Zoom In Zoom Out #13

Helena's meme to zoom in and out with photography continues on; it's nearly the end of week 13 and I almost came a cropper as there's not a lot of photography happening.  However, today I had a moment free in the garden which is looking dull and boring: too much moss, too many weeds, too many fallen leaves, not enough colour (apart from green) ...

 ... when I spotted that there is some beauty out there - you just have to get up close. 

March Books - A Mixed Bag

Last month I wrote that I was half way through our Book Club choice: Louisa Young's "My Dear, I Wanted To Tell You" and I am happy to report that the second half was as beautifully written as the first.  Young gives an appallingly clear insight into the experiences of the soldiers both on the front line and on leave.  Equally movingly described is the strain of waiting at home on the soldiers' wives and girlfriends.  Some tried to cope with housework and shopping: in a constant, numbing state of readiness for their loved one's return.  Others found that work was a welcome distraction, paying forward nursing care to soldiers.  Soldiers' injuries were often appalling and the book describes pioneering facial reconstruction techniques in heart-rending yet interesting detail.  The characters and plot kept me engaged right to the end; a thoroughly good read.

My sister in law knows that we are big scandi-drama fans here and insisted on lending me her copy of "The Killing" by David Hewson: a novel written from the screenplay ?!?!?  Luckily I had forgotten much of the plot of the series which was shown on BBC4 in 2011, although I could remember who did it!  The novel explained the political shenanigans better than I remembered from the TV series. Both lead you up the garden path on the trail of red herrings (mixed metaphors, sorry) but there is an extra, very clever twist at the end of the novel that went beyond the televised finale.  I was pleasantly surprised in the end and may have to borrow the novelised sequel from my sister in law to see if Hewson can pull it off again.


I grabbed my next book from our shelf of ex-library/bargain bin/gifted books: Robert Goddard's "Sight Unseen" promised a thrilling mystery set around Avebury.  Having visited the ancient stones just last year, I was initially immersed in the description of a child's sudden kidnap and the efforts of a retired policeman and a witness to find motive, perpetrator and victim.  However I became less and less enamoured of the story as the action flitted from Avebury to Prague to London and Jersey and the originally impecunious witness paid for plane tickets, car hire and hotels as if money was no object.  Overly large amounts of historical research and improbable plot developments left me bored and frustrated respectively.  In fact I'm convinced that I've come across at least part of the plot before in an episode of Bergerac or some other TV series/film ... I wonder which came first?

My nearest library didn't have a copy of our March book club choice so I grabbed randomly from the "new" books shelf.  John Grisham's  "The Brethren" looked like an interesting read: prisoners working a blackmail scam from inside a prison hook the wrong fish.  It started well with an engaging account of a prisoners' court dealing with internal grievances, introducing the scammers.  However, after successfully blackmailing a few unfortunates, they target a man being groomed by the CIA to be the next president of the United States.  What might have been an exciting will they, won't they story was overwhelmed by the machinations of presidential campaigning mixed with unpleasant activities involving the CIA.  There were several odd interludes that had no purpose that I could fathom and the ending left me pretty cold.  The first Grisham novel to let me down :-(

Oh dear - after a great start, March's books were getting increasingly disappointing.

It was therefore with some trepidation that I started on another random library choice: "I'm The King Of The Castle" by Susan Hill.  Although it was on the "new" shelf, the book was originally published in 1970.  The story describes the unhealthy relationship between two ten year old boys forced into companionship by their parents during their summer holiday from boarding school.  I was entranced by Hill's depiction of the psychological bullying perpetrated by one boy on the other and appalled at the inability of the parents to notice their unhealthy relationship.  Packed with symbolism, the novel is a real page-turner as the victim's torment ebbs and flows but steadily increases towards the tragic climax.  A very unsettling read; I can fully understand why it has been republished as a classic of its decade.

