Old Yella

 

I was lucky enough to attend the brilliant Scrapbooking with the Stars Scrapbooking Retreat at Phillip Island in mid November! The gorgeous Karen Shady and Stacey Apps did an amazing job organizing such a wonderful event and I already have my name down for next years retreat!

 

At this retreat I was hoping to get some of my mojo back. I wasn't putting too much pressure on myself though. I ended up scrapping 4 layouts so I was pretty happy with that. My first and my favourite layout of the weekend was one featuring my now heavens angel Missy Precious. She was a gold Labrador so I wanted to use yellow and gold all over the page. I still had heaps of old My Mind's Eye Lost and Found papers I had been saving for a special occasion so that help.

 

I used Matte Medium to adhere some Prima Art Ingredients - Glass Beads in Butter and Mica Flakes in Gold around the edges of some gorgeous Prima flowers and accessories. I also added some gold sequins. BTW I think I have a sequin addiction??

 

Anyway one of Missy Preicous' many nicknames was 'Old Yella'. And because this was a gold/yellow page I thought to myself well I can't finish the page until I find someone who has a chipboard cutting machine to do me a custom Old Yella title. In comes Miss Karen Shady to save the day! She introduces me to Dusty Attic owner Jenn who is at the retreat and the gorgeous Jenn is kind enough to spend time with me choosing a font and size and positioning of a custom chipboard title for my page!

 

I was so gobsmacked I nearly cried! This was a major major highlight of my weekend and I still sincerely thank Jenn from Dusty Attic for taking the time to do this for me. When they arrived in the mail I was thrilled. So the other day I sat down and inked the title in Walnut Stain and then added Dimensional Magic and I thought, I'll just add a sprinkling of gold glass glitter. Well, um hmmm I think I got a bit carried away and added too much glitter but what the heck!

 

I absolutely love it!

This page was a very emotional for me. It took me a long time to finally get it started but once I was started I didn't want the layout to be finished.

 

I couldn't miss my Old Yella more, but I tell you looking at this everyday sure does help.

Once more THANK YOU to Karen Shady and Jenn from Dusty Attic, your generosity was much appreciated :)

 



You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine....

As you may have read in my last post it has been a terribly hectic year for hubby and I. We finished renovations on our home and then put it on the market to sell. Well it sold in 13 days! And then we had a settlement period of 35 days. So as you can imagine things have been non stop as we packed and moved items.

 However, 9 days before the settlement of our house the absolute sunshine of my life, my doggy soul mate, my everything had a seizure/fit of some kind which she didn't recover from and had to be put to sleep. She was only 12.5 years old.

( This is one of my favourite pictures of Missy Precious)

That was on Monday 21st of July. So in my last week before moving house fully I was busy organising her cremation and inviting a small amount of family and friends to come to her viewing and a lunch to celebrate Missy Precious' life.

We have moved house and are now slowly settling in. Unfortunately I still don't have a studio to create in but remain hopeful it will be very soon. And last Saturday I went back to work for the first time since she passed and it was hard. It was only a short shift to ease me back in. And on Sunday morning whilst getting ready for work I had a complete breakdown and couldn't stop crying for 1.5hours and had to call work to let them know I wouldn't be in. So it has been a hard long journey, but I am trying.

Thank you to everyone who has been kind enough to leave me message on my fb page etc regarding the loss of my beautiful loyal Labrador, they are appreciated more then you could ever know. But right now I am learning a 'new' kind of normal without her and I hope to start creating again soon.

Missy Precious exactly 1 week before she passed away (July 14th)

Missy Precious living the life on our bed the night before her seizure/fit.

 

Missy Precious

R.I.P

17th November 2001

-

21st July 2014

Lack of posts = House Selling!

My sincere apologies for the lack of posts on this poor neglected blog lately!

After years and years of dusty, dirty, annoying, noisy house renovations we decided to sell our house. It finally went on the market on Monday 9th June after a HUGE weekend of touch up and too much cleaning to mention! And we had our second open for inspection this morning much to the disgust of my precious Labradors lol. They don't like their dog beds being packed up all the time and water bowls put away for photos and inspections etc lol.

Here are some of the before (8 years ago when we purchased) and after photo's.

