Rocking your world friday and Five for friday

Hello Friday rockers!

Its that time of the week again to find all the positive stuff that rocked your week!

If you don't know what I am talking about pop over to Virginia's blog and check it out!

 *On Saturday I went to my sister's for waffles!She has just bought a waffle maker after the ladies at our retreat brought one with them and treated us to a huge pile of waffles! My sister made waffles with whipped cream, maple syrup and fresh strawberries-delish! She also announced some pretty big news to me...her and her partner are getting married next year! Biggest rocking news of the month! She proposed to him as it was a leap year which I think is so sweet!

 I photographed my 2 kids in their Big Bang Theory t-shirts on Saturday so I could do a little page in my journal.I love my little N.E.R.D's (not even remotely dorky!) so much!!!

 Also on Saturday I went with my sister while she got her tattoo done. She wanted a dandelion clock but couldn't find one she liked so I drew this one for her as part of her birthday present. It looks really good!

* On Sunday hubby and me went to the cinema to watch This means war. We have not been out together in sooooo long so we had a lovely evening and the film was really funny.

* On Monday I had to buy a new office chair as two wheels fell off my other one. I also bought a bright pink filing cabinet for all my work files and spent a happy 2 hours filing everything, sad but true!

* Tuesday afternoon was spent with my sister discussing wedding plans. We both could not believe the cost of getting married in this day and age! They don't want a big fancy wedding as they have both done that before, they just want to go to the registry office and then have a BBQ and a party, but the price of hiring somewhere to hold a party and BBQ left us reeling. Its a challenge now to come up with a beautiful day for them as cheap as we can!!!

* Wednesday was a horrible day, work rubbish still going on and driving me insane..I hate politics and petty behaviour! The only positive I found for today was watching my little robin in the garden eating the fruit cake crumbs I put out for him! I tried to get a photo but every time I reached for my camera he flew away.

* Thursday started off bad when I got a phone call from the school to say my son had had an accident in PE and could I go and collect him and take him to A&E as he'd split his chin open and they thought it needed stitching. I rang my friend Tee who is head nurse at A&E to see if she was at work, she was at home but she came and picked me up, collected my son and then glued and steri stripped his wound! What an amazing friend she is, thanks so much Tee! My son is fine, just another scar to add to the collection!

Then we had parents evening that night. Isn't it so nice to hear wonderful things about your children?! His teachers are all so impressed with him, his natural abilities, his hardworking ethics, his A* grades in all his subjects, it was so lovely for him that his teachers recognise all his hard work and effort and lovely for me to hear great stuff about him. His science teachers said they know they are going to be seeing his name all over the scientific world in about ten years time!!! (I know, I'm boasting now but I am such a proud mummy so please forgive me!)

* And today, I have just been given a really generous donation of gardening equipment for my ladies group so they can start their allotment. My next door neighbour and my father in law between them have given us, forks, spades, hoes, rakes, shears, seeds, twine, plant feeder, trowels and much more! It is so wonderful to encounter such generosity when the news is always so full of doom and gloom.

Also this week, Paige is fairly certain that The union of Bella and Oakley has been fruitful and that Bella is going to have puppies! Way to go Bella and Oak's, especially as Paige outed Oak's on Facebook when he didn't get straight to business!!!!

So that was my rocking week, and a really good one it was too!

Here are a couple of AJ pages I have done over the last 2 weeks...can you tell that work was peeing me off!

 My graffiti on this one leaves a lot to be desired, maybe I need to ask Sarah (Flo) for lessons!!!

 Really enjoyed layering up loads of circles for this one. Doing art in my journal always manages to calm me down and help take some of the stress out of the situation for me!

And this is last weeks Five for Friday challenge over at Lauries blog

The challenge was list your five favourite books, and that was way to hard for me to list just five so I did five books in three different categories so I could list more!!!

I will come and have a looky at all your rocking posts over the weekend as I have to go out to a meeting now.

