Summer of Color - Week Three

Well lookee, lookee who's posting before the next colours are announced. And with not one, not two but three pieces. *Shines halo*  You aren't dreaming. This is happening.

The colours for this weeks Summer of Color are (not were, are) Lavender, Grey and a smudge, splash or pop of Plum.

First up are a couple of Wonky Cat. I draw Wonky with my left (non-dominant) hand. These are on watercolour postcards. The difference in using decent paper has been amazing this week. No warping at all.

Neocolour ii crayons
Twinkling H2o's
Fineliner pen

Neocolour ii crayons
Twinkling H2o's
Fineliner pen

I'll be doing some more of these and sending them off to Sarah for her Free Art Friday event that's launching in Swindon. If you will be near Swindon on the 25th - 26th of July keep your eyes peeled. I know she's had some amazing submissions to release already.

Then - I really want to try and do a face for each colour prompt so I was chuffed to bits to get this one done today. Slightly smaller than A4 and again on good watercolour paper - OK, yes, I'm a convert - the hoarding will stop. I'm only as good as the materials I use...etcetera, etcetera. Lesson learnt!

Neocolour ii crayons
Kimberley water soluble graphite pencil

I used the below photo as inspiration - I've used it before to trace and then watercolour. This time I wanted to draw her myself - I told my girls she's the saucier side of Pixar - she really is Frozen! Bahaha! 

I found this image on Pinterest ages ago, it's a favourite to draw. I have tried , many times, without luck to find the original photographer. If anyone knows who it is please let me know so I can link and give credit.

If Sarah wants her, my Lady Butterfly will be toddling along to join in with the Free Art event too. Counting her as number 16 of my 40Portraits.

If you'd like to see what the other participants have done with the colour prompt, or join in yourself you can look here.

Thanks for stopping by today :)

Summer of Color - Week Two

Oh crikey. The week three colours are announced today and here I am bringing up the rear with week two. The colours for last week were Coral & Teal with a smudge, splash or pop of White.

I used a picture from Paint My Photo as reference. (This one by Ruth Archer.) Again my finished piece looks nothing like the photo - it was of a beautiful mask but I made her a person. (Well, secretly she is a vampire stalking her prey at a New Orleans masquerade ball.)

Neocolur ii crayons
Twinkling H2o's
Posca pens

I was last minute rushing and so I want to come back and try my hand at this one again - I'm not totally happy with her. We had some issues she and I. But we were getting there. Still - it's all practise. You can't see from my picture here but she's all shimmery where I went mad with the Twinkling H2o's that a lovely friend has loaned me. Also - the paper has buckled. Going to have to bite the bullet and start practising on my good watercolour paper aren't I.

I'd like to say I'll post earlier this coming week but I know we have another manic one. I can but try. I try not to check out any of the other participants till I'm finished so that I'm not influenced. So I'm going to have a mad trawl through today and catch up with everyone. If you'd like to see what everyone else did with the colours you can check out the list here.

Claiming mine as number 15 of my 40Portraits.

Thanks for stopping by today :)

MONSTER Rocking My World Friday...

Morning all. I've had this post building and building and building in my drafts folder for weeks now and it just keeps getting huger and huger and huger. Then it got so huge I thought there is no way I can post that... but Virginia gave me a kick up the bum and so here it is.

Normal, manageable and a little more bite sized Rocking Friday posts will resume as of next week.

So, using the last of my 100 Happy Days photos - this is what rocked my last few weeks...

65 - Craig spotted Silver Crow having a wander and snapped a pic for me :)
66 - Made it out to the shedio. Cutting up feathers for a 21Secrets Class
67 - More time in the shedio - with my little helper!

68 - A certain someone got an award for 'outstanding reading' today. Some books and a certificate - she was most pleased.
69 - A Cooper selfie (with a little help from Pheebs) made us all chuckle.
70 - Not one to be outdone, Pheebs came home with an Accelerated Reader award. 

71 - Not liking the heat but am liking having my shedio door open and getting loads of washing dry.
72 - Went to the local nature reserve with our lunch. The Bear loved it.
73 - Fun times out with Nanna in Hastings

74 - I was pretty addicted to the Sims 3 for a period there. This screenshot was shortly before my fairy burned her house down and in the ensuing chaos had her horse taken away. They were eventually reunited. Yeah. I've had to go cold turkey and not play any more - it was taking over a bit ;)
75 - (For some reason I've numbered this 74) Silence is Golden :)
76 - Fun. With Food.

