But this was cleverly resolved by having the story open on the theft of one of the LANav units, the thief subsequently being unsuspectedly thrown back through time, and our four heroes having to chase him throughout colonial Boston, attempting to recover their property and apprehend the criminal before he does too much damage to the timeline.

Along the way they find themselves directly involved in many key events in American history including the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and the first battle of the American Revolution at Lexington

Like the first Timecachers novel, I enjoyed this book - it's written in a style that I respond well to, with plenty of historical and scientific detail, although that does occasionally get in the way of character development a little, even after two books I don't feel that I really know all of these characters well. It was a great history lesson too - the author is American as are the majority of the intended audience for this book - so I got the impression that he did expect at least a basic knowledge of the events and historical figures mentioned, but it wasn't all lost on me - and I now know a lot more about the American Revolution than I did before.

All in all a good balance of entertainment and education - even if we Brits were the bad guys :) I look forward to book three!

And now onto this month's artwork - I'll admit that I was a bit stumped with what to do for this one, I was thinking along the lines of illustrating one of the big events described in the book - like the Boston Tea Party or Paul Revere's ride... but there is already so much great art old and new dedicated to these historical landmarks, that I didn't think I could compete!

So in the end I went with the time travel thing instead - not exactly true to the book as there is no vortex or anything when you travel back via the LANav - neither did anyone actually make the jump on horseback - but let's call it artistic licence :)

Next month I'll be reading and arting up "Rivers of London" by Ben Aaronovitch - I've already started it and am thoroughly enjoying it so far - so I'll see you in the merry merry month of May

Artful Readers Club March - Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill

2013-03-29T08:07:00.000Z

It's the last Friday of the month again - and that means it's book club time :)

This month I read Heart Shaped Box by Stephen King's son (although I didn't know that when I bought it), Joe Hill:

I'll start my review with a question - if a horror book doesn't leave you utterly terrified, has it failed?

Because if so, then I'm afraid this book didn't quite hit the mark.

It started off deliciously creepy - to the extent that I couldn't read it in bed at night just before sleep for fear of nightmares - but then there came a point, less than half way in to the story, where it just stopped being scary.

It was still an entertaining read though, and I really enjoyed it, but was just a teensy bit disappointed it didn't leave me a gibbering wreck :)

Author Joe Hill

So - what's it about? It's a good old fashioned ghost story - revolving around Ozzy-style ageing rock star Judas Coyne, and the spirit of an old man that he bought on an internet auction site.

The bulk of the story sees Coyne, his young goth girlfriend, and his two dogs fleeing across country from the vengeful spook, who has some personal scores to settle from beyond the grave.

That just about sums it up really - it's nothing ground breaking or complex - but it's an enjoyable romp of a read and despite being over 400 pages long (and me being scared to read it in bed at first :) which is where I generally do 99% of my reading ...) I got through it in no time.

And it really does remind me of early Stephen King, it took me right back to my teenage years when his books were all I read, I guess the writing style must be hereditary!

My journal page this month is based on the ghost of the old man in the book - he is described as having black scribbles dancing in front of his eyes, like someone was crossing them out with a Sharpie ..... spooooooky....

(tintype image by Michael Shindler)

In the book, the lead character first finds the ghost sitting quietly in a chair on the landing outside his bedroom. This bit of the book really did give me the shivers, and for a few days I was scared every time I emerged from my bedroom in case I found him sat there, with his scribbles for eyes.

Shudder :)

I'll hopefully see you back here next month, when I'll be reviewing and "arting up" Pursuit of Liberty by Glenn Petrucci

PS I actually scheduled this post yonks ago, and in the meantime Rhomany, a fellow ARC-er, has read and reviewed the same book, so for an another opinion on it - see here

Isn't it good....Norwegian wood....

2013-03-23T22:44:00.000Z

It's Desert Island Discs CJ time again and this month I have Pat's absolutely gorgeous book to play in

I chose the song Norwegian Wood as when I was little, the Beatles were constantly played in my house as my big sister loved them - and this song (and the Rubber Soul album as a whole) was my favourite

I never realised though until I really read the lyrics in preparation for this page that it was about a jilted arsonist! :D

But instead of portraying our John burning the poor girl's furniture, I decided to illustrate the line about sleeping in the bath tub...

The background was spray painted through the same stencil twice, but moved a bit the second time... I was kind of trying to go for something reminiscent of the Norwegian flag:

Not sure it quite worked, ah well, at least the colours are right....ish

Then I blocked out the shape for bathtime Lennon with white paint pen, and started to colour him in:

I liked the way the background showed through his towel so I made sure to keep a bit of that in the final thing.

Lots of shading with oil pastels and a Stabilo All pencil later, and he was done.

All that was left to do was type up the relevant bit of the song lyrics:

You can see where I was a bit heavy handed with the typewriter on the "o" in "crawled off" and the middle fell out - oops! But I had already stuck it down before I noticed :)

So that's it for my own page, quite plain, so lots of scope for the other participants to fiddle with it as it does the rest of its rounds :D (this is a collaborative circle journal)

And talking of fiddling:

I added some shadow stamping to echo the lovely pressed flower on Pam's page

And some light colour to the gorgeous sketched girl on Sherry's page

Meanwhile Donna's amazing Parisian page was the perfect home for my Paris washi tape (up top)

and I finished up by giving Virginia's page a blush of colour round the edges

As ever, this has been a lot of fun!

Sian's book next month, and I'm going to give a bit of an advanced warning, my page might have a few swear words on it!

An impossible-to-photograph CJ page

2013-03-19T22:31:00.000Z

I know people always say "trust me, it looks a lot better in real life" - but trust me, it really does!

Anyway, enough excuses, this is my entry in Mistyrat's art journal CJ - her theme is "quotes to live by" .....

I've always loved this Einstein quote, it rings so true for so many of us, feeling like failures because of the things we can't do, instead of successes for all the things we can.

So, a fish up a tree it had to be :)

Here's a close up of my fishy friend:

He was drawn with a micron pen onto watercolour paper that already had the red numbers stamped on it, and coloured with watercolours and oil pastels

The page background was printed on a gelli plate and overstamped with the little stars in a pale pearlescent ink - they are over the whole page but they come and go depending on the light and the angle you hold the paper. So you can see the stars clearly in bright light (the left hand side of the page in the top photo) and they almost disappear in shadow (the right hand side of the page). And the trees were drawn freehand with a black Sharpie.

