Wings

The prompt for week 22 of Journal52 is Wings. For me this has to involve dragonflies. I got out my Neocolor crayons and got going. I layered colour down then used water to create washes. I probably laid down about 4-5 colours to get some depth. I then doodled with a Micron pen and wrote with my Sharpie.

Here's a daily visitor to my garden. He's so friendly he can often land on your hand if you are sitting at the garden table.

He's not actually a dragon fly. He's called a Small Red Damselfly and here's a professional picture of one (so much better than my poor attempt....

Link to original image

Hubby and I went to the garden centre and spend quite a bit more than we estimated. He planted the large stuff up last night and I spend the morning planting the rest (and dodging the rain) 

I think there was around 60 plants in all. Phew! Now all I have to do is get the dirt from under my nails!!!

Tags and Top Ten

I said in my last post I was going to make some tags. Guess what? I actually completed something I said I was going to do.

The photo is fairly awful but you can kind of see them. I added colour coordinated eyelets too.

Here's my latest journal page. I'm using a prompt from Journal52 The prompt this week is 'Top 10 Lists' I used various colour pencils and my trusty sharpie.

I've been pinning a lot of trees and swirls in the last 24 hours so I think it's fair to say these will be a big influence in my next few journal entries.

So, it's been another huge gap since my last post. No excuses at all!

I just wanted to share my latest craze. Journalling.

I did a bit of looking around and there seems to be different types of journaling. I've found art journals, sentiment journals, Project Life etc. As usual I don't fit into a nice little pigeon-hole so my journal will be a bit of everything. Depending on the mood it'll be a diary type snap shot, art experiments and scrapbooking....plus anything else that takes my fancy.
My first layout was a double page one that chronicled a week.

I used all sorts of pens, pencils and even a bit of scrap decopatch paper I found in the bottom of a box.

The next 2 were art experiments...

If you can read the writing I was VERY unimpressed with the left hand layout. It's grown on me a bit since then. The 4 rectangles were printed out from the web and the brown strip was ripped from a chinese note book. The colour was watercolour pencils and pens. The right hand layout was pencils and watercolour crayons. I'm liking the idea of this theme so I'll go back to it to see what else I can come up with.

My final 2 layouts...

 These are more scrapbooking than anything. I hit Hobbycraft today so these are a mix of old and new. The backgrounds are stuff I've had for years and the top layers are new today. I'll write something in the right hand one tomorrow.

The plan is to either crate a new page each day or create elements for a new layout. I'm thinking tomorrow is a day for making tags....yup, definitely tags!

Monday again. Where did the week go?

At last we got a non rainy Sunday so I got to go to a boot sale. Yayyyy :)

It was a bit dissapointing but I managed to snap up a few bargains.

I stuck to my mission of filling my walls with artwork.

This lovely collection of quite large prints cost me the princely sum of £2.50. I think they were originally illustrations around a map (there are outlines of a country on the bottom right corner of pictures 3 and 4)

More art.........

This time old colour book plates. Some of them have quite a lot of foxing on them but I think they are just beautiful and they are themed on London (where I live) One is of Greenwich park - 5th one down(Very local) This was my big spend of the day at £12

 I'd better get framing.

Last batch of art was a framed set of cigarette cards. The series is 'Cries of London' and date from 1912. I was chuffed to get it for £5

My last few bits were a lovely necklace for 10p

I also got 2 scarves for 50p each....

The last thing I got was a book on ornaments. Not the dust traps that sit on the mantelpiece but scuptural ornaments. The illustrations are wonderful and the plan is to colour the plates and frame them. The problem with that is when it comes to it I can't actually bring myself to deface a book! I have a complete set of Cassells Illustrated History of the World upstairs and I get as far as chosing the plates I want to frame then....then.... nothing. I can't do it!

Can you imagine these lightly watercoloured and framed though?

The book is from the 1950's and there are lots of them on the market but....but.... arghhhh

I'm such a book wuss!

I shall sit in my craft room with my watercolours and my scalpel and not come out until I deface a book....

It's going to be a long week.....

I may need a food parcel!

Linked with Magpie Monday over at the wonderful blog of Me and my shadow