April photo

On the 12 Months in View challenge blog I challenged everyone to take a photo of the same place every month.  Preferably at the same time and the same day so for example the 5th of every month.

This was my photo for March - taken of my back garden from my bedroom window.

The idea was that by the end of the 12 months we would each have a record of the monthly and seasonal changes to the view we take.

At the time of the original challenge, who knew in the UK that winter would return rather than SPring arrive.   Here is today's photo.

You can see that Roger has cut down the bedraggled Pampas Grass and that the snowdrops recovered well from being under 6 inches of snow for a week.

In the bottom left hand corner you can just see the crocus in the lawn that also survived the snow.

Hopefully next month we will see some change.  After all they have promised that the weather WILL warm up - but not for at least a week.

April Challenge

The challenge set today on 12 Months in View is:
"Using Lime green, Lemon and Bluebell blue make a page, a layout, a tag, whatever you will based on any of the inspiration you have found on this blog post."

I decided I would try out some of the things I learned with Dina Wakley and that are contained in her book, Art Journal Freedom.

I spread a very thin layer of Gesso on the journal pages.  I added the green paint - rather too much of it really and it's probably too dark.  I added the paint with an old credit card which has given some hard lines.   Using the same stencil I used on Saturday I removed some of the paint with a baby wipe through the stencil.

I added the lemon paint with my fingers and did the same technique with the stencil.  I added the blue with my fingers and then used Dina's Mosaic stencil and a baby wipe to remove the paint.

I dipped a plastic top in white acrylic paint and 'stamped' 7 circles across the page.

While the white circles were drying, using a set of bird stamps and Archival ink, I stamped on book paper and some scrapbook cardstock and cut them out.

I wrote part of The Wasteland quote across the page and then stuck on the birds.

  
I felt it lacked something, so i added the red paint through some sequin waste.

I look forward to seeing what you do today with the challenge.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

My April Calendar

I like to join in with Kate Crane's Calendar Challenge.  My problem is that although I make the calendar it rarely gets filled in.  I said much the same in my blog post about March.

So let's see if I can manage it for April!

To make my April Calendar, I sprayed water on the journal pages and sprayed two colours of yellow.  Despite the risk of everything going brownish, I sprayed Turquoise at the top of the page and sprayed more water to make the inks drip down when I picked up the journal.   I used a Julie Fei-Fan Balzer stencil to draw the raindrops on the pages with an Inktense pencil and then coloured in the shape.

I went over the watercolour crayon with water to blend it.  I used a pale blue Paint Dabber through the stencil to make the raindrops at the edges of the pages.  And stamped with two sizes of the Tim Holtz stamp.

I drew round the raindrops with a Gellyroll pen.  I stamped the month and coloured it with pen.   I wrote the numbers in and the days of the week.   I drew a white highlight on each raindrop.

So now all I have to do is remember to fill it in!

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice