Warwickshire Open Studios Slideshow

Back again!  I am creating but with this wonderful weather I am not spending quite so much time on the computer, hence the lack of blogging.

To start off, I have two more pictures for the Gallo Organico Summer 2013 Photo Scavenger Hunt to show you.  I have done nearly all of them already, despite the deadline not being until September 21st.  I just keep spotting them when I am doing other projects.

Here I have #13 A Fence:

...which was taken at my youngest son's Primary School playground.  It's a big year for us him this year as he moves up to High School in September. 

and this one is for #1 An Open Air Market:

 ...or maybe this one?:

Our town closed its main street to traffic and had a market showcasing all it's local independent shops yesterday.  Yay for the independent shops rather than the same old, same old, big brand name shops that you can get any town anywhere (well, all over the UK anyway).  It's important that we support these small shops or we'll lose 'em!  

At the weekend, I also went along to visit some of our local artist's studios.  This was part of an organised event that happens every year and is free, yay!  Ours is called 'Warwickshire Open Studios' and has places to visit all over Warwickshire.  The event started on 29th June and runs until 14th July.

Rather than loads of individual photos, I have put together a slide show on Photobucket. Blogger wouldn't let me embed it in here, so you will find the link to it here.

(If on Feedly, or some other substitute google readers, please click yourself into the blog to follow link above).

Thanks for stopping by today,

Nicky

A Sad Goodbye to Google Reader + Summer Photo Scavenger Hunt

I was surprised to see my Google Reader just vanish a couple of days ago. I knew it was due to go, but on the 1st of July (today), not a few days before! I think it's sad that it's going at all, but Google shouldn't have taken it away before they said they were going to. I'm fortunate in that I found a smooth, easy changeover to Feedly (unlike Bloglovin', which said 'No Feeds found' when I tried to transfer...?) but I can see that it (Feedly) will take a bit of getting used to. I do wish Google wouldn't mess with things we like and I'm more than a bit disappointed that they are removing iGoogle too, in November...

Ah well, back to blogging!

I have still got all my cards to show you from last month's ICAD (Index Card a Day) but if you want a sneaky pre-post peak at some of them, check my flickr set here.  The slideshow of all my cards from June will be on here very soon, so 'watch this space.' 

Meanwhile, back to my participation in Gallo Organico's Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt and I have another 3 pictures to show you (the others that I have done can be found on my flickr set here)

This one:

 (My apologies to Ireland and Wales that aren't strictly represented, but I thought it was too good not to use, it even seems to include a bit of 'France'.  I also like the way the blue sky represents the sea. ) 

The subject was to be a cloud in the shape of something and we had to say what it was.

This one was 'a sign that was intentionally or unintentionally funny'.  

 

This church found in Warwick often has very cleverly thought out handwritten signs outside.  The colour streaks you can see are from the sun. 

Some of the photos I've been taking for this project I've been thinking, 'I might find a better one' later on (not the two above!) but I do think that maybe I could find a better one than this one of our local theatre:

It's an unattractive 1970's building, which is why I 'hid it' by taking my photo from this side of the river (yes, there is a river between that theatre and the bushes) so now it looks more theatrical - like a scene from 'Sleeping Beauty'.  I may find a better theatre picture between now and September 21st when this challenge finishes....?  If not, it still qualifies (just needs a bulldozer!)...

Thanks for looking today,

Nicky

ICAD post.....soon!

I have been keeping up with Daisy Yellow's Index Card a Day (ICAD) challenge every day this month but haven't got round to putting a post together yet (sorry!).  I will do soon, honest, but In the meantime, I have taken yet another two photos for the Gallo Organico Summer 2013 Photo Scavenge.

I went with my youngest son's Year 6 class to Drayton Manor Park & Zoo in Staffordshire yesterday and apart from getting soaked, I managed to come away with two more of the subjects I needed:

RoaRRRRR!

and

I'm never very keen on seeing animals in zoos and did think the cages were a bit small there.  I have to say the best conditions I've seen for animals in captivity were at the Jersey Conservation Zoo a few years ago.  We went there for the weekend for our son's 2nd birthday (and he slept through it!)

That same son (at 11) is definately braver than me for theme park rides.  I just about managed the gentile horses bobbing up and down on the carousel but he went on this roller coaster ten times!:

He didn't go on this, though, would you?:

!!!

* * * * *

This weekend I'm going to (once again), be attending our annual (free!) Leamington Spa Peace Festival.  I go every year and it is such a creative place, full of colourful music, crafts, good music and interesting people.  You can see what it is like from my photos from last year on my set in my flickr account here.

I was hoping that the weather would be better this year, but the forecast isn't good. Brollies and wellies (flowery ones) are at the ready!...

Enjoy your weekend and thanks for visiting,

Nicky

Instagram

Unusual graffiti eh? Such nicely joined up writing!  Loving the reversed out hand print that's above it too. 

 

It's the latest picture that I've put on my Instagram:

Still trying to use Instagram more than I do, so if you are on it yourself, please look me up (Doodledoo) and give me some gentle words of encouragement.  Something like 'PUT MORE PICTURES ON!' should do it...

* * *

I found another photo for the Gallo Organico Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt that I spoke about in my last post:

 Think it looks a bit like a dog with it's tongue hanging out...

...and this side view looks a bit like a face, doesn't it?:

(or is that just me...?) 

See you again soon,

Nicky

Gallorganico Summertime Photography Scavenger 2013

Hello! I know it's been a very long time since I put pen to paper fingers to keyboard but I'm glad to be back and bursting with more creativity! What better way to get back than to get stuck into some of the great Summertime challenges that are lurking around in Blogland.

The first one I found was this fun scavenger photo project and for that my thanks must go to Julie Kirk who had pinned it on (wonderful) Pinterest (my second home).  

For all the details of this project you need to pop along to the blog:  http://gallorganico.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/2013-summertime-photography-scavenger.html where you will find the list of 21 items that we need to hunt out and snap during the (hopefully!) sunny months ahead.

It actually started on June 1st, but I think it accepts latecomers and it runs until September 21st .

I have to say, even though we have all Summer, I have already spotted and taken 8 out of my 21!  So many of these were on my doorstep and the weather (up until this week) has been absolutely brilliant.  So, enough waffling without further ado, here are my pics so far:

 Our local Town Hall.  Just look at that naturally fabulous blue sky!

 This man was sleeping in the park in the sunshine. I like the way you can see the bottom of his shoe!

 This tower was part of a local church called St. Pauls. (I could have had #4 Airplane too, but I'll try and get a bigger one)

 This 'car' in our local river, is actually a boat.  These girls were eying up some lads in another 'car'.

 Stylish benches found outside our local Post Office

 Window of a country pub.  I popped in for half a cider just so I could photograph this (dedication you see!)

 Didn't think I'd see a fisherman but spotted these few people fishing 'illegally!' (omve!)

...And, last but not least, the bonus item, someone wearing an item of clothing representing their country.  (My mother in law just happened to have bought my son this shirt a couple of weeks ago).

Be back soon with pictures of another challenge that I'm taking part in, ICAD 2013.

Thanks for stopping by today,

Nicky 

B-I-G B-i-r-t-h-d-a-y!

Hello again!  Thought it was about time that I came back to show you a few bits and pieces that I've been creating in my rather long absence.  Those of you that follow me on Pinterest (and hello to any new people who have found me from there!) may have noticed that lately I have become obsessed extremely keen on bombarding posting onto my nostalgic board, 'My Childhood (1960s/70s UK)'  The reason for that is that I am coming up to a rather big birthday next week and I can't seem to resist looking back on anything and everything related to my youth.  (I'm sure a psychiatrist would have something to say about that!...)

(I apologise to those Pinterest followers of mine that aren't of that era, just unfollow that particular board if you don't want your Pinterest 'inbox' clogged up with a combination of  dodgy music choices, 70s Pyrex dishes and psychedelic wallpapers....)

I've also started pinning photography articles because, woohoo, I'm excited to be getting my first digital SLR for my birthday, yay! (Thanks in advance sweet hubby of mine x)

And on that subject, I've loved taking pictures of the snow we had a little while back and also some indoor abstracts for the times when the weather has been bad and I haven't wanted to venture out.

Like this one of our skylight, bannister and lampshade:

(The Post-camera effect was created using iPiccy)

Before that, I did some more pages in my journal which were part of the Creative Jump Start course.  

This one:

...Where I stuck various textured tapes down onto my page and then painted around and over them with neocolor watercolour crayons and water.  (I added some journalling on afterwards).

And also this one:

...Which had a rain theme as we were getting a fair bit at the time of creating it. 

I have been producing other things of interest too but that will do for today,  the rest I'll save up to show you another time.

Thanks for taking the time to pop by today,

See you soon,

Nicky

Love Your Handwriting by Heidi Swapp

I am still actively creating as part of the Creative Jump Start Course and today's activity will follow after I show you what else I've been doing today.

One of my creative loves in life is doing lettering, calligraphy and fun styles of writing and so this year I decided that I was going to do more of it which is why I purchased from America, this book of Heidi Swapps called 'Love Your Handwriting'.  I got it from Abe Books for something like £5 including postage so was delighted when I got it to see how good it was.  I've always loved the way Heidi Swapp writes and was interested to know something about her style.

The book came as a set with a step-by-step guide, a workbook, a ruler, Zig Millenium Pen, a technical pencil and a rubber.    I've decided I may as well just work through all the exercises as they are pretty short and this was my exercise 3:

Writing in different sizes, different styles, with different pens.

The book I've been refering to is this one:

which may be a few years old (?) but it had an original price of $29.95 so I was dead chuffed. 

