Boxing Day sunrise

 

Happy Christmas

 

Red Nose

 

Enjoying a mince pie specially for dogs

 

Happy Christmas

Looks good but it was freezing with a wicked easterly wind!

Christmas Collage

There are so many delectable Christmas themed magazines around at the moment that I found myself tearing out all kinds of imagery, temporarily forgetting that I had finished my 52 collages already. But as I mentioned there are some empty pages in the Moleskine 5 x 8" journal I was using for the #52collages2019 project and it was fun adding one more. I was particularly happy with the Flora look-alike watch image!

Happy Christmas

Pink Poinsettia

In the festive spirit

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.

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays

I made this as part of an Gothic Arch exchange many years ago (2007) and am using it today as my digital Christmas card to you all. As per last year I won’t be sending any actual cards but instead will donate the money to the Barking Mad Dog Rescue charity. 

Have a very happy time whatever you will be celebrating in the coming days.

Happy Christmas

The Magic of Christmas

The Colour Me Positive prompt for this week is, of course, Christmas. I indulged in making it as nostalgic and sentimental as possible and am surprisingly pleased with the result. It has a little bit of everything: a Father Christmas who looks very much like Sinterklaas (a Dutch tradition), there are 4 Scandinavian horses (dala) present as well as a quintessentially British village with a traditional coach arriving. The pages sparkle with metallic paints (hard to see, I know!) and it looks like it is all taking place in a mysterious forest. The christmas tree is an unadorned evergreen, which is how I like them best. Of course, there is also a hint of snow.

In the background I used L451 It's a Jungle Out There stencil by Stencilgirl Products and the white leafy bits hanging done from the top come from the S078 Flowers Version 1. Both were designed by Cecilia Swatton. Her stencils are so versatile.

 The stars in black and gold come from the EEA04 stamp set designed by Everything Art for PaperArtsy

All the collage elements originated in a lifestyle magazine. It's hard to capture the sparkle and shine,  but by tilting the album and taking the above picture I hope you get the idea.

I want to wish everyone a very happy holiday, whatever you may be celebrating! It's going to be a wet and windy one here in the Scottish Borders but we will be celebrating Flora's first Christmas with us and that is enough fun for anyone.

Happy Christmas

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

It is beginning to look a lot

 

like Christmas!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Lovely lights

 

It is wet, wild and windy outside courtesy of storm Desmond. Our little lane has become more of a stream so it was a good day to decorate the Christmas tree. Love how the lights look through the glass door.

 

Posted with Blogsy

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.

Shine

The Documented Life Project 2014 has posted the last prompt of the year for week 52. It was: Document your family holiday tradition. Which started me off thinking how long it takes before something becomes a tradition. In the meantime however I took a picture of our Christmas tree using my polaroid camera and printed it out with one of the inbuilt borders, that gave it a sort of vintage effect. I grabbed my pile of gelli plate printed papers and by great good fortune found one that had the word SHINE prominently displayed and even better it fitted within the size requirements of the Moleskine planner I have been using this year (4.3/4 x 8"). The word come from a stencil from Stencilgirlproducts designed by Carolyn Dube

I stitched on the polaroid photograph and then punched a star out of gold card and stitched that on too so that the word SHINE could still be seen.

So here it is. Week 52 finished. The Documented Life Project 2015 starts on the 1st January 2015 and is housed on a different website although there will still be a Facebook page too. I have (finally!) decided to carry on in a planner and still tip in my pages as I did this year. I'll share my planner with you very soon. I made the decision as I'm so in love with my big, fat planner for 2014 and I will put up pictures of that too in the next few days. During this last week the Moleskine has finally shown signs that it has reached it's very maximum capacity but with the help of some washi tape I've restored it enough to use for this final week of 2014.

You can find all my posts this year about the project under the label The Documented Life. Next year's pages will appear labelled DLP2015.

Christmas Cards Art Journal

As I promised you in a previous post I can now show you the finished art journal made from recycled Christmas cards. This was the result of coming across a marvellous and entirely free tutorial on YouTube by Jennibellie, an artist here in the UK. The tutorial is in two parts. My link takes you to the first one and you'll find your way yourself to the next one. Jennibellie herself can be found online here. She has a great selection of very informative videos up and I hugely enjoyed watching them. So no info here about how to make this journal. And there is no need to just use recycled Christmas cards, any other greeting cards would serve just as well. Of course my journal has a bit more stitching than Jenny's! So I sewed around the cover using zigzag. The cover was made from hand painted paper.

Jennibellie also has a video tutorial about how to make your own beads but I have used beads from my stash as you can see above.

The other thing I did differently is that I used Gelli plate printing to cover my cards. I so enjoy working with my plates that I can't resist putting them to use at every available opportunity, as you can see in the following images which feature pages from the journal. Sometimes you can still see the original card through the painting and I have done that for those cards whose imagery I particularly liked, such as the one at the very bottom of this post.