The Craft Barn

Calendar Challenge - August

Hello everyone

Today I am here to share my calendar page for The Craft Barn's Calendar Challenge. 

We are, as you know, in August, (already!) and the words for this month are Pink & Butterflies.

Again I managed to make good use of my gelatos. I smooshed my  Bubble Gum and Guava gelatos onto a sheet of watercolour paper with a baby wipe. Once dry, I used a butterfly punch and glued them onto the calendar page. Using my silver pen I stencilled the month, wrote my quote and added some pink washi tape.

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I would also like to share some more of my Picasso inspired art pieces. 

and another Modigliani inspired picture

I'm having so much fun creating these; I hope you enjoy seeing them, (I have more on the boil lol).

Thank you so much for visiting.

Until next time,

be well and be happy {{Hugs}} Mo :o) x

 

Wee Man joins T on Tuesday

Hello Everyone, Wee Man here :D

Today I want to share some photos for Tea on Tuesday that granny took when we went out yesterday. 

We got a number 31 bus to the library to return my book. I didn't get another one out but we did check that they have the next one I want.

Then we went to the Community Cafe for our lunch.

We sat at table number 8

I had a cheese toastie, water and a banana

Jasper Wasper tried to steal some

Granny had cauliflower soup - yuck!!

But she said it was delicious.

After lunch we went to the park

Granny did an extra ICAD while I was playing.

I took this butterflower photo for granny

Later on we went back to the cafe for dessert

3 scoops and delicious wafers.

Until next time, thanks for popping by to say Hi.

Hugs

Wee Man

:D

Anti Journal Pages and Another Little Flutter

Hi there Everyone!

I hope this finds you all well. I am delighted to say that my migraines have stayed away for a few days now so I'm hoping that cluster has gone and may it be a long time before the next! 

Now this week I am sharing a fun double spread in my Anti Journal using the prompt 

'A Crowd of Faces'

I used a napkin, some faces from a sticker booklet, I cut faces from magazines, I used a magazine freebie to stamp some faces onto tissue paper, (that enabled me to reverse them too), and I stamped some faces from Rubber Dance stamp set Celestial Images also onto tissue paper.  I added some water colour to the stamped faces and I added watercolour to the remaining white spaces on the page.  

I enjoyed creating this and am indeed, still very much enjoying using this book. I've heard a whisper that there is a new one coming out after Summer, so I am excited to think that may be true, as I will definitely want to get it. 

I am looking forward to finding out what Carolyn, if her internet is behaving, and Karen have done in their Wreck It journals lately. If you want to see too, just click on their names and you will be transported to their wonderful blogs. 

In the meantime, for those of you following the Butterfly Project, here is the latest photograph, taken just yesterday of our four Painted Lady butterflies.  A 100% increase on the first batch. YiPpEe!

I will of course try to get some photographs when these beauties are released 'into the wild'. And then that will be the end of the project for this year, but Wee Man and I are definitely going to help with more next year.

We are going to be busy in June doing the Index Card A Day challenge, hosted by Tammy Garcia, which you can read all about over here,

And I will also be taking part in Kristin's Summer of Colour challenge which you can read all about over here. 

As well as keeping up with my regular things like T on Tuesday and Tag Tuesday and Wreck it On Wednesday with my Anti Journal, I am going to be juuust a little too occupied for more caterpillar rearing this Summer. 

Righto - I thank you for visiting, I hope you enjoyed it enough to leave a few words.

Wishing you good health and happiness

{{Hugs}} Mo :o)) xx

Anti Journal Pages and a Little Flutter

Hello there :D 

You are there aren't you?

I missed last weeks post - in fact I missed most of last week full stop! I was plagued by migraines, having two a day on some days. Very bizarre, and very annoying. They take over everything. Every action, every thought.

But, this week is clear! Huzzah!! 

Now, onto business.

I have several of my Anti Journal pages I could share with you and have had a time of it trying to decide which to share today, *scratches chin thoughtfully*

In the end I decided to go with the two pages that are my most recent favourites.

The prompt for the first page was,
Bleed colours; place under a dripping tap
But seeing as there was a sudden heavy downpour yesterday whilst I was flicking through my journal I quickly cut out this page, splodged some acrylic paints on it and shoved it out onto the back door step

And this was the result;

tho' not the punched out shapes, you realise, lol :-D
The paint hadn't moved around as much as I'd hoped considering the rain was quite heavy, but it's ok.

I set the page to dry over night and then used a black marker to go back over the outline of the tap and the wording.
You may, (or may not), be wondering why I have some holes in the page.
Well, check out the second page I'm sharing, which just happens to be the reverse of this page.

Design by removing parts of this page

I used a large butterfly punch and then outlined them with oil pastels, smudging them a little with my fingers.

