Monthly Photo

On 12 Months in View today is the reminder to take the monthly photo.

I take a photograph from my bedroom window of the back garden.

Here's how it looked last month. It still had a distinctly wintery look despite being the middle of Spring.

But look what a couple of weeks of warm weather has done.

And here are a couple of areas where you can see lots of colour coming.

I love that we get to enjoy the neighbour's Magnolia tree.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Playing Catch Up

Today I have been playing catchup with the April challenges I posted on 12 Months in View.

At the beginning of April there was a giveaway from Anita of some Primrose and Primula related papers.  I made a book with her second set of papers. 

I gessoed the page in my journal (left) and printed off this paper from the set.

I swiped 3 different colours of Distress Ink over the gessoed page and wiped on the colour with a baby wipe.

I inked over the flowers on the printed page.

I tore the flowers out and stuck them onto the journal page with gel medium.  I printed out the quote, cut it up and inked the edges before sticking it down on the page.  I found the butterfly card topper and stuck that on as well.

The page seemed to be a bit disjointed and the eye had nowhere to rest.  So I inked butterflies through a stencil using black distress ink.

Then I moved on to the April 23rd challenge.  Although I had already done a Shakespeare-related blog post I decided to do a journal page as well.

I started by collaging scraps of music paper, map, pattern paper, doilies and paper napkins onto my page.

Then I sprayed yellow ink over the whole page.

I printed out the quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream, cut it up and inked the edges.

I haven't totally caught up yet but I do feel I made some headway today.


Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Flower of the Month

This month's flower of the month on 12 Months in View is the Bluebell.

The challenge was to make a bluebell page.  Susan Ernst had previously given us a tutorial on how to 'draw' flowers and I used this same technique.

I downloaded the colouring page of bluebells and rubbed a pencil over the back.  I drew over the image transferring it to my sketchbook.

Using the Shaded Lilac Re-inker and some water I painted in the flowers.  I found I was better able to get the shading if I painted the shape with water and then added the colour.  When it was dry I put the highlights in with undiluted colour.

I coloured in the stem and leaves with a watercolour pencil and then washed over it with water.

I diluted some of the re-inker so that it was only just blue and washed it over the page.  The paper isn't for watercolour so it buckled.

When it was all totally dry I outlined it all with a black pen.

If you haven't joined in yet with 12 Months in View.  It isn't too late to join.

Thanks for popping by.
Bernice