A Friend

Two things can perk you up, 

A cup of coffee and a good FRIEND.

This sentiment is so true!  I have a dear friend at church who perks me up immensely.  How do I repay this kindness?  I forget her birthday.  I am ashamed and hope that she will forgive me when she receives this card.

This is an Inkadinkado stamp which I coloured with pencil crayons.

Silly Scraps Saturday

Just black and white this time.  Happy Saturday!

This is a simple collage made of scraps, done in my Scrap Journal.  I made my Scrap Journal with my Bind-It-All, especially to hold these "warm-up" collages.  When I want to make something but I'm not inspired to do anything specific, I make one of these.  One usually leads to two (or more).  I got the idea from iHanna's "Every Artist Needs a Scrap Notebook" post.

Every Saturday I post one of these simple collages.  Thanks for visiting my blog and I hope you are enjoying the weekend!

Links to Love

Each morning I look at blogs on my iPod while I have coffee.  Here are some that I saw this week and that I wanted to have a look at on a bigger screen or mark them with tags for further reference.  (I use Feedly now that Reader is leaving us because I can tag things by category).

Three good sentiment stamp tips.

A simple new alphabet anyone can do!

This simple background technique would work on cards or journal pages or just about anything!

I love these simple stamping ideas, particularly the stamping on masking tape.

Make your own silhouettes!

Bronwyn

Bronwyn lives with Samantha in my old book journal.  She is drawn with a black Stabilo pencil on top of an acrylic impasto background.

Samantha

I've named this woman Samantha, so I don't have to say "Another Face".

Samantha lives in my old book journal, and is done with watercolour pencil.  The background is watercolour spritzed through stencils.

Update on the Calligraphy Journal

I finished another page in my Calligraphy Journal over the weekend.  I'm not 100% happy with the journal or the paper.  The pages fall out of the glued pad too easily and the paper is a little bit thin so certain stamp inks bleed through.  Yes, it is really just a pad of paper if I could only admit it.  So, I should say that I'm working on loose pages at the moment.  The advantage of this, however, is that if I find paper I like better I can switch over and bind it all together when it is finished!

Inspired by Yves Laterme

On Friday night, the West Coast Calligraphy Society was very fortunate to enjoy a presentation by Yves Laterme, a Belgian calligrapher and artist.  He inspired this journal page:

The background is scrapbook paper, all ready for the pen work!