It's Been Too Long

I've been away from Blogland too long and feel so bad. I shouldn't really as I have been getting on with life - everyday day things that need to be done - family stuff that needs to be nurtured and awarded more quality time than other things - and yes that includes blogging:-) Then are other commitments, deadlines to meet, creative projects that have been filed under "Procrastination" - (yes with a capital P) - for too long! Watching TV - yes I actually enjoy doing that:-) and just stuff in general. But at the back of it all there has been the guilt slowly simmering away, nudging at the core of me, niggling and eating away, reminding me that I've been neglecting this commitment (and yes in a way it is a commitment from when you first start a blog) and that I've been away too long and should get back. So here I am again folks - back on my blog page ready to share so much with you all.

In fact there has been a lot of things I've wanted to share with you guys projects I've been involved with, swaps, creative stuff as well as life stuff like shows I've seen and exhibitions I've attended. So, hop on board and buckle up and we'll go for a ride through my life........... well not quite but you know what I mean I'm sure:-)As this would be an absurdly lengthy post if I were to fit in all that I've seen and done since my absence, I think it more fitting to back track a little and start with some of the shows I've seen.

Hairspray leaflet Hairspray Ticket

poster for Hairspray

Last month my daughter Meena and I went to see "Hairspray" the Musical on stage at The Shaftsbury Theatre, Holborn. I was familiar with the story since I'd seen the John Travolta film - which I loved and became familiar with the songs too, which were so unbelievably catchy (that I find myself still singing and humming them!). I haven’t seen the original film starring Rikki Lake – must get round to that!

The Shaftsbury Theatre, Shaftsbury Ave, Holborn London

A beautiful Old Theatre

Hairspray The Musical

Anyway, all I can say was that we were just blown away with the sheer vitality of the show – the performance, the stage settings, the songs – everything was just so OTT and corny and yet so exhilarating and entertaining. I couldn’t stop bouncing in my seat and singing along to the songs (I’m sure much to the exasperation my neighbouring seatholders!) Well I was having a grand old time and that’s what you go to the theatre for isn’t it?

Interior of the Shaftsbury Theatre - Box seats and Circle

Box seats in Shaftsbury Theatre

I would really recommend this show if you’re feeling kinda low or want to have a good night out with the girls – it really is a feel good production and I defy anyone not to come out of there uplifted and happy:-)

We enjoyed the show immensely (as you can tell:-)) and I’d go back to watch it again given half the chance. As it is, I continually to catch the film on TV and have to watch it each time. I will be buying the soundtrack on CD and the film on DVD. But for those of you unfamiliar with any of the songs you can catch them on YouTube.

Hairspray - It is what it claims to be!

Playing Catch Up - Ramadan & New Blog Banner

I feel so guilty for not having checked in any sooner. I've left it a whole month before coming back here and yet I've had a whole load of stuff that I wanted to post and share but somehow time evaded me and the routine of daily life was always there. On top of which it's our holy month of Ramadan and we're busy with fasting and devotional prayers take up most of the day.


We fast from dawn till sunset, where we can't eat or drink anything. Fasting has been prescribed by God for all Muslims in order for us to attain piety and to make us thankful for all that He's given us and believe me when one refrains from eating and drinking all day for so many hours and then it's time to break your fast - a glass of water has never tasted so sweet:-) It makes us empathise with the millions of people in the world who don't even get clean water to drink, who are starving and dying everyday through lack of food and water. It really puts things in perspective for us and we become sober at the thought of it and we devote our time praying and reading the Quran so that we can gain more knowledge and do charitable deeds and give alms to help needy people.

So, this is going to last 30 days (Ramadan started 1st Sept) and at then end we celebrate with Eid, which is our festival (the nearest I can describe it to is Christmas) - where families gather together and eat, drink (not alcohol), wear new clothes, exchange gifts and generally celebrate the end of the fasting month.

