Long Time No See

Hello friends, - I called this post "long time no see", and it has been a long time indeed, - nearly a month.... There are a number of reasons for this, - being away from home, having lost my mojo and finally my photo editing programme having been broken, but that is now fixed (long story), - so really there is no longer an excuse (apart from that mojo is still away on a break), but hey ho, I have been there before, - so here goes:

It's a journal spread in my handmade water colour journal, (more details about that HERE, if you are interested). I used watercolour, Distress products, - crayons, Doxides and inks an also washi tapes, an Alcohol Lift Ink embellishment, some stamping and a Paper Doll received in a mail art swap on Instagram from the the wonderful Rox (Red Dirt Crafter).
The sentiments are stamped using some of Lynne's Affirmations from That's Crafty.

Below some more details:

This beetle was stamped using the print after using Tim Holtz's Alcohol Lift ink. I had planned to use the actual lifted image, but the background was too dark, so I will keep that for an other occasion.

Well, that's it for today. Thank you for your visit and I will try to become a better blogger again and do some more visiting you all too.....

Have a creative time with hopefully some sunshine in it,

xxxxx

Bullet Journal, - a new approach

Hello friends, I hope your week has been going well, - nearly the weekend now😌

Today I want to share some pages from my bullet journal, something I have not shared for ages.
Some people seem to be able to blog pretty much every day, well I am not one of those people... Even though I create and journal every day, I don't always take the time to blog my creations.... So today just a small selection of my bujo that I have been working in every day since October.

I think the last time I shared some pages was back in April, well here you can see my June title page.
But, during the course of the first week in June I have totally changed my style, as I was getting tired of the way I did things. I nearly scrapped my B. Journal all together, but I do love the discipline of daily to do lists, habit and spending tracking etc. So I decided to continue, but just totally change things up a bit. Before I show you the changes, here first the pages as I set them up at the end of May:

My spending and habit trackers. The bits of decoration are hybrid stickers I made myself, as hand drawing/painting every bit of decoration was proving to be too time consuming.

My weekly grocery spending and gratitude pages, decorated in the same way.

And here an example of how I used to set up my weekly pages. This was the first one in May, all the other weeklies were pretty much the same, so this month I decided to give up weeklies altogether and instead do daily pages:

The first 4 days. I set up the double page in my new style and then add my daily to do list each day and so far I am really enjoying it.

And here is the second page, in progress as you can see. I have been really inspired by some of the journals on Instagram, and I love how relaxing and comparatively quick it is to set pages like this up, and I think it is actually more "me".......

Well that's it for now, - one of the things I love about bullet journal planning is that it gives you the freedom to set up your pages in the way that works for you, and this is working for me just now...

Thank you for taking the time to visit

To seek freedom is the only driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there. Freedom to dissolve; to lift off; to be like the flame of a candle, which, in spite of being up against the light of a billion stars, remains intact, because it never pretended to be more than what it is: a mere candle. Carlos Castaneda (Don Juan - The Sorcerer)

xxxxx

Timeless Love, -mixed media journal page for MMM #45

Hello friends and welcome to my second post today, this time for Mixed Media Monthly.
Our theme this month is a photo inspiration for this Valentine's month, so plenty of chance to show us your love filled projects!
I created a journal page in one of my oldest journals, filled with pages going right back to 2010 I think.

And here is our photo inspiration badge for this month:

Hope I did it justice..... Pink and red are not usually my colour of choice.....

Alright, on to my project, - I was unable to take any process photos as it has just been so dark and gloomy here in the far north, but I hope the detailed photos will give you some idea of what I did:

I started by adhering strips of various tapes, strips of old bookpages, art-stones and fabric to my spread, adhering them with heavy gel medium.

Next everything was covered in gesso and when that had dried colour was added with Victorian Velvet Distress Sprays. Here you can see how the strips of fabric when covered with gesso, almost start to look like plaster.

Background stamping, using a a couple of Wendy Vecchi stamps followed, done with Black Archival ink. The edges of the spread were darkened with a brown Gelato, to give it all more of a vintage look..

Time to embellish... - I took the Scribble Frame Leaves laser cut from My Gypsy Soul and a rusty heart, covered both with gelmedium and while still wet with Stampendous Ancient Silver EP and melted it all to give me the metal look I was after. I cut the frame apart and adhered it to the two sides of my spread.

The finishing touches were this lovely couple, one of Tim Holtz's paper dolls

I stood them on some strips of washi and added a bit of light shadow with a Stabilo All pencil to make them pop a bit more.

And finally some heart stenciling with a gelato, a few little flowers and a sentiment and that was pretty much it.

Thank you for your visit here today and please hop over to the Mixed Media Monthly challenge blog where you can see what my talented teamies have created and get all the details of the challenge this month.

Happy February and happy creating!

xxxxx