Pastels and Unusual Alphabets

Last night as I was unpacking the bag of birthday presents I got from my friends I refound the pastels that my friend Adam had bought me. Immeadiately I wanted to play with them which is exactly what I did. I got out a journal I have only used a couple of times because I have not got into the swing of doing journal work not for a swap. Not sure why, maybe I should start trying to do it more. Anyway I haven't used pastels since I had an old set and used to draw on my walls at my Dad's - he didn't mind as it was wallpaper and he knew he would take it down one day but that was in my teenage years where you have all those emotions and you feel you want to make a statement. So I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them but decided I would just have a play. I started just rubbing them on at first but it didn't look right and that's when I started blending it with my fingers. I of course ended up with different fingers for different colours and I can only really blend with one hand so I soon ran out of space but it was fun. I started with the background just thinking about enjoying using the colours and such knowing I would put stuff over the top soon, maybe some writing or something. The other page didn't turn out quite as I wanted it. I thought I would create a dreamy looking woman with flowing hair and a flowing dress but my drawing skills were not up to it, especially in pastel. The second I drew the high neckline I was like ahhhh no thats not what I wanted but I kept with it anyway and in the end turned out better than expected but not to what I held in my mind. Practice, practice will be the key.

Unusual Alphabet ATC's. I was glad to get these all done in the one night as I should have sent them yesterday but one day is late is ok. Well its not ok but its done now. I had thought about my idea's during the day and printed off the pirate and guinea pig pictures. The monster was a sudden inspiration upon finding the monster wrapping paper someone had wrapped one of my birthday presents in and thinking - AH HA. The pirate one was fun to make as I basket wove the background for it to give it a nice patchy effect which was realistic. Trying to stick squares on would have been a nightmare. That left with one left to do and i just looked at what I had and what letter I could do and thats where B for buttons was born from. I don't use my buttons enough and I do like them so it was nice to play around with them. So smooth :)

Plus I found the picture of the valentines postcard I sent and here it is. Couple of years ago I bought like a desktop calender which had pages you could use for scrapbooking everyday. And this is the first one I had used, Only took me a couple of years and I didn't use it for scrapbooking.

So thats it. I am off up to Rugby tonight with work for a conference tomorrow so I might take my journal with me to work on those pastels pages some more turning them from WIPs into winners :)