Unwinding?

 

says I, almost a week into my Sabbatical.

(One of the things I am doing is trying to express myself in an arty way when I am not really an artist, just giving it a bash and hoping to learn via mistakes. This is done with Inktense pencils) (And a brush pen. Phil hates it when I use a brush pen "looks like you held the pen with your foot" he says. I like the wobbly writing aesthetic myself).

For someone for whom this is oh so true

I have done a remarkable amount of washing and ironing and putting away and sorting this week. I have the chance to be still and am fidgeting about like anything.

But more on that later...
first it is Friday and that means Daring Cardmakers Day! And it is the first Friday of the month which means there is a colour challenge

I knew exactly what I wanted to do and also had the perfect 6x6 paper pad to go with it - Basic Grey Wisteria.
Except
1) I don't anymore. It was either all used up (I did like it) or went in the great purge of 2012 when we moved
AND
2) the colours that you see above are not the colours I saw on my screen or printed out. I saw a lot more brown and cream and a darker purple

So this is what I came up with after searching through every single piece of paper that I own - because I don't have much purple

Some purple and lilac cardstock; a brown paper from Costco, die cut into a feather shape, stamped with PTI ink dots, emboseed and then covered in glue and mica flakes; some Pink Paislee embossed card stock inked with Distress Ink and die cut; some cream cardstock embossed with a Maggie Holmes folder; some lace and a love die cut covered in mica flakes. (Dies are all Clearly Besotted)
Oh and some pearls
And some very old letter stickers. No-one can tell that the last letter is actually an "n" because of my two sets of these stickers I have used all 24 "h"'s but still have many vowels left so don't want to discard them, can they?
Good.

So what have I done this week apart from nesting? Well I have started thinking about pilgrimage - I read a murder mystery which included the Pilgrim's Prayer from those travelling to Santiago de Compostela which I thought I ought to have in the beginning of my watercolour journal

(that is supposed to be the Pilgrim's shell - a sign that you are a pilgrim).

Then in my diary journal I have prepared some pages and written reflections of my day

I suspect I will end up adding black pen to all of them as I prefer that. Might be something to do on the long ferry ride I have coming up

And I have also begun reading a book on mindfulness and trying out the exercises in my other journal

Why have one journal when you can have three on the go - that is what I say.



And then there is the layout hinted at earlier

 Here is one of those lovely subconscious things. I had decided that I wanted to use Basic Grey lollipop shoppe papers with this photo because they are fun and colourful and I still had a lot left despite them being just about the first set of scrapbooking papers I ever bought. And it took until I was sticking everything down to realise just what a perfect match the colours are. Wierd eh?


The backround paper is Heidi Swapp resist which I gave a wash of pink distress ink to and added lots of splodges of black ink and distressed everything to the hilt, adding some Kaisercraft stamps in as well.
I die cut some leaves using some Clearly Besotted dies and glitter paper. Some of the leaves were colour green using a Chalk mist.
Random different letters/words for the title (including some Tim Holtz word fetti stuff) and some October Afternoon stickers, some gems and enamel hearts and I was done.
And so is this epic post!