A return to the Book of Moments and more...

Last week I told you about the Seth Apter workshops I went on.   So often I go to workshops and don't finish the project so this time I determined that I would finish the book.

Here are the pages I did after the last blog post.











The fronts of all the pages.

The backs of all the pages


I think the pages may need some scribble and splatter but that can be done anytime.  Or maybe even add some more elements to some of the pages.  But for now I shall consider it done.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Welcome back to our trip around the Northlands of North Island, New Zealand.

Our last three days in the area featured the largest sand dunes in the world, enormous boulders and the second largest trees in the world.

Sadly this photo doesn't really do justice to how tall these sand dunes actually are.

We drove along the tourist drive until we came to the Hokianga Ferry.


This took us to Rawene where we booked into a B&B.

This is is the pretty front door of the B&B The Postmaster's Lodgings.

We visited Clendon House arriving just as the guide was beginning a talk about the history of the place.

Then we took a drive to Wairere Boulders.

The path around the site is mostly well defined although there were some narrow places to get through



and sometimes the path seemed to disappear.


I earned my 'mountain goat certificate' scrambling over some of these large boulders.


The next day as we travelled we stopped off at different spots to view intersting landscapes, a waterfall and view the large Kauri trees.





These were still sand dunes but some of the sand seemed to have hardened into rocks.  I always though rocks eroded into sand but there you are!

The Waiotemarama Waterfall.




And a walk through the forest.





We spent the last morning in New Zealand visiting the Kauri Museum.  It was a very comprehensive museum about the Kauri tree and the amber that is taken from it.  I spotted these in the room displays.  I was supposed to be looking at the amazing furniture!

Then we were off to the airport and our flight to Sydney.  Next time - In and around Sydney, Australia.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

I'm interrupting my armchair travel guide to New Zealand & Australia to share the workshops that I did last weekend at Art from the Heart with Seth Apter.

On Saturday Seth presented 'The Book of Moments'.  He showed us an easy way to bind two book covers together.

And then we made the pages.  I'm really pleased with how much I got done in one day.   I love Seth's teaching style - structured technique in the morning and supervised play in the afternoon.







I have the backs of all these pages to collage and one more doublesided page to make.  I am thinking of using 3 tags instead for the missing page.

Sunday brought us 'Cutting Room Floor' where we altered photos and then made a background and collaged one of the photos.

I took these two photos with me amongst others and below you can see how I worked into them and colourized them.





This one was a black and white version of the photo above.


I didn't change very much of this one.

For the afternoon's collage, I painted the background

I looked through the collage elements I had taken with me and came up with this layout.

It didn't look quite the same when I had stuck it down but that doesn't matter.  I added some finishing touches.

Here are the links to previous blog posts for Seth's workshops.
50 Ways to Leave Your Layer & Mixed Media Mashup
Collage Camp & Dimensional Stenciling
52 Card Pick-up and the finished project.

If you have enjoyed looking at the work I've done in Seth's workshops why not check out his DVDs and Downloads.   You can buy Seth's DVDs direct from his online shop or if you're in the UK you can download them from the Northlight Shop.

Have fun!

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

We flew into Auckland, collected the hire car and stayed at a not particularly glamorous motel for the night.

The next morning we started our road trip around the area north of Auckland.  Our plan was to drive up the right side of this map and back down the left without going to the long narrow bit at the top (geographical term!)

 We drove around Auckland and up towards Whangarei with detours to coastal places.











We had lunch at Mangawhai tavern looking at this view.




Next day we went to see the Whangarei Falls which were in a public park on the edge of town.

We drove along a beautiful winding road and stopped at Helena Bay Hill for lunch at an art gallery.  Such a great view whilst having lunch.

When we arrived in Russell we walked up a very steep hill - and I mean STEEP - but the view over the bay was worth it.

This was the view from the front door of the hotel.

The next morning we got up early and went on a boat trip.  As the season hadn't officially started, we were the only customers!


The Bay of Islands was beautiful and I took lots of photos.   We took the ferry across to Paihia and drove along the coast to Kerikeri where we visited the Stone House and had lunch at the Pear Tree cafe.

Continuing along the coast we eventually came to Mangonui where we found the rather lovely Acacia Lodge Motel.   Roger went for a walk and took this photo looking down on the town.

There was an amazing restaurant in Mangonui where we had dinner.  We were so impressed we went back there for breakfast the next day.   Then we did the Heritage Walk around Mangonui.   This was the oldest building.

And the view of the bay

We drove on visiting Karikari Beach.

We stopped off at one of the access points to 90 Mile Beach at Waipapkauri Beach.  90 mile beach is actually only 55 miles long and rental cars are not allowed on it.

We drove to Ahipara and booked into the Ahipara Bay Motel where we had dinner.   One of the things we found as we travelled around was there was less accommodation and far less places to eat once you went away from the tourist areas.

At one end of the beach were rocks with lots of the green mussels.

The view along the beach back towards the motel.

We were just over half way through our road trip so I'll finish there for today.  Next time:  big sand dunes, big trees and big boulders.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

We have just returned from a trip to babysit our grandson for the afternoon and evening in Queenstown, New Zealand.   We also added on over 2 weeks holiday in both New Zealand and Australia.

We flew from Birmingham to Sydney via Dubai and then on to Queenstown where everything was rather monochrome.  The view from our rented apartment.

Friday
The weather was somewhat poor and Andy drove us to see Glenorchy.  Only Roger got out of the car and I took this photo through the windscreen!

We drove back to Queenstown and the weather began to improve.  We stopped off to see the bungee jumping.  We didn't partake.

I rather liked this toilet sign at the bungee jumping centre.

The weather improved during the afternoon and when we went for a late-ish walk the lake looked beautiful.

Next day the sun came out!

We went to Arrowtown.

We dropped Naomi off at the venue where she was helping to organise a wedding and a bit later Andy went off to the wedding itself.  So there we were babysitting our grandson for the afternoon and evening.  We walked down to the local playground where we had to ask one of the Mum's to show us how to relase C from the pushchair!   Grandpa really enjoyed himself!

And C loved the freedom to walk about and throw stones in the lake.

Both the grandparents and the grandson survived the baby sitting and next day we all drove to Te Anau where we stayed in a beautiful home 'Silver Tussock'.   It snowed during our journey.

We went for a walk along the lake front and father and son did the 'mini-me' thing!

We saw some interesting clouds.

The weather on Monday was much improved and Andy drove us to Milford Sound where we had booked a boat trip.

The sun came out sufficiently to produce rainbows in the waterfalls.

And we saw seals basking on a rock.



In the evening we went out to celebrate Andy's birthday which was the next day.

The weather on Tuesday was beautiful as we drove back to Queenstown.

The Hopper Juniors flew back to Sydney and we flew to Auckland in North Island.  I really should think about booking seats that don't involve being close to the wing!

We had a wonderful few days in South Island despite the grey weather.  Next time I'll tell you all about our trip to the Bay of Islands, north of Auckland.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice