Wherever you go...

Oh my...it's the 8th already and I'd hoped to have posted by now.... so my first piece for this month Art Journal Journey is just a simple digital page. The fun theme this month is 'Polka-Dots, Stripes, Plaids or Patterns'  aka 'PSPP' and is hosted by the lovely Erika of BIOARTGal

  My head has been a bit all over the place for the last couple of weeks nothing serious - and hopefully a good thing. I've been wanting to move home, away from here for a while and now hubby is on board with this idea too we are investigating the where to etc etc... having lived here for over 20 years its a big thing to think about....

I did start a page on the 1st and then I saw that the previous collaged/painted double pages in my journal of the Blackbird from August was going to stick together* if I flattened the book in my book press - so it needed a coating of candle (does everyone do this I wonder or have other methods? - I rub the side of a candle over finished pages to try to stop that* happening) .... but then I couldn't find the candles...anyhow... I've since found a candle, flattened and gessoed  the page eventually after finding my old Gesso dried up... and for now I'm having a mental block....arghhh....  :)

 

I needed to make a card...  and because I now keep rough stamped copies of previous cards on paper that I can put in my stamping platform it makes it easier to reproduce again if need be.. this is so useful when having a mental block..

and the Altenew 'watercolour doodles' are fairly quick with the layering system and adds colour quickly and this design is a loose design with the colours going over the lines to give an arty hand coloured look.

Thanks for stopping by...

hope your weekend is going well...

will catch up with you soon.

Gill x

we're all loving the summer flowers

Hello

At last.. I am back in blogland.... so I must join in at my favourite place              
 AJJ and the 'we're all/going theme'     which is hosted this month by
 Chris from pearshapedcrafting    
This is a mix in my A5 journal of stamps by Altenew, distress ink and some digital additions.

     

This was my original stamped page

I don't like the heat at this time of year but I do love the flowers the sunshine/heat brings.
Every year we wonder will it be the year our cactus flowers - it's the sort that blooms over night and lasts a day or two at the most. This summer it has had four flowers - three almost all at once and then about 3 days later another single flower - this is probably the most flowers its had in nearly 40 years - yes 40 years!

Our two Nisperos/Loquat trees - have had the most fruit ever. Although  one of the trees probably had half a dozen fruits only, the other one made up for that. This tree isn't native to the UK so its just luck and our climate here on the Essex coast that probably helped.

Its hard to explain how this fruit tastes  - maybe like a mix of peach, apricot, lime and something tropical - quite an intense flavour - but really lovely. Dave has blanched, sliced and froze some to save for the winter. There's still a lot left on the tree to pick which hopefully are still edible and not all pecked by the birds :)

And the reason why the fruit is a bit battered looking is probably because the trees have attracted a lot of birds. This time of the year there are a lot of young birds about and the black birds appear to use our garden as a kindergarten and leave them with us to look watch over and they repay us by devouring the fruit ha ha :)

The Hebe has a mass of white flowers

We had a lot of  Foxgloves - all freebies that have seeded from somewhere else and blown into our garden - what  a lovely treat - I love them and so do the bees :)

And I had a lovely surprise; there was a young squirrel in the garden 

and he kindly came up to the door and posed for me.

That's all from me for this time.

Thanks so much for visting here.

Happy Sunday.

Gill x