CAN'T SEE AHEAD ....

 

Well I'm back - and (almost) over the jet lag, although we found a brilliant homeopathic remedy for that which helped a LOT.

This was a page I made shortly before we went .... I must have been in holiday mode already when I put that palm tree in there (we've been to Florida)!

I sometimes feel that my pages can be a bit too tight and controlled, so I tried my best to loosen up with this one.  At this stage its simply acrylic paint in two colours with a little bit of collage on the top.

Then very often I just write down whatever is on my heart at the time - frequently surprising myself with the revelation of what I'm really thinking about or need to say.  You may know that we're making preparations to retire, but any kind of timescale is a bit unclear at the moment.  We'd actually hoped to be gone by now, but in fact the current approximate date is September.  Since building work on our new home hasn't even begun I'm not setting my heart on that happening!

But when I wrote this statement down I realised that was OK - I can still look forward to getting there even if I'm not yet sure how and when.  Its entirely possible that I was also demob happy because of the holiday, and simply content to just let things roll for a time.  Usually I like to have rather more control of things ....

The palm tree is also done with collage, and like the shapes below and above it are just cut from random magazines.  Once I found the texture that I used to make the trunk it was always going to be a tree, and then it just seemed to need the red bird, who seemed to look a bit like a chicken.  Well that got me thinking about our chickens happily pecking about in the yard, blithely untroubled by anything much .... so I added chicken(ish) birds to indicate that state of mind.

Sorry this is quite short - my brain is still slightly out of sync with the rest of the world, but I hope to be back to proper form shortly.

Couldn't resist sharing this picture of me drinking a FABULOUS cocktail on our trip - it was called The Tranquiliser, and boy did it work!  Three kinds of rum, loads of pineapple juice, all topped up with cream and a cherry.  :)

And yes, we DID have a very nice time, thank you for asking!!

WAITING ....

 

My continuing love affair with lime green - something NOT shared by my family, who clearly have no taste and appreciation!  I especially like this colour in the Spring, when the new green leaves are such an intense lime shade, before dust and traffic fumes get to them.

So nothing fancy going on here - I just painted the page in this yummy shade of green acrylic paint, and then began to add bits of green collage, mainly from a children's book I got from the charity shop.

And then the collage just grew and grew .... the butterfly top left and the advertisement bottom right are both from tissue paper which I tore out and collaged on with matte medium.  Its a besetting sin of mine that I tend to get stuck on one colour and produce all manner of tone on tone pages - if I start off blue it often stays blue, and I have to remind myself that it is OK to use more than one colour!

Still didn't know quite where I was going at this stage, even when I added the rather wistful looking Modigliani lady (if you've been with me a while you'll already know how much I love his work). A white Posca paint pen added a few highlights here and there.  Between the pictures above and below you might also notice that I added a shadow, using a grey marker. It always amazes me just how much difference such a small subtle addition makes!

So I left it awhile to come back to another day, when I knew what I wanted to say, and this was something of a cry from the heart.  Something we'd dreamed of and hoped for over a long LONG period of time FINALLY came to fruition, and instead of feeling joyful I found myself oddly flat. I've been doing some work on changing that.

We are off to Florida on Wednesday so this will be my last post for a couple of weeks - but I plan to come home laden with craft bargains (Jo-Anns here I come!) and collage stash.  The sunshine always warms my bones and, combined with the relaxation of being away from it all, I experience less pain, which is rather wonderful!  Arrivaderci ....