I've been kinda quiet on the Art front aswell during Ramadan but have been busy making Eid cards for all my relatives and friends. I gotta do a little Art everyday otherwise I feel something is missing from my life:-)

By the way... have you seen my new blog banner? How can you have failed to notice it when it's right there blinging in your face:-) Isn't it just so beautiful? Well sorry to blow my own trumpet but I think it is and I defy you to say any different;-) I had it personally designed for me by Shabby Cottage Studio's very own Gail Schmidt. We liaised together (yes we did!) for a few days in order to get the elements and look of the banner just right and Gail was so helpful and friendly, giving me advice night and day on how to get my banner just right. My banner showcases some of my Art from mosaics to ATCs. I wanted it to reflect my personality and love of colours and I think Gail has managed to capture exactly that. Oh and by the way, that lovely red chandelier swinging from the centre is my very own which hangs as a pair in my lounge - I just had to include that because it's my most fave colour RED! Along with the newly designed banner I've changed the name one last time to suit ME. Don't worry won't be changing it again:-) So a very BIG Thank you to Gail for all your help with my new blog banner and if anyone out there in Blogland is stuck for ideas go visit Gail she'll help you all the way:-D

Well, as they say, tomorrow is another day and I will hopefully offer up another post - I want to really I do!

FELT-MAKING DAY

I've never made felt before but have always wanted to try my hand at it and although there are some great books on the market showing you step by step photos of what you need and how to actually felt, I'm the sort of person who learns better from guidance and tuition. If someone's there in front of me demonstrating the technique (whatever it may be) then I learn better.

So, a couple of weeks ago, my good friend Amanda announced that she and her daughter Hannah were holding a felt-making class at their place and they'd invited a couple of their friends who are long time felters to come along and teach us some techniques.

These are some of the materials needed to get started.

These skeins of wool are called wool tops and that's the basic

material to make felt. you can then add various fibres to

enhance your felted piece.

We started by choosing the colours we wanted to work with - there would be 3 layers in this first flat piece of felt we were making. I chose a bright fuschia pink wool top and Amanda had real alpaca hair in soft creams and browns and I chose the cream as my middle layer. The middle layer doesn't show - well it did in our case - read on to find out!!

We began by laying a tea towel onto our work surface and then laying a sheet of bubble wrap on top. Then we gently teased the wool tops into strands that we laid across the bubble wrap - we worked to whatever size we wanted but at the same time had to take into account that this would shrink by about a third by the time we got to felting it. So, basically whatever you decide to make initially, the overall size you start with will considerably shrink at the end of the process.

So, you have a first layer - for which I used the fuscia pink wool top, a middle layer - for which I used the alpaca hair, and then the third layer - which I used the pink again. After the third layer this is the time you can play around with your fibres or other colour wool tops to create a design on top. I laid some different colours and some fibres till I was happy with the design and then laid a piece of net (like net curtain material) over the top - this was to keep everything in place.

teasing of the wool tops and laying them into 3 layers.

laying the final design layer of fibres and wool

Now came the messy bit - we sprinkled hot water over the entire surface of our piece and with with a scrunched up plastic bag we scrubbed gently in circular motions at the net to meld the fibres together. We also rubbed soap over the net to create some lather and then scrubbed over the net making sure we were working into all the fibres. We made sure to scrub the other side too.

scrubbing away at the wool and checking to see if the fibres have felted.

After a few minutes we checked to see whether the fibres had all felted together and when we were satisfied that they were, we removed the net and then put our felted piece along with bubble wrap onto a bamboo mat and put that on top of the tea-towel and then rolled the whole thing up and this is where the hard work of shrinking the felt began. We rolled and rolled and rolled. We were told that rolling the felted piece about 100 times each way was a good method to ensure an evenly shaped and shrunk piece. So once I'd rolled it 100 times one way, I carefully unrolled it all and turned it round the otherway and rolled it back again and worked on it more. You basically stopped when you were happy with the size.

rolling rolling rolling, shrinking shrinking shrinking

This is my felted and shrunk piece of felt - oh the joy! Look at all the yummy colours!

