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.

A little catch up....

Here are a couple of bits and bobs I've made recently that have seen the light of day elsewhere but not on here....

Firstly a couple of journal pages that I used as examples in a basic stencil/mask tutorial for UKScrappers

(I'll probably put the tute on here eventually, but in the meantime if you'd like a read, it is available to UKS members in PDF form here)

The first one deals with the unfortunate fact that I'm now on the downhill slide towards 50! noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

How did this happen????  To be fair, I have got to admit that I'm enjoying my 40s more than either my 30s or my 20s - but I kind of wish I could be having all this fun in a body 20 years younger :D

The second page was a quickie to celebrate the fact that I'm booked in for a new tattoo!  It won't be happening until August, but the deposit's paid and I can't wait!

I'm having my very old Celtic style armband re-worked into a Haida  thunderbird - hence the "out with the old and in with the new!" bit...







Here's the old tattoo, done when I was still in my teens, I still really like it but it has got blurry with age (a bit like the rest of me :) ) and it doesn't really go with my Haida orca backpiece

And the bird is going to look something like this, nowhere near this big or intricate - but this gives you an idea of the general style and colouring:

My armband will become the horizontal black part of the wings (my tattooist is going to work my old design into something more "Haida-ish" :) ), and the heads of the bird will go up onto my shoulder with the tail and wing feathers hanging down onto my upper arm.

Exciting, if painful, stuff :)

And here's something completely different, over at Collabor-ART, I have paired up with the very talented Shirley.

We have each got hold of a pocket Japanese Moleskine journal (these things are very cool!  I got mine from my pal Vicki here)  and we are going to swap them back and forth adding to what's gone before until they are full (or we get bored :))

Fish by PEZ

I have already done a bit of work in mine to set the bright colourful tone I'm aiming for - and now it's ready for its first visit to Shirley's desk.

I think we are going to have lots of fun with this over the next few months.  I'll be sure to share how it develops

Rocking Your World Monday - week 17

So I'm officially giving up on the 'posting RYWF on a Friday' thang....I just don't seem to be able to do it!  I'm always too busy on a Friday both at work and at home in the evening.

And the weekends are a no no - so from now on I'm going to aim for Mondays....which may occasionally slip to Tuesdays or Wednesdays :)

I hope Virginia doesn't kick me out of the club :)

So anyway - all that said and excuses made, I don't really have much to write about for week 17, as after the excesses and excitement of the previous week, we had a few chilled days to recover :)

Not that I'm complaining, mind you, it's been a lovely relaxing week.  And that most certainly rocks my world as I don't do the 'R' word very often :)

Starting on Saturday, the weather started off really nicely, so the boys were playing out from early in the morning until mid afternoon.  Ah, the peace and quiet!  That meant that Jay and I could put our feet up and watch what WE wanted to watch on the telly for once.  No Disney Channel or Nickelodeon - hooray!!!  What we ended up watching - a marathon of Come Dine With Me episodes - probably wasn't much more intellectually stimulating, mind :D

The kids came home at about 3pm having suddenly realised that they hadn't had lunch and were therefore instantly ravenous.  So we decided to make a third attempt at a meal at the new Harvester.  I call it the new Harvester, but really it's a couple of years old, it's just that it's usually so incredibly busy that we've never managed to actually get in there before.  But being an odd time, halfway between lunch and dinner, we actually succeeded this time.  Hooray!  And dinner was delish!

And not only was the food good, but the decor was really cool, with framed leaf collages all over.  They were lovely and now I want to make a wall of leaf pictures of my own :)  Will add it to the never ending list....

On Sunday I got my head down and finished the sample pages for my stencil tutorial for the Art Journey course over at UKScrappers.  I'm kind of glad that that's my last contribution to the course, as they take up a lot of my time - but on the other hand, doing the tutes did give me a good excuse/nudge to work in my journal....

I'll blog the pages properly when the tutorial goes live on Wednesday.

Oh and we also baked our Herman cake.  He started off ten days before as this rather unappetising looking, and not too sweet smelling, bubbling bowl of primeval goop:

But ended up as a very delicious, very fruity, spicy and all round yummy cake.  Or rather cakes.  We filled four of these loaf tins:

I can highly recommend taking a Herman mix home if you are ever offered one.  Despite the fact they look and smell like a swamp :)

the magazine - Very Nearly Almost

And that's about all I have to report this week - the remainder of the week was back to work, fairly tiring (especially the 6 hours of driving in the pouring rain on Friday, no fun), and therefore I did very little in the evenings other than tuck up in bed with either a magazine or back episodes of Eureka! on my laptop (love that programme :) )

the TV show - Eureka

Now my batteries are recharged and I'm all ready for week 18.

Which hopefully I'll blog next Friday Monday ;)

See you then!

Now I had best go and link this up at RYWF central and go and see what the other Rockettes have been up to....

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz - more mail art

I know that this has landed on its intended doormat now, so I can share

A little bit of mail art to brighten up someone's day....

Rockin' all over the world...

….well, at least in Berkshire and Cheshire....

First up, here is my very last entry in the Project Runway themed circle journal that I hosted over on UKScrappers.

My own book is already home and I will share its contents here on the blog soon.

The theme of this last journal was “rock the runway” – and we were to pull together a two page layout based upon music of any kind.

As you know I’m a bit of a rock chick, so that’s what I went with for my pages:

And as I had made up far too much of that spraypainted background patterned paper, I used some of the spare to make a mail art postcard too:

This one’s on a base of thick corrugated cardboard so it’s bulky and light at the same time.

I've just had word that it arrived in one piece, much to the bemusement of the chap who delivers the internal post (it was sent to a corporate office address :) )

Rock on :)