Northern Grin

Two art journal pages

2011-01-30T21:49:00.004Z

These are two pages from my art journal. I've been trying to do something in my journal every day, I've managed it most days, which is nice. The lyrics page is a song by Ryan Adams, and the other one has some of the brand new washi tape that my mum bought me on it. I love it :)

Sorry for the somewhat blurry pictures, they were just taken on my BlackBerry.

Today's outgoing mail

2011-01-03T22:47:00.004Z

Happy New Year! I resolve to blog more this year.

Today's outgoing mail is the above, a letter to the singer Lily Allen. I've never written to a celebrity before, but I wanted to write to tell her how sorry I was that she lost her baby. I don't know if it'll make its way to her, but I hope it will!

Fill in the blank Friday October style!

2010-10-01T17:40:00.003+01:00

1. True happiness is being true to your own self, however that may be.

2. The most surreal moment of my life was when the police informed us of my dad's death - not a happy memory and one that catches in my throat.

3. My favorite texture is paint on paper.

4. My signature color is I'm not sure. I wear grey, white and black to work, so probably that. I like my monochromatic wardrobe for work. Otherwise, I'm easy.

5. My signature style is I have no clue. It depends. I'm smart for work, sloppy for round the house, cute t-shirts for other times.

6. If I could choose one store to spend my life savings at, it would be a jewellery shop, probably. I would buy fancy fuck off jewels :D

7. My best thing about autumn is the rain. I love the rain.

21 Secrets

2010-09-19T14:18:00.002+01:00

I have seen this ALL over the art journal blogosphere this week as some of my favourite artists are teaching! I wish I could afford it but I don't have the money spare, so I'm entering the giveaway instead.

21 Secrets is "An Art Journal Playground" featuring instructional videos, pdfs and even mp3s from a range of amazing artists. It sounds like SO much fun! The artists I would LOVE to learn from are: Connie herself, the lovely and whimsical iHanna, and Spooky, whose class on using old texts sounds really fun :)

If you enter too, good luck, and if you can afford the class, maybe I'll see you there!

Fill in the Blank Friday

2010-09-18T13:44:00.003+01:00

1. When I get a day to myself I like to catch up on computer reading, make art, write letters, cook for Himself and I

2. High school was.... A long time ago, and honestly not that bad. I think I've come to the conclusion that a LOT of people had a shit time at school.

3. A little dream I have is to pass this year of my course with an A again

4. A big dream I have is to get published one day

5. If I could drive any car my pick would be a crappy old banger of a 2CV, maybe like this.

6. A time that I felt really and truly beautiful was after I had my hair cut short last March. It was a literal and metaphorical weight off me.

7. Tomorrow I will.... go to my mother's and be fed a delicious roast lunch followed by apple crumble!

An art journal as a present

2010-06-29T22:01:00.001+01:00

So like twenty hundred other people, I made a journal for my Significant Other. It was our anniversary on Saturday - we've been married for five years now (holy shit) and been together for ten years. An entire decade. We've been together for about two-fifths of my life. Wow. Anyway. I made a journal for him. It is a bunch of reasons why I love him in it...

This is what I started off with. It was a style supplement that fell out of a magazine. Lovely sturdy outside pages. I sanded and gessoed them. I forgot to take photos of the outside once I'd done them, but on the cover I put a picture of us.

First pages. I've covered up his name. Vintage map used on the right.

The Red Dwarf picture is from last year's calendar and the picture on the right is from one of his computing magazines that I did have permission to cut up, lol.

The glitter writing was SO hard to do and even now I think it looks awful. The page on the right says "I love you because you call me stupid names" and I wrote some of the stupid names down, but I've covered them up because they are a bit vomit-inducing.

The left hand page was definitely trial and error. It says "I love you because you let me get a cat even though you don't like cats... and because you are a good cat daddy!"

More computing magazine images on the left. Pictures I had saved on the right. Which he is lucky to receive.

The right hand page says "I love you because you love me and all that I am. I share myself with you... thank you". The word circled is 'them'.

The left hand page says "I love you because you married me!" and the right hand page has another photo of us on it. I added a sticker to this that says "Here's to the next decade!"

This is how I wrapped it. I wrote his name on one of the heart post-its and stuck it on with stickers.

