February in the garden (before Storm Ciara) and some new plants

 Yesterday was a lovely day with sunshine and even a bit of a blue sky.  I went into town and was tempted by some plants - some iris reticulata and more snowdrops (well, you can never have too many) as well as some geraniums.   Above is iris 'Harmony'...

 ...this is 'Pixie'...

 ...and this one is 'Painted Lady'.  I have never had much success with these plants, so I shall enjoy them in their pots and then plant them in the garden.  If they come back next year, that's a bonus.

The geraniums I bought are here - geranium cantabrigiense 'St Ola'.  I have potted them into pots where they will stay until April or May depending on the weather.  I have some cantabrigiense with pink flowers, so I think these white flowers will look good with them.

 My hellebores in the border are starting to flower - here is Harvington Pink speckled...

...and Harvington Single Red which has taken a couple of years to settle in.

 Cardamine quinquefolia is getting ready to flower and I think this may be a bit early.

 Lovely winter flowering honeysuckle is still flowering away and on a sunny day like yesterday, the scent was beautiful.

 The little flowers pack a real punch of fragrance.

 Here is hellebore 'Hello Ruby' still going well (in a small pot).  I will pot the poor thing on once it has finished flowering.

 Here are the snowdrops I bought yesterday.  I love them!

Finally, here's a plant we picked up at our local Aldi - Peperomia 'Napoli Nights'.  I had been seeing peperomias all over the internet in other blogs and decided this one was coming home with me.  It came in a sweet little stripy pot too. It will need re-potting soon, but I will let it settle in a bit first.  Today has been very windy and we have also had hail and sudden rain too, but so far, we have been a lot luckier than many areas of the UK.  If you are in the UK, I hope you have been safe through this storm.

February Artists' Trading Card (ATC)

Here is my February ATC (Artists' Trading Card), the second in my monthly projects.   I am really enjoying the whole process of making these - gathering the ideas, deciding on colour schemes, choosing images, making the gemstone pieces and using some of my stash! 
The base of the card is recycled packaging cardboard,  which is gessoed to give a lovely surface to work on.  My art journal is also made using this card for the pages.  The card has a gel press printed base of purple, white, silver and grey paint, with stamped 'rain' on half of it.  Half of the card has stencilled raindrops with clear texture paste and added glitter and the other half has stamped puddles, and raindrops with clear embossing powder.  The hearts stand a little away from the surface and are made from the cardboard, with satin board which has been embossed with an industrial pattern.  The gemstones are clear quartz, fluorite, kunzite, rutile quartz, white moonstone and an amethyst charm at the bottom.

The back has stamped raindrops with glossy accents over them to add a watery shine, a stamped snowdrop and the February verse. 
Now to start thinking about March...

Making collage papers and Daffodils

I have been busy with my second art journal over last year and into this and will share some of my favourite pages shortly.  I was looking at collage papers with a view to buying some and suddenly had a brainwave - I could make them myself!  I have tissue paper and a myriad of suitable stamps so what was stopping me?  I had a very happy time trying my stamps and  deciding what to use... 

 ...and here are some papers ready to go.  The good thing about these is that they add pattern to a page but you can still see the background colours peeping through.  I think they will work well.

 I couldn't resist buying some daffodils on Saturday as I was wanting some brightness in the house.  They started to open on Sunday...

 Here they are later on Sunday (excuse the flash - my camera does not like low light levels at all).

Here they are today - all open and very scented.  Even if they don't last long, they have given that shot of colour I needed and are very cheering.

The January Garden

 January always seems to be such a long month.  It is often grey and dreary, but then you get frosty nights and beautiful blue skies with sunshine which make up for it.  Over the years, I have been trying to include plants for this time of year so I had a look round the garden the other day to see how things were going.  Above is a hellebore, 'Hello Ruby' , which I bought from a shop called 'the range' (which does indeed have a wide range of things and is one of my favourites).  This plant is still in the pot it came in and I will pot it on shortly.  I was so pleased to see it in flower.

 One of my favourites is Winter flowering honeysuckle, a shrubby plant which looks a bit tousled and even a bit scruffy in its form.  However, in the winter, on a sunny day, the small white flowers release the most beautiful fragrance which smells like lily of the valley to me.

 They may be small, but they pack a punch!

 The ever reliable snowdrops are starting to make an appearance.

 So are these patio peonies - I have planted two in the borders, but this one is still in a pot.

 Camellia Yoimachi is looking lovely and is flowering away, giving a highlight to the bottom of the garden.

