learning to dance in the rain: July 2013

Saturday, 20 July 2013

The Bionic Bit

First off a huge thank you to all who are sending me best wishes. Having fun posting progress reports on twitter and FB. Me and the boy ( haven't named him yet!) have been together for 48 hours now and we seem to be getting along better. Still gives me a little pain now and again just to remind me he's there.

My rythmologist ( that's how we call him in France ) has just been in to control him and he's working well. We're looking at an eight year partnership, after that he'll have to be replaced for a younger model.

You know how it is with us middle aged men!!

Hopefully I'll be back crafting shortly. Just resting up for the moment.

Lunchtime so I'll sign off.

A great weekend to all! Xxxx

Tuesday, 16 July 2013

Promarker Doodling

Over the last few days I’ve been doodling with my Promarkers,.I suppose it's my way off taking my mind off the days to come (they’ll come and go and I’ll deal with them!).

First off I wanted to make some colour charts so I could see:

what I have in stock
how the colours look in reality
how the all work together

All colours

Oranges

Reds

Limited Edition Colours

I divided them up into Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple and Pink. The greys have still to be done, but then again I've only got 4 coo grey Trias for the moment! I've combined the flexmarker and Promarker charts. At present I can get Tria markers for roughly the same price as a Promarker so where there is a Tria equivalent I buy the Tria marker.

I will to do some samples with suggested blending colours next week – more in a later post.

I have the Jofy 13 stamp just shouting at me to be used so, just like Jo Firth Young did in her sketchbook with Fresco paints, I fancied trying different colour ways with my markers.

Off I went, happy as Larry!

Darcy suggested using Memento, Dessert sand for a subdued outline, black for a more pronounced one, she also defo said heavy white cardstock so the translucent colours are true and to avoid leeching and show through. Ok. So what did I do?

Yes, I stamped in my ordinary sketchbook.

Funny how you can listen to advice and fail to carry it out! The result, as you can see, is as expected…..

The front

the colours leeching out with the outline... ..

not a bad watercolour look, though not what I was aiming for!

…….. like the colours though!

The back of the page!!

yep, almost all the colour came through the page.....

the next page

.....and of course I didn't protect the following page so the colours stained that!

I’m off to prepare Chicken Tika then stamp on white SU 80lb cardstock…. Watch this space!

Monday, 15 July 2013

Evening Flight

Not a craft post sorry! I just had to post these photos of my latest experience.

I have wanted to do a first flight in a paramotor (power assisted para-glider) for some time. After my operation it might be impossible to do this so, when the op was postponed I seized the opportunity to book a "baptism" as they call it here in France!

It was initially scheduled for Sunday the 7th July but was postpone till 14th cause of strong winds, there was even last minute doubts for yesterday evening, but I went along as planned at 9 pm and twenty minutes later we took off! It was fantastic, climbing, descending, picking up speed to skim over fields, woods and animals.

To finish off we climbed fairly high and The instructor cut the motor so we descended quietly doing some fairly sharp angled turns "skating" in the air.

A fantastic experience to be repeated!

(click on the photos to enlarge)