To have and to hold...for 34 years

My Hb and I recently celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary and I decided that I wanted to make some pages in my art journal to remember our special day. We spent 25th July at Scotney Castle in Lamberhurst, Kent, owned by the National Trust. The sun shone and we enjoyed a wandering around the house and grounds and a had a lovely picnic too.

Here are a few photos from our special day. The main house was built between 1835-1843 and replaced the cold damp original Scotney Castle. It was lived in until 2006 when it was given to the National Trust who opened it to the public in 2007. I visited it that same year and since then there has been lots of gorgeous renovation both of the house and grounds.

A few of the inside rooms

It stands in beautiful grounds looking down to the original castle. This was built in 1378 and occupied for 450 years until the new house was built. The original castle was left as a folly and a very spectacular folly it is too.

We sat in the grounds of the old castle and admired the beautiful flora and fauna.

The tree above and the photo below were our views from a bench where we sat at 3pm, the exact time of our wedding in 1981

and this little fellow walked over to wish us a happy anniversary.

This is the view looking back towards the house.

We had such a lovely day there and I was inspired to make some new pages in my Art Journal.I wanted lots of floral texture so I added die cuts and book pages to start.

 I started to add green acrylics to represent all the gorgeous trees we saw

I also added some purples and pinks as these were the main colours in the gardens at the time of our visit.

I also stamped out my Tim Holtz flowers and watercoloured some of them with distress ink

So then it was time to put on my creative hat and make my journal pages.

Here they are. I am really loving adding doodles and Zenspirational dangles and ideas to my pages, inspired by the great Joanne Fink.

I decided to write some of the words, with a micron pen, of the marriage vows we made 34 years ago. Below are some close ups;

a close up of my "butterfly" tree with it's crackle and butterflies for leaves. These are an old MS punch.

and one last "arty" shot

I would like to enter my art journal pages into the following challenges;

Scrap around the world.  I was inspired by the lovely textures of the footprint and waves on the beach photo and used these colours on the tree and butterflies with lots of crackle texture. I used an arrow inspired by the sign post photo and my words are inspiration to me just like those of "explore, dream and discover". My journal pages are each 6"x 8" as required .

Artistic stamper anything goes

Anything but cute making magic again I was inspired by all the gorgeous textures in the photos.

Mixed  media world gorgeous textures

A vintage journey things with wings

Country View Crafts summertime

Dies R Us the great outdoors

Words to scrap by Book inspiration mine is The Good Earth

Vintage utfoldring add a butterfly

That craft place anything goes mixed media

Papertake weekly to die for, use a die I used several!

Memory box cool thoughts for warm days the fairytale border and flower are both Memory box dies

Vintage Uttfordring vintage with a butterfly

Pixie's Snippets playground week 191 This is a new challenge I have found and really looks great fun. I certainly used lots of die snippets in my pages.

Thanks for visiting today me here today. My Hb and I so enjoyed our anniversary. Now when I look at my pages in my journal I can relive that wonderful July day we shared.

We enjoyed at great day on the beach this Saturday with Daisy and Co.....such a sunny day but yesterday the rain returned so we were very lucky indeed. I have plans for some more art journal pages from the day....stay tuned ;0)

I hope you all had a lovely weekend?

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x