couldn't sleep last night, the usual, the harder you try the further away sleep becomes. For a while now I have been picking up one of my journals when I have trouble sleeping and writing my thought patterns until I relax enough to drift off. I wrote for a while all the positive thoughts I could, not sleepy yet, I spied a box of crayons I had put out on my trestle to catch my attention when I needed to try something new. just what I needed, I swirled, those crayons in flowing curves my mind going with the flow, thinking how like life these rivers of motion represent, we flow into dark places which seem to overtake us, then with a little effort it can flow back into the brighter swirls and we can see the sun again. I outlined the depth's then highlighted the peaks. The lovely crayons I used Gallery Watercolour I bought last Xmas, they had been hiding under my creative mess coming to my notice recently. I found this exercise very therapuatic, I had nothing in mind and just let my hand flow where it wanted.

At the shop I am teaching a house book, inspired from the book 'In this House' by Angela Cartwright and Sarah Fishburn. following is page 1, this is a Christmas theme and my favourite Christmas colour shades of white.

I have used vintage christmas themed background pages in black and white onto heavy bookboard. On this page I painted beige all around the border. I am using Claudine Hellmuth's vaseline technique for the backgrounds, painted gesso over the top, rubbed the paint back. painted a thick peice of scrap cardboard with gesso. I have glued using generous amounts of PVA glue, some white gauze over the cardboard into nice textures, as well as adhering to bookboard. I have painted my photo printed on nopa paper with polymer medium to give the photo body. glued photo on top. cut mica with pinking shears and attach over photo. a sprinkle of silver micro beads along top of glued gauze to give that Christmas sparkle. a very nina touch, painted white twigs tied along with a tatty old paint brush, a watch crystal from Coffee Break Design to highlight Santa's face from the background, he is a grand old santa. photo is my sweet little boy from about 38 years ago.

Page two I have used the same techniques and used a musky pink in the santa clip art and instead of gauze a scrap of raw silk fabric, if you have used silk, you will know how the edges like to fray, I have used these threads to tie the twigs onto the roof line over some pink painted stripe script paper. the photo is of me that has been handpainted. I can see these standing zig zag on the mantle peice at Christmas. Will keep you updated as I complete the other pages and the finished peice. I am off down South with two of my three sisters later this afternoon as Phillipa meets another milestone in her life. as we reach a certain age we all try to get together for a week and just celebrate being sisters. sadly my baby sister is unable to come this year, she will be missed. we are just going to go with the flow, stop where it pleases us, have lots of walks on the beach as well as in the forest. last time we got a tattoo each, none of that will be happening this time but I am sure we will come up with something crazy. I will be back next week, re energised with my soul nurtured, will catch up with you then.