He was a little overcome when I gave it to him, I think. I'm not really sure he knew what to say, but he liked it!

Happy anniversary to us!

2010-06-25T22:21:00.006+01:00

This time five years ago I was at my parents' house with one of my bridesmaids, really ridiculously nervous about my wedding the next day. This time ten years ago I was probably talking to Himself online, trying to work up the courage to ask him out. I did. We got married five years to the day after we started going out and now, ten years later, we have been together for what feels like forever.

Happy anniversary sweetie; I love you so much; I do not know my life without you.

We're going back to the hotel we got married in to spend the night, and we're going out for curry. Sounds idyllic :)

Two wedding photos, clearly. And one of us taken in February 2009, we both look amazing here! Ha ha.

Solstice

2010-06-24T09:42:00.002+01:00

I was talking on a Yahoogroup about how it's really light in the evenings here at the moment. I'm in Northern England and even at 11pm it isn't fully dark. I love it - I suffer from S.A.D. and I find it motivating to have it light in the evenings - it keeps me active for longer.

This time last year we had relatives over from Florida, my mum's cousin Daphne and her wonderfully named husband Charlie Brown, and they were saying how novel it was that it stayed light and how jealous they were. I would be jealous of their sunshine and pool, but there we go!

Here are some photos from 10pm - yes, ten at night - on June 21st, Summer Solstice.

I think it's so beautiful :)

Yesterday's mail

2010-06-10T21:26:00.005+01:00

Yesterday's mail was just so colourful I had to take a photo. A candy swap from Swapbot - I got lemon sweets and hard candy things with chocolate in the middle, a letter from Lauren all covered in pretty with Katherine Hepburn stamps! and a letter from my friend Nathaniel on very sweet paper :)

Art Journal #1

2010-05-09T13:29:00.011+01:00

I've been keeping a paper journal consistently for about five years now. I'm proud of them! But I recently decided I needed to keep an art journal too, one that was especially for art and not many words, for paint and glue and CREATING. I finished it! I am really really proud of myself. Below are a few pages. Do ask if you have any questions.

Panic at the Disco lyrics on the left, I've edited the writing on the right, but the background was drawn with burnt matches.

I like drawing rainbows :)

The left hand page is one of my favourites.

This is the very first page :)

A weekend away

2010-04-29T15:17:00.003+01:00

Last weekend I went with my mum and stepdad on their church retreat. I know a lot of the people through them, even though I don't attend the church myself. (Or any, come to that.) It was in Whitby which is by the coast in North Yorkshire. These are a few photos.

Handmade envelopes

2010-04-24T11:22:00.001+01:00

I made this envelope from a vintage beer advert calendar that I picked up in Paperchase on sale. This envelope went to my friend Chloe. Isn't it immensely tacky?

This was a lovely letter from Bianca. Feel free to write to me, by the way ;)

Made from a comic calendar, I love these envelopes so much. I believe this one went to Lauren in Florida.

Journal page

2010-04-23T11:06:00.001+01:00

Page that went into my art journal. It was done on old sheet music, gessoed and then stamped with the heart stamp. Then I cut out the heart image and the small foil heart. I stamped the words, covered with embossing powder and heated with the heat gun. This crinkled the foil heart somewhat, but I think it adds to it :) When I stuck this in my journal, I painted grey around the edges. The colours aren't great in this photo, sorry.

Stationery swap

2010-04-22T09:57:00.004+01:00

This was what I received in the stationery swap that Megan held. My stuff came all the way from Pip in Australia. I love it all, it's all so colourful and sweet :)

On the day that this arrived from Pip, I got so much mail it was amazing. This is what I got:

A very good mail day!

Glimpse of a paper journal

2010-04-14T14:01:00.004+01:00

I kind of spilt wax on my last paper journal

I think it sort of adds to the effect, though.

I've been paper journalling for about four years now, and I wouldn't swap it for the world :)

Show and Tell

2010-03-18T13:30:00.003Z

These are letters from my great-grandfather to my great-grandmother sent during World War One.

My maternal grandmother has always been interested in family history, and recently she's been working on her dad and his time in the Army. He was a qualified pharmacist and was in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). He was working in London when war broke out and went to France not long after. He was action around Ypres on the Western Front.

