Nom

I'm in London right now. Innit?

I went for an interview yesterday and i have been accepted. Yeeeeehaw! But until I have fine tuned the agreements, I can't divulge what it is alrhough, suffice to say, it's a wonderful opportunity. I then got invited to a craft event in Islington (which I can blog about on Sunday). It was such a great night but the best suprise of all is bumping in Shimelle and meeting Vicky Sheridan. As there were only a handful of invited guests, I had no idea these girls would be here. It made me feel at home!

Today I spent my time in crystal palace and at Rubinas beauty parlour. I'm working on Rubes's website and as part of the transaction I was rewarded with a full body and head massage plus a facial. Well, it was like all my holidays rolled into one. I can honestly say, hand on heart, that it was one of the most relaxing experiences of my life. It's made me super sleepy, all day.

Im now back at my accommodation, which I have to admit was one of the best bookings of "lets" ever. I'm staying in Streatham with a great couple who have treated me very well. I couldn't ask for a more perfect place to stay. Look up "Airbandb" on google to read just what I mean. Thoroughly recommended for the most adventurous travelor.

Aaaaaaaaanyway, I'll leave you with this bit of eye candy.

Peanut butter and jam cuppy cakes - hello?

Feel class live class!

This class goes live at 8pm tonight but is recorded so that people can still buy the class, even in a years time, and watch the video for full instruction. The class manuals have been sent out and im just limbering up before I go on air.

Here is a sneak of two of the completed pages. Each pages has a different texture that begs you to run your fingers over and feel its loveliness. Also, each page has a quote relating to happiness and you have a journal pocket to write your thoughts about happiness relating to different events of your life (though prompts).

There are a few kits left if you would like to buy one, here.

And today? Well I had the pleasure of teaching Kate Crane how to use her DSLR. Here she is, in full Grattan Catalogue pose (for fun!) as we were out on location, shooting stuff (you know, benches and trees!). By the end of 6 hours, Kate was shooting in full manual - I knew she would. Go see her blog - Kates fantastic art journalling is a sight o behold PLUS her DVD is now available to buy ( from HERE) and Im in the queue already!

Getting close, scarily close

My 100mm Macro lens is here and Im dying to get to grips with it properly. It's scarily if not freakishly clever at getting right into those nooks and crannies not commonly seen with the naked eye. I only faffed for 20 minutes tonight as the sun was dying plus my Momma is here and her time is far to precious to be spent working it all out in full. So as Mum and I sat out in the evening sun, drinking tea and jabbering (as you do), I went for a trot around the garden.

Our garden is a bombsite at the moment as we upheave land to make way for a new shed. This means disturbing turf, habitats and old, rotten sheds. This gave me a good playground for a while and this is what I discovered from a bugs point of view:

Pics look better if you click on them. Sadly, blogger squishes them on your blog pages :(

The centre of a chopped trunk of a Cordaline (ours died this winter - did yours?)

Sorry we uprooted you from your home Mr Froggy/Toady pants

This is a mega macro of my Hapene Flax plant. We love this pic. Mark had to hold it steady whilst I got into a weird, uncomfortable contortion to get the shot!

Rusty screws - lovely!

Twisted, wooden sticks

And an obedient dog under the command of Mark but was also being chastised for chasing My Frogy/Toady pants

Watch out Mark, your nostril hair could be next!

I love Leeds

Of course I do, I was born there and my fondest memories as a child are harnessed in the boundaries of this beautiful, old city. And of course I was always going to make it one of my places for my traveling one day photo courses. Hello?
I taught 4 fab lasses how to take their amazing cameras out of automatic mode and shooting in full semi-automatic with all the tricks and buttons that allow you to take amazing photos. Oh, we did laugh. A lot. And as sure as egg is eggs, they were taking brilliant photos by the end of the day. You just can't beat teaching photography to people in laymans terms. Technical jargon is not appropriate when all you want to do is take nice photos without explaining the science behind ISO. And also why, when recomposing, does your initial focus point stay in focus when you have shifted the camera. Bleh - hurts my head too!

We spent most of our time in the stunning surrounding of the Corn Exchange and the Victorian Arcade, look ->

Isn't it pwitty?

All archy and spanning out far and wide

A fan of beautiful architecture

filigree balustrades adding interesting touches

And paving that might go amis to the everyday person

Freeze framing water at 3200 of a second - check out the bubbles!

