Happy Christmas

A Happy Christmas to you all. Watch this space, I hope to start getting involved again next year x

Fruity Mellowness

Now that the summer is officially over and the weather seems to agree with that, I may find a bit more blogging time, in between trying to tidy up the garden and all that other stuff I should have been doing. But I have been blackberrying again and took some photos and did a couple of little montages for your delectation and delight.
It is amazing how much there is along the old farm track that leads from our lane to the new estate and Tesco's I have to admit to feeling rather smug when I see little punnets of blackberries for over £1 for about 4 ozs when I have picked 3 lbs for free

The last lot of bramble jelly didn't last long as it was too lovely with yogurt, or on top of the stewed apple, so this time I will put it in proper jars and hide it until Christmas. One or two favoured people might even get a dollop for a present - now won't that be something to look forward to!

IF - Giant

The topic for Illustration Friday this week is "Giant".
Now, my husband doesn't like spiders and so he has a habit of exagerating when he tells me how big they are (and that it is my job to dispose of them) but never again will I disbelieve him when he tells me there is a giant spider in the bath.

IF - satellite

Although I have been participating in Illustration Friday, although not every week I have to admit, this week's contribution is also part of a challenge, or party game, at the wonderful Misummer Maahes party being hosted by my friend Grethic. If you would like to go to the party just say I sent you and click HERE
This little doodle is done using metallic pencils on black card but beefed up a bit afterwards digitally as the colours were a bit too muted. You will of course recognise the planet Zog and the third Emperor's now defunct satellite beaming music and poetry to the rest of the universe.



Click on the IF button on the side bar to see other people's interpretations

IF- Paisley

I haven't been doing much arty blogging for a while but this week I decided to have a go at the Illustration Friday theme of Paisley. Just my little doodle. Check out the IF site via the banner on my side bar

Monday Mosaic - My good fortune

I want to share my good fortune with you. My friend over at Random Ramblings has just celebrated her blogversary - a year since she started blogging. She set up a giveaway, anyone who commented and left a link to their own first ever post would go in to the draw, which would be done by the ever present random number generator. And I won! My mosaic shows what I won, a lovely bag with elephants on the border (I collect elephants) and a bookmark (I read a lot) and a fridge magnet which is too true it is scary. And some chocolate. Well, I thought I had better eat it, after all - it would be rude not to!
Some will think it was rigged but it wasn't - honest! Because you see, RR and me have met in real life as we found we lived close by, and we have even introduced our husbands! So the good fortune I am sharing is not that I won the prize but that, through the wonder of the internet, I found a really good friend.
Over at The Little Red House you will find more mosaics, by the way, it isn't Mother's Day here in the UK, that was weeks ago, but a happy one to my US readers

Weekend Reflections

There don't seem to be many reflection friendly photo opportunities outside so I have come back indoors for this week's submission. Our lovely new wheelchair friendly wet room is finished, tried, tested and approved. You can see most of it reflected in the very up market all brass and chrome shower control which suddenly made the builder's estimate even more reasonable than we had thought it was. Hubby is happy so I am happy.
See more reflections at Newtown Area Photo

Mosaic Monday - Easton

My mosaic this week features Easton Farm Park. It is a favourite place to go but is a bit run down now and a bit expensive to get in but we go once a year and have a good day there. I can walk round the grounds but hubby is confined to the concrete bits so he has a cup of tea at the cafe when I go for my walk. And it is a bit smelly in the hot weather!
More mosaics HERE

Weekend Reflections

Not sure if some strange craft has left the water or entered it! This was taken at Woodbridge Suffolk UK a couple of months ago. There is a lovely walk along the river there and I keep meaning to go back and take some more photos for when I haven't been struck by reflective inspiration elsewhere
Find lots more reflections at Newtown Area Photo

Mosaic Monday - one I made earlier

I have to admit to having been a bit lazy this morning. I have a lot to do today and was busy over the weekend so I had a look through some of my earlier experiments and thought I'd share this one. Just some pretty things in my bedroom
Happy Monday - see other mosaics HERE

