Daisy, daisy ...

I'm currently experiencing internet problems, so this will be a short  post (don't you just love technology!).

Here is a small watercolour, done with Brushos, that I've turned into a card. I've used a mount so that it can be framed too.

Daisies always remind me of hot summer days - making daisy chains!

This week I went to the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. Fabulous - really enjoyed it. A very eclectic mix of work, some weird and wacky, some very traditional - and everything in-between.

There were so many pieces I loved, that I have put them all onto one of my Pinterest boards. See what I pinned here.

Look on the positive side ...

The Craft Barn's alpha dictionary challenge is every 2 weeks, but it seems those 2 weeks go in the blink of an eye! The next letter is N - with no twists (phew!).

I did contemplate doing Nothing and presenting a blank page - but then had a Negative thought!

I took some black card and some card that had been sprayed with inks. I then die-cut both pieces exactly the same.  Then I pieced the images together using opposites - the birds were quite tricky!

Again, the definition was very long, so I took just one aspect and printed it separately.

Thought for the day -

Turn every negative into a positive!

If you go down to the woods today ...

... sometimes I surprise myself - and when I look at this piece, I think - did I do that?

Recently I attended an all day workshop to paint a bluebell wood in mixed media. This is a large painting on half-imperial (22 inches x 15 inches), and we had to pre-draw the main tree outlines before the workshop to save time.

The painting was built up in layers; with a watercolour base, and the detail added using coloured pencils (I use Derwent Coloursoft), and wax crayons (I use Neocolor II).

I find all day workshops are quite demanding, when I have to be focused for so many hours, (my back and neck don't like it either!). I didn't finish completely on the day, and it took me a couple more hours to finish at home.

I have rather taken to using the pencils and crayons with watercolour - maybe I've found the mixed media selection to focus on? Time will tell!

Emily Bronte wrote a poem entitled "The Bluebell", here is the first verse -

The Bluebell is the sweetest flower
That waves in summer air:
Its blossoms have the mightiest power
To soothe my spirit's care.

Flights of fancy ...

I seem to have started a few projects recently, but none are finished, as I'm flitting between them!

So, thought I would enter this card into the Craft Barn's other fortnightly challenge, which at the moment is all about "butterflies".

Butterflies are a perennial favourite, and this card uses magazine pages for collage.

The background is part of a text page, and a piece of handmade paper for texture. The butterflies are punched from magazine pages. My butterfly punch is pretty old and struggles with very thin pages, but I found if I punched through the page together with a piece of copy paper, the copy paper gives it something to bite into.

Finally summer seems to have arrived, so hope to see more butterflies!

A power of Butterfly must be -
The Aptitude to fly
Meadows of Majesty concedes
And easy Sweeps of Sky -
Emily Dickinson