ArtyFartyAnnie

Hello Bloggy Friends, This month Life Book has been all about "Growth and Transformation". In the lesson for Week 34, the lovely Roben-Marie Smith  showed us how to create a beautiful abstract picture of flowers in a pot, using a combination of collage, paint and other media to build up layers of colour and texture. Although I love pictures of flowers, they never seem to work out well for me, but I did enjoy the process and picked up some new ideas and techniques along the way. Here's how it came out ... To start my collage, I used some gorgeous papers from two of my Life Book friends which they sent to me when we swapped ATCs a while back - there's a beautiful gelli print from Zsuzsa which I used to create the magenta/blue flowers, and some lovely painted music score paper from Mychele which I used for some of the leaves. It was really cool to be able to incorporate some art from my friends into a piece of my own. I also love the look of the collaged...

Hello Everyone, It's a lovely long weekend here in the UK, as we have a Bank Holiday Monday woooHOOOO!!! The weather's not up to much, but that suits me, as I plan to spend some time playing in my room - first I want to catch up on a Life Book lesson I missed, then I want to do some scrapping as I have a delicious new Quirky Kit to play with. My kind of weekend :o) This week on LifeBook we had a Bonus Lesson - a "mash-up" with LB creator Tamara Laporte and her good friend Jane Davenport in Australia. Their styles are very different and it was interesting to watch them work together on the same piece to create an integrated whole. Tam encouraged us to free up our creativity by trying a new style and using limited supplies. I chose to be inspired by Jane's style, determined to use only what is in my pen case, and since it was Friday night at the beginning of a long weekend, I decided to further liberate my creativity by doing most of my painting under the i...

Hello Bloggers and Fellow Deskers, My working hours have changed, so my Wednesdays are not what they used to be - but the lovely LLJ has very kindly offered to link up for me so I don't have to miss my weekly dose of snouting round other people's workdesks and still get to show you what I've been up to this week. If you would like to join us, please pop over to Julia's Stamping Ground and click on Mr Linky. I've been crafting in the garden again today, making the most of the summer while I can - as I type this at 8.30 on Tuesday evening, darkness is already falling and there are tiny bats flitting about outside, where only a couple of hours ago I was playing with Paper Clay to make this little guy ... No, it's not Davros - when he grows up, I think he wants to be a mediaeval King's Fool - but he may yet change his mind! On Sunday, I had the most amazing and inspiring day with the talented Tanya Goddard , who creates art dolls. Tanya comes from Rus...

Hello Bloggy Peeps, Saturday 20th August 2011 was one of the very happiest days of my whole life - because I married my Lobster .... This painting was inspired by a photo of My Beloved taken on a very happy afternoon during our first summer together in 2010. We had just found each other through eHarmony and on this particular afternoon, we met up with some friends at the Duke's Head Beer Festival Somerleyton in Norfolk. What an amazing time that was - we had just found each other through eHarmony and were beginning to realise that we fitted together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. I've called the painting "Rose  Coloured Specs", because we're still looking through them now :o) Thanks for visiting today my blogg friends, and if you are reading this too, my Stinky Lobster, Happy Anniversary!!! <3 Annie xxx

Hello Bloggers and Fellow Deskers, What a beautiful WOYWW morning it is, and I have the whole day more-or-less to myself - the trick is to decide what I really feel like doing and then actually do it, rather than waft about doing nothing in particular and then feeling like I've wasted the day :o) Here's my workdesk today - after a mammoth clearing and tidying session at the weekend ... It seemed like a good idea to do it while DH was away on a jolly, as I knew the temporary mess that needs to happen while you're tidying a craft room would drive him nuts. So, I started around midday on Saturday .... by 6pm I was wishing I had never started, but luckily my son was keeping me company and stopped me from throwing the whole lot out of the window ... we stopped for dinner, then I carried on .... he went home about midnight, I still carried on .... it was finally finished at 3.30am!!! Phew !!! :o) Now I wonder how long it will take me to trash it again?! What's O...

Hello my friends, This week I didn't get a lot of play time, but I did manage to finish a painting. For week 31 of Life Book 2016 , we had a lesson with the talented Gillian Lee Smith and I must say it really got my creative juices flowing ... I also got very very messy in the earlier stages :o) This month Life Book has been all about light and dark. Gillian encouraged us to be brave, and to accept that as we build up layers we will have to let go of part of what was there before, but that's ok because it's all part of the journey and it all helps to bring depth and interest to the piece. She also warned us to be very patient, allowing time for each of the layers to dry completely before going on to the next ...

Hello Bloggy Friends and Fellow Deskers, I've missed WEEKS of What's On Your Workdesk Wednesdays - what with holidays and other pressing stuff, and now my day off has changed, so it will be difficult to link up and visit on Wednesdays. But I miss WOYWWdays, so I'm going to try scheduling this to post itself tomorrow, then in the evening I can do a late link-up and have a little potter around Blogland to see what everyone's been up to. If you would like to share what's on YOUR workdesk this week and have a little snout around other people's crafty spaces, please join us over at Julia's Stamping Ground - how lovely to see our Julia on the road to recovery and back at the helm, although the lovely Jan did a great job of looking after us all whilst Julia was away :o) So, without further ado, here's my favourite arty-farty space this week ... I have been making the most of the sunshine by working at a garden table under the gazebo in our garden. ...

Hello Arty Friends, Life Book 2016 has been like a huge arty banquet for me - it's full of delicious things I want to try, but I don't have room for all of it at once! So, I've been dotting back and forth as and when I have a bit of space for arting, helping myself to whichever delectable morsel takes my fancy - and some of them I know I will get a taste for and want to try again and again. This time, I went back to the lesson for Week 27 with the wonderful Lisa Viger - what an inspiration this was! Lisa encouraged us to first listen to our critical inner voice, see if it had anything useful to say, choose to act on it or ignore it, and then let our inner child out to play :o) Here's my end result (bit of a sad girly, not sure why) ... Firstly, we allowed our inner voice to scribble words all over the page, then over this we created a soft, light background with layers of bright pastel colours. If you look closely, you'll the word "LISTEN" ...