10 things you might not know about me...

I was reading Christy Tomlinson's blog and she had a post with 10 things about her and I thought I'd play along. I'm going to be taking Christy's "She Art Workshop" at the end of February - make sure you check it out!

1. I have never broken a bone in my life. I did dislocate my big toe once and that hurt enough! I also fell off a trampoline when I was about 10 years old - I landed on my chest and my feet where still up on the tramp - my first thought was that I'd broken my back and my life (although short) flashed before my little eyes. I ended up just being winded really bad and my friend's parents let us eat the easter eggs we'd just made. :) Just thinking about it, I never went to the hospital or anything....

2. I'm not having any more kids! Two is enough for me... anymore and they start to outnumber us... LOL. But seriously, I want to be able to provide as best as I can for the girls I have... if we had another we'd need a bigger car and I rather like my little one that is all paid for. :)

3. I never went to Uni... well, I did (by correspondance) but dropped out. Going to Uni was never a question for me growing up - I was always going to go. Oops.. that didn't work out.

4. I lived in Saudi Arabia for 3 years when I was a teenager. It was the BEST experience ever and would love to do something similar with my girls if I ever have the chance. It exposed me to so many different cultures and people (there were over 60 different nationalities at my school) and now I hate people who are ignorant and bag other cultures. So many people like to complain about "people who move to this country and can't even speak English". Well, that was me - I never learned to speak Arabic while I was over there!

5. I've lived in a lot of different houses over the years.... 20 to be exact. I think I got that from my Great Grandparents - they always moved around.

6. I love crappy reality shows.... The Bachelor, Wife Swap, The Block - can't get enough of them!

7. My long term goal is to have a little studio somewhere with a nice view where I can create art and sell it, maybe teach some classes. And it will be quiet!! No kids crying because they can't take the lid off their pen! (That just happened)

8. I wear my wedding rings on the middle finger of my right hand - no real reason, it's just where they fit the best. I've lost a fair bit of weight since we were married and I need to get them resized.... I just need to lose this baby weight first!

9. I like to make lists of things I need to do - I find it motivates me and I get more done when I do.

10. I love The Simpsons.... I've been watching it ever since I was in high school... although I don't get much time to watch it nowadays. I even have a collection of Simpson trading cards!

So what are 10 things that I don't know about you?? If you do your own list, make sure you let me know so I can have a sticky beak! :)

I'm loving this!

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I do not sew. My in-laws gave me a sewing machine one year for Christmas and it took me almost a year to use it. Even then, it was on a scrapbooking layout.

Well, yesterday I used my sewing machine for fabric and fabric only! I'd been thinking about making a fabric cover for my art journal as the front cover is plastic and I wasn't sure how everything would stick to it. So I bought a remnant of a something that looked like calico to me, but the label said "linen", for about a dollar. And from that came this....


I absolutely loved how it turned out!

Now, if you DO sew, and you looked close, you would probably have a heart attack - it's a bit wonky, when I pinned the pieces together I used decorative pins meant for scrapping, and the pieces weren't cut entirely straight. I didn't measure anything, just held it against my journal and guessed. When sewing it together, I thought for sure that it wouldn't fit and would be too small. But I love all the imperfections.... it gives it character (or so I tell myself)!

I even love how it looks from the side, all the texture and colours from the pages.


Once I'd sewn it together, I dyed the fabric using Adirondack Colour Wash, waited for it to dry and then put some gesso over the top. Then I used my FW Acrylic Artists Ink to stamp and draw over the top and added some lacey stuff and a butterfly.

I think I'm going to have to make some more of these! Now I just need to start a new journal so I have something to cover! LOL

I'm excited!

I'm super excited because I finally got these in the mail....


They were a bit late arriving because of the floods but I can't wait to give them a go! The new colours are so gorgeous! I got these beauties from Kazmos Kreations - THE place to get them in Australia as far as I'm concerned! This is my second order from Karen and her service has been great both times.

I decided to try and get a half decent photo of myself out in the backyard today - I thought the grass would look cool as a backdrop so I was lying down... Here are some outtakes! LOL

Love these imperfect photos... we had so much fun!

Thanks for stopping by!

What are you reading??

I saw this book quiz on the Daisy Yellow blog and thought I'd give it a go...

1. What is on your reading list for 2011? Room by Emma Donoghue and I'd love to pick up a few mixed media books.
   
2. What was the best fiction book you read in 2010? Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett - not the kind of book I would normally pick up but it was probably the best book I've ever read.
3. What book was the biggest let down in 2010? Pride and Prejudice - I really wanted to read a classic so I was determined to read the whole thing, otherwise I would have stopped reading it a lot earlier.
4. Do you remember the first short story you wrote as a kid? What was it about? I wrote a book in year 1 about a dog that fell asleep in the basket of a hot air balloon and ended up going up into the sky with it. We made it into a proper little book.... I think I still have it somewhere.
5. Do you keep track of the books you read? nope
6. How many books are on your TO READ list? I don't have an actual list, but I am a member of a book club (it's just a title really, we don't talk about the books much, more of an excuse to go out to dinner!) so I'm sure I'll end up with a heap to read. My Dad just gave me a copy of "Fall of Giants" by Ken Follett, so I will be reading that next!
7. Where is your favorite reading spot? I always read in bed before I go to sleep at night... sometimes it's the only way to get my brain to stop thinking so I can fall asleep.
8. How many books (fiction + non-fiction) did you read in 2010? I didn't actually count but I'm going to take a guess at about 15.
9. Do you read more than one book at once? Not usually, but sometimes if I really want to read one I might start it before I've finished another.
   
10. Do you read more fiction or non-fiction? Fiction

I also have some exciting news but can't share just yet.... Let's see if you can guess what it is! LOL

Angela

My poor art journal

My poor art journal has been a bit neglected over the last few days. But I still have been creating - just playing with ATC's, I've made a couple already and am having so much fun with them. I've also been busy changing my blog around as you can see and I am happy with the results so far. A little bit more to go and I'll be done.. for a while at least. :)

I just wanted to give you some details about my new blog header:

*The background is a close up of Jenna's very first journal page. (As seen in this post.)
*The little toy house is actually one of my favourite toys from when I was a kid - When closed it was a telephone and when you opened it up it had little furniture and a doll as well as some other accessories. I found it in the garage a while back and cleaned it up for Jenna to play with.
*I've just realised that all the photos except for my toy house were taken by my brother (his camera is a lot better than mine). Although I DID take that photo with his camera. LOL

Here are the two journal pages that I have completed over the last few days:

This first one is very simple, just black pen, watercolour crayons and some foam lettering.


This next one has been in my journal unfinished for a while now... I really like the splatter patterns of the ink and wasn't quite sure what else to do to it. So I did nothing but add the arrow and some words. :)



And now for my ATC's! I somehow found some flickr groups where they put up pictures of their ATC's to trade with other people and I thought I'd join in. Problem is, once I made them I liked them so much that now I'm not sure I want to part with them!


The good news is that the flood in Rocky is nearing it's end. We're no longer cut off and people are returning to their homes. The water is still up higher than normal though...

Thanks for stopping by!

I was going to do a proper post....

I had all intentions of doing a big post with my latest creations and (possibly) some future plans, but I got distracted changing the look of my blog.

I'm very happy with the result!

My blog header had been bugging me for ages... it was created years ago and desperately needed changing. I finally found an easy way of doing it. I saw in Today's Creative Blog Forum a link to this page which has a tutorial of creating blog headers using Picasa.

And voila!

But now I'm tired and going to bed... so my proper post will just have to wait until tomorrow.

Night night!

Edited to add: I just realised my header is a bit too big.... oh well, I'll fix it tomorrow. :)

The good and the bad.

I'll start with the bad so I can end on a happy note. The floods in SE Queensland are still going on with water meant to hit Brisbane tomorrow. They are expecting it to be worse than the floods in 1974 - my Mum was there for that one - she worked in the State Library along the riverbank... she still has a mug of hers that she recovered after the flood. There are currently 78 people missing.... It must be absolutely horrible to be waiting to hear news about family members.

Now for the good stuff.....

By far the best thing that happened this week is that my baby girl Amani rolled over onto her stomach by herself for the first time today. She is now 16 weeks old.... I can't wait until she starts crawling around the place. Here she is after the historic event... I think she looks pretty pleased with herself!

Oh look, there's a toy under the couch!

Another good thing is that I found out that I was featured on a Russian blog along with some other talented Aussies... you can see it here. You'll need Google translate for that one!

I've still been managing to do at least 10 minutes of art journaling every day. I've been enjoying it so much I haven't done any scrap pages to put in the girls albums. I figure that the girl's albums is where they get to see themselves and my art journals are where they get to see me.

The first page is for the January 123 Challenge. I had to borrow the heart punch from my MIL as I don't have any. The background is watercolour crayons with some ink drizzled over the top.

This next was done after seeing a prompt on Traci Bautista's blog to use circles. I used Matisse heavy body acrylics for the big circles and watercolour crayons for the rest of the background.


And last up, have you checked out Today's Creative Blog?? Every week they have "Get your craft on" where you can share your crafty creations. LOTS of eye candy there!!

Bye for now!

Water, water everywhere....

I was going to post some pics of my latest journal pages but I think I'm going to leave that until tomorrow.

For now I'm going to ask everyone that their thoughts/prayers/whatever it is you do goes out to the people of Queensland. It seems our whole state at the moment is having some sort of flooding crisis. The river here at Rockhampton peaked at 9.2m last Wednesday and is now sitting at about 9.1m. That is a drop of only about 10cm in almost a week. Friends and family have left their homes and are waiting for the water to recede.... it looks like we might still be cut off from Rocky until the end of the week.

