48 Questions...

I saw this over at Ali’s blog and thought it looked fun too – so I shamelessly nicked it. :) If you fancy joining in too, why not answer the questions on your blog? And if you want, post me a link so I can read your answers too. :)

1. What time did you get up this morning? 8.15am – I’ve got a VERY IMPORTANT and EXCITING parcel arriving today so wanted to be up in good time!

2. How do you like your steak? Done. I never seem to get it right – I don’t like to see any pink bits but don’t like it cremated either. Which is probably why I prefer chicken.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Hanna. And I still don’t quite understand it – so many plot-holes you could drive a bus thru them...

4. What is your favourite TV show? Strictly Come Dancing and Downton Abbey – hands down. But also love Lewis... Sunday nite curled up on the sofa with my fella watching re-runs on cable... OK, I’ll also admit to an unhealthy obsession to America’s Next Top Model!

5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? Somewhere quiet and un-overlooked with a nice view – and my own driveway and garage.

6. What did you have for breakfast? Egg and mushroom omelette wrap.

7. What is your favourite food? Chinese or Italian.

8. Foods you dislike? Parsnips – they should be totally removed from the food chain. And creme caramel. Also large tomatoes, although cherry tomatoes are fine.

9. Favourite place to eat? Anywhere that someone else is paying...

10. Favourite dressing? Don't often have dressing.

11. What kind of vehicle do you drive? Focus estate.

12. What are your favourite clothes? Definitely jeans, t-shirt and a sweatshirt or rugby shirt.

13. Where would you visit if you had the chance? Australia/New Zealand. Altho would love to go back to America now I’m more into scrapbooking and papercrafting!

14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full? 1/2 empty

15. Where would you want to retire? Rate things are going I’m never going to be able to afford to retire...

16. Favourite time of day? Evening - I'm a nightowl.

17. Where were you born? I’m a Billericay Dickie – although no way am I an "Essex Girl" lol...

18. What is your favourite sport to watch? Wimbledon, Formula 1 and American Football - Go Seattle Seahawks!  (I got the chance to see them beat the Denver Broncos’ back in November 1999 at the old Seattle Kingdome, just before they pulled it down to rebuild it)

19. What is your favourite fragrance? I don’t wear perfume, makes me sneeze. But I do love the smell of Dewberry.

20. What is your favourite face cream? Don't use it. I don’t wear any make-up either.

21. Favourite baby/kids products? Baby wipes... they’re not just for babies bums!

22. People watcher? Sometimes, altho I prefer to be a view watcher, preferably from a great height.

23. Are you a morning or night person? Definite nightowl. I've never been good with mornings and I always stay up late.

24. Do you have any pets? Not at the moment, although I do have a visiting cat who demands fuss and biscuits now and then. In fact she's just been this morning!

25. Any new and exciting news you’d like to share? Apart from hopefully getting my Cricut Mini today?

26. What did you want to be when you were little? I wanted to follow my brother into theatre management, working backstage on sound and lighting rigs, but got pushed into secretarial college instead.

27. What is your favourite memory? Not sure I could just pick one!

28. Are you a cat or dog person? Definitely a cat person.

29. Are you married? Not any more, but I do live a complicated lifestyle!

30. Always wear your seat belt? Yes, always nowadays.

31. Been in a car accident? Two – one as a front seat passenger - not wearing a seatbelt and almost went thru the windscreen, luckily the car was so old my head pushed the windscreen out in one piece and I just hit the rear-view mirror – I still have the scars and that was back in 1981. The other was in 1995, I was driving and someone overtook coming from the opposite way and went into my car head-on and wrote it off – I got away with whiplash and bruising and severe shock.

32. Any pet peeves? Young children out late at night walking down my road swearing their heads off – what are their parents thinking?

33. Favourite pizza toppings? Anything meaty but not too spicy – no anchovies or olives tho!

34. Favourite flower? Lily of the Valley, freesias and poinsettias. All three remind me of my mum. And an amaryllis bulb to grow at Christmas, something my Dad started a few years before he died and something which we want to continue.

35. Favourite ice cream? Cookie dough.

36. Favourite fast food restaurant? McDonalds or KFC.

37. How many times did you fail your driver’s test? None – I passed first time!

38. From whom did you get your last email? Youtube – one of the people I follow has just uploaded a new video!

39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Having never been there, if I get the chance it would be Art from the Heart – and everything Dylusions!

40. Do anything spontaneous lately? Went up to London for Chinese New Year – kinda took me out of my comfort zone!

41. Like your job? It just about pays the bills but at times can be hard going, especially when there is no work coming thru. ‘Peaks and troughs’ they call it...

42. Broccoli? Yep – but its gotta be cooked properly – just right not overcooked.

43. What was your favourite vacation? America in 1999.

44. Last person you went out to dinner with? My friend Tim and a group of friends following the Christmas organ concert we did.

45. What are you listening to right now? Nothing – apart from the traffic outside, waiting to hear a Parcelforce van pull up outside with my Cricut...

