Rocking Your World Tuesday – week 19

It’s that (variable) time of the week again – time to count my blessings and put a few more ticks on the grateful list

I’m feeling a bit fed up today – nothing major, just a bit run down, big cold sore threatening to erupt any minute, super tired, you know how it is – and so it’s a really good moment to do a round up of what’s been rockin’ my world – to stop me feeling so down in the dumps

And last week had a lot going for it – for a start it kicked off with a three day weekend – can’t beat a free day off work!! :)

On the Saturday we had a nice lazy day, mainly spent at home, the boys played on the Xbox and I worked on my Steve Tyler CJ entry.  Very chilled.  We did have a little walk into town when we dropped Connor off at his dad’s for a bit – and I bought three fab new colours of spray paint at the market – got to say I’m liking this MTN 94 stuff even more than my usual Montana Gold.  

And I was super excited on Saturday evening when I got an email from the Art House Co-op Sketchbook Project tour to say that my travelling sketchbook had been checked out and viewed at the tour’s first stop in Chicago.  I hope you liked it, Angela B. :)

Crossing the Severn Bridge into Wales

Sunday was our day trip day – we try to have at least one big family day out every week, weather permitting.   The Sunday weather had been looking a bit sketchy in the forecasts around our usual haunts, so I tried a bit of sun chasing, and checked the forecasts for various different potential destinations, choosing the one with the biggest chance of sunshine.  And surprisingly the weather man chose Wales – usually renowned for its rain :)  So a trip to Cardiff it was….

The weather man was spot on and we had lovely weather all day.  First we went into central Cardiff to the city’s main museum and art gallery.  Very impressive buildings and lots of interesting things to see inside.  Also we got the chance to see a mother peregrine attend to her chick up on the clock tower (in the black Olympic ring in my photo…) – as the RSPB were helpfully stationed outside the museum with telescopes trained on the nest.

Next we walked what looked like a short distance on Google Maps, but turned out to be quite a trek, to find “Europe’s biggest sticker graffiti combo!!!!” – only to discover that someone had painted over the whole thing with dark green paint – boo.  Never mind, we still added our stickers to the mix.  Better three months late than never :)

Next we took a drive out to the Llandaff area of the city, looking for the Boiler House Graffiti Project gallery.

Which we found, but it was shut.  Pffft.  But never mind, the legal walls around the back of the gallery were all open and well worth a look.  I especially loved the “Silence in the Library” spaceman.

It was a short trip from here to St Fagans where they have a fantastic (and FREE apart from the car park fee) open air museum featuring original and reconstructed buildings from all periods of Welsh history, many of which have been transplanted here brick by brick.  The kids particularly enjoyed the olden days sweet shop (well, they would, wouldn’t they :) ) and having a wrestle in the cock fighting ring.  Connor also had a go at archery.  We were only here a couple of hours and I’m sure we barely scratched the surface of it.  Definitely a place worth re-visiting one day.

And finally, we popped up the road to the coast, and famous Barry Island. I’ve managed to get to the advanced age of 45 without ever visiting the home of Gavin and Stacey, but I couldn’t put it off any longer :)  The place is a bit tatty and a bit run down, to say the least, but it has a certain classic British seaside resort charm to it, and the kids had great fun on the rides.

And we even got ice creams from Marco’s Café, which I think features in the TV show.  (I have to sheepishly admit that I couldn’t get into the programme, only ever watched one episode and didn’t get it at all.  But I know everyone else thinks it’s really funny so it must just be me)

We got home at about 11pm, thoroughly tired but having had a brilliant day – and happy in the knowledge that we could have a nice long lie in the next day thanks to the Bank Holiday.

And we did exactly that – it was nearly midday by the time we struggled out of bed!  I cooked a big roast dinner – which I don’t often get the chance to do given that Connor is always at his dad’s one weekend day, and we tend to go out for day trips on the other day.  And then after we’d had our fill we walked around to the cinema to see the new Avengers movie.

I’d been looking forward to the film, and expected to enjoy it, but I didn’t expect to enjoy it as MUCH as I did – it was awesome!! :) :) :)

And not only for the eye candy ;)

(I have a new Avenger crush, by the way, Thor was still super cute, but oh my, Hawkeye! He had me all a quiver….see what I did there? :D )

Such a fun film – now I totally understand why people have been going to see it two or three times on the trot.  I wouldn’t mind another watch myself.

