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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.

White Christmas!

We spent Christmas day with family at my sister and her husband's home in Eltham. They say be careful what you wish for, and ever since I left England as a child, I've longed for a white Christmas. Well it happened this year. We were all sitting outside enjoying a balmy 30 deg C afternoon, all very sleepy after over indulging on the traditional Christmas lunch, when we felt a few spots of rain. Everywhere became very steamy with the heat. Then it happened, the skies opened and we received the biggest deluge of hail that I've ever seen, some pieces the size and shape of lemons. Needless to say we all dashed inside and viewed the show from the windows. The outcome, all the skylights in my sister's house were broken as well as a large window. Our cars in the driveway all ended up damaged with craters all over the roofs, sides and bonnets. Their garden and trees were torn to shreds, and we were the lucky ones. They live on five sloping acres and the dam at the bottom of their land just couldn't cope with the amount of water, it burst it's banks and just kept going. There has been such widespread devastation in the area.
Our house was lucky this time, (we lost our roof and skylights in a similar storm last year), the storm followed a narrow path that didn't go over our area.

Looking out of the living room window you can see the size of the hail.

It suddenly gathered speed and pelted down.

Looking down their property to their dam, every where is white.

The hail was so forceful it striped the leaves off the gum trees, paint off the hand rails and put holes right through the plastic chairs. It's amazing the damage that can be caused, it only took 15 minutes to reek all of the havoc.

I hope you all had an uneventful time and that you have a great New Year.

Happy Festive Season and Thank You

I'd like to wish everyone a Happy Christmas or whatever else it is that you might be celebrating. Thank you so much for visiting my blog over the past twelve months, and a big thank you to those who leave comments, and for supporting my Etsy and workshops.  I feel I know so many more like minded people than I thought was possible since starting my blog back in 2006. I hope to start some on-line workshops next year, once I sort out what to do.

From our place to yours have a wonderful, safe holiday break and an even more creative 2012

This swag hangs above the fire place

Our Christmas tree, the flash makes everything look so bright but in reality it's more like the photo below.

More of the swag

My work room table after my two little artists came to play.

Another shot of the chaos that hangs from my studio ceiling.

Guess what! More fabric pages for another journal.

And a few more, I try to work on two journals at a time.

These are some papers I've decorated ready to go into the journals.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE

Latest necklace

This is my last necklace to go on Etsy until I find time to make some more. this one features a beach theme.

This is the necklace, there are lots of semi precious stone beads in this. It has a lovely delicate aqua look to it.

A piece of my hand wired sea glass and a repurposed earring.

One of my fabric beads, a game piece and a vintage mother of pearl fish.

A lovely glass bead and the game piece.

An overall view.

Thank you for all of your lovely comments on my last post. I'm so happy one of the pieces has sold already.

Thanks everyone for your continued support, I really do appreciate you taking the time to check out my blog and Etsy.