Lost & Found

Over at The Studio at the weekend there was a fabulous blog hop, based on a Pencil Lines Sketch:

At Saturday's crop I managed to squeeze out another couple of pages from my February Counterfeit Kit - it really is just scraps now - and I used this sketch as inspiration for one of them:

Photo of Clown Fish couple courtesy of my fellow snorkeller - thanks Janice!

Just one sheet of paper, a scrap of lace, some of the blooms (made from de-contructing artificial flowers), a few more buttons (I was generous with those when I made the kit), a brad, some more of the teeny tiny alpha stickers, and the title alphas cut from handmade paper using Sizzlits Boys Will Be Boys dies. I used a Crafters Template as a mask and for the outline of Liquid Pearls.  My UKS team-mate Pat told me that you can reduce the pointy part of the pearl dots by flicking the back of the paper ... it really works!

This page also earned me some "points" on UKS as it fitted in with the final challenge from February - using fabric/lace, a technique taught by a friend, but sadly no purple!

Whoops Indeed!!

Last night I was working on this page about No. 2 Son's new glasses. It's based on this week's sketch (#222) over at Pencil Lines and was done for the UKS Weekly Challenge.

I'd chosen the photo, the patterned paper, the card, decided upon the shapes I wanted to use, the alphas, even the title. Almost 100% planned out, so I set to work and started cutting, sticking, painting and sewing. Then I realised I hadn't included any  journalling ... whoops!!!! Nor did I have any more of the background card.  What to do?  In my slightly overtired state (the evening's wine had also taken its toll), I decided to gut the card that was behind the large piece of  BG Discover paper.  Not an easy task considering it was both glued and stitched down, but I managed it.

Fancy Pants clear alphas altered with
emulsion, 3D paint and Sharpies

I really shouldn't have bothered, because by the time I'd cut the card to shape and slotted it onto the front I decided that it was far too dark to write upon and rather too eye-watering on top of the patterned paper.  So I did what I should have done in the first place, i.e. grab a scrap of something else to use - there were still plenty of pieces left in my "Colour Me Silly" collection.

The journalling records the reason No. 2 Son had to buy new specs during his first weeks at university: they didn't survive a trip to a foam disco!  Whoops indeed!!

The Cat's Whiskers

I love sewing on my pages as I think it gives an extra textural dimension to them.  In fact the sewing machine is permanently loaded with a bobbin of clear thread so that I can quickly load up a top spool in the colour of my choice and get stitching.  I tried doodling stitches once as the machine was temporarily tidied away and vowed never again!  It took an age to achieve the effect I wanted and was a pain to try and keep the "stitch" lengths even!

As regular (are there any?) readers of this blog will know I recently attended the 5th Pink Booby Charity Crop in aid of Breast Cancer Research and I did a lovely class on distressing by Cathy Windsor from Sarah's Cards DT.  I bought the kit and produced a page that I love with photos from 2007.

There were loads of scraps left from the 3 sheets of double sided October Afternoon Thrift Shop papers so I thought I would see what else I could do with them rather than let them get buried in my scraps bags (yes that is plural!).

There were some large scraps for strips and lots of little bits which would do for a collaged paper element too ...

I was also inspired by a post about paper appliqué over on Siân's blog and thought I would try a bit of hand sewing on a page element!  Alas! I have yet again come to the conclusion that I prefer my machine for sewing.  Of course it didn't help that I was sewing through layers of card collaged with scraps of thick quality paper scraps.  Nor did it help that I'd decided to add zig-zag and blanket stitch rather than just sewing a simple straight line!
My fingers were aching by the end and I know it will be a while before I attempt anything by hand again!

My page started life as a Pencil Lines Sketch (#146)

It was much easier to machine sew the larger scraps of paper to my page and lots of fun to try out a few of the different stitch styles.  Using red stitches throughout helps unify the diverse shapes and colours on the page.  I used the free font Type-Ra for my journalling to tie in with the words from the One-of-a-Kind wordy paper.  I like this font better than Adler and other typewriter fonts because it includes more punctuation marks, including, for us Brits, the £ sign!
And I still have enough scraps from the kit to make something else.

The weekly challenges over on UKS are fun ways to motivate me, so there is a misted masked background (again using a home-made spritz from dilute ink), a symbol representing something from the photograph (my UKS team name is "The Scrappy Cats"), numbers on the page (not that difficult to do, but I included it in my title to show willing), and ribbon - the cat's whiskers :o)

Catching up!

This week has been a time of catching up in all sorts of ways.  Hubby will no longer be under my feet from next week so I have been making him help with some of the little jobs that could have been done at any time during the year but of course have not!  I caught up with some friends for some geocaching and I caught up with the ironing - unfortunately it's getting away from me again :o)

Yesterday I finally caught up with my LSNED album - just seven pages and the sign-off page - everything was ready last weekend, but somehow the rest of the catching up took priority!

For some reason Warburtons were handing out free loaves in town today - never one to look a gift horse in the mouth I gratefully accepted one.