So, that folks, was my first attempt at felting and I can't tell you how pleased I felt - ok, ok, that's corny I know, but I just couldn't help myself :-O But seriously though, I was really pleased with what I made and after letting it dry naturally in the sun I folded it into a purse and it looked really good - see for yourselves.............

all I have to do is sew it up and add a nice big button in the middle

We then went on to felt a 3D piece and I decided to make a vase. Making a 3D form is slightly more technical in that you have to make careful measurements and make a plastic template to work onto. I followed the same technique for felting the first piece, except this time I had to work both sides onto the template. Once all the fibres had felted over the plastic template, I cut a slit at the top and pulled out the template. This left me with a bag form which I had to shrink down considerably so that the jar (I was using as mould) could slip inside. Then I had to further shrink and mould the felted bag around the glass jar. It was amazing how it shrank before my eyes and fitted the jar perfectly and I folded and shaped a rim that turned over so that the inner colour of the vase was displayed.

One lesson Amanda and I learnt was that alpaca hair though lovely and soft to start with, becomes very coarse when felted and actually comes through the layers to create a hairy whatever you've made and not only that, it actually moults like an animal and gets everywhere! I know I shan't be using that material in my felting again - unless I want to create a felted alpaca! :-O

My hairy felted vase. I actually had to give this a hair cut - the alpaca hair was just moulting so badly. It also dulls the colour of the wool - this was meant to be bright red with ochre and olive designs in but the alpaca dilutes the colour and it's hairyness takes over :-D By the way, the glass jar is inside so I can fill it with water and arrange flowers inside.

Here endeth our lesson in felt-making :-)

Double-sided Frame Book

This is a book I started at my bookmaking class run by our expert teacher Annalise. It took us over the course of two classses as well as working on at home to make. It measures 10cm x 8cm on it's outer frame and 7.5cm x 5.5cm on it's inside frame. There are 9 frames back to back, making 18 frames in total.

This is the front of the book when closed. You can see the folds of mull

on the edges. I laid a torso covered in red raw silk on top of red

glittery mesh and embellished with sequins and rhinetsones.

The frames were cut from grey board (which is basically just a denser quality cardboard). This is where precise meauring and a sharp cutting blade came into play. Once all the frames were cut I covered each one with a decorative paper - in this case Annalise had kindly given us a selection of papers to use including this precious one from Venice which depicted the drawings of Leornado Da Vinci - it has drawings and script on and is quite beautiful. Covering these frames was a laborious task but once I started I just got into production line mode and a logical order to things just took over.

After covering the boards the next step took place in class and that was sandwiching the chosen material between the pairs of frames. There is a wide choice of materials that would be suitable for this, but I wouldn't recommend paper as you have to take into account the folding and opening action of this book and the wear and tear it's going to take. So a material that is flexible as well as long standing is better. You could use, mesh, net, wire mesh, calico, hessian, muslin, acetate, vellum just to mention a few. In this instance we chose mull, which a is bookbinders material - used to strengthen covers of books before the actual book cover goes on. It's a very fine mesh and is quite stiff yet soft and has the added advantage of being sheer.

This is the back of the book when closed. I made the blue

ceramic buttons from paperclay which is then fired

and becomes like porcelain.

Before we could glue our frames onto the mull we had to make ourselves spacers to put between each row and column of frames - for this we simply cut long, thin strips of card o.5cm in width, and lay them in between the rows and columns of frames. This would give the grid layout, prevent the frames from touching each other and would provide the folds when closing this book.

Now came the tricky part and that was glueing the mull to the frames. You could either work across or down and after gluing the first frame right to the edge of the mull, another frame had to be glued underneath to match it, thereby sandwiching the mull between them. This is when the spacers came into play - one spacer had to be laid horizontally under the frane and the other vertically by the frame - this would give you the position to lay your next frame in a grid formation. After laying the first pair of frames and spacers everything else just fell into place.