I enjoyed pulling this page together, I just wish I could get a half decent photo of it before it goes off in the post....

Mail comes in.....mail goes out.....

2013-03-18T00:46:00.000Z

.... and thus is the balance of the world restored :)

First of all - mail came in

You might remember, a few months ago, my Rock CJ came home - the one with all the little record sleeve makeovers.

When I blogged it back then, I had a couple of spare record sleeves left over, and asked if anyone out in blogland fancied doing me a favour and completing my CJ for me. And Donna and Bex (fellow Collabor-ARTists both) were kind enough to volunteer.

And here are the fantastic results!

Donna chose Kraftwerk's The Model for her makeover:

And Bex went with Faith no More's brilliant Angel Dust, one of my favourite albums of all time - love the screaming Mike P on the front :)

I LOVE them both, thank you ladies!!

And then some mail art went out

The first one, coincidentally, was for Donna - yes that Donna up there :)

I happen to know that her mis-spent youth was very similar to my own, and that she shares a love both for the punk rock sensibility, and for those crazy old anarcho-space-rockers Hawkwind. So I chose the most punk rock song Hawkwind ever wrote as the basis for my mail art offering.

First of all I got my Banksy on with some spray paint and a hand cut stencil:

And this is the end result:

I realised once it was finished that the song lyrics I included on the card ("I'm an urban guerrilla, I make bombs in my cellar"....etc....) could possibly be taken the wrong way lol

So I wrote a little note on the back to the postman assuring him that it was just a song and there really was no need to alert the authorities ;)

And it must have worked as the postcard arrived at Donna's safe and sound the next day

The eye in the pyramid on the back is another logo used by Hawkwind along the way, and was drawn using Posca paint pens

And the faux postage stamp is one from this sheet, still going strong

Next up, a postcard for my good friend Virginia

It started off like this (gelli-plate background onto corrugated cardboard - I love the how the texture shows through - and drawings on top with Posca paint pens) - can you tell what it is yet?? :D

How about now?

Yes, it's a zombie bunny - or will be when it's finished. This subject matter is a bit of an in joke for Virginia harking back to a previous conversation. I hope she remembered the conversation as otherwise she probably thinks I'm a little peculiar right now! :)

And here he is all done and ready to pop in the post:

cute isn't he .... in an undead kinda way :)

(finished off with a combination of Fresco chalk paints and oil pastels - bunny adapted from a digital illustration by Patione)

Rock hands for the Queen of the Rockettes :)

Virginia expressed some surprise that the postcard had travelled through the mail unhindered given the Biohazard stamp - but that's nothing compared to Donna's bomb threats :D

Rocking February - plus Year of Firsts update

2013-03-11T23:43:00.000Z

So here we are again with a roundup of what rocked my world last month, and also how I'm getting along with my Year of Firsts:

Blimey it was a rubbish month weather-wise, wasn't it? Either freezing cold, or raining, or both. Ugh. But we tried not to let that get in the way of having fun.

For a start we've been doing a lot of hockeying - when you are stuck inside an ice rink anyway you don't really care what the weather is like outside :)

We have done our usual thing of realising that the season is nearly over and that we are going to miss it loads, so we have gone to a couple of away games this month as well as our regular home games, in a last minute frenzy :)

And as one of those away games was in Manchester, I have now completed my goal of seeing a game at every rink in our league, which is kind of cool - I think I deserve a badge for that.

And in other sporting news - the lovely ladies of Wiltshire Roller Derby had their first ever public home bout this month, and I was lucky enough to be invited along to take photos for the team.

They played really well, vs the Kernow Rollers, and were leading for most of the game, but right near the end our Cornish foes got a late boost of energy and managed to JUST pip us at the post. The final score was 178 to 173.

The following weekend we had a very short holiday - otherwise known as one night in a cheap Travelodge in Manchester :) We had a brilliant time - who needs a fortnight in the Caribbean??

On the Saturday we were up bright and early and on the road by 8, arriving in central Manchester at 11-ish. First stop was the Manchester Art Gallery.

Saw lots of incredibly inspiring art there, including a major exhibition by Raqib Shaw, plus the kids had fun recreating some old masters:

After lunch in the gallery (lush!) and a mooch around Chinatown, we drove out to Old Trafford for the Manchester United stadium tour. I'm not even particularly interested in football but I found the tour really interesting, and the boys (old and young) loved it

We topped off the Saturday night with a walk into town and dinner at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen by the canal. Manchester city centre on a Saturday night was a real eye opener for the boys - I don't think they had ever seen so many loud drunks and scantily dressed girls before :)

Next morning we had a yummy buffet breakfast at the hotel, and then headed to the Trafford Centre to go to the indoor Legoland there. My my, that's one posh shopping centre! It's like a slightly obscene and very over the top temple to opulence and excessive consumption:

Legoland was fun but probably more suited to younger children, as our big strapping lads were too big and old for some of the rides. We did enjoy making our own cars to race though, and the 4D movie, and the miniland with scale models of lots of Northern landmarks we have visited, like Blackpool Tower and Alton Towers, and of course Old Trafford.

After Legoland we wandered over to the food court (if you have never seen the food court at the Trafford Centre, you HAVE to go, I've never seen anything like it, it's what I imagine Las Vegas is like, but with more Mancunians :) )

And there at Nandos we met up with my best friend from school, Sarah (yes another Sarah, there were 5 Sarahs in our class at one point! common as muck name!) and her two lovely kiddies. It was SO good to see her for the first time in over 20 years. I was so excited that I forgot to take a photo of us together. Doh!

Next we were going to go to MOSI (the Museum of Science and Industry) but we had left it too late to really do it justice, so instead we went to have a nose at Manchester City's stadium (just for the sake of balance) (and because Connor supports them )

And then it was on to Altrincham for the ice hockey. Which we lost. Oops. But never mind, I was just happy to have finally ticked off the full set of EPL rinks.

We got home late Sunday night tired but happy after a brilliant weekend.

And our final adventure for February happened the following day. The kids were back at school but Jay and I had a day off work, so we went out to Corsham near Chippenham to the derelict Naval site that is there, abandoned and now covered in graffiti.

It was amazing, and huge! we were there over three hours and still didn't see it all.

Thankfully we didn't get apprehended and evicted by any MOD patrols....

