revisiting

Over the weekend I decided it was time I had a clear out of my scrappy supplies as I have more paper than I can use, so I was hard on myself and now have a pizza box full of cardstock and patterned papers to take to my crop for rehoming. 

While I was about it I sat down with some of my old albums and have since made the decision to re-scrap my wedding and honeymoon layouts.  I know it’s nice to look at the progression of your style, but honestly, when I started scrapping I had no style.  Badly matted photo’s plonked in the middle of pages with very little interest on the page. Weddings are important, so I want to create pages that I want to look at, so above is the first new page.  Trust when I tell you it’s a thousand times better, although I’m not convinced I have finished with it.  We’ll have to see.

The next layout is another look back.  We ran out of ink in our printer so I had a hunt for a photo to scrap when I went to the local crop, that or sit and twiddle my thumbs!  I found this one of Rosie’s feet and finally finished the layout on Friday.

A little stash busting went on here with lots of brads, stickers and a feltie being used.  All of which I have had for a while.

        

That’s it for now.  Today is one of my rare kid free days, and I have tons to be getting on with while the house is calm.    Thanks for stopping by!

bubble bubble toil and trouble

What a week!  I've been around online, popping in here and there, but since Sunday I've been ill, mainly in bed, with the most horrendous tummy bug.  I'll spare you the details, but on the plus side I've had to punch a new hole in my belt as my jeans were falling down this morning.  I'm not quite out of the woods yet, but getting there.

A bad side to being ill is a distict lack of anything crafty.  I've been filling in my daily art journal calendar but that's been it.  Today, I decided to have a play around with my blog.  I *think* I've settled on a set of new fonts - like them?  Tomorrow I'm hoping to get a bit inky and create a new header so watch out for that one.

Next week however I'll definately be making up for a lack of crafting as I'll be off to Art from the Heart for an afternoon with Sir Tim! I am getting a little excited.  If you pop to Dyan's blog there is a chance to win a golden ticket to the morning workshop as well. 

Another attempt

Still going on the cat front.  What do you think?  Are they getting better?

The fluffy above and her brother below.

Seriously, I’d love to hear what you think about these shots, and any tips for taking photo’s of cats who won’t sit still.  I’ve already ruled out superglue, think that could be classed as cruel.

just a look

A little while ago I signed up for “the joy of love” over on Willette Designs  It’s free and runs throughout February.  

Today’s prompt is to capture a loved one at their best or worst, and after that photo I posted the other day I’ve been desperate to take shots of my cats. As always they don’t want to do as I want them. That’s cats though I guess.  As soon as they see me coming with the camera they run towards me and the shot I had planned in my head after watching them be completely still for ten minutes, has gone out the window.  This shot is as close as I’ve been able to get to the fluffy one.  A little out of focus but I will keep trying for that illusive shot! In the meantime I need to clean “nudge” marks off the lens and de-fur the camera.

Mini Journal

Paints & Ink Sprays: Dylusions.          Image: Tumble Fish Studio      

I love my art journals and although I’ve only been creating my pages since August 2010 I think I may be getting closer to my style.  I’m finding that I love brighter richer colours.  Colours that ordinarily I might avoid as I think of them as being too loud for my eyes.  I suffer from photophobia and I honestly think it gives me a fear of anything bright – colour included, but I’m learning to love them again.  Having said that this page is about the near constant headache I’ve had for the last week and my craving for silence. Light I can hide from, silence is not so easy to obtain in a house with a three and five year old.

Paints & Inks: Dylusions.  Images: Cemerony & Itkupilli

Another page from my small moleskine, this time in luscious red.  I think this page was also borne from my state of mind and lack of sleep down to these cluster headaches.  Ah well, tomorrow is another day!

Finally I would like to say a very big thank you to all those that have visited my blog in the last few days to view my calendar pages. I was amazed to see the stats!   Thank you so much for your visits and for your wonderful comments and here was me thinking of giving up my blog.

Where did January go?

 

So far I have managed to keep up with my art journal calendar…yay!  I know it’s not quite the end of the month, but I’m sharing them with you now so that I don’t forget.  The whole plan with this is that I’m always ahead of myself, I’m hoping it means I’ll keep it up. 

I’m using an A5 sketch book so each page is a is big enough for a week.  Below is the end of January running into February.  yep – February is all ready to go, and I’m working on March! Told you – determined to keep it up.

Paints & ink sprays: Dylusions from AFTH.

Stamps: Sassafrass Lass, BasicGrey, 7 Gypsies, Paper Artsy

Image in February: Itkupilli

Chilly Beach Days

Last weekend we headed to the beach for a couple of hours. We didn’t realise that this could bring out the premature teenager in Jamie who was fed up after five minutes of being cold.  It seems that zipping his coat up properly wouldn’t have made and difference….until he did zip his coat up properly and lo, he was much happier and able to start a new rock collection. 

Rosie on the other hand was perfectly happy to be outside, climbing over rocks, collecting sea water in her bucket and holding hands.

One word...awesome

Bouncing off around the internet I came across this shot taken by Andrew Smith from Cuba Gallery .

All I have to say is "awesome"

Sketch scrapping

I rarely ever use sketches for scrapping. I just have an aversion to them, even though I have started to create sketch challenges for my local crop, but just recently I they have started to grow on me, and more importantly means quick scrapping when the mood takes me.  Yesterday I spent a couple of hours meandering through blog land and at one point landed on Shimelle’s blog and found her sketch of the week.  I loved the big blocks of patterned paper and promptly printed off an A4 sized photo from our trip to New York in November 2010.  I trimmed it down and then pulled out a couple of virtually untouched GoGo kits and set about chopping them up.

