I have 5.....

....Art Journal pages on the go at the moment. They are all at different stages but none are complete yet, I have completed one though and this is called True Strength. The quote says "True strength is keeping everything together when everyone expects you to fall apart." My favourite colour, purple, seems to have made another appearance on this page, I really try not to use purple so much but it just seems to appear whenever I am getting creative. I've had my brother and his wife staying for a couple of days so creativity has been neglected as I had to clear my table so we had somewhere to sit and eat dinner. Visitors have gone now and my table looks uncreatively empty at the moment, but it won't take me long to get paper, glue, paints and inks out again and have it so cluttered the top won't be visible again :-)

I can't believe my Tutorial~How to make a neverending card, has had over 4500 views on Youtube. This was the first tutorial I ever filmed and I'm thinking about making a few more films

My Art Journal is...

.... starting to get full of creativity. I still don't seem to find time to do a page every day, I wish I could, but the time I spend creating pages is a great way to experiment with different media and techniques. The first 2 pages were created using prompts from Milliande Art Community for Women ........... Singing in the Rain and Spring

The Liberty page evolved from an image torn from a magazine advertisement and just anything that was laying on my work table.

I have also started a painting a canvas, not going quite to plan but with a bit more work when I'm in the right frame of mind and it should work out ok. I might then post an image here.

Today my horoscope says ....

"Weird ideas are exploding in your brain and it's challenging to figure out what to do today. You want to take each idea and run with it, but you cannot possibly finish what you initiate. Be careful, for you could start enough projects to keep you busy for a very long time. However, don't stress if you still have lots of loose ends by the end of the day. It will be easy enough to clean up everything over the next few weeks during Mercury's retrograde."

....this is so true! My brain is actually ready to burst, I just don't know where to start! I have got so many ideas and plans, but there is so much everyday life stuff thats needs to get done before creativity can begin. So I'm off to get the boring stuff out the way before I can play........

I'm really feeling....

..... homesick today. Well thats a daft saying 'cause where I am now is my home, what I should say is I'm really missing my kids and grandkids. I miss them every day since moving away from them, but I think because I had a lovely visit yesterday from my ex-hubbys mum and my niece and her son, it has stirred up a lot of emotions. I will need to go and visit them all soon, but then when I come home I will miss them all again. It's a never ending circle which I hope will get easier over time.
My creating has dwindled over the weeks, as I am always busy doing something or other. We had a few really nice days so they were spent taking the dogs for long walks and I really needed the exercise lol. It will be strange this year not having a litter of pups, but Fearne is now retired and I also needed a break from the dog breeding. I need to try and decide what exactly I am going to do now I've moved in with Frankie and live in the beautiful countryside. I have a few ideas going around in my head, but nothing yet that has grabbed my full attention. I do have one project that I have started work on, that does involve being creative with a range of mixed media and including Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, but that is all I want to reveal at the moment. I will see how it goes and if I'm happy with it then all will be revealed in due course.

I have managed to throw together a quick page for my art journal, the prompt was 'Stories of Women'.

I used collage for this, something that I don't do very often, as I was doing this it reminded me of Justine who was in my class at college. I used to love her collages, she was so fast, just tearing and cutting images out of old magazines and sticking them down. She was so messy and clumsy yet her finished work always looked great. We used to have such laughs everyday, but our work was always done and handed in on time.....model students lol

well thats all for now till I find time to blog again and hopefully have managed to be a little more creative :-)

I'm still playing....

..... catch up with the January Art Journal prompts. I just never seem to have enough time, the days just go by so quickly. I wish I could just get up in the morning and draw, paint, stick, create all day every day, but life just gets in the way :-)
So here we have days 23 and 24, 'Round and Round' and 'Paper Poems' .........

here is a slide show of the Art Journal Pages I have done so far

I have also been playing around in Photoshop and made a new desktop image with my grandaughter Ellie in her elf costume sitting on a toadstool in the forest. She is just the cutest wee scrummyest wee munchkin and I miss her lots n lots.......hoping to get away for a wee visist very soon to see all my family

I just don't know.....

..... how some people have the time to blog every day! I never seem to have a spare minute, I am always doing something. I hear people I know say they are bored, but this is something I can say I don't think I have ever been, I've far too much that I want to do. So I never have time to be bored.