Lots of lovely things are in your city, waiting to be photographed. Am I coming to a city near you to teach? Come see HERE.

**edited to add (in light of recent unnecessary rumblings) These are MY photos from the day and not students photos. I take these as they go off an practice compositions**

Love Kirsty
Sign up for my online Feel class here - Texture rich and happy infused
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A little inky obsessed

Its funny how my crafting life has evolved over the years. I've gone from cardmaker to scrapbooker to photographer to general papercrafter and now Ive jumped on the inky and painty wagon. True, I'm a novice in this department (to some of my peers) but I do love it so.

Belles and I went out this afternoon and instead of me rifling through the racks of clothing stores, I was buying more gesso and more paint brushes and more Moleskines. I was in heaven.

Well, ok - a 100mm F2.8 L IS USM lens fell into my basket on Amazon but only because I had sold my divine 17-40mm F4 L USM lens to warrant the shift. Tthe macro on my new lens will help me develop a new style of photography combined with inky paintiness and my inky paintiness will enhance some scrapbook pages and also other papercraft projects. I mean, its all relevant, isn't it?

Aaaaaaaanyway.
I have been toying with buying the grid paged Moleskines for a while and the larger books at that. And as they are on offer at Waterstones (buy 2 get 1 free - hello? - I've just bough 34 packs of three at full whack for my Feel class - what a rip :( ) I bought some plain and grid paged ones to play with.

Ive been doing intermediate style splodging for a while now but never felt compelled to share anything until now. And here it is - My Journal of quotes, page 1 is complete.
I used Jo Sonjas texture gesso to create those stars through a homemade template. I LOVE JO SONJA'S stuff muchly.
Im going to work on a page a day (or so) and try and force myself to share the work with you without dying at how ashamedly under par it is to my friend, Dyan Reaveley.

Going to wipe the surfaces of my office down - they are disgusting.

Our sunny Diet Coke break

Call the cops, I give my kid Diet Coke.

But you can't beat it on a sunny afternoon after you have been sat in your jammies all morning, festering in the stink of the wild indoors. So, I dragged Belles out late this afternoon to get some sunshine and brought poochy boy along too. It felt good to be in the warm sunshine and nestled amongst the prettiness in our local flower park.

Here she is, lost in a caffeine trance

Cheers Momma, Im high as a kite on an aspartame overdose

And now Im coming down off my sugar high, so I'll contemplate eating a marigold

Better not eat the flowers but instead have something a bit more fattening cuz these jeans keep falling down!

And besides, pudgey sausage boy could do with a tasty morsel - so lets go home

And so we went home and grazed on ham sammiches and crumpets. NOM.

PS: laughing out loud here as none of the pictures show the flower park in its full glory. Instead, we shall call it the "grass" park for today.

Love Kirsty
Sign up for my online Feel class here - Texture rich and happy infused
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More sneaks of the Feel class

As requested, here are more sneaks of the Feel class.

Kits post out tomorrow in ready for the video release next weds. I am, after tonight, suffering from kit-itis. But don't you think its fun packing parcels, rather like wrapping a gift :)

I am delighted with how this turned out and I can't stop touching it (must get out more, right?! .....but then why go out and touch things and get germs when you can touch this book and know where its been.......see, you get me - don't you?)

So here are my second lot of sneaks (3rd lot goes out on Monday):

Overlapping frills

Folded and twisted print

Collage of tickets

Inked up bubble wrap

Touchy feely beaded heart (yes, you have to sew my friends!)

Chunky brayered pain and lid prints


Now that I have done this class, I have already planned the next one. Again, its in a Moleskine but this time its multi layered backgrounds and the theme will be Childhood. Still involves journalling as ever, with pockets as before with the MIMM and Feel class. Ive even mapped out the pages and worked out the cost which will be £21 this time as there isn't a huge kit like the Feel one.

Ok, bed time.......planning on having sweet dreams as next week is one of the biggest weeks of my life.

Sketch night

I promised a crop tonight but alas, life got in the way.
Nevertheless, here is a sketch to work on, just in case you are feeling scrappy tonight xx




Have fun

Happy Birthday Momma

It's my Mommas birthday today and I had the perfect ingredient for her card... a delish square doiley made into an envelope.