46. What is your favourite colour? Purple.

47. How many tattoos do you have? None – yet. Something I’m considering but haven’t got around to.

48. Coffee drinker? Only at Starbucks – a skinny Grande Caramel latte with just one shot of espresso.

Go on- you know you want to have a go too...

And - I'm a winner again!

Don't know what I have done to deserve this, karma is obviously kicking in to treat me nicely this week after the downs I have had recently, but last nite I entered a giveaway on Craft At Home's Facebook page to be in with a chance of winning the new Cricut Mini electronic die-cutting machine - we had to answer a simple question "how big is the cutting mat?" and then say what our last craft purchase was and why we'd bought it. So I trotted out the answer as being 8.5" by 12", and that I'd bought (amongst other things) 2 pots of Claudine Hellmuth's acrylic paint...

The competition was being drawn at 9pm, and I was out at a crop in Gt Wakering, didn't get in until 10pm and leapt straight onto their Facebook page, but I didn't see any postings as to who had won, even tho I kept refreshing the page... it wasn't until just gone midnight that the message popped up on my screen (having been posted 3 HOURS EARLIER) and Oh. My. God. the winner was me...

Now I already have a Cricut machine, but the first model that came out, and it's a second-hand one at that (altho I knew the previous owner and she'd not abused it at all!) and of course the Cricut Mini was only released about a year ago, so is definitely the new kid on the block... I'm so looking forward to receiving it and playing with it.

It'll use the cartridges I already own, but you can design your cuts on your computer using Provocraft's online craft room software and then cut them out - the mat being bigger than my current one means I can cut from 1/4" up to 11.5". And designing your cuts via the computer means I can place things exactly where I want them to make the most use out of the space available.

Right, that's enough of an advert for Provocraft - but I must say a huge thank you to Craft At Home for running the competition and for randomly picking my name out of the cyber-hat - next weeks courier delivery cannot come quick enough!

Oh, and the crop I went to? it was run by Total Papercrafts, lovely kit and good easy to follow instructions altho I didn't finish it, however I'm hopefully out at another crop this Saturday (weather permitting) so will get it done then. Having not been to a crop since well before Christmas it was good to get the ol' grey cells working in a crafty fashion and not just for work purposes!

I'm a winner!

Oh my - I came home to the news that I'd been picked as the winner of a very special blog give-away - Kate Crane http://www.thekathrynwheel.blogspot.com/ had hosted the recent Stampotique challenge and had altered a matchbox into a mini Rogues Gallery using her favourite Stampotique designs, and had decided to give it away to a random commenter on her blog - and it was me! Couldn't believe my luck, I was almost dancing round the lounge lol... my fella looked at me as if I'd gone totally loopy...

And when I got home from work this afternoon there was a package on my doormat - so now I am the proud owner of - drum roll please - a Kate Crane original lol...

She's used a Swan Vesta matchbox as her base, so that should give you some idea of the size... it's about 3.5 inches by 1.5 inches and as well as painting the box and the portraits, Kate has machine-sewn around them as well.

Here's some close-up pics of the Rogues themselves...

Here's the cover with Dweeze - love his wings lol...



Here's Eric

and Carrot...

...and Hiya Cinth...

...Dawwze's legs - wish mine were that thin...

and Quasimoto 3...

...with Mela to finish off!

They are all so cute, I've never really got into Stampotique stamps but having browsed thru their website tonite to find the names of the stamps Kate used, I've ear-marked a few that I wouldn't mind having myself - they are certainly quirky!

Having just signed up to do a matchbox shrine swap I've already had one person offering to relieve me of this fabby piece of art - sorry lovey but this stays firmly with me!





Out of the frying pan...

Couldn't resist calling my page this, it's done (or at least as done as I want it to be for now) so here are some pics of it. Apologies for the pics in advance, since getting my new laptop running 64-bit Windows 7, I've discovered that my photo-editing software MGI PhotoSuite, and my graphics package Windows Draw are both far too old to be able to run on this operating system - so I am playing around with what I have got and trying to download new software which *is* supported and *will* run under 64-bit Windows 7... so far MS Publisher seems to be kinda doing what I want it to do, but it's just not the same as the software I've been using since forever grrr...

Out of the frying pan... and into the fire, the journaling reads. Because that's kinda how I feel, having jumped straight into this without really knowing what I am doing. But then this is a journey of discovery, and the whole point of the exercise is to try out new things and not be scared by them.

Hopefully I'll look back on this page in a few months/years time and think "Girl what on EARTH were you doing!" but for now I'm actually kinda happy with this page.

And like it says: Who will judge? Only me...

THERE ARE NO

ART-JOURNALING POLICE!

And that lovely phrase came from my days on the newsgroup rec.crafts.textiles.quilting, only there it was there are no quilt police, but it means exactly the same thing - if YOU like what YOU have done then you have succeeded - nobody else matters, this is YOUR artwork and YOUR journey. After all, this is a journal, and the definition in Merriam-Webster's dictionary says: "Journal - a record of experiences, ideas, or reflections kept regularly for private use".


