Wk 8..

This is a post I never wanted to write. Wk 8 of the Documented Life saw the death of my brother.  He has fought courageously for two years against cancer of the jaw.

 I will miss him.

Wk 7......

TheDocumented Life challenge was  Draw one shape and repeat, add colour.  Well there has only been one topic of convesation this week.  The Weather.  It would seem that Australia is burning,  North America  is freezing and we are drowning. I chose diamonds as my shape and added the little rhyme by R.L. Stvenson.  "The rain is falling all around"  the cover is another recycled photo.The background is a gelli which looked to me like the land underwater.

For my runner I took the wind, the other feature of last week's weather. 

Miss......

"Strong and Miss" were the two words in the Craft Barn Q&L Challenge.  Nothing came to mind for "Strong" but my brain immediately started singing "Have You met Miss Jones?" and it wouldn't stop.  I love the songs Richard Rodgers wrote with Lorenz Hart better than the later ones with Oscar Hammerstein, take a look at this list, I bet you start singing one of them. Some time I was given a beautiful cabinet card by a friend, she looks like Miss Jones to me.  As it was Valentine's week and there were hearts everywhere they had to be part of the design but I didn't want red ones. So I used red card as the background and dug out all my heart stamps, stamped them with grey achival ink and die cut some Memory Box butterflies. So here she is.

and here is a version by the old smoothie Frank Sinatra.

Wk 6 Documented Life....

I seem to be all over the place with my numbers and last week was indeed Wk 6.  A bit more drama this week,a trip to August. Osage County at the cinema, strong stuff but riveting and good acting and a trip to see my daughter in From Here to Eternity the musical. strong stuff but riveting and good acting and then a  pleasant day at the Maylands stitching group.  All of which helped take the mind off the rain.
The Documented Life prompt was "Open your Pinterest board and be inspired".  Didn't take me long to try an emulate the work of Jill Ricci. I love her work so this is my attempt.  Gelli print background, snippets of other gelli prints and another old photograph.

 

Because it had to be folded into my journal I needed to make a cover so another photograph received the treatment. Don't do pink usually.

and for the runner I had palm trees and an aeroplane and the date of Pearl Harbour which is the climax of "From Here to Eternity". The sea is both for FHTE and for the dreadful battering our coasts are taking.

Sochi.....

I'm your girl when it comes to an opening ceremony and I enjoyed the one for the Winter Olympics.  I just loved the colour, I took these from the television so they are not sharp but a good reminder.

The colour is everywhere,, on all the venues and on the competitors and volunteers.

 
 This site has interesting descriptions of the various regions and types of art which where the inspiration.for the designs.Everything from shawls to painted boxes.

Marvel.....

Thanks to the Embrouderie blog I visited the web site of Michelle Carragher who embroidered the costumes for "The Game of Thrones"  TV series. 

This is a taster, if you like stumpwork and embroidery go and marvel..

Wk 4 and Oh dear!...

For Week 4 of the Documented Life the brief was to "add a doodle border to your page".  This tied in nicely with one of my latest book purchases "Zenspirations Dangle Designs" by Joanne Fink.







So far so good.  Then I decided I would throw out a lot (and I mean a lot) of old photographs and it was going well until I saw one and thought, I wonder what that would look like if I put it through the Big Shot.  
What happened became the theme of my page, here it is the larger circles are from a very out of focus photograph.

Oh dear, a use for the photographs......another thought this is a piece of sky from a very boring photo put through with an embossing plate, painted with craft paint, stamped with Distress Stain, there was a piece of paper on my desk which had the words in it, so here it is mounted on a piece of gelli print.

 Oh dear another use for the photographs...... and then this for my present "tree" decoration.

 The photgraphs have gome back in the box.

My runned band for last week has teeth, which were a big feature and celebrate an outing to see an amateur production of  "Avenue Q" performed by some very talented friends.  Great fun.

So that is January been and gone already.

Silence and Dazzle...........

..second challenge Q&L  prompt from the Craft Barn.,   I thought of "Give'em the Old Razzle Dazzle"  from "Chicago" but who remembers this gem.

Ah, those were the days!
But the song that stuck in my mind was "I loved you one in silence" from "Camelot".  I saw the original production of this at Drury Lane. It was a beautiful production and years later I drew heavily on my memories when I was wardrobe mistress for our amateur production.  I can't remember how many cloaks I made and working out which bit of armour went where.
But I digress, my first thoughts were to do something medieval and romantic but my lack of artistic skills prevented that and then I had a very silly thought.
 I thought of the wonderfully ridiculous shoes which are about at the moment.  I would love to own a pair but I at my age I know the pain they would cause.My slippers is where I'm at. So it remains an unrequited love affair.   Tenuous I know but if did let me make this dazzling shoe.

If you don't know the song this is Julie Andrews's vesion. Audio only.