 

Front Yard Before's

 

Front Yard After's

 

 

Entrance looking into loungeroom before

 

 

Entrance looking into loungeroom after

 

Inside loungeroom looking to entrance and dining before

 

 

Inside loungeroom looking to entrance and dining/kitchen after

 

Kitchen before's

 

 

Kitchen After

 

 

Kitchen looking to dining and hallway before

  

Kitchen looking to dining and hallway after

 

 

Laundry before

 

Laundry after

 

Bathroom before's

 

Bathroom after

 

Bedroom 2 before

 

Bedroom 2 After

 

Main bedroom before

 

Main bedroom after

 

Bedroom 3 before

 

Bedroom 3 after

 

Backyard before

 

Backyard after

 

 

Entertainment bunker/pit before

 

 

Entertainment bunker/pit after

I still can't believe hubby and I did all this by ourselves. We were nuts! What were we thinking lol. I still can't believe that it has turned out as gorgeous as it has. What a talented husband I have!

So as you can see this is what has been distracting me from my art. And although it will be sad to sell this house we have basically rebuilt, it will be dam exciting to have a new Art Studio! I can't wait to be able to play with the design and set up, so much fun! All good things come to those who wait!

Thanks so much for stopping by and hopefully I can share some art soon.

Cassandra Bright

Whoops! Better late then never!

What a busy week!

I've gone from being bored to non stop lol. I had my fantastic craft retreat at the weekend and I haven't stopped since I got back with work and hospital appointments. I am sure my doctor is being over cautious sending me for some sort of Nuclear test for my heart, but I spose it is better to be safe rather then sorry when it comes to the heart as it does keep us going after all.

 

Now with all this rush around I have had no chance to share the last picture I sketched at the craft retreat on the weekend. So here it is better late then never right???

I have been working on sketching the female body in as many poses as possible. People have been asking me why I am only sketching nudes. My theory is that I have to learn how to draw the human body and its shapes before I can tackle the task of learning how to draw clothes on the human body with all creases, folds and shadows and shading. Well, like I said that is my theory. Small steps :)

 

Thanks for stopping by to check out my work. I hope your all having a wonderful week!

 

Casssandra Bright

Sketch Share!

Happy Monday!

 

I hope your all having lovely weather wherever you are. It has been just gorgeous here for a week now and considering it is late Autumn we are very lucky indeed. I just love watching all the leaves fall from my deciduous trees in the front yard. It looks like a completely different world to Spring time that is for sure.

 

As promised yesterday, I am back to share another sketch from my craft retreat weekend away. I love this sketch! I don't usually say that much about my own work. I mean we are our own worst critics, am I right?? mmm.... we do need to be nicer to ourselves that is for sure.

 

 

I can't wait to transfer this image to a canvas and to paint it. Funny thing is I never try to sketch male figures. I must really be brave and give that a go soon. I have one more sketch I'd love to share with you all and I'll do that tomorrow. For now I hope I have managed to inspire some of you to pick up a pencil and sketch. You never know what you are capable of :)

 

Cassandra Bright

Craft Retreat Art

I am lucky enough to have just gotten back from a 4 day craft retreat in Daylesford, Victoria!
The weather was gorgeous, especially for Autumn and seeing all those lovely gold leaved trees is very inspirational too. I love Autumn in Daylesford.

I thought today I would share one of the sketches I managed to get done whilst away. I think she would look great as a fairy with some gorgeous wings.

 

 

I'll share some more sketches over coming days. I got a few pieces sketched that I am quite pleased with and will paint on canvases in the near future (when time permits). I hope you enjoyed your lovely Autumn weekend as much as I did.

 

 

Cassandra Bright

Let the journey continue

As a child I loved colouring, drawing, creating and just making pretty things. It was something that has always made me happy, and I spose I would even say it has been an escape. As I got older I was not encouraged to continue drawing and my skills were not up to the level of my older sibling, but I always continued to find great joy in art classes through school.

When it came time to select classes for year 11 and 12 and I still had no idea what I wanted to 'be when I was grown up' my mother simply said do the classes you will enjoy and get good marks in. So I chose Art, Studio Art and Graphic Design as three of my VCE classes. I enjoyed them and the art room at school so much that I even sat in the art room at every recess and lunch break and continued my work or homework in there.  I distinctly remember being so thrilled and excited to be able to go on a school excursion in my final year of schooling to our National Gallery to view a Rembrandt Exhibition. Something about his paintings and nude female drawings and the curves was just so stunning and beautiful.

When I left school and worked in retail I began dabbling and then getting addicted to Cross Stitch as my new creative outlet. I gave up the painting, drawing and other things as I was lead to believe that art couldn't be something I made a living from. Now some 15 years later I wonder how different life would be if I had done what truly made me happy and just concentrated on doing what I love, drawing, painting. I have decided to start drawing again! Anything worthwhile in life takes practice and practice is what I shall do.

So I invite you all to follow my blog and facebook page and my creative journey that is being continued after such a long break. It won't happen overnight, but then again how boring would that be??

Cassandra Bright