T Stands For.....the Mans attraction!

 Hi everyone, here we are and it's almost February - we are well on our way to Spring now!

I feel that the title to this post should be - 'We Don't Get out Much' as last week only included a brisk walk around a park close by to where we were shopping, too cold to stop and take photos of the snowdrops we saw, the derelict pond and scruffy gardens - not much to see but we did get a walk. We kept a couple of appointments and I did go to visit my friends (see the previous post to see what we did)

I have a chance to show you my photos from our visit to Le Mans though. I looked forward to seeing Le Mans and I must say on a sunny day back in September it was every bit as good as I expected it to be.

Our first call was to go for lunch and I am joining Bleubeard and Elizabeth for T Stands For Tuesday (all you need is a drink related item in your post to join the rest of the T gang)

We had water to drink and I attempted a shot of the glasses with the jug with the Mairie behind.

The lunch time Formule menu was quite varied for the price - some we look at only have a choice of 2 or 3

The top of the menu states that this menu is only served Monday to Friday lunchtimes except on public holidays. It is mainly for workers. If you know me you will know which dessert I went for!

Hubby chose a Chocolate Liégoise and I of course chose the Café Liégoise. You can also see that as well as water I had a tonic water with lemon.

It was then time to go and explore.

We went over the bridge to reach the cathedral

There was a plan of the cathedral which indicated important areas

The main thing I wanted to see was one of the oldest stained glass windows in Europe and one that I knew Henry and Eleanor would had seen themselves

As we left a guide was saying goodbye to a group he had been showing round the Cathedral - I commented that we had enjoyed our visit and that I was happy to see the window that HenryII and Eleanor  would have seen and he then started to tell us lots of other things about the Cathedral - a kind of English/French conversation that we have become used to, being helped out with unfamiliar words on both sides! He also told us things to look out for in the Cité Plantagenet.

Hubby took this photo of me with what he calls my Cheshire Cat grin after the man had gone back into the Cathedral

We set off down the cobbled streets.

The same street but two different signs, named after Richard 1's wife who lived in Le Mans until her death

Following the guide's directions we found what is left of the old palace - now council buildings

Sadly not a lot of the original building remains.

We walked back to the bus stop passing Le Mans railway station on the way.

The front has lots of photos of the Le Mans 24 hour race.

I would be happy to revisit Le Mans one day.

Thanks for looking, Chris 

Cutting and Sticking and then some!!!!

 Hi everyone! Last week I went with my friend Helen to cheer up our friend Sarah who has had a really bad chest infection since before Christmas. We have made several visits. Sometimes we do some art journaling sometimes not but when we went on Thursday Sarah had been trying something new that she had seen on Instagram. It looked great so we decided to have a go and made a start during the afternoon. I finished my first zine on Thursday night while watching TV. 

Well, I am ever so slightly addicted!!! So much so that I decided to make something for Art Journal Journey and Erika's 'It's On The Calendar' theme.

I started by folding a piece of copy paper into 8 (just for guidelines) then collaged one half lengthways before turning it upside down to complete it. I used images and dates from an old calendar along with some designer pages, music paper, book text, a doily, some paper flowers some gel prints  - in fact just a lot of things that I have kept in a box for a very long time!

Here is this years calendar - very similar style to last years

Next I made a photo copy and folded that into eight, folded it in half widthways and cut the centre line between the 2nd and 3rd fold 

This way it folds into six inner pages and front and back covers. The real collage elements make it difficult to fold. I will cut them up and add more bits to them to make some journal fodder

At this stage you can leave it or do as I did and glue the pages together

So here it is - you will see that I need to look more carefully at the way the zine folds as the dates are not in the sequence!

I find it quite funny to notice that the words say something like - have  -   taken -   your mind  - my way - naturally,  although of course that is not a sentence and I'm not totally sure that is a correct translation!

Here is a quick look at the first zine I made

As you can see I used up quite a few scraps.

Oh and I have started another!

Thanks for looking,Chris