There are over 100 more photos here if you fancy a proper look

Other Fab Feb happenings:

I got to see my friends' little boy play in goal (hockey again) for the first time, as his under-10s team did a short demo game at our local rink - he's going to be a star in years to come, watch this space

The week before their first home bout mentioned above, my Wiltshire Roller Derby girls got their first ever win in Milton Keynes - and with a short team of only 8 skaters too - well done ladies!!
Baltimore won the Superbowl - go Ravens!

(February seems to have been sporty month!)

I'm getting back into reading in a big way thanks to the Artful Readers Club. I'm even finding myself wanting to make artwork to accompany the other books I'm reading outside of the challenge! (watch this space)
Connor had a brilliant day out at the Harry Potter Studio Tour in London with his school. I don't remember school trips being that fab when I was a kid...
Visiting friends - I had a CJ to pick up from my pal Pam and as she only lives about 40 minutes away I went over to collect it one Saturday morning, it was fab to sit in her craft room and look at all the lovely art on her walls and have a good old natter. The internet is great and everything but you can't beat a good old fashioned real life catch up.
An impromptu trip to the Stamp Attic in Wantage and resulting major spend up suggested by Jay one day when I was feeling a bit fed up. Retail therapy makes everything better :) Especially when it includes a Gelli Plate! Yes, I've finally climbed on that particular bandwagon and am pleased I did - gelli-printing is so much fun!

Eventually got my Pure Evil print in a frame after finding a perfectly sized (and perfectly priced!) frame at the Range. It still hasn't actually made it onto the wall yet, but I'm getting there....

Connor and I took a punt on the Qwertee random t-shirt sale. It's really good fun waiting for your shirts to turn up with no idea what you're going to get. I got a nice art nouveau type design and Connor got this brilliant Monty Python one: I think we'll play again next time.
Good telly - this month I particularly enjoyed Utopia, Black Mirror and Ripper Street. And I also finally got to the end of Season 3 of Fringe (which is the point at which a lot of people apparently went right off it but I still think it's fab). Only two more seasons to go.
Talking of Fringe - I got mine back! After attempting to grow my hair out to one length for a year, I finally had had enough of it blowing in my face on windy days and generally being all rat-tailed and horrid, so I had my hair cut and had my fringe cut back in. I can seeeeeeee!!!! Hooray :D

Connor got a shout out online from his favourite artist - El Pez - it made his day:

This month's firsts - big and small, they all count:

10) After last month's 'trying a different type of bread roll' triumph, I tried ANOTHER new type of roll. This time, it wasn't very nice :( ah well, you win some you lose some.

11) Used my airbrush machine for the first time, it's awesome, I need to practice with it more though to really get the hang of it

12) Photographed my first open-to-the-public roller derby bout. It's harder with people in the way!

13) I ALWAYS get exactly the same dinner whenever we have a Chinese takeaway. This time I chose something different. It was almost but crucially not quite as nice as what I usually have. This experiment isn't working as well as I hoped :)

14) First time partaking in the Qwertee random t-shirt lottery

15) First time using the gelli-plate for monoprinting - SO MUCH FUN

16) First visit to Manchester Legoland

17) First time doing a behind-the-scenes football stadium tour

18) First time visiting the home rink of the Manchester Phoenix in Altrincham

19) First visit to the Manchester Art Gallery

20) First time eating in Nandos. Yum!!!

21) First time trespassing on MOD property!

So that's 21 of my 100 firsts already achieved and we are only 2 months into the year - slightly ahead of the pace - good stuff!

Ooops - forgot to post this here

2013-03-03T12:57:00.001Z

I just realised that I have posted pics of my latest circle journal entry over at Collabor-ART, but not on here

This is for Virginia's desert island discs CJ.

Being a collaborative project, before I got to work on my own entry, I had fun ~~defacing~~ enhancing everything that had gone before :)

The box containing the CJ - I added some highlights to the wording in a butterscotch-y colour paint to complement the purples, and then stencilled a dotty pattern around the edges of the box in the same colour:

Next I added some black and white geometric washi tape to both the front and back of Virginia's page for Roxette's The Look (as the journalling was about a black and white dress):

I *carefully* added some colour to Donna's gorgeous drawing of the pregnant lady:

I wasn't sure what I could add to Sherry's fab page featuring Motley Crue's pretty boy frontman Vince Neil, as the page was already pretty full. But then I remembered he was not one to leave the house without lipgloss, so out came the Diamond Glaze :)

Don't worry it doesn't look this heavily applied in real life, I just took the photo at a glary angle as from full on you couldn't really see the lippy

Next up, Pam's Pink page - I added a border in oil pastels to ground the two hands a little, and then a line round the perimeter with a purple paint pen:

And finally, my own page and sign in tag:

Not the best photo but this was the one that best captured all the sparkle and shimmer from the metallic and interference paints.

The song is One Last Breath by Creed, one of my favourites.

just collage, no cheating....

2013-02-27T22:35:00.000Z

Over on Collabor-ART we've been having fun with collage recently. Well, when I say "fun", I mean that we were all painfully dragged kicking and screaming from our comfort zones :) But I think most of us enjoyed it in the end, at least a bit.

The challenge was a two stage collaborative project to make purely collaged postcards - absolutely no paint, ink, pens and pencils even, allowed. All we could use were cardboard for the base, printed papers, scissors and glue. It was hard work!

Everyone did two postcards each, so here are the backgrounds I made for Vicki to work on:

And this is a get well soon card I made for my friend Pam at the same time:

(that one isn't "purely collaged" as the get well plaster was stamped, but I won't tell if you don't ;) )

This is what Vicki did with my backgrounds, love them, especially the dude on the straw:

And for my part I was sent these backgrounds by Jean:

and

And my final collaged postcards:

and

To see more of the amazing collages that resulted from this little experiment, click here

And if you fancy joining in some fun, collaborative projects like this (and you are European based) - then why not join us over at Collabor-ART? We are always on the lookout for new members....

Artful Readers Club February - America Unchained by Dave Gorman

2013-02-22T07:37:00.000Z

Another month, another book :)

This month I've been reading America Unchained by comedian Dave Gorman:

The plan was simple. Go to America. Buy a second-hand car. Drive coast-to-coast without giving any money to "The Man". What could possibly go wrong?

This was a nice easy book to read - I had picked it up in a charity shop a year or so ago, a safe bet as I had enjoyed his previous books, the one where he travels the world looking for other Dave Gormans, and his Googlewhack adventure.

