To Do

A to-do art project list-only two of which are done! The snail got done the day after and I have made a felt owl for the doll but everything else is still waiting! Then, for want of an idea, I carefully coloured in a chequered pattern on the graph paper page. I really enjoy colouring in at times. I find it very therapeutic-like doodling. Next week I go back to work after the summer holidays, and the first day-of usually quite tedious meetings, is a prime doodling day! I try to resist but am usually so bored I can't help it.

The snail photo added the next day. He was fun, and quick to make, which is not always the case with needle felting. He has a real shell, and little bead eyes on wires.

Stuff

This mouse is representative of my inability to throw much away. He is from my brother's house-remnants of the last occupant-an elderly lady. My brother is quite able to de-clutter, and laughs at me for my over filled house and collecting habits. So when I was allowed to look through what was left in his house after he moved in, I found it hard to not take things away, to be appreciated later. Only recently did I turf the bag of stuff out of the cupboard, to find out what was left. This little mouse is broken and badly repaired, so he either has to go in the bin, or, because he has a nodding head, to join with my nodding head china poodle-part of a small collection of poodles, keep his head down, and pretend he is one too. So that is what he has done.

I am a hopeless case.

More roofing work.

They are still there five weeks later and I am wondering if they will get it finished by the start of term.
Ideas for motorway signs after my trip up to Yorkshire and back in a day.
Motorway driving would be so much easier without the arrogant and badly behaved
(insert expletive of your choice)s out there. I want to make the big sign for my rear window as an ironic statement to those expletives who do this but I fear it would be inflammatory. On holiday in Scotland I liked their motorway signs-they were positive but thought provoking statements, none of which I can remember sadly!

I love the big basic direction signs in capitals for THE NORTH etc. My fox and a view of some moors I crossed somewhere on my way back.

Just recording a few things on this page. Nothing too exciting! Cassie looking cute in a black and white picture from the new camera, and a zoomed in picture of the scaffolding sign out the back, to show how good the zoom is. The little cat sticker is from a giveaway I won from here. Maria-Therese takes beautiful photographs, and uses her images to make a selection of lovely things.
I love the image, and it reminds me of this poem, by Thomas Hardy, which I also love. Andy introduced it to me and reads it to me sometimes, and it always brings a tear to my eye.

Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.
A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eye
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.
The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.

The second page is a wishy-washy watercolour of a doll I bought recently. I couldn't resist her-she is very cheaply made with a polystyrene base and most things pinned on, but at the same time there is great attention to detail, and pretty and decorative fabrics used.
Some of the pages in the book are graph tracing paper, and when you paint on them with watercolour, the paint fills the squares but is resisted by the lines, so you get a chequered, pixellated look to some areas. A happy accident.
I continue to love the pogo! I have used it a lot in this book, especially in the last two weeks as we were on holiday, and there were just so many pictures I wanted in my journal. I am going to post two pages a day I think, until I have caught up with myself!

Soup and Cake

What it says! I made soup and cake on that day. I think it was a fruit cake. The beetroots are printed with beetroot juice.

Unfinished Page

Do you have unfinished pages in your journal, that stay unfinished forever? I like how this page looks and it is now so far back in the book that I don't want to put something from now on it, as that would not make sense. So it will stay as a pretty and unfinished page. The bird is from wrapping paper-a piece left over. It is stuck on top of some ironed angelina fibres, on an inked page and with a little piece of gold leaf in the corner.

Insects and Seeds

During the first week of the holidays, I had a dead bee in a cup from school-I was going to put it in resin so brought it home. I found a dead ladybird just outside the back door, and the butterfly on a walk. The honesty seeds are for purple ones, and every year I mean to collect some from a hill near here which I drive up but hardly ever walk up. I remembered finally!

Before I resined the creatures or planted the seeds, I decided to paint them. Lucky really as I have bought the wrong type of resin, so now they are encased in pink plastic! You can still see them just about.

Drawing or Sketching?

Whichever it is, that is what I was doing. I had inked the pages with ink pads, and with no thought of what would go on them. As it was it worked quite well, in the first one seeming to highlight the central part of the drawing, and in the ones of the builders, giving a bright outdoor feel. I have so many art supplies(see previous post!) that I forget what I have and therefore have the pleasure of periodically rediscovering something. I still have my tin of ink pads out on the table (a very nice tin in the shape of a highland terrier-it contained shortbread, my favourite biscuit) and so have inked a number of pages. Drawing the kitchen makes me think about perspective and how difficult I find it! So I had a second go-mainly to try to understand the chair position.

Then on the right hand page what I think is more of a sketch than a drawing, as the subject is a moving one-the builders replacing the roof on the school behind where I live. Another thing I have a bit of a fear of drawing is people-not faces(mainly straight on, forward facing-again a fear!) but bodies. So I enjoyed having a go and not caring too much about the results. I think the hats give the impression of realism if nothing else does!

Second builder sketch and a list of what I have been up to. I always worry that I am not using my time well in the summer holiday so obsessively write down my activities to convince myself that I am. Only now, as they are almost at an end, am I beginning to relax a bit!

Shiny and Shimmery

First page-I used lovely glaze pens and metallic gel pens from Sakura. The page on the left is a pogo print of a photo of one of the pages from a learning journey book from my class this year. We are not doing them in the same way again as they were massively labour intensive-lovely though but we need to find an easier way next year. I took photos of a sample of the books just in case I need to show them to anyone.
The page on the right says 'I am an addict of art'-I would have added 'materials' to that statement but I ran out of room! I was just trying out my newish metallic watercolour pencils. They are nice but not quite shimmery enough I feel.

The Beginning

This is the front cover of my new journal. It is called 'Erewhon' as that is the title of the book I used the cover from. (The book is about a fictional country, and the title is an anagram of 'nowhere') I cut a circle from the cover and from quite a lot of the following pages, then filled it with pieces of china from the riverbank, then covered these with resin. I prevented the resin getting through to the rest of the book with tinfoil. It took ages and ages for it to dry thoroughly and for the smell to go, but eventually it did, and it is now lovely. I cut lots of different pages from an assortment of papers then made signatures to go inside, sewed these into a piece of fabric then stuck this into the emptied book cover. It is so different to my last book and that is making me use it differently-more drawing and painting and less sticking things in.