Beach Collages and WOYWW

 I really don't do the beach in summer, although I do spend many hours at our local beach out of season and love it.  Somehow the three little backgrounds I had left over from last weeks collages just screamed 'seaside' at me, helped along by me finding a piece of sea pottery with a pretty wave pattern on it! 
  

It also gave me the perfect opportunity to use more of my old clay pipe stems - they make a perfect breakwater!  The gold foil I used on all three is not showing up very well in the photos but in one of two of these detailed shots you can see the light glinting on the gold of the coral, the sea glass and the stamped seashell.

I'm linking up with Julia over at WOYWW this week.

A Walk Around the Local Boatyard

A walk around a local boatyard offered up some wonderful colours and textures to photograph.   Even the boats whose bottoms were about to be scrubbed were wonderful photographic opportunities!

This week I am linking up with Mary over at Mosaic Monday and Sally over at Blue Monday 

Color This Quote

 I've just finished this month's challenge for Colour this Quote, over at Artists in Blogland, and the quote to inspire us was

'Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year'

                                                                    Ralph Waldo Emerson 

This was quite a difficult challenge for me, as at the moment every day is most definitely NOT the best day in the year!  However, I decided to think about 'best days' and immediately holidays and childhood sprung to mind.  A lot of distress ink, Ranger dyes and rubber stamping later and I finally finished.  I stepped out of my comfort zone and moved away from my favoured cream and neutral backgrounds and palettes.  I am disappointed that the gold embossed writing along the top just didn't show up clearly in photos or scans, and it's also a bit wonky - but that's because I didn't do it on one of my 'best days'! 

 If only every day was a day like these!

 Close up showing the gold embossed writing along the top of the page

I removed the ink with clean water on a fine brush to write the words next to the image, and it reminded me of the 'invisible' writing we used to do as kids - I think onion skins were involved somehow - anyone remember that?!

BLUES AT THE BEACH

 I had forgotten how wonderful old beach huts are - the more run-down and tatty the better the textures to photograph!  

I am linking up with Mosaic Monday, Color Me Weekly and Blue Monday.

COLLAGE OBSESSION - A GREY THEME

This week Collage Obsession tempted me with the theme of 'grey'.  It's a colour I love but don't work with that often.

I decided to put together two grey photo collages, using photos from my archives - one based on sewing and the other based on the beach.   

Why not nip over and visit other grey-themed work at Collage Obsession.

TAG TUESDAY CATCH-UP

It has been a few weeks since I posted my Tag Tuesday entries on my blog so I though I would play catch-up.

This weeks theme is 'Rock Pools and Beach Finds'.  For this I used a found piece of heart shaped sea glass,  which I wrapped in wire and glued to a piece of silk.  I attached this to a 'mess' of ink and gel medium and added some silver flakes.

Last weeks theme was 'Swimming'.  I used vintage images from the Graphics Fairy and 'somewhere else, I can't remember where'!  I emulsioned the background and stamped a swirly pattern to give an underwater feel, then added some small pearls.

For the previous week the theme was 'The Beach'.  I decided to keep it simple and stick to just rubber stamping (I think most of them are from Oxford Impressions).  The fossils and text were embossed in gold and look quite shiny and metallic.

And that's me all caught up!

There are some fantastic tags over at Tag Tuesday - why not take a peek!

SUMMER OF COLOUR - WEEK 4

This weeks ice cream challenge over at Kristin's Summer of Colour was Strawberry Lemonade Punch ice cream - in other words working with the colours pink and yellow.

 I wanted to continue working with my ongoing pollen theme but the colours just kept taking me to the beach!  I decided to incorporate both the pollen and the beach themes and I used images of shells, silver wire and beads, along with a pink cutout tree that I hope looks like coral now that I've cut the trunk off!

It's difficult to see the wires - they just look like pencil lines - so here's a close up of the wire and beads.

This is pretty much all the pink stuff I own!

But I do have some lovely pink and yellow Rockroses and St John's Wort in the garden at the moment - I have added them to some old photos to make a Strawberry Lemonade Punch photo mosaic to link with Little Red House!

While still in the pink/yellow frame of mind I found these beautiful caterpillars on some Verbascum plants at my local garden centre.  We moved the plants they were on to the back of the display so the staff would hopefully not find them and destroy them!  These caterpillars turn into Mullein moths and boy, can they eat Verbascum at a rate of knots!

I am linking these colour palettes to Colour Me Weekly over at Rosie's Leavesnbloom. 

 And finally, after playing around in photoshop with this photograph I took of a fern against a slab of slate, I rather liked the yellow and pink effect I ended up with.  Quite appropriate for the challenge, but not very realistic!

A WALK ALONG THE BEACH

Although it wasn't really the day for a walk at the beach we went for it anyway.

The sky was dark and moody and it looked like the heavens were going to open on us at any minute.

However, for a few brief, wonderful moments the sun shone out from the darkness and yes, I actually had my camera handy (so far, so good with the New Years resolution!).