Weekend Reflections

The little bedroom under the eaves has one small window that looks straight on to the house next door. I have two mirrors in there to try and reflect some more light into the room and it also enables me to see a tree and a bit of next door's garden without performing acrobatics
Have a great weekend everyone and if I don't comment on your post please forgive me, I am still having all sorts of problems with my Broadband "speed"
See more reflections at Newtown Area Photo

Mosaic Monday - Happy Easter

I hope it isn't too late to wish you all a Happy Easter. In my mosaic I have included pictures of the crosses which I own. The top one is a plain silver one which I was given when I became a Methodist preacher. The one on the left is an amber and silver cross which my mum gave me for my 50th birthday. The one on the right is the gold cross that belonged to my mother's mother and the one at the bottom is a pretty cross given to me by an aunt and uncle when I was a little girl. The one in the middle is copper wire and I made that one myself one afternoon, quite out of the blue.
I hope you all had a great Easter. And by the way, please forgive me if I don't return your visit, blogger keeps crashing on me at the moment
See more mosaics HERE

Mosaic Monday - Spring is Sprung

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz
I wonder where the birdies is
The little birds is on the wing
But that's absurd
The little wings is on the birds

These are some pictures I took in my garden at the weekend. Spring seems very late this year

For more mosaics go to Little Red House

Weekend Reflections

Last Saturday was my hubby's birthday so we went to our favourite local place Sutton Hoo I took the camera along as usual but we have been there so many times it is difficult to find much that I haven't snapped a hundred times before. Then as we were leaving I suddenly saw the sky reflected in the car. Rather pleased with it
There's lots more to see at Newtown Area Photo It's late here so I'll catch up with you all tomorrow

Mosaic Monday - A Birthday

We went to one of our favourite places as it was my husband's birthday - Sutton Hoo
You will see from this and my wordy blog that we go there a lot as it is close by and a lot of it is very wheelchair friendly. Hubby can borrow an electric buggy there to go round the shorter walk and we both quite like the restaurant and it is somewhere that we can go for a walk together without him struggling or me pushing. So it wasn't exactly a special birthday treat as we might well have gone anyway, but we don't always have lunch there so that was. He had the Suffolk Rarebit with Salad and I had the Stilton and Roasted Vegetable Tart with Roast Potatoes and Salad. It was very good.
In the exhibition centre, in addition to all the usual displays, there was a collection of drawings and ephemera of Victor Ambrus, who is an artist who works on the "Time Team" programme on television which is about archaeology. I don't know if my US readers know of this programme or the artist, but if you would like to you can find out more HERE
We had to have our lunch rather early as when we got there we found that there was a lecture lunch planned so 50 spaces in the restaurant were reserved for that at 1:00. We went for our usual sprint round the mounds and after lunch looked at the exhibition and the gift shop. My photos show the famous Sutton Hoo Helmet plus a few views from the restaurant terrace (yes, it was warm enough to sit outside!) but hubby is shy and doesn't want me to put his photo on my blog, although I sneaked his ear in! There are more photos tagged as Sutton Hoo on Just Jotting Along
I put the photos together for the Monday Mosaic If you would like to see other people's photos for this week go HERE
If you are paying me a visit leave a comment and I will try to visit you when I get up tomorrow, in the UK it's past my bedtime already!

IF Expired

The Illustration Friday subject was "expired". See the button on my side bar to visit the site and see more. I have to admit to having been a bit rushed this morning so this may not be as good as it might have been, but you get the idea!

Mosaic Monday - Secret Garden

The last place I worked had a beautiful walled garden and had some art exhibitions in it in the summer. The mother of the boss kept it so well and it was a real oasis on a fraught day.
For more mosaics go HERE

Weekend Reflections

My friend easternsparkle and I met on Twitter. We have both blogged about this but last night we introduced our respective other halfs to each other over dinner at my place. I was rather pleased with the meal. I did a mild chicken curry with onions, tart dried apricots and coconut milk, potatoes roasted with cumin and ginger and side dishes of chutney, cashews fried with coriander and cumin, yogurt with mint and cucumber and a salad of raw thinly sliced sweet peppers, baby courgette and spring onion. For pud, dessert or afters we had home made kulfi with stewed apple and almond thins. Conversation was easy, nothing burnt. nobody got drunk and I like to think a good time was had by all. Anyway, I took a picture for you all to see and this is my submission for Weekend Reflections too. The dark blob is the back of sparkle's head!