So I will continue to throw ink and paint and rubber-stamps at my pages, and make a complete mess everywhere ('altered' armchair anyone? that blue overspray effect could really catch on...) and I will enjoy myself as I do it.

Thought I'd better stick a couple of pics of what I'd written cos it's a bit hard to read on the main pic, these are certainly preconceptions in my world and I have to learn how to live with them. Or more to the point, learn how to get around them. Nobody said this was going to be an easy ride!

My Art Journey

So whilst I'm getting all creative and throwing paint around and spraying colourwash everywhere, it does of course occur to me that I don't really have a clear idea of what I'm doing (or why lol)... but I've found an online forum which will have a section dedicated to Art Journalling... Each week there's going to be a "Research" prompt followed by an "Action" prompt, all cunningly presented in a handy PDF format. The first week covered making your own journals, couple of great ideas there, but I already have an A5 book I want to use, so have skipped that (altho thats not to say I won't have a go another time!)

This week was all about preconceptions and colour, including a great article by Claire Vickery from Creative Moments (who has just about convinced me to throw out my Hobbycraft acrylic paints and sell my soul for a set of Claudine Hellmuth acrylic paints instead...) all about the different types of mediums we can use in our art journals; acrylic paints, watercolour paints, colour mists/sprays, pan pastels, inkpads, crackle paint and distress stains, watercolour pencils and crayons, oil pastels - goodness me is there anything we can't use?

So today, whilst waiting on my calendar pages to dry, I dug my A5 journal out and sat and thought for a while. Some of my preconceptions are "am I ready for this?" and "can I do this?" so whilst having fun spraying my colourwash inks in shades of blue I was thinking about the other colours, and wanted a go with the red and orange sprays... so a firey page somehow sprung into life... I think the journaling will be "out of the frying pan into the fire" or something like that...

I've used Red Pepper, Sunset Orange and Butterscotch sprays on this, tilting the page to let it run down (or up) so it looks like a burning fire. It's hard to take a good picture of with flash, 'cos as well as colourwash sprays I had a go with Perfect Pearls Heirloom Gold as well, and it reflects the flash really well lol... around the edge I've stamped a couple of Dylusions stamps, coloured one with a white Posca pen and stamped the other using Barn Door Distress Ink... so this is now drying before I go wild and start writing on it!

Art Journaling (or getting well messy...)

Saturday I should have gone to an all day crop, was especially looking forward to it as it was finishing at 7pm rather than 5, so an extra couple of hours to work, but when I woke up I had very little voice and couldn't stop sneezing - who gets ill on the weekend? There should be a law against it!

So I've spent the weekend slouched in front of the laptop playing online backgammon, and watching crafting videos and the Kate Crane DVD's I got for Christmas, and eventually plucked up the strength to have a play over on my craft table... I had already made a start on my art journal calendar a few weeks back but hadn't got very far with it, just gesso'd the pages and then put a base coat of blue and white acrylic paint on them. So far so good. I'm using cheapo Hobbycraft acrylic paints 'cos at £2.59 in their sale they were just too good to resist. They are a little thick to spread, but as I'm no expert I'm happy to play around with them for now.

So yesterday I decided to go a bit mad. NO change there, I hear you say... well I dug out my Adirondack Colourwash sprays and slapped on my latex gloves and got busy... all 3 shades of blue... even had a go at spraying thru an alphabet stencil.... and shock horror, I didn't like it... it was far too dark. So I left it to dry whilst I made yet another cup of tea and played some more online backgammon.

When I came back to have another look, I decided everything needed lightening up, so grabbed a bottle of pearlescent acrylic paint in a very pale blue, and covered the whole of both pages, using an old creditcard (sacrilege!) to spread the paint very thin. You can still see the stencilling thru it, but now its all a pale pearlescent blue.

Still not that keen, so it was back out with the colourwash sprays and a few very light applications of each of the blues, and I'm happy. For now. Stuck it to one side to play with something else. Tomorrow is another day - I'm thinking stamping with distress inks and Stazon, making little marks in acrylic paint with bottle tops and that creditcard, mebbe even some bubblewrap (hang on, I've got a clear stamp of bubblewrap - that'll do...)

Welcome to 2012!

OK, so I kinda drifted off again at the end of 2011, but hey whats new... I'll have a good sort out of pics to upload over the weekend whilst I'm trying to finish my current project and make a start on my art journal calendar pages for January. Yup, I'm moving into art journalling, it looks a whole bunch of fun and as my fella bought me Kate Crane's DVD's for Christmas I'm all inspired to get paints inks and sprays out and get all messy!

So for 2012 I'm going to hold back on the monthly swaps and instead concentrate on working on things for me - I have loads of scrapbook pages I want to do, lots of projects I want to have a go at and lots of craft-related sorting out and tidying up to achieve - this year I *will* sort my clear stamps out into some sort of order, mainly because I can't get any more packs into the box and they are in danger of getting seriously squished!