I didn’t even have the foggiest clue what the book was about, other than it mentioned America and a road trip, and I do love a good road trip tale – I’ve always wanted to do the coast to coast thing in a nice big RV, and visit all the wacky roadside attractions like the world’s biggest ball of string, and of course, being a huge Neil Gaiman fan, the House on the Rock – so that was enough to persuade me to hand over my £1 to the nice little old lady in Oxfam

It wasn’t until I actually picked up the book and started reading it for the Artful Readers Club, that I discovered the underlying basis of the road trip – Dave’s challenge was to drive from coast to coast without giving a penny to the endless procession of faceless multinational corporations and superbrands. So he could only buy petrol from independent unbranded petrol stations, only sleep in independent unbranded hotels and motels, and only buy food from, you’ve got it, independent and unbranded shops and restaurants. Mom and Pop businesses only.

I think this would be nigh on impossible in the UK – when was the last time you saw a petrol station that wasn’t an Esso or a Shell or tacked onto a major supermarket? Or a reasonably priced hotel that wasn’t a Holiday Inn, a Premier Inn or a Travelodge? OK I guess you’d be alright in seaside towns where there are plenty of independent B&Bs ….. but it definitely wouldn’t be easy

And to be fair it was nigh on impossible in America too – although he made a jolly good go of it. Overall the story of the highs and lows of the journey makes great reading, you truly empathise with the author when everything goes horribly wrong, and celebrate with him when his luck improves.

The only downside to the book was that there were very few photos, just a couple in the middle, and I would have liked to see more of the interesting people and locations the author described as he encountered them along the way - but maybe that was a deliberate marketing ploy as it has spurred me to purchase the DVD of the accompanying TV show :) I'm glad I read the book first though, as it goes into much more detail than the one hour documentary.

On to my arty interpretation for this month, I decided to illustrate a favourite quote from the book:

"You don't need a convertible to feel the wind in your hair. You don't even need wind. Or hair. It's not a physical sensation. It's a state of mind"

Acrylics and watercolour over a background of torn maps to represent the road trip undertaken in the book. The inspiration for the windswept lady was a painting I saw on Etsy by fashion illustrator Cate Parr.

I have already started reading next month's book - Heart Shaped Box by Stephen King's son Joe Hill. He has definitely inherited the scare-them-stupid gene from his dad, it's so creepy I can't even read it in bed for fear of nightmares! I'll see you next month with my full review and some spooky artwork.....

Infinite Scroll : Monsters

2013-02-21T00:42:00.000Z

I've been trying hard to resist signing up for the seemingly endless stream of fun free projects over at the Art House Co-op ..... but....but....monsters!!! How could I say no to this one?

This was how they described the project:

This is going to get ugly...

We're calling out to 500 people worldwide to make one segment of what will become a really long, continuous drawing.

The Infinite Scroll series is inspired by the surrealist drawing exercise known as exquisite corpse, in which a group of people work collaboratively on a drawing without seeing the other parts that come before and after. We'll start the drawing off with a monstrous head and end it with some grotesque feet - everything in between is up to you!

Sign up and we'll email you the template and instructions for creating your design, drawing, or illustration of creepy, scary, and cute-in-a-hideous-way monsters.

We'll string all of the submissions together into one really long monster the likes of which has never been seen or imagined!

And this was my monster segment:

I kept him fairly simple, coloured with watercolours, and his spots came from a pencil eraser dipped in black ink

You can see the final whole monster on the project's blog here - but here's a snapshot of the section I'm in:

I think maybe they should have told everyone to keep the background white, as the sections join together better then, but it's still really cool to scroll through

So, there you go, I painted my little bit of monster, scanned it and emailed it in to the project, but then I still had my little bit of monster, and I didn't really know what to do with it .....

So I thought, why not make a not so infinite exquisite corpse monster of my own?

I didn't want to design the head and feet portions myself, as then they wouldn't have looked as disjointed as they needed to, so I asked my other half Jay to draw a head and my 10 year old son to design the legs and feet.

Then I copied their designs in different media, and ta da:

Meet Marvin, isn't he a cutie!

The end result is about A4 size, which luckily I had an IKEA frame lying around to fit. I think I will hang him in my hallway so that he can greet visitors to my house with that lovely cheery smile :)

The truth about Mondays.....

2013-02-11T00:25:00.000Z

So here's a very appropriate circle journal page to post in the early hours of Monday morning, just as I'm off to bed and sooooooo looking forward to the working week! :)

This is my entry in Gill's CJ - her theme is 'the truth about Mondays', she wants us to fill her book with quotes and quips about everybody's favourite day of the week, and she plans to keep the completed book on her desk at work to cheer her up

Neat theme, but I am glad I am one of the first to tackle it, as there don't seem to be that many good Monday quotes out there!

Rocking January - and introducing my Year of Firsts.....

2013-02-05T13:54:00.000Z

I pretty much failed last year at playing along with Virginia's awesome weekly gratitude party, Rocking Your World Friday - weekly just proved a bit much for me as I slipped first to fortnightly and then ended up settling with posting every three or four weeks.

So for 2013, I thought I'd take the pressure off myself and aim for monthly roundups instead. And so here we go, kicking off with my rocking January.

It's been a fairly uneventful month, we haven't been out too much as the weather has been a bit pants, and we lost a couple of weeks to the lurgy, first Connor then me.

But it still had its moments :)

- it's been a great month for hockey, we haven't won every game we've played but they've been a lot of fun to watch

- we've won a ton of new business at work - which means we are crazy busy but it's all good on the job security front

- the January sales - I didn't go mad, but I did have fun buying up half of Paperchase's sticker department :)

- the snow - it arrived, looked pretty, and went away again without turning to dangerous ice or causing too much disruption. Perfect. The only pity was that it came while I was all flu'd up so I didn't get to play out in it, but I did enjoy watching Connor through the window making snow angels after school :)

- and on the subject of the weather, winter sunshine! it's been a little few and far between but we have made the most of it when it has showed its face

- for example, we had a brilliant day out in Stratford upon Avon on the 6th - and the weather was very kind to us.

Shakespeare's birthplace

We had a good stroll around town and visited - and I quote Reece - the two best museums ever! First the creaky cauldron / magic alley / museum of witches and wizardry (it seems to have three names) where we delighted in the Harry Potterish surroundings, solved (with help!) the potion puzzle, found a polite TARDIS and sent ourselves some letters via owl post.

Then the MAD museum - Mechanical Art and Design - two floors of crazy kinetic and interactive sculptures and machinery - it was awesome!