Luckily, we have still been able to get to towns further south which up until a few days ago had not been affected by flood and were fully stocked. Now the South East of our state has been lashed by rain and is on flood alert. The highway north from Brisbane is cut in multiple places which means that trucks can not get through. Our local store here in Gracemere can no longer get supplies and are limiting milk to one bottle per customer.

Toowoomba, the town where I lived for 10 years has been hit by flash flooding - I've seen footage of cars being washed down streets, even a shipping container being moved by the force of the water. Two people are dead and more are missing. People are being told to evacuate everywhere it seems, some of these places have just had one flood and are now bracing for another.

If you are a Queenslander and are on Facebook, I recommend you "like" the Queensland Police Service as they are always giving updates on what is happening. If you are not from here you can look just to see the magnitude of what is happening. Hopefully the rain eases over the next few days so things can have a chance to get back to some normality.

Happier post tomorrow I promise! :)

What comes first?

More pages to share... This first one was inspired by a picture I saw here. I had a bit of a chicken/egg dilemma with it... What comes first, the black outline or the white gesso. Answer is white gesso. :)


I've been thinking a bit lately about what kind of direction I want my life to take, how I can earn some money doing something I love while still being at home for the girls. Usually when I decide that I want something, I want it to happen now! So I'm trying to be a bit more patient and not in a huge rush - I don't want anything too time consuming until both the girls are in school anyway as they are my first priority.

This next one was very quick to do, I already had the silhouette on the page - when I did an earlier page I used the ink that was on my stencil on here - I can't waste any ink now can I? It was getting later in the night and I wanted to do create something but my brain just wasn't connecting...


And last up, I covered up this page with a thin layer of gesso... for some reason the orange circles magically turned to white... not sure how that works. I've also learned that if you paint gesso over Adirondack Colour Wash, the colour slowly bleeds through so that the gesso isn't white anymore. That might come in handy some time.

Still don't like the page though. LOL

A Challenge

I have to say I hate this page:


It started out bad and just got worse so now I'm going to challenge myself to turn it into something I like... I don't care what it takes.... even if I have to cover it in gesso and start again!
FYI - the circles were created by the bottom of the ink bottle after I had tried to get my pen nib out - see previous post.

Inspiration Overload!

Today I started my own flickr account to play along with this. (You can find me here) You know how sometimes you can go from one thing to another to another and then you forget how you even got there in the first place? Well that was me today.

Here's a few of the things I found:

* Love this blog! Could spend hours having a look around.

* This art journal group.... can't wait until my membership is approved!
* I'm also going to play along with the prompts here.

And finally the page I finished last night.... I'm so proud of myself, I have actually completed a page each day so far this year... hopefully I can keep it up once Noel goes back to work.

I coloured in my doodled border with Matisse Liquid Pencil.... my friend Michelle gave me a sample a while back and I think I need to get me some more!

Last of all, if you know of any art journaling people or groups based in Australia can you post a link?? Would love to find something a bit more local.... I have a hankering for an ATC swap or something similar.

Thanks for stopping by!

Disasters in Art Journaling

Being that yesterday was the 1st of January and I am joining in with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's art journal everyday journey, I sat down at my desk last night to spend some time playing in my art journal. I've been wanting to play with silhouettes for a while so decided to do that... and it was all going great until I started using my fountain pen with orange ink. Well.... the nib fell in the bottle didn't it.... I tried to get it out with my finger but that didn't work (except for giving me an orange finger and getting ink all over the place!), then I tried using a paddle pop stick... no luck there either. Then I stuck my scissors in there which was able to locate the nib, (you can't see anything through orange ink) but couldn't grab it properly to pull it out.

Aha.... Tweezers! I ran and grabbed a pair but do you think I could get it to work... they weren't quite long enough to reach in properly and I couldn't get it. So then I thought "I'll pour some of the ink out and I'll be able to see better". On the way to the kitchen (which is only about 8 steps away) I asked my husband for some help as I was getting a small container to tip ink in. No sooner was I about to go back in my scrap room did my husband emerge and say

"I got it out for you".

Thanks honey, but you could have made it seem just a little bit harder since I had spent the last 10 minutes trying to do it myself!! No surprise, I decided to call it a night.

But here is what I finished this morning.....


I really wanted a white pen to do the journaling but mine decided to die and it's not like I can go into Rocky to get a new one as we are now cut off for probably the next week. I do like the effect of the black pen in the second page though... it's kind of like hidden journaling in plain view as you have to hold it in the right light to be able to read what it says.

Well, that's it for now... I'm going to try and do some scrapping (hopefully disaster free!). If you are participating in Julie's challenge, please leave me a comment and I will have a look at what you've been creating. I've been trying to get through the list and check out all the blogs but there are just so many!