Dylusions & Pan Pastels

Last Saturday the afternoon workshop I taught at Snazzys was all about Pan Pastels. I was trying to illustrate my belief that their versatility means just having a few colours of the pastels need not limit what you can create, but actually allows you to really explore all the techniques you can use with them.

This was the final project of the afternoon using Bright Yellow Green and Pthalo Green Pan Pastels, Tsukineko Versamark and Versafine Onyx Black inkpads plus some of my favourite masks and stamps from the brilliant Dyan Reaveley's Dylusions collection.......and with thanks to the lady at Artstamps Cornwall who gave me the idea, my new favourite tool, a Derwent Eraser Pencil.

Often I fail to do anything with my workshop pieces but I set to on Sunday and added a quote which says 'Home is where you can say anything you please because nobody pays any attention to you anyway' - anyone with a brood of children will know exactly how that feels lol!

Thanks for visiting

Back soon xx

Happy Birthday Mum

Today is my Mum's 84th Birthday, and the first birthday in the past six that we have not spent at least part of the day with her. Sadly, she now lives in a nursing home almost 500 miles away (she said she didn't want to emigrate to join us at her age lol!) so we do not see her as often as we would like. She suffers from dementia and so time has become a little meaningless to her but, as is often the case, her recollection of earlier times is much more vivid than the recent past.

Each time we visit I try to make her a little book including photographs from past events with spaces so we can fill in the details together. This one will have to wait until I get the chance to visit later in the Summer so it looks a little bare at the moment, but here are a few of the pages......

I think these photographs were taken in 1957 at Hazelhead in Aberdeen

...and at least some were taken on their honeymoon.

Each of the pages to the left contains a pocket with a tag.....

and each on the right has a flap.

I'm not sure how Mum will feel out in her swimming cossie in blogland lol,

but I'm sure she will enjoy the memories of happier times - she and my Father both doted on their nephew Gordon pictured here with them.

We made a version of this mini book in a workshop at Snazzys last Tuesday so I will try to blog the workshop 'for instance' and all the measurements etc over at sosimplysnazzy soon.

Hope you enjoy the long Bank Holiday weekend, I will be working as Snazzys will be open as normal, but I will find a mo to raise a glass in celebration of Mum's Birthday xx