ArtyFartyAnnie

One of my current obsessions is turning old newspapers and paper bags into useful baskets - first tearing them into strips, then rolling into tubes, and finally weaving into baskets like this ... I'm so chuffed with how these came out - they're really sturdy and I love the look of them. It was amazing to see how many colours I could get from the newspapers without colouring them at all ... I also loved the more natural colours ... And tried out some decorative hanging hearts ...

Another page in my AJ, made with collaged Tomoe River paper, acrylic inks, acrylic paints and Prismacolour pencils ... Really enjoyed playing with Tomoe River paper for the first time - it takes wet media beautifully but it's so thin and very smooth. It's really meant for pen and ink I believe, but I haven't tried that yet. The girl in the boat was drawn separately on a scrap of watercolour paper, coloured in, cut out and applied to the page along with torn pieces of collage paper ... Trouble is, I can't decide whether it needs some words and what the words would be - any ideas??

Had a go at weaving willow over the Easter weekend with expert tuition from the lovely Emma of Willow Phoenix at Alby Crafts here in Norfolk UK. After a few happy hours sitting in the sunshine with some of my favourite crafting companions, we all had sore thumbs and aching arms, but also the satisfaction of producing something beautiful and useful to take home. Here's mine (which is genuinely called a "buttocks basket") ... Although my buttocks are not especially well-formed, I think you can see where it gets its name :o) We used two different kinds of willow. They were both quite green and they were not stripped of the bark, so there was a lot of variation in the colours, which I loved. In this one, you can see why my DH said it reminded him of the knickers we used to put over babies' nappies! This is definitely something I would love to do more of when I have time. Three of my friends made beautiful berry baskets and another made a gorgeous lan...

I recently joined up for Sketchbook Revival 2019, a free online workshop hosted by Karen Abend. For the very first session, Kooje Koene showed us how to create a self portrait, without lifting the pen or looking at the paper. This was great fun, so I tried it a few times - here are a couple of the more successful attempts ... Neither of them look like me, but I do like the sketchy quality and I think maybe they've caught a bit of my personality :o) What do you think?

Hello Fellow Deskers, Sorry I've been AWOL for so long I can't even remember how many weeks, but I'm looking forward to catching up with some of you over the next couple of days. I know there's a big WOYWW 10th Anniversary celebration coming up - I SO wish I could make it and meet you all in person, but I will have to content myself with watching from the wings. The sun's been shining today, so I've been crafting in the garden - my current obsession is turning old T-shirts into rag rugs ... Those balls of "yarn" were made from T-shirts I had for years, worn them to the point where it would have been embarrassing to take them to the charity shop, but this way I get to turn them into something useful AND I'm not really letting these old friends go :o) I'll be back after work to link up over at Julia's and have a snout around to see what everyone else has been up to this week - see you there! Love Annie xxx

Really enjoyed the "Fancy Folds" GoGo Dayaway at St. Albans last weekend. Gorgeous kits and goodies, lots of techniques and tips from Niki and Kirei AND we came home loaded with leftovers. There was also CAKE - perfect :o) All of the pages involved some kind of paper-folding technique. As always, I'm not the fastest scrapper on the block, so I had lots of finishing-off to do. Here are my completed pages ... Folding circles into squares Cut file with folded-back hearts Hearts folded into flowers Pleated paper rosette Add caption Origami stars Folded squares with contrast centres And last but not least, a heart-shaped squash book made from a cut file, with added flaps to give lots of space for photos ... And I still have enough love to make some "extra inspiration" pages - brilliant! :o)

Hello everyone, It's a lovely sunshiney day here in Norfolk UK, really lifts the spirits :o) I've just realised that I forgot to post my page for Case File #281 when the May Case Files went live over at CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration . So without further procrastination, here's the inspiration - If you head over to the reveal post, you'll find lots of clues to help you, or you can just pull your own inspiration from the Scene. I usually choose to follow the clues, because that's how I roll. So here's my page ... It was a very easy page to make, as I used a cut file from my Quirky Kit, used the heart to frame this picture of my DH and filled the other letters with scraps of paper, then just added some embellishments and finally wrote my story around the edges of the page. Scheme : all the colours are there. Evidence: plain white background, woodgrain, winged things, frames and potted plant. Testimony : my journaling tells how I love to go ...