This is the front of the frame book open - the red torso

in the top left hand corner is the cover when closed.

You can see where the two cuts in the mull are that

provide the opening and folding of the book.

I actually made a mistake in trimming the excess mull

when the book was closed, which is why you see an

open channel. There is only meant to be a cut at

the top and bottom so that when you view the open

book the material appears as a whole piece with

only slits at the top and bottom. I'll remember next time:-)

After all the frames were glued with the mull sandwiched between them it was left to dry thoroughly before the fun part of embellishing the mull could be done. At this stage you could coordinate a theme according to whatever print or pattern your frames are covered in - for instance, I had a Leorando Da Vinci print on my frames, therefore I could've run with that theme on my frames and portray each frame with an image and words relating to that. In this case I decided not to and just made each one different.

This is the back of the book open. The bottom left corner

with the blue buttons is the back cover of the book when closed.

It was like creating a whole load of ATCs really - that's the way it felt when I was creating each one. It also occured to me that you could indeed create framed ATCs like this but separate not attached or if you did attach them in pairs or three's they'd be diptychs or triptychs. The possibilities of making this framed book and altering into something else is quite exciting and I shall be playing with those possibilities and sharing them with you all as I progress - so watch this space folks!

FOREST GATE STREET FESTIVAL

Every year around the third week in July, Forest Gate, in the East End of London, holds it's annual Street Festival. They close a street down to traffic from 9am-7pm and pre-booked stall holders set up their stalls and wares on the pavement, outside a pre-specified house number. I've been selling at this festival for a few years now and the atmosphere is really great. You get to meet such friendly people and sell them stuff in return.

My colourful stall set up and all ready to sell sell sell!

However, there was a noticeable void in the festival this year and that was the absence of any street entertainment. In the past there have been Indian dhol players beating rhythmically on their drums, theatrically costumed street dancers in all their finery gyrating down the length of the street, stilt walkers dressed up as comical Elvis Presley and police constables, snake charmers, belly dancers and singers. This year they had none of that and only had a marquee put up for some singing talents. It was really disppointing and when asked why the absence of all the entertainment, the organisers replied that it was due to cutback in funding. That's so unfortunate and disappointing as the street entertainment really used to liven things up.

A colourful display of all my stuff for sale - mosaics,

decorative tin cans, handmade journals, handmade cards,

Indian beaded/embroidered bags and box frames.

Some of my mosaic plaques. I make the ceramic letters out of clay and then they go in for bisque firing, after which I glaze and put chipping of glass and glass beads on top and it's sent back to the kiln. When my letter have come out the glass has fused into the glaze which intensifies the colours beautifully.

Well, the day started off cloudy and overcast with the threat of rain and sure enough by the time we'd set up and arranged everything just so, down came a torrent of rain and we all desperately clamoured about covering everything with sheets of tarpaulin. Thankfully the rain didn't last long and out came the sun and with it hoardes of potential buyers.

I had a team of little helpers with me, namely my nieces and they were quite the little sales people, walking up and down the street with baskets of my handmade cards and journals, encouraging people to buy these beautiful items - and guess what? - they did! :-) All in all, I ended up doing very well and was pleased with what I'd sold and made.

Yours Truly desperately trying to hold my decorative tin cans down, before a big puff of wind blows it al down!

Selling your handmade items is naturally very important at any kind of fair or venue, but equally important is getting yourself out there and meeting people and talking about your art/work and promoting not only yourself but your work also. That's why I hand out my Moo cards - coz you never know when someone will remember your work and will contact you to have something made especially. I did get an order for a mosaic door number - which although small fry compared to the big commissions I've done, are still just as important as your contact is one to one with your client and how well you produce that piece for them, will reflect on future word of mouth business.