And then we had a nice walk down by the canal and found an art gallery on a boat, a lovely day out all round

- Connor's new graffiti career :) He had to make a piece of graffiti art for homework, and he made a canvas inspired by his favourite graffiti artist, El Pez from Spain. He sent a photo to the artist himself and got a really nice email back, plus it's now on display in the school reception. WTG Connor!

- Darcy's Artful Readers Club - I am so enjoying this new challenge, I had really slacked off on my reading last year, but this has reawakened the urge big time, I am fairly ploughing through my list of books - I'm reading March's book now having already finished February's - and I'm also listening to Game of Thrones on audiobook whenever I'm in the car. I don't know why I've never tried audiobooks before, they are awesome, SO much better than listening to all the awful noise that passes as music these days on the radio (god, I'm so middle-aged!!)

- I finally finished my months long marathon viewing of Battlestar Galactica - I'd been terrified of the final episode because so many people had told me it was AWFUL and how they were still smarting from it years down the line - but you know what? It wasn't that bad :) Sometimes it is good to have your expectations lowered so they can be exceeded :)

- and, more TV, I watched the first series of Danish/Swedish crime drama The Bridge while I was off work poorly.... it was amazing, highly recommended. And I'm now hooked on the Channel 4 series Utopia- which is not for the faint hearted but, in my opinion, the best short drama series to hit British TV screens since The Fades

- playing with new toys - one of my christmas pressies from Jay was a set of pom pom makers, and I have gone a bit pom pom crazy this month :) I am looking to make enough for a big garland to hang above the double doorway between my front room and kitchen/diner/craft room. Here's one in progress <------

- another trip out on a sunny winter's day : we headed over to Bourton on the Water - the Venice of the Cotswolds, as they call it because of all the bridges. Our first stop was the model village - in all the time I've lived in the area I've never been there, and we had great fun staging "giant" photos :)

Jay modelling his new beard :) I love the fact they even have little to-scale sized trees here

posting a postcard home :)

and admiring the model village within the model village - very fractal ;)

Afterwards we had a lovely lunch in a quaint little tea room, and then a walk around the village. And we were going to do the motor museum too but it was closed for the winter, so we'll come back to that one another day.

- my eldest son finally adding me on Facebook - yay, I'm not shunned any more :D

- getting our accommodation booked for Barcelona ....exciting stuff! can't wait! we arrive really late on the first night so we have one night in an airport hotel and then 4 nights in a gorgeous 3 bedroomed apartment right next door to the Picasso museum!

all three bedrooms have a double bed and their own balcony :) lush!

- back to telly again - my guiltiest watching pleasure is back! :) Gentlemen, start your engines, because Ru Paul's Drag Race season 5 started this month (along with my favourite judge, Santino). From the one episode I've seen so far I totally want Detox to win, girl is fierce!

And that's it for my rocking post ..... but, I also have something new (and to an extent, overlapping) that I want to share with you.

For a while in blogging circles it has been the done thing to choose a word in January that sums up what you are hoping to achieve that year. After some humming and harring I settled for "brave" as my 2013 word.

I'm not talking "wrestle a lion" levels of courageousness, I just want to encourage myself out of my rut a little. Silly things like I always order EXACTLY the same meal when we eat out, because I know I like it, and I'm scared that if I order something else it might not be as nice.

Or, whenever I start a painting, I agonise about the initial stages of it for ages (days usually), whereas I wish I could just get on with it! :)

So, to support my efforts to be brave, I have challenged myself to do, eat, visit, experience 100 brand new things in 2013. They can be big or little. But they have to be things I've never done before.

And here is the opening chapter of my Year of Firsts:

1) first cooking of an actual chicken in the shape of a chicken (I very rarely cook meat at all and whenever I have done a roast dinner before I've always cheated and bought one of those decidedly non chicken shaped joints in a tray). Connor had to help me with the carving as I could barely get any meat off the thing, it's all hidden behind bones!

2) first visit to Magic Alley and MAD Museum in Stratford upon Avon (see above)

(as an example of a classic missed opportunity to be brave in the first week, we went to a fudge shop while in Stratford upon Avon - I dithered for ages over lemon meringue flavour but chickened out in the end and bought safe old chocolate and vanilla because I already know I like them. LM flavour might have been AMAZING! but I'll never know....)

3) first time published in Featuring magazine

4) First visit to the model village at Bourton on the Water (see above)

5) First use of pom pom makers (ditto)

6) First visit to Leominster. Not that I saw much of it as was just for a work meeting but it looked purty in the snow

7) First time taking part in the Artful Readers Club

8) Tried a fancy type of roll for lunch instead of the one I always get. It had sundried tomatoes and walnuts in. Didn't expect to like it. In fact was grumpy about buying it. But it was lovely :)

9) First time opening my car bonnet! I've had the car well over a year but Jay has always kindly done anything that needed doing. But I ran out of screenwash and in the spirit of the year of the brave, he encouraged me to pull up my big girl panties and do it myself :)

Not a desperately exciting list so far! But let's hope that as the weather improves and we get out and about more, that I'll have more opportunity for interesting "firsts"

For those that managed it, thanks for reading to the bottom of this mammoth post :)

What's on YOUR bucket list?

2013-02-03T23:59:00.001Z

And so, having vowed off signing up for any new circle journals on UKScrappers, I found myself nevertheless volunteering for the final vacant spot on an art journal themed CJ over there, with the words "I expect I'm going to regret this....."

And there was never a truer word spoken, as no sooner had I signed on the dotted line, the first posting date was announced, eight days away. Eight days???!! I usually spend a month on and off getting a new book ready, plus I already had a few existing deadlines to hit before the end of the month.

I panicked accordingly and the host was kind enough to put the start date back five more days to Feb 1st, but I still couldn't quite hit it, finally finishing up today, ready for posting tomorrow, the 4th. I hate missing deadlines, grrrrr :(

But it's all done now, hooray :) :) :) So here's my journal - it's an accordion book with 7"x7" watercolour paper pages held together with washi tape - the whole thing closing up with a ribbon

The front cover is a simple watercolour painting with some colourful cardboard letters that I've had for yonks and can't remember what make they are, and little washi tape pennants stapled on.

