T stands for….Tea!!!!!

Well, it's time to join Bleubeard and Elizabeth for T stands for  Tuesday and there's a header title you never thought you would see!

First though can I say my mood is much brighter today, the sun has been shining and I have had(almost)a day in my craft room! 

I am actually allergic to tea (must be the tannin!) so I am a coffee drinker mainly! The tea I am talking about though is not from tea bush tea but the Rooibos plant!

This time…and maybe a few more to come, I am drinking Rooibos tea! 

So…now Elizabeth has had time to pick herself from the floor…I'll tell you why!
There is a new shop opened at the top of our road! One or two of our neighbours have been and enjoyed their visit
Last week after watching 'Manchester By The Sea' in town (well worth a watch btw!)we got off the bus and went inside!
I explained that I didn't drink tea and the lady there showed me the range of Rooibos teas and offered to make me a Arabica coffee blend! Hubby had an Irish breakfast tea!
I asked if I could take photos for 'T Stands for Tuesday'(she got very excited about the name)

Lots of lovely cups and pots.

 Herbal teas

Black teas

Here you can see both of our drinks. We bought some to take home as well as some Moringa oil which had been recommended to us by my friend Sarah and is supposed to be really good for easing arthritis…we shall see…
We have been for a few walks but I think I will leave those for another time!

We have seen signs of Spring though, so will be out again looking this week!

We had to move my Amaryliss from the window sill as we couldn't close the curtains!
Just to catch up with my planner here are the last two weeks

I am beginning to enjoy drawing more! The turquoise flowers are one stamped and the rest drawn and the black and white flower is a rub on extended with my doodles.
As you can see I am still tidying but today has seen most of it done so ..although I forgot to take many 'before' pics I will share some next week of how I got on!

Thanks for looking, Chrisx

Timed out!

Today has been a bit of a disaster! We had a plan to meet up with son and grandchildren after church and go out for lunch. A poor beginning as I'm afraid I wasn't very receptive of the visiting minister's presentation technique!
The service however was quite a short one and we were on track for our lunch! 
We decided to travel little further than at first planned to visit a place where we had a good meal once before! On arrival we were told that there would be a two hour wait for a table! (I had tried to book a table and a recorded message had told me that they didn't take bookings!) As by then it was almost 2p.m. and we usually eat around 1.15 we decided to do what many were doing and find somewhere else! 
The site we were on had nine other eateries. We went to chain we are familiar with - a wait offered of forty-five minutes! As we could order drinks and have a salad bowl once we had our table we chose to wait! Luckily it was only a twenty minute wait! There were quite a few empty tables when we arrived so I take it that the problem was in the kitchen!
The food when it arrived was not the usual standard and hubby and I left a good portion of ours.We heard that some food was off the menu!

Of course with eating so late we didn't get home very early either so no crafting time to finish something off! Yes, I am a grumpy old woman, so I do apologise of this rant!  
What I do have are a couple of things I am working on..

A mop up page - mainly stencils from a gelli plate play...

…to which I added some mop up tissues, doily edges, and some spotty tissue! 
I have added a little bit more to this but had hoped to finish it this afternoon!
I also have this stamped page that I intend doodling and colouring into - may sit in front of the TV with this tonight!

  
I would like to thank you for continuing to visit my blog and leaving such encouraging comments! I hope that I have nearly caught up with blog visits and my craft room is almost ready for me to have some more fun in! I am actually labelling boxes properly this time!

Thanks for looking, Chris 

"There's a shade of red for every woman"

I loved Audrey Hepburn and have quite a few quotes attributed to her! I wasn't so sure on this one, as I would say I don't wear red very often - then I looked in my wardrobe - rust..tick, cerise…tick, scarlet…tick,maroon..tick I could probably go on as I have lots of patterned items with red in them! So, Audrey was right! 

I made this spread in my small moleskine.
Still trying to use up scraps so the page was first covered with lots of torn up bits! I painted over everything with some quinacradine gold.

 The Graphic 45 lady is painted with watered down red paint.I added some washi tape, a TH ticket, and an image from a brochure.

I would like to enter in Linda's theme 'Fifty shades of Red' at Art Journal Journey. With my musical background and image I can also join in at Moo Mania and more as the theme this time is 'Music' 

I am getting close to the end of my BIG tidy so more time for crafting and walks I hope!

Thanks for looking, Chris 

T stands for ………taking a walk….

…but before I start I will show you  card I made for a friend!

 Used some Paper Artsy Infusions (once again!) onto watercolour paper. While it dried I stamped Darcy's heart flowers onto smooth stamping card and coloured them with some quite ancient Tombow pens.
I masked off the small flower and stamped the stem and stamens before sticking down the flowers! A little bit of Dusty Concord DI around the edges…. The card I used was a pale pink one so I used some Picked Raspspberry DI to colour the front before mounting.

Just a little reminder that Try It On Tuesday's challenge 'Hearts and Flowers' still has another week for you to take part if you wish!