Art in a Carton & Shaving Foam

This is the latest Art in a Carton I received from Jan. The carton itself was beautifully decorated and I can't begin to describe the treasures it contained inside. Jan was most generous in her gifts and each one was made exquisitely. There was a fabric summer sandal bookmark containing a paper parasol at the back in a specially made pouch. It was made in hot summery colours and is such an original gift. I've never seen anything like this before and consider myself very fortunate to have received it. Then there were some hand moulded papers in various designs, a beautiful little handmade book with folded pages that pop up when you untie the ribbon and open it, a gorgeous charm with a vintage image and a fabric beaded square with a vintage image printed on to it.

All the gifts were handmade by Jan and you could feel the love and care she'd put into creating each piece - Thank you Jan! :-) This project has been such fun to participate in and I've received some wonderful pieces of Art created by some very talented people.

MARBLED PAPER USING THE SHAVING FOAM TECHNIQUE

I visited my local craft store over the weekend and they were demonstrating this new method of marbling paper (well by new method, I mean relatively new method - not everyone's heard of it). Anyway, I watched the demo and then had a go and do you know what? I didn't have to even buy anything to get started at home - well, no, actually I did and that was just the shaving foam - but hey sometimes you might have that in your home already.

So, I got home and got out the necessary materials (shown above). All you need are:

• some scraps of card or paper (works best on card or watercolour paper)
• selection of inks, paints, shimmer sprays
• kitchen roll and baby wipes on hand for cleaning up
• a container (size depends on what size paper you're going to marbleize) I used those plastic containers they give you when you get a takeaway.
• can of shaving foam - (cheapest will do)
• sticks for mixing and marbling

You'll need to protect your work area with clean paper and then keep your pieces of card or paper ready to marble.

all the materials you need to create wonderful marbled pieces

Give the can of shaving foam a good shake before squirting generously into your container, filling it approximately a third full.

shaving foam coloured with inks, paints and glimmer sprays

With your stick comb it through the foam to settle it a bit and now here comes the fun bit - add the colour drop at a time on top of the foam. It's best to keep it to a max of 3 colours at any one time or you'll end up with a murky mess.

Comb your stick through the foam distributing the colour into a pleasing pattern (this is where you use your own discretion and eye)

Take your piece of card or paper and lay on top of the coloured foam and push and rub the card or paper slightly to pick up the colour - lift carefully with your fingers or tweezers.

At this point the card will look a mess all covered in foam and murky colours, but don't worry! It's only when you scrape off the excess foam onto the side of your container and then with a dry wipe or cloth, wipe the rest of the card.

What you see before you will be a gorgeously marbled card with streaks of ink, paints or shimmer (depending on what you've used). Leave this card aside to dry and move onto your next piece.

You don't have to keep adding colour each time you marble your card - just use your stick to create different patterns in the foam and lay your card in. You can add fresh colours to the same foam and spray in glimmer sprays and create swirly patterns in the foam and then lay your card on top and press and lift to see what wonderful marble designs you can create. Believe me no two designs will ever be the same!

Now for the science.... The foam acts like a carrier for the paints or inks - so, basically the foam wipes off and the colour remains on the card - clever huh?

You can further enhance these marbled cards by spritzing over with glimmer sprays or just keeping them as they are and use them as ATC backgrounds, for greeting cards or any host of crafting projects.

This is a really fun technique to do with kids as they'll enjoy them tremendously trying to out do each other to see who can create the best marbled designs. It's very enjoyable and is suitable for even the youngest of kids. Just make sure you have plenty of wipes on hand as it can get very messy :-)

MOSAICS, CERAMICS & GLASS FUSING

MOSAICS - ALLAH PLAQUES
These are the latest two plaques commissioned for a friend's sister in Chicago. The ceramic lettering on this plaque says "Allah" which means God in Arabic. These plaques are 13 inches in diameter and are made on a 1/2inch thick plywood base.