Sometimes just one single item can map out the rest of your projects with such ease and that doiley was my starting point

**very happy card maker moment**

One to one DSLR training

Yest, I taught Mell a One to One photo session.
These sessions are different to my one day courses as they are more intense but will allow you to shoot in FULL manual mode in 6 hours. But not Mell. Oh no! She was shooting in full manual mode in 3 hours. I almost fell on the floor and she kindly gave me these images to share with you. I've known Mell for 5 years now through crafting and I've always had a soft spot for her as she has overcome/deals with a lot of difficulties, like my Belles. I hope my Belles grows up to be EXACTLY like her.

All of these shots, below are straight out of camera, perfectly exposed in full manual mode and not touched by one piece of editing software - as natural and as organic as photography should be.

Mells father, David, has these steam driven trains and track all around the garden - perfect for Mells nephews. This shot is fantastically composed (rule of thirds with continual)

One of Mells Nephews

Mell's father and nephew

Love this bunting shot, freeze franmed during a blustery bout of wind.

How fabulous is this shot?

Beautiful ivy.

Mells nephew, freeze framed, on the swing
And as it happens, it's Mells birthday today, too. Happy Birthday.

Gloucester 'togs

Well, true to form, Gloucester was wet.
But by 12.20 it had brightened up and 8 new 'togs had sat through 2.5 hours of theory and were DESPERATE to try out their new learnings "on location".We couldn't have timed it better. And I was incredibly surprised at how quickly the girls had grasped depth of field.

The best thing about the day is always seeing the playback screens of their cameras and enjoying the progression of composition throughout the course of the afternoon. Here are the Gloucester group from todays photocourse:


And luckily for us, there was a pretty park to take pictures in. Here are parts of the scenery that the girls had full access to:


Ok, a wire fence isn't THAT pretty - but the depth of field is ;)


BONUS! Mr Bee landed on the rule of thirds just for me! HOORAY!

Next week I'm teaching in Leeds, my birth right. FUN! I have one space left if you fancy getting to grips with your DSLR.

Online Class - "Feel" texture journal book
I have a few places left on the course if you would like to sign up. Read two blog posts below to find out more :)

Love
Kirsty x
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Dr Foster

Dr Foster
Went to Gloucester
In the pouring rain.
He stepped in a puddle,
Right up to his middle (I HATED that that never rhymed!)
And never went there again.

Well, until 18th september - when Im teaching a scrapbooking class!

Is it pouring where you are?
As we are in the process of buying a whopping great shed (could my life get anymore exciting?), Mark stripped back the 2 foot thick of ivy from our existing dump of a shed, to prepare for its demolition. And now that it's unprotected from the elements, it resembles an enormous collander and you gotta feel sorry for our lawnmower sat in there, getting soaked to the electrical core. Fizz bang.

Progress and Work in Progress

It's been a funny old week.
Lots of things accomplished, some shelved, some on going ....... yadda yadda yadda
And now its the weekend (a working one at that - Im in Gloucester on Sunday teaching 8 women DSLR photography) most of my projects will snowball into next week.

Here are a few pics of my recent goings on:

I cannot wait to finish this layout, This one has been one of those layouts where you add bits here and there rather than do the whole thing in a one-er


I was making room in my office to put some felt away (you know the story, you rob peter to pay paul on space and end up with your space looking like a bomb site) and I came across my fashion design modules. Im not sure if I blogged about this but I've changed my course to Graphic design. The reason being that I wasn't cut out for Mens fashion and that module would have failed me. But still, here are some of my fave doodles:



The one below is my pencil mock up on croquis. I am RUBBISH at drawing bodies and if you look close you can see my body grid lines. I also think her dress looks like a mcdonalds pack of fries! I think the House of McQueen may rest that I never ventured down that route.
And lastly, this. I started this in March and it only needs photos in the frames but I just haven't got round to adding them ....... silly, isn't it? It's my 7 Gypsies printers tray, filled with mainly left overs from my Studio Calico days. It was such a thrill to bring together but once you lose momentum on a project, well.... that's it for me.

I must make the effort next week to finally put it together.


Yes, that it hair in the jar. Its some of Ellies curls from years ago.

That empty jar will be filled with Ellie's pulled teeth


What IS that foreign object near the No 23?!!! (off to investigate)

Love our Dachshund ornament, which came off a keyring.

And lastly, I have some sort of semblance in the room. My tools corner got a little makeover and is ready to be trashed again very soon!

Must press on....... things to do!

PS: My "Feel" online class sneaks are in the post below x