In the light of the blue moon

On Wednesday we were promised the spectacle of the brightest biggest full moon we would see for 150 years. It was also a blue moon..ie more than one full moon in the month. We did have pretty clear skies but I must admit that I have seen bigger moons in the past. One thing for certain though was the moon was incredibly bright. My little camera could not cope with the huge contrast so my photos don't show the man in the moon who smiled out at me.

Here are a couple of photos I took but as I say they don't show his lovely "face"

 The brightness was very striking.

There is usually so much detail to see on the moon.... I took this photo some time ago  and thought I would show it.

So Mr Moon inspired me to make another of my Lavinia fairy cards to restock Dotty's teahouse.

I thought my fairy could hold the moon in her hands...what a lovely thought.

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

Crafty Catz 1/3 anything goes
Simon says Wednesday anything goes
That's Crafty feeling blue
Sweet stampin 1/3 anything but birthdays

Enjoy a lovely weekend, we have a special visitor...Bear our son's dog...and yes Billy is in his upstairs apartment 😂

Back on Monday with my weekly dose of Visible Image inspiration.

Bye for now,

Jane x

Lunar

I love all things moon related. The latest dictionary letter over at the Craft Barn alphabet challenge is L and as I searched through my antique dictionary I came across the word lunar. Perfect!
I love a full moon and I hoped to take a photo of one on Monday 22nd Feb, but sadly the sky was very overcast that night.
So I decided to dig out some lovely moon photos I took in September. You may have seen these but here goes. They were taken on holiday in Rhodes.

I love the texture on these photos. When I see a full moon here in the UK I often see a "face" on it and I made a few moons with faces for Christmas cards last year.
I had one of them left over, it was a face I didn't like but it had some great textures so I decided to paint it over with Picket Fence crackle paint.

I love those crackles

I have also decided to make some single pages in my art journal....It will fill it up far too quickly if I keep making double pages every time. I added some scrunched up tissue wrap and some texture paste stars through my TH stencil.

I wanted a deep blue starry night sky to put my moon in so I dribbled and dabbed my paints onto my page adding lots of spritzes of water.

I painted some of my stars silver. Sorry about this awful photo, the under cupboard light in my kitchen is not brilliant. It's too cold in my studio to work so I have been working on the kitchen breakfast bar.

I wanted to use a moon quote so I used the Moon one below. This has actually been attributed to several people so I can't be definite who is the owner!

Shoot for the moon, if you miss it you will still land among the stars

Once my night sky background was make it was time to put my creative hat on. This is what I came up with.

 Here is a close up of my moon and the lunar dictionary  definition. I add even more texture with frantage and surrounded the moon with my Noor star die which I also dipped into paint. The little stars are a Lavinia stamp. I used gold acrylic paint. 

I still wanted to keep a touch of the whimsical with my lunar page so I added a Lavinia fairy stamp and die cut a star for her to hold which was sprinkled with gold glamour dust.

I would like to enter my mixed media piece into the following challenges.

The Craft Barn letter L. Mine is L for lunar.                                                                                          

Our creative corner 1/3 previous challenge mine is words, words, words chosen by Candice
Rhedd's Creative Spirit March
Simon says stamp Wednesday  1/5 touchy feely
Whimsy Stamps 1/3 anything goes
Simon says stamp Monday take a leap into the unknown it's the first time I have used picket fence crackle paste and I was not sure if it would ruin my moon...it didn't. I loved the effect.
Creative Inspirations 1/3 pretty projects

Thanks for popping by today and welcome to March.  Spring really is just around the corner now.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

My own Man in the Moon

It's no secret that my Mum and I really love the image of "The Man in the Moon". I have written and shared a few moon posts here in the past.

When my Hb and I were on holiday in Rhodes last month we were lucky to find that it coincided with a full moon. The night sky is so beautiful there, so much less light pollution that the stars are visible, as well as some of the planets. My hubby is quite knowledgeable about these things and pointed out several of constellations and planets. We were able to see Venus and Jupiter clearly.

The nights around the full moon were all beautifully clear and I really enjoyed seeing it from our restaurant tables as it's always warm enough to enjoy every meal outside. Here are a few shots.

At the beginning of the evening it was a red moon...so beautiful. My photos are not perfect as I didn't use a tripod, my camera is just hand held and that takes some doing!

It was also amazing to see the moon still in the sky in the morning and I snapped these photos from our balcony at 6.30am

 Soooo beautiful

Over the last few days I have been trying to find a good man in the moon digi or stamp but really none were suitable.  So inspired by the challenge over at PaperArtsy which is "faces" I took a really brave decision and decided to draw a few of my own Man in the moon faces.

I never claim be an artist so my drawings are rather primitive but I came up with these. I  drew one on crumpled tissue paper which I stuck onto a circle die cut and a couple I drew directly onto the card. I used a silver pen for one and micron for the others.

 My Sukura glaze pens are such fun to use.

I added some distress ink to given them some dimension

I chose my favourite moon face and decided to try making it into a Christmas card.

I created an inky background with shades of blue distress ink by swooshing my card through the inks until I had created a dark blue night sky.

I also stamped some stars on my background.

Below is my finished card and I really like the vintage/retro feel of it. My very own Man in the Moon Christmas card.  This really epitomizes my childhood Christmas cards for me. I used to also love the German advent calendars which often had smiley man in the moon images.

 The sleigh die is Cheery Lynn and I attached some bells

The star die is by Noor.

I plan to use the other faces for other projects so you will see them again at some point.

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

PaperArtsy Faces. I was very inspired by the butterfly post by Julie Anne Lee where she used a face on a butterfly.
Country View add some texture
Sparkles Christmas distress it
Christmas card challenge photo inspiration
Crafty Hazelnut For a child
Cheery Lynn Vintage
We love to create #21
Allsorts all sentimental, use a sentiment
Pixie's Crafty workshop #199
Craft Stamper Take it make it process;ink,stitch, paint,collage, print paper I have used ink, collage paper as well as stamping my star background and my sentiment.

Thanks for visiting me today and also for the really kind messages you left on my Zenspirations post on Friday.   It's the start of another week already and at the end of this week the clocks go back...gosh how quickly that has come around.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

The Man in the Moon

My Mum loves the Man in the Moon and I must admit so do I. There is nothing more special than seeing a full moon in a clear starlit sky with  his face grinning down. For my Mum's  recent birthday at the end of November I thought I would commission another little ACEO from the very talented Vita . If you remember she painted a beautiful mermaid picture for when my daughter's boyfriend went to sea. (News on that front is that after after 3 long months he  finally came home last Friday).

I thought you would like to see the wonderful moon ACEO that Vita painted for me....

I used the little painting to feature in the birthday card I made for my Mum.
I framed it with a card die cut frame using  little jewels at the edge and then mounted it on a deep blue/purple card. I also used some other die cut frosty card borders and finished it off with a Happy Birthday banner and some silver peel offs to read MUM.










This was the finished card and I was pleased with how it turned
out. My Mum loved it and when she has finished with the card
she is going to take out the little painting and frame it.

Also keeping with the Moon theme for my Mum's birthday I managed to commission  a wonderful Man in the Moon lampwork glass bead by a very talented English lampworker called Emma. She had never made a man in the moon before but felt it would be a great challenge and she managed to create the most wonderful bead.

I decided that he would look best on a vintage style brass chain and this is the finished piece that I gave my Mum for her birthday present.

As always I had my trusty camera assistant at hand-

Billy does like to get in on the action!

I was so inspired by this wonderful bead that I commissioned Emma to make me a "Blue Moon" and here is mine.

                                                           Stunning! I love wearing him.

Whilst I am on the subject of the moon I wanted to tell you about a recent  phenomenon which occurred this year, during the Autumn Equinox. It was the appearance of a Harvest Moon. This is a little know event which rarely occurs.  There is a very interesting article about it here

On that night, 22nd September we were lucky enough to have a fairly clear sky here in Surrey. Most of the UK that night was covered in cloud so the Harvest Moon was only visible in some area. I managed to take the following photos out of my bedroom window.

The sky had the most wonderful glow to it and clearly visible to the left and below the moon was none other than Jupiter shining brightly.

It really was a sight to see and I am glad I did not miss out in this once in every 20 years or so phenomenon.

How lucky we are to have a sky to look up into and watch the stars twinkling and on occasions the Man in the Moon smiling down on us .... or is it just me who sees him ?? ;0)

(Remember to have a peep at my ** days til....... posts we really are well into the countdown to Christmas now!)

Bye for now,

Jane x