I will try to do something prettier next week, such lovely photos you all do and I'm not really taking it seriously am I!

Mosaic Monday - Family photos

I didn't realise until after I had done this that there was no MM last week. But I left it here anyway as I really don't have time to do a new one - man coming to start work on the house today and need to finish shifting stuff before he arrives!


I have spent quite a lot of the weekend sorting through a couple of shoe boxes full of old photographs. These are all from my mum's side of the family. On the left, her mum, at the top her Uncle Arthur and her paternal grandfather, below her Great Aunt Bessie and her father and in the middle her paternal grandmother. Now I have just seen that there is no official Mosaic Monday this week (don't forget I wrote this last week!) but having done it I shall leave it here anyway. If you would like to see previous weeks Mosaics from all those other lovely bloggers out there click on the link in my sidebar for Little Red House

Weekend Reflections - My first try

My good friend easternsparkle steered me in the direction of another photographic challenge called Weekend Reflections. I have had all sorts of ideas but my back went ping on me this morning after a very early morning trip to the supermarket so I had to find something in the house to do for my first go. Hope to get more artistic in future
Find more reflections HERE

Illustration Friday - Brave

I was inspired this morning by a record that I bought a long time ago and of which I was reminded by my friend GRETHIC because she did a spotify list to go with her submission. I missed the boat on free spotify so I have to trawl You Tube but I found what I was looking for and it is HERE

Click on the Illustration Friday button on the side bar if you want to see other interpretations

Ta-Dah!

You see before you one very happy bunny. Bloggers in Blogland are such a very helpful lot of people and with a lot of help from my friends but two in particular who will get a mention shortly, I have now got lovely big photos on my blog that you will not need a microscope to see! Several people gave me their thoughts, which enabled me to ask slightly more intelligent questions until at last I found what I was looking for
First of all particular thanks go to Jackie
who is a fellow Mosaic Monday participant and a UK girl like me. She made a few suggestions and the link that she sent me to was THIS which told me exactly what I wanted to know. I am so glad I persevered with this, makes me feel slightly less thick than I did this time yesterday!

An Experiment

As I am hoping to take part in a few more photographic based challenges I have been investigating the possibilities. Not being the sharpest pencil in the box, I found Live Writer difficult, limiting and when I eventually previewed what I had done the ends of words were missing from either side of the text. So I thought I would see how easy it was to do the things with photos that I had thought of using LW for and this is what I did in a few minutes with Paint Shop. So I think I will stick with what I know except I seem to have a width issue which I will now go and twitter about in the hope of some advice

Mosaic Monday - Aldeburgh

Hi, this is my first post for Mosaic Monday . I welcome constructive criticism as I am trying to improve. I have recently started learning to use Paint Shop and am enjoying it hugely. I am also trying to get my head round a digital camera with a lot of menus. So my mosaic consists of some photos I have taken in Aldeburgh in Suffolk UK. I used to work there which was great except that in the summer it was very difficult to go back to the office after lunchtime.
Please feel free to wander round this and my other blog while you are here. There are photos and artwork on both

SomComDif ATC Keys

Again I am thwarted to some extent because I do not have all the stamps and inks and stuff but I did have some paper with a lot of rusty keys on it so I reduced it to ATC size and Paint Shopped it into pretty colours

Happy Birthday to ....

