1st Journal page for my drawings done

I have started a journal to try and get better with the drawing/painting etc....... so here is the first one, I really suck at paints I can tell you all, I repainted the hair 3 times and now have given up LOL and decided to call it done for now, I obviously need a lot more practice using the paints and brush - it totally drove me to distraction....anyways will post them as I do them, hopefully it will encourage me to do better as I go back through my beginning attempts   :o)))

Attempted a drawing

Was a cold and rainy day here yesterday so sat down in the lounge with my pencils and started a drawing, I would  like to learn how to paint properly so am going to start sketching stuff into a book, but this I had just grabbed a lined page and started sketching, not great but better than I expected LOL

Hello from my poor neglected blog

Well its been a long time since I posted anything here.  Actually its been a while since I have been creative at all unfortunately, you know sometimes we get a lot of lemons all at once which take a while to turn into lemonade, and I prefer to keep this blog a happy place.    BUT its time to put on the "big girl panties" and get back into my creating, its the one thing that normally helps when the going gets tough.  I do have some pictures of Craft Group stuff to show and a wee dabble in the clay which I have been attempting.  Sooo the first pic is of a head I have been playing with, I made some eyes a while ago which really are not big enough for this poor guy but I did want to see how they baked up etc and if it was worthwhile me making some more, which it is as the price of eyes is horrendous.  So this guy is just to test the eyes and give me some practice again, I'm still not very good at this clay stuff but do find it enjoyable - I always seem to get characters out of the clay, doubt you will ever see any pretty fairies here LOL LOL.....   sorry about the pics today is overcast and not much light to difficult to get reasonable pics.    I have to thank Jodie Creager for her awesome DVD on making heads which has helped me get a reasonable mouth going, mouths are my nemesis but I think after watching her fantastic DVD I might be able to get it right. 

 I had a dabble at making a softee type "something"  LOL was a lot of fun but I still have to finish the final stuffing.

Next pic is of an awesome quilt one of the girls has made at Craft, I just love it and what a heap of work in it but perfect for a Granddaughter.  I am seriously tempted to have a go at this myself, I have 5 Granddaughters, I wonder if they would like something like this, I do need to make all of them a quilt at some stage.

Next up - the girls have been making Jill Maas patterns again and here are a few of the characters.

 Next up is a bag Berryl made - lots of work in this one 

Getting ready for fishing/camping trip

Thought I had better get some pics up finally LOL.......... grabbed a few of the guys getting ready to go on their fishing camping trip today.  They are heading to the beach for 4 days or so, hope they catch some fish, the weather is perfect here and very hot.  Unfortunately I have to head back to work tomorrow so Pete will take some pics at the beach.

Dan and Danielle

Pete and Danielle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dog and her friend LOL

Discussing the fishing strategy I think LOL LOL

More outside work done today

Phew more outside work done today only 2 weeks till hubbies son and his partner come for a  holiday YIPEEE cant wait, but we are doing a wee tidy up which is long overdue around here.  This old house needs a lot more done to it but we do it in small chunks as we can. - It  had been pretty neglected for many years and was rented out so its an ongoing mission .    Here is the work done today..............  not fantastic but for now it will be ok.....this area is where we will put the deck and the french doors out -  in the below pic where the double window is (dining room) - french doors there ....but cant afford to do the deck as yet - I have the french doors though in the shed ready to go....but this will tidy it up a bit for now, sorry plants are a bit yuk but don't have any soil to repot them for now just placed them to tidy up a bit  in the interim until we can get a trailer load of mix to repot some of the plants we have floating around the place.

and yep I know got to repaint the bloody windows outside again..........that can wait until the craft studio is painted then onto the repaint touch ups of the windows  - have a heap of before pics to put up one day once the Craft Studio is finished on the outside.

Finally a wee bit of creating LOL

Since Christmas break and over the break we have really been spending most of our free time on the house and doing things outside so not a lot of creative things happening around here.   We have done a lot of tidy up around the back of the house and I am nearly ready to paint the craft studio on the outside as it really looks so sad now, but a good paint job will make a difference.  I have been taking a lot of before photos etc and will show a screed of before and afters once we are finished.    

BUT in the meantime I had Craft group today so took a canvas with me that I had drawn up a pic on and had a go at painting and shading with pencils........ I am going to do a few of them to hang up in my bathroom - very cost effective LOL........ meaning free really so it works for me.....  so here are some pics of what I did today, not finished but about half way there, lots of shading etc still to do.

EDIT:  eek just wanted to say this is not my original artwork, well it is as far as actually drawing it and painting etc but I got the idea from some pics I saw on the net a while ago, unfortunately I cant find where I got them now.......... just wanted to clarify that......