The theme of my book is 'what's on your bucket list?' - here are the instructions for those taking part:

In short, I've asked people to list ten life experiences they would like to achieve in their lifetime, on the back of their page, and then to choose one of the ten and create their main journal page about it - in the style of a travel journal

Here's my list and sign in tag:

I chose point 8 - take a ride in a hot air balloon - to illustrate:

Can you spot mini me in the basket? :)

And that's about it for my book so far, other than an "outtro" page at the end:

And now I send it off out on its travels, and I can't wait to see it come back to me full of everyone's goals and dreams....

Artful Readers Club January - Heartstone by C. J. Sansom

2013-01-25T08:15:00.000Z

It's time for my first book review and associated arty piece reveal for the Artful Readers Club

The book I chose to read in January is Heartstone - the fifth and most recent title in a series of period crime thrillers written by PHd historian (ie. he knows what he’s talking about!) C. J. Sansom

The five novels revolve around a fictional lawyer come amateur detective called Matthew Shardlake, active during the reign of King Henry VIII.

I have read the first two Shardlake books – Dissolution and Dark Fire – but am yet to read #3 Sovereign and #4 Revelation – despite the fact I have them sat on my bookshelf – so I’m really not sure why I skipped straight ahead to Heartstone, I think I thought this was the next one – I will have to go back and play catch up at some point.

This is an ambitious book, and a long one at over 700 pages – but none of those are filler as there is a lot going on. There are two separate cases of wrongdoing for our clever lawyer to investigate, both of which attract multiple twists and turns (and dead bodies) along the way – and all of this is set against the backdrop of the war against France, and in particular the French navy’s arrival at Portsmouth and the ensuing battles at sea.

I particularly liked the part of the book about the Mary Rose as I remember a trip to see the remains of the ship when I was little

The author’s real skill, as well as writing a cracking story that’s extremely entertaining to read, is in bringing the sights and sounds and smells of Tudor England to life, and also in perfectly explaining the social norms of the day, how people of all classes from beggars to the Monarchy behaved around each other. He creates a really believable and immersive world.

And our lead characters are believable too – Shardlake, clever as he is, and seemingly in possession of more ethics and morals than the rest of Tudor England combined, doesn’t always make the right deductions or the right calls, in fact sometimes he gets things quite spectacularly wrong. And his dogged determination to solve even the cases that nobody wants solved, despite the fact that his continued meddling endangers himself, his clients and everyone around him, is rightly highlighted by his manservant / right hand man Jack Barak as a major character flaw.

All in all, another great book from an accomplished and well rounded author – but I would definitely advise you start with one of the earlier books in the series if you would like to try a Shardlake novel for yourself – they are shorter and punchier than this one, a little faster moving, and most importantly provide important background for the lead characters which help you to understand their motivations in their later adventures.

Oh – and as for the title of the book itself – which will hopefully help make some sense of my accompanying artwork – one of the key scenes in the book takes place on a deer hunt – and the ‘heart stone’ is a heart-shaped bone from a felled stag that is given as a good luck charm to the huntsman who brings the stag down. One of the main characters in the book wins the heart stone and ..... it's barely mentioned again for the rest of the book :) (I kept thinking it would end up being hugely significant seeing as it's the title of the book, but no). So I'm not spoiling anything by telling you that little snippet.

And here's my arty thang:

I've decided to make individual 7" x 7" loose pages - artwork on the front, details of the book and a copy of my review on the back - and at the end of the year I'll bind them in some way (probably a stab binding of some kind - there's a one inch flap of paper on the left that you can't see as I have tucked it under for the photo)

This one has a watercolour and charcoal background, with a bit of stamping (the manuscript lettering, to represent one of the lead character's legal documents) and a stag hand cut from black card overlaid.

His heart is nice and glossy as it is topped with diamond glaze, but you can't really see that in the photo.

Now to go and link this up over at Darcy's blog, and to get blog hopping to read everyone else's reviews!

Next month I'll be reading America Unchained by comedian Dave Gorman, which will be quite a different experience to Heartstone, I think :)

Desert Island Discs circle journal - Crazy Little Thing

2013-01-21T15:14:00.000Z

It's circle journal time again - and what a joy to take my turn with Donna's most excellent desert island disc box:

Isn't she a beauty??

The premise of this CJ is slightly different to most of the others doing the rounds - instead of a book with pages, we have a box with little file folders for us to fill - and instead of choosing a song to "artify", Donna has done the choosing for us.

This worried me a little to start with, but as it turned out, the song I was allocated - Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen - was exactly the one I would have chosen for myself from what was left on the list, so all's well there.

Working on my entry kept me amused over a snowed-in weekend, I've had a lot of fun with it.

Here's my file folder / envelope thingy:

I've given Freddie some sparkly jewels in his crown, they suit him :)

Inside the envelope:

The brown outer wrapper with the hearts on comes off to reveal my "crazy little thing called love" in all his glory:

Cute isn't he, in a slightly demented, evil-looking way :) I drew him in India ink with a nib pen and coloured him in with watercolours. There's Diamond Glaze on his eyes to make them nice and shiny but you can't really see that in the photo.

This part opens up to reveal some stamped lyrics from the song, and my little sign in tag/disc

<--------

And on the back, a stitched double heart:

And here's all my bits together:

Like I said, it was an enjoyable one to pull together

But the fun didn't stop here, as this isn't just any old circle journal, this is a COLLABOR-ART circle journal (please don't sue me, Marks 'n' Sparks!) - so that meant I also had free licence to play with all the previous players' work..... I love this part :D

I added a "USA" button to Donna's Blondie entry, to go with her I <3 NY sticker:

For Sherry's tribute to a song by 'Louise and the Pins'? What else but some colour co-ordinated safety pins?

<----

And finally, I couldn't resist adding a literal Primal Scream (aaaaaarrrrggghhhh!!!!!!) to Pam's rendition of the band's logo:

Rocking Your World Friday - wrapping up 2012

2013-01-02T19:39:00.001Z

And so, 2012 is over, and I need to wrap up my year-long document of what’s been rockin’ my world….

I’m quite chuffed I managed to stick with this for the whole year, I’m a rubbish blogger usually. I didn’t do it quite as per instructions (you’re supposed to post every Friday, but I ended up slipping to fortnightly, then every three weeks….) but I always caught up.

I think next year I might slip even further and do a calendar-monthly catch up at each month end. But I’m definitely going to keep the practice going in some format or other as I have found the whole discipline of constantly looking for the positives in my life to be hugely therapeutic and helpful. It’s not a new idea, this counting your blessings lark, but so many people nowadays seem to spend more time moaning about what they don’t have than appreciating what they have got, and that’s a real pity.

