Documented Life....

   This is going to take some keeping up but here is week 2.  The challenge was to include a selfie, well the reality is a bit gruesome so I did a "self portrait".......with gelli print background.

and the flyer from the Designer Crafts.

For my band on my cloth I chose a couple of pots and paintings to represent the exhibition and a little representation of the National Gallery

 I think I am taking up a bit too much space and the cloth will be too long for the table but I suppose a couple of  boring weeks  would take care of that.

Weekend again...

I see this year is intending to travel at the same speed as last year.  I have just spent really good day in London. The weather was glorious, bright and crisp and this young man was looking very proud of himself.

It was a day that made you look up.

The main reason for the visit was the  Designer Crafts exhibition at the Mall Galleries. Lots to see and admire, stand out for me was the work of  Batool Showghi. If you like Mixed Media go look.
We wandered up Regent Street discussing what used to be where and into Liberty  to gasp at the prices of the, undeniably beautiful, fabrics but longing for the days when a remnant cost less that £12.95. Margaret Cooter has a very informative and link filled post on the big London department shops of yesteryear
We tottered along to John Lewis as Liberty no longer sells satin bias binding and and finally  to The Cloth House No 47 Berwick Street. such a lovely shop and people.  It was good to see it filled with so many young people choosing fabrics.

A good day but now self imposed challenges need to be addressed.

I've started..........

........but will I finish?  I was taken with the idea of The Documented Life Project. Plan to use a Moleskin planner and acting on weekly prompts fill the planner for one year.  I bought a small planner, as my handbag is always full to bursting,  and realised that this was going to get unwieldy pretty quickly. So, I already had an A5 sized sketchbook and decided I could if I scanned them I could use the entries from the diary/planner and create my documents in them.   I am wondering if I can sustain responding to a weekly challenge. The prompt for Week 1 was

January 1 Challenge (Week One) - photograph, sketch, paint or incorporate your front door. 

 So I "incorporated" my front door into the kind of house I dream about.  This one is Scotney Castle in Kent

 

I bought this charming book 

 and tried out a few flowers,
This is the diary page with a little collagraph I made as Art Van Go.

In tandem with this challenge I decided it would be fun to try and stitch an event from each week and create a table runner by Christmas.  If there is nothing outstanding I will add some stitching.  Here is our eventful journey on Saturday,

The rain doesn't show up very well but believe me it is/was there.

Here we go.....

...the decorations are tucked away for another year and the year has had a very busy start. Put my art prompts together.  I may embellish them a little more but for the moment they look like this.

Friday was our stitching group and I spent a happy day chatting and doing the boring bit of my quilt. Yesterday in spite of the atrocious weather we couldn't resist  the temptation to visit Art Van Go where Lynda Monk and friends were demonstrating thermofax and collagraphs.  Fascinating stuff. I was particularly delighted that with a bit of experiment I could use my Big Shot to make collagraph prints. Anyone know how to put a few more hours into each day?  I always wish AVG wasn't so far away but yesterday I made it a even further by going up the M1 instead of the A1(M). Never been to Luton before!.

Start.......

as you hope to go on.  I spent a lovely morning with my new large gelli plate, some cereal boxes and my Big Shot.  The result was 52 ATC's which I am hoping to turn into art prompts.  I started this back in the summer but like so many things it stalled, so with my New Year fervour I thought I'd try again.  I should have taken photographs but you know what the gelli plate is like you are carried away. The outside(printed) of the cereal cardboard gave me coverage problems but with a combination of  gesso, opaque Fresco Paints and a deal of layering I managed and felt very happy with my re-cycling.

Now to add a bit of stamping and the words.

Lynda Monk has been doing some wonderful things with Thermofax .Who knew fish and bird skeletons would look this good. 

Late Christmas....

For various reasons we had our Christmas day on Sunday and it was a day worth waiting for.  Such fun.  My son cooked a wonderful rib of beef and I used this recipe  from the Ree, Pioneer Woman for the all important Mashed Potatoes.I don't usually do cooking on this blog but I found a recipe some time ago and I wanted to test it out before I shared it here.  It saves that nuisance moment of stopping production and finding  the potato masher, a bowl etc. when you are trying to bring the big meal to fruition and best of all it makes delicious, fluffy mashed potatoes. The seasoning she uses is obviously an american brand but I found this which explained what it consists of, made some up in an empty spice jar, worked a treat. Incidentally I made the mashed carrot and turnip the day before as well and that worked too.
This is Ree's picture

 So here we are the last day of the year, my mind is making resolutions but I will be suprised but happy if all (or any) actually bring results.If you look at my Pinterest Tutorials page you will see some of my dreams.

Thank to all who have visited and commented this year.. My very Best Wishes for the New Year to all..

Christmas came early......

Yesterday it was the monthly meeting of The Girls and we were to have our pre-Christmas meeting. Unfortunately, one friend had the current cold but bless she did send us a little gift. It is now on the tree.

The little tin contain threads. 

 

The other gifts I received were this tool which I never seen before.. We will be playing with this next time we meet.

 and this wonderful ornament of my initial in mosaic it stands about 9 inches high.. Clever girl.

My present to them was this

 

which I hope will give them some fun.

Our hostess for the day had gone to great pains to create the right atmosphere right on the doorstep.

 

As you can imagine, we fell through the door in fits of laughter.  

Lots of chatter, some lovely food and not to over tax ourselves we

made one of these. Tutorial here

Great day with a very special little group who have given me so much pleasure.

i......

