The last couple of days, I have just been playing in my Canvo Journal from Catherine Pooler creating pages and trying out different mixed media to see what I can get away with in the journal.
The pages are nice and thick so you can actually use the Nuvo Embellishment mousse and a friend used gesso and then watercolored over the gesso.
She covered the entire page in gesso, let it dry and then watercolored. How fun! I will be trying that sometime this week.
I used alcohol markers on the cover:
Another crafter colored her cover in with alcohol markers, so I decided to try it out. I did just a bit to see how it works and it works great!
I also pulled out some puffy stickers:
Don’t we all have scads of collections of stickers? I never buy these, but they come in card kits sometimes and this is a perfect place to use them.
I don’t want a journal that I spend more time decorating than using. I want this to be a useful journal. I have an art journal that I practice and collect techniques in. I want this to be fun and functional.
I also practiced my Copic coloring. I’m taking the class at mycreativescoop.com and I’m enjoying it.
My copic collection is very limited and I don’t have all the markers that the instructor has. I’m very happy with the dress and the face. I’m a bit hit or miss on hair still.
I think I don’t leave enough white space on the hair and end up covering up too much of the detail that I add.
The snow banks and sky are terrible. I just could not make that work!!!
Practice, practice, practice. This was my first snowbank attempt with Copics. I’ve mastered the sponging of snowbanks, but this is new!
I also had a couple of random spots that bled…you can see the boots really are a mess. I’m using some of my Stampin’ Up! card stock here and it is very light weight. I should pull out some of my heavier Neenah card stock to do my Copic practice on.
I’ve decided I will practice either Copics or watercolors every single day until I am comfortable enough to enter my coloring in challenges.
Although, I have entered and won some challenges with my watercoloring. I would rate myself beyond beginner with that, but nowhere near mastery.
Luckily it is tremendously fun to practice these skills and ridiculously relaxing to do.
For the last several days, I have had mice prancing around the ceiling above my head and it has been really unnerving. My husband set about to catch them and get rid of them because I threatened to hire an exterminator. He’s so cheap that a threat like that always sets the man in motion with a task! (This is year 36 of knowing him and our 34th year of marriage. I know how to get him moving.) He tried to tell me that it was just windy lately and that is what I was hearing. (I’m not sure about what that says about how well he knows me?)
I think I can tell the pitter patter of mouse feet from wind. And it sounded like the plural form. Did I tell you we bought an old house that is a bit of a fixer upper almost 2 years ago? It’s a work in progress. We wanted to down size when the kids finished college and this little house is perfect. (Not that we’ve ever lived in a large house, but we really don’t need more than 4 rooms and a basement for our hobbies. Plus the one floor layout is ideal.) Needless to say though, we’ve had to de-critter the place and plug holes and critter entry points. We battled earwigs when we first moved in. EWWW. They were everywhere. I’m pretty tenacious and I don’t like to share my house with critters of any kind.
So far…little earwigs, little ants, crickets, spiders, mice and last winter there were RATS in the garage. The former owners kept a huge wood pile in the garage. While they did move the wood out, they did not plug the hole in the wall. We plugged holes, sealed things, removed brush and weeds…you name it. I’ve got sticky things around collecting spiders and crickets. No earwigs this year, very few crickets, no rats…but the mice!
Happily, he actually caught 4 mice and I don’t hear any more pitter patters. I hope that is it. Ugh.
Most of my neighbors are battling mice as well. We are surrounded by wineries and fields so I think little rodents are inevitable periodically. I just want to reduce every possible point of entry to ZERO if I can. But they really are wily little creatures. Our contractor lives down the street and he had mice last year. He said he caught 18 (!) and could still hear them moving around. The woman across the street told me that she gets them in her basement every year.
This will not be an every year thing. I promise you, I will be sealing every access point I can find. Again…EWWW.
And spiders. I don’t think I will completely get rid of those, but I’m working on it.
The price of a fixer upper. It allowed us to move to a cute little harbor town, but it’s an ongoing project.
If you have sure fire ways of getting rid of critters and spiders…PLEASE leave your comments below!
Thanks for visiting. I hope you are having a happy critter free day!
