Welcome to my creative online journal

Friday 29 April 2011

Today's the Day!

(This picture above was a photo taken of the side of a brand new Royal Mail Post Van that conveniently parked outside our house one day!)

'The day' being The Royal Wedding, of course!  Our family are going to a Street Party at my Brother-in-Law's house because we live on a busy Main Road so aren't able to have one where we live. 

I've been baking! (Remember, I do not cook!) So here, for you, to snigger at are just some of the sausage rolls shapey things I've been making for today's celebrations. Some of them are heart shaped and some of them are not - because my boys would not appreciate hearts (sigh!)  I've even put the initials 'C' & 'W' on some of them too!
The plate they are on is the one I made last year.  It's a cake stand with a glass candlestick base - details here

I remember, as a child (blush because I really am that old!) the Silver Jubilee in 1977.  We went to my grandparent's house in Tenby, South Wales, and we had a fabulous Street Party  where they lived.

I hunted out some of the photos the other day and discovered that they had got a strange colour cast because of their age. I was able to improve them a bit using Picnik:

 ..but Photoshop would probably do a better job.

They really went to town on the decorations.
..and somebody obviously put in a lot of effort with this special cake.
I love the way the whole street came together. It was a very memorable ocassion - even today, 34 years later! 

Enjoy today and your weekend whatever you are doing,
Thanks for looking and for any comments,
qwiksave

Thursday 28 April 2011

Create, Have Fun & Experiment

Ssshush, don't tell Ruth (Furrypig), but this handmade card is for her.  I sent it in the post today, together with the fabulous book, 'Creative Wildfire,' which was one of  Sian's 'Pass the Book's' generous offerings on her 'From High in the Sky' blog.  Hope that everyone that borrows this book enjoys it as much as I did.

 I was very inspired by the creativity in the book, which was all about art journalling, enough to make this card. 
 
  The fabulous boldy coloured black & coloured background seen here sadly isn't my own, it is in fact a sticker on my laptop which I bought in the Hobbycraft's sale, back in March.  It's the kind of effect you could recreate easily (?) enough though.

The card itself as you can see is a mixture of collaged pieces, stamps and stencilling through some punchinella ;-) with some blopens, and some handwritten lettering.   

This is the book I'm referring to, and if you would like to get into art journalling, this is one I would definately recommend:
You could try your luck on 'Pass the Book', once its on the move again, or maybe you could get a copy from your local  library?  This is one that I personally have put on my Amazon Wishlist as I simply have to have it! (stamps foot!)

Thanks for looking and for any comments,
qwiksave

Tuesday 26 April 2011

Love Peacocks!

Their beauty...:

..and their incredible colour!
This lovely peacock was spotted and photographed at the Wicksteed Park today, which is where we all went on a family day out this Bank Holiday Monday. 

We've been out and about so much lately, I've hardly had chance to do much crafting or blogging (Sorry!) The weather has been so unseasonably sunshiny that it just makes you want to go out and enjoy every moment of it.  My husband has been with us for the school holidays too, which was an extra treat for the boys. He is going back to Germany tomorrow though,  he just needs to complete some more days over there before he starts his new job locally (yay!)

Hope you enjoyed your Easter Break.
Thanks for looking and for any comments,
qwiksave

Sunday 24 April 2011

Easter Decorations

A very Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates it.  I've been busy tonight, getting together an indoor easter hunt for my boys for the morning.  I thought they might be too old for that kind of thing but apparently not.  I had to test it out of course and it nearly wore me out going up and down, up and down the stairs!

They are also not too old for some easter toy decorations:
Playmobil, Easter Bunny themed
A Play-Doh chick:
 A well dressed bunny:
 and a very long earred cuddly rabbit:
...with a soft squidqy little body.

I haven't been resting in my mini blog absence, I also made covers and title labels for three more of my books:
The doodles book on the left has a page stuck on that was printed from the internet and I added the title.  The middle book has a photocopy of one of my previous drawings and I collaged the pencil and sharpenings on to it.  I also added the masking tape and the title.  This contains my 'drawings from life' which I've been doing a bit of lately.  The last book I just added the title, 'My Retro Book'.

We have been thoroughly enjoying the fantastic sunshine that we have been having lately. Numerous barbeques and visits to and from relatives. Our younger son is nearly over his Chicken Pox and nobody (touch wood) has caught it off him. 

Do enjoy your Easter and Easter Break.
Thanks for looking and for any comments,
qwiksave

Tuesday 19 April 2011

Come on get happy

Following on from my previous notebook posts, here and here, I've made my 'Happy Notebook'
 ..to counteract my 'Grumble Book':
 Again using magazine cuttings stuck on to the cover.
Nice, happy images that bring a smile to my face when I pick up the book:
I also covered them in Matt Medium to protect them.  

This time I'm planning to put in pictures of my favourite foods, places, colour, clothes, craft equipment, people.... Putting things in here should get me in a much better mood than when I am using my 'Grumble' book!  (pictured on the right of the second pic)
 
* * * * *


I have also made a few more eggs for my collection:
The two in the middle had material stuck on them with Tacky Glue (as suggested by Alisa Burke on her blog today) and I painted the bottom left one.  Just a few more eggs left to do before Easter....

* * * * *
Finally today, we are a little restricted for going out this School Holiday because number two son has come back from visiting his grandparents with...
Chicken Pox!

Luckily he's not suffering too much with it, and is still content to run around as much as ever.  I just hope that nobody else in our family gets it! 

Thanks for stopping by and for any comments,
qwiksave

Sunday 17 April 2011

A Creative Flourishes Tagxedo

(Click picture to enlarge)

I've spent a great deal of today enjoying Mel's Alphanumeric Blog Hop  (my children are at their grandparents for a few days) and during the blog hop, one of the bloggers, just-jimjams, introduced us to a free internet program called tagxedo which is a little bit like Wordle but uses pictures.  I was impressed so went and had a play.  This picture (above) is the result.  I'm not even sure how I got the bird shape but I put in my website address as the source for the words (do you recognise some of my recent posts? I like the way it gave me 'grumble' from my last post).  Once I've got the hang of what I'm doing, I think I'll almost certainly use tagxedo again.

Maybe you might like to try your own?

Thanks for looking and for any comments,
qwiksave

Saturday 16 April 2011

Grumble, Grumble, Aaaaah!

I'm not really a very grumbly person but in day to day life I do come across things that nark me a bit.  So, following on from my notebook post a few days ago (here), I decided to make myself  a 'Grumble' notebook

 
...using magazine cuttings for the cover.  

This is the inside cover:
Good, eh?

Even the notebook I used to make this 'grumble' book gave me reason to complain:

See this front cover?:
I opened it up:
...and found that all the pages had been put in the wrong way up!

Which meant that I had to cover the back cover instead!

Just one of life's little irritations (products designed or made badly) that I want to make note of in this little book of mine. I'm hoping by putting them in here I'm doing a form of getting them off my chest. Well, that's the theory anyway.  

I did decide after making this that it put me in a negative frame of mind and all day I kept finding things I could put in it.  Think I'd better start making my 'Happy' notebook pretty sharpish! 

Have a great weekend. 
Thanks for looking and for any comments,
qwiksave

Thursday 14 April 2011

Easter Egg Decorating

This is the first year I have tried decorating polystyrene eggs and I must admit I'm quite getting into it.  I've made another two over the last couple of days.

We have this one:
 ...Which was created by colouring the hexagonal pattern that was naturally on the polystyrene using watercolour pens.   Creating this was a bit frustrating, because the colours sunk into the background and almost disappeared.  There were bright oranges, sky blues and lime greens on there, but you can't really see them.  For each of the colours I had to go over them several times.

And then you have the one that's in the front of the top picture which was created with layers of tissue paper and glue.  The overlapping created a cool layered effect.
I'm getting quite a colourful collection going...
* * * *  *

Finally, this picture is for one of my good blogging friends, 'Kandi', who has asked us to write the answers to a few questions to see our handwriting (see her post here for details):  
I used a 'yoropen' which as you can see is an unusual shaped pen.  I love how it writes, as I always write neater when I am writing with it (Available online and from WHSmiths).

Do join in and link up in the comments so we can see how you write too!
Thanks for looking and for any comments,
qwiksave

Monday 11 April 2011

More Easter Crafting & Good News!

Following on from yesterday's easter crafting post, I had some coloured book page strips left over from making these nests:
For these little birdies:
 (Isn't it funny the way they all look as though they're looking at us?)
So I used the strips to cover this egg:
 (Which isn't dry yet, but you get the idea). 

I used Multi Matt Medium on top of a polysterene egg (from a set of 12 that were 99p from the Works last year).  The medium was painted on below the strip and on top.

I also made this tonight:
The 'CREATE' word and the gears were made with air-drying clay, the coloured overlay is a photo effect created using Picnik.

Oops, I nearly forgot to tell you my good news, well, its good for me and my family anyway - my husband has got himself a job in our hometown - just a 15 minutes cycle ride away!!  As my regular followers will know, he has been working away, first in China and then Germany, so this is great news for us.  We'll be just like a 'regular family' again, yay!  Apart from seeing him, I know I'm going to be glad of the extra help looking after the boys.   

Hope you enjoyed your weekend (we spent a lot of it in the garden, we even had a barbeque!) 
Thanks for looking and for any comments,
qwiksave

Saturday 9 April 2011

Let's Start Easter Crafting

I don't usually make Easter cards, but I do like to decorate the house 'for the boys.'  It's just another fun excuse to craft really!  (As if we need another excuse....)

This is part of what I was making today:

 Can you tell what it is yet?   It's easter themed......

..Its mini chick's easter nests!:
I had some plastic eggs (bought from Woolworth's a few years ago) so I made these little chicks some nests out of old book pages.  The pages were coloured first by rubbing them over with an ink pad and then I snipped the pages with these fringing scissors (The Works, £3 a few years ago)
You can also use a shredder (this idea was spotted on a blog this morning) or simply cut them with ordinary scissors. They are only small so you don't need much.

At first, I tried colouring the chicks using alcohol inks the colours of the eggs but they looked strange! This little fella looks as though he's been rolling around in several of my ink pots:
(Apologies for the fact that he looks a bit too realistic! He is plastic, honest! )
As they didn't look right, I decided to keep them all yellow:
I think they are going to make a fun decoration for my children's activity table.

Personally, I like the picture of all that type at the top and am planning on framing that!

Enjoy your weekend and thanks for looking and for any comments,
qwiksave

Friday 8 April 2011

This Old House... Scrapbook Page

This is my entry to the Gauche Alchemy Julie Fei-Fan Balzer painted page challenge which is due for today (eek!):

It's a page about the house I grew up in (the address is on the tag but I have blurred that for privacy)

This is the journalling:

...and the finished page:
The dark blue background to the photo is a piece of canvas cloth that I coloured with a Memento ink pad (as seen on QVC today!) All the letters were painted blue.  They were from 3 different styles of chipboard lettering sets.  The letters for OLD were distressed, I attempted to crackle them but that didn't work out.  I've added vintage buttons using Glossy Accents and everything else was stuck down using PVA or Multi-Medium.   The reason for the blue colour was because for many years the paintwork on the house was blue so that is how I remember it.

 I showed you how I made the painted background on this slideshow post here a few days ago.  For the layout of this one, I used a sketch  from the 'Pencil Lines' book that I (woohoo!) got for Christmas. I'm just off to link this layout with Gauche Alchemy now and then its off to bed with me, its the middle of the night! 

Hope you've had a good week, thanks for looking and for any comments,
qwiksave

Wednesday 6 April 2011

Let me make a note of that....

..in one of my notebooks....now, which one shall I pick for that particular note?
 
..and this doesn't include my plain covered collection! 

We have the retro look:
(I used to love Starsky & Hutch as a teenager!)  

..or the patterns:
...or the spots or stripes:
Maybe I could use the notebooks with the painted illustrated covers and quotes inside?:
..or perhaps I'll go with one of the ones with the quirky, fun covers:
. Actually, every one of these notebooks is blank, unused.  I have been just bunging them in a box in our attic for years with the obvious intention of using them one day.  But today I came across a journalling blog where the artist had made a book called 'Lists' and I thought, 'Wow! What a great idea, I love Lists' I'll make one of those (a book of  'Lists').... and then I got to thinking, 'what other books could I make?'  So, in my current, everything-goes notebook, I made a list (groan!):

I could make a:
HAPPY BOOK 
A GRUMBLE BOOK (Get it off my chest!)
A BLOG BOOK (Ideas for this blog)
A QUOTES BOOK
AN INSPIRATION BOOK 
A SHOPPING BOOK (Things I need!)
A HOUSE BOOK (Interior design ideas, etc)
 A BOOK for DOODLING IN
A SKETCHING BOOK
A COOKING/RECIPES BOOK
and AN IDEAS FOR THE GARDEN BOOK
...plus many others, but you get the general idea!

So finally, my enormous notebook collection will actually get used. I'm going to title them all up on the computer and get myself a bag on wheels to cart them all around  get myself organised!  

Are you a fan of notebooks?

Hope your week is going well. Thanks for looking and for any comments,
qwiksave
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