An addition to yesterdays post

They didn't really make me a cake. It was Chas' birthday and that look of utter bliss on my face?.....well it was the tail end of "happly birthday to YOOOOUUUUU!!!"

and I couldn't resist adding a few more shots of the blokes I used to work with.

After 19 years............

I'll never have to fill in one of these......

......or enter the data from one of these

......or sit at this desk

......or work with this motley crew.....Good grief!!!!
.......because I have RETIRED !!! After 19 long years in the same job, casual, full time, and permanent partime. What a strange feeling. I couldn't have picked a worse time either, what with world wide depression or recession (take your pick) looming , unemployment set to rise, job scarcity etc. etc. etc. But I'm not phased, I'll just keep the faith and let the universe work it out and drop some fantastic, interesting, worthwhile job in my lap. Too much to ask? And what did I do on my first day of retirement you may ask, vacuumed the whole house and washed the floors then right on the dot of 3 p.m when I would be leaving work, I awoke from a lovelly "seniors snooze" on the couch.

One I forgot

Well I didn't actually forget to add this picture, for some reason when I uploaded them from Picasa this one got left behind. This is one of Kerin's pages that she was working on and in between doing her thing she very kindly showed me how to do my image with the fabric stitched to it. Thank's Kerin. So scroll down to the next post to see the other girls work. keep scrolling.........just a bit further!

Journal Junkies

Well Sunday was our first "Journal Junkies" get together. We decided to hire a hall instead of trying to squash into our respective houses. As there's 8 of us and with all our "stuff", we thought a hall would serve our purpose a lot better, which it did. It was very spacious with plenty of tables and chairs, a kitchen, really good light and lots of room to spread out. Everyone arrived pretty much on time with the exception of Suzzanne, but we know she's always late.........I think we'll have to call her "Got lost again Suzzanne" . Only one didn't turn up, but she's busy swanning around Canada and taking lovelly little day trips to Niagra Falls..... aren't you Joanie. Thank you Carmen for organising the hall and the beautiful strawberries and icecream you brought, they were delicious. Everyone worked on their respective projects, some doing pages for various journals they are working on. Kerin working on a wedding album she is making for a friend and all of us being very productive. I hope I haven't mixed up any ones work, if so let me know.

This is what I did. A bit of sewing and glueing.

This is Carmen's

This is Anna's

This is Joan's

This is Suzzanne's

Romeo, Romeo

Yesterday we had a visit from the sweetest little puppy. Romeo is his name and he's a Pugalier. A Pug crossed with a Cavalier. So sweet it almost made me want to go out and get one. But then my sanity prevailed and I started thinking about vet bills, heart worm, flea stuff, walkies and picking up doggy do and dug up gardens and I quickly changed my mind. He can just come and visit me every so often.

Carmen and Brighita..............eat your hearts out!

Book Making Experiment

I was in Art Shed in the other day and picked up this really great book called Painted Paper by Alisa Golden. All kinds of beauftiful things in it with lots of fairly easy to follow instructions, so I decided to have a go at making a book. It's about 10.5 cm by 15 cm and I have painted all the pages using Panpastels and FW acrylic artist inks and Daler Rowney Pearlescent liquid acrylics. Love those paints. On the cover is a small picture behind a microscope slide bound with copper tape. It was supposed to go on an ATC but I never got around to attaching it so decided it would look good on the cover. I also bound a chipboard frame with Silk ribbons that I bought from Vivian and glued that to the cover as well. I tried some of the techniques from the book on the inner pages hoping they would look as good as Alisa's, but alas, it's a bit like cooking really, it never looks like the recipe in the cook book.

I didn't have any linen thread to bind the book with so just used some embroidary thread. The photos don't really show the colours to the best advantage but for all you Journal Junkies I'll bring it with me next week so you can have a look.

I seriously need some photography lessons !.

Op Shop Treasures

I was out cruisin' the Op shops a couple of weeks ago and came across these photo stands. Two about 15 cm high and one about 25cm. I looked at them for a while and thought naaah! bit too glitzy, bit too ornate, bit too GOLD, so I wandered off down the other aisles to see what other treasures there were for me to buy. But I kept going back to these stands. Then I had an "arty" brain explosion and the possibilities for transforming these glitzy stands started up. They only cost a few dollars so I thought what the heck, if my ideas don't turn out then not huge waste.

So here is the stand after it's transformation. I painted it with black gesso and then highlited all the raised parts with silver Rubb & Buff, looks so much better now I think than it did before.

I had a workshop last Saturday with the very talented Kelsey and we painted a small canvas and then made 9 "inchies" which were then attached to the canvas. The inchies were decorated with paint, various images and bits and bobs and my re-vamped photo stand is the perfect size to display my inchie canvas on. What do you think?