Rain rain go away...

.... come again another day!

Today is another one of those rainy Scottish summer days that we are getting so many of, it would be nice to maybe have a couple of days of sun and we live in hope these will appear soon. Between showers I went for a wander around the garden with the dogs and my camera and captured a few of the rain drops.

I came across this.....

collage making program while I was looking for something else this morning. You can download the free version from Shape Collage and it does stuff like this :-)
Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day so we went for a wee trip up to Portsoy, another place I have not been for years. We popped in to see an old friend of Frankies in his amazing antique shop full of chandeliers, grandfather clocks and large pieces of old furniture, all far too big for our higgildy piggildy hobit house. I could of stayed in there for hours rummaging about the place. We sat at the habour watching a mother duck and her 7 chicks swimmimg about, which I thought was a strange thing to see in a harbour, but they all seemed to be enjoying themselves. Below is a collage of a few snaps I took while at Portsoy

At last.....

....I've got round to updating my blog again. Its been a few months since I was last here and quite a lot has been happening, far too much for me remember but a few thing are;

We went to see Rush in Glasgow and they were absolutely amazing, just as good if not even better than they were when I last saw them in 1979. Geddy Lee still jumps about the stage like he did 30 years ago and his voice still has that magic that mesmerized me as a teenager. Neil Peart's drum solo was out of this world and the guitar playing was loaud and awesome. We had a brilliant weekend and an evening with Rush and Rush fans that we will never forget.

On the way home from Glasgow we took a different road than usual and went over the Cairn O' Mount where I found the old ruined cottage that I had been talking about a few weeks earlier and saying how I had happy memories of it and my kids but had no idea where it was. We went round a bend in the lane and there it was with the wee river running in front of it, so we had to stop and take some photos in the rain. We have been back to see it again on a beautiful sunny day, I feel drawn towards this place, I wish I knew its story. I have done a wee bit of research and now know it is called Spittalburn Cottage and through the census I know who lived in it for a while. When I have more time I will research further. I have also been getting creative again and a few journal pages are below


The next page was a promt from Milliande Art Commuinty for Women to create a page inspired by Teesha Moore, I just love her style and really enjoyed creating this page.

The next page didn't turn out as good as I imagined it, a free bookmark that came with my Pedlars catalogue got me started on this.


I was practising faces again but all my faces seem to look the same, just have to keep practising. When I finished this I thought it looked quite sad, but then I was feeling sad as I created it as I was missing my family in Fife.

I have been to Fife to visit my family for a weekend, but a weekend is just not long enough. It was quite an adventure as I travelled by train, something I have not done for years. I'm hoping to get to visit them all again very soon and I'm looking forward to the train journey. To finish of I will leave you with my favourite photo of my grandaughter, who is growing up so fast. I can't wait till my next visit to see all my grandchildren.

One day I might surprise myself and be a better and more frequent blogger, right I'm off now to walk the dogs........

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 :-)