21 secrets goes pearshaped

 My good friend Chris, from Pearshaped Crafting, came over this morning to do a bit of journaling.  After a bit of umming and ahhing I'd signed up to the '21 Secrets' series of art journaling workshops and we decided to do one this morning.  To choose which one, Chris picked a random number out of her head - 10 - and we counted along to find the tenth workshop which was Kate Crane's!

Funnily enough we've taken a class with Kate together before!

Chris' page started with reds and greens.  I decided to go for browns and greens, but discovered that Mushroom Adirondack spray is nearer a grey when sprayed over gesso!

I didn't have any acrylic ink to hand so used a couple of pipettes to add inky circles with ink taken from my Adirondack spray bottles.

Chris used her Neocolour water soluble crayons to add her circles.  Much more subtle!

I had been saying that I was resisting the current journal trend of painting faces (actually, I don't have to resist hard as faces aren't really 'my thing') but looking at my 'blobs' they seemed to be crying out for facial features.  Sue's funny bird doodles came to mind, as did Dr Seuss and Carla Sonheim's imaginary creatures!!!

I intended to make a couple of the 'blobs' into flowers, but forgot - or maybe they just didn't want to be flowers!!

The blob at the base of the 'elephant' looked so like a little snail without a shell I just had to doodle him in, despite it looking a bit odd, but then, the whole page is odd!

I just added eyes to each blob and went from there!

"Be who you are"

Dr Seuss

EDIT:  Chris has blogged her page so head on over to her blog HERE to see how differently the pages turned out!

a woolly gathering

Chris, our good friend Sarah and I headed 'up North' last night to Woolfest, Cockerham, Cumbria..  We stayed the night in Chris' caravan, where the view included a lake! [ It doesn't usually, it's just rained a lot (a month's rain in one day yesterday apparently!) ]

From there we made our way to the wool focused event this morning and had an aMaZiNG time :)  Woolly inspiration everywhere!

I'd love to be able to wear a hat like this one on the right!  Gorgeous!!!

I am definitely going to have a go at wet felting with other fabrics and bits and pieces included.  Every bit of nano felting caught my eye, I just love the wrinkled effect produced on the silk/organza.

I'm even tempted to have a go at some weaving after seeing this work by Eta Ingham Lawrie, it's just STuNNiNG!

One of the fab things about the event was that it included everything about wool, from the sheep (this is a Wensleydale - I have some curly Wensleydale locks but didn't realise they were exactly like that on the sheep lol!  Except mine have been dyed blue/green)  through carding and spinning to knitting/felting/weaving. It was great to appreciate the whole cycle.

Chris showed off her knowledge of wool by declaring "Isn't that blue leicester Sarah?  I'm sure it is!"  It was.  Who knew there were so many funky breeds.  I now have some black shetland wool to needle felt into penguins :)  I even got some projects started on the journey there and back -

granny squares on the way, 'big' crochet on the way back (but that photo didn't transfer from my phone for some reason so will share another day).

And now for bed, it was a looooooooooong day, but a good one.  Thanks Chris!