My Competition Entry for Gulfsprite Class

You may have already seen my mentioning my fabulous class '30 pages in 90 days' I am taking with Christy Sobolewski at http://gulfspritesartjournal.ning.com/ above is my latest page finished just yesterday, we are now on page 20 - all the students in the class are finding this sad, as we are getting closer to day 30 and we have loved our daily lessons so much we dont want them to end.

I cannot tell you just how much I have learnt about art journal process and mixed media in this class - every day has been a new technique and new process to learn.  Each page we do takes 3 lessons, and sometimes there is even a bonus page included.

You too can take this class, but not until June 1st when it opens again - you will not be alone as most of us will miss it so much we intend to start all over again so we will enjoy your company, and I'm sure Christy will be there too to lend further encouragement.
One of the other great things about this class is the teaching itself, fun and fresh and gives such a wonderful light approach, though at the same time professional - Christy has a superb knack of spreading her cheery self to others and making us all feel great for the day, whilst thoroughly enjoying each class.  This class could not have arrived at a better time for me, as many of you know it was at a time of great sadness for me, and helped to take me through those times and keep me focused.  It can be found here http://gulfspritesartjournal.ning.com/.

Last but not least.  By joining this site http://gulfspritesartjournal.ning.com/ you can even take FREE classes to enable you to see how you enjoy the teachings. Above is the Scrapy Journal I made at the FREE class offered by Christy, there are others too.  If Art Journal is not your thing there are other courses on painting faces, which is another class I do (when I can find some time) this too can teach a lot about how to paint faces using mixed media, though unlike me I would recommend you take class I first!  Thats the one I want, along with all the rest on offer.
This blog post is my entry to Christy's giveaway, in which I could win another of her fabulous classes - how cool is that? I could take the painted faces I class, or the other journal classes ... how on earth would I choose?

just having arty fun

So much for keeping up with the blog! Its ten days since my last post.  Far too busy having fun.  Above is one of my recent pages from my "30 pages in 90 days" course with Gulfsprite.  I did this one last week to celebrate my birthday, we made the whole page ourselves first, its not collage stuck to a page, all the students are sad as we are just passed half way in the course, we love it so much we dont want it to end.  My birthday was good, the photo shows me opening my 'gelli plate' that I have wanted since January when all my pals in the USA had them, we now cannot get the larger one in the UK which is a shame, and to order from the States would be another £13 in postage and £18 in customs fee's so totally priced out.  But still, a smaller one is better than none at all, and I am having plenty of fun with that.
Also featured in my page was my very special gift from my best friend Julie, who painted a portrait of my dear Alfie, she is very talented.
I was also lucky enough to receive a few extra pennies so I could order some faber castell pencils, here is my first sketch with them I did last night.

I have been having a lot of fun with page 16 of our '30 pages in 90 days' course, its 'fabric paper' I am totally covered in ink and matt medium, and glue gun.  The glue from the glue gun is from something else though, one of my blog buddies 'Suztats' http://suztats.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/fun-with-gun.html was making stencils with the glue gun yesterday, I kept meaning to have a go at that one, so had a go earlier, I think I might need a bit more practice.... but it was fun.

Another reason I havent done much blogging is I was injured, found out my acute shoulder pain has been a trapped nerve, so I finally did some research on how to sort that one out, should (and may well) do a blog post on that one, as learnt some very interesting facts on how to sort out my shoulder without too much expense or delay.  I'm half way there, at least I can spend a bit more time on the PC now than I could.

Hope everyone in the UK has stayed safe after the dreadful winds we have had, one of my neighbours woke to a damaged car today.
Also much love to our friends in Boston after the terrible bomb attack, and to those in Texas from the  explosion there.  So much sadness in the world just now....

Never Enough Hours ....

Never Enough Hours in the day!! that is my motto.  I think with Alfie's illness I forgot to mention I managed to obtain my first CUSTOM CARD ORDER !!! How exciting is that? .. and for 20 cards, certainly kept me busy this week.  I couldn't understand were all my time was going, then I worked out with Alfie being on lead walks only, my total dog walking hours per day has now doubled to 4 hours a day, he is not so fast either and we do a lot of stopping.  Once you add the usual household stuff to that, and that 'sleep' thing one is meant to do - very little free time in a day left.

My intention was to do so many cards for the order and one for the Etsy shop, best laid plans and all that.. I had all on managing one or two cards per day.  Having said that, I have also started a new art course with Gulfsprint, called '30 pages in 90 days' the idea is I can actually keep up with this one, but I seem to be getting behind already, the thing is I am enjoying the course so much that is all I really want to be doing - you can find details on Christy's ning site here http://gulfspritesartjournal.ning.com/ though registration is now closed for this particular course until the end of May.

Whoops, managed to digress again... anyway, I have finally finished said card order, just need to stick the 'made by SimJaTa' stickers on the back of them all (today's task was sorting those out, from design to print), slot in the card inserts and post off to customer - as you can see by two of the cards shown, she is a fellow dog lover, but requested a selection of cards so they are not actually ALL doggie ones, there is a selection of varying topics and some suitable for males too, so hopefully she will be happy.

If anyone finds out were that time thief is hiding out, please let me know - I could really do with at least another 8 or so extra hours per day to catch up...