Rocking your world friday

Hello! It's Friday again and that means taking a look at all the positives of the last week, no matter how big or small. If you would like to play along you need to link up with Virginia over at her blog.

Not a lot happening this week in the Scott household, I think its the lull before the storm that is Christmas as next week is going to be hectic!

 * Here is a photo of my Christmas tree,  I posted about putting my tree up last week but had not taken a photo.

* I decorated my altar for Yule this week. Now, I am going to post photos of it because it makes me happy. In the past when I have posted stuff about being pagan, I noticed I lost a couple of followers so I don't really post any pagan stuff now. But I thought, Sod it!! It's my blog, it's who I am and if i lose followers so be it! Hopefully most people are tolerant of other peoples beliefs and if they are not I don't want them following me anyway!!

Yule or the Winter Solstice as it is also known, celebrates the return of the sun to earth. The 21st Dec is the shortest day of the year and the longest night, but from this point on the days will get a little longer, the nights a little shorter until we reach Litha, the summer solstice when it will reverse again. At Yule we also acknowledge the end of the Holly Kings rule and the start of the Oak kings rule.

 My Yule altar

 I have made five of these little sun disks for my pagan friends for our Yule Celebration next week

 I made this candle spiral for our Yule celebrations next week as well.The spiral represents the never ending cycle of life and rebirth and the candles when lit will represent the return of the sun at Yule and its growing power throughout the next six months.

 Another sun ornament I made for my altar, a wand of sunstone crystal, Holly, oak and ivy leaves

 Paintings of the holly king and the Oak king, painted on wood for my altar.

I find most of my inspiration for my art and creativity comes from my beliefs and the nature all around me. Making the candle spiral and the little suns for instance, such fun but I didn't want to post them on here for fear of what people will think. A lot of the stuff on my altar has been handmade by me, like the painting, the Goddess dolls and the clay Goddess statue and prayer beads. So now I am coming out of the broom closet and I hope I don't offend anyone by showing things I have created for my beliefs, as I would like to be able post ALL the things I make.

* We recieved a good news postcard home from Shelbys school this week for all her hard work in ICT and a good news letter for her excellent 'work of the week' in maths. Way to go Shelby, we are so proud of you!

* I have had fun playing with the gelli arts prints I made last week. I have doodled feathers on a couple of the pages..

 ...and made some mail art postcards with others. I just need to sign up for the mail art challenge over at collabor-art now.

 * An article about the group that I run has been featured in this months One Island magazine. You can read the article here if you are interested.(It is in the December 2012 edition on page 7-PDF file)

 * On Saturday I dragged my Son to St. Thomas church to make a Christmas wreath. We have been doing this for the last three years now but I was not going to bother this year until I saw that I had a comment on last weeks blog post from the lovely Janette (check out her blog to see her amazing art journals)Janette lives in the same town as me, just around the corner from the house I grew up in, but we have never met although we have been following each others blogs for a while now. She mentioned in her comment that she was going to be at the wreath making all day and was taking her art journals along to see how much interest there would be for a workshop she is running next year. Well, I couldn't miss the opportunity of meeting her and seeing, in real life, her fantastic art journals so I went along and am so glad I did! Janette was so lovely and we had a great chat about her journals and the art retreat she had been on where she took classes with Teesha Moore. I got to spend ages looking and touching all her journals, which was amazing. Hopefully we are going to meet up for a coffee and chat some more, it will be so nice to have an art journal friend in real life!!!!

 * My fairy is coming along nicely at Fairy club. She is painted now and I have started adding the clothes. I have also bought some purple hair for her. She is nothing like what I wanted to create. I wanted her to be a green lady of the forest with green flowing robes and oak leaf shaped wings with leaves painted onto her face. Instead she is turning into a mischievous fairy with a huge padded bum and great boobies! She is going to have big stompy DM style boots, a leather under corset with see through blouse underneath so you can still catch a glimpse of her boobies and hopefully dragonfly shaped wings. Menna, the lady who teaches us, says the fairy emerges as she wants to emerge and she is definitely right.Paige also said that she feels there is an aspect of your personality that comes through as well, sort of like an alter ego and I have to say-Yes! If I could dress like my fairy and stomp around the woods all day I would!

 Close up of her face and boobies!

 * I ordered this book from Amazon last week and it came on Thursday. It's nice to see other peoples work and their motivation behind it, but I found the techniques all a bit samey and nothing I hadn't tried already. Still, a great book for inspiration!

* I made peppermint melts on Tuesday for the kids to give as gifts to their friends for Xmas. They tasted yummy and looked sweet all packaged up.

* I received some lovely Xmas cards from ladies from the Wednesday Whine group on Facebook. Thank you ladies, they cheered me up!

* My hubby did all the hoovering and mopped the floors for me this week as I have been feeling a little poorly, I think I have a kidney infection. He is a star and I am so lucky to be married to such a wonderful guy.

* Finishing the last of the Xmas present shopping, it just all needs to be wrapped now.

* Watching the new series of Big Bang with the kids, always has us in stitches.

* I am grateful for my kids, my hubby, my family and my wonderful friends

* I am grateful for my heating, it is so cold this week!

Well, that's enough from me this week! I probably won't post again until after Christmas as next Friday it is Yule and I will be up at stupid o clock to walk up to the Longstone and watch the sunrise with friends, then we are off to have breakfast at Weatherspoons to celebrate my birthday, followed by a meditation in the afternoon and Yule celebrations in the evening, on the Saturday it's my birthday so I am going to chill out with family and friends and then my sister is making me dinner, on Sunday we will have to battle Tesco for the Xmas food shopping and then its Xmas eve!!

I hope you all have a wonderful and peaceful Christmas, however you celebrate and a good start to the New Year!

Blessed Be!

Sami x

Rocking your world friday

Wow, I hear you exclaim, two rocking posts in one week! That's to make up for all the weeks I have missed!

If you don't know what RYWF is all about (why not?) then pop over to our hosts blog and check it out.

* What has rocked my world the most this week was taking part in Ryde Arts Parade with the fabulous Equals Friendship Group. (photos and video should be on the Equals website next week, worth a look if only to giggle at me dancing!)

Although a hell of a lot of hard work and stress to make the costumes and organise everything it was well worth it on the day. This years theme was cultural celebrations throughout the calendar year and we were given Guy Fawkes as our celebration.

We had a special mix of music put together for us by my volunteers son and it was a mix of Fire by Arthur Brown, fire starter by the prodigy and fireworks by Katy Perry. Unfortunately the carnival centre gave us a dead battery on our sound system so we didn't have our music on the way round, but we made up for it when we performed in the Gala afterwards on stage!

 My Daughter Shelby

 My Husband, Stewart on the left, Arums Husband and my brother in law, being our stewards for the day, carrying all our water bottles and first aid kit and pushing the dead sound system all the way round the streets of Ryde!

 Before we set off

 Lining up ready to set off

 Performing our dance moves, without the music at the top of Union Street in Ryde

 The back of our costumes as we head along the seafront.

(All photos taken by the fab Travis Lumpkin!)

We all had so much fun and we won a trophy for third place for costume design.

* Fresh potato's and peas from my sons allotment

*Making baby shower banners at work yesterday for our first Equals baby!

* Finishing the shades of grey trilogy..oh my!

*Two broke girls on E4...this does make me laugh.

* Reiki share group this week. We had our auras photographed this week by a lovely lady called Charlotte. She took before photos that showed our auras and chakras and then we gave each other Reiki and had our photos taken again. Amazing results and her analysis of our personalities based on our aura colours was fantastic and spot on!

* The Wednesday Whine group. I know I don't get on their as often as I'd like, but all you ladies are fab! You can have a whine about anything and there's always a listening ear and a laugh to be had. Thank you ladies x

* And as always, I am grateful for my wonderful kids and hubby, who can always put a smile on my face.

Not a long list this week, and I am sure there were more moments, but these were my highlights!

I have managed to finish some pages in Sue's pair journal, as part of the swap on Collabor-art. The theme of Sue's journal is 'alphabetika'. We add to each others pages and start new ones for each other to play with.

 I just added the stamped trees to this page

 This page was book pages and gesso, paint and ink, a printed image which I drew over and then added the poem

 Paint, ink, tissue paper and handcarved stamps and a bit of deciphering that Sue needs to do!

 I added the parrot with the skull on this page and did the title with washi tape

 I used a magazine image as a mask on this page and then covered the page with gesso.

 This was Sue's braille page which I loved. I added chalk ink to highlight the Braille, some stamps and a cut up postcard.

 I used newspaper headlines as the background then gessoed over it, added red paint, a text stamp and an image from a magazine.

 I loved this page of Sue's so I only added the handcarved 'confidential' and raven stamp and the little dancing skeletons around the outside.

