More books

I'm working on another fabric/paper journal, this was going on my etsy but has been reserved by a lovely visitor to my blog. I'm also making some altered books to teach in a workshop from home. The kitchen's still progressing nicely. The stone benches go in this Saturday. I'll have photos soon.

A completed page in my sample altered book. I painted the vase and candle stick.

This is a smaller book. I painted the lady, her dress is made using papers inspired by Anne Bagby.

This is a page in progress.

My new journal in progress.

one of the fabric pages

more fabric pages

I love dyeing doilies. The other page is sun dyed fabric.

a bit of everything

a collaged and stamped page

more sun printed fabric

Thanks for all of the lovely comments on my previous post, they are much appreciated.

Earrings and hand carved stamps

I've just added a range of hand carved stamps and some earrings to my etsy store. I hope to have some photos of the kitchen soon. The ovens working, we have new cupboards, or should I say drawers, we don't have any cupboards and a new huge double sink with a Darth Vader tap, or that's what I call it. It was more expensive than the sink. I also have a fabulous sink in my studio now, what a difference a sink makes, love it.

This pair features vintage white and mother of pearl buttons.

The earrings all the details or on my etsy store.

The hand carved stamps.

Pages

Our little art group, Jacky, Dot and Patsy had our get together on Saturday and had a wonderful time, talking, eating and journalling. We've been doing a book swap for sometime now and I've been working in Patsy's book. Here's the results below. The style was very influenced by the workshop I took with Flora Bowley.

This is how two of the pages started.

This was the end result. The camera reflected off the right hand page so you can't see all of the detail.

This was the second page, before

and after, I love this technique and am going to do Flora's on-line workshop too for more tips.

Thanks everyone for your lovely comments in my last post and also for visiting my guest post on Crescendoh blog.

Crescendoh Guest Curator

I was very honoured some time back to be asked as a guest curator on Jenny Doh's Crescendoh blog under the title Art Saves. This is the week and there are also daily links to some of the blogs I frequent. Here's the link to the post and to today's links

The kitchen is progressing along nicely, I'll have some photos soon. I'll also have some more stamps on etsy by the end of the week.

I can't do a post without a photo so here's a piece of felt I made recently that will become two journal covers once I add some hand stitching.

This is the piece laid out before the felting process.

The finished piece awaiting some hand stitching.

Thanks for all the lovely comments about my journal in the last post, they are much appreciated.

It's now on its way to a new home in the US

New Journal

The kitchen saga continues. We now have our fabulous oven installed, we have an electric oven with gas hotplates. I've never had gas before and was terrified the first time I used them, but I survived, I almost singed my eyebrows on the wok burner though, I think I could do some serious soldering with that flame.

Between building I've managed to finish my latest journal. I hope to have it in my Etsy store tomorrow. Here's a preview.

SOLD before being listed on Etsy - Thank you Deb

the cover

the spine

total view

following are just a few of the pages, there are lots of white watercolour pages for you to work on. They just have some of my stamps, painted and stamped across the bottom.

Hopefully if I'm not stuck to the wall or in a cupboard, this will be on Etsy tomorrow.

Happy new Year

I'd like to wish everyone a Happy and Creative 2012. I can't believe it's the 10th already. Happy Birthday Patsy.

We are in chaos at home after deciding it was time to re vamp our kitchen. It's over thirty years old and we now have, (or I should say had, I don't have any at the moment), one hot plate that worked correctly, the other three only worked when they felt like it. We went out and bought a beautiful new Smeg oven with six hotplates which required more room. Two cupboards had to be removed to make way for it, one think led to another and we now have new sinks, stone bench tops and new oak cupboards on order. The intention is we'll have the whole thing completed by the end of the month, famous last words. I'll keep you posted.

In the mean time I've been doing a bit of this

watercolour painting in one of my many journals

and this

another journal in progress for my Etsy store

and some components for a new necklace.

Happy creating.