Sadness

"Sadness flies away on the wings of time" (Jean de la Fontaine)

The ghost of Christmas past

“Sunsets are proof that no matter what happens, every day can end beautifully “ (Kristen Butler)
In the extra picture a decorated Xmas tree right in the middle of the forestry Estate like the ghost of Xmasses past.

Night

The latest prompt on Artful Adventures Stroll through the Hood is: Night. I didn't want to wait till tonight to try and find an appropriate picture so I started looking around for inspiration in "my hood" last night. I was going to go for the sunset but it wasn't too spectacular but while wandering around in the garden my eye fell on the Black as the Night tulips in the last of the day light! Job done.

Let There Be Light

We are still journalling with photos for The Documented Life Project 2015 in September. Our art challenge for this week is: silhouettes, and the journalling prompt: There is no shadow without the light. I have shamelessly borrowed various elements of my own art for this page. The circular sunset photographs come from my Instagram presence where I tend to put them whenever we have a spectacular sunset. I also like sunrises but am not often up early enough for them! I had them printed out by Printstagram and then used a circular punch. The photo top left is from one of my journal quilts. This one is called: You Leave me Cold. And the idea of two facing silhouettes comes from a sketchbook I did for the Sketchbook Project called: Passioneyes.

I used complimentary colours toning in with these pictures to make my background, as well as the Ripple Effect stencil from Stencilgirl Products.  I also used some vintage text in the background and a stamp by Stampotique, designed by France Papillon.

For the silhouettes I borrowed a face from a fashion magazine and outlined it with white paint and then added blue Radiant Silk glaze on top. The text too came from a magazine.

Finally I added the quotation by Helen Keller: "Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow" around the two silhouettes and added the postage stamps.

Picture This Journal Quilts

 I mentioned some time ago that I had had good news and today I can reveal what that was. I visited the Spring Quilt Festival at Ingliston, Edinburgh and the travelling journal quilt competition was on show there. This competition is organized by Grosvenor Shows and they set a new theme each year. For this one the theme was: Picture This. And yes, that is the 2nd Place Rozette adorning my two pieces.

The competition requires that you enter two A4 sized pieces and I like to make mine as a pair. I also use these journal quilt competitions to step slightly out of my comfort zone and use new, experimental techniques. For these two I returned to using Craft Attitude and in fact technique wise these two JQs are made much like my Virgin Marriage piece that I produced for Craft Attitude themselves. When they asked me to make some pieces for them to show off on their website they kindly send me 2 packages of Craft Attitude and I'm eking them out! You can in fact buy this from Amazon. It is for sale under a variety of trade names such as Craft Attitude for Scrapbooking, Wood, Quilts etc., but all of these are the exact same product, only the instructions are geared towards the specific crafts mentioned. It used to be quite expensive via the UK Amazon site but it has come down in price considerably and you can even get it with free postage.

This is my description to go with these two journal quilts: " The word "picture" always translates into photographs for me, so I used my photographs of sunsets, printed them out onto Craft Attitude, and applied them to a lace appliquéd, machine quilted, painted and stencilled background and framed them in gold lame.

Those of you who came to my recent 52 Journals exhibition in Peebles will recognize the framing method as one I have used before on various pieces. Doing it in gold lame made it a bit more challenging but on the plus side it doesn't fray! The theme Picture This made me want to put a frame around them. The top one is titled: The Sun himself must die and the bottom one: The Sunset of Life. Both have their title included using vintage text.

It was the day after Christmas

I should have waited for the day to progress yesterday as I took many better and more interesting pictures after posting here on this blog. On the other hand there wouldn't have been time for writing blogs much so maybe it's just as well. I was rather pleased with my pictures though so I am showing them today. After the grey start Christmas day became increasingly brighter and when we sat down with our friends (and neighbours as they are less than 1/2 mile away) the sun was shining. The picture above was taken on our arrival and you can just about see our house in the far distance They are located that bit higher than we are  and a bit further along the lane, and have different and equally fantastic views all round.

 This was the view I had from their window while eating our Christmas meal.

We then moved to the sitting room where the panoramic views are at their best and the sunset last night was breathtaking. The view above was taken through the blinds which added extra interest. Soon afterwards they were opened and we all looked with amazement and awe at what nature offered us.

 What a beautiful way to end the Christmas celebrations.

Because of all those clear skies we had a frost this morning and I caught these grasses in all their iciness. This time however I'm going to wait to see what the rest of the day brings before deciding whether or not to blip this one.

On a sadder note it was just as well that we weren't far away as John dashed back every 2 hours or so to keep an eye on the greyhound who has caught some sort of stomach bug. We had her at the vet on Christmas Eve and she received an injection to stop her vomiting but she hasn't eaten anything since despite being tempted by scrambled egg, white fish and rice as well as sausages. We're trying again to make her eat something today but will be back at the vet tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed she'll start eating soon.

Summer Time, and the living is easy!

 

Wow, what a day. It was possible to imagine being somewhere in Italy rather than the Scottish Borders. All pretense of work was abandoned eventually and I gave myself over to the cult of the sun! Sat reading outside till just before 8pm when the midges became too active to bear.

And then at the end of the day we were rewarded by another spectacular sunset!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Bright and Beautiful

We're experiencing a spot of beautiful, warm and sunny weather accompanied by some spectacular sunsets here in the Scottish Borders.

 The pictures above show the one last night.

And today too  looks to be a real treat so I took out the camera and had another wander through the garden. There are new treasures to be discovered almost every day and the best thing as far as I'm concerned is that the roses have started to appear, the first one being Zephirine Drouhin seen above and with a gorgeous scent.

 The hanging baskets have started to fill out and on a sunny day also produce lovely shadows on the wall.

 At the moment however it's the lupins that steal the show!

Another beautiful sunset

Glorious Sunset

For the first time since I joined the Blipfoto site I changed my photograph for the day. Originally I had pictured Troi sleeping in her basket using my iPad for both photography and uploading. It was a lovely picture but I felt in many ways I was cheating as I hadn't really made an effort. It just wasn't my day yesterday, I wasn't even in the mood to be in my studio. Sometimes you have days like that and if it hadn't been so slippery and icy I would have taken the car and gone for an outing to bring myself around to a more positive frame of mind but instead I forced myself to keep on working and by the end of the day I was in a truly bad mood. As one of my fellow blippers mentioned: " I needed a reboot". And I received it at the end of the day in the shape of a astonishing sunset over the field next to us. It looked like the sky and horizon were on fire. I grabbed my camera and caught the few golden moments when this event was at its best. It only lasted for some minutes and I was a bit handicapped by the electricity lines which go diagonally across the field. Above I've made the image long and small thus cropping those lines out.

And here I went for a very low angle so that they didn't get into the picture at all. I loved the juxta positioning of the snow and ice in the foreground and the fire in the distance and in the end decided on that one as my blip with the title: The World on Fire.