Hi you all, once again it's time for Paint Party Friday, hosted, as always, by Eva and Kristin. Today I am sharing a little water-colour picture I made  many years ago in Israel. I painted it from an old postcard of Rachel's Tomb, near Bethlehem. It is very small, as I didn't have many paints or much paper in those days, and I could not see well enough today to paint such a lot of detail on such a small scale (3x2"). I discovered a few such pics whilst clearing up, so perhaps it is quite good to have a sort out here and then!

Hi you all! Hope you are all well, fit and creative, and not wasting time with things like H*******K! I had to do a little of it today,  so decided to bake a cake as a consolation prize. I made a French lemon cake; it has no butter in it, just cream and eggs and sugar and other little things. I am sure it doesn't have too many calories, and if it does, I don't really care! I took a piece to my neighbour, so hope he enjoyed it, too.

Hi you all! It's been another cold, grey day here, with lots of snow. And I have had enough of it! The weather men have promised that the temps will start to climb a bit this week, and that we will see the sun again - I so hope that they are right! And to make matters worse, I had to spend my time doing the book-keeping for a charitable group I am in. I don't know WHY I got this job, as I am really lousy at math and everything to do with it, but today was the day to get it done. I have got it nearly finished, so that's one nightmare less!

The card I have made today is for the 'heavy metal' challenge at Simon Says Stamp and Show. I stuck some strips of aluminium tape from the discounter onto a piece of cardboard packaging, embossed it with a texture fade folder, and 'aged' it with Inka gold in pewter and archival black. You can't see the joins in the tape once it has been embossed and treated. Then I cut TH's old jalopy, and wings and a heart from it.  I mounted it onto a piece of Miri board in gunmetal grey, and added a red tin heart that I got some time back from Donna , who often sends me nice odds and sods bits and bobs from Mexico. I matted it with a square of red card before fixing it to a piece of cardboard, peeled (as far as the eye can see) and distressed with Inka gold in pewter again. I found the 4 snap-fasteners for the corners in my button box.

The magazine in the background of some of the photos is from 1913. Miri board is almost impossible to photograph without reflections, so you can see me - luckily very indistinctly - in the background.

Hi you all, hope you are enjoying your weekend! It is very cold here, there's snow on the ground, an icy wind and no blue skies. But in my kitchen it was warm, so I had fun creating a journal spread for the last lesson in Carolyn's course 'Use your words'. There is still time to join up and do the lessons at your leisure, just hop over and sign up! The theme for this lesson was 'Playful tag trios'. I decided to make this page as a thank you to Carolyn for hosting this free and fun course. I started, as (almost) always by spraying my pages, letting them drip, and adding some background stamping using rusty hinge DI, which coordinated wonderfully with the spray inks. The same sprays were used on my tag trio, which were cut from a spare strip of paper, and the same background stamps, this time without using DI, just stamping into the wet colours and moving it around a bit. When they were dry, I stamped them with some words in archival black. I wanted a photo of Carolyn, so used the one on her blog, which I printed onto tissue paper,  before fixing it to my page with golden gel. I added the tags, and the message on the right hand side, a bit of stamping here and there, and a crown for Carolyn for giving us such a great opportunity to join in her course.

Hi you all, another week has flown by and it's party time again! Paint party Friday is hosted, as always, by Eva and Kristin.

I have been busy this week with journal pages for Carolyn's workshop 'Use Your Words'. This journal spread is for the last lesson we had, laugh and play with fonts.

I masked 'my' head before spraying with my home made inks - made from a mix of food colouring, water, perfect pearls, cheap ink from the Euro shop and a lot of hope and guess work. I let it drip, and splodged some gold ink on to it while it was still wet. Once dry, I stamped the 'filling' for my head, using stamps from Paper Artsy, Artemio and LaBlanche. The words have been stencilled using the 'waste' from a sheet of alphas I used up years ago, it's sometimes quite good to keep things till you need them!

Hi you all! Today we saw the sun again - what a wonderful feeling! It is still very cold, but it just did good to see the blue sky and the sun sparkling on the Rhine. I went for a nice walk, through the park and our little town, and really enjoyed being out in the fresh air without freezing stiff or trying to see through the mist! The weather will be worsening in the course of the week, we have icy winds and snow on its way from the north east, but it felt good to have a nice day today.

But first to Tag Tuesday. Our letter this week is 'G'. I had problems deciding again which word to take, and then I stuck my neck out and chose giraffe. I made a simple tag, long and narrow, using a scrap of printed paper mounted onto cardboard.. I added the giraffe at the bottom, and drew the 'G' at the top, before fitting a giraffe's head onto it. 

Hi you all, hope you are enjoying a restful Sunday. I have been enjoying getting messy and inky again, playing with stamps and colours. My hands are a lot less shaky than they were, but I still have difficulties, and I think it is important that I get plenty of practice.

The first piece is a card made for 2 challenges; the birds and or bees challenge at Out of a Hat Creations, and a second entry for the Fashionable stamping challenge 'Birds'. I was happy that I was chosen to be in the 'Saturday Spotlight' at FSC for my share some love entry which you can see here if you want to.

I stamped a background using my much loved script stamp in vintage photo DI, and the nest and bird - both from Catherine Moore - have been stamped with Adirondack espresso, fussy cut, and popped up with foam squares. I gave them a glint in their eyes with a drop of glossy accents. I used various scraps to cut the background matting, and threaded a ribbon through some slits between the punched paper lace. The little wooden bird is from Crafty emblies. I love doing monochrome stamping, as it reminds me of the prints in old books.