Calendar Challenge and snow

Hello again! Hope you all had a fab Christmas and happy times with family and friends. This snowy scene is what we woke up to on Christmas Eve and it continued to snow and get deeper and deeper. Santa brought my children lovely new mountain bikes for Christmas and they haven't been able to get outside on them yet!

Thank you all for your very kind comments on my article being published in Somerset Art Journaling. My mag arrived just before Christmas WOO HOO!

Now onto the 2010 365 calendar challenge. If you are joining in the calendar challenge you have four days to get ready for January! Here is my December page almost finished (click on it for a closer look). I tried this for a month to see if I could keep up with it and if I enjoyed doing it before I committed to doing it for a year, and I have really enjoyed it. December is a frantically busy month and I haven't had time to do as much art as I would like but however busy my day I could find 5 minutes to fill in a small square. When I look back on these pages I realise why I get so tired!

Here, I am working in an A4 Moleskine and each square measures about 1 1/2", but feel free to do this in any way you like. Every day I write, doodle or draw a picture of what I have been up to as a record of the minutiae of every day life. So far the following people have said they would like to join in the 365 challenge (I think), and remember, if you're thinking about it, it's not too late to join!

Sue C

Dyan

Tanya

Sharon

Pat

Francie

Sarah A

Sarah H

Annette (I don't have a link for you Annette)

Cath

Lesley

Kirsti

Pat

Sandy

Ann

Craftygirl (This is my daughter and IF she keeps this up I will post it here!)

If you have changed your mind / don't want to do it or whatever just let me know, it's not a problem. This is how it's going to work: At the end of every month post a picture of your completed journal page on your blog or flickr, link it back to here. When I post my journal page I shall link back to you all. Simples! We'll maybe throw a little blog candy in along the way. I think and I hope that this will be a great way to encourage each other to keep going!

Jill, over on Third Age Musings blog was my inspiration for doing this. She is also running a calendar challenge but at a slightly more sedate pace - a month at a time. Have a look at Jill's blog as she has posted a step-by-step on how to create your page. If you want to see my step-by-step have a look here. And finally for more inspiration, and to see different ways to set up a page have a look at the pictures posted on this Flickr group

Bye for now :-)

Somerset Honours

I'm soooooooo excited to tell you that I'll be in the very next issue of Somerset Art Journaling WOOP WOOP! I've been bursting with excitement for months :-)  This, of course, is my very very favourite magazine EVER so I'm truly honoured to have a 6 page article featuring 9 of my journal pages, titled 'Achieving Balance'.
The first edition of this mag sold out so quickly that I could only get a digital copy, which was nice but not as nice as stroking real pages LOL! I managed to get hold of a second edition, and now I'm actually in the third! I haven't got a copy of it yet......it's due out on 1st Jan........it's worse than waiting for Christmas! In the UK you can get hold of the mag here at The Stamp Attic. If you're into Art Journaling you really NEED this magazine!

Blogging off for a few days to spend time with family, make mince pies, wrap presents (yeah I know, I'm running a little behind schedule), and stuff the turkey.

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a joyous, peaceful and artful new year :-)

Tick tock tick tock...

It was my Mum's birthday this weekend and when I asked her what she wanted for her birthday she said 'make me something to go on the wall'. She also mentioned that her kitchen clock had stopped working, so I put two and two together and made her a clock for the kitchen! It's quite big - about 30cm - but it looked well at home on the kitchen wall. I used stamps by Tim Holtz and Paperbag Studios, and papers by Basic Grey.

A couple of close-ups:

Now, onto other things......this lovely package arrived from Belgium this week because I won some blog candy off the lovely Tania of the life is full of lovely things, enjoy them! blog. It's lovely to receive a bag of goodies in the post but especially nice to receive an original painting off Tania. Click on the pic for a closer look. Thanks Tania :-)

And finally - if you want to be in with a chance of winning a set of fine tipped Sharpie markers (a MUST if you are an art journaler) you must look here at the Craft Stamper Magazine blog . Good luck!

Now, I must go and get myself organised for Christmas. I haven't made a single card this year (shame on me), I still have cards to post and presents to wrap. Tut tut. Must get a move-on!

Bye for now....

I wish I had two heads

Yes, it's true! Sometimes I do wish I had two heads. This time of year is so busy that there is little time to sit back and reflect even for a moment. I get frustrated when I can't switch off from my busy day, to create a little. When you are very busy it becomes all consuming, and that is why I wish I had two heads, or that my head could be in two places at once. See? Do I make sense?........I'm not sure that I do! So anyway, this is the completed page that I blogged earlier.

And this is how it came together. I decided the phrenology head needed a hat and a matching border at the bottom of the page:

I added some random numbers cut from an old text (index pages are great for this), a Tim Holtz staples stamp along the bottom, and an arrow cut from from scrapbooking paper:

I added some journaling lines with a felt tip and then scrawled my ramblings all over the page in different directions. But who is to say it's finished?! I may add more doodlings at a later date:

Sandy left me a comment asking if the head is an Invoke stamp. No, in fact it's an image and I'm not sure where it came from but I did find the stamp Sandy is talking about here oooh tempting isn't it? (Oh Sandy, look what you've done! No matter how many stamps I have it's NEVER enough!)

Thanks for all your lovely comments re: my new look blog. Seems like it's a hit! YAY! And thanks to everyone who has volunteered to join the 365 calendar challenge. Watch this space..............

And finally; we have heating again woop woop! 3 weeks without heat has been a little uncomfortable and the bathroom has been a bit of a challenge every morning, but we are warm again :-)))  I love my gas man :-))

A blog makeover!

Hello! Don't worry it's me! It just looks a little different round here, that's all. I decided that after one year of blogging it was high time I had a blog makeover. I'd love to tell you I did it all myself but you know I'd be lying LOL! It's all down to the lovely, very talented and extremely patient Susie whose work you can see here, here and here. Much as I liked my old black background I know it was hard on the eyes (esp. if you are over 40 like me!!) so the old black had to go. Anyway, white is the new black. Let me know what you think.....

I've had an extremely busy time at work recently so I decided to to have a day at Art from the Heart today, doing what I love the most, art journaling. So I spent the day doing a bit of journaling, a lot of chatting, and quite a bit of drinking coffee and eating yummy chocolate cake :-)  This is a work in progress. I used colours I haven't ever used before; ranger dabber in butterscotch which quite frankly looks disgusting in the bottle but I loved when I mixed it with the blues and greens, and I stamped circles in metallic gold which I usually avoid like the plague. I like it so far but there's lots more to be done. I'll blog it again when finished.

Creatively things have been a bit quiet recently but I am managing to keep on top of my art calendar, Look:

However busy my day has been I can usually find 5 minutes to fill a small square and then I feel that I have accomplished something. And my husband doesn't seem to mind climbing into a bed covered in felt tips :-)   Don't forget I'm setting a 365 challenge along with Jill starting January 2010 if you want to join in. Details nearer the time.......

I spent some of today making the page for january:

A while ago I told you that our heating was off. IT'S STILL OFF. Brrrrrrrrrrrr. We are having a new boiler fitted over the next couple of days, but look! My house bunny knows where to go to keep warm!

Best seat in the house.......

Bye for now.....