So before I get into the nitty gritty of what’s been happening for the last three weeks, here’s a little snapshot of what I’m grateful for in general:

• My wonderful other half Jay who keeps me on an even keel and always puts a smile on my face with his constant stream of so-bad-they’re-good jokes, and his brilliant Ewok impersonations:

• My sons – it has been great having them all around at once over the Christmas period

• The fact that I have a job that I don’t hate and that pays the bills with some to spare, not everyone is so lucky in the current financial climate

• Never being bored – I have my art materials and – at the moment at least – no shortage of creative mojo, more books than some travelling libraries, great TV and films to watch, my hockey, fab company around me, my online buddies, loads of great days out, let’s face it my life is Fun with a capital F and I sometimes wonder how I struck so lucky :)

So – anyway – all gushiness aside – where were we?

Ah yes, the last three weeks of December – what did I get up to and what rocked my world?

- Live music rules!!! We went to two gigs in December- the first one was on the 12/12/12 – Californian ska-punk kings Rancid at the O2 Academy in Bristol. I haven’t seen them in a good 17/18 years, and Jay had never seen them. They were excellent, still lively, still in tune, and still great to boogie to :)

Tim’s changed a bit though - I thought a tramp had wandered in off the street and nicked his guitar :D That’s some crazy beardage!

(Rancid photos from the Bristol gig by Adam Gasson)

And then on Boxing Day night we headed back to Bristol, with the kids in tow this time, for a festive knees up with Bad Manners at the Fleece.

This gig would have been brilliant, if the band hadn’t come on sooooo late!! They didn’t hit the stage until around 11:30pm by which time the kids were shattered, so they only lasted through about half of the set and then needed to go and sit/lie down, so I took them back to the car and subsequently missed the rest of the gig :( Never mind, we had all had fun boogie-ing to the classic punk and ska disco for the previous 4 hours, plus Jay and Darby got to stay to the end and had a great time (and I’ve seen Bad Manners a few times before so not the end of the world)

- My work’s Christmas do – we had a delicious nosh up at the Thai restaurant in Ciren followed by a free bar at the bar next door (pity I was driving home so I couldn’t partake – but at least that meant I had a fresh head the next morning unlike many of my colleagues :) )

- Secret Santa time – I did really well with my office secret santa gift this year – someone (it turned out to be Tracey who works in my room – thank you!) knows me really well as I got a brilliant Box o’ Zombies! I LOVE them.

- Seeing family – from a fab meal out with Jay’s mum, step-dad, nan and gramp to celebrate their 67th wedding anniversary (wow!) on December 15th, to Christmas day at my cousin’s with my dad and sister, it has been a great month for catching up with the rellies

- Having both my big lads home for Christmas – so good to have them at home again even if only for a short while – Darby was only back for 4 days but Ethan and Daisy stayed from December 15th to Jan 5th – I miss them loads when they are off in Bristol and Cornwall

- Surviving the end of the world – suck on that, ancient Mayans! :P

- Having lots of fun creatively – mainly making Christmas pressies and decorations and taking part in Marit’s Top 2000 Blog Party – and learning to use my new soldering iron too

- Eight whole days off work. In a row! Yay! (actually 8 and a bit as they let us go home at around half past two on Christmas Eve). I REALLY needed the break! (it went by far too fast though)

- Getting the decorations sorted- our tree didn't go up until December 20th this year, and I always moan that it's a chore and that I'm not a Christmas person ..... but once it's all done I love it :)

- Christmas Day – was just about 99% perfect (it would have been 100% if Jay and Reece had been there too) – myself and my three sons went to my cousin’s gorgeous house in Kent for the da y and met my sister and dad there. Company was great, food was delicious, the sun even came out for a little while so we could enjoy the great view <-------, we had a nice walk after the main course and before the pud, as is traditional.
And everyone liked their pressies. It was great to chat to my cousin Christine about her paintings (she’s one of the more creative members of the family) and to natter to her son Robin about his adventures climbing the rigging of the Cutty Sark. And the drive down and back was uneventful, not much traffic about, which makes a nice change when you have to tackle large sections of the M25.

- Boxing Day was also fantastic – Jay and Reece came over so that’s when we did our main present exchanging. As previously blogged, I was utterly spoilt :) We also had a matinee game of hockey to attend on Boxing Day followed by the Bad Manners gig in Bristol. No rest for the wicked!

Loved the label on the hot hot hot sauce

- Whole Foods Market has opened a store in Cheltenham! I’ve only seen them before in the US and in Vancouver. I could have spent a fortune in there. Everything is sooooo delicious! Amongst other things, I bought some butternut squash and goats cheese cannelloni – just 9 pieces cost £5.50!! Seemed like such a rip off, but when I cooked them the next day, oh my word, worth EVERY penny! Thankfully we don’t go to Cheltenham all that often, otherwise I’d be doing all my shopping in there (which would leave me homeless as I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay my mortgage any more)

the cookies were soooooooooo goooooooood!

- A New Year’s Eve trip to Coventry and Nuneaton to see fab art and even fabber friends. After a bit of shopping and mooching around my old home city of Cov we went to the Herbert (museum/art gallery), opposite the cathedral.

First we visited the dinosaur exhibit ROAARRRRRRRRR, and then, the main reason we were at the Herbert, we went to see the His Dark Materials exhibition, by local artist Adie Blundell. We weren’t allowed to take photos in there, and there was an eagle eyed lady watching, which is a pity as I can’t find any photos on the interwebs that really capture the atmosphere of the exhibition.

they did have these postcards for sale though....

Here is the artist’s website, his sketchbooks are amazing, and his wall of iron and salt masks (which Jay called ‘not the best Slipknot tribute band I’ve ever seen’ :) ) was brilliant, and, oh it was just all fantastic. You should go and see it! And I have booked up to take a workshop with the artist in March, can’t wait.

Then after lunch we headed up the road to Nunny to visit my bestest buddy Alison and hubby Malc (and Bertuzzi the dog) in their Winter Wonderland Grotto. Seriously, the house had to be seen to be believed :)

We spent a great afternoon catching up with our pals, I got a sparkly purple manicure, Jay and Malc had a beard off: (Malc won!),

and the kids played happily with various remote controlled vehicles while petting Bert and eating piles of biscuits. And we were home in plenty of time to watch Jools Holland count in the New Year. What more could you want from a day?