TFL

Sami x

Back from the 5th WCC retreat & five for friday wk 2

Phew! What a fab weekend I have just had at the Wight Craft Circle's 5th retreat. I am so tired now, crafting till 3am every night will do that to you!

We have such a wonderful bunch of ladies at the retreat and we always have such fun and its so lovely to meet up with each other year after year. We have ladies that scrapbook, ladies who art journal, cardmakers and crocheters so we are quite a diverse bunch!

Paige and me organise this retreat twice a year, held at Totland Bay Youth Hostel on the Isle of Wight. The next two are booked for Sept 2012 and March 2013, please check out our Wight Craft Circle blog for details of tickets and dates if you are interested as places are limited and always sell out fast. There are no classes at this retreat (although if you are intrested in what someone is making they will always take the time to give you a demonstration...thanks Diane!) it is just a chance to get away from it all, create at your leisure and enjoy the company of some fantastic people. The weekend is self catering and because it is held in a youth hostel (which we have to ourselves, no other people there) we are asked to strip our own beds, hoover our rooms and ensure the kitchen is left clean, however this means that you can have the whole weekend away for just £45 a ticket!!!! A bargin price for a great weekend!

 Some of the ladies from the 5th Retreat.

 We like to get everyone out for a walk and some fresh air over the weekend so that we can take some silly photos of everyone!

I managed to get 5 art journal pages done and my march calendar page for the calendar challenge, it doesnt seem like many for a whole weekend but it was just nice to be able to take my time and really enjoy the process.

 This was my first page of the weekend. I have had an issue this week that has not been resolved and wanted to get it off my chest so I could enjoy my weekend!

 There were loads of tourist leaflets at the youth hostel so I used a map of the IOW from one of them on this page and then asked people to write a little comment about the retreat on the page.

 I found this prompt and the one below from a list of AJ prompts on this website. I used 2 images from a magazine advert and then applied gesso and paint to them, dylusions paints and sprays, crafters workshop stencils, washi tape and stamps.

 This is my favourite page from the weekend! The prompt was 'what super power would you choose?' I started thinking of super powers and then asked everyone to name a few more and soon I had such a long list that I found it impossible to choose just one so I listed them all! I used Dylusions paints and ink sprays, crafters workshop stencils and a bit of stickles on her cape.

And this one is for Laurie's Five for Friday challenge over at her blog. This week was list your 5 favourite love songs or just songs you love. I chose songs I love and made a little Ipod and record out of card to stick on the page and some Tim Holtz tissue tape.

I really enjoyed this weekend and just finding my style with my art journal pages and am pleased with how they all turned out. I can't show my calendar page until next month but I spent a whole day doing that as well!

I will catch up on friday with all the rocking posts I missed over the weekend as I am busy for the rest of the week with work.

Thanks for looking

Sami x

Hello!

I am taking part in Laurie's Five for Friday challenge over at her Lone Blackbird blog.

Each friday she will post a topic for a list and all you need to do is create your list in any way you choose.

I have chosen to do mine as art journalling.

This week was five fun things. I really had to think about this one which surprised me. I suppose as I have gotten older I don't do many fun things, or at least what I would consider to be really fun, like things I did in my youth. I lead such a boring life now!

This page already had the painted stencils on from when I was working on something else and used this as a mop up page. I added some spray ink, some washi tape and some stamps and doodled on it with black paint pens and a white out corrector pen.

Why dont you pop over to Lauries blog and check it out?

Sami x

Rocking your world friday

Hi Friday rockers! I am late posting as I have been soooo busy this week.

So, what has rocked my world this week?

First off, my wonderful sister who made me a pair of fingerless gloves and a matching hairband with her fab crochet skills.

***

Going to see Damh the Bard live in Southsea with a wonderful bunch of friends. We have had the tickets booked for ages and were so excited and he didn't let us down!

 Damh the Bard is a pagan folk singer and his music just inspires me so much, it's what I always listen to when I am creating my paintings. You can just get lost in the magic of his words.

It was a wonderful evening and Paige even got him to sign our tickets so we could scrapbook/journal them.