I make the letters from clay. The process is slightly lengthy in that I roll out the clay into slabs and then roll a plastic textured mat over the top to give a deep etched pattern and texture to the clay. I then score out the letters from templates I've made, after which I have to wait for the clay to harden a little in order for me to cut the letters out. The next step is the bisque firing and after they've come out the kiln I glaze the letters and put chippings of glass on top as well as glass beads. This is then re-fired under glaze settings and the end result is that the glass fuses into the glaze to give it a deeper intensity and adds a decorative effect.

The lettering in this is made using a black clay, glazed in transparent and fused with blue and white millefiori beads. The background mosaic is worked in broken white irridescent china with blue millefiori randomly dotted around. The edging is a blue that contrasts with the blue in the lettering. The mosaic is grouted in brown and dries to a neutral shade. I've applied a textured paste to the edges of the plaque and when dried, painted it with a matching shade of blue. It's completed with a hanging fixture at the back.

I've used a white clay for this lettering and glazed it in Emerald Green and fused it with green millefiori . The background mosaic is worked in two shades of pale green vitreous tiles with random green millefiori dotted about. I've run a border of broken green and white china around this and then finished off with a border of another two shades of whole green vitreous tiles. I've grouted the mosaic in brown which dries to quite a neutral shade and I've applied a coat of textured paste to the edges of the plaque and when dried, I painted it green to match the mosaic and attached a fixing to the back for hanging.

GLASS FUSING

I made these glass fused pieces many years ago and have a good collection which I house in these compartmented boxes that have glass lids to them. I aim to use them in my mosaics (I've been saying that for ages!).

I've fused stained glass onto clear glass and nuggets, beads, thin glass rods, glass sweets, millefiori, glass nuggets, broken glass bottles, glass frit, and many more things - so long as one glass bit is compatible with the other glass bit you're going to fuse it onto then it'll work and if you put uncompatible pieces together - well sometimes the results pleasantly surprise you and other times you have to live and learn!

I just love the way they all look displayed togther in the boxes. I feel like a magpie collecting these pretty things:-)

CERAMIC PIECES

These are just little trial pieces I made when I was experimenting with fusing glass into ceramic. I gouged out little channels of design into the clay while it was still soft and pliable and then it went in for bisque firing. I then applied glaze to the pieces and began to fill in all the grooves with tiny shards of glass - almost powdered. Then it went in for the final firing and the glass all fused into the glaze perfectly, but you can see from these results I didn't quite fill up the channels sufficiently as the glass should've levelled out. Nonetheless I'm happy with the results and I've learnt a lesson for my next attempt:-)

Bookmaking & Travelling Journal

BOOKMAKING
I go to Bookmaking classes every Monday evening. They're run by a really nice lady called Annalise, from New Zealand. She's a professional bookbinder with 15 years experience behind her. Her classes are run from home and it' a very relaxed and informal atmosphere. There are 5 of us in attendance - myself, my sis-in-law, Uzma, 2 of my mosaic buddies, Amanda & Lyn and , a lovely Chinese lady called Terry - we're a good multicultural bunch!

I started this class at the beginning of this year and have made quite a few books in a number of styles and in the process have learnt many interesting techniques. Annalise always gives us printed notes at the end of each new technique and book that we make, so we get to keep the tutorials so that we can practice at home.

These two books above are album type books with hard covers. The music score book has a stab binding and the red bookcloth book is a very simple 2 hole sewn book attached with buttons for decorative effect. These are great as travel journals or even photo albums.

Even if we repeat a style of book, it will always be different in cover design and materials. Besides which, repeating a technique is good for us as some books have a longer process to construct and therefore practice makes perfect (well... that's the idea anyway!)