If you are one of the two or three people left in the world who hasn’t seen it yet, I can heartily recommend that you get yourself to the cinema pronto – even if you don’t think you like super hero films – you’ll enjoy THIS super hero film, promise.

For the rest of the week I was back at work but there were a few more fun spots:

- I made a kite themed bit of mail art for Vicki via Collabor-ART, and a birthday card for my sister – making stuff is a great way to unwind in the evenings

- My theme and free Prismacolor marker arrived from the Art House co-op for the Mystery Project (just need to work out what to actually make now…)

- The Apprentice had a street art episode set in East London and Bristol, which was highly entertaining – blimey this year’s crop of the young business elite are a proper bunch of twonks!

- Our Download tickets came!!  Can't wait!  less than 4 weeks away now :)

- and we booked our accommodation for our trip to Berlin in July - cool little apartment in the artsy part of town on the former East Berlin side - looks ace doesn't it, so excited :)

And that’s about it for this week

As ever I’ll be linking this up at RYWF Central aka Virginia’s blog.  Feel free to join in if you would like to spend a little time thinking about the high spots of your week….it makes a refreshing change from thinking about the downsides of life.  I can definitely attest that having written all this down, I feel a lot less sorry for myself than I did when I started :)

See you again next time!

Rocking Your World Wednesday – week 18

OK, OK, so I get how this works now…. when I intend to post on a Friday, I invariably fail and end up posting the following Monday.  When I give up even thinking about posting on Fridays, and aim instead for the – theoretically much more achievable – Monday, I still fail, and so here we are on Wednesday!

Oops.  Never mind, better late than never and all that jazz.  

So….where were we?  Ah yes, week 18.  This week started with a rainy Saturday and a walk into town in between showers – a walk that took us past the recently opened Museum of Computing (which looks like it could be fun for a visit when we have both the kiddies with us).

In the front window of the museum was a lovely old (not too old, am guessing late 70s / early 80s) typewriter, with a big sign on her (she’s definitely a she, she has a name badge that says Erika :) ) that read “STEAMPUNK TYPEWRITER, £14”.  Now, she isn’t remotely steam powered, or very punk for that matter – but £14 seemed like a bargain to me, so they got a sale.  (big thanks to Jay for lugging her all the way home, she comes in a lovely little made to measure suitcase, which gives the illusion of portability, but she weighs a TON!)

I can tell I will be using Erika a LOT in my journals and other artwork.

This same Saturday was, according to Facebook anyway, which I presume is going on the date we did the “….is in a relationship” thingummy, mine and Jay’s third anniversary of official going out-ness.  So hip hip hooray and happy anniversary to us and here’s to many more fun years together :)

Hee hee :)

The next day we got up bright and early (well, early anyway) and drove down to London town for the Animals Inside Out exhibition at the Natural History Museum.  

I had bought tickets for 11am thinking that would give us an hour to look around the rest of the museum first before we went in – but the traffic was so awful with the Hammersmith Flyover being shut, and the torrential rain, that we ended up being late, even with that hour buffer.  But it wasn’t a problem, firstly a nice security guard outside waved us past the huuuuuge queue outside in the cold and the rain and straight into the museum (I felt a bit guilty!  Apparently people were queuing for at least an hour), and then the chap on the door of the exhibition itself let us in straight away with a smile despite us having missed our slot.   

The exhibition itself was mindblowing!  I thought it a little expensive at first at £25 for 2 adults and one child but it was worth every penny (in fact it was almost worth it just to avoid queuing in the rain for an hour :) ).  German scientist Gunther von Hagens – he of the controversial human anatomy show Body Worlds - has developed a process for preserving real bodies – in this case animal bodies not humans – in tremendous detail so that we can see at close hand all the major anatomical systems in the body, such as blood vessels, muscles, the nervous system etc.

They were very strict inside about people taking photos, so I only managed to sneak one little phone pic – of this shark with everything removed except his circulatory system and his teeth.  This is one of the first things you see when you enter the exhibition, and it certainly grabbed our attention!