I know it doesn’t follow the rule of thirds, but to print the shot out smaller just felt wrong. I just love the simplicity of this layout and feel inspired to get stash busting.   Just need to get some photo’s printed out now and hopefully I’ll then be able to justify the pile of unused kits currently hiding in my cupboard.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

When you are running late

Getting the kids ready to get out the door in the morning is no mean feat, but it annoys me even more when my chaotic mornings are made worse by the door bell ringing.  It’s not that we have such a huge house it takes an age to get to the door, but it’s the moments standing there whilst they ask me my name, followed by how do I spell that (short term memory problems from looking at my name less than thirty seconds ago – it must be an affliction suffered only by delivery drivers), followed by sign here, are precious moments that I should be using to pull on socks or brush teeth so that I can then bundle the kids out of the door.  Still it gives me yet one more reason in my day to rant about something.  Not least, as was this morning, that fact that I then didn’t have time to open the parcel!  Arrgh.  I hate that.  I have very little patience especially when I know what’s in it.

So what was in it – this little lot to start with… Caran D’ache Neocolor II crayons….dozens of them.

 

Don’t they almost look good enough to eat? 

I have fallen in love with the set of 15 I have, which were then topped up with some flesh colours when doing the Willowing course.  Well now I have almost every colour, admittedly only almost because they were out of stock on some colours, but that’s ok.  Why do I love them so?  They have a creamy texture and blend beautifully with acrylic paints while wet, are vibrant and so damn easy to store.   I know it seems rather excessive to buy so many but they will last me a lifetime.  I consider them an investment, just like my watercolour and inktense pencils.  Any besides, I wanted them! LOL.

I also now have a huge pot of white acrylic paint, some texture paint and a tube of interference paint to play with.  Guess who’s running out of storage space again. 

Ouch!

It's been a little while since I made jewellery and I'd forgotten how much polishing it takes to get silver looking good.  I actually have a friction burn on one of my fingers after working on this double pendant.   The smaller one has children's fingerprints on it, and the larger one is patterned.  I'm really pleased how this one has turned out and hope the recipient likes it too!

It must be time for new challenges

You know, and I know, that I am utterly useless at keeping up annual or monthly challenges. This year I took part in LSNED and didn't finish.  At the start of the year I meant to look at the Document:2010 project on UKS....and forgot.  I haven't even looked at JYC this year.  So, for 2011 I've set myself a challenge of creating a weekly art journal calendar a la Kate Crane. 

So here are the first two weeks all ready to go.  I figured that as I love doing my art journal, then this surely must be an easy to do.  No photo's to take or print out and that means a distinct lack of feeling the need to colour match.  Using up lots of scraps of scrapbook paper to make the daily journalling squares.  Surely it has to tick some boxes as well as making a dent in my stash mountain, albeit a small one. 

I'm doing this in an A5 greyboard sketchbook from paperchase and it feels good to have put it to use. Pages are ready to go not just for the first two weeks, but the first six.  I figure by giving myself a head start I stand a fighting chance of doing this.

My next crafty task is indeed to look back over the Document: 2010 prompts (I have them all downloaded) and maybe make a Document: 2011 album.

So what crafty challenges are you planning to take part in next year then?

Frosty Mornings

You can’t deny it is rather beautiful and worth getting the camera out for.  We’ve had weeks of snow and ice, our footpaths and untreated roads still have inches of ice on them. Poor Rosie almost cried with the cold on her face going to school this morning.  It comes to something when you get up and hope it’s only –4 Celsius as you’ve got used to that and it’s not as bad as it sounds.   It’s certainly not the sort of weather than has you leaping out of bed.  Jamie can’t wait for the school holidays to start so he doesn’t have to (1) get up and (2) go out.  Oh boy – does he have a shock coming to him.

Being a guest

This month I’m a guest, in this case a guest designer for A Trip Down memory Lane.  It was a real privilege to be asked, especially as ATDML was the first store I ever did any scrappy shopping with.  I loved the papers that I was sent to work with and simply put - I ran out of time to use them what with out trip away and all the chaos that comes with coming home again. I’ll be sure to share more layouts with you when I get five minutes to scrap.

The December gallery is now live, so head on over and take a look.  There are, as always, some fabulous creations there, and I’d really like to say Thanks to Mel & Jill for inviting me to join their talented team of designers this month.

Thanks for stopping by!

Just can't concentrate!

It's driving me nuts that I can't seem to concentrate on a blooming thing at the moment.  Never mind restless legs from running, I have restless everything from being on holiday and am seriously struggling to get back into it, and worse sort myself out for Christmas.  I have half idea's for projects running round in my head, a pile of presents to buy and make, food shopping to do and a house to sort out.  I've even walked past the post box a dozen time with a huge pile of Christmas cards in my bag and forgotten to post them .  I'm panicking and that means I come to a full stop!  Not the best really.

So this very quick and probably dull post, is to apologise for the lack of blogging taking place.  I have crafted for my crop, I have tons of photo from New York along with tales of parades and sparkly rings (twas a very special 40th) and I have created layouts for an upcoming guest DT spot,  I will share these things with you soon.  That is as soon as I have sorted myself out and feel properly back in the grove!  Until then thanks for stopping by.  Normal service will resume in January!  Promise.