T Stands For The Start Of Our Trip To Paris

Hi everyone, I missed you last week. Our journey home took longer than expected thanks to Avanti West Coast trains!

Our journey to Paris went very well though! 

We had time to have lunch at The Hansom at St Pancras Station.

It is somewhere I have wanted to go to for a while but usually we only have time for a quick snack.

It was quite a warm day so we both chose salads - mine was my favourite Caesar and hubby had Niçoise. We shared a pot of fries. We both opted for water as our drinks and it is these I am sharing at T Stands For Tuesday at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's Altered Book Lover blog.

It is quite a grand place as it used to be part the entrance for the station and is accessed from the station from the old booking office which is a rather grander restaurant. 

We had a good journey to Paris and when we arrived had lovely welcome from the receptionist

In our hotel room there was a lovely, surprising welcome from the manager.

She had written us a lovely welcome note and left us some chocolates.

We saved them until Easter Day and can report that they are delicious. 

We had a good catch up the next day before setting off on a very long walk.

Here is the view from our room.

We took a better photo of this at ground level - it is part of an art trail and this particular wall art changes every year.

This is on the opposite side of the road

I love to look out over the rooftops - were on the fourth floor of the six storey hotel

The roof garden at the centre of this photo fascinates me. The owner has added new things over the years.

Here is a close up I took a few years ago. 

That's all for now.

Next time I will tell you about our long walk.

Thanks for looking, Chris

A very late Calendar journal page

Hi everyone, as you can see I am very much in catch up mode.

I totally forgot to make my calendar journal page before we went away - I wrote down notes so that I could fill it in.

It does mean though, that I was able to use some things from our trip on the pages.

When we order coffee in Paris it usually comes with sugar, (we do sometimes remember to say we don't need any) I know it only gets thrown away if we don't use it so I always drop the sachets in my bag. This year some got used up on some very tart lemon crepes that we ordered. 

The violets are new Paper Artsy stamps by Alison Bomber (of Words and Pictures blog)They always make me think of my Gran, whose birthday was in April - she loved them.

The backing for the left hand corner is a Gelli print practice piece and also has magazine pics and some corrugated wrapping paper.

I hope I have recycled enough for Elizabeth's Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose' theme at Art Journal Journey

I intended adding more flowers to last months pages but when I looked at the photo I had taken I saw that I didn't get around to colouring them in!

Thanks for looking, I'll be back with some photos of Paris soon, Chris

  

 

Tagging my recycling!

 Hi everyone, we are back from our travels. We had six days in Paris then one day at home before a round trip of around 170 miles to attend my uncle's funeral. He had lived a happy life until his last few months when illness set in. While it was not a happy occasion his instructions were 'not to be sad'. All of us there shared our memories of him and it was good to chat to aunts and cousins as well as my brother and his wife. After our shopping trip today we have had a relaxing afternoon.

For Art Journal Journey and Bleubeard and Elizabeth's theme 'Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose' I have reused two old tags.

I covered the whole page with old receipts to begin with.

I added some green paint randomly over the page then repeat stamped  onto the page, I added some arrows to the tags and then stamped them around the edges of the page. The tags were stuck to the page....done!!

Thanks for looking, Chris

 

Hello Spring

 Hi everyone, I really do hope that this title rings true, I am so ready for some Spring sunshine! We have a new theme at Try It On Tuesday - 'Hello Spring' 

The Design Team are ready for Spring too, please take look here!

I started my journal page with some spritzed green inks, I added some leaves with paint through a stencil then added some torn up scraps of leafy napkin tissue. The Carabelle Studio, Birgit Koopsen Tulips were stamped, coloured with Promarkers and cut out.

The quote is from a Paper Artsy by Alison Bomber, mounted onto yellow and green paper.

I hope you will welcome Spring with our 'Hello Spring' theme this time at TIOT. I look forward to seeing what you create.

Thanks for looking, Chris 

Update - I have no idea why this didn't schedule but couldn't do anything about it until we got back from Paris, which unfortunately, thanks to Avanti West Coast was a lot later than we intended being home. We had a little lie in this morning!

Loving my greens!

Hi everyone, I have another page for Art Journal Journey where The Altered Book Lover's Bleubeard and Elizabeth (I'm sure Elizabeth is getting some help from Bleubeard) have the theme - 'Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose'

I had some quite ugly gelli printed paper and the final piece of a  designer paper.

I looked through a little scraps bag and found the book paper heart and the dictionary paper, then another bag turned up the receipt from our trip to Avignon (No, I don't throw much away!), the piece of stamped Crafty Individual paper (the rest didn't stamp well) and the map hearts.

I stamped, added some random water colours and fussy cut a stamp I bought at Version Scrap in Paris last year and added a Crafty Individuals diamond stamp with part of a background stamp that has been separated from the sheet!

Finally everything was spattered with black distress ink that I dabbed with a tissue so it wasn't too black.

By now we should be home(briefly, as we have to drive 100 miles to a funeral this week)

Thanks for looking, Chris

Storage page

 Hi everyone, I have a rather unusual journal page today, it is pasted onto a cereal box.

I have purchased quite a few stencils over the years and one cereal box wasn't enough so when we emptied one recently I set to to decorate another.

Here it is with my reorganised stencils

I decorated the back too 

I used lots of scraps of papers I decorated in the past, along with some scraps of leftover designer paper, some under paper from spray box, birthday cards, magazine images, wrapping paper and a Tim Holtz small talk sticker.

Elizabeth's theme at Art Journal Journey is 'Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose'. 

A lot of these items would have ended up in the bin if I hadn't 'rescued' them - I am slowly getting through my scrap mountain!

Thanks for looking, Chris

Recycle

 Hi everyone, we have a new theme at Art Journal Journey today.  We also have a new host, Elizabeth of The Altered Book Lover, who I am sure will be helped along through the month by lovely Bleubeard!

She has chosen 'Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose' as her theme.

Huge thanks to Valerie who gave us some freedom of choice in our subject matter and I guess that as long as we remember to do some recycling etc. along the way Elizabeth will be kind to us and let us choose a little too!

For my first page I have recycled a lot!

The page was sprinkled with Paper Artsy Infusions and spritzed. I used a tag I made back in January, I added some ink to the tag which was mainly white. I used some chocolate paper that had had some of the foil ripped off. When I added the coffee pack die cut it looked a bit lost, I had scrap of red dot tissue that once I added it defined the die cut more.

I added a couple of US postage stamps. A mini brick stamp by Paper Artsy gave some texture around the edges and just for fun I added some spatters.

 

I hope you can join us at AJJ this month with your 'Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose' pages.

Thanks for looking, Chris