Meet Coffee and Cream at TioT's

Coffee and Cream

 is the new challenge theme for

 Try it on Tuesdays.

 We will accept your choice of any  two colour shades  for this theme,

Remember you can use any style of crafting/art,  medium etc.

Please pop over for all the details and see what we all made.

I chose to use shades of cream and browns for this card. A cream card base , a layer of deep chocolate brown and then cream card for the top.

I used stencils with Vintage Photo distress ink.

An alphabet stamp, and two fussy cut Stampers  Anonymous dogs, which were coloured in watercolour and distress inks.

In case you wonder, Coffee would have been rather ill,  if I hadn't  painted his tongue. pink.

Thank you for calling in to see me today, you are always welcome.

If you have stopped by to share a cuppa, please scroll down to my earlier post.

Sea air, fish and a cuppa.

Where the River Tyne meets the North Sea.

 We often visit North Shields for a day out

to visit the Fish Quay .

Today I am sharing a cuppa with friends over at

 Bleubeard and Elizabeths

and the brew that was very welcome on our return home.

In the distance on the left is the headland at  Tynemouth.

It was a dull day, but still a few folk were enjoying the sands.

This was looking back towards North Shields.

Now to the buy some fish for tea, just around the corner from the Smokehouse.

What to buy????

Back home , with the brew close to hand it was time to consult the books for ideas,

we had bought Sea Bream.

A treat and not something I usually buy, like cod or haddock.

You have my word it was delicious,

 but taking a photo when it was shouting out, ''eat me'',

was the last thing on my mind at the time.

Thank you for calling in today you are most welcome.

Happy Tea day everyone.

My post for Try it on Tuesdays will be posted soon.

Knowledge for AJJ

I have always loved reading  and books of all kinds appeal to me.

We didn't have TV when I was young, so my earliest encounters with books

 were the stories that were read to me.

I am joining the folk again at 

Art Journal Journey
where  Elizabeth's  theme for this month is 

Back to School

This side of the journal spread  is  all about Fairy Tales.   Hidden meanings never  came to mind back then, just the magic,  make believe and  hopefully a happy ending to the tale.

The background was scribbled crayons, which I blended with a wet wipe and sprinkled with a little Brusho powder.

The cut outs  are papers sent me by a friend. Graphics 45 I think.

Butterflies are stamped and fussy cut and left over from another project.

This page was made in  a digital program.

Growing older,  the magic  disappears, with the need to gather knowledge.

Books are for information, aids to learning, filling your head with facts,  maybe at the time, they are of no interest to you. But,  they have to be learned in detail, in order to pass exams.

School days pass, gathering speed and  when we  leave  and go out into the world.... How much do we truly remember.  I would say quite a lot stays,  its there stored for the day we may be asked a question, that would jog our memory and hopefully we would  be able to recall the relevant  facts.

Thank you for stopping by to see me today,

you are very welcome and your comments are always appreciated.

Digital additions

are images from

Mischief Circus kits.

Spelling tests for AJJ

A digital page for

  Art Journal Journey,

where Elizabeth's theme of  ' Back to School', is really jogging everyone's memories.

Today's memory of mine is from  Infants school [ 5 - 7 years old].
then later Junior School [7- 11years old]
.... when  we had to learn how a spell a list of words   over the weekend.
 with the words obviously getting harder to spell as the weeks went by.

Then the dreaded spelling test was always before first lesson on Monday.
The writing always had to be neat and tidy.
If you got any wrong you had to copy them out 10 times each in the back of your spelling book.
Schools these days may not be as strict , but I have to say we did learn.
It may be seen as hard to today's children with access to, '' spell checks'' etc, but
it certainly worked for me back then.
We all knew what to expect,  if we didn't try to do our best.


I will also be showing this page  at
 Moo Mania and More
where there new Theme is'' Alphabet''.
Without our alphabets we wouldn't be able to spell.
Now that's a question worth asking later.

I used my own base layer.

with stored, found and

Mischief Circus images

Thank you for calling in to visit today, you are very welcome

Play days and spicy buns

Some days you just need to play

.

 Remember when  playing was fun.

 In the absence of an audience there  was always the family pet or a row of dolls and teddies.

Those were the days....

This is a digital page made as a reminder for the current challenge theme over at TioT's.

 Play days are still fun for me,..... an excuse...not that I need one.... to get

 into the craft room and start creating.

......................................

Speaking of that well loved place a blog friend and I were talking on the phone  the other day,
 about our messy craft rooms, this was the photo I shared with her of my abode at that time.
Well as you can see it was  in desperate need of a good tidy up.

For sure not far away would  be my mug of tea.

So I will pop over and say hello
  to the Tea gang at,
Bleubeard and Elizabeths 

where T stands for Tuesday

 Doing a Supermarket shop  has its own bakery,
 had me smelling  a tempting  spicy aroma.
Spicy buns are somewhat of a favourite around Easter time in our home.
But Hey its September....
and they are still marking the buns with the Easter Cross.
Needless to say a few went into my basket
 and take my word for it they were................. delicious

Selling  these all year round, doesn't seem to make them special anymore.
My Gran used to make these buns all year,
 but the cross only appeared on them for the Easter baking.
I wonder if this sort of thing occurs in other countries besides the UK.

If you wonder about the   ''Mess '' I  did clear a space on the table ,
but have to report its back to normal.
But it is still on my list of things to do.

Hope you all have a happy T day and thank you for calling in to see me.

First Lessons in ''art'--' for AJJ

Well I am still in the early years of  school, with this next  hybrid journal spread for 

Art Journal Journey

where Elizabeth's super theme for this month is

Back to School.

I would have loved to have shown you a photo of my hands at this stage, but I'm afraid I may have  messed up the camera big style.

As you can guess, I had a ball with the hand painting.

The background is sprayed water

colour  and its   acrylic paint  for the hand.

I have never passed this stage of being messy, its an art in itself to be free with paint, and creativity should be encouraged from an early age.

Much more fun than watching a TV.

The younger children at school found it much more fun when there was a wall [always covered with paper] where they could draw,  paint, splash and splodge colour.

Yes they had a piece of paper and a table, but hey, would you not like a wall to paint  on, I would. have done. Maybe I would been more confident to draw freely now,

  if I had been encouraged while young.

In my teenage years, my art teacher told me I was wasting her time and mine, so I swapped subjects at the end of the year.

 Rant over, Elizabeth you have  brought up memories

 long forgotten with this  great theme choice.

Thank you for stopping by, you are very welcome here

 and I always appreciate your comments.

Digital additions found

when looking for free to

use images on the internet.

An apple for the teacher at AJJ

I'm back to school again today and making sure there is an apple

 for the teacher in my school bag.

This spread is for

  Art Journal Journey

and Bleubeard and Elizabeths theme of........... Back to School

This is the beginnings of  one of the pages. 

Spray inks, Stencils.

Cut out counters and a little background number stamping.

After the photo was taken

 I added some extra digital additions.

I think you may guess from these basic pages , that early years education is very special to me.

I did spend many years working with  children .

who needed extra help with their learning.

 Visual methods , when  counting, helped them a lot.

The other side of the page is mostly digital using 

free to use images found with a Google search., but it is my own photograph of a textured, coloured, background.

Thank you for calling into see me today, you are very welcome.