Penciled in and first lot of colour on

Bit of shading starting to happen and starting to paint the dress

Dress painted and starting to get some shading

Where I finished today still heaps to do but starting to shape up

A little tour of my outside area

I decided today to give you all a glimpse of our outside area around the house, we live on 1 acre approx 12 Kilometres outside a town, but very handy as we have a dairy on the corner of our road, and also a garage, plus its only 10mins drive tops to work so I get to come home for lunch each day.  We have no neighbours either side just paddocks and nothing out the front of us apart from the road and then down to a stream so its very quiet and peaceful here.  We have large hedges to the front and down the driveway which we planted a few years ago, so we are totally private and cant be seen from the road. 

Right I am taking you on a walk around the grounds LOL

This is to the left of my house coming around from the back door (we only use the back door)

Just around the corner from there coming to my front window - the wee fence you see there is our inner area which leads out to the rest of the section - we can close it off if necessary 

 same view from the side of the front of the house about to walk through the wee opening to the right

 View from the gate opening to the edge of our frontage, where that large hedge is which has thousands of birds in it at the moment, as you walk over towards there - there is such a flurry of birds its quite amazing

 View to the left where up against the fence is our driveway - as you can see its very very dry here at the moment we are normally very green even in the summer

 Front taken from the left going around the section basically I am doing a semi circle walk around outside in the tree area

 going down to the right hand side of the property all the trees you see to the right here are out inner border of trees next to the house

 Another view walking to the other side of the property

 View down the length of the right hand side from the front

 Looking back from my back area out to the front hedge again - to the right there my husband has what I call the trifods, which is a huge pumpkin patch

 Looking from the back of our property down the driveway out to the road

 This is our fallen over plum tree, it fell over in high winds a few years ago and is a very old tree, by the summer of that year it had kept growing but with a sort of underpass under it and the roots all up in the air, so we decided to leave it as a feature and hubby will make a small garden around it, plus we get heaps of plums off it usually

So I hope you enjoyed the wee tour around the property, nice to get some insights into where people live etc methinks

Revamp of the worlds ugliest bathroom - picture heavy lots of pics

As the title says - this is what I have been doing in my holidays....  apart from 4 days in bed with a nasty tummy bug.   A whole lot of hard work and elbow grease.   NOW before we go to the pics of the before and afters, we did not revamp our bathroom with new fittings etc no way could we afford to do that bathrooms are an expensive item indeed so it is a paint and color makeover to make it presentable and easier to keep clean.   When we moved into this old place we did paint and pull up carpet etc in most of the rooms but the bathroom has forever remained in the too hard basket or "we ran out of steam" basket LOL.   This old place was rented out for many many years, mainly to students - so you can imagine the state of most of the rooms when we brought it, some rooms they had stood back and flicked paint with a paint brush to get the effect that they wanted, psychedelic but in browns and yellows Eeeeeeeeeeek,.  

So onto the bathroom, the before pics I have taken with no shame LOL........ messy as heck as we had already started to setup and sand and fill in there when I started taking photos, you will notice the polka dots on the walls, well this was a special paint to cover rust and other "things" that were on the wall that a painter friend gave to me, brilliant stuff but boy what a shit to cover up, a few coats of undercoat went on those ceilings and walls.  Also the nasty lino on the floor is coming up but we left it there while we painted - I have managed to get about one third of it up so far but it will take a while to get it all lifted as it is well glued down - but nice wooden floorboards underneath.

Before - OMG ...... look at the polka dots LOL I went a bit berserk with this paint - as you do - the colour on the walls was that green/blue/teal colour they used to have in hospitals - I figure that the bathroom has never been touched before and was pretty original as I went down to bare walls when sanding at times - yes I know the vanity is ugly but it has to stay for now.  This is actually quite a large room for a bathroom with lots of wall by the bath which will need some art or something to break it up a bit.

Next pics of the progress being made heaps of undercoat on walls already noticing a difference - lots of days of prep work involved before even getting to the painting stage as you can see from the above pics - ahh polka dots getting covered - that was a mission

 In this photo you can see the floorboards - still some glue etc on the floor but I shall worry about getting that up later on will be a bit at a time job as its well glued

Starting to cut in the paint color ready to roll the main walls - YES IT IS COLOUR - this house needs colour its not a white or cream type of house being old and a bit bitsy piecy and colour hides a multitude of sins hehe

 

You will notice the handrails by the shower - we put these in when we had my mum living with us to help her get into the shower from the wheelchair - we decided to leave them there as who knows we may need them ourselves one day.

TA DA THE FINISH - There is still things to do like putting the towel rails back up and the walls need something - and of course I have not yet got all the lino up, but mostly done thank goodness

 

One final before and after pic together just for reference