:: 52 weeks of happy, 16/52 ::

I'm doing this post early as I'm heading off to Western Australia for two and a half weeks on Sunday to stay with my Mum on the farm and visit Dad who is in hospital.  This post is probably more about being grateful rather than happy, but I don't think you can separate the two.

1.  I'm grateful to have the means and the time to visit and stay with my Mum on the farm and visit my very unwell Dad.

2.  Making these goodies during the week made me very grateful that I have access and means to buy ingredients to make them.

Boiled fruit cakes and soft ginger biscuits.

 3.  Finding this cute and a bit over the top collar for Stripey.  Who says male cats can't wear a bit of bling?!  :)  (I'll let you in on a little secret, it was the only cat collar in the grocery store.)

4.   Sketching this tractor to put on my Dad's birthday card.  He turns 85 on the 26th of April so I'll be home for his birthday.  :)

Materials used:  water colour paper, black fine line pen and water colour pencils.

Wishing you all many happy moments in the week ahead.

Anne  xx

Postcard swap

Hello, I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend.  We are enjoying some lovely balmy autumn weather today and with the rest of the week predicted to be wet, it's nice to soak up the sun.

 

I recently decided to join a postcard swap organised by i. Hanna's Blog.  I've never participated in a swap before so I thought it would be another opportunity to get creative.  Looking at the some of the offerings from last year, I'm not quite sure if my postcards are up to standard, but I guess there is a first time for everything and I'll learn from the experience.

I chose a theme around quotes about nature, one of my passions and the following photos are of the postcards that I made to send to 10 different people.  

It has been an interesting process creating postcards from scrapbook paper, card stock, watercolours, watercolour paper, ink pens, stamps, ribbon and printable quotes from the computer.  I have a few favourites postcards and a couple I'm not real happy with.  I hope the people who receive them will not mind my amateurish attempts.

Have a fantastic week.

Anne  xx

This morning I went out into my garden room to have my coffee and someone had been very hard at work making this.

The web was attached to one of the chairs but I didn't have the heart to move the chair and destroy this spider's hard work.  I was intrigued to see the zig zig line down the centre of the web and wonder if this is for extra strength.

The day has been beautiful, warm and balmy and no thunderstorms for which I'm very grateful.

  These lobelia have self sown in the garden room.  I love it when nature takes over in a nice way!

While I was sitting drinking my coffee, I couldn't help but look around the back yard full of flowers, sunshine, a dragonfly or two and be grateful to live in a country that has freedom.  Freedom to own some land and a house.  A country that has stability and enough food to eat and so many more things.  It was nice to just sit and appreciate, taking some time to enjoy the environment.

Look at that beautiful blue sky.  In the centre of the photo is a tree fern which I imagine would be over a hundred years old.  We have been living here for over 20 years and it was quite tall when we moved in.  Our roofline can be seen in the bottom left hand corner.

Here is another tree fern.  Not quite as old, but nonetheless just as beautiful as the other one.  About five years ago I saved this particular tree fern from being smothered to death by ivy.  It took about 2 years of constant pruning and pulling out roots to get rid of it as I didn't want to use poison in the garden.  A Japanese maple is growing underneath

While I was out taking photos, I was joined by our other cat Bungee (you mostly see pictures of Stripey) and he leapt up onto the garden seat to get in on the action.

Here he is dazzling white in the sun.  At the vet he is listed as a domestic short hair, colour, white and champagne.  A bit exotic for a cat don't you think?  :)

As well as enjoying the outdoors, I've spent a bit of time in this.

This is what I call creative bliss.  I've been working on some things the last couple of days and as this table is where we eat, the family has been consigned to eat on the couch.  Ooops!!  We have a study which is filled to overflowing with all manner of things creative as well as an electric piano, part of a set of drums in storage, a filing cabinet, a table which is supposed to be a craft table (general dumping ground) and a number of plastic storage boxes crammed full of things that need storing.  One day I hope to have this room under control so I can go in there and craft to my hearts content without disrupting the household.

Tomorrow I will be announcing the winner of my 100th post give away.  Thank you to everyone who entered.  You've still got time to enter if you wish. 

One last thing, (can't shut me up), Miss G. and I will be going away for a few days during the week to stay near the beach in a friend's beach house.  Miss G. really needs a break after a hard year of study and I need the sea.  I find the sea air agrees with me very much.  So we will have about 4 days of walking on the beach, sleeping, watching DVD's, drawing and sketching (me), novel writing (Miss G.), reading, reading, reading, late breakfasts, sitting in the sun (hopefully no thunderstorms) fish and chips and definitely  NO COOKING!!  For those that might be concerned about my eating habits (mum?), it won't be fish and chips every night.  :)  I hope I can take some lovely photos to share.

Until tomorrow, have a lovely day/evening,

Anne  xx

Highschoool artwork

My favourite memories from high school are when I was either in the library or having art classes.  I remember doing all kinds of interesting things in art that I had never been exposed to before.  Working in clay, silk screen printing, tie-dying and making lino prints to name a few.

After I discovered Chantal Vincent's blog (check out the button on the side bar), and being inspired by her stamps and lino prints, a little memory came to the surface.  Didn't I have a piece of artwork in the linen cupboard from high school days, something I made when I was either 13 or 14 years of age?
I went scrabbling last night and found my memory and here it is.

From memory this is a lino print.  The design is of my Grandma's house, she lived just across the road from the high school and we would visit her for lunch every day.  (Home was 20 miles away by school bus).  Looking at this artwork (which is printed on a pillowslip), I can't believe I actually did this.  Here is a closer view.

Looking at this makes me want to have another go at lino printing and I've already started drawing up some designs which I think would look very nice on a linen tea towel or two.  It's fun playing around with sketches and ideas.

Wishing everyone a lovely weekend.  We are quite sodden with rain here and probably won't see the sunshine this weekend.  Ah that means lots of opportunities for delightful inside craft stuff.  :-)

Anne

Home made birthday card

Being a creative person I try to make most of my own cards.  I've got oodles of stuff from stamps, stencils, stickers, papers, card etc.  But sometimes I like to make a card with a free hand drawing for a unique touch.  I made the following card for the birthday person.

First I draw my design on watercolour paper using a fine black waterproof marker.

The paper is actually white but as I didn't use flash lighting when taking these photos, (I would have blinded you), it looks beige.

Then I use watercolour pencils to colour in the design.

You can see in the above photos that the drawing of the design and the colouring in process is quite rough.  This style of card is not about perfection, it's very free and easy.

These are the colours I used.

Now comes the fun part.  Using a fine watercolour brush, I dip the brush in water, wipe off the excess and proceed to paint, so to speak, water over the coloured in areas.

In this photo I have applied water to the base of the cake stand.  You can see how the colour intensifies.

I've added a few more details in the photo below.  Some more colour in the cake stand base and plate and defined the candles a bit more.  I've also added some background colours.

Now for the greeting.  This was somewhat more difficult as I find lettering hard to do.

The finished card.  Ta dahhhh!!!!!

Here are some other bits and pieces I've doodled and had fun with using the same technique.  (Click on images for a closer view.)

Thank you for taking a peek at one of the things I love to do.

Have a great day/evening.

Anne