GPP Street Team Challenge 59

Oh how I love Michelle Ward's challenges!  I haven't been able to do the last couple because of time and even now I am just snucking in under the finish line!!  A great idea to do a Ta Da list for 2011.  A chance to look back and be surprised at all your accomplishments.

I have so loved the Strathmore online workshop 1 (with Traci Bautista) that I thought I would do something in that style so picked a background from one of the pages in my A4 size journal which was already painted with acrylics and watercolours and which had one or two light stencils on it.  Then I set to work with some oil pastels, some copic markers

some delicious Indian Ink and a Tippex white out pen and here we are.  Then for the accomplishments themselves I wrote in a red copic marker all round the images (I think I could keep adding to it actually as I keep remembering things even now!!)

A bit of a closer look

I had great fun again doing this.  Thanks so much for the inspiration Michelle!

Thoughtful Monday 155

"The best thing you can do

 is to get very good at being you!"

Starlings in Winter

image courtesy of newsandstar.co.uk

Chunky and noisy,

but with stars in their black feathers,

they spring from the telephone wire

and instantly,

they are acrobats

in the freezing wind.

And now, in the theater of air,

they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;

they float like one stippled star

that opens,

becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;

and you watch

and you try

but you simply can't imagine

how they do it

with no articulated instruction, no pause

only the silent confirmation

they they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin

over and over again,

full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,

even in the ashy city.

I am thinking now

of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots

trying to leave the ground,

I feel my heart

pumping hard.  I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.

I want to be light and frolicsome.

I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,

as though I had wings.

Mary Oliver  (From 'Wild Geese")

Thoughtful Friday 154

"Our fears are more numerous than our dangers, 

and we suffer more in our imagination

than in reality" 

Seneca

Finished pieces

A quick look at the finished pieces following Traci Bautista's workshop

I really loved using a correction pen to do the white outlining and doodles and Indian ink for the black

This was workshop 2, using more stencils, watercolour crayons, pencils, ink and allowing the paint to drip drip drip!!  Very freeing!

Creative every day - the weekend!

I am loving the new free Strathmore online workshops and thoroughly enjoyed these doodling techniques from Traci Bautista and especially using the Indian Ink to outline!

Thoughtful Friday 153

"We are remembered from the ways

we have walked our ideals.

At the heart of history is this reminder -

you paint the colours of your days"

Mary Anne Radmacher

Walking Every Day

Stormy days here although nothing compared to what others are facing in the north

taken early morning before I went out for my newly intentioned 15 minute walk locally (as I work from home there are days that I don't 'need' to go out and this is for those days particularly).

Red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning!

Walking in the woods

 Such a glorious day to go walking...

 to smell the air and to revel in the colours of the deep blue sky

against the brown and green of the earth.

Creative every day!

Where did December go?  I hardly managed to post anything here but maybe that's because I was busy, busy, being creative for the season?  The truth is I was in part but also busy with the day job and preparing the house for guests to stay.  We had all four daughters home for Christmas which was great and also my mother-in-law and her friend so we were 9 for most of the time!!  Here is a look at some little creative things I made for others.  First up were some Multigrain no knead bread mixes from one of my favourite cooking sites Our Best Bites

Here they are all ready to go to good homes with the recipe tucked into a nice envelope, decorated appropriately!

Then for my CPS UK (Cloth, Paper, Scissors) group I made a crocheted snowflake and wrapped it in white tissue and added a red crochet flower to the outside.

Next up were some felted pictures from scratch, which incidentally didn't stay in these frames!

And finally, some Duct Tape Journals for another group of ladies I meet with every month!

I hope that wherever you are, you have had a peaceful Christmas and that 2012 will be a special year for you.  I certainly am hoping to be more regular on this blog in 2012!!