Folk Tales of the Sea People

Over at Doing A Thing, I've been sharing a writing and painting project, Folk Tales of the Sea People. Since it's a creative endeavour, I realised, "Why haven't I written about it on Unfortunately Oh?"

What is Folk Tales of the Sea People?
An illustrated collection of Grimm-style fairy stories, presented as though collected from people of the sea by Cadogan Browne, a fictitious explorer of yester-year.

What mythical creatures are in the stories?
Mermaids, Siren, Selkie, Nereids, and more. I borrowed from the folklore of various different countries.

Which age group are the stories suitable for?
It depends on the story. Some, like Yam and the Octopus, are suitable for younger children; others are more suited to older children, teens, young adults and adults.

The Stories:

Preface and Introduction
In which a modern-day professor comments on the fact science has proved that mermaids to not exist, and Cadogan Browne introduces his compilation with insistence that they do.

Halwyn, or A Pinch of Salt
A tale of Selkie-folk in a saltless sea, set upon by a terrible creature--and what they do to defeat him.

A Havsrå's Fortune
The tale of a lonely Havsrå, who has the gift of seeing the future, but is cursed that Human men shall never remember her face.

Yam and the Octopus
A simple story about a nosy boy, and a grumpy octopus.

Golden Scales
In which Glyndwr the Vain learns not to be vain, through rather awful means. (Do note the warning at the beginning of this one.)

The Clam Keeper and the Sailor
A story about a Siren and a Human, who meet on the surface of the sea.

A Pearl For Your Daughter
A cautionary tale about a spoilt young Mermaid.

There are further stories to come, including that of a sea monster, a strange gentleman, sunken treasure, draugs and more. I'll post them all on Doing A Thing, so please follow there to see future posts.
Meanwhile, to see all the stories together, use the Folk Tales of the Sea People tag :)


Well, that's it for now. Sorry my posts here have been so few and far between, and so lacking in tutorials. I've not been particularly crafty recently, and when I have been, my crafting has been things that are fairly obvious (like shortening a skirt). So I've nothing to share!
Still, I'm grateful to everyone who takes a moment to read my posts, and hope you continue to enjoy them. :)

Pinning Inspiration #10

Are you feeling artistic?
This Pinning Inspiration focuses on the art form, assemblage.

Assemblage is the composition of two and three-dimensional works using found objects. I see it as fairly free from rules and a great artistic process for any age group.

Source: musingrelics.com via Kei on Pinterest

The above work is by Lynne Parks. Her website, musingrelics, is full of intriguing, gorgeous pieces and lots of inspiration!

Wreck This Journal Update #2

For a while, I ran out of steam on my Wreck This Journal. It languished on a shelf whilst I got on with other things. I've done most of the 'easy' things, and the things I was most inspired to do.
Some pages are works in progress, such as 'a page for positive thoughts'--I'll fill this up over time!

However, I have completed some more pages so here's a little progress report!

I'm pleased with how this page turned out. It's not perfect, but WTJ isn't meant to be. It's supposed to be destructive!
As you can see, I got bored of my neat and tidy method on the right hand page. I like to fill both pages so the left hand page ended up being a bunch of flowers and a leaf that I picked up on a walk.

'Sample various substances found in your home.' This took me longer than it should have done, as substances have always been to hand! My colour themes went out of the window pretty fast.
I actually got a little help from this one--I took my Wreck This Journal with me when I went for a catch up with a neighbour, and she provided some soup and grape juice from her fridge! (Being a creature of creativity, she also provided me with a foot and number sticker for the front cover!)

'Collect the stamps off all your mail'.

Does anyone else get disappointed when post arrives and it doesn't have a traditional stamp on it? So many letters are franked nowadays, so many parcels arrive with a printed, goldish sticker-stamp attached that has been run off the machine at the post office. So rarely do our brown paper packages come tied up with string and stuck with a rainbow of postage stamps!

But I digress. This page took time, too, as stamped post doesn't show up often. I kinda cheated on this one as well, as I turned out a bunch of old postcards and chopped all the stamps from them ;) Technically it's still off my mail, but they're old!

There are still a few dozen pages waiting to be started, finished, or even looked at. Then there's the occasional blank page that I'll fill in as I like, and pages I don't know how to fill--we don't tend to have stickers on our fruit, or a compost bin (both needed for pages...) So I guess I'll have to think around those!

