ROCKING YOUR WORLD FRIDAY - 17TH OF 2016

Good Morning tis 

time once more, time to take a step back and look at the silver linings and positives in the week. 

I'm going to start off with the first one, which is that my Mum's scan shows an issue that needs resolving, but it isn't what we thought it might be.  We have all been quite apprehensive this week whittling about it, but thankfully it is something that can be sorted.  Thank you all for your kind words and prayers, they are very much appreciated! 

So next on the happy list - Saturday doing some crafting, hubby was silk painting, said 15 year old was fabric painting with inktense pencils and I was acrylic painting.  We had a film on in the background and were sat chatting, twas fab! 

Here is a glimpse of what I was painting, I've done further work on them since this photo.  

Sunday found us over the other side of Sheffield dropping said 15 year old off for a team building afternoon, so we decided to head to Chatsworth to blow the cobwebs off as it were.  It was cool but a lovely day nonetheless!  The gardens were full of gorgeous daffodils

And we were pleased to see this tile covered sculpture specifically designed for Chatsworth still in situ, it looked brilliant surrounded by all the daffodils.

We walked the trough path - backwards for a change and were delighted to see these bright yellow flowers, not that we know what they are! 

We had a great view out of the grotto over the pond and managed to dodge the smallest of rain showers. 

I really enjoyed the blue skies

And we got to admire the David Nash sculpture that has ended up at Chatsworth as part of the revitalisation of the trout stream, in effect they brought the Chatsworth entry to the Chelsea flower show, back to Chatsworth and have planted the trout pond area out with the items! 

Look and sunshine - can you tell how pleased I was to be enjoying the weather!

Selfie with hubby

The amazing pink hyacinth's next to the maze smelt fantastic (I was going to say amazing - but I thought I could hear you groan).

And the small elephant sculpture looked great in the sunshine.

For once this sculpture was actually working, although said 15 year old growled when I told him as he has yet to see it working!  It fills with water and the petals close and once full it pumps the bottom out of the base and once light enough the petals open and the sphere inside pops up! 

And how sad does this lion look?  We found him in the cottage garden. 

I loved the moving obelisk in the cottage garden, particularly the part that reflected the sky! 

Whilst we were there we headed into the shop to try and find an anniversary gift for one another, unfortunately Chatsworth is once again under a mass of scaffolding on the back of the building, which apparently will be there until the end of next year, included in this scaffold is the orangery shop, so there were limited supplies.  So we headed up to the Stables shops which have been revamped and are looking lovely and found these.  Apparently whilst there is no traditional gift for an 18th wedding anniversary, it has become the norm to associate porcelain with the anniversary - so we thought - why not! 

We enjoyed our wedding anniversary despite both being at work.  We had a bar meal out that evening (no photos unfortunately).

We've enjoyed our morning walk and managed a few lovely sunrises too, although the longer days mean that won't continue much longer.

We managed to get the grass cup (although we won't mention the broken mower)

I had a busy day on Wednesday at work (although we won't mention the broken car). 

And I've even managed 3 layouts this week, which I know by my normal standards is tiny but to be honest my mojo has been on holiday for quite some time now.  I'm hoping it is back for good - but we shall see. 

I hope you've had an amazing week, if you fancy joining in pop a post together, pop back, link up and we shall come and visit. 

SUMMER OF COLOUR WEEK 2

Morning all, well I have to stop with this orange and hot pink because I've got a little bit obsessive.  I mean not a bit obsessive but quite obsessive, it started with a gelli plate session, unlike last week where I was churning out the A4 pieces this week I started that way and then thought "What about all those 12 x 12 sheets of white paper that come in the scrapbook albums?" - so I set too with those!  Mmmmmm so here we go - eyes down starter for ten no conferring

First up 12 x 12 layouts, this one was using a fabulous scrapbook sketch from UK Scrappers from their Old Stash New Stash inspiration post, check these out in the Inspirations and Challenges threat.  It's a really versatile sketch and great for 'using up' leftovers when you've been blitzing your way through layouts and have lots of leftovers!

This one was is part of a double page, documenting an early gelli plate session with my sister, samples of our work

 And a jaunty shot of the state the house was in as a result LOL

 Here they are as the double page

Next up I used a blonde moments paper originally a Christmas paper with reddish pink and green circles on it, I spent some time painting over the green circles, great fun, I then used some gelli prints on the page, this one is another sketch from the Old Stash New Stash inspiration - this one being June's sketch (again so versatile).

This one using a gelli print background I loved how it turned out but then like I said got a bit obsessed generating lots of gelli prints!

 Then I did cards, not fully finished but a good start.

 Up close

Then I started some mail art

Up close

 Can't wait to see the colour choice for next week!

SUMMER OF COLOUR - WEEK 1

Morning all, well I think I should get this in by the skin of my teeth, I was soooooooooooo excited to see this go live over on Kristin's blog - Twinkle Twinkle - click here to go see.  I enjoyed this challenge last year so much and made loads of mail art in the process.  This year the colours are members choice, which is lovely because we get to vote and the first week's colour choice is turquoise and citron green which turned out to be a fantastic colour combination.

And this is what I made layouts, gelli prints, basis for cards and some jigsaw pieces - atrocious photo but I've done some close ups

Layout, the background paper is just soooooooooo hard to use because it's so visually busy, but toned down with plain cardstock and then using a gelli print base below it means I get to use paper which quite frankly I thought I might not and I get to incorporate gelli print in my layouts!

Again using up papers I never thought I'd manage, the stripy paper behind the photos I've had forever and loved but never quite fathomed out what to do with it!

Then a double page layout, using up papers from different ranges, I was going to try and paint out the pinky coloured flower in the paper to make it true to the scheme but ran out of time!

 Up close

 and again

Then I gelli-printed some jigsaw pieces I had no idea what I'll do with them but had great fun in the process

 And some card stock

 And some potential mail art

 And then said 12 year old 'borrowed' some to make a Father's Day card

Can't wait to find the next colour scheme!  Thank you Kristin!

COLLABOR-ART CJ UPDATE

Again for those who haven't seen this on the Collabor-art blog, I've just completed my entry into Sonja's CJ having great fun using my gelli plate.

There were still plenty of tracks that I love to choose from and so I set too listening to the CD and perusing the book, it didn't take much to decide on the Gun track Don't Say It's Over from the track list.

The CJ is based on a chipboard page with an envelope attached and I wondered if I could do something a little 'different' with the envelope.  So gelli plate at the ready I set too.  I had a fab morning playing journalling etc to create this entry, background gelli plate and music and star stamps, images and masking tape, leaving enough 'blank space' hopefully for future additions.

The back of the page looks like this, again Gelli plate.

I opened the envelope up, gelli plated it (this is becoming a habit), reinforced the 'tear off' strip of the envelope (which didn't survive the gelli plate due to it's perforations) with black card, hand stamped the track name, attached the gun image, masking tape and an off cut of scrapbook paper and felt me 

work here was done!

In addition to this page I 'added' to the entries already in the book in the spirit of collaboration, if you fancy seeing more of the collaborative work that we've been doing, or even fancy joining in, check our the blog - here