To walk beside you

I AM FURIOUS AND DEEPLY UNHAPPY.  I HATE NEW BLOGGER.  I CAN NO LONGER DESIGN MY BLOGPOST AS I WANT TO.  I CANNOT PLACE THE PHOTOS WHERE I WANT THEM.   AND IT TAKES FOUR TIMES AS LONG EVEN TO GET THEM TO WHERE I DON'T WANT THEM.  BUT I NO LONGER HAVE A CHOICE TO REVERT TO LEGACY SO THE BLOGPOSTS ARE NOW NOT AS I WANT THEM TO LOOK.   THE LAYOUT IS RUINED.  NEW BLOGGER IS EVIDENTLY NOT FOR CREATIVE PEOPLE.  I DON'T KNOW HOW LONG I WILL PERSEVERE WITH A PLATFORM WHERE THE "IMPROVEMENTS" ARE MAKING MY LIFE HARDER.

Hello all!  I'm very behind on sharing tags with you here on the blog.  I've had a sudden rush of creative mojo while I've been here in the Czech Republic checking on the building work.  But now I'm heading back to (quarantine in) the UK to start packing up my stuff for the permanent move.  

So there might not be too much going on creatively in the next while - I'm not sure how I'm going to juggle it all.  But I've got plenty stored up to share - it's just a question of finding time to blog it all - so I'm back with a favourite trio today.  I notice I can no longer revert to Legacy Blogger, so this post may never see the light of day at all!  (No longer amused, as you'll see by the prologue at the top of the blog.)

These backgrounds are a combination of Distress Inks and Oxides smooshed on the craft mat - but the key ingredient (and the key element in my reawakenedmojo) is the addition of Speckled Egg to my favourite colour palettes.

It's a glorious colour by itself - veering from delicate blue tones to soft greens depending on context - but the joy for me has been in finding how it plays with the other colours I adore.  So there is Vintage Photo here, and some Rusty Hinge.  There's Stormy Sky and Wilted Violet.  And there had to be Pumice Stone too.

The tangled branches stamped to create the undergrowth are a Penny Black image.

And there's a Wendy Vecchi vintage text background embossed in white to echo the book page fragments behind the Paper Dolls.

I was feeling the lack of die-cutting ability, given I had only my travelling stash to work with... but the solution was these twig trees.

They were a fortuitous by-product of a weekend of hard work cutting, chopping and clearing overgrown plants and trees in the garden.

I wasn't doing it all by myself - a lovely young Czech friend came and spent one of his last weekends before starting his architecture degree doing most of the work... I was merely an assistant.  I think he thought I was a bit mad when I started hauling branches back out of the carload headed for the greenery skip which bobs up around the village at this time of year.  I now have a lovely collection of branches large and small to get creative with once I'm settled back here.

The Paper Dolls almost chose themselves.  The little guy in the hat is a constant favourite of mine - I could do with twice as many of him in each pack in every size!

And the toddler has also put in many an appearance on various tags and ATCs over time here at Words and Pictures.  He's carefully holding on to one of the branches to help with his balance.

I do like the seated girl too.  In fact, I glued on an extra branch for her to rest on.

The words are from Tim's Clippings stickers... found text without going to the trouble of finding it.

  

It's funny how, as you flick through the pages, the phrases you need just seem to appear.

You have to peer between the twiggy branches to catch all the words, which makes for a nice active engagement with the tags.

No need for anything fancy at the top - some simple fine twine finishes things off.

I hope you like them as much as I do.  And I hope you'll bear with me over the next few months.  It's been a busy six weeks dealing with builders and searching for flooring/showers etc where the chosen ones from 2018 were no longer available.  And it's going to be worse as I pack away my life's belongings and ship them across Europe.  

But sooner or later I'll be back in action properly... though maybe not on Blogger given New Blogger, which makes me desperately sad.  I'll have enough on my hands working out how life works in a new country, with a difficult language, and building new income streams given the theatre work is on hold for the foreseeable future, without struggling to deal with a platform which has been "improved" to make my life harder.

But looking on the bright side, it's a beautiful place I'm moving to.  I'm sharing some photos of South Bohemia on Instagram, so you can take a look if you would like to here... @b0hem1anh0me

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  Take good care of yourselves as the second wave takes hold.  Stay safe, stay well, and stay creative.

I want to cultivate the seed that was placed in me until the last small twig has grown.

Käthe Kollwitz