Sue had made this mini journal to go in the pocket on the left. I added some Morse code for her to decipher.

I am really enjoying working on this pair journal, although am still struggling a bit with adding stuff to Sue's pages in case she doesn't like them!

Thanks for looking

Sami x

Rocking your world friday

Hello Friday Rockers! I did not manage to post last week so this is a bit of a mish mash of all my gratefuls over the last two weeks.

 So, in no particular order...

* Making dreamcatchers with friends on Monday night. I love our 'craft' evenings together, so far we have made spirit dolls, sea glass mobiles and now these beautiful dream catchers.

 * My new art book 'Mixed Media Girls' by Suzi Blu arrived last week. I have enjoyed having a good read and there are some good tips for drawing faces and how to blend the colours on the face. There are also techniques for adding texture, collage etc and there is a DVD with it which I have not had time to watch yet. Overall I am pleased I bought this book.

* My new Prismacolor pencils. Wow, these are expensive aren't they??? Suzi uses these in her book to blend the face colours together so I went on line to have a look at them and could not believe the price of the sets. The smaller sets did not have the colours I needed and I could not afford to buy a bigger set, but, YAY, I found a site that sells them individually for £1.05 a pencil-still a bit pricey but I just bought the few colours I needed for the faces. They blend beautifully so I am pleased I got them.

* This is how my fairy is progressing at fairy club, I think it's going to be a long process but I am so grateful to be included in this club with a wonderfully amazing teacher and a great group of people that I don't care if it takes forever!

 * Above are a couple of photos of a little art doll I made with the clay faces that Sherry sent me last week. Its a bit basic but I think shes sweet! I am going to add some beads to her dragonfly body. Thank you Sherry!

* I went to a new meditation group with Paige on Tuesday. Neither of us knew anyone there and didn't know what to expect but everyone was lovely and the teachers were really good. I am looking forward to going again.

* I spent last Saturday with Paige rummaging through charity shops for clothes that we can alter for a new project. I also went in the crystal shop and bought a new crystal. Had a fun day just browsing and keeping my mind off work issues.

* I am very grateful to Paige's wonderful Hubby Trav who spent all of Sunday sorting my computer out. My computer has been on death watch for a while and Trav managed to get me a reconditioned one (just the tower) for £45 and then spent all day transferring stuff from the old one to the new one. Also on Sunday I used my 'pimping' money (the stud fee I got for Oakley) to buy a netbook so that I can actually sit in the frontroom with the kids and be online instead of always being shut away in my craft room. The kids can use it aswell if I am working on the main computer and they want to browse or do homework. It was a bit of a luxury and I am not sure if I really needed it but I wanted to spend the pimping money on a treat rather than putting it away and then it getting spent on bills. So Travis also sorted the netbook out for me because I had to be able to use it straight away!!

* I had my pair journal back from Sue and I love what shes done with it. I am really enjoying taking part in this now I have got over my nerves about working in someone else's book and adding to their work. I am also loving reading all the posts and seeing all the amazing art on the Collabor-ART blog.

* On Wednesday at the friendship group we had a lady in from 'Get Sorted' which deals with drug and alcohol abuse, mainly in young people. She gave us a really good talk about the dangers, signs to look out for and that sort of thing. It prompted to me to have a really good chat with my kids about the dangers of drugs. I know my kids are good kids, they are sensible, responsible etc but even I was surprised at HOW responsible their views were on drugs. They seemed to know a lot more than I thought and both were really adamant that they would never touch them. We talked about peer pressure and the confidence to say no and I was really impressed with their grown up attitudes.

* And finally I will leave you with a couple of photos from the friendship groups new project-Culture Kitchen-which helps spread cultural awareness through ethnic cooking. Some of the ladies went and provided a session of the culture kitchen to staff at the IW College on their staff training day. Feedback from the staff was excellent and we have been asked when we can do it again! I am so proud of these ladies!

Well, that's it for me, I'm off to link this up with our host of rocking Friday's, Virginia over on her blog.

Sami x

Rocking your world Friday

Hello Friday rockers!

I didn't get a chance to post last week and this post may be quite short..I am failing at time management the last few weeks!

Anyhow, if you are wondering what this is all about, check out our host, Virginia's blog.

Its the time of the week to list all your gratefuls.

* Spending the afternoon on Sunday hunting the beaches for sea glass so we could make these mobiles on Monday. It was cold, raining, but the joy of finding all the beautiful sea glass was worth it!

 We found the inspiration over on pinterest here.