So that’s that all done and dusted – I will go now and link this up at Rockette Central with the lovely Virginia, queen of the blessing counting. If any of you reading this would like to join us in 2013, there’s always room for another Rockette (or Rocker!), and I really can’t recommend it highly enough. Gratitude improves your attitude, and all that :)

See you again somewhere around the tail end of January…..

A year of Artful Reading starts here

2013-01-01T00:09:00.000Z

So it's January 1st - the start of a new year - and time for a new challenge!

The Artful Readers Club is the brainchild of the lovely Darcy from Art and Sole - at the start of the year we are to choose 12 books, and then each month we will:

read one of the books
write a brief review of it on our blog
make a piece of art of some kind inspired by the book

<=== This was my original choice of 12 books

But I was a little worried about that monster at the bottom of the pile, New York by Edward Rutherfurd. It has over 1100 pages, and the chances of me managing to finish it in a month are frankly slim

Then came Christmas, and one of my presents was a book about fonts called Just My Type, that looks really interesting, so I swapped that for New York and here is my revised pile:

I have left New York on my virtual bookshelf over there in the left sidebar, though, and my plan is to try and read it bit by bit over the year as a bonus book

I'll see you back here on the last Friday of January when I'll be posting my review and related art-thingy for book # 1 on my list - Heartstone by CJ Sansom, a crime thriller set in Tudor times

Until then, happy artful reading to everyone else taking part in the challenge

Top 2000 Blog Party

2012-12-31T08:35:00.000Z

I've had so much fun playing along with Marit's Top 2000 Blog Party this year

I was hoping to submit an entry for each of the seven days, but I ran out of time :(

Here's what I did get done - complete with links to each day of the party, so you can see what everyone else got up to too:

Day 1: December 25th #2000-#1840

#1953 : The Kinks - Dedicated Follower of Fashion

Day 2: December 26th #1839-#1518

Day 3: December 27th #1517-#1202

#1372 : Robbie Williams - Rock DJ (you might have seen this one on my blog before as I did it earlier in the year)

Day 4: December 28th #1201-#890

#995 : Ralph McTell - Streets of London

Day 5: December 29th #889-#574

Day 6: December 30th #573-#270

#330 : Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street

(peeps from Collabor-ART will have seen this one already as I multi-tasked and used this for a circle journal entry over there)

Day 7: December 31st #269-#1

#123 : Jimi Hendrix Experience - All Along The Watchtower (this one will only make sense to fellow Battlestar Galactica fans)

Next year I'm hoping to play every day!

Remember that soldering iron I got for chrimbo?

2012-12-30T19:50:00.001Z

It's fab!!

I'm still in need of a LOT more practice but I'm loving it so far

Here is my first attempt at a soldered pendant .....

A post Christmas round up ....

2012-12-27T23:22:00.001Z

My blog has been very quiet recently, not because I've not been making stuff, but because most of the makings have been for Christmas pressies and the like ....

But now the big day is over I'm safe to blog

First of all, a book made for my friend Michelle when she came over from the States in October:

The skyline is Venice and the beads are Venetian glass

A couple of birthday cards:

More cards, Christmas ones this time (only made a handful for posting for immediate family and my bestest pal, I'm pretty rubbish at Christmas cards):

A bracelet for Jay's mum as she liked a similar one I made for myself a while back:

Yet more cards, these were for my kids and other half:

(Minecraft / Snoop Dogg / Pokemon)

(Breaking Bad / Battlestar Galactica)

A bracelet for my Secret Santa (I know she has opened up her gifts and she has already sussed they were from me, I think, so hopefully this is safe to blog):

I think I will make myself one of these, it's a good way to use up the leather I have spare from bookbinding, and it's a different twist on a charm bracelet that I haven't seen anyone else doing (although I'm sure someone somewhere must have already had the same idea!)

And I also made her a green man stencil:

I think that's everything ..... as you've already seen the papercut tree I made for my cousins (and yes thanks, to those who asked, they really liked it :) )

Festive round up complete!

Spoilt rotten!!

2012-12-26T15:33:00.001Z

Squee!! Airbrush!!! squee!!!! Dremel soldering iron!!! Squeeeee!!!! Browncoats and Chicago Wolves badges!! Squeee!!!! Serenity book!!! DAB radio!!! books!!!! Haida necklace!!! Secret santa bracelet!!! Pom pom makers!!!! I'm so spoilt!!!!!

Here's a closer look at my gift from Carmen's secret santa this year - a fabulous bracelet and ring from Brandy in the US of A - Michigan is one of my favourite states, thank you!

Shiny!!!!

2012-12-22T22:03:00.000Z

Well, the weather outside is frightful, as the song goes, so I wanted something to do with the boys this afternoon.

I'd seen something on t'interwebs about glittery dinosaur ornaments, and that seemed like a fun thing to do, so I nipped out to the shops this morning to buy some cheap plastic dinos and got to work

Of course the kids didn't help at all because the X-Box was singing its siren song, but I enjoyed myself anyway :D

Step one, slather the dino with PVA glue:

Step two, dunk with glitter:

Step three, rewind, and realise that it would have been easier to screw the eye hook in first so that I had something to hold:

Rinse and repeat until you have three super sparkly prehistoric buddies:

And hang in tree:

Rex

Steggy

and Pterry

This is most likely my last blog post before the big day, so Happy Christmas everyone!

Hooray! Something I can blog!

2012-12-21T00:28:00.000Z

It must look like I have been supremely un-productive recently, but I have been making stuffs, honest. It's just that everything has been either Christmas related for people who read the blog, so I can't reveal until after the big day - or it's been for Marit's Top 2000 Blog Party, so I am waiting for that to start before I blog my contributions....

Finally, though, I've made something for my cousin, who I am pretty sure is not a blog reader, so I can put it on here :)

So, I was looking for something to buy Cousin Christine (and her hubby), and I saw this pretty papercut artwork in a local arts/crafts shop:

As you can see by the plug sockets next to it, it's not very big, and I thought £35 was a lot, given it was unframed - but I did think my cousins would like it ...... so I decided to make my own version

It took two nights and I now have very achey fingers, but I am really chuffed with the end result!

just getting started....

this was as far as I got on night one

I was getting pretty bored by this point :)

And here it is all framed and ready to wrap:

I hope they like it!

If not, I rather like how it looks on my fireplace with the little reindeers, I might just keep it :D