This is a slimline Tab Book in an accordian style - it has pleated pages with tabs attached to each pleat. It's very easy to make and very different from what we think of as an ordinary book with pages. This is a more decorative book - great as a personalized gift for someone as you can personalize it according to their tastes or hobbies etc. In this instance I made this one for myself and themed it according to my fave colour - can you guess what that could be? - DUH! Yeah ok, it's RED! I titled it "If I was RED I Would Be..." and inside on the tabs I've listed all the things that I associate with the colour RED - such as a red red rose, bright red lipstick, sexy red Ferrari etc. (click on the pic for a closer view). This was great fun to construct and I plan to make more for friends and family (ssshhh... when I get the time!)

The classes last 2 hours from 7.30 -9.30pm and Annalise's place is quite local to most of us, so the travelling's not too bad and some of us car share. For a very reasonable weekly fee Annalise provides all the materials and equipment and shares her vast knowledge of bookmaking skills with us, explaining to us and demonstrating step by step. She makes the same book along side us so that we don't get lost in the process. If we do get stuck, tangled, glued, or behind she is always there quick on the draw to ease the way and we breathe a sigh of relief when it's all sorted out.

This is another accordian style slimline book with 3 pleats (6 pages). The pages are wider and have a slot where another accordian runs through it. I used an old map to lend some interest and to coordinate with the cover, which is hardbound. Again, this style of book is more decorative than functional but can be personalized to suit any theme or anyone. It's also very good for journalling - which is what I'll use mine for:-)

We all leave the class feeling good and having accomplished something creative, practical and unique. On top of which we've had a thoroughly enjoyable time and come home with a book that we've made ourselves from scratch!

TRAVELLING JOURNAL

I'm a member of a Yahoo group called Travelling Journals. This is a group that encourages you to either start off or take part in a collaborative journal. These journals can travel within a country or all over the world and can be tracked back at the Group site. The owner of the journal sets the theme and starts off a few pages to get the ball rolling and leaves instructions in the journal with a return address should it ever get lost and a sign up database on the site. Then the participents who've signed up for the journal wait their turn for the journal to get to them. A reasonable amount of time to work in the journal is set by the owner and sometimes there are delays, but things can be settled mutually and with understanding.

I've participated in quite a few travelling journals, 1000 Journals being the biggest and most popular as well as 1001 Journals. Then there have been the private journals signed up on Yahoo groups. The groups contain a database where you sign up and keep log of the journal, so at a glance others can see where the journal is in line and how much longer they have to wait. In the meantime people who've completed their pages and have mailed it to the next in line scan their pages in and upload them to the Group album where the other signees can have a sneak preview.

The journal I recently participated in was titled "A Day in the life of..." and participants were asked to journal a day in their life either in pictures, words or both. The day could be an imaginary one or a realistic/typical one. I chose the latter and took photos of things I do during a typical day, like waking up, brushing my teeth, having breakfast, checking my email etc etc. Then I just collaged and journalled and decorated the page artistically. Here are my pages - I did 5 double page spreads.

Okay, so this is the front cover of the Travelling Journal entitled "A Day in the Life of..." The cover was designed by the owner of this journal and this was a foreign text book - so not only is it a journal but it's also an altered book.

This is the first double page spread - pretty basic I think - what most people do first thing in the morning. I've added artwork to the pages.

This is my second double page spread showing the daily routine of my life.

Third double page spread - more details about my day!

Fourth double page spread I decided to make a little gift for the owner of this journal and included it in my page. I added stickers and embellishments to liven up my layout.

Fifth and final double page spread - by this time I'd condensed my day right down to the basics, otherwise I'm sure I could've completed the whole book!!

I really enjoy taking part in these collaborative journals - a little bit of me goes out there and I'm sharing my life with people I haven't met physically, but people I know through the group and it feels good - especially when you get great feedback from them, telling you how much they enjoyed what you had to say and how they loved your layouts and design. It gives you the warm and fuzzies you know?

Strangely enough I've never started off a journal of my own and sent it out into the wide blue yonder - I've though of it many times tho' and do have every intention to do it, I even have great titles and themes planned - it's just the getting started bit that's always the hardest (as with anything - procrastination is a great enemy of action) - and you can quote me on that if you want:-)