I was really pleased with how it turned out.

* Photos of my kids. I have loads of photos going up my stairs of the kids and family members. Sometimes I just pause on the stairs and really look at them! I found myself doing that this week and it made me smile!

*My Hubby. I am in my moody/stroppy/tired week and the stress with my job has been really getting me down the last few weeks, but as always he is there. He is not a man of  many words but his actions are normally spot on! So a big thank you to him for understanding my stroppiness, cooking the dinner last night as I just couldn't be bothered and for not going bowling so I could go and help a friend. You are amazing.

*Taking part in my first ever pair journal. I am very excited about this.

 This is the front cover of the journal I made for it.

 The first page

 The second page.

I am hoping that this journal gets my mojo going again.

* I am grateful for some exciting opportunities that may be coming my way. I am grateful that I recognised the signs that I was sent and that my thoughts and hopes were answered. I now just need to act on them.

* Caleb got an A* in his biology exam, so proud of him.

 * At group this week, Luz's husband came in and showed us how to make traditional Paella. It took 2 1/2 hrs but he was a total pro and the results were amazing! Big thank you to John for doing this for us!

(there's always one photo that blogger flips around and wont let me put back the right way!)

* Grateful for my health, my family, my wonderful kids and great friends. Grateful for what I have in my life right now and the fact that even though things sometimes pull me down I have the ability to recognise exactly what I have in my life.

That's it for this week as I have to rush out the door now. I will catch up with everyones rocking post on Monday as I am out and about all weekend.

Thanks for looking,

Sam x

Rocking your world Friday and Five for Friday

Hello! Late again for this post, I know! I just have not been able to keep up these last weeks and I have no idea why!

Anyway, just a short rocking post as I am off to the dentist again in a minute!

This week I am grateful/thankful for...

* Mothers day and my wonderful children. Mothers day did not get off to a great start in our house, the kids forgot they were going to make me breakfast in bed and then both forgot to say happy mothers day when I got up!! Never mind, they made up for it by baking me a wonderful cake!

And they bought me this beautiful chalkboard and a dragonfly paperweight.

Hubby bought me a bunch of flowers and cooked the dinner in the evening! All in all, a wonderful day!

* It was the spring equinox this week, or as we call it-Ostara. I got together with my Pagan friends to celebrate the return of the light. We blessed our spirit dolls and planted seeds for each with a wish for the coming year. As our seeds grow so will our wishes manifest.

* At the friendship group this week we made things with silk flowers. My volunteer had bought 16 bunches of silk flowers in a closing down sale so we made headbands, candle rings and decorations with them. We all had a great time and nobody wanted to pack up when the session was over so we are going to carry on this week!

* Watching my daughter Bea practise for her hip hop exam! She has come on in leaps and bounds the last few months and I was really impressed with her. We spent an hour going over all her moves for the exam as she is quite nervous about it, I know she will do great, this is her level 3 so shes done it twice before.

*Watching Bea and Caleb have a dance off on the Wii and Caleb beating Bea! She was not impressed with this as she said 'I am the dancer in the family Caleb!'. But Caleb has been sneakily practising in breakfast club at school and we were all quite shocked when he won! He normally looks like some sort of demented octopus when he plays 'Just dance'!

*I have been re reading the Twilight series this week and thoroughly enjoying it! It may not be great literature but I definately class it as one of my all time favourites.

*My dogs. They are so loving and enjoy nothing better than curling up on the sofa with me for cuddles. Willow has been poorly this week and we had to take her to the vets, I was quite worried about her but it's only a urinary tract infection. She has got some tablets and is looking better already. I don't know what I would do without my dogs if anything happened to one of them, they are a part of the family. They both have such different personalities- Willow is a princess, she always has an air about her, so prim and proper and Oakley is such a nutcase, whizzing around, unable to sit still for five minutes and always walking into things and banging his head! I am also grateful for the vets this week for squeezing Willow in on saturday when they were full.

I am sure I have lots of other gratefuls but as I was so busy in the week I didn't write them down as I normally do and can't remember, and the dentist is calling me...urgh!

I am linking this up with Virginia and will catch up with your posts after the dreaded dentist.

Also, here is my Five for Friday post for the challenge over at Lauries Blog. Last week it was your favorite five green things. This was alittle harder than I thought But I found my five!



I used scrapbooking paper, washi tape, alphas and a flower and then sprayed the whole thing with some Dylusions ink sprays.

TFL

Sami x