Sunny Thursday

What a gorgeous day today has been, the sun has been shining, the birds have been cheeping, and the cat is very much lazing!

I have had time today to just sit and play, and as such I have managed to complete a journal, so I have filmed a flip-through. I didn’t add song & dance to it, I left the sounds as per the video, so you can hear me turning pages and you can hear the aeroplane going overhead and the sounds of the birds etc, apparently this is something called ASMR, I don’t understand what that means, maybe someone could enlighten me, but I see it on all sorts of videos where they have left it as “natural sounds”. Anyway the video is 5 mins long, have a look if you fancy. The journal is one of the ones from a review I did in April, by the company Mindful Giraffe. The book has lasted so well, stood up to everything I’ve thrown at it and is still very happily opening and closing and holding all the pages in. I am super happy with that journal and I’m glad I have another one to play in 🙂

I have sorted out my postcard for this months postcard swap as part of the Kick in the Creatives Facebook group. I have used one of the pictures from yesterday and added something onto the other side, I am super happy with the card.

For my birthday my hubby bought me a cotton store rack, and I haven’t used it – art not sewing has become the mainstay of my work, and I was feeling guilty that he had bought this lovely thing and I wasn’t using it. So we have attached it onto the wall, and I have used it to store some of my washi tapes. My goal now is to not buy any more tapes until the over-spill and some of this lot have been used up!… wish me luck 🙂

Washi Tape wall store

Sewtember day 9 Spookasem, In South Africa, it literally translates as ghost’s breath, we more commonly know it as candy floss. I am pretty sure I have only ever seen it in pink and white, I have always wanted fancy colours though! 

Ohhh Im going to college tomorrow so need a good nights sleep! Cant wait to tell you all about it 🙂

Disclaimer: 

All opinions expressed here are my own.
I paid for any products discussed.
I received no payment and I am not affiliated in any way with any brand mentioned herein.

A day alone….

Oh I know, I shouldn’t say it, but having the house to myself today has been bliss! This isn’t a “I wish they were always out” type of bliss, but the sort of bliss that comes after not having ANY time alone for any significant amount of weeks, months and almost years due to the worldwide pandemic.

As soon as it hit, the kids and hubby were sent home, and with the exception of about 3 days since March 2020 I haven’t had the house to myself at all. It is SO nice to not have to worry if I’m annoying anyone putting the vacuum on, or telling them they can’t go in the kitchen because I’ve washed the floor, or don’t use the loos I’ve cleaned them. You know what I mean? Yes I have had a GREAT day of being alone to clean the house, eat snacks, drink tea, do some art, pop to the shop when I want, without having to be on hand for anyone else. I know it makes me sound ungrateful and I really don’t mean it, I love my family intensely, I just also like to have some space occasionally. Starting this week, our new normal means that one day a week during term time I get the house alone, and on my college days hubby gets the house alone (yes I’ve told him he needs to do housework whilst also WFH 🙂 )

Anyway enough of the headiness of being able to clean the house, I also managed to do some art today, so here is a quick roundup.

Week 30 Wanderlust, the artist Mystele took us through using gelly plates (I don’t have one) and altering an existing project (I didn’t have one) to make new art. So I used a magazine picture, stuck it into my journal then added various amounts of collage matter, gesso and Posca pen art to create a new page

Week 32 Wanderlust this week was the artist Helen Colebrook, I had been putting this one off as I am not a “journaller” as such, but today I decided to do the piece without doing the journalling, and I really enjoyed the experience of just creating.

Week 36 Wanderlust – Francisca Nunes I have to say that this one I really didn’t enjoy or get, but maybe because I didn’t buy into the process more than not liking the project. Pick flowers, make swatches of colours to match the flowers, collage and then use the colours you’ve swatched. It just didn’t work for me and the final piece shows that I didn’t put the effort in the class was wanting. Maybe I’d just had enough by then and I may try it again another time.

Mix Media Postcards – I had another go at making the cards from yesterday. I chose entirely different colours and went very free for all. I have to say I LOVE the final outcome of this. I may well have found my “thing” and I am considering whether this would be a saleable item on the Etsy shop. Ill take a look and see if other people do similar and what they may charge for it, who knows it could become something! I do love the page before I take the masking tape off, I wonder if i could sell that as a digital download? When I took the masking tape off , the tape was so pretty I have added it into a journal and made a new page out of it ha ha.

Sewtember day 7 – The word was “Pochemuchka” a Russian word for “Why” often used in association with young people asking lots of questions.

Sewtember day 8 Today’s word is Orenda, and its meaning is “invisible magic power believed by the Iroquois to pervade all natural objects as a spiritual energy.” Now to come up with some ideas of what to do for this.

Until tomorrow have a lovely day …..

Disclaimer: 

All opinions expressed here are my own.
I paid for any products discussed.
I received no payment and I am not affiliated in any way with any brand mentioned herein.

Back to Normal?

Today is the first day of the new term, and our Son returned to school, Daughter returns tomorrow, then we are “Back To Normal” well as normal as we can be with hubby WFH and me starting college on Friday. But well school’s back and that is what denotes normal around here. It’s an important year for our daughter, her GCSE year, so she needs to be properly “on it” to do well and get the grades she wants. We also heard our son say to grandparents “Oh I will be doing them in 3 years OMG” so yeah normal it is 🙂

Today I have had the opportunity to do some art. I have had 2 weeks off really, not doing much and ensuring what I did do wasn’t going to affect the family too much, if they needed me I could stop. Hubby was on holiday from work so it was nice to spend time together, just to “be” rather together in the office him working me creating art.

