Here's looking at you

Howdy Y'all. I know this has not been updated much recently. Part of that is due to me having done less arty stuff with work knackering me out during the week and then alot pf partying at the weekends and trips back to London. However I am in America for a week, visiting family, so a little down time with give me some craft time hopefully.
So look at the guinea pig, hopefully it makes you smile and I plan to bring you craftiness very soon!

House ATC's

Horray from some crafting actually being done. It was nice to do this and I think they are fun. Plus I am organising this swap so have been seeing all the fantastic cards which have been coming in. Gives me first picks on which cards I would like from the swap. It's nice to do something a bit different, not just the normal shape.

But I am not letting my crafting afternoon/evening finish there, I have lost on the tv, a bit of food on the stove and I am going to continue making things. Working on a couple of cards at the moment, making use of a cat stamp I bought a couple of weeks ago. I am sure I will add photo's later in the week.

Its going to be a busy week as I start my new role within Royal Mail tomorrow being Assistant Business Partner for South West Wales, Kate officially left on Friday for her maternity leave with nice presents. So its just me from now on whilst still keeping my old role going for a few more weeks. This is likely to leave me little time for fun on my computer whilst at work. But there are always the evenings.

Also we got another guinea pig following the death of Takumi about 3 weeks ago. We picked ourselves up a little ginger one as the picture shows and we have named him Dave. Yes I realise this is rather a human name for him (going with our other pig, Patch) but I suggested it as a sort of joke last night and its just seemed right.

So enjoy the art and the cute picture of a guinea pig :)

Ticking off the list

Thats right I managed to tick some thing off the list which I had to complete. A couple of things sent out which I needed to send out but still things needing to be done. Hopefully I will get there in the end.
Still working in the journals and loving it. I did a couple of background for journal pages yesterday so I could take my journal on our trip. I painted a background with blue paint which slight dyed the strong holding it together but only for a couple of pages - need to figure how to stop it doing that. I also used ink pad to lightly colour a couple of pages - one side yellow, one side red.
I have done some actual pages in the journal though - I added another sketch to the bottom of the other page although it didn't turn out how I wanted but I left it in anyway - after all its development.

I did a sex and the city page from last week where I went to see Sex & The City movie whilst I was in Leeds for Work. It is the first time I have ever been to the cinema alone so its about that experience and how it made me feel.

Another page I did was some purple striped paper as a background and originally I was going to write on it but then I thought, no this will look nice as just a picture page. So I got out my silver ink pad and some hand stamps and left lots of handprints all over the page. I like the effect it created so decided not to add any words as I don't think it needs it.

Thats was fun I liked it. I have alos been working in my journal for mine and Lia's swap but I will post them once we next swap back as I like her to see them in person first.

Linda's Journal

Linda's Journal Page 3
Originally uploaded by seussscat

Did some more Art last night. Firstly I made use of a doodle I made in a 2 day meeting last week. Even as I created it I knew I would probably turn it into a journal page. I wanted to be specific with my doodling - I had a feeling of what it had to look like and wanted it to look right. I did it ring by ring as such working out from the original HI. The joy of a 4 colour biro was especially handy. No green in this though, I didn't think it would look right. I also did a sketch before bed whilst Sam and Matt were playing XBox 360 (I surprised Sam by buying him an XBox 360 - he was not expecting it, A big Present for him) of one of Guinea Pigs - Takumi eating. It was quite tricky as he kept eating for a little bit, then going to get some water and then coming back plus he went to bed before I had finished however I had the general gist of the picture so I just finished it off. It was nice to sketch as its been a little while since I last sketched and even longer since I did it based on a subject I was looking at rather than just from my imagination. It turned out quite well - Sam thought it was a good sketch which was nice.

ATC's, Cross Stitch and more

I got creative the other night and was busy finishing off cards, making news ones and working on a couple of postcards to go out to pen friends. Firstly these are my cross stitch cards which I made for a swap on MixedMediaATC_UK on yahoo. My cards arrived too late for the swap and due to lack of internet over the weekend I was unable to let Amanda know but we are going to do a one for one swap and so she will get to pick from these 3 cards. So the two she doesn't pick will be open for trade. Also I will have my all cross stitch card which I have yet to have refound yet. So if anyone is interested let me know, Always happy to do one for one trades. My favourite of these is the flags card. I like the though of stitching flags so I did this first not really thinking about what the background would be like but once stitched I decided that some different languages behind the flags would bring across the sense of other countries. I think the white paper is polish from a polish newspaper and the more brown paper which was a page I got sent, I think it is spanish but could not tell you for sure. I like the layering effect they gave and that is what inspired me for what I wrote around them.

Then we have this love theme card which seeing as were around valentines it is unsurprising I ended up making a love themed one. I love the material that I put over the top, again sent to me, probably in a grab bag win. You can't see it very well in the picture but I wrote love underneath in red which is what inspired me to call the ATC Hidden Love.

The one below is stitching meets doodle, I like that effect. I sometimes worry that doodle looks rubbish although I love to do it however I think

for this ATC it framed it nicely. Plus its what I wanted to do and enjoyed :)

I also made a couple of valentines card to send to Catherine and

Norma in the states in return for the lovely ones they sent me. Having got some vintage valentine images from the mary davis sampler I decided to have a try with them as I rarely use vintage images using more modern stuff but fancied giving it a go. I like the though of a secret admirer giving flowers. I loved the backgrounds for these, just images I searched out on google images and then printed out thinking how great they would be for back grounds but totally not knowing what was going to go on top of them at the time.

And finally on this creative night, although thinking about it I think it was over a couple of evenings. I made postcards to send to a pen friend. One was a valentines postcard which I don't seem to have a picture of at the moment - the question is did I take one. And the other was making use of some patterns I had printed off forever ago knowing I would love making a postcard from them and then losing them in the ether which turned out to be hidden in a work folder.

So that has been my creativity of late. Apart from that finished watching Season 3 of Lost and loved it. Might have to rewatch them as was really ploughing through them and I like to contemplate what I have seen and thinking about possible future storylines and how linked to previous stuff. Been playing with our new cute guinea pigs. Patch and Takumi. Both boys with black and white coats and such different personalities. Patch is bolder and easier to get a hold of where at Takumi is more jumpy and can run ever so fast, round and round the cage when trying to catch him. But both very good when you get them out, so loving them and spending time taming them. Bit of Guitar Hero last night, got it for my birthday so was loving the new songs to play to. Plus needed to chill after spending most of the day on trains travelling to different meetings. Yesterday was a long work day!