a little lime

Wow, this journal has taken me far longer to complete than usual - it spans 14 June - 9 Sept. Generally I get about a month out of my journals, just shows that life has been a little more full-on than usual, I suppose. Here's a couple of random pieces before this one is slotted into its spot on the shelf. poppy/tube: the shape of the flower could use some work but, eh. loopy string doodle:  I love starting with these loopy strings and going from there. Yesterday  we brought down the new Jersey (now called Daisy) to share the paddock with our milking cow, we think she'll be having her calf in the next month or so and we want her to get used to the routine, the sound of the milking machine, etc, etc. Anyway, we decided to extricate our neighbours sheep from the paddock at the same time (she's been hanging out with our cows for most of the year) and return her to our neighbours spare paddock along with our new sheep. Thi...

So, no Monday Moleskine this week - it was my mum's birthday - we drove up to see her.....and, I kinda forgot.....oops. As we're all full of Christmas love and cheer and frantic preparation around here (I have 24 coming to lunch Christmas Day), I don't see any MM's happening until after New Years. Onto this weeks Diva Challenge  - what a fabulous milestone for Laura to reach 100 challenges, and how cool to have the introduction of the tangle pattern, Diva Dance to celebrate it. Fantastic. I started in on the challenges about half way through this year, and they have been such a wonderful way for me to stretch myself creatively as well as discovering so many talented tanglers. Love it. Diva Dance. Love, love, love. Can you tell - I loved  playing with this pattern. "Anything goes/rock n'roll" is definitely the version I lean towards. Here's what I came up with: Wreath: this was the first thing that came to mind as soon as I saw the potential to...

This weeks challenge was to create a zentangle/zia without using a string. Love it! Although I very rarely use strings as such, I often draw a couple of directional lines on my blank page to get me going. So, for this challenge, I put the pencil and eraser in a safe and threw away the key so they couldn't weave their wicked wiles and tempt me to use them. Oh, and, when I say safe.........I really mean the box on my desk. lol. My drawing will not surprise you.... I went naturalistic.........there's leaves, feather, mooka :) I started with the front leaf and layered back from there, throwing in a mooka scroll at different intervals to give it a more woven effect. It was fun working without my safety net of a few pencilled lines, and though the balance feels a little out to me, I still like it. I also got to use a couple new colours from my latest tria marker delivery :) The top scroll is not shaded - though I love a bound journal, I have to remember n...

Okay, well, I did get my delivery of grey markers last week, but hadn't used them until today. So good to have light grey markers again! I actually bought a 12 box set, so now I have 3 sets of graduating greys in warm, neutral and cool. Sooooo soooo happy. I had a great afternoon drawing........I managed to catch up on patterns, as well as get through some pattern tiles for my organisation system - I am almost done with "B". It's a slow process, especially as I stop drawing once I get to one I just don't feel like doing - usually the patterns requiring lots of blocking/colouring in. I also broke out a new journal and so far I am loving it - it ticks all the boxes for me - 125gsm, smooth paper, bound, hard cover, able to blend markers and erase without it disintegrating and it was under $10.00. Win! I came across a page with some filagree and scroll sketches in one of my old journals, the scrolls remind me of the type of freeform designs that quilters do so t...

A busy weekend. Not only did I go on a field trip to buy a 300+kg bag of pig feed, John and I got out in the veggie garden and put up our new raised garden bed this morning. I was so glad to get back inside to my nice, warm wood heater and my pjs. Luckily John is back at work tomorrow and not able to distract me with moving cows, building garden beds, having coffees and spending time together :) I've tracked down a "follow" button that wasn't the bulky, default one offered in blogger gadgets and it's now sitting proudly right column above the Pinterest button - I'd love, love it if you want to keep up to date with what I'm doing. I have plans..........oh so many (evil) plans........unfortunately probably not enough time implement them all, so I may have to cross "take over the world"  off the list. (Just having a bit of a Pinky and The Brain flashback here! My kids - yes, ok, and me, too - loved that show!). So, I did get some time to draw t...

Today has been the most amazing day in my little corner of the world. One of those beautiful, sunny, blue-skied Spring days that makes you forget all about miserable, muddy winter and has me feeling so glad I live in the Yarra Valley. I seriously hate the cold and cannot wait each year for winter to end. Those of you who live in climates that snow would probably find our winter laughable, but, hey, we do have frost a few times each season, and I can see snow on the mountain caps in the distance.......well, every few years, anyway. So, today. STUNNING. Slip on a pair of thongs and get out in the garden weather (thongs = flip-flops for those of you who just had the truly horrifying thought of me gardening in my underwear). I managed to pull a few weeds, remove the chicken wire fence from around my flower garden (the chickens kept getting in and ripping through my seedlings - we think we have now stopped them from getting over the house-yard perimeter fence, so my flowers are b...

A while back when I did the pattern for Scrolled Feather - I got my daughter to video me demoing - all ready for me to upload to the blog so that you could see how I go about drawing it. Unfortunately my firewire cord, or the video, would not talk to the computer and I couldn't edit it. I still wanted to do it, and today, as it has been miserable and so incredibly cold that even my husband, John didn't want to work outside (an unheard of occurence!)  I got him to video me on my little Canon point and shoot camera. Yep. We're a high quality outfit here. Nothing but the best. LOL. Hopefully I don't live to regret it. Anyway, here it is. Take note of the disclaimers at the start - the sound quality is not good (I do not lisp, and I'm sure my voice does not sound like that!) Hopefully you can understand me and my very Aussie accent. I also had a bit of a play with the pattern and came up with a few variations of the theme. Also, along the...

This is a drawing from last week which I have been feeling a bit ambivalent about, not sure whether I wanted to post it or not, but, ultimately it has a yellow and purple colour scheme (insert happy gurgle), and daisies (love), so up it goes. I also wanted to post the steps I used for drawing the feather using Margaret Bremner's pattern copada for the diva challenge last week. I will definitely be doing something more with the peacock style feather I did here - love this :) Feather instructions: Note: direction of the curly brackets and scrolls, as well as giving the feather centre a good curve are important for this one to look right, so it is a little fiddly. I prefer it in greyscale rather than colour. Back to my drawing :)  hx

I thought I was done with the challenge , ready to return to the design that I was working on before the challenge was posted this week, but I found myself sketching away in my journal again and came up with a couple more things that I wanted to expand on to see where they went. Copada Feather: I can't resist trying to turn patterns into feathers, I just love the challenge of seeing if I can still retain the basic pattern but also bend it to my nefarious will (insert evil laugh here). I had thought about this idea before I went in the banksia direction, but didn't think it would work. I've had to contort the base parentheses shape to point upwards so that the feather swirls would head in the right direction. Kind of an odd, spiky feather, but I like it. String Flower: This one initially started as a sunflower but kept growing out of the shape. This is my comfort colour combo right now. Love, love mauve and yellow together. Copada in primary colours: This...

I love coneflowers. I want them ALL over my garden and have tried to grow them several times with no luck - this year I am giving it another go and have both purple and white coneflowers in the ground (currenly dormant), and (I hope) rearing to sprout as soon as spring comes around. So, for now, I have to appease my need by drawing them. This morning, I was totally inspired when I opened my email and found a link from tangle patterns to this gorgeous pattern: cruffle . I am even totally in love with the name - so cute, as soon as I saw this pattern I thought CONE FLOWER CENTRES! and started drawing them out right away. I drew a similar feather in this drawing too, and, though it is pretty straight-forward, thought it would be fun to do a pattern for it, so here it is: You can also see a video demo of it here. hx