An old photo

When the children were smaller we used to take them at least once a year to visit various relatives; while the boys were really small this involved flying back "home" and our "holidays" were anything but!  However this photo was taken after we had returned to live in the UK and the family visits down south had to take place during the school holidays, preferably with a bank holiday weekend so that Hubby wouldn't lose too much annual leave.  I never thought I would miss these "duty" visits that ate up our free family time, but they have now become a rarity and I do.

"Sadly, this sort of photo opportunity no longer occurs; not only is your Grandpa no longer with us, but these days you kids are rarely all able to visit our relatives, let alone smile for the camera, at the same time. 

I like to think that this photo brought pleasure to my father and will also, one day, remind you what he looked like before he got too ill."  

I'd half-prepared the layout for a weekly challenge on UKS using Twisted Sketches #66, but got distracted and didn't do more than select the papers. But I've found some "me" time tonight and finished it off, too late for the UKS points, but in time for the TS deadline :o)  I twisted the sketch onto its side and the fabric I used is actually wide lace that I've cut up plus a silk covered button. First time playing along with them for a long time - I'd forgotten what fun sketches they have - why not check them out?

Latest life lessons

I had a smashing day at the Golborne Crop yesterday - thank you ladies for welcoming me and supplying the danish pastries :o) I normally attend a crop much closer to home, but as I'm attending the Pink Booby Crop next month I wanted to do a test drive and put some faces to names. On top of the delicious pastries and friendly atmosphere, I also achieved a mahoosive SEVEN pages for my LSNED album (and that's including re-doing two pages because I'd mixed up which side the binding space has to go!).

It's good to share

Lean Mean Mini Books

A while ago my UKS team-mates Claire & Tracie asked me to come and teach at the Summer Workshop of their Exhall Crop, giving me carte blanche as to what I wanted to do.  After picking myself back up off the floor,  I decided that a mini-book with a difference might be the way to go and started playing around with some photocopied instructions from a Dutch book about mini-books. There was a cool one-sheet-of-paper book that I hadn't seen around in the UK, so I thought that would be good, but it was frankly a bit boring as it made a square 4"x4" book.  So I cut and folded and folded and cut ... until I came up with a book which wasn't square and had some extra pockets - not boring at all now!

I made up a prototype, ironed out some kinks and taught the class at the end of June.  It uses just one sheet of double sided patterned paper for the inner pages and one sheet of cardstock for the cover and tags - how frugal is that?

Phew - taken me an age to work out how to link to a slideshow - I'm sure there must be easier ways!

Still learning ...

Well as usual I'm not really managing to keep up with my projects.  It's day 6 of September and I've completed just 3 pages of my LSNED book.  In my defence the colour printer ink packed up on Friday night while I was getting ready for my Saturday crop (thankfully, after I'd printed some photos to take!), and I'm  waiting for them to arrive from Amazon.  There's a lesson in itself - when the printer starts warning you that the ink is running low - order ink straight away! 

September 2nd saw Child No.3's return to school, wearing one of  the new blouses that I had bought to replace the too small and heavily stained ones (why do kids these days not wear aprons in Art lessons???).  So far, so efficient.  Unfortunately, despite having tried them on for size, neither she nor I had spotted that the collar was wrong: she needs a rever collar as they no longer have a tie as part of their uniform.  Unbuttoning the top button of a normal blouse simply will not do.  So, it was time to fish an old blouse back out of the charity rag bag for her to wear (creased) to school and I had an emergency trip to the shops to exchange the blouses.  I knew there was a reason I hadn't got around to sewing name labels into them!

I am not a particularly punctual bod ... as my friends will attest! Things have become even more erratic for the last few months as the buckle on my watch strap