Wednesday 31 December 2014

Starting work in my 2015 Journal

Regular readers will know that I am using a Dylusions Journal for a monthly calendar, my Take Me Deeper devotional and my word for the year.

I described how I prepared my journal here.

I started with the January calendar.   I found some scrapbooking cardstock and cut narrow strips.

I stuck the strips down on the left hand page and on the flap on the right.

I put some clear gesso through a snowflake stencil.

I used 3 colours of Distress Ink over parts of the pages and took the colour off where the clear gesso was.  This technique works better with spray inks!

Using a punch I cut 31 flower shapes and then stamped the days of the week.

I stamped snowflakes with Archival Ink.

I stuck the flowers down and wrote the numbers on.   There isn't much room to write something for each day but to me that's a good thing!

Take Me Deeper and logos365 don't officially start until January 1st but I thought I would do my main word page.

I started by putting gesso over the page.  When that was dry I scraped 2 colours of acrylic paint onto the bottom third of the page.   I pressed a spider's web stencil into the wet paint in the hopes it would dry to look like parched earth.

At the top of the page I scraped modelling paste through a raindrop stencil.  I put a thin coat of two tones of blue acrylic paint over it.  However I forgot to take a photo of this stage.  The cracks didn't show up very well when the paint was dry so I stamped on it with Sepia Archival Ink.

I printed out the word thirst and stuck the letters front side onto a page of a Bible that I bought from a Dollar Store for the express purpose of using it in  my artwork.   I cut them out and stuck them onto my page.  When the glue was dry I drew turquoise lines inside the letters.

I printed out the verse from John 4:13 and stuck it onto my page.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice


Tuesday 30 December 2014

Tenerife at Christmas

We were only home for two weeks after getting back from the States before we were off again for a 6 day stay in Tenerife.
The view of the square in La Orotava from the roof of our hotel.

The Canary Islands have never been on my wishlist of places to visit but we wanted to go somewhere warm and Tenerife didn't disappoint either in warmth or interesting places.  And I have 643 photos to prove it!   However I won't show you all of them but beware this is a photo heavy post.

For this blog post I'll concentrate on the Nativity scenes we saw at various places.   The work involved in them is spectacular.

On our first night we walked down to the square and found this amazing nativity scene with people-sized figures.  Just like last year where we found Jesus was born in Madeira, the Canarians incorporate the Nativity into their culture.


























 Sorry some of the photos weren't as clear as they should have been.   While we were in the aquare these folks turned up.

Opposite the square there was a room with this model in it.


We visited Garrachio and this model was on show.








This was in the room next door.








And this was in the last room.









On Christmas Eve we went to La Laguna and saw yet another Nativity.  I didn't take so many photos this time!  The model was behind glass and yet again featured Canarian life to such an extent that the Nativity scene was a small part in the right hand corner!

 We loved the attention to detail.

Our last Nativity scene was found on Christmas Day.   These were taken in Santa Cruz in the Parliament building.

 We loved that there were Pelicans.
 Well done if you've got this far.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice