All posts filed under: CatsEatDogs

Books and vintage ephemera from my UK trip.

While on a recent trip home to Lincoln in the UK, I marked the calendar to visit an antique market in Castle Square and I wasn’t disappointed.  It was a small but interesting gathering of stalls from local vendors and antique dealers.  Among the wares on sale I spotted a vintage gladstone bag which my teenage goth self would have given her right arm for, I wanted one of those things so badly!  Thirty years on, I left it for someone else. This typewriter was pretty sweet and I thought a bargain at twenty pounds but it would not have fit in my carry on, so even though it worked, it also was left for another owner. As cruised the stalls in search of photos and ephemera which would fit into my bag, I found these cigarette cards wrapped in a crabby old elastic band at the bottom of a box of treasures. These old travel souvenir photo sets were in the same box and I soon had a pile forming!The 1972 London street map …

100 days of freeform mandalas 61-70

We are in the final straight of the 100 day project and to be honest I keep forgetting which day we are on and if I am keeping up or not. I am pretty much keeping up and I still am not sure what number I am at! Of this 10, I like the trio of collaged mandalas on the vintage math cards best and I also like working on the small watercolour cards, they are just the right size.  I used the watercolour cards while I was in the UK and they worked really well.  There is one missing and that is the mandala I drew on a coffee cup on the train! The 100 day project is almost complete and I am enjoying it still and I am very pleased with my pile of freeform mandalas so far. Happy Monday x SaveSave

100 days of freeform mandalas 51-60

We are well into the 100 day project now and if you are still going, good for you and see going!  We have quite a collection of items created by now which is always encouraging. I like this gathering of mandalas which are painted, stamped, sprayed, collaged and drawn. I am looking forward to see what the next ten will look like. If you want to follow along with my project on Instagram, it is at #100daysoffreeformmandalas. Happy Monday x

Daily Moleskine 2018 May pages

May was a very floral month!  I sketched, painted and collaged all the botanicals along with the Botanicals in Art Journaling class at Get Messy Art Journaling.  I didn’t realize just how flower mad I had gone!  No complaints here. Some of my favourite pages are the flowers for heads collage pages which crack me up and the pages where I was planning and making stamps.  I am super proud of those stamps. Nearly half way through the year, I can’t believe it! Happy Thursday x SaveSave

Handmade art journal and Get Messy Season of Story

Whenever I visit an antique shop or estate sale I am always on the lookout for old photos, books and ledgers as well as any interesting papers from days gone by which I can use in art journals as collage or inspiration. Sometimes there will be a box of photos to sift through but in my eyes, the real finds are the albums still full of ancient black and white images often with written descriptions on the back or front of the photos and on the album pages. I love to see the names, the date and often a little description of the image. Just look at the poses and the joy in the page of photos from 1916 shown above! I consequently have a lot of old pictures and I use them in my journals some, but I want to use more. One per page at least to and fill my journal with photos and the imagined stories that accompany these people and their clothes and cars and locations. A happy coincidence that the …

Get Messy season of play week 8.

The final two pages in my little altered book – a vintage Maytag washing machine manual- and it timed out perfectly for the last week of the season of play over at the Get Messy Art Journal community. This has turned out to be a season of few pages for me, but I did fill my book which I am pleased about.  I have also been very inspired by the new class also from Get Messy called Botanicals in Art Journaling . I just can’t stop adding leaves and flowers to my pages! I am always on the lookout for flowers to photograph on my phone so that I can use them as sketching inspiration in my journals and sketchbooks.  The top irises are from a sea of flowers I snapped near the gym I go to. Happy Thursday x

The day I made a hand carved stamp set.

I have been wanting to make stamps for ages now and I have had a couple of goes with some success but nothing amazing. Boosted by the fact that I said that one of my goals for May was to make a stamp set, yes, not just one lonesome stamp, a lovely friendly set of them, I got to work. I am not a get the equipment and dive in kinda girl, I have to look at at least one book on the subject if possible.  I checked out ‘Carve, Stamp, Play‘ by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer and ‘Making an Impression‘ by Geninne Zlatkis from the library and got studying stamp making. Of course I don’t get far into any books about making stuff without wanting to jump in and have a go.  I grabbed my carving equipment and some stamp blocks and decided what I wanted to make a stamp of. I love to use sumi ink with a sumi brush so I wondered if I painted a basic design on each of my three …

Daily Moleskine 2018 April Pages

Lots of flowers this past month as I also participated in Creative Bug‘s daily flower challenge with Pam Garrison.  The flowers sit alongside vintage photos, vague figure sketching and a spot of collage. My Moleskine daily planner is filling up nicely and it is lovely to flip through the completed months and see what was going on. I use this planner to test new paint colours or practice a new idea or supply.  It is a no pressure platform to mess about for a day and then turn the page. Some of which I like and some I don’t but whatever the turn out, I always turn the page and carry on. Happy Monday x  

Taking Stock May 2018

Each time I write a ‘Taking Stock’ post I have to look back on a previous one to get the list and make sure I am consistent with the title.  While I am visiting the older post I like to read what I was up to just a few months ago! One of the many reasons I like to write these fun posts. The idea for Taking Stock came from Pip of Meet Me at Mikes fame and I am grateful to her for it. To take stock, just copy the list at the end of my list and fill it in to make it your own stock take.  Do it again in a couple of months and revisit them to see what you were up to! Making : sketchbooks using old book covers. Cooking : I am not sure what to cook for dinner but I made a very nice apple cake at the weekend. Drinking : Frothy coffee. Reading: The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin. Wanting: Spring, it seems that here in the mid …