WOYWW 323 - Another week has vanished in a flash,

It has been a while since I joined in with the wonderful Wednesday blog hop that is WOYWW, hosted by the lovely Julia at Stamping Ground.  Life has been somewhat hectic of late and I feel it is unfair to expect people to leave me comments when I know I do not have enough time to return the compliment.  I have been popping in and out to see what has been going on.

This is quite a photo heavy post today.  I am deeply addicted to parchment work at the moment.  It is something I have loved for a while, but the addiction has grown recently.  Many of you will know that I am also addicted to anything from Clarity Stamps and Barbara Gray.

 

They have recently brought out a revolutionary parchment kit, called the Groovi Plate, which enables total beginners to produce beautiful work within hours,  I already have most of the kit, but you can see my latest additions to my collection of plates.

My  other addiction, which has been a lifetime one, is for pencil crayons.  I now possess four complete sets from different companies, starting with my beloved Derwent.  That is in addition to all the watercolour pencils and pastels etc.

The box you can see here is one of my new acquisitions, the complete set of Caran D'Ache, which are Swiss, and totally luscious.  They are so smooth and easy to blend which makes them perfect for colouring parchment work.

The colours are so beautiful, I could sit and stroke them.  I am sure you know what I mean.  I do have one more new set which I will show you another time, which are the Fabel Castell Polichromos.  

 

Both these sets are expensive, but I was lucky enough to find brilliant offers and it would have been rude to refuse them, wouldn't it?

This final parchment picture was actually featured on my blog earlier this week, so I will not say too much about it.  I used three of the Groovi plates to put the design together, and then the crayons to colour lightly.  The backgrounds were from mop up sheets, but they just had the right colours.

I painted the canvas boards with two different shades of the Fresco Chalk paints, and I have become a real fan of those.  I learned some of the ways to use them when I went down to spend time on the Clarity Retreats in Kent last month.

I had hoped to spend some time during the week I was there doing some sight seeing in an area which was really totally new to me.  However, the weather had other ideas, being generally miserable, as you can see from this photo.  I ended up on the Monday morning at the viewpoint at the top of Ashdown Forest.  I am sure that the view is fantastic, but this photo actually shows more than I could actually see.  The clouds just sat down hard on any ground more than about 10 feet above sea level.

I actually gave up on the sight seeing and concentrated on the crafting and meeting up with lovely friends.  Once my session was over, I decided to cut and run, after a night of torrential rain with an appalling forecast.  I will try again next year and look forward to next year.

Meanwhile, I am looking forward to the second WOYWW crop later this year and meeting up with as many of you that can make it.  I will let you get back to Julia now and the links to all the other lovely blogs on show toady, and hope to get round as many of you as possible.