FIERCE TIGER ...

This page started with me messing about with Distress Inks - then splashing water on the page which gives a lovely effect. It works best if you let the inks dry thoroughly first. I found this tiger lady among my stash of Artchix collage images and it reminded me how fierce I can get if anything hurts or threatens my daughters (and one of them was very poorly recently). The thing about motherhood which most amazed me was how much I wanted to protect them - from anything or anyone, especially when they were little. I used to tell them that I would fight tigers for them - this being significant because in childhood I used to have a recurring nightmare about an escaped tiger coming to get me. So tigers are the scary monster for me, but I knew I could be (uncharacteristically) brave in the defence of my children.
So I started to journal about that - then for some reason (it must have made sense at the time) this lady's stripy swimsuit seemed a bit tigerish too, and anyway she's shaped like me, so in she went!
And of course (you know me) I have to fill the pages up with all sorts of doodles or little extra comments - I even added my tiger claws at the bottom of the page.

For a while I thought that, as the girls grew older (and could fight their own battles) this sense of fierce protectiveness had faded. I was wrong. When one young man broke my girl's heart - well let's just say that if he'd come round here I'd have torn him limb from limb. That same daughter is 30 plus now, and the others in their late twenties, but just let anybody make them cry and WATCH OUT for tiger mummy!!

SOMETHING SMOKEY ...

I can see that this page doesn't look very exciting at first - its just a plain pink sheet of paper I had left over and a label I was about to throw away ... then I looked at it more carefully. I know its supposed to mean fire retardant or something, but I saw it as cigarette resistant, or lighting up resistant! That's because I'm a reformed smoker, which in my book is something to celebrate since I stupidly persisted with it for far too long ...
So this page became a celebration of that - almost 10 years to the day (4th July) and its something I'm really proud to have beaten. For the first time I used my home made collage sheet to make the bunting edge - I'm really pleased with how this turned out!
Then I decided that less is not more, and gave it some more bunting and (radically for me) wrote up and down the spiky edges. I haven't been drawing much lately so enjoyed adding the puffing chimney too ...
And this is the finished page - an unashamed celebration of my own achievement. It was easier than I thought it would be in the end. Now when I pass smokers having a puff outside an eatery or office I feel genuinely sorry for them. As a non-smoker I also quickly discovered how BAD it smells, and was mortified to realise what I'd been inflicting on people all those years ... Never mind, better late than never eh?? I've been told that after 10 years your lungs should have fully recovered, so am tooting my own horn and shouting from the rafters that yes, it CAN be done, and you've nothing to lose and your freedom to gain!!

BIT OF A RANT ...!

I'm back! .... thanks to a new gadget called a card reader which means that I can once again upload photos from my camera. I was reading a magazine (a pretty rubbish one) waiting somewhere the other day, and an article asked "would you have a facelift"? I was pretty cross about this question, since it was asked on the basic assumption that all the readership would eventually aspire to such a procedure. Gggrrrr, red rad to a bull - which prompted this page.
I'd prepared it ahead with an offcut of scrapbook paper, and then laid Tim Holtz tape across it, and decorated the panels with blue lines using my water soluble crayons. The face is, of course, a Stampendous image which has always reminded me of me .... especially when in a grumpy mood! But honestly, the suggestion that I would WANT to embark on major surgery just to have my perfectly normal 50-something face tidied up to someone else's idea of what it should look like made me want to ROAR (you know that thing - I am woman, hear me roar). Even if I could afford it or was that vain ... I still wouldn't do any such thing! I'm proud of the way experience has shaped woman I've become and think our society should value that. I won't be having bags of silicone shoved up my chest either, and as for shaving my pubes .... get real!
Sorry to be quite so grumpy, but honestly ... this sort of rubbish makes me want to break into very unladylike language. My face has lines from a life well lived, and that's normal for a mother and grandmother like myself. I'm proud of that, not ashamed of it, and so should you be!!

Phew, now I need a lie down with a stiff drink ....

I'LL BE BACK ....

... but alas not until I've sorted out the problems with my camera, because right now I can't upload any photos from camera to pooter. It doesn't seem to be the camera, and I suspect the most likely culprit is the lead so have ordered a replacement. If its the pooter or the software I may be gone some time while I save up for new stuff ....

In the meantime, here's one of the pictures I did manage to load - of a home-made collage sheet which I've used with great success (but unfortunately can't show you). I was about to throw away a house magazine when I noticed that its pages were full of lovely bright prints and fabrics. So, to cut a long story short, I snipped out lots of colour and pattern and pasted all the bits onto an A4 sheet, which I then colour copied on my trusty 3 in 1 printer. I've mainly used the result cut into strips as borders, but can see all sorts of possibilities and will definitely be making more sheets like this.