My art today came down to a piece for Gezellig, a mixed media board that we ended up cutting up and adding words to, to go into our journal. It was all about layers, medium and having fun. I did enjoy doing it, and I want to do it again soon. I can see this type of work being good as fodder for journals or the back bone of another piece of work (omg get me, I almost sound like I know what i am talking about!) I even made a video showing the cards.

  • Finished masterboard waiting to be untaped
  • Untaped Masterboard

I even made a video to show you the finished cards.

I also made a piece for The Ugly Art Club prompt “Holey” I had a sheet of Yupo paper (synthetic / plastic paper made especially for alcohol inks) that I had cut circles from, and the paper that was left was perfect for the project. I used my horrible Archer and Olive Acrylograph pens (I’m sorry but they are just the worst acrylic pens I’ve used and I cant wait to get rid of them) to scribble blocks of colour onto the page, using them to blend into each other and make more colours, not that they blend that well on the page, but that’s OK its all about mark making as the under page, then I stuck the holey page on top and used a black pen to draw in the circles. Overall I think it qualifies for an ugly art page 🙂

I haven’t yet done my piece for #sewtember, but its gone 8pm and hubby and I are sitting out in the garden, enjoying the late evening. Its been super hot here today so to sit outside and be cool is really yummy right now. We are burning a citronella candle though as the bugs are starting to be a pain. Sitting here we can hear the local church bells ringing, its Tuesday evening and that’s bell practice night. It’s such a lovely sound! So now its quite dark but we are being lit by my screen and the candle burning, we are almost certainly being bitten by little bugs, but that’s summer in the UK for you!

And away……

Disclaimer: 

All opinions expressed here are my own.
I paid for any products discussed.
I received no payment and I am not affiliated in any way with any brand mentioned herein.

A busy day

Today has been a here, there and everywhere kind of day.

It’s the last day before kids return to school and hubby returns to work so it was all the last minute things that need to be done.

We set the alarms for normal time, that was tough, but we had a coffee and started the day reasonably early. I made an early supermarket visit and did a massive shop, bumping into a old friend and having a chat in the aisles ?

I collected Max from the cattery. We didn’t cancel his booking when we cancelled our own holiday, because we wanted to have some time to not worry about getting back to feed him if were out for the day / away for a night or two. It was a luxury but he has been well looked after and they didn’t want to let him go as “he has a cute squeak when he wants attention” basically he was a good boy and they fell in love with him ha ha. That cat can twist anyone around his fat paws ?

Had to take @owlsowner to school for his covid test, ready to go in tomorrow for first day of yr 8. I forgot to tell you hubby had the realisation that his baby is nearly as tall as him now .. both the kids are almost as tall as him now, best part is I’m Stepmum and slightly taller still and can tease them they won’t be as tall as me… I can hope right??

I managed to create a Flip-through video for YouTube of a finished junk journal. I do need to get better at them, but they are good for now.

I managed to spend most of the afternoon doing admin work that I’ve been putting off, boring but necessary paperwork that included making passport size photos for college for Friday. Fun thing is I have coloured wax in my hair today so my grey has a lovely purple and blue tint to it. I have to say even I think it looked good, not that the picture does it justice ?

After dinner we watched the penultimate episode of Lego Masters Australia 2019… If you know the results don’t tell me as we won’t know for a week!!

After that I managed to complete me #sewtember day 6 piece

Rimjhim : Hindi : refers to the slight drizzling of the rain.

Then the rest of the evening was spent catching up on TV and having a very nice cheese and cracker supper plate before an early night and…oops a quick post write up as once again I’ve gone all day and written nothing. I have however managed to comment on a few blogs. There are so many interesting blogs again this time.

Until tomorrow……

Disclaimer: 

All opinions expressed here are my own.
I paid for any products discussed.
I received no payment and I am not affiliated in any way with any brand mentioned herein.

Another day at the beach

We stayed overnight at the chalet, yesterday was a lovely day and we didn’t want to worry about rushing home so we stayed, it’s why we bought the place after all ☺️ We played a new board game with the children, one hubby bought via Kickstarter, it’s pretty good. “Hit the silk” if you are interested. It’s the second from this particular company he is backing.

Today we had a lovely day as a family. Kids went off to the arcades and hubby and I went for a “short” walk, 4 miles later we returned home with lunch to find the kids had spent all their money and were waiting for us back at the chalet.

How quickly can two children spend £10 in an arcade?

Very!

Says every parent everywhere…

After lunch we decided to go for another short walk, but this time the mini humans had to come with us. We got as far as Scratby this time and stopped at the ice-cream van. Every British holiday maker needs a 99 ice-cream at some point!

Today we walked a total of 6.35 miles. Not bad going but definitely explains why we are shattered and maybe a little sunburnt, definitely should have thought about that when thinking we’d “have a short walk as the weather is nice”. But we are well on our way to the monthly target already.

#sewtember is continuing, last night I sewed day 4 whilst at the chalet and hubby watched the f1 qualifyer and sewed day 5 this evening whilst watching Mortimer & Whitehouse (two British comedian friends that have made a TV show about fishing, we love the show, can’t stand fishing but that’s ok)

Day 4 dustsceawung :
Old English : the contemplation of dust
Day 5 Laotong :
Chinese : friends for life

We watched the f1 when we got home, it was a good race, Max won (yay) Lewis complained (boring) Bottas (confirmed he isn’t good enough to drive for mercedes anymore, but they have done him over many a time) Norris (proving himself again) I’ll stop it can get boring to those not interested ??️?

Introduced the kids to a new film ….okay it was new to them, Rush Hour, one of hubbys favourite films made in 1998 and made the kids laugh a lot.

Now for an early night and I remember I haven’t done the blog, so oops “quick” write up before sleep.

Night all xx