A few days in Bath

 I have been in Bath for a few days with a friend..................

 The first day saw us at The Roman Baths................

....... the head of Sulis Minerva.......to whom the baths are dedicated...........

 The next day we went to Bath Abbey.................

 then to Sally Lunns for lunch......one of the oldest houses in Bath and home of the Bath Bun.....

 that evening we went to the cute Little Theatre Cinema where we saw The Woman in Black......it was SCARY and we had to walk back to our B&B in the dark afterwards!!

 No visit to Bath is complete without a visit to the spectacular Georgian Royal Crescent......

No 1 Royal Crescent is a restored Georgian town house open as a museum

To complete our visit we spent a VERY lovely evening at THERMAE BATH SPA.....Britains only natural  thermal spa. It was extremely relaxing sitting in a eucalyptus steam room (even if it reminded me of a jar of Vick!) and then floating around a bubbling open air pool on the roof under the stars!

More..........

 playing just for the heck of it!! 

Well that, and using things I have bought and never used.........this stencil and dies both come into that category!

 I have a bit of a confession......I don't really like spray inks, especially through stencils! I think I must be a bit anal but I like to be more in control of where stuff goes and sprays are just a bit random. I do use them......like on this page.....as a general spray over a background and then work on over that.

 

 

 I read on MICHELLE WARDS blog that we should remember that we don't always have to get stencils wet to use them! So, I first drew through mine and later used ink on a sponge.

 I LOVE this image:)

 Masking tape, strips of book page, painty circles and paper clips and a black gem.

Just for the hell of it!

 After a morning of doing other everyday necessary stuff I felt the need to make something this afternoon...............the only problem was I had no idea what!! So, I sat down and fiddled around and came up with this..........no idea why except that I had this owl stamp that I had never used sand when I stamped him he reminded me of a Victorian school teacher!

 Just to show how small this journal is:)

 COMPLETELY by chance it says THE CAT IN THE HAT on the bit of paper I used for his hat.....and yes, I do know he's an owl but he does have a hat on:)

 

Don't be a sheep...............

but if you have to........be a black one!!

 I think what I mean by this is don't just blindly follow, try to be a little (or a lot) different, to stand out from the crowd............be a black sheep in a crowd of white ones!

 And what prompted this?

Well......let me just get me soap box out and climb up on it......

OK,  I find it very strange that a product only has to have Tim Holtz written on it for all common sense to go out the window regardless of whether the product is good or not........want an example? "new" stamps that are just old ones re-sized.......paper clips with gems stuck on, screw eyes....and the best of all the new Stamp and Cut which cuts out Tims stamps......even the square and rectangular ones.....by means of a mega expensive die cutting machine......I mean, come on!!

 Is it just me that thinks this way??????

Just my opinion:)

Reaper of Hearts

 I started this page yesterday......had to leave the drips and splatters to dry ............

 .......I like this little quote.................

 ........meet Saint Valentine......he is a new image from Lily over at THE OCTOPODE FACTORY

Lost in Lace

 I was so taken by one particular piece that I saw at the Lace exhibition in Birmingham the other day that I decided to use some of my pics for a journal page. A few days ago I bought myself a new Moleskine journal.....a nice red one.......and I decided on a ruled one just to give another dimension to the pages. The idea is to leave some of the lines showing or to actually use them.....not too sure I achieved that on this page! Oh well!

 First step was to use up the left over watery brown paint you can see sitting on the tile in the picture above.....ooops made the pages curl.....heat gun sorted that out!

 Before it was completely dry I rubbed over some Pan Pastels in orange and brown....................

 ........then stamped some lace around the edges and used a credit card dipped in black paint to echo the lines in the photos......................

 The finished thing..............my natural inclination was to add the pics at angles and overlapping each other but I resisted and put them down on the page straight as contrast to all the crossing lines

 If you are interested, the artist who created this installation in the exhibition is  

CHIHARU SHIOTA....click to read more.

Oh yes.....I used my Poloroid Pogo mini printer for the pics.

Lace and a metal man

 Today a friend and I went to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery to see LOST IN LACE......a contemporary look at lace...it was very interesting and certainly not lace as you normally think of it.

 

 This was made from metal.............and look....a skull!!

 A beautiful wire and bead chandelier- like piece........

 here are two pieces......the one in the distance is made with punch cards and wire................

 .................. the nearer one looks like punched paper.......all these were lovely but.....

  MY ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE PIECE WAS THIS..................WOW, WOW AND WOW!

 its hard to see the scale of this.....it was set into the corner of the room and the dresses were hanging free and were more than life sized.....

 the black lines are lengths of black wool representing the lace aspect..................

 it had something of a creepy, slightly spooky feel to it but I LOVED IT!

 Then outside of the museum was this................I was thinking 

"it looks a bit like the Angel of the North".......

 and lo and behold when I went to look it is called "Iron Man" by Anthony Gormley!