Thoughtful Friday no. 117

"The only true gift is a portion of yourself"

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Would you believe it?!!

The lovely daughter no. 4 in Paris had a birthday last week and I had been planning for some time what to do!  Post didn't seem to be getting to her apartment so we decided I would send to the Lanvin office!  So far so good.  What do you send to the gorgeous who love beautiful things?  Beautiful flowers of course!  So having scanned the websites for delivery to Paris I found one and ordered a delightful bouquet of pink and white flowers to arrive on her birthday.  I also made a card and crocheted a necklace and sent that off too.  Did they arrive?  No No No!!  She got the card on Tuesday this week but there was a hole where the necklace had been taken out!!!! Boo Hoo I say and she did too when she found out.  So all alone in Paris and no presents!!! But she did get a beautiful cake from Lauderie from her colleagues at Lanvin so not all was lost.  And today I got a refund from the flower company who could not explain it at all.  And another crocheted necklace is in process so we will celebrate when she is back next week.  In the meantime, here are some other things I have been up to lately;

Same pattern and different colour combination yarn and I am very pleased with the results.  They are now packed up and in the UK postal system so I sincerely hope they do better than the stuff destined for Paris!!  

Best Shot Monday - checking in

Just to say that I am still here although not in blogland very much at the moment.  I have been finishing a big job and had to stay focused plus busy trying to get some creative projects finished for Christmas and I have a hubby who likes to use my computer each evening and at the weekends!!!  Guess what I am hoping Santa will bring him for Christmas?!!!!  As Arnie says "I'll be back!"

Thoughtful Friday no. 116

"The real voyage of discovery consists not

 in seeking new landscapes

 but in having new eyes." 

– Marcel Proust

Best Shot Monday - I'm back!

I've been away for the last 10 days or so in North West Wales on retreat.  Every day I took a 3-4 mile walk in the beautiful countryside.  It was a real gift.

Best Shot Monday - I'm watching you!

Thoughtful Friday no. 115

“Until you value yourself, you will not value your time.


Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.”

M. Scott Peck

Best Shot Monday - Departures

While this cannot be construed as a 'best photo' it is nonetheless where things are at today!  For at 4am we got up to take daughter no.1 to the airport for a new job opportunity in Dubai!! It's been a tough couple of years for her workwise with the recession (the media has cut back drastically) but this is an amazing opportunity.  Another goodbye and another daughter overseas (that makes 3 of them now!) has left me feeling somewhat emotional but this is a great opportunity and one I hope turns out to be truly fabulous in every way.  And she'll be back for Christmas so.......no need to get too emotional.... although you just can't help being a mother can you?

Thoughtful Friday no. 114

"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, 

and paints his own nature into his pictures"

Henry Ward Beecher

Best Shot Monday!

I'm going to try and have this as a regular feature on a Monday each week, both to help me post more regularly but also as an incentive for me to improve my photography skills!  So here goes:

GPPS Street Challenge No. 45!

Another street team challenge , this time to use a background which has been prepared earlier so here we have two layer-painted pages.

fairly uninteresting as they stand but layered using credit card and acrylic paint

time to brighten it up a little with some spray gold paint and some stencils and a little metallic rub on along the sides and a hint of script stamping

I wanted to use tags so thought I would use three and put some messages on the back

I used distressed ink in a variety of colours on the front of each with a theme of yellow/orange/red and a bit of green

I loved seeing Michelle's hand print - such a personal message, so I cut a stencil of my hand and sprayed black copper paint (crafty notions) over it (I nearly didn't as it looked so dark in the bottle and I thought I might spoil it all but it's all about taking a small risk here and there and going with the flow.  The inner critic would have me cautious and careful but this is so much more fun)

And I love the result!

So to the next page (base colours purple, black and white) I added a stencil made up from Tim Holtz's alphabet masks and outlined it with a sakura pen. Then I added some flower stencilling with distressed ink in purple.   I then wrote words on some voile fabric and used gel medium to stick them down.  Some of the words just melted into the page which was really cool.

Thank you again Michelle for this challenge.  It was fun and I was surprised by the results.  I really had no idea what I was going to do today with those pages but it just all came together. 

Thoughtful Friday no. 113

"Who you are is more important than what you do"

Anon

Amazing!

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Thoughtful Friday no. 112

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."

Goethe

Seven More Things...

I so enjoyed capturing 7 things I am enjoying at the moment that I thought why stop at 7 when you can do 14 so here are another 7:

This is such a fun online course for art journaling and I am enjoying it so much.  21 different techniques by 21 different artists.  It is a rich and nourishing 'playground' indeed.  More to come on this in another post!

I am just loving this new series by Jamie Oliver.  His meals are scrumptious, accessible and reasonably priced.  It just makes my mouth water watching each episode.  A delicious main course and sumptuous dessert all in 30 minutes - yes, really!

I watched this when it was showing live on the TV and was really hooked.  I love the character development, the high performing team dynamic and the sharp, super fast dialogue.  So now we are watching it on dvd and taking our time to cycle through the episodes - it's just great!

Playing with paint on canvas and some interesting texture paste - lots of ideas on how to use this as it also works with fabric!

Some lovely new Kaffe Fassett fabric bought in a very good sale of almost 50% off!! and it's all ready to go with this pattern

Experimenting with some free motion quilting having been inspired by the very talented  Jenny Doh

Enjoying this website The Women's Room where fashion, art and all sorts of thing feature on a regular basis.

Wow, so much to enjoy out there, what are you enjoying at the moment?  Do leave a comment and let me know.

Seven Things I am enjoying just now

Tess at the lovely Driftwood nominated me over a week ago now to list 7 things about myself so after what can only be described as a very emotional week here are some things that I am really enjoying:

Enjoying the colours of leaves so much just now and pressing a few in a very old flower press!

A new project on the go in some very different 'yarn' which will make its debut as a scarf hopefully as a Christmas gift.

Loving the colours of this blanket I have started working to the lovely Lucy's pattern

These beautiful blooms keep on greeting me each morning even in October.  There are regularly 10 or 12 gorgeous flowers open in the conservatory - yes they climbed on in and made themselves at home through a tiny open window!

Ahhhh, isn't he adorable!  A super picture taken by my lovely son-in-law when he and daughter no.3 were over for the weekend recently.  Can it really be a year since they got married at the end of this month?!!!

We took a lovely visit to The Hop Shop where all things lavender can be bought.  It's a tiny farm shop (Lavender and hop farm with an apple orchard too) and I bought some lavender essence and just had to make some lavender and honey bread when I got home!

Another project with some really gorgeous yarn (the picture doesn't do it justice here) for someone who is quite special.

So there we have it - 7 very enjoyable things - I'm feeling better already!

Thoughtful Friday no. 111

"Happiness is not a matter of intensity

but of balance, order, rhythm

and harmony."

Thomas Merton

Thoughtful Friday no. 110

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."

Goethe

Thoughtful Friday no. 109

"O cooling breath of Autumn, tame our desire 

to have summer last forever"

Joyce Rupp

GPPS Street Challenge No. 44!

Challenge time again and more fun to be had.  This time it was all about scraping paint onto the page with a credit card/hotel key card or some other such card and watching how the layers take shape and then adding some stencilling.  So what to do? I chose my larger journal which is A4ish in size.  First decision, what colours to use?  I don't have that many although my collection is getting larger as I do more journaling.  First up it was teal blue and light beigey pink:

which turned out like this

Then I just had to do another page with different colours this time red, blue, purple and gold!

I had a hard time deciding on the stencil to use and in the end punched out three hearts and used the spaces as a stencil which I did in different colours on the background

I really loved the gold on the red so wanted to do more of that using the hearts again

But neither looked finished somehow so .....

I added some shiny stones I had in my stash and some tissue tape.  And for the red one I ummed and ahhed about what to use. I really wanted to use black but didn't want it to overtake the page!!!!  In the end it was a case of " c'mon girl loosen up here and just go for it" and this was the result!

And I like it.  I like it alot!

At the same time I did some experimenting as Michelle suggested using gesso then black paint, scraping back and adding several colours.  These will be good background pages for journaling sometime.  Any ideas for taking them further?

 Thanks again Michelle for a great challenge!