A Splendid Little Chap

At the doll group (or rather Craftydollybirds group) last Sunday some of us started to make a bird out of a lightbulb!  This was a project by Christine Lehto in 'Cloth Paper Scissors' - March/April 2012.  Who would look at a lightbulb and think 'that would make a fabulous body for a bird'? - well obviously Christine did and I'm so glad she did as I love my little chap.  Christine used paperclay to cover the lightbulb after attaching wings and tail; I've used an airdrying clay called DAS as  you can see in one pic.  I bought mine at 'The Works' (but I seem to remember from reading comments somewhere in Blogland that this isn't a countrywide company).  The project suggests using acrylic paints for the bird but I decided to decoupage mine - the papers are from Decopatch.  I keep thinking you could use paper napkins as Decopatch papers are a little expensive but I've never seen some of the lovely designs they do in napkins plus the printed side of the papers is coated which I think gives a little bit of strength when wet.  He's 53/4"

I asked for and received a lovely 'dumfling' from Jo so thought I'd make her one of my birds as a thank you.

I belong to a small but select craft group, hehe, that meets once a month in Brighouse, West Yorkshire.  We sometimes have challenges and for this month it was to make something 'red, white and blue' because of the queen's Jubilee.  I made a little felt bird.

SuperLambananas

Went to see DS and granddaughters yesterday :-)  Grandson Lewis came with me, but Robyn doesn't like the long drive, thinks she's going to miss something at home (even though there was nothing exciting going on) and as DD was working yesterday morning she would've wanted to be in when her mum got home; even though she then plagued the life out of her mum as is her wont!  The weather was miserable, chucked it down while we were on the motorway and there was fog, mainly when we were passing the moors.  We went to Liverpool where luckily we only had  a little bit of light rain.  We visited the New Museum of Liverpool not a nice looking structure IMO.  And though there are lots of new 'modern' buildings in that area I feel they could've been built to fit in more with the beautiful old buildings around them.  I snapped some of the SuperLambanana sculptures that are dotted around.  You may have seen some previously on Jo's blog and if memory serves also on Donna's (I stand to be corrected though).  Apparantly the original one was created by Japanese artist Taro Chiezo to warn of the dangers of genetically modified food.

 Distant view of Liverpool's Catholic Cathedral; yes we have 2! I've included the other pic (not taken by me) as you can see so little in mine.

The Albert Dock

Statue of Billy Fury (1940-1983)

The River Mersey was quite choppy.

SuperLambananas outside the New Museum of Liverpool

View of Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral (It was much further away than it looks) completed in 1978 (the foundation stone was laid in 1904) is the largest in the UK and the fifth largest in the world

Embroderies in the museum depicting images of Liverpool (there are 2 others either side of this)

A lovely SuperLambanana in the museum, her name is Mandy

Laser cut corrugated card depicting important events - see the info.

Amber, the youngest, decided to squeeze into one of the lockers after DS had retrieved their coats and things.

Simon Says...................

I've never entered this challenge before, but I'd been watching a Christy Tomlinson tutorial where she'd used texture paste; which is something I love to use; so when I saw that the SimonSays challenge this week was to 'stamp and show texture' I was inspired to have a go.  I've added texture with the use of texture paste and also by using corrugated card.  I don't know how much stamping you have to do but I've just added a little using a 'zigzag stitch' stamp on all four edges and stamped over the flower and torn corrugated card at the bottom with a 'bubbles' stamp.  I didn't want the stamping to show too much so used a blue Distress Ink.  I've used Basic Grey paper on the background and daubed a little peach and blue paint in.
I've not been able to crop it properly as I was using MS Officed Starter 2010 to do that but it's stopped working.
(Canvas, but it's a flat one)

366 Journal and Yorkshire Sculpture Park

On time this month :-) Not a lot to say about my pages.  I haven't been able to crop the pics this month as I had finally installed the software for my camera onto my laptop but it has mysteriously disappeared.  Previously I had been using MS Word (Starter 2010 pre-installed on laptop) but that is refusing to work, I cannot open it at all.  I've tried installing a free download again but it's not working so I don't know what's going on :-/  I'm trying to get advice from several sources; just waiting for replies.

I went to Poland for a few days with Pat, really enjoyed it.  We had  room overlooking the river which was lovely.  I've uploaded photos onto laptop so will blog about it in a few days.  I intend to show a selection of pics on here but upload all of them onto Flickr so if people want to see them all they can.  Also visited Yorkshire Sculpture Park earlier in the week; for the first time since I moved here - shame on me!  It's a wonderful place.  Stupidly I didn't think to take my camera so had to rely on my phone so only got a few pics.  There are sculptures by many different artists; I didn't make note of them all.  There was quite a large installation of sculptures by Miro and a small gallery in the same building as one of the restaurants/cafes showing limited edition of Miro prints.  Also an installation named 'Family of Man' by our very own Barbara Hepworth.  Oh I'm so fickle, after all Barbara Hepworth hails from Wakefield; where I now live; and I of course hail from Liverpool which is on the opposite side of the country.  Though Liverpool is now in the county of Merseyside it was once part of Lancashire - do you know about the 'War of the Roses?' - enough said! hehe  Many of the sculptures at the park are on loan from various parts of the world.  I loved the little greenhouse that housed lots of plantpots with 'Word Poems' in; onlyh one of which I'm showing here plus info about the author.  I could've reduced the image quality and taken more photographs but wasn't sure how well they would turn out, actually the last 2 are lower quality and are fine.  This is only a tiny taste of what's on offer.  The park covers 500 acres.

On the left, one of the 'Family of Man' series by Barbara Hepworth

Beautiful bark (not one of the sculptures haha)

Miro Sculptures

Thought I'd share this - it's nothing special except that I planted it up along with another for myself and 2 for my daughter whilst they were on holiday last October!  Can you believe it?  There were other plants in which died off and the pansies have taken over :-)