Now…our walk. As we have been spending some time at home lately we have been exploring our local area. We usually walk along by the river but hubby had been out on his own (while I was doing the BIG tidy)and found somewhere neither of us been before. We started our walk by the river and then came up to the road crossed over and went down in to a little spinney. There was a sort of stream…

Both sides from the little bridge.

The path was quite muddy in parts

There were a few benches along the way but we did not sit on them!!

We often drive along the road that is past the bollards

 We could have turned here to go through to the village but chose to carry on along the path.

We had been walking on part of the Trans-Pennine trail that goes from one side of the country to the other.

Lovely signs of Spring on it's way!!

There's that road again - we were heading in the direction of home…almost…we decided on another detour!

We crossed over the road that led directly home and carried on parallel to the road before turning off and cutting through a beautiful quiet road. We will go back another day later on in Spring to show you what I think will be quite pretty!

I showed you my new planner the other week - here are another couple of pages.

My Amaryllis is almost ready to flower!

Sadly only one stem but I am looking forward to seeing it!

Finally..do I hear you say "At Last!"?
We are here for T Stands For Tuesday with Bluebeard and Elizabeth.

I'm afraid it's another shot of our coffee mugs…

 ...quite welcome when we got back after our walk - it took us just over an hour.

Thanks for looking, Chris

Pink and orange makes..

….well, a relaxing time for a start! It also makes a page for the Paper Artsy challenge - which is almost at the deadline!
I started this page a while ago with the intention of it being for the challenge, then started on the big tidy!
I kept looking at it but I had forgotten my original inspiration and idea. It was only when I saw Tracy's page last night that I felt able to go back to it, except I wasn't that happy with the background so last night before bedtime I painted an old gazetteer page with Bougainvillea and Autumn Fire Fresco paints. Today I stamped Lin's leaves then chose one of my favourite Hot Picks stamps and just had fun with pens and stickles. I love Tracy's idea of scribbling around the flower!

I inked the edges of the paper and added a TH chit chat sticker.

So, entering into 

Paper Artsy challenge Topic 1 - Pink and Orange
and …because the flowers are red…
Art Journal Journey - 50 shades of Red

Thanks for looking, Chris

Red sky!

I am almost at the end of my big tidy in my craft room although I have now decided that I probably need to look into some of the boxes that hold ephemera from some of our trips….I could be a while!!

As my desk was quite clear (and hubby was watching a very old Western on TV) I decided to make a journal page!

There are couple of challenges that I would like to enter too!

It's in one of my A6 journals. I used a combination of water colour and Paper Artsy Infusions to make the background and stamped the swirly stems from Lavinia Stamps and then PA's Elenazinskiart leaf.
After colouring them in with some ancient Tombow pens I added some PA Pearl Glaze over the leaf and flowers.
They are 'standing' on a piece of tape that I had transferred some paint I had used up on some black paper. I tore the tape to get a rough edge. I added some Hickory Smoke DI around the page. Finally, some black paint spatters and the words from 2 different Sarah Naumann sets.

I would like to enter in

Art Journal Journey's new challenge 'Fifty Shades Of Red', chosen by LindaK

A Vintage Journey where the new challenge is Words That Are Special- I have combined two words as both of these are relevant to how I make my journal pages!

Craft Stamper - Take It - Make It Challenge  - Anything Goes 

Thanks for looking. Chris 

My calendar journal and Second on the 2nd

At least I am only late for my calendar journal! I am trying so hard to be done with sorting my craft room by the end of this week and I totally forgot about it!
Here is January all filled in - I have tried to keep it simple  this time.

Here is February's page all ready for this short month.

I will add to this over the month.

One thing I didn't forget was something for Elizabeth's Second on the 2nd post.

I have gone back to the beginning of February 2013

FRIDAY, 1 FEBRUARY 2013

January,February 365 calendar journal

Here is my February page. I know, I've got a bit of a romance theme here 
but why not?!
I love taking part in this challenge, hosted by the amazing Kate Crane at the Kathrynwheel - although I very nearly didn't - my journal went missing -  for days - I won't bore you with the tale, but if you want to read about what happened it's here

I used my favourite(for the moment) distress ink Picked raspberry dabbed onto my craft mat and rubbed on with a baby wipe - I don't think I've ever used a wipe to apply ink but I wanted a lighter swirly look. I then 

sprayed my stencils with water and dabbed them onto the paper and quickly pressed paper towel over to dry up the water - I love this effect! Then 

more stencilling by dabbing on PR again with a sponge. The dancing lady 

is a Crafty Individuals stamp(sorry don't know the number) and the rose is an old Elusive Images stamp with the buds stamped again at the bottom - I coloured this in using distress markers.

Here are my completed January pages

We are taking a break at our caravan at the moment, this is the first year the site been open all year round and now that hubby is retired it would have been rude not to come wouldn't it? There are only about five being 

used at the moment(probably more will come tonight) It is a very small 

site - none of that big entertainment centre nonsense and I'm being distracted by the birds right outside my window - Mr Robin pushing the others out of the way!!

Thanks for looking, Chris

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As you may see I was sorting out my craft room then too - clearly a never-ending task!
I also see that I used the same alphabet stamps then too - they are my favourites!

Thanks for looking, Chris