A friend of mine on Twitter is having a special birthday tomorrow. When I celebrated this particular milestone a few years ago hubby and I booked in to a local hotel which assured us they were wheelchair friendly but as ever it proved not to be, they had got the sleeping arrangements wrong and we spent a very uncomfortable night and went home early. We were able to prove later that they were in the wrong, not us, so we did get a bit of our money back but it was a disappointment. Hey ho, such is life, our hearts are where our home is. Anyway, this is the picture that I would have put on her card had I known where to send it. It was a drawing I did of the view from our back garden before we moved back to civilisation which I hope would strike a chord with the person I have in mind

Experiment

I have been playing around with Paint Shop and trying to produce some nice images in the style that I have seen on other blogs. I suspect that I can't do what I want to do because of the type of blog I have got

IF - Adrift and SomComDif -Wings

Being a bit lazy and have done one thing for both the Illustration Friday and the Something Completely Different challenges. These butterflies have been caught on the wind and are being blown who knows where! My mum used to collect things with butterflies on them, or butterfly shaped things, so I bought a lot of sticker so I could always put them on cards or letters that I wrote to her. She has got rid of most of it now and I write less as I can visit more

Illustration Friday Muddy

I really love my purple Hunters, they were a present from my husband. This is a photoshopped photo using the "cutout" Filter

SomComDif ATC #01

The theme for the first ATC was Mad March Hare but we were given some leeway in our interpretation and the spelling of hare was optional so here is my hippy Easter chick with her Mad March Hair! This is a drawing of my own in pen which I scanned and coloured in in Photoshop as I didn't have anything else that I could fnd to meet the subject.

Illustration Friday - Focus

This is just a scribble but was inspired by the other challenge I do (Something Completely Different) where cats and arches were involved. Poor mousey, if he stays put he will be OK!

SomComDif Cats

I bought this peel-off for a card for a cat obsessed friend but there were three on the sheet and I hadn't got round to using the others, so thanks for the opportunity. I stuck the peel-off over a photo of the view from the back garden of my previous house and layered it on to some Paper Cellar paper which reminds me a bit of a faded Edwardian sitting room, where the cats have a lovely life

Illustration Friday - Wilderness

I only have Photoshop Elements v4 but it does quite a bit and I love playing around with it. This snowy wilderness was what I could see from my window a few days ago - a digitally played around with photo - hope that counts!

SomComDif Gothic Arch - Fashion (Shoot)

This model has been taken to one of my favourite places ( Sutton Hoo ) for a fashion shoot. I printed the photo, which I took last summer, to start with. Then I scanned a copyright free design from a Dover book and printed it three times, on plain white, patterned green and patterned peach papers and built her up with 3D sticky pads and then posed her in the photo. It came out better than I had hoped

My Beady Eye

A while ago a friend asked me to post up some pictures of jewellery that I had made in the past. I don't do much now as I find that holding little beads and threading them and rolling Fimo hurts my hands, plus I no longer have a utility room where I can cook it without the fumes filling the house. I found that trying to get decent photos was not very easy and so I scanned a few things, hence the boring background, but I think it gives you a taster. The first and second pics are some Chinese Knotting, which I find very theraputic. I can sit and tie long Snake Knots just for fun and then undo them which is just as restful. The big flat knots are Prosperity Knots and the little round ones are Button Knots
The third fourth and fifth show some Fimo beads that I made and strung. I did a lot of these, flat ones that are made a bit like peppermint rock with the design running through and then big round ones with thin slices of the rock rolled round them. I think you need cool hands, like for pastry, as mine tended to go a bit awry. I made some to match the colour of the clothes I used to sell as a party planner and sometimes sold more beads than clothes!
The last two picture are some of my purchased beads just strung in what I hope is a pleasing manner. A lot of the internet sites sell very similar stuff and I used to hunt around for unusual beads, and buy in charity shops and re-string. It's that thing I have about putting colours together again!

SomComDiff Gothic Arch New Year

If you are, like me, under a foot of snow then this isn't so cute or so funny! Brrrr!

IF - Confined

For the last couple of days I have not been confined, as the snow has been soft and cruchy enough for me to feel safe to go out in it. This was a bit of an experiment - a quick sketch of a small child confined by some unnamed illness who is not allowed to go out and play in the snow, overlaid onto a photo that I took this morning.

Another walk through the woods