What a great show!

LOL, not me, Happy Stampers North West festival at Port Sunny ;)

OK, we have had lots of laughs about this photo that the lovely Jennie Boxall took of me early today and iNSTaNTLY put on Facebook, and I mean instantly!!  Mind you, I don't think I could have resisted if roles had been reversed ;)  So yes, I am still speaking to her lol

My phone battery died fairly early on so my plan to take photos of the event didn't go ahead.  I just managed to get Tracey to take a photo of me with the gorgeous Paul B, who was on pain of death not to come and say hi

I had an absolute ball demonstrating this morning for Paddy at Paddy's Stamping Place, then catching up with friends and doing a touch of shopping this afternoon.  I'll share my goodies with you tomorrow, and some pics from the the art exhibition last night :)

my first exhibition - yikes!!

ExperienceArt

The Mustard Tree, Oldham Road, Ancoats, Manchester

7.30pm

The Mustard Tree do a fabulous job working with people in Manchester who are homeless.  Ten artists are exhibiting there tonight, including professional, established artists and those just starting on the journey.  We are each donating a piece to be auctioned to raise money for the charity.  

I was asked to contribute to the exhibition back in May/June but found the transition from art journal to canvas very, very difficult - my mind kept interfering!  Happily I settled into my 'art journaling' mood this week and just enjoyed putting paper, paint and ink onto canvases, not thinking about what others would think about it or whether they'd like it on their wall!  I'd happily put them all on my wall so ....:)

Christmas in the Play Date Cafe

Don't say I didn't warn you!!!  This week we are sponsored by the fabulous Elusive Images by Glenda Waterworth.  I have many of Glenda's stamps and am so pleased that we have another great British stamp company sponsoring the Play Date Cafe.

I received the GoRGeouS Frosty Trees set to play with and decided to go green with just a hint of watermelon using Julie's fabulous colour inspiration

Glenda is offering a tremendous prize this week.  The winner of the Cup of the Week will receive FouR sets of stamps, and each of our Fab Four will win one set of stamps each.  How cool is that!!!  Head over to The Play Date Cafe for more information on how to play along, and to see what you can win,  and don't forget to check out the inspiration from our regular designers, the Elusive Images design team, and Glenda Waterworth, our guest designer this week.

Julie Ranae

Suzanne Czosek

Andrea Ewen
Savannah O'Gwynn
Lisa Somerville
Ruby 2 Shoes

Glenda Waterworth
Elusive Images Design Team

WOYWW 70

I'm rubbish at getting round to see everyone who joins in 'what's on your workdesk Wednesday', but truly appreciate those of you who visit me!

I've been prepping for our local rubber stamp show at Port Sunlight on The Wirral today.  The show is run by the Happy Stampers stamp group and is the BeST show ever.  I'm demoing for Paddy and this is one of my samples :)  

more journaling fun

Blogger wasn't playing ball for me last night, especially when adding photos, so this post is a day later than promised!

Besides mopping and sweeping (during our big paint) we had a couple more household chores that we turned on their heads during our weekend workshop at The Cubby Hole.  Ironing and sewing are so much more fun when you are doing them to paper rather than clothes ;), especially when the result is something like this:

little Sue's book

Suzanne's book

Tracey D's book

Nigel's book

Christine's book (unfinished cover)

I didn't get a piccie of Wendy or Carol's books unfortunately.

I mentioned on Sunday that we had journal prompts throughout the weekend, and my favourite was 'create a page with a hole in it'.  This is because ALL the designs people came up with were STuNNiNG!

 Little Sue's glittery butterflies

 Nigel's moth and dragonfly, created by putting some of the 'big paint' paper behind the die cut holes

 Suzanne's exquisite peacock, again using 'big paint' paper behind a circular hole; images by Elusive Images

 my 'spades' shaped holes in two pages to co-ordinate with the playing cards elsewhere in the book, and again featuring 'big paint' paper

Tracy's fabulous 'weird things' by Stampotique (i'm sure they have an official name but I don't know what it is lol) peeping through a circular hole

It's all go here at 'The Art of Moodling', I've had a workshop to teach this am, the prep to do for Port Sunlight on Saturday as well as finishing my artwork that'll be included in my friend Graham's exhibition.  Here he is telling you more about it but for those in the Manchester area, it is being held at The Mustard Tree, 7.30pm on Friday :)

snug in a cubby hole through a very wet weekend

When it's raining outside, the best place to be is snug and warm inside, making stuff!  Carol and I taught a weekend long workshop at The Cubby Hole this weekend, starting with a 'big paint' on Friday night.  This was SuCH fun (head over to Nigel's blog for a great piccie).  We used some rather unconventional materials for adding paint to the paper - mop, brush, scourer, spray bottle...

This paper looks fabulous now; some of it is framed in A3 size, some makes up journal pages, and smaller pieces form elements in our books.

Carol taught a great tyvek class on Saturday morning.  The painted and heated pieces looked fantastic put through the cuttlebug with Paper Artsy's dies

 By the end of the weekend everyone had made a felt paper journal, with tiny books and pockets inside. 

At various points during the weekend my mobile played the Strictly Come Dancing theme tune which indicated that it was time for a journal prompt. Our theme for the weekend was 'Permission to Play' so there  were various game related links. My favourite journal prompt, 'Inspired by...', involved Suzanne choosing a number using the Bingo machine

We then looked up this number in my book '1,000 Journal Pages' by Dawn DeVries and found a collection of pages by Kathy Welsh.

Looking at her pages, and number 37 in particular (this matched the bingo ball), we decided that her work  was characterised by bright colours, circles, faces and writing. 

I really struggled with painting a flat coloured background, but love the nearly finished page.  I just need to add some writing now.  Not being brave enough to paint a face (unlike Christine!), I used an image from the fabulous Graphic 45 Steampunk papers.

Here's a close up of some of the others' pages

 little Sue's peacock page

 Christines' beautifully painted face

Tracey's fab Zetti style page

 Love that dragonfly of Nigel's

Suzanne's exquisite peacock lady page

I'll show you some more pictures tomorrow.  Thanks to everyone who came and made the weekend so great!  And especially to Carol for looking after us so well, and Paul for drilling holes in draught pieces for me and making our toast for breakfast :)

new things

A friend and I are starting a new venture together next week, teaching half day workshops in our local church building.  They have a fantastic cafe each Tuesday and Thursday so we're running our workshops in a good sized room off the cafe so we'll all have easy access to the great coffee and cake ;)  

My first workshop is this little trinket box, and the following week Jo is teaching shaped cards.  We're situated in Sale, Cheshire, if anyone's interested in joining us.  

All the details are on my new website, The Art of Moodling.  I'm thrilled to have been able to use the artwork from my blog banner on my website, and on my business cards.  :)  The hardest thing was to describe what I do, but I'm pleased with the description I came up with in the end!

I play with paper, paint, inks and 

odds n ends to make beautiful things, 

and teach others to make lovely things too! 

I'm teaching a weekend long workshop at The Cubby Hole, Crewe from tonight, which I'm really looking forward too.  Our theme is 'Permission to Play' and we're focusing on some big ideas.  The Big Paint kicks off the weekend at 6pm tonight.  I'll share photos as soon as I can :)