Since moving to the country I am getting back into the kitchen and enjoying cooking again, I have now mastered the art of breadmaking after many years of failed attempts and love the smell that wafts through the croft when my bread is in the oven. I still miss my family being near, thanks to technology ie. mobile phones, email, instant chat and Skype I can stay in touch and feel closer to them.
I'm still playing along with Milliande's Journal January but have severally fell by the wayside here as I just never get round to doing a page every day. I have now started to get through the prompts, but not always in the order they were given out lol

So below are my pages for Crossword Puzzles, Stripey Dragonfly, Daily Debris, Taking Lines for A Walk, Favourite Number and Your Front Door.

Favourite Number was done digitally, as I need to keep up my Photoshop and Illustrator skills, which have been a little neglected since I moved to the country. I am hoping to get back to college this year, but if it doesn't happen then like I always say "it wasn't meant to be, because my life is taking me down another path". So I will just have to wait and see what happens and which path I end up going down :-) ...... Also I don't really have a favourite number so I chose 49 'cause thats my age, which by the end of this week I won't be! ........ I'll be 40-10 or 50 as most folk would say. It's just a number and I feel like 20 it's just my body that is starting to age lol

Well got to go now as my bread is ready to go into the oven and I've a quiche to make, as my wee sis is working in Aberdeen this week and is going to attempt to find our croft and have dinner with us tonight. I love getting visitors!

So till the next time its goodbye from me :-)

I'm already a bad blogger......

......it' s been 5 days since my last blog, so what has been happeing? Not a lot really the hours and days just seem to fly by and I never seem to get everything I would like to do done. The weather is still cold, but the sun is trying to shine so I've had some nice walks with our dogs. I can walk down the lane and back and maybe see only the farmer passing in his tractor, which is a big change from living in a town, but I love it.


Ive managed to create a few more pages for Milliandes Art Journal January following the prompts set by Milliande, I feel I am starting to get my creative juices flowing again, which I am really pleased about. I really must find time to get on the computer and start creating in Photoshop and Illustrator, I haven't done much in these programs since I left college last year.



Here are my Art Journal creations for the prompts : Paint a zebra hand ala Guido Daniele, Stripey window, Vertical Journalling and Layered lines

its been a very long time.....

.... since my last post and so much has happened. I've seperated from my husband of 26 years with the intention of getting a flat and carrying on my studies at college doing Computer Arts and Digital Design. Chatting with a friend on Facebook I discovered my boyfriend from 30 years ago was not dead (long story) as I had thought but alive and well. To cut a even longer story short, he phoned, we met, it was just like we'd not been apart and I now live happily with him in his croft in Aberdeenshire, with my dog Buzz, his dog Dan, a pup from my last litter called Shug, 7 chickens and a cockeral. College has been put on hold but I'm thinking of applying to Aberdeen College this year. So very big changes in my life!

While settling into my new home I haven't been very creative as most of my art/craft stuff was in boxes (some still is) till I could decide which room I would like to be creative in. When I say not creating, that is a bit of a lie because I have done some decorating, re-arranging lots of furniture, baked cakes and bread and created some wonderful meals that are very appreciated, I have also been taking lots of photos and taken up the hobby of fishing lol.............. Frankie does woodturning and is going to teach me..... so that will be another creative hobby I will have :-)

Just like last year I have started to do Milliande's Art Journal January to get my creative juices flowing again, I'm finding it hard to fit in but I am determined to do a page for every prompt that Milliande sets. I have only done 4 days and Milliande is on day 14, but hey ho I will get all the days done as I am enjoying it. So here are the pages that I have done far...................



I'm hoping to be a better blogger and get back into regular blogs, but we will see how things go and what time I have :-)

puppy dinner time

There is.....

....definetly a lack of blogging going on here! I knew it was too good to be true, that I could actualy blog more than once in a week. So I am back to my usual now and again blogs.....and I will update my blog very soon..... but not tonight ....'cause I'm way too busy doin' other stuff. All I can say the noo is

• college is going well
• art journal coming along slowly
• weather is crap
• dogs are fine
• grandsons are brilliant
• new grandchild due in May .... been told it's a girl....so exciting
• chickens all fine and laying well

so bye till next time when I will blog in more detail and have some photos to post :-)

Another.....

....art journal page has been created. This time it is a double page spread and because I am not keeping up with all the daily prompts that Milliande sets I used 2 prompts for this. The prompts I used were - burn some paper and message in a bottle. These pages are Truth. I used my H2O's for the background, which gives it a shimmery look, that doesn't really show in the photos. I have wrote truth quotes all around the edges of the pages. The bottle comes off the page and is made of green card covered with fantasy film to make it shiney. The bottle opens like a card so I can jot down all my journalling thoughts of the day. The quote on the bottle is

"Three things cannot long be hidden; the sun, the moon and the truth." ~ Confucious.

I wonder if I will manage another page tomorrow?...................