77 - The black lily I grew last year has come back to life. A minor miracle considering I am the Grim Reaper to plants usually.
78 - This was a good day. Over 2 hours of walking, lost 4lbs at my weekly weigh-in, saw Silver Crow who was quite happy to let me stand very near and watch him, and the only picture I took was honking big plate of food. My entire 'syns' for the day on one plate and so worth it.
79 - An unexpected gift of a beautiful card and some positive affirmations arrived in the post.

80 - Craig bought me these stencils. Love me a good doily shape!
80 - An extra for this day, couldn't resist the manic hoola hooping expression.
81 - Time out in the shedio.

82 - Boot fair bargain of the day. Julia Donaldson books in fab nick. One of them is even signed by her and the illustrator. 10p each!
83 - I have stopped biting my nails. One at a time mind but I have done it! Finally. Devvie shaped and painted them for me. I am officially a girl!
84 - Little Mister wasn't about to be left out when she tried to do her own nails the next day though ;)

85 - The option to sort my Whoopidoo newsfeed by most recent rather than most popular is back. Hey, it's the little things.
86 - Cuppa and catch up with two of my big sisters, Ky and Sue. Plus meeting the two newest doggy members of Ky's Family. Love at first sight for the Bear.

87 - The sun took us by surprise so we packed a picnic and headed to a local park. Lots of walking, playing and munching of yummy food was had by all.
88 - Had a really lovely catch up with my bubby sis, Mel. Seems this was unintentionally the week of catch ups - it was lovely but I never got a picture so took one of the mad professor instead.
89 - Big Bear all grown up and eating at the table with a booster seat. Meant we could get rid of his grotty high chair.

90 - My birthday boy, Craig :)
91 - Two of my poorly babies giving comfort to each other.
92 - I got my one stone award at my Slimming World meeting. 

93 - Bubby canaries are magic. No matter how big a strop the Bear is in, if Daddy takes him to see the "buddies" it's instant smiles all round.
94 - The artist became the subject. Just love this picture - cute overload!
95 - These shoes illustrate a momentous occasion. On this day I spent at least an hour RUNNING around a field playing football (kind of) with my kids. All of them. I cannot remember the last time I was able to participate in any physical type of play with my children. It was when the eldest two were younger for sure - bearing in mind they are teens now. I didn't even realise till half way through that I was doing it. I got kind of teary in the evening thinking about what a change I have had health-wise recently.

90 - The newest member of our family. Lily - a 2 and a half year old beagle. She's lovely.
91 - The Bear using the wii board as a crayon station.
92 - The lunch I had on this day was so tasty. A ham & tomato omelette with a huge salad on the side. Add to that a massive chilli for dinner and I had a very confused mother-in-law who couldn't understand how I was losing weight ;)

99 - The dog whisperer. All doggies just seem to love the Bear.
100 - Ruby enjoying her Daddy Date at school where they had laid on 2 course meals for Dad's (or Special People) and their children for Fathers Day.

...and that is the end of my 100 Happy Days. I saw it through all 100 days and am so glad I did! I've got some great pictures to look back on. I will continue Rocking Fridays but there wont be so many pictures for you to wade through.

I've also been enjoying...

•  Summer of Colour even if I am seeming to be last minute each week.
• Walking, walking, walking.
• Cool evenings after unbearably hot days.
• Ginger nut biscuits crumbled into yogurt.
• My Slimming World group - am staying each week and it makes such a difference.
• Talking of which - I broke the 1 and a half stone barrier this week with a 5.5lbs off, also reached my 10% award (meaning I've lost 10% of my body weight from when I started on the 1st of May) and I was Slimmer of the Week which meant a lovely bag full to the brim of goodies.
  
  
• I'm usually a hermit socially but we had 3 meals out this past week. A McDonalds, a carvery and an all you can eat buffet and they were all very yum!
• Craig and the kids - always.
• The Wednesday Whine girls who put up with me posting weekly photos so I don't spam my personal FB page. (It helps if I can see the difference each week.)
• Using housework as exercise (actually think Monica... Craig is more happy about this one!) 
• Slowly getting organised again after a period of general disorganisation. Reminding myself of my word for the year.

*Phew* That'll do me I reckon. I'm off to link up with Virginia - why not pop over and join us?

Thanks for stopping by today - how have you been?

Stay at Home CJ - Cogs & Wheels & Rust

The CollaborArt "Stay At Home CJ" is a project where  all the participants made just one background and come up with a theme for that background. We then sent our background  to our host, Sarah. She photocopied them and then we all got a full set of backgrounds (and our originals) back to work on. We all work on the same background each month - to the theme set by the backgrounds creator.

April's background and theme was set by Katie. The theme was Cogs & Wheels & Rust... Which to me screams 'Steampunk!' Shortly followed by a "Yikes!" 

Katie's beautiful background 

I really didn't want to cover up that background. The more I looked at it, the more I saw an angel, so I decided to make a paper doll - making a feature of some of the elements. It wasn't till I was halfway through chopping and snipping that I remembered it was supposed to be a background paper. Whoops. Ah well, to late now!

I kind of love her and I get to keep her. I love that part of this CJ, because we are keeping all the final pieces ourselves, it gives a freedom to experiment that I wouldn't normally do in a CJ that was going to live with someone else.

I reckon she makes number 14 of my 40 Portraits too.

Katie's background
Neocolour ii crayons
Fineliner pens

This was the last entry in this CJ and a sad farewell to the CollaborArt site itself. Though Sarah has promised to leave the archives up for people to still read. I have enjoyed so much taking part in the collaborations over there - this CJ in particular.

If you'd like to see the varied and different interpretations to this months theme please pop over and take a look. Always amazes me the different things that come out of a group of people working on the same background and theme.

Thanks for stopping by today :)

Summer of Color - Week 1

Talk about cutting it fine!

Week one of the Summer of Color is in full swing. In fact the second weeks colours will be announced tomorrow - I'm hoping (though - thinking what we have planned - not holding my breath)  I have time to play earlier next week! Still, am squeaking in just under the wire this week.

The colours we had to play are Aqua Blue & Yellow with a smudge, splash or pop of Hot Pink.

I still want to improve my watercolours and also my faces. However - due to time and panic and not wanting to miss a single week of this fabulous event... I went for the next best thing and cracked open the Neocolour ii crayons.

Neocolour ii crayons
Fineliner pens

For reference I used a brilliant photo by Alex Lee Johnson on Paint My Photo. You might need to join the site to be able to view it. It's well worth it - the site is free and the aim is for photographers to provide photos for people to paint without the fear of copyright issues. There's so much inspiration on there. So much. This is the first one I have attempted and she looks nothing like the photo but I enjoyed it so much and had a lot of fun.

Here's what she'd look like if you met her down a dark alleyway...

If you'd like to see what everyone else did with the colour combo or play along yourself (every single medium is welcome)  there are already over 100 participants this week - you can click here.

Also claiming her as number 13 of my 40 Portraits.

Thanks for stopping by today :)

UKS Stamp Head Swap - Sent

Ooh, it's taken me a while to get my head back into internetting. We lost access for a few days a while ago - due to a problem at the exchange.  I am taking a stupid amount of time to get caught up again both with my blogging and reading.  Lots to post - so here we go :)

Over on UKScrappers Rebecca has been hosting an ATC swap. The theme is to incorporate postal stamps as heads.  It's been a lot of fun - these are the ones I've posted off...

Supplies used:

Stamps (Obvs!)

Fairy body is from an Itkupilli collage sheet

Butterfly wings from a magazine

Cartoon animals from an old childrens book.

Acrylic paints

Watercolour paints (The raven ATC background) 

Various stamps of the inky variety

I'll update with what comes home to me. The ones people have been posting up that they've done have been brilliant - I can't wait to see what I get back. My mind just went blank trying to think of quotes or funnies for these so I hope they are OK. I loved making them. I must admit a fondness for Buster Bear - mainly because my Dad has been nicknamed Buster since childhood (No, he wont say why!) 

Thanks for stopping by for a peek today :)

Summer of Color 2014

It's heeeere!

The yearly event hosted by Kristin of Twinkle Twinkle is back .

Every monday there will be a new colour prompt posted for us to take and run with using any medium we fancy. I've taken part the last two years now and love this so much. I've  used colours and tried techniques I wouldn't normally think to put together. (You can click here if you fancy a nosey SoC2012 & SoC2013)

If that's not enough to tempt you, there will be weekly giveaways to participants too.

Click the banner up top for a full run down on what it's all about :)

Come on, come play!