Do you have a Wreck This Journal?

Are you enjoying it?

Wreck This Journal Update

Back in March I wrote about the Wreck This Journal that I received as a Christmas present.

It's about time I posted an update on how that's going, right?

Remember how nice and pretty the pages were? After two trips to the shower, inks had run, glue had washed away and pages had wrinkled! Oh, and there were pink stains on it where the colour came out of my hair. :D

This page took me ages. Having looked around the internet, a lot of people picked a word at random and did some fantastic text art. I couldn't think of a word, so I took the instruction, 'Write one word over and over' absolutely literally.
Water damage means my painstakingly-written tiny 'one word' writing got all blurry.

Oddly enough, one page didn't get affected by the water...

Pinning Inspiration #2

For the first Pinning Inspiration, I wrote about the youngest ever Nobel Peace Price Nominee and education activist, Malala Yousafzai.

Whilst I don’t intend to always write about people for this feature, today is going to be about everyone’s favourite moustached surrealist, Salvador Dali.

Source: onesurrealistaday.com via Kei on Pinterest

I find his work to be very inspiring and interesting to look at. Some of his paintings contain so much extra detail that it’s possible to notice new things each time you look at it!

Cake Is Marvellous!

Yesterday, I bought a pad of watercolour paper (from Tiger, which is an awesome shop) and today sat down to test it out.
It's glued on all four sides, which makes detaching the pages a bit awkward but on the plus side means no paint getting under the page I'm working on!

Didn't really know what to paint, so I did this:

I don't really know what I'm doing with watercolours, but it makes a change from not knowing what I'm doing with acrylics!

Wreck This Journal!

One of the presents I received for Christmas 2012 was ‘Wreck This Journal’ by Keri Smith. It’s a fabulous, reader-involved book which, as the title suggests, you destroy. All in the name of creativity!

Completing it is one of my goals for 2013.

So far, it’s been inspiring. The instructions are varied and open to interpretation, even encouraging you to deface the cover (as you can see, I’ve not done that one yet!)

I’m having fun with picking pages at random to complete, and art materials that have been gathering dust in the cupboard for years are finally seeing the light of day!

One of the great things I’ve found about Wreck this Journal is that it’s helping me to lose restraint when being creative: to be careless, to rip and scribble and colour outside the lines. And I’m pretty pleased with some of the stuff I’ve churned out so far!

I would definitely recommend this book.

This was NOT a sponsored post. As with all posts on Unfortunately Oh!, I have written my opinions out of my own will without receiving any benefits in return. I just want to share with you the awesome things I’ve happened upon!

Paint.

At the beginning of the year, I wrote about some of my goals for the next twelve months.

One of them was simply, ‘Paint’.

For a long time I was apprehensive about sharing my paintings, because I have felt that they ‘aren’t good enough.’

I realised that this is just silly; nobody is expecting me to be the next Van Gogh and I shouldn’t expect myself to be, either!

Also, the more practice I get, the better I should get.

So I decided to share the things I’ve painted. I uploaded them to my old deviantART account (hence the watermarks on these pictures!) but decided to post them here, too.

Stood Up Comedy

This sad little pierrot is a painting I sketched out a few years ago but never had the motivation to paint. Originally I drew something along the same lines on paper, scanned it and coloured the picture in Photoshop Elements—my first ever attempt at using a graphics tablet!

So I thought it was about time I painted the poor abandoned fool. Anyone want to give him some love? :)

Wise Man

I painted the ‘wise man’ last year; it was the first painting I’d done for a few years! I used to paint a lot of portrait-style images though these were primarily female. This time I thought I’d go for a male character!

Tears of the Sea

Siren's Secret

A couple of these paintings play around with some ideas about siren/mermaids and I’ll probably paint more involving those to explore the ideas more.

Flaming Os

‘Flaming Os’ is an old painting from 2004. I’m posting it here because it amuses me!

I’m hoping to maintain my level of motivation when it comes to painting! I’d like to try out some different styles and maybe different types of paint, too (normally I use acrylic but I have some watercolours that I’d like to get to grips with!)

So there we go. Goal #12 is under way!