***

Finding an hour in a very busy week to do a bit of art journalling. Lately I am finding that I spend too much time on pinterest looking at other peoples creativity rather than creating myself!!!

***

And the reason for my busy week and the most rocking thing of the week, The Equals News Years Party!

The friendship group organised a huge party to celebrate the New Year so its been hectic this week with all the last minute details.

Over 100 people attended last night, from all backgrounds, nationalities and faiths. The members of the group prepared all the food (and there was enough to feed double the guests!), ethnic dishes galore-Indian, Thai, Indonesian, Filipino...you name it we had it! They also put on several cultural dances, making the costumes themselves as well. We even had a guy come last minute with a full on disco for us at no charge...this is the sense of community that this group inspires in people.

There were traditional Indonesian games played and a huge raffle.

Everyone who attended said what a great time they had and we had trouble getting people to leave at the end!

So my huge thanks and appreciation go to this wonderful group of women for all their hard work and commitment.

Its just a pity that I had to spend most of the evening talking to all our VIP guests and promoting the group, instead of letting loose and enjoying the wonderful atmosphere! Oh well, thats my job and its so important to get across to people what we do so we can access future funding.

And lastly, my wonderful children. They were such a big help to me last night with the setting up and tidying up. My son was dragging tables and chairs about, setting everything up and selling raffle tickets and my daughter helped sell tickets on the door and helped some of the younger kids make decorations to take home. I was so proud of them last night ansd loads of people commented on what a credit they are to me, which made me beam with pride. They are such good kids and I thank my lucky stars everyday for them.

I am going to try and link this up at Virgina's blog, but I am still having problems with blogger, some people's blogs I can comment on, others I still can't. Does anyone have a fix for this...let me know!

So thank you to all the people who commented on last weeks post, I managed to read everyones posts but some I could not leave a comment on. Some that I could comment on last week, I can't comment on this week so If You think I havn't been by, I have I just can't tell you how wonderful your posts were!

TFL

Sami x

Strathmore artist workshops-they are free!

Hello!

I joined the Strathmore Artists Studio Workshops again this year. I tried to do a couple last year but didn't have enough time what with us having to move out of our house for a few months. The first workshops this month are by Tracy Bautista and are called 'Doodles unleashed'. There are two videos to watch which are about 30mins in total.Once you join you can access the videos until August, I think. It is a ning site so you can join the forum and post your work if you want to, but there is no commitment to do so, you can just dip in and out (Carmen!!).

I copied what Tracy did in the videos and came up with this.

 First layer was spraying through stencils and found objects like rubber bands and feathers. I had no rubber bands or feathers so I made my own feather stencil out of card. I made the circle stencils out of card and used my crop-a-dile to punch some holes in them. I used Dylusions inks as I didn't have any fluid acrylic to make my own sprays.

 The next layer was to add some paint

 Then to outline bits in indian ink (waterproof)

And then to make more marks and doodles with marker pens.

I throughly enjoyed this process! I can still be a bit uptight with my art, worrying I am going to mess it up or that it won't be perfect...I have got a lot better since I started art journalling, but the perfectionist in me still lurks in the background! I found this really liberating, it didn't have to mean anything it was just playing with different mediums and as Tracy says in the videos, just being free to make marks on the paper.

I love how its turned out and think I will use this process again for backgrounds in my journal.

TFL

Sami x

Sept calander challenge

Here is my September calendar page for the challenge over at Kates blog. I am soooo late posting this but at least I got it done!

 I used Dylusions paints and sprays, watercolours, TH distress inks and masks and See D's leaf stamp set.

 I have not really had any time for art over the last few weeks. Bad news, people making things complicated, trying to find funding for my job etc has all got on top of me. All I have managed is some doodles. In the one above I looked for shapes in the paint splodges and then doodled them in.

 This one I sat and doodled while watching the TV the other night,

Then I used watercolour to colour her in, but now think I liked her better as a doodle!

TFL

Sami x