I know I don't need to learn how to letter really, but its such fun and I really enjoyed doing the exercises shown above. 

Onto the Creative Jumpstart course and I am having to miss the odd lesson out as I don't have all the materials but it's not a problem, there are enough I can do.

This one was another of Natalie Kalbach's. 

It was to make a fun journal background.  We gessoed our page up first, then put down a first colour of paint.  In my case it was red.  We then splashed water on the paper and dried the paint around the wet dots.  Next we dried the wet splashy bits off with a paper towel and where the wet drips had been, it remained white:

Then we painted a layer of blue on top and splashed that.  We dried it off like before, as in the paint around the wet drips was dried with a heat gun.

After towel drying, you get spots from both layers coming through and in some cases, where the drips overlapped the previous ones, you got white too:

I have always loved the effect of glaze pens on dark paper so decided to write some journalling about today's weather with a few of my neon Sakura glaze pens:

.. and today was a perfect day for staying indoors and crafting!

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

Nicky

JumpStarting Continued and Creative Lettering

I haven't been around for a couple of days because it was my eldest son's birthday yesterday and I had to do some preparations.  He's now a teenager (eeeek! lol)

It hasn't stopped me doing some more work on the Creative JumpStart Summit course, which I have to show you.

First of all this journal page:

...Which was me working out about the balance I need in my life towards art and happiness levels, possiblities surrounding a job, money, etc.  It was loosely based on one of the projects set by Catherine Scanlon.

Second of all, I have this rather strange page where I was experimenting with transparencies, a project we learned about by Natalie Kalbach:

 I used an image of a soft face to contrast with the harshness of my stamped images (this is a doll photo that I took years ago).  The squared texture images were stamped on the transparency with black gesso and layered. 

Finally, I have started a notebook to put in examples of lettering found in magazines, leaflets and books:

This book will be similar to a scrapbook.  I plan to do another one that will be full of my own lettering experiments.

Thanks for looking and for any comments,
Nicky

On a Roll Now - Creative Jump Start 2013

I really got into these two projects!

Yesterday's on the left...:

...and today's on the right.

Yesterday's project, another part of the Creative Jump Start Summit course was about using your stencils in different ways.   Karen Ellis demonstrated using a 3 house stencil that she had designed for Crafter's Workshop.  I didn't have that particular stencil, so used one (the middle house cottage) that I found in a children's book of stenciling.  The other houses you can see  I ended up just freehand drawing and paper piercing using different handmade coloured papers.

For the background I just used distress stains and water and then drew the background houses on using a water soluble felt tip pen.  I like the way that they blended and resemble charcoal.  The front houses were drawn with a sharpie to make them stand out more.    The resulting page has ended up being pretty similar in style to the card that Karen Ellis demonstrated, minus the title that I added to the front.  

On the right hand page of my journal was today's project, a clever technique I didn't know about, using gel medium through a stencil.  When I first spread the gel I was delighted to see how thick the effect was:

It's like paper... but..it does show how a stencil that you think is clean isn't!  It shows no mercy and any bits left on the stencil (tut, tut) show up.  When it dries it does dry a little flatter, but this one being gloss meant that the letters had a glossy sheen.

After spraying (in my case, a bit heavy handed) over the whole thing with my new Dylusions spray, I decided to emphasise the edge of the letters with black.  First I tried indian ink, then a bit of black pan pastel.  The letters still looked lost in their background so I went loosely around the edges with a black technical pen.  

I really enjoyed doing these two projects, my favourites so far, and am looking forward to seeing what is in store for us next....

Thanks for looking today and for any comments.

Are you taking part in Creative Jump Start?

Continuing to Creatively Jumpstart 2013

Excuse me if in my last post I sounded as if this course was getting to be a chore, it definately isn't and I am loving it!  I'm learning lots of interesting techniques from some of the greatest teachers in the crafting world and all for free! (well, donations welcome)....

Today I've got two days of my coursework to show you as I did them over the weekend.

First up, we have another technique from Nathalie Kalbach, stamping with acrylic paint on foam stamps:

 

 (Right hand page)  

I had a foam heart stamp years ago that was meant for decorating walls with.  Not sure I'd ever do that, but it was ideal for my experiments for this project:

 We added texture with various textured objects, like sequin waste and net curtain.  (The red paint around the hearts was for 'deliberate' artistic effect).

When I was an art student years ago, we had a photographic project on decay and I loved it.  I loved taking pictures of paint peeling off doors and mouldy cabbages! 

Which is why I really liked Louise Nelson's project of recreating crackles on paint.  I couldn't find my crackle glaze (messy art room again!) so had to make do with a textured stamp to get an almost crackle effect in my journal.

 ...and I added some of our wedding photos to my page:

I also added buttons and white tippex to frame the photos.  My wedding dress was pink and white so the colour scheme was set.  

I will show you today's project (Monday's) tomorrow (Tuesday)

Thank you for looking,

Nicky