Style-ish Scraplift

At my recent scrapbooking retreat I was getting to know my table-mates Karen and Michelle and admiring their skills with masks, stamps and inks for making beautiful backgrounds when Karen challenged us to get out of our comfort zones by swapping styles.  She reckoned it would do me good to get inky for a change and she might have fun trying out a more blocky C&S style.

The Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog had a challenge to add texture to your background which needed doing.  I also wanted to have a go with Scrap 365's March sketch and wondered if I could replace most of the layers of paper with layers of texture paste and ink ...

I used a 6x6 Crafter's Workshop punchinella stencil and some texture paste to add 2 strips of small dots across the page as well as a scrap of white card for an extra layer.  Once these were dry I added some colour to the background before inking through a chevron stencil right across the page.  This was then overlaid with the 12x12 version of the punchinella stencil and more texture paste.  Finally I added some ink splatters before layering up the photo on scraps of paper from my March Counterfeit Kit.



The page needed a little more colour ... a sun made from a spiral paperclip and some washi combined with a few of my kit's starry gems did the trick.

Hmmm ... it certainly is inkier than my normal but you'll note that I still had to have my layers horizontally placed across the page!  Karen adopted the blocky graphic style of one of my pages but couldn't quite resist adding a few trademark ink splats - we are obviously both creatures of habit!

ETA: Here is Karen's style scraplift of my original page.

Do you have a particular technique/style that you struggle to avoid?  Do you ever style-scraplift your friends' pages?

My Name Is ... Brie

I'm rather envious of Child No.3 because she has already met the latest additions to our "family" and I have not:  No.1 Son and his lovely girlfriend became proud owners of two Bengal kittens on Boxing Day.  Had they produced our first grandchildren we'd have been up to visit long ago, but it's hard to justify a 6 hour round trip for some cats, no matter how cute they are, especially when Hubby prefers dogs!  However, Child No.3 enjoyed a long weekend with her brother and got to play and pet and photograph them.  I, meanwhile, have had to make do with Facebook photos and videos ... when I spotted a "selfie" there recently I knew it needed scrapping!

And when I received the Teresa Collins My Name Is collection pack from S J Crafts I knew I had the perfect papers for the photo!

There are 9 double-sided sheets and two sheets of sticker in the collection - I've used large blocks from Journal, Love and Words, pieces from Polaroids and Record, along with some scraps of toning cardstock, wooden buttons and twine.

These kittens are quite a handful already - playful, intelligent, spirited - so it seemed appropriate to alter one of the 3x4 cards with the alphas from the collection pack.

I'd better get a companion page done for the "boys" now - off to check out their Facebook uploads!

How Many Posts?!?!?

Welcome to the final post of the March CKCB Members' Blog Hop; if you didn't reach me from Cindy then you might want to start at the beginning with Lisa.  This month we had a choice of three challenges to use for the hop (#1 Use Watercolour Techniques, #2 Be Inspired By Jennifer and #3 Add Texture To Your Background).

I had a page all ready for the texture challenge, but then I realised that today I'd also celebrating blog post No:

so I decided to combine texture with my favourite on-line tool: Tagxedo.

As you can see from the image, it's possible to load up  your own text to be used as the outline rather than use the pre-defined shapes (here I selected Shape ► and Add Words ... and typed the characters "400", chose ChunkFive font and then inverted the shape.

It's also easy to upload special fonts to use instead of the standard ones: my 200th blog post explains how I used Saru's Flower Ding Font, available free from dafont here.  Any special font has to be already downloaded onto your computer and then uploaded into Tagxedo by selecting Font ►and Add Fonts ...

Mothering Sunday is approaching (in the U.K.) so I thought I'd see if I could combine these two actions and make my outline shape from the character set of an added font.  I loaded Wingdings2 into Tagxedo first, then made my shape the letter "u" in Wingdings2 to give me ❶ (I generally copy & paste from the Windows Character Map to select characters in weird fonts as it's impossible to remember all the character equivalents ... this sheet is useful for quick reference though). 