I’ve nabbed some other photos from the internet of some other highlights.  But this is just a tiny fraction of what’s there.  I can thoroughly recommend a visit if you get a chance.

Next we hopped back in the car and drove across town to Brick Lane, passing Buckingham Palace (the flag was up, so I guess her maj was home) and the Tower of London on the way.  I am pretty sure I have never seen either of these close up before, I really need to go on a proper, classic, sightseeing trip around London one day, we can go on the open topped double decker bus and stuff, it’ll be fun!     

Brick Lane was amazing – I haven’t been here for 20 years, and apart from the curry houses which are all still there and going strong – everything has changed so much!  Spitalfields Market is super trendy!  It has a bit of a Camden like hipster vibe to it now.  And delicious food too.  And the street art (which was the main reason for our visit) was everywhere, and on such a scale, both in terms of the size of some of the pieces and also the big names that are represented.  I was in heaven :)

I took a huge number of street art piccies and I definitely don’t have room to include them all here – but if you look on my Instagram feed you can see them all (you might have to scroll back a way though, sorry I can’t find a way to link just to a collection of photos from a specific day).  Here are some of my favourites:

by C215

by Roa

by Pez

bird by Roa, and I can't find who did the extremism=fundamentalism mural

not so much street art as a publicity stunt by Marks and Sparks, but it looks cool :)

by Vhils - image made by chiselling away at the wall, amazing.  Connor was trying to be 'sad like the man' :)

more Pez, so smiley :)

As well as all the public, outdoor art, we also went to two gallery exhibitions – the first by Belgian artist Roa (the chap who painted the big hedgehog up there ^) and the second by Spanish artist Pez (the one who paints the happy fishies).  So much eye candy my brain was ready to pop with all the inspiration :)

the gallery staff were totally ok with us touching and interacting with the artwork, which was cool

Oh – and Connor spent all his pocket money on a luchador mask :)  Which he wore to school the next day :)  His teachers must have us marked down as the weird family lol

For the rest of the week it was back to stressy old work, and rotten weather throughout, but there were still a few more Rockin’ moments:

- I watched Iron Man and Iron Man 2 on Tuesday and Wednesday nights while working in my art journal – in preparation for going to watch the Avengers – and enjoyed them a lot more than I thought I would – both Robert Downey Jr and Mickey Rourke were a lot of fun to watch

- Glee on Thursday was almost back to its old form, and made me glad I haven’t given up on it yet

- I got two fab new pairs of Vans to replace my trusty old ones that are literally falling apart

- And I went to a really cool exhibition near to work on my Friday lunchbreak, it was in celebration of the Jubilee and had a theme of “Best of British” – with hundreds of postcard sized contributions from the public in all sorts of media from paintings and drawings to textiles and collage and digital creations – really interesting

That’s a wrap, people.

I’ll link this up now over at Virginia’s, and then I’d better have a quick look round at all the other Rockettes’ blogs to see what they have been doing, before the Friday posts start afresh any day now!

Celebrating the Demon of Screamin'

Here's my latest Rock CJ entry - in Karen's journal which is dedicated to Steven Tyler from Aerosmith

I decided to illustrate some of Mr T's quotes, some of which are pretty funny.

I was going to use a photo of him with his mouth open on the speech bubble, but instead found this fantastic caricature on DeviantArt - hopefully the artist won't mind me using it given that this is just a non commercial project between friends

The right hand side part of the speech bubble is a page in its own right, and that turns over to reveal the quotes underneath:

I typed the quotes on my trusty new toy, Erika.  Who I haven't blogged about yet, have I?  I'd better do my very overdue Rockin' My world Friday post tomorrow!

You might want to click on this pic to enlarge it so you can read  the quotes...they are worth it....especially the one about the duck :)

And that's about it for the layout itself.

The last thing we had to do was make a little laminated "tour pass" to match our layout.... here's mine:

And that's another CJ done.... see you again next month .....


PS, I've just had an email asking about the background paper I used for these pages.  Here is how it looked before I stuck everything down:

It is primarily spray paints (with some normal acrylic paint in the mix too) through various stencils onto an A3  sheet of textured watercolour paper.  These backgrounds take no time at all to whip up but they add a lot of texture and depth to your page.