Enchanted Forest

This is my work in Maz's Anne of Green Gables altered book.

I have a confession. I never read the book. Everyone in my class did - all at the same time.
See I never did go with the flow ;0)

When the book came I had a dilemma. To read or not to read.
I intended to read. We got the book and Roger read it and loved it but I did not get round to it, always something else got in the way.
So these pages are my work on his ideas - team work.

He loved that Anne had such a vivid imagination and made up stories and day dreams, especially an enchanted forest.

I hope Maz likes it and feels we got it right - even just a little bit.

Skinny Book Pages

The yearly swap this time on AlterNative UK is to make and collect pages for a Skinny Book.
The size is 3"x 5". Not too skinny and a really good size too work on.

The theme for January is "photographs".
Well of course I have lots of photographs of lovely vintage ladies and I do a bit of scrapbooking so this was a great theme for me.

The background papers have been painted with acrylic paints using various commercial and handmade stencils. A little bit of scrapbook paper attached itself and then the photos and a few embellishments to add a bit of texture.

My partners were happy with them and that makes me happy too ;0)

Helen's Page

Well one step forward two steps back with my health has made me very late with this fabric page for Helen.

This is for a swap on Fibre Art Friends
and is a fabric page measuring 7 inches square.
Helen's theme is India.

I had some wonderful ideas using elephants and birds but they ended up on the studio floor!
I may try to get them to work at a later date.

So this quilted page is based on Banjara textiles and incorporates actual sari fabrics. The other fabrics are hand painted felt.
It is a bit bright isn't it?!
I was quite happy with it in the end and Helen says she is very pleased with it too.

Christmas Day

Well before I leave the Christmas theme behind I just wanted to share a little bit of my Christmas day.

My Brother runs a very popular pub, but he will be moving on and into business with one of his sons this year.
So, for once, he closed the pub on Christmas day and all the family arrived for dinner.


We had the most wonderful dinner with lots of laughter and a very big slice of love.


It was great to all be together and the first time all the little cousins were in one place.
It is so funny to think of my baby brother as a grandfather and even funnier to think of my folks as great grandparents! All are far too young.

This is Laura with my brother's sons Philip and Lewis. You can see Ian in the background.

I hope your Christmas was as much fun as mine.

Catching Up

Well I am, at last, starting to feel a little better and am wanting to do things.
One of those things is read my e-mails and catch up on my groups.
I thought I would catch up on my blog reading too but when I went to my google reader I was shocked to see how busy you all had been! I had missed well over 200 posts from you.
Forgive me but I am going to start reading your new posts from today or I will never catch up.

All my current work is from before Christmas and, unfortunately, there is not much of it.
As you can see Christmas Trees loomed large for me last year. Our long standing favourite wouldn't stand!
It must have got broken in our move the Christmas before.
Very sad as it was as old as Laura our daughter.
We put the tree decorations around the house either on the
walls on on top of furniture. A new tree is on the list for this Christmas.

The first piece here is an altered film canister for a swap on AlterNative UK.
I needle felted pieces of felted jumpers to make the trees on a sleeve that fitted the canister then
tied some posh ribbon round it so it could be hung on a tree. Of course the trees are embellished with little beads for extra sparkle.

The others are the last of the Chunky Book Pages for ANUK. We will be doing Skinny Pages this year.
The background is painted with watercolour paints and then stamped with acrylic paints. The trees are cut from card textured with tissue paper. Some little gems add the twinkle.