News from Sunny Harrogate!

I've just had a blisteringly hot five day break in Harrogate with Andy, he went to the Spa for a little pampering while I pampered myself at AFTH with a little art journaling along with a fantastic bunch of ladies...






We stayed at The Old Swan (a bit of luxury!) known as Agatha's retreat. Jude and hubby Paul stayed here too, so Jude and I travelled in to Dy's together, its really great to chit chat with bloggy friends.



We picked up loads of tips and ideas from Dy, had fun playing with her downloads (utterly gorgeously colourful and wacky!)



Had a tutorial on shading the balls....and we all did good...Dy said so!
They do really pop off the page don't they?



Then we picked a colour and created a page using only that colour...after I'd made the border, I used the first red image I came to and wrote a bit of drivel so I could see the impact of the completed page, I also cut out the white strip as the wording was so apt for what we were doing. I enjoyed doing this - very effective...



We made a journal out of water colour paper for another style of journaling, lots of painty, inky, watery, dribbly messy goings on here with a little Dina Wakeley influence thrown in along with Dy's inimitable style - although I applied so much water, mine fell apart! No worries, I shall cut these gorgeous pieces up and use them in something else.





And here are a couple of pages I created a while ago but haven't posted as I haven't had much blogging time. Our son came from Belfast with his girlfriend Niamh so we had a wonderful few days with them. Its a balancing act isn't it when it comes to blogging - you need time to create the art that you're going to blog, you need time to visit other blogs to say hi and leave comments appreciating THEIR art, but you also need family time too...somethings gotta give.

This first one came about because I felt I was being manipulated by someone - I know we all use manipulation to get our own way to some degree but its not a nice feeling when you recognise its happening and feel powerless to stop it.



And the second one is also a bit depressing....sorry! I needed to get this out of my system. I spilled all the private stuff out on a tag and hid it behind the doors. I liked the images I used here - well I say liked but it was a painful time, the images were fitting for the subject! Pedestals are precarious places to live and it can be dangerous/damaging to place people there. Lessons we all have to learn at some point in our life.



That's it for now folks... see ya soon!