My Tagxedo text was simply the letters "M", "u" and "m" rather than the word "Mum" plus a ♥.  I forced the ♥ to be artificially large using ♥:150 and the letters were repeated 40 times (for some reason it's necessary to type in the letters individually rather than use "M:40 u:40 m:40" but I have NO idea why).

I used the defaults for everything else except:

Theme = Pi Palette
Font = a few of the ones I like best (deselect unwanted ones, including Wingdings2!)
Orientation = Horizontal

My Word Options were:

Remove Common Words = No (for small words like “a”, “is” and “it” ... and "m" and "u"!!!)
Combine Identical Words = No (so that "M" and "m" aren't treated as one item)

My Layout Options were:

Max Word Count = 150 (stops the letters getting too small - for printing out reduce it further)
Allow Replication = Yes (to fill the shape without typing "M", "u", "m" repeatedly)
Font Preference = All (the ones I have selected)

I messed about with  Layout, Colour, and Font Respins until I found a combination that I was happy with - utilising the History to see thumbnails of the variations - before using Save ... to get an image onto my computer.

And here's the finished card:

My Coluzzle circle templates were dusted off to cut out the Tagxedo image and mat it onto a scrap of textured orange card before scissor distressing the edges.  The starry strip is made with a 6x6 Crafter's Workshop punchinella stencil and some texture paste which was coloured once dry.  The rest of the supplies (washi, butterflies, ledger paper scraps) are from my March Counterfeit Kit.

I've just had the Tagxedo image printed onto a mug for a matching gift ... Aldi have free postage on gifts at the moment with the code EASTER3 ... hope it arrives in time!

Well, that's it for the CKCBMBH today - if you missed anyone you can see the whole blog hop listed here. If you fancy joining in yourself next month, just drop the CKCB a mail - everyone is welcome.

P.S. If you're new to Tagxedo, please check out some of my other Tagxedo posts for more tips & tricks.

Zoom In Zoom Out #12

This time last week I was scrap, scrap, scrapping away at a wonderful retreat organised by my friend and fellow Master Forger Lesley.  She has blogged a few photos from the weekend here ... can you spot me?  No doubt there'll be a layout or two about the retreat to go with the ones I made at the retreat!

I was sitting on a sofa in the hotel reception, waiting for my lift home, reflecting on the challenges, the chocolates and the chatter, my new friends, their inventive fancy dress and the delicious food ... when I looked up and spotted ...

... the most amazing light fitting!  Our crop room was directly opposite the reception desk so I must have passed underneath it a hundred times during the weekend ... ????

It just goes to show what you might be missing if you don't take a moment to look around (up?) from time to time.  With thanks to Helena and her ZIZO meme which is making me do just that!

Very Versatile Vellum

My first DT post over at S J Crafts has just gone live ... I've been playing around with the most versatile product: starry vellum from the Crate Paper Boys Rule collection.  I'd already used it once for this page to tone down the bright stripy paper, but I found another four fun ways to use it, including a pocket ...

... which helped me squeeze 14 photos of No.2 Son with crazy cartoon characters (from our Florida 2004 holiday) onto a double page spread:

{click on the picture for a larger view}

The title letters are cut with Sizzlits Round-a-bout dies but the page is so busy that I had to doodle around them to help them stand out a little more.

I had originally planned to spread the word "Characters" across the two pages, but annoyingly the word wouldn't fit without leaving one letter across the page join or another obscuring part of a photo!  Once I'd decided to split the word and keep it on the RHS, I hated the empty space left on the LHS ... and added the word "toon" in an effort to balance it all a bit.  Ggggrrrrr!!!!  Next time I must remember to plan my title a little better before sticking everything down!

The page supplies, including the starry vellum, are all from Crate Paper's Boys Rule collection (see here for details of the products and all the other ways that I've used the vellum).  While you're over at S J Craft's blog, don't forget to check out their March Prize Challenge - the deadline is March 31st.

P.S. I've already made a Lean Mean MAXI book with these photos for No.2 Son, but now we get to keep them in our holiday album too.  Do you ever scrap the same (set of) photos again?