I hope you like my Anti Journal pages for this week and have time to visit Carolyn and Karen to see what they have been doing in their Wreck it journals.

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Now, for those of you who have been following my caterpillar adoptions *grin* I apologise for the late posting of the release photos - I hope my 'sick note' above will absolve me.
Here are the pictures I managed to take - it was quite difficult doing it one-handed; Wee Man's only concession to being so close was to hold the flap open for me, lol

They flew away so quickly I only got a glimpse and no footage. Wee Man was amazed. Not enough to want to touch them, but quite happy for them to go.

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Also,

you may be interested to know that I got some more a few days ago and they are doing very well and growing just as rapidly as the first 'brood' :-D

Now, I shall love you and leave you and thank you for your visit.

Do take care won't you, and be happy

{{Hugs}} Mo :o)) x

The Craft Barn & Caterpillars

Calendar Challenge

The prompts for our May page in The Craft Barn's Calender Challenge are Magenta and Flowers.

I mixed some purple and pink gelatos with water on a palette and then used a white ink pad to stamp flowers all over my page. I then used the same stamp, dabbed it in my magenta mix and re-stamped the flowers. 

I stencilled May with a silver pen and coloured it in.

I really like the quote but could not find an attribution; it is also written with my silver pen, and then I added a strip of washi tape in a pink/magenta-ish colour, lol.

Finally I flicked on a few specks of silver Wink of Stella. Shame the sparkle doesn't show in the photo.

In caterpillar news, our chrysalides are now in their net habitat.

Hopefully we will see the stirrings of new things in about a week. YaY! It's so exciting!

Stay tuned!

I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all my followers for your love, support and encouraging words, you all mean so very much to me. Thank You!

With loving {{Hugs}}

Take care and be well

Mo :o)) xo

Anti Journal

What a wonderful time I am having with this magnificent journal and I hope it shows in what I share and what I say.

Here are two more pages I would like to share with you today.

The prompt for this one was, 'Pour colours here' I sprayed the paper with water, added acrylic paints, more water and tipped the page up to get it to run down. I wasn't very successful at it but was happy with it anyway. I stamped using 'Water Droplets' by Ryn, went back over the black lines that were printed there, dribbled some dylusions ink and then spattered some white paint on top of it all.

This one said to 'Show off your true colours' The bird image and black plumage was already printed. I added the leafy feathers with Derwent metallics just pencil crayons, the white dots are my white signo pen and the background is done with some Pebbles chalks. I fixed it with cheap hairspray.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Karen has done in her journal, but I'll be surprised if Carolyn will have managed anything after falling and badly cutting her right hand :( Big ouchy! Sending best wishes for quick healing to her from me and Wee Man. You can visit her here to send her some love if you wish. 

Meanwhile, Wee Man and I have been looking after our steadily growing caterpillars. If you would like to see the first mention of them, have a look here.

We started with five caterpillars but now have just three chrysalides.

 We will be transferring them to a net habitat in preparation for their magical transformation into Painted Lady Butterflies on Friday; they have to be left untouched for  a few days to ensure the cocoons have hardened sufficiently. 

Isn't it cute? Actually it reminds me of a collapsible laundry basket, lol.

Well thank you for coming by and for taking the time to leave me a few words.

Until next time, take care, {{Hugs}} :o) Mo x

T Stands for......

.......lunch in a posh place

I'm sorry I missed T on Tuesday last week, life just took over. However, I did go out to lunch on the Wednesday with the ladies I volunteer with on Fridays, (cooking a three course lunch for the over 60's), and we went to somewhere most of us had never been before.

It's called the ClubHouse

I assume it used to be a private house, but I can't find anything about it. 

The inner decor is beautiful 

And I really liked the flowers decorating the table tops 

My preferred drink that day was Apple & Mango J2O. Some of my friends had wine, and others had other soft drinks.

My first course was poached salmon with asparagus wrapped in parma ham and a warm hollandaise sauce. It was delicious!

My dessert was a Cranachan Trifle - a traditional Scottish dessert usually made from a mixture of whipped cream, whisky, honey and fresh raspberries with toasted oatmeal soaked overnight in a little bit of whisky.  This day it had a bottom layer of sponge soaked with raspberry jelly, and not so much of the whisky; it was served on a slate tray with a raspberry coulis and homemade shortbread. 

Also, delicious.

I would have both of these courses again, anyday. 

In other news, you may or may not have seen that Wee Man and I are working on a nature project together - first post here - looking after Painted Lady caterpillars. Here are some updated photo's of them

Yesterday

and today.

We feel confident there will be three butterflies out of the five caterpillars we started with. The one hanging by a thread is not cocooned properly, so will likely not make it and the fifth is laying at the bottom of the cup. We will leave these alone for a couple of days and then move them into a net habitat where they will, hopefully, complete their amazing transformation.

I hope you found them as fascinating as we do. And I hope you can join us for T on Tuesday again next time. Now I wonder what Elizabeth & Bleubeard with young Squiggles have been up to, and also, the rest of the T gang. Go here if you'd like to find out too.

Thanks so much for popping in and until next time, take care and be happy {{Hugs}} Mo :o)) x

Anti Journal and a new Project

Good morrow dear friends, I hope I find thee in good health.

Sorry about that, I'm listening to an audible book set in the late 1700s and there's a lot of thee and thou from the quakers and I'm one of those people that picks these things up and annoys everyone else with it, lol. Wee Man just thinks I'm very silly. 

*Sigh*, he's probably right ;) So I shall cease and desist.

Righto, onto the reason why I'm here today. It's Wednesday and I have got into the habit of sharing some pages from my Anti Journal around the same time as Karen and Carolyn share some of their work from their Wreck It journals.

The prompt for this first page says: 

Any object you place here automatically becomes a work of art 

I used the edge of an inkpad to make some grass, which I like, and tried the same for the sky - nicht so gut - so I covered it with some gesso and then added white crayon through a cloud stencil to hide more of the blue - better.

Then I got out my dried flowers and stuck some onto the page with a matt medium.

Then I had to give it a title, so I called it After the April showers

The prompt on the second page I'm sharing says: It's raining colour

I stamped some raindrops using a stamp from Designs by Ryn, coloured them with twinkly paints and then added a wee white highlight with a white signo pen.

The black umbrella was already on the page, so I just decorated it and added a few drops of water in various colours.

As always, I enjoyed creating these pages and look forward to sharing them here each week.

Now, Wee Man and I started a new project a week ago.

We are rearing five Painted Lady caterpillars that we bought from Insect Lore

This is the pack we got

This was the size of the caterpillars on Day 1

Tiny huh?!

This is the size of them today! 

It's incredible how quickly they grow.

Once they become chrysalides we are to open the pot and put them into their net butterfly hotel (habitat)

And then we wait patiently until they develop into butterflies and after a couple of days we can set them free outdoors.

The speed in which these beautiful insects develop is holding Wee Man's attention because they are different every day. 

I will continue taking photographs and keep you updated as things progress.

We would like to link this to Moo-Mania & More where the theme is Butterflies :-D

Thanks for coming over and until next time, 

take care won't you?

{{Hugs}} Mo & Wee Man :-D xx

The Craft Barn

Calendar Challenge

The Craft Barn have added the link for the new month's challenge, and the two words for March are Yellow and Rabbit(s) 

If you would like to join in, you can see the rules here

As with January and February, I wanted to use my gelatos.  I found my Easter/Spring stencil and daubed the lemon gelato through the rabbit stencils then spread it with my finger. I know it looks green in the photo but I promise it is Lemon; 

I can only assume it is a mixture of poor daylight and the black base that makes it look green. 

I added some flowers and butterflies also in the lemon gelato, and I stamped a 'sun' flower also with the gelato. I used a silver Pilot pen to do some outlining and for stencilling March on to the page. I added some washi tape fencing, a metallic bee and butterfly and some 'grass' strands in the hope the rabbits don't look like they're floating mid air, hehe.

I stamped the sentiment, Happiness is a state of mind from Rubber Dance Stamps, in a silver ink from Hobbycraft.

Finally I added some clear Wink of Stella to the butterflies, some orange Wink of Stella rays radiating from the sun and I splattered white WoS over the page. 

Thank you so much for coming by; I hope you will leave a comment, they always make me smile. 

Take care, be well, and be happy, ((hugs)) :o) Mo x

Altered Cereal Boxes

I wanted to make a magazine holder and chose to use an empty cereal box.  I covered it in some old notepaper, gesso, die-cut flowers, hearts, leaves & butterflies all stuck with matt-medium and outlined with a black pen.

Actually, instead of magazines, I've got my decoupage kits in it. I got fed up with them slipping of the shelf; but now they're neat and tidy :)

A certain wee man asked if I would do one for him as well, so we set to work, (with the box I was going to make my own, second one with ~ ahh, the sacrifices, haha). I had very specific instructions, with no deviation from the plan allowed.

I gave the box a couple of thick coats of gesso and left it to dry thoroughly whilst he was at school. The stencils, colours and some of the stamps were chosen by him and I used acrylic paints for the colouring.  I had forgotten about the ticket stamp from the train set, but luckily he has a terrific memory.  He's very happy with it, bless him, and it is already in use.  Our special children find pleasure in the simplest of things.

I had another idea to collage some of his, extensive, collection of bus tickets and train tickets onto two more boxes for his train and bus magazines, but that produced a very intense, negative reaction, soo.... I think I shall shelve that idea, lol.

So, until next time................
.................eat cereal,
and thanks for popping by to say 'Hi' *hugs*