Week 31 of the ukstampers art journal challenge is all about Smile:

• what made you smile this week – list your top 5
• use a happy colour on your page
• stamp some kisses

I have used some yellow, orange and pink for this page  and I tried to transfer an image using Golden medium and printed acetate.  The image is a couple of years old – Tegan was playing with my hair and put it up in a bun on the top of my head; I have rather a stupid grin on my face and it reminded me of the song about ‘a smile and a ribbon in my hair’.  It came out very dark so I scribbled over the hair with some pens.  Some things that made me smile this week include my dog launching himself into his bed and rolling about in it without a care in the world, the baby dove is still about in the garden and visits everyday, the sun came out briefly, I made pancakes for lunch today, and the roofer finally came to fix the guttering which broke last winter with all that snow.  You might not be able to see the stamped kisses – they are 3 tiny crosses after ‘Rare’ and after ‘hair’.

Inks/paint:  mostly yellow, orange and pink acrylic paint with some black and white
Card:  watercolour card (and acetate to transfer)
Stamps:  Paperbag studios Scrap journal (bubblewrap stamp), Eline’s Huis cross-stitch (tiny crosses)
Other: coloured pens, Golden medium

Week 15 – yeh I know from ages ago but I kept putting this one off.  I am not a big fan of travelling and now when we do go anywhere we take sooooo much stuff!!  The image on my background page is from a card Harry gave me a short while back and I love it.  Thank goodness for estate cars with top-boxes is all I can say.  For ukstamper’s week 15 challenge we had to include:

•  travel – love it or hate it?
• where are the best and worst places you have travelled?
• use an old map on your background

We tend to just travel around Britain and we haven’t really been to any bad places but a few of our favourite places include Aviemore, Cornwall and Wales.  I love woodlands and forested places whereas Harry likes open rolling fields. Whenever we do go out and about we have to plan out route carefully for good accessible toilets for me and plenty of nice places for our dog to stretch his legs.  The map is a scan from an old Roadfinder atlas.  I tore it in strips before pasting to the background then sprayed the whole lot.  To make it a bit more visible I outlined it roughly with a pink pen then white dots.
You can’t tell from the main photo but you might be able to see in the closer shot that there is a nice shimmer on the background.

Inks:  Memento Tuxedo black, Dylusion ink sprays Post box red and Cyan, Cosmic shimmer mist Aqua lagoon
Card:  water colour paper, torn scanned image on copy paper
Stamp:  Stamps away Arrow
Other:  Tim Holtz tissue tape, black and white image scanned from a card then coloured using copic pens, white, black, pink and blue pens