A few journal pages

The time's flown since my last post I'm afraid ..... been dealing with quite a bit of "real life" stuff the past few weeks so haven't been able to do as much crafting as I'd planned.  Well, took Mia back for her checkup - all was fine - but it took her a good hour or so when we got back home again before she'd forgive me for yet another visit to the vets!

I've been running badly behind with the Art Journal 2012 that I planned on being involved with but have finally started to catch up and just completed all four pages for January (that had a sea/beach theme).  They're not very inspired (or inspiring) but at least I've done something and I can look back on them and see what I'd've done differently if I'd had more time, imagination, etc.  I posted a pic previously of the first page I did, these are the other three :-

For Week 2 we had to illustrate the quote about "memories lasting longer than our footprints".  I decided to use a copy of a photograph I took on holiday in Anglesey some years back - it was taken on a wonderful day by the sea where we gathered all sorts of beach treasures.  The paper I used to print out the picture was quite creamy so has given a softer (faded memory) feel to the scene and the shells and glass added to the bottom are some of the "treasures" I collected on that day.

For the third week's page we had to design a beach hut and say where we would like to put it.  I had this daft idea really to make a pink beach hut with wings, my version of a magic carpet, that I could travel around the world in and land anywhere I chose, maybe even travelling back in time to the days of the Victorian bathing beauties too!  Just a bit of fun!

Week 4 - we could create whatever we liked with a sea theme and add a four-line poem to it.  Living by the seaside, I've often stood on the promenade (not naked though *LOL*) and gazed out past the piers towards the sea's horizon, imagining the countries far beyond across the waters and taking in the sights and sounds with all my senses.

For the month of February we are supposed to work on our journals about 30 mins each day - I confess I haven't done this but I have at least made a start.  Firstly, we are creating seven different backgrounds which I think we will then be working on for the rest of the month.  This is just the first of the seven - a BLUE background - nice and simple, just used all my blueish TH Distress Inks sponged onto the page, spritzed with water then heat set.

So .... apart from selling bits and pieces on EBay and going to watch my football team ..... that's what I've been up to since my last posting.  Oh, and trying to keep warm too - we've had some ferociously bitter weather here, but thankfully though the ice has been quite treacherous, we've so far missed out on the snow, one of the advantages to living by the coast being that it often bypasses us on its way across the Atlantic and waits till it reaches higher land. 

Hope you're all keeping warm and safe and I'll try to not leave it so long till my next post.