Susanna

And as soon as I finished watching Blue, I started Susanna! They are like short stories - they only take a small amount of your time, yet, they are completely immersive. Seeing Anna Paquin in this has reminded me that we must catch up on True Blood - we're way behind. Hey, come to think of it, why don't they have True Blood on Netflix? I feel I've run out of things to watch there - I tried Being Erica, and I tried Drop Dead Diva, they are fun, but they lack depth.

Blue

Just finished watching Season 2 of Blue. I wish they had stuff as good as this on Netflix!

Silhouette

Thanks to an understanding husband who walked the dog on his own twice today, I got a bit of time to play with my toys: my Gelli Plate, a Gyro-cut, cheap acrylic paint from the Art & Hobby shop and some Dealz stencils. And a photo of a woman from a magazine... She was confident and sassy and I liked the look of her. 

So, thank you BB!

Siobhan Ryan - 20 November - black lace top and black dress

Maybe I'm not watching the weather as much as I used to? Or maybe there haven't been many new outfits?

Anyways, here is one for you:

Labels and Envelopes

I've been printing labels and envelopes to match my art journals. Not the most exciting video, but I find that video shows the colours much better than pictures. Strange that. Or maybe not. I know nothing about photography. Maybe there is a good explanation.

Only watch this if you have 2.38 minutes to spare. Life is too short!

Another art journal

I've now got 3 journals ready to work with! No excuses!

Art Journal

Another video. Another art journal. With lovely soundtrack by my husband!!



One day I will add pictures and text to these journals. For now, I'm just happy to look at the not-quite-blank pages.

Art Journal Video

I told you I don't like the sound of my voice, didn't I? I couldn't bear to watch my first video because of that. So, this time, I used captions instead. With a soundtrack by Chris Zabriskie, which I got from the Free Music Archive.

Gravity

Wheiii - Went to a movie! A 3D movie even!

Gravity, with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, is well worth the hour and a half of your time. He's an experienced astronaut on his last space walk. She's a  specialist of some sort on her first space mission. She's done the training. But she doesn't feel comfortable in space.




Something goes wrong. Very wrong. It's just the two of them. In space. Alone. How to survive? How to get home?

A simple story, in a way. But it looks fantastic too. And it doesn't have the annoying Hollywood long introduction and wrapping-up sections. So it just tells the central story, nothing else. And you're grateful for it. That's all you need. That's all you want.

And for those of you who are more interested in the technical details, check out this page and Wikipedia.

Glenveagh National Park

I was going through a few photos this morning, and I decided to put them together into a little slideshow of Glenveagh National Park. It's nice to look back at the summer we had - Today is a grey, cold, November day. But it will be Christmas before you know it!

(Sorry for the abrupt ending to the music!)

Colourful Bubble Wrap

I had a lot of fun printing these. I know they are a bit shapeless, but the colours make me very happy.

Malice or Incompetence

I did say I would try a video to show you my journal pages. I'm starting small. Plus I don't like to watch big long videos on YouTube - life is too short, as far as I'm concerned.

The only problem is that I don't like my voice. But I'll get over it, hopefully!

Timber at Killiney Beach

Pooh Bear Battle

Timber had a wonderful time at the beach on Monday. And afterwards, he got to play tug with Stan!

Asthma life expectancy

Good to know that the life expectancy of a mild asthma sufferer is the same as that of someone without asthma!: http://www.healthcentral.com/asthma/c/52325/70734/interesting-asthma/

More Art Journals - Work in progress

Art Journals

Instead of cleaning my brayer on a scrap piece of paper after applying it to the Gelli plate, I've started rolling it onto sketchbooks. The resulting colours make a perfect background for journal pages.

On this one, I simply added doodles and writing with a white pen and a few lines with a black marker. A great way to unwind at the end of the day or if you're in a conference call that goes on for too long!

My baby

He's the sweetest dog! And he currently weighs over 27 kg!

Gelli print journal

What happens when you have lots and lots of gelli prints and you don't know what to do with them? You start looking for inspiration. My search led me to this lovely page. I didn't feel like I had the energy to go the whole way to assembling a proper bound book, but I found some sites that show the steps for binding pages together using a simple stitching method. Stitching I can do. And that was definitely worth a try. All I needed was an awl. Well, I didn't even know the word in English until three days ago! But our local DIY store sold them and it was only €3.99 (it's "poinçon" in French in case you're wondering)

I still have a lot to figure out - like maybe binding the pages together before I print on them, so that the patterns work across the spine. And maybe I will go to the next stage where you glue booklets together and even make a proper hard cover. I'm not good with glue.So it's baby steps for now.

Over the weekend, I made a couple of booklets that I will be using for art journaling and collages, all set with pretty gelli-printed backgrounds. So let's focus on that.

The next step for me is to figure out a way to photographs these booklets in a way that shows them at their best. Maybe a little video will do the trick?

Here is the cover of the one I stitched at the weekend. That alone was worth my while, I think.




And the centre-page, which shows the stitches nicely:

And a few other pages:

And some that maybe are not so good, but once I've journalled into them will probably work out ok:

And the final page, which I think is particularly lovely:

Timber

He does keep us busy!