His letters are so amazing to hold and read - there is genuine love for his sweetheart, my great-grandmother. They got married after the war and my grandma was born in 1926. There are, in London, genuinely interesting things about the war, such as 'Germany is fighting a war she cannot win... It will bring her to her knees'.

I never knew either of my great grandparents on this side, so this look into their lives as young people is interesting anyway. Against the back drop of WWI it's even more so :)

I spent all day in bed yesterday throwing up. Today I ache in places I didn't know I had muscles...

Show and Tell

2010-03-11T10:42:00.004Z

(Click photo for MUCH bigger!)

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join in here.

Today I'm showing my collection of nail polishes . I recently took them out of a makeup case and now have them living on top of my chest of drawers. I arranged them by colour. That way I can see exactly what I have and don't have. I went through every polish and gave away those that I didn't absolutely love.

On the left out of picture is a box with files and buffers in. On top of that is a bag with my nail art supplies in - striper polishes, konad plates and polishes and the little fruit decals I bought on eBay. Behind that is my removers and cotton wool pads, and my base coat and top coat. I figured that by leaving them in conspicuous view I wouldn't lose them - I actually have lost a base coat and some Seche Vite somewhere that I have no clue where. I had to buy more. My base coat is generic stuff from Superdrug, and I never used to use a top coat but I love Seche Vite. Oh, you can see it in the photo, near the remover.

I am not fancy about nail polish. I like cheap stuff and expensive stuff. One of my very favourites is a bright red creme from Maybelline (you can see it right in the back, fourth along). The silver right in the front right is one of OPI's minis (I forget its name right now) and that's a definite favourite too.

I'm currently wearing one that you won't find in the photo. My friend Jeni sent me the pastel cremes from Claire's that I was completely loving. I'm currently wearing the purple from that collection, which is pastel but with a slight shimmer. It's very spring-like and sexy!

Rebel Alliance Tour Review

2010-02-25T13:51:00.002Z

This piece was written for Tasty Fanzine.

Rebel Alliance Tour – Leeds Cockpit

16^th February 2010

Random Hand, The Skints, Mouthwash and Chris Murray

There were two gigs on at the Cockpit on Tuesday which made for a slightly hilarious mixture in the queue between punks and hipsters, and it also meant that by the time we actually got inside Chris Murray was already on stage. He was joined by Jon and Jamie from the Skints, and played an enthusiastic set of his upbeat ska. He bantered with the crowd and deserves a lot more recognition than he’s currently getting.

Mouthwash were up next, and had guitar troubles almost from the off. I’ve seen them once before and couldn’t stand them, but I was prepared to change my mind. I almost did, since the first three songs were really good, including a brilliant version of ‘That Girl’. However after that all the songs began to blur into one loud punk mess and it resulted in an overly-long set that I didn’t much care for.

The running over of Mouthwash meant that The Skints didn’t get as much time as they should have, and this was definitely a shame. The Skints play soulful reggae and they deserve to be as big as friends and allies The King Blues. They are always tight, and drummer Jamie sings amazingly, backed up by the wonderful Marcia. She plays a punk rock flute, and that alone should be enough reason to check out their album Live. Breathe. Build. Believe.

Random Hand were as heavy as ever. It was their drummer Joe’s last gig; he’s had enough of touring, not that it showed. It seemed like a definite high to go out on. Highlights were starting with ‘Scum Triumphant’, the always amazing ‘Anthropology’ and a new song called ‘Start the Fans Please’. An enthusiastic mosh pit from a local crowd meant that Random Hand left to a lot of applause, and were excellent.

iHanna's swap cards

2010-02-23T16:44:00.003Z

iHanna did a huge postcard swap and I've already received three of mine! I finished mine last week and I'm posting them below. See other links here.

This is one of my favourites, I love the background paper and the cute chick!

This is probably my favourite one.

All lined up together! They went out today. The postmistress was quite surprised!

Hello world!

2010-02-12T14:52:00.002Z

My name is Rebecca, I'm 26 and I live in England with my husband (let's call him JD) and our cat, Ivy. I'm currently unemployed but looking for work. This blog is an outlet for some of my obsessions.

I love music, stationery, books, Hello Kitty, Coronation Street, penpals, nail polish, tattoos, piercings, boys in bands, writing, shower gel, drinking too much Sprite.

The picture is of me last year when I had my hair cut from waist length.

Looking forward to being around here a little more!