Hello friends!
Happy Tuesday! Hope you are having a lovely day. We are enjoying a week – a whole week!!! – of nice, sunny, dry weather so I am trying to make the most of it by being outside as much as possible and get also getting some vitamin D!
Today’s Art . . .
For today’s art I am sharing the page I made for Day 7 of my #eotcartjournalaugust prompt which was YELLOW. I am not a huge lover of yellow in things (including flowers, I rarely buy yellow anything) but I do acknowledge that it is such a happy, joyful, sunny colour. It’s just not my favourite colour. So just to torture myself I covered the whole page with yellow neocolours. The page on the left is the Day 6 prompt, and the page on the right is the start of the Day 7 prompt – yellow.
Then I left it overnight while I pondered how to proceed. In the morning, I decided to turn it into a sunflower. It was not supposed to fill the whole page but I’m glad that it did in the end. I got a bit carried away drawing petals, first with a black fineliner pen, and then adding more depth with black and brown Polychromos pencils.
I used some lyrics from the famous Coldplay song which is of course called – Yellow!
Day 6 and 7 both finished.
T Stands For . . .
While I was drawing the above sunflower, I had a companion who was enjoying the warmth from the sun shining into that room. It was Miss Lily getting her dose of early morning Vitamin D.
And I was also getting my early morning dose of decaf… but not from the expensive coffee machine!!! This coffee came from the inexpensive, and very old Cafetiere (aka French Press) which actually has a broken spout as I managed to crack it on a tap while washing it sometime last year.
So why am I using this old broken coffee making device? Well the fancy new expensive one, has to be cleaned internally once a month or so. This was the first time I was doing it, and it had to be dismantled, cleaned and then left to air dry before it can be reassembled. (Air drying took three days FYI.) It was a bit of a faff, and next time it is due to be cleaned it will need even more faffing about, because there is “Phillips grease” that has to be purchased so you can grease the internal workings, and “Phillips coffee oil tablets” that also have to be added to the cleaning process to get rid of excess oil from the coffee beans.
BTW did I mention it comes with a water filter like those water jugs? More faff, more expense and not necessary IMO. Before setting it up, you have to test your water with the strips provided, testing for Ph, water hardness etc. Our water is some of the best in the UK, so we don’t need a filter, we don’t have hard water. After testing the water, you had to match the strip result against the chart for the level of redness indicating how bad the water was. Our strip was green, no red, just saying. So we are not using the filter! But if we continue to use the coffee machine then we may have to invest in these coffee oil remover tablets and the grease *rolls eyes* but meantime, I’m enjoying the delicious – possibly better – tasting coffee from the old, broken Cafetiere, to which I can add cardamom which is my favourite way to drink coffee. I can’t add cardamom to the new machine as it would clog up the grinder.
If you’re at all interested in seeing what else I’ve been making since last Tuesday, have a look at these blog posts from the last week…
Let me know what you think in the comments. As always, thanks for reading!
Challenges
Altered Book Lover – T Stands for
Art Journal August – see original post here
Try it on Tuesday – Summer Blooms – sunflowers!
You might also like these posts . . .
I adore this sunflower Elle! I don’t use yellow much but strangely, I have lately. I know what you mean about cleaning coffee machines. We followed instructions but couldn’t get ours to work aferwards had to be taken through the procedure via a help line. Belated Happy T Day!
Oooh! and thanks for joining us at Try It On Tuesday, hugs, Chrisx
I love your art journal pages Elle, I don’t use yellow very often either. I hadn’t registered that you had a challenge going. I’ll try and do a few pages if I can. This heat doesn’t agree with me, I’ve mostly been lying on the sofa reading this month.
Lovely to see the sunbathing Miss Lily.
Enjoy your weekend,
Alison
Oh that cleaning sounds such a faff! It sounded such a perfect machine until you mentioned all this cleaning. Mine (a Senseo) has to be descaled regularly, bus as we have soft water I don’t do it. Hubby has a bean to cup machine which is basically a filter machine with a built in grinder. He has to clean the filter and gubbins after every time he makes coffee. Then I leave it on the worktop to dry and it dries in an hour. No probs.
I’ve never really used a French press. They say it is the best (providing you buy good coffee)
Happy belated T-Day,
Keep smiling,
Hugs,
Lisca
Elle, Happy late T-day. I am running behind this week but I made it.
I loved hearing about your coffee making adventure. Not that I would buy and expensive coffee maker but you have made me feel better about not buying one now. The old, less expensive way is often the better way. True of so many things.
LOVE the sunflower. Your art is happy and fun – both pages in your journal. The kitty is adorable as always.
Hugz
I am not quite sure how I missed your post, but for some reason, I skipped over you, which was NOT my intention. Then I got caught up checking out your wall hanging. I’m so glad I came back to make sure I had visited you.
Your sunflower is beautiful. You must have a lot of patience because that looks very labor intensive. It turned out great!
My friend Joseph gave me a French Press for my birthday one year. I used it once and gave it back to him. It was too hard for me to clean. I have a Black and Decker regular electric coffee maker that I wouldn’t trade for anything. I was enamored by your fabulous coffee maker until I read what a problem it is to clean. I could never be without coffee for even 3 hours, much less three days. Thanks for sharing your adorable sunflower, sweet Miss Lily, and your French Press decaf with us for T this Tuesday, dear Elle.
You have been very busy again, lovely pages that you created. I wish I had just a tiny portion of your creativity. Your coffee maker sounds very labor intesive – I’m not fond of things that need so much maintenance. No wonder you love your old French press. Happy T day!
Woww Wonderful journal pages ! So happy colours and designs. Beautiful sunflower .
Happy t-day ! Miss lily is so cute.
I wish you a very nice afternoon,
Big hugs, Caty
Elle, I love your journal layout. The sunflower has so much depth. I have been thinking about playing around with colored pencils sometime and have heard of the polychromos pencils. Your page inspires me to give pencils a try.
That certainly sounds like a process to clean that coffee maker. I am with you, fancy isn’t worth all the extra work and money. Simple is best, most of the time.
Looks like you have been busy this week creating.
Happy Tea Day,
Kate
Wow, such beautiful pages! Loving all your artwork too, you have been busy and there are so many beautiful makes ?. Of course Miss Lily is super pretty and looks like she’s enjoying the sunshine! Wishing you a Happy T Day! Hugs Jo x
You have made lots of beautiful art these past days. I love your sunflower, that took a lot of patience. Happy T Day, hugs, Valerie