 Lovely white flowers edged with pink.

 A beautiful plant.

 I think these may be alliums with crocuses or daffodils or grape hyacinths but it will be easier to tell in a week or two.

To finish, here's 'Hello Ruby' again.  The hellebores in the borders are in bud but I don't think they are quite flowering yet.  I probably should go and check...

January Artist Trading Card (ATC)

 Here is the first in my ATC project over the next eleven months.  The first is for January and was ready for the first of the month, but I have kept adding little bits and pieces.  I made the card and then had a brainwave to use some of my gemstones and to also include the month's birthstone as well.  For this card, there is a haematite round, clear quartz, sky blue apatite, white moonstone, turquoise and rutilated quartz, with a garnet charm at the bottom.

 The card itself has acrylic paint watered down and dripped over a texture paste pattern, then silver embossed shapes and grey stamping.  The colours are silver, grey, white and turquoise.

 On the back, I added a verse from the seasons rhyme I knew from when I was little - 'January brings the snow...' and some silver glitter die cut snowflakes.

 Here's a close up of the verse.

The ATC goes really well with the Scandi inspired felt birds and balls on the seasonal tree, alongside some rather glamorous glass bead snowflake decorations which I bought in a sale last week.
February's ATC will involve grey, white and purple, raindrops, a heart and amethyst...
edited to add...
I am going to enter this ATC in the Craft Stamper Take It Make It challenge over at Craft Stamper.  Wish me luck!

Happy New Year 2020

 

Happy New Year!  Here's hoping 2020 will be a good one for us all.  All the photos in this post were taken off the TV during the London Fireworks at midnight.

Today, as has become a bit of a tradition, I review various aims from last year and think about this coming year.  

Make more felt

Well, felting has been put on the back burner for now and papercrafting/art journaling has moved into first place.  I will probably do more felting at some point in the future, but not at the moment and possibly, not this year. 

 

Read interesting books

I have continued to achieve this aim and have read 91 books this year, down on the previous year, but still a pretty good total.  I have revisited old favourites and been introduced to new writers and books (some more successfully than others, which is always the way). Some of my favourites have been the young adult series 'The Bartimaeus Trilogy' and 'Lockwood and Co' series, both by Jonathan Stroud,  the Miss Marple series by Agatha Christie, the Nursery Crime series and 'Early Riser' by Jasper Fforde (which I do need to re-read as there were some complex ideas in all of them), Jane Austen, some Dickens, 'The Easternmost House' by Juliet Blaxland and the Nell Sweeney series by P B Ryan. 
This is an aim which will definitely continue through 2020 especially as there is already a pile of books waiting to be read...

Be Creative (using what I have)

I have achieved this as well, with papercrafting, journaling, making my first patchwork quilt...I haven't made the other pinafores I wanted to, nor have I attempted making a tunic dress using stretch  material, so those are aims for this coming year too.  I have my ATC monthly project to work on.   I would also like to be able to draw faces and figures in my art journal and have bought two books to help me with that.  I would also like to aim to concentrate on using what I have, rather than always buying something else.

Get rid of or donate things I do not want or need

This is also on-going as I haven't made as much progress as I would have liked.  I have too much stuff and I do need to make a real effort to go through it.  It is very easy to just ignore it, but it won't go away.   If I buy something new, an equivalent something should go.  (It is easier said than done, particularly if you are a hoarder/collector, which I am.)   I think this needs to be a main focus this year.

There we are then - I wonder how well I will get on with these aims in 2020. 
Happy New Year to all my lovely readers.

Pocket Doodle Book pages 23-25 and bonus pages

I have finished this pocket doodle book and above are pages 23 and 24.  I emphasised the background rather than the pattern on page 23 and just added large dots of white and black for page 24.

Page 25 started with triangles, but then morphed into other shapes, some on stalks and some not.

These were extra pages (because I didn't count the pages as well as I thought, but they were decorated anyway (yes, more circles!)

The final bonus page was decorated with small gold circles and large gold flower outlines, which you can just about see.
I enjoyed this project a lot and will be continuing my creative projects next year (the monthly Artists' Trading Card project for a start).

Merry Christmas 2019

(Seasonal Tree decorations - some bought and some made)

Merry Christmas to all blog readers and commenters (who celebrate this festive season).

As has become my Christmas tradition, I quote from one of my favourite Christmas carols, "It came upon the midnight clear" written by Edmund Sears in 1849. 

