Marysia mentioned Alpaca this morning.

So I thought you would like to see Alpaca Ted playing dead on the scanner!

He's nice isn't he?

Here are not very good pics of my not very good Celtic Fragment!The detail is meant to show the stitching but you have to look hard!The colours are OK though except for that purpley colour on the edges of the canvas... it isn't really there, just an artefact! It's this border that I dislike so much... very ermmmm Brown!This is a mixed media piece of paper, felt, wax crayon, stitching.

I'm back now from my sojourn in Ferndown learning how to make little books. I really enjoyed it... especially after I asked the hotel to change my room as the first night was near a very busy road. I find that they quite often give the least nice of the double rooms to people who book a single!
Here is the view from my window overlooking the River Stour after they moved me... very peaceful. I couldn't get a really good picture as the window didn't open far enough.





I would love to do it all again having learned a little about how some of the effects are done. I made a start on three books.
One is a childs board book. I didn't use an old one but a new blank book. My theme for this one is daisies and I started by cutting a hole in the cover. This was originally intended to have something displayed in it but I might change my mind about that as I like what happened when I forgot to protect the page behind the cover before I painted it!
Here is a pic of it as it is at the minute but it will change. It looks a little darker here and you can't see the interference green overlay. It is going to have the word Daisy in little wooden blocks somewhere on the cover.




The second one is a pamphlet type using painted and stamped papers. This one is called 'Aspects of the Heart' and features some stamped words, a beautiful rubber stamp and some paper castings made from stamps.
The third is more like a folded pamphlet than a book and hasn't got very far yet. This one will display some of my odds and ends of samples. The reason it hasn't got very far yet is that I think I chose the wrong colours for the background and I need to reconsider.... I love the idea though.

Still working with the genealogy pics.

Now then, Who do you all think these are?

Bet Margaret can guess!

This is what I have been playing with this morning. The first scanned, hand coloured picture has a shrapnel hole in it from the Nov 1940 raid on Coventry. I have had a go at repairing it in Photoshop Elements. Thought some of you might like to see it.

I think if I am going to use it though I will have to re-photograph it as it doesn't all fit on the scanner.

I have also been having a look at how Paul Klee might have used the computer to produce his picture of the Golden Fish. Here is my version. I had to make the background of several layers in order to somewhat reproduce the effect. I then overlaid it with his images of the fish but these could also have been made .

I think he would have enjoyed having the use of a computer.

Hi Folks, it is high time I updated this.... been a bit busy getting things ready for my upcoming book classes. One of them is going to be about daisies I think. Here are a couple of background papers I made using a scanned image of a pressed flower.

I made another using a dropped shadow ... not sure which, if any I will use.

If I have time I will also print some onto shrink plastic and see what that looks like.