This is a first for me - a Blog Party to celebrate Halloween. The party is the brainchild of
Kathryn who is leading the second Soul Journey. Over on her Blog, she has a list of the other party goers, which are all worth visiting ......
Last week was a bit on the challenging side and I wasn't able to do all of what I wanted to but here are my party pieces .....
I didn't know (until I googled it) that Halloween is an ancient Celtic festival, known as Samhain, which is celebrated at the end of the harvest system. The ancient Gaels believed that Halloween dissolved the boundary between the living and the dead; and the dead became danagerous for the living by causing problems such as disease and damage to crops.
Trick or Treat is a fairly recent Halloween tradition and I remember taking my children out when they were small. Sadly, nowadays, Trick or Treat has a bad name here, not just in the towns but in the rural areas as well and the local Police provide door stickers to display in an effort to deter youngsters.
I have to confess, I don't open the door .....
I haven't done pumpkins for years but this year I carved three in honour of The Gorgeous One aka Finley .... As I say I hadn't done this for years and the lids were a bit wonky but they sort of looked as they should and I still have all my fingers- lol .
Most importantly, Fin seemed to like sitting amongst them .....
One thing that I still do every year is gourds. A local farm shop grows ornamental ones and they make lovely table decorations which can last nearly through to the spring. I give them two or three coats of clear varnish to help make them last ......
And finally a recipe for Barmbrack, a yeasted bread, which my friend Eamon (a true Irishman) at work told me about.
The bread is traditionally baked with various objects inside, which had a meaning to the person who got it in their slice - a pea (the person would not marry that year); a stick "to beat one's wife with" (the person would have an unhappy marriage or be in disputes); the cloth or rag (the person would have bad luck or be poor; the coin (the person would enjoy good fortune or be rich); and the ring (the person would be wed within the year).
The recipe is over on
Wikipedia here ......
Hope you all have a good weekend .....
Hope you like it ......
I didn't know (until I googled it) that Halloween is an ancient Celtic festival, known as Samhain, which is celebrated at the end of the harvest system. The ancient Gaels believed that Halloween dissolved the boundary between the living and the dead; and the dead became danagerous for the living by causing problems such as disease and damage to crops.
One thing that I still do every year is gourds. A local farm shop grows ornamental ones and they make lovely table decorations which can last nearly through to the spring. I give them two or three coats of clear varnish to help make them last ......
And finally a recipe for Barmbrack, a yeasted bread, which my friend Eamon (a true Irishman) at work told me about.
days to go
And not being one to boast but .... I logged into the Soul Journal Yahoo Group this afternoon and I was stunned and thrilled to bits to see that Kathryn has chosen one of my pages as this week's art for the Group's Home Page. Although it is included in my last post, I had to put it here as well - as I say I'm not one to brag .....
It was such a lovely day today, that I sat out in the garden with a coffee and a couple of chocolate biscuits and did the journalling on my latest Soul Journal pages.
- quite the little workshop al fresco ....
. I have caught up now but for how long - lol
There's quite a few layers - torn old dictionary pages, gesso, watered down acrylic paint, pictures, journalling, more acrylic paint (from the Dabbers), stencilled flowers, gold swirls - all making loads of layers (credit to Suzi Blu for teaching me that)
This is how Amy opens out ....
And here's Amy striking a pose with a bit of attitude .....
Right, that's my holiday over and it's back to work tomorrow. My final bit of relaxation is to do a bit more with my Soul Journal - loads of gesso and paint sloshing around in the kitchen.
I now have to name seven Blogs that I love to visit, so here they are. They all make beautiful art and they all have other qualities -
Saturday came along, complete with No. 1 son .... Christmas cards were put on hold ,as the day was spent commiserating with him about his love life, watching re-runs of Top Gear and Jaws 2 and generally running around constantly preparing food (that boy is an eating machine - lol).
Christmas Trees also took my fancy. I just love the Ribbon Tree stamp set by Woodware and, of course, Paper Artsy .....
I had also bought a Penny Black clear stamp set - 12 Days of Christmas - and this is what I made with that ....
The end result - we all got something out of the weekend - lol ....
The prompt for the second page of the layout was interesting - to photocopy office stuff - paper clips, staples, elastic bands etc. To 'show' the illusion of Pressed Glass, the whole page is covered with a sheet of acetate....
The prompts in the second week were all about giving yourself Permission ....
The next week was all about things Lost and Found (Found has already been posted to the Arty Girlz challange last week, so I won't repeat it) ....
This week is about creating your Personal Lexicon which looks great fun and will give me some much needed practice with my journalling, as my handwriting is appalling - but first I have to do last week's - lol.
Anyways, I caught up on the last week and finished the last page this afternoon. I had always had the idea that I would bind all the pages together with my Bind It All, using the largest wires that Zutter do but I have to confess I was a little bit doubful because the pages were extremely thick.
Not a particularly good photo but I feel a whole heap better for writing this down and - I quite like the book in its new form. Just the covers to do now ......