"Yet with the woes of sin and strife

The world has suffered long;

Beneath the angel-strain have rolled

Two thousand years of wrong;

And man, at war with man, hears not 

The love song which they bring;

O hush the noise, ye men of strife,

And hear the angels sing." 

 (Pom pom wreath made earlier this year and various angels on our kitchen door)

 To end on a positive, I again quote from Desiderata (a 1927 prose poem by Max Ehrmann):
"...And whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy."

I hope we all have a peaceful New Year.

Pocket Doodle Book 2019 pages 16 - 22 and new decorations

 I am nearing the end of this very enjoyable little challenge.  Page 16 was rounded rectangles.

Page 17 was lines in black and gold and page 18 was dots of white and gold.  I have tried to make the pages different from the previous ones so that has also been a challenge.

Page 19 was the most Christmassy image with floral and star decorations.  Page 20 was dictated by the eye patterns in the background print.

Page 21 was a mix of lines and circles (bit of a recurring theme, I think) and page 22 was more dots and lines following the spirals, in white and gold. 
In other creative news, I have been making some extra decorations for the Christmas tree, which are also a memorial to our previous and current much loved cats.

 I bought some mdf bauble shapes and painted them in suitably Christmassy colours, adding some gold stencils (oh look, circles again) and some glitter (well, it is nearly Christmas).  Their photos went on the front...

 ...and their names on the back.  Scruffy is our current cat and features on the blog now and again. They were all lovely cats and it will be a happy reminder every Christmas.

Pocket Doodle book 2019 pages 8 - 15 and a project for 2020

Here are the next set of pages in my pocket doodle book.  Page eight is decorated with colours and dots, whereas for page nine, I went a bit mad with big flowers.

Page 10 started as lines but ended up looking like skyscrapers, albeit at some odd angles.  Page 11 has delicate gold lines and dots which look a bit like constellations.

 I emphasised the swirly roses on page 12 and added some dots for background interest.  Page 13 is just lines which together with the background colour remind me of a 1950s or 1960s print.

 Page 14 had swirly roses in the background but I wanted to do something different so went for blocks and lines.

Page 15 started with blocks but then ended up with circles which are a Zentangle pattern and connecting circles.  It reminds me a bit of a beaded necklace. 
The book is a pleasure to work in and I am really enjoying filling in the pages.
I have got an idea for a project for next year which was inspired by watching a Youtube video by Nina Ribena who has been making Artists' Trading Cards for each month.  I am going to do the same and display them on my seasonal tree.  I have cut and gessoed some greyboard shapes (2.5 x 3.5 inches) and am going to get the first one ready for 1st January 2020.  I am really enjoying thinking about what I will put on each one.

Pocket doodle book pages 2-7

Here's the first set of pages from my Pocket Doodle Book.  Page two ended up being quite scribbly, using both white and black pens.  Page three was more decorative, using acrylic paint pens and Sharpie coloured markers to add some coloured dots to the oranges in the original print.

 Page four was using just black and white again, emphasising the swirls from the gel print.  For page five, I used just white gel pen and added more decoration to the leaves, eye shapes and diamonds that were already there.  I then filled in all the rest of the space with blocks, lines and circles.

On page six, I used the patterns already there and added some blocks.  I found page seven more of a challenge.  The original print was the dark red and lighter pink.  I outlined the blobby shapes in the pink and drew some lines through the red block, but then stopped.  I wasn't sure what to do next, but remembered my Zentangle book (which had been languishing on a shelf for some time), so added some patterns inside the blocks. 
I have quite a few plain unpatterned pages to come, so there will have more challenges.
However, I am really enjoying this activity and the challenge of just using pens and my own drawings - no stamps, stencils, collage or die cuts!

Pocket Doodle Book December 2019

I have been watching lots of crafters on Youtube recently and getting lots of ideas and inspiration.  I was particularly interested in one I saw from creationsceecee, who is a talented watercolourist.  She is making an Advent Pocket Doodle Book and has made a book (4.5 x 5 inches) and painted a background on each page.  She is going to add doodles on each page every day until Christmas Day.
Ooh, I thought, there's a great idea for making use of some of the huge number of gel plate prints I have amassed.

So I set to and created this little book, with a card front and back, ready to fill with all my doodling each day.

Here's the first doodle.
I won't post every day, but will offer a round up now and again in December so that you can see how I'm getting on.
I thought it was a great, achievable way of doing a little something creative every day (and using some stash too - win/win!).