time to play

Did you know it's really good for you to take time to play?  To do something just because you enjoy doing it, rather than 'for' someone.  That's what I love about journalling - playing with paint and paper; cutting and sticking, ...

It takes me into a world of my own where I'm focused on colour, texture and shape, but also expands my creativity in the sense that I start using colour combos etc through 'happy accidents' that I never would have tried otherwise.

This envelope became a page in my accordion book - one end is for tucking tags, or maybe a little book inside, the other has been opened out and additional pages added.  I LoVe working with envelopes :) :) :)

Yesterday was going to be a 'lettering in journalling' workshop at Paddy's Stamping Place, but became a more general journalling workshop as most people hadn't done much, if any journalling before.  I love teaching like this, starting with where people are and taking them to or towards where they want to go.  For me, that's real teaching, and one of the reason's I won't be going back into teaching in schools yet, if ever, but let's not get me onto politics lol.  Apologies for not getting photos from people's work yesterday; and I really should have done, there was some great stuff produced!

I took some time working alongside everyone working in my own journal.  This is a small accordion one for Carol's challenge 'The Secret Garden'  

I do so love that Martha Stewart hydrangea punch (well, both of them lol, I have two!).

And there's a bit of Paper Artsy in there too from one of their Hot Picks plates.

If you take time out to just play today or over the next couple of days, let me know, I'd love to hear about it.  Get some paper, put some colour on it with paints, distress inks, spray inks, then stencil over it, stamp over it repeatedly to create pattern, then put a main image over the top - see, it's easy!