So here my last page for the Craft Barn Alphabet challenge. I spent a long time trying to find a word .....then the light bulb, of course...INSPIRATION......that is what this challenge has done all year.  You start with the letter prompt and than a browse through the dictionary and then suddenly an idea.Then the fun of working out how you are going to interpret it. But where did it come from, who knows?.  Nature?  Memory?  Media?.....it is a wonderful mystery.
 I painted a background, using Fresco paints, which I hope represents air.  I made a digital collage from my photographs and then cut out the question mark.  I had been going to add other words but liked the suggestion of mystery. So

with tag

Finally, I have been mounting the pages in an A4 Landscape spiral bound book. A couple of months into the challenge I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like. Every time I die cut letters for the word I saved the leftovers.  I started about a month ago, adding layer on layer, so this is the result. Quietly pleased.

I have really enjoyed this challenge.  I found the two week interval was just enough to give you a slight deadline pressure but gave you  time to think and was not so long as to make you forget, which has happened to me in the past with monthly challenges. The other thing I liked was the uncertainty of which letter would be next or what restriction would be put on it.  So well done and thank you to the team at The Craft Barn

x......

Last two letters of the  Craft Barn Alphabet Challenge i and x. " i" had so many entries in my old dictionary so I went with x first(only one page).  A word I didn't know (there were quite a few) "xylograph" which means a wood engraving,  I have two Indian wood block so I used them on he background and then I copied the wood engraving from the wikipedia entry. Found some paper that looked a bit woodlike for the word.  That has been one of the things I have loved about this challenge is finding a use for things that I have had for years.

and with tag

December..part 2

The John Lewis windows. A hair hare..

A towel turkey..

A dyson donkey

and

a polar bear

amd penguins

and of course and owl

all very ingenious.

Another bit of a disappointment at Liberty

and finally to Fortnums where there was this domestic goddess

some carol singers

and finally Father Christmas

I really hope I have the chance to go up again after dark as the street lights looked as though they would be quite a sight.

December...

..now it is time to think about Christmas.  With dire warnings of freezing weather for later in the week I decided to pop up to London and have a look at the Christmas windows.  I had heard that Harrods had gone to town this year.  The windows represent the carriages of a very luxurious train.

 

 

 

Not camp at all.  One end of the store had a woodland scene. With Golden Owls...well it is Harrods.

 and these  for my friend who would have wanted to take them home

I found Selfridges, though in a worthy cause a little disappointing so we will move on down to John Lewis which I found highly entertaining. Blogger having a bit of a fit so I will add later.

S.....

Craft Barn Alphabet challenge time again. Not much time and a letter with a huge number of words but can't fall so close to the finishing line .... my first thought was Serendipity, because it is such a lovely word to say and that's mainly how I work But my old dictionary had a different definition to the normal usage of " happy accident" that we have now.  It said "the liking for old books and ornaments.  Mmmm! I thought about it for a few days but nothing was happening so I delved into the dictionary again and it opened at the snow page, very seasonal.    Out of all the snow words I chose this because the definition made me laugh. "Snowstorm: a storm with falling snow."  Right. So here we have Snowstorm.

 and with tag

 The little houses are Memory Box die cuts and the snowflakes are a mixture of die cuts and punched. The paint is  Fresco Ice Blue and Baltic Blue with some acrylic white added.
I have also finished the cover for the book where I am keeping all the letters but I am keeping that secret for now.  Thought occurred, I wonder what I would have chosen for S if it were July instead of November?

Tissue prints

I have to thank Paper Printables  for ending my long search for an easy way  to print on tissue paper with my inkjet printer. I have tried so many other ways fighting with adhesive tape etc.and always in terror of jaming my printer.This one is relatively quick and easy and so far 100% successful. Yeah!

Q...

is the latest letter in the Craft Barn Alphabet challenge.   I chose Quartette,  my dictionary tells me it is anything in fours so at first I was thinking of dividing the page and filling it with the seasons, suits of cards, that sort of thing but then there was the musical connection.  I looked in my Dover Desk Gallery of clip art, I was now thinking silhouettes.(this blog is called altering thoug
hts!), at first I was looking for musicians and then I found this and given the season I thought it perfect.
I cut a mask with the intention of stencilling the image, I liked this one but as you can see I had trouble with working out which way round the stencil should go and  when I tried it the "right" way round I couldn't re-create the textures.

 After ten rejects  I decided to use the mask itself which by then was nicely coated in paint.

Here it is with word tag.

Only three letters left now.

Just a little ...

bit proud of my daughter. Don't usuall do family here but I wanted somewhere to keep this.  She plays the part played by Deborah Kerr in the film.

N.....

is the letter as the Craft Barn Challenge nears the end. I was surprised to find relatively few words beginning with N. I chose Needlewoman.   Like the letter L below I have chosen this for more personal reasons. There are quite a few seamstresses and a milliner  in my family tree and I have enjoyed many hours stitching with friends or on my own. I looked for images of needlewomen and chose the one by Velazques as I  thought it gave a sense of the way woman have plied a needle stretching back through time.  I painted two pieces of paper and used one for the background and one to cut out the stamped images. None of my die cut alphabets seemed to fit so I sewed the name.

Just to prove my point I am having fun with crazy patchwork at the moment.  I turned the piece here into a cushion. I wanted to do some more and decised to make a throw for the settee, I wanted it to look aged so I made up the block and then sprayed it with brown Seta colour.  This should keep me busy for a little while.