116th What's on your Workdesk Wednesday - no gesso, sorry Rachel!

Partway through working on this journal page the postman brought me a parcel -

... some Milton Bradley Flashcards I won on Ebay :)  So the theme for my page became numbers; I added a selection of rub ons by 7 gypsies alongside one of the numbers from a card.  There's also a snippet from the customs label.

I'm LoViNG working in these small journals.    I used my Dylusions paints on a pre-gessoed page in my tiny Gorjuss notebook :)

This page, however, has no gesso in sight!

This is my passport size one by Muji, again pre-gessoed from Kate's class the other day.

More busy workdesks available over at The Stamping Ground hosted by the wonderful Mrs Dunnit :)

Kate Crane - a mini journaling inspiration!

Saturday saw my good friend Chris and I heading up to Art from the Heart, Harrogate to take this class from Kate Crane:

It's aaaaaaaaages since I took a class so I was really excited.  I love little books and have been really keen to get journaling in some, but for some reason I find it really hard.  I can happily journal on small tags, or decorate tiny squares or envelopes, but adding paint to small pages throws me!  I LoVe the colours Kate uses on her pages, well, everything about them to be honest!  They're always STuNNiNG!

I'm usually a baby wipe girl, slapping the paint on my page; Kate had us paint with a paintbrush over gessoed pages.  I HaTe gesso!  And probably for the same reason most people like it - I don't like things to move once I've put the paint down, and I know how paint etc is going to behave on paper, gesso makes it behave differently.  

I do LoVe the pages I made on the day though, and as well as learning a different way of adding the paint to the page I challenged myself to work in a different way.

 It was also great to meet people from blogland,

http://patacake-patcrafts.blogspot.com/2011/08/mini-journalling-at-afth.html

http://gezzybscraftybits.blogspot.com/2011/08/well-i-promised-my-next-post-would-be.html

http://craftyshe.blogspot.com/2011/08/birthday-weekend.html

http://gotpaintinmyhair.blogspot.com/2011/08/fabulous-weekend.html

http://flutterbycrafter.blogspot.com/2011/08/warning-contains-scenes-of-sexual.html#comments

 and not forgetting those without blogs, and to share in Sheila's birthday cake :)  

I've worked on a couple more pages since the workshop - thanks so much for the inspiration, and for a great workshop Kate! I'm getting there I think, although I still don't get the nice, distinct areas of colour like you do ;)

unfinished; meant to try NoT working across a double paged spread in class

and forgot,  so had a go here

no gesso; bit busy this page; little tag book in bottom RH corner

is covering up a picture I added last night and didn't like!

I am a very proud Mum today...

my eldest boy got 4 A*s, 4 As and 2 Bs in his GCSE results.  Well done George, great job!!!

[not easy to get photos of George but he didn't seem to mind this one at Easter!]

365 Tile a day

My tile came out of the kiln, and I'm really pleased with it!  Forgot to take a photo though - duh!  I thought I'd share this inspiring video with you though, it inspired my plate here (please head over to youtube and 'like' this for Kelly, she's so generous with her designs and ceramic painting knowledge, or check out new tiles on her facebook page)

Have you ever been tempted to do something every day for a year?  Or everyday for a month?  I'd love to hear from you, and if you did it!!!

in the style of Sarah Ahearn Bellamere by train

I treated myself to this beautiful book just before I went away.  I LoVe the way Sarah Ahearn uses snippets of collage and colour, and also her use of white space.  One of the activities in her book is mini scrapping using what comes to hand from a collection of papers in a box. I found this really hard on holiday but gave it another go whilst away again this last week.  We celebrated our twentieth wedding anniversary this week by taking a steam ride from York to Scarborough, first class no less!!

On the return journey I got out my scrapping kit again and had a go at some mini pages:

I might still add to these pages, I might not, but I'm pleased with the progress I'm making.  My friend Chris and I are going up to Harrogate on Saturday for a workshop with Kate Crane, again working on mini pages - hmm, I see a pattern forming ;)

going DoTTY!

I'm back at work, playing about with glazes again :)  This idea's been playing around in my head for a while so it was good to get it 'out' as it were!  After masking leaves, I added a number of coloured dots, inspired by some work I'd seen on Facebook. Whilst looking this up again, I came across a new blog to me: http://365tileaday.wordpress.com/.  Today I decided to decorate a couple of plates for my hall table, one for the Autumn, ready to showcase conkers, coloured leaves and fir cones,

and one for the Summer, inspired by one of Kelly Hennessey's tiles

The Summer plate is my favourite and I can't wait for it to come out of the kiln :)

On another note, here's the newspaper article from the yarn bombing I organised about a month ago now.  The article came out whilst I was away on holiday:

If you love meeting people, and want to bring a smile to your local community, I can highly recommend a bit of 'yarn bombing' ;)