Five and a half inches!

Yes, five and a half inches of snow fell between 6 and 9.30 this morning. It is amazing! This winter has been the most winterly I have seen since I was a child. Usually we get a day or two of snow that melts very quickly. This year has been very special though. It started to snow on the Saturday before Christmas and it has stayed around, snowing on and off over that period. I love snow (in case you hadn't noticed) so this is making me feel like a kid. At the moment we have thick fog but more snow is forecast for later. I usually hate New Year but this one is turning out to be more fun than most.

These two photos are of the road that runs in front of the house.

Merry Christmas!

It looks like we will be getting a white Christmas this year. The first in many years. Yippee!

So, now it is Christmas Eve, and all the cards have been delivered, I can show you some of the Christmas cards I have been making this year. I bought some nice stamps and card so there was very little that could go wrong with them. It made the job much easier. Every year I seem to have fewer and fewer cards to send. A family members pass on and friends leave the fold the need to make as many cards diminishes. It is a sad but natural part of life but this time of year allows me to think of all the fun times I had with those people.

The pictures above are of my final tip in pages for the monthly swap I took part in. The recipient was a fan of pink so I used my snow obsession and pinks and purples as the theme.

The swirly card here is by a company called Hunkydory and the images and stamps by Crafty Individuals. All very rich and Christmassy.

Wishing you all a crafty Christmas and a creative New Year.

Tim's tags

There can't be a crafter out there who hasn't heard about Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas. This year, for the first time, I made a tag every day following Tim's inspiration. Mine were just little though, 2x3.5 inches, as I wanted to use them on my Christmas gifts. So the photo of my tags are here, a glut of techniques and new stamps.

Fun and festive

Yes, we are ALL getting involved with the festivities. Stanley is wearing his reindeer antlers in solidarity with all reindeer. The decorations are all up, the cards I have received are stuck to the doors (though they keep falling off again) and we even have snow. Now all I have to do is finish up my final, family Christmas cards. Hope you are all having a good festive period - no matter what your beliefs.

Pussy cat, pussy cat

I have been doing a few speedy loose pieces again. I enjoyed doing the zoomie pieces last year but like so many other things I never got back to doing them. The neighbour's cat is a great subject though. He loves posing. They are not meant to be finished pieces but I wanted to just have a little fun with a brush pen filled with black ink. I have always admired artists who can produce a likeness of an animal in just a few strokes. While I'm a long way from having their skill I was quite pleased with the shapes of the finished animals.

Ta-da!

At long, long last! I've done it! Some of my paintings are on Etsy with more to come - once I actually finish them. At the moment the art I have up is the mouse in a tea cup and the panda from my earlier posts. Unfortunately the art exhibition wasn't as successful as it usually is. I can only assume it was done to the current financial climate. I also added the pencil drawing of the coal tit that I also posted a while back. It has been sitting on my desk for weeks so I figured I might as well show it off on Etsy and see if anything comes of it. In the pipeline are some cute bunnies but I actually have to sit down and finish up their landscape. At the moment they are sitting in mid air, just floating on blank paper. They look like the first rabbits in space. A swish or two of a paintbrush should sort that out for them. Anyway, I hope you will take a look at them. At the moment their viewing figures are kind of low so a few visitors would cheer them up.

Tea in the garden

Here are my newest pieces for the exhibition. Hand in is tomorrow and the exhibition starts on Saturday so, once again, I have been cutting it a bit fine. But what's new? Both paintings have actually been cropped a little in the framing which I feel improves their composition a bit. But I forgot to crop them in the same way when I scanned them. Typical Gillian! Both are done with watercolour but the mouse, entitled 'Tea for One', also uses gouache for the periwinkle.

Finally, to all my US readers, I hope you have an enjoyable Thanksgiving.

Out of the Dark

Here is my first drawing that will go into the local Christmas art exhibition. I wanted to call him Spandex the panda but someone pointed out there might be copyright issues over the name 'Spandex'. I bet the panda is very glad about that. Not sure too many pandas would like to be named after a synthetic fiber. The picture is three inches square and done in graphite.

Halloween treats

As promised here are some Halloween goodies that I have been working on. Tim Holtz in his 'tricks & treats' blog post gave some great ideas for creating wonderful arty pieces and Ten Two Studios has some instructions on using matchboxes in the 'project' section of the web site. So I took my lead from those ideas and here they are. Some have been swapped out for group or one to one swaps but all of them were fun to do.

A few pictures of some greetings cards and inchies I made. At the top of the page, however, is a collection of pages from a manifest journal swap. The idea is to take a large piece of paper and write what you wish to manifest in your life on the paper in large, bold letters. Then you add some masking tape over the writing in places and coat it in gesso. Once the gesso is dry you remove the masking tape, tear the page into equal pieces and paint it, collage it, do whatever to make it look pretty. Each participant then gets a page from each person's sheet. It was another new project for me but great fun - even moreso when you realise that each page is a very personal piece of the other swappers.

The next post should be some of my Halloween treasures that I have been making and swapping.

Recipes for a sweet life

OK! I know! Until recently it has been a whole month since I posted. It has been busy here with everything from a new shower being installed (huge mess!) to me having a horrible cold. Now that things are quieting down - don't speak too soon, Gillian - I will hopefully have more time to create and post.

Over recent months I have been taking part in swaps for some things I have never tried before. The first of them was recipe cards. I like simple cooking - not for me standing, over a hot stove for hours on end. Just think Mediterranean cookery - mmmm, simple and tasty. So swapping recipe cards was new and fun. Of course, the first swap was for sweets and treats so the diet was put on hold while I tried some of them.

The other cards here revolved around other kinds of recipes - there is a facial scrub and some lemon balm tea. So even if you're not the world's best cook there is a recipe out there to suit - it just needn't be for something edible.

The bottom photo is for my ongoing tip in swap - it just had to be a Halloween theme for October.

I have more pictures to post but I'll be adding them throughout the week.

Heavenly rosary

Back in July I posted about a commission I received for 120 paper beads. Well, those beads have now been made into the most amazing one of a kind Rock'n'roll rosaries by the very talented Syd from Heavenly Rosaries. One was given as a gift to a friend of Syd's. Judging by what she has told me, her friend really loves the rosary and has received many compliments about it. And rightly so. They are truly stunning pieces and completely original which makes them great as gifts - no one else will have one quite like it as each bead and link is original. The second rosary is now for sale in Syd's Etsy store but she has kindly allowed me to post some pictures here. Enjoy!

Beads ahoy!

I have spent the last week making loads of new beads and updating my Etsy store. Lots of fun with just a smattering of hair pulling as my broadband connection caused a few issues. When I upgraded to broadband recently I expected much faster service and quicker upload speed for Etsy. However, it was not to be. It isn't much better than my old dial up connection at times. Anyway, at least I can get the pictures updated. I believe some people in the UK can't get broadband at all. So here are a few pictures of my newest beads. Lost of Halloween themes and some very pretty colours - if I do say so myself.