WOYWW#590: Birthday Fun

I've been AWOL from WOYWW for the last three weeks. Life's just got a bit busy with schools back and me being back in the office twice a week now, though I still do a lot of work from home as well. I haven't done much in the way of art since then, but I do have my son's (and Oreo's) birthday card to share today. I even have a shot of my desk while I was working on it a few week's back. 

I used recycled cardboard packaging as in previous years. I painted it with black gesso and decorated it with Stamperia's Cosmos collection 12X12 papers and some photos - it's kind of a hybrid scrapbook layout/mini album/birthday card with flaps and an envelope for some virtual birthday money. Here's a closer look:

I've also made a matching coaster. I just stuck one of the images from the paper collection on a piece of plain MDF coaster base, sealed it and then resined it. 

The envelope contains some fake money, that I printed from this website: https://funny.pho.to/ There are lots of other fun features on here that I had a little play with. You can put your photos into different templates. Here are just some of them - you can even make some gif files:

Have a go at this - it's so much fun! Thanks for your visit - I'll be over soon! xx

WOYWW #587: Mini Journal Part Two

What's up peeps! Happy Wednesday! I clean forgot to take a shot of my work desk for WOYWW but I have a video of my finished mini journal instead, which kind of shows my desk in the background. It's so easy to work on a small scale, especially if you follow the same process for each page. My process involved some inky backgrounds I created a white ago for collage and I simply added some postage stamps, washi tapes, book text, gesso to distress and that was pretty much it. 

That's it art-wise, but I have some more photos to share. See if you can guess where we went last weekend from these photos below. Hint 1: it's a small touristy place in Worcestershire. Hint 2: it has the same name as a famous street in New York with all the theatres. (I probably gave too much away LOL!)

It's a photo heavy post today - I have a few more to share. Meet Walter and Mabel, our resident pigeons. They've been here ever since we moved in three years ago - or so we think it's the same couple - always together. You can't see in this photo but it was raining heavily and they were just sitting on the fence for ages! I wanted to invite them in to dry off! The lawn is dug up because we're getting electricity out to the summer house which is yet to be built just in time for the winter LOL but I'm planning to put fairy lights on it which will look pretty in the dark. 

And just one last photo: we had a bumper crop of apples this year. They seem to be bigger and healthier than in past years. This is my next lot for a crumble:

Happy WOYWW! Thanks for your visit! I'm not sure how much time I'll have today, but I'll visit everyone who leaves a comment over the course of the week! xx

WOYWW #586: Mini journal on a whim

I wasn't sure if I would be in a position to post today for WOYWW as I hadn't done anything up until the weekend and I didn't have anything projects planned either. Then out of the blue one night, I felt the need to smudge some paint around, which is how I ended with this: 

Not very exciting in itself, so I tore it up into smaller pieces, which always makes these backgrounds more appealing somehow. (The colours are a bit exaggerated in the photos.)

This probably would have been enough to share for today, but then - completely on a whim - I made a mini journal using one of these pieces as a cover and a left-over tea-dyed sheet of paper for the inside pages. Then I thought I'd better do a sample page inside and I couldn't stop myself until I had half the journal filled! So here are the pages I've made so far in a random order:

I have actually made a few other bits and pieces of art since, but I'd better keep them until next time. Instead, here's a quick shot of my little plant nursery on the patio - I will try and over-winter the coleus as the one we got last year perished in the first frost! It's a shame they're not more hardy. Poor plants got a bit battered in the winds last night, but no harm done. 

Thanks for visiting today! I'll be around today or later in the week. 

Happy # 586 xx

WOYWW #585: Journal page 'Spirit' and lots of rain

What a difference a week makes - we've had lots of rain since my last post and the temperatures are a lot more comfortable as well. I am definitely a confirmed pluviophile - rain always makes me happy - provided that I can stay indoors - which I can today so yay, I'm happy!

Sometime last weekend I made a journal page. I started by randomly sticking pieces of collage in one of my neglected journals. This is as far as I got when I took the photo for WOYWW.

I was stuck at this stage, then decided to add some imagery from a Stamperia collection (Cosmos) that I'm using for my son's birthday card this year. I still have a whole month to work on it, so I'm way ahead of myself! I'd previously scanned in the imagery and printed them on matte photo paper. I love Stamperia papers, but they're so stingy - they only give you one double-sided sheet of each design - so you always end up wasting one side - and they're not cheap enough to just buy another pack!  That's why I had to resort to using my scanner and printer to get my money's worth out of the pack. So, this is what I ended up with after adding the cut-aparts from the collection. All the other bits were just random pieces lying around (some of them destined for the bin). I came across the "spirit" pebble that I'd made a while ago while looking for my gold ink for the splatters. I thought it was a perfect fit as you could interpret the imagery as spirit animals. The shape in front of the moon is meant to be a boat signifying the journey through life guided by the spirit animals. I didn't plan this page - I just went with the flow. 

I thought it looked atmospheric next to the rainswept window! Much as I like rain, I realise we need sunshine too - so here's a sunny shot of one of the marigolds in the tub you can see outside the window. Nature's the best artist - look at that blending of the colours! 

Happy #585! Hope you're enjoying the rain as much as I do! xx