PEACE COMES DROPPING SLOW ...

A very talented blog-friend, Jackie Cardy, is sort of responsible for this page. Do visit her blog to see the amazing felt and embroidery pieces she creates. One of her recent ones was on the theme of Peace Comes Dropping slow ... and after she mentioned it I couldn't get the phrase out of my mind. Its from a poem by Yeats "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", and I've always loved it. This is the middle
verse ...
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
Anyway, this was a page I'd already prepared and the pinky purples seemed just right for the "veils of morning". The background is done with my trusty Caran D'Ache crayons and I added the flower with Promarkers, which to my delight take really well on this surface. I'm using these quite a lot now, and apart from the smell really like them!
With no particular plan in mind I just began to write the poem out - wish I could do beautiful calligraphy which would do the words justice - and generally just doodling around the spaces. Working on this took me to a wonderfully peaceful place which felt like a gift and a blessing.
The leaves were also inspired by Jackie - because her pieces are composed of leaf shapes, and that seems right somehow. The vision of peace seems to go with the idea of gently dropping leaves, and things in their due time and season - very much on my mind at the moment.
I'm more pleased with this page than I have been with any for some time - it somehow catches what the poem was saying to me, and it will be good to revisit this when I'm feeling rather less than calm and serene....

So thank you Jackie for your continuing inspiration - isn't it wonderful how artists can touch one another and bring out things you never knew were in you??

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.

DID YOU THINK I'D LEFT THE COUNTRY??

I hadn't gone anywhere but my camera had decided to have a funny 5 minutes and pictures weren't uploading from camera to PC. I've fiddled about and reloaded the software, but it still wasn't working, though after some days I eventually managed upload these direct from within Photoshop Elements.

I had the most brilliant day on Saturday - went to my first ever art journalling class at Art from the Heart (what a FABULOUS place) for a session on mini art journals with Kate Crane. We did all sorts of backgrounds and techniques, and I worked well out of my comfort zone - which was exactly what I wanted. I'd begun to feel as if my pages were getting a bit "samey" and wanted to be jolted out of my rut. All of the pages are about 6 x 4, so much smaller than my usual A5, and they are all done on a gesso base with acrylic paint. Now I don't normally like paint very much - it dries to a chalky finish which makes my teeth itch, but I got around this by giving them a coat of matt acrylic varnish when I got home.
The first challenge for me was using more than one colour!! I'm terrible like that, if I start with a blue I keep reaching for other blues, I'm a bit of a monochrome girl ... But look, not only more than one colour but two completely CLASHING colours, pink and orange, which it turns out I absolutely love, but would never have put together left to myself. These are the only pages which have any writing on at present.
We used masks and stamps, and techniques like using the edge of a credit card to add white or dark grey lines, or a bottle cap to add circles. All this was completely uncharted territory for me. Those who had a look at my journal exclaimed over how neat it all was, and I had to say "yes but I'm trying NOT to be"!!
This last is the one page I don't like very much - at least, the background is OK but I'm not a bit happy with that awful picture which looks a bit like that Beckham person don't you think?? And will I use all the new techniques I've learned from now on, or go back to my old ways. Not sure ... watch this space!!

IT WASN'T A GOOD DAY ...

You may detect a modicum of self-pity creeping into this journal page .... OK I admit it, I was wallowing a bit! Am being determinedly Pollyanna-ish now however, and resolutely upbeat. Unfortunately I made this on a day when I was feeling a bit blue, which might be why I picked these papers with their cool blue/green colours. The figure is a stamp by Paula Best that I watercoloured - I use this image a lot - and the script is torn tissue paper.
Then I found the words "blue moon" in a magazine I was cutting up, so that was when I added the moon face as well. What can I say, sometimes you can only journal the mood you're in, and I suppose I will look back at these early weeks in our new home and smile when I read these words. I was rather helped by reading somewhere the question "will any of this matter in a year's time, and if not why are you worrying about it?" That put everything into perspective!

SCOFFING THE CHOCS

You probably already guessed what was going on here ... and you'd be right. It was one of those days when only chocolate will do, except that we didn't have any. Then himself remembered the box he'd won on the tombola, which were milk not plain, so not his kind of thing at all. Needless to say I did a pretty good job of polishing them off (therapeutically necessary) and for some bizarre reason kept all the little labels off their wrappings. And that's what led to this page, made up of paper scraps onto which said labels could be stuck. I really like cutting up paper to make borders and so on, which also had the double advantages of a) being ecologically sound and b) using up some of the scraps I tend to shove into boxes rather than waste them.
Anyway, this turned into a sort of confessional about the chocolate, which may or may not have also been therapeutic. I didn't actually feel guilty about it even if I should have! So please tell me you do this too, or I shall begin to question my sanity. If God hadn't meant us to eat chocolate in desperate handfuls when the going gets tough, well she shouldn't have invented it. Right?

Rosie's Roses

This is just a quick post as I believe Blogger has been misbehaving and eating all sorts of posts - it has certainly gobbled up some of my comments on the last post, but I thank you for them whoever you are/were.

I was feeling particularly grateful for Himself the other day when I made this .... no of course its not always like that, but often enough for me to feel like a very fortunate woman. Some days of course he is a total pain in the rear end, but I'm used to him so will be keeping him. I couldn't break a new one in now. Obviously I never annoy him or anything like that. Actually, sometimes I tell porky pies .....

DON'T JUST SIT THERE ...

Don't just sit there ... was one of those times when I needed to send a message to myself! These journal pages are always about talking to myself, or talking myself into (or indeed out of) something - I get a lot out of the reflective process that journalling involves. Anyway, on that particular day I was conscious that an unhealthy degree of self-pity was going on, so I was doing a "pull yourself together" sort of exercise. This page began with a sheet of paper which I think looks like a cracked paving slab or something. Being grey and cracked it spoke to my low mood, but I immediately attempted to counter this by sticking down a big red spotty heart, to brighten up the page (and me)!
Then I gave myself a good ticking off, as above, to the effect that it was necessary to put yourself out there if you wanted to make friends and get to know the new area. Sitting inside, even in my lovely pink studio, wasn't going to make any of this happen! Nor were interesting, creative and largely available people going to beat a path to my door (and even if they did the doorbell is too quiet and I can't hear it). It was up to met to get the ball rolling ...
Then I cut these big red letters out of paper and outlined them in black. I wanted them to say DO SOMETHING, but as you can see there wasn't room, so I settled for "take action" which took up less space. Then in my usual fashion I fiddled about and filled up all the gaps with more writing, arrows etc and a few pictures which seemed to fit. The page complete, lecture to self delivered, and thus fired up,I knew what I needed to do - get out there, meet people, join something etc etc. DO SOMETHING!

And do you know what .....? It was raining out there and I couldn't be ar**ed, so I continued to sit inside feeling quite sorry for myself, and of course nothing changed. You just can't help some people can you?? Naturally, all charming and interesting arty people who come to my door and invite me to be their friend will be made very welcome. Just don't expect me to get out there and go looking ... or at least not until it stops raining!!

I TRY TO BE A NICE PERSON BUT ...

... well as you know, some things just make you mad - right? I made this swooshy background some time ago, and you could tell I was feeling a bit thunderous by the way I added (using Promarkers) a deep purply border and some doodling.
One thing led to another and (having tried to put a more positive spin on things) I decided to simply record how cross I was feeling. A journal has to be an honest reflection of your life doesn't it, and while I hesitate to reveal myself as a cranky old bat, what the hell I thought!! Can't be all sweetness and light the whole time, or even most of the time ...
To cut a long story short, visiting daughter had rather taken us for granted which seriously brassed me off at the time (it seems utterly unimportant now).
Anyways, as you can see, I got some negative emotions off my chest, and it did indeed make me feel a lot better. Said daughter is a delightful, funny, talented young woman whom I love dearly and am very proud of, but she's not perfect. On the other hand, neither is her mother.
Does you get to get your bad temper down on paper doesn't it? I'm already looking back at this page and feeling more inclined to laugh at myself than anything else ...

THAT WEDDING ...

As it says ... I do love a good wedding, and you must admit that it was! Not a dry eye in the house. Us Girls watched it from 8.00 am wearing our plastic tiaras, waving our flags, in a room decorated with bunting and paper chains. Later Himself made us a gorgeous lunch of salmon and strawberries, and we drank Bucks Fizz! A good time was had by all, and so in thoroughly patriotic mode I set off to make a journal entry ...

I found the bunting (ie triangular Union Jacks) online - if you don't already use Google Images do try it, you'll discover everything you ever needed there, and more besides! Incidentally that was where I also found delicious details like the bit about sprigs of myrtle in the bride's bouquet, and what Prince Harry said to Wills when Kate came up the aisle. The page started with a sheet of red paper (well the backside of some that I was never going to use) and went from there.
It just seemed a very happy and positive thing to record - I still remember what we did for the wedding of Charles and Di! Often my entries are about things I'm uncertain or unhappy about, so its good to be writing about something cheerful ... and one day, when the grandchildren inherit the journals, they'll be glad I did! I may be taking too much for granted here?

So here is the record of the day in all its glory. Us Brits don't often go into full patriotic mode, but we do big posh Royal ceremonial terribly well, don't you think? Hope you had as nice a day as we did. Himself was in Bah Humbug mode throughout, so was perfectly happy to be relegated to the kitchen, and attacked some of our brambles during the afternoon. But bless him, he then manfully sat through the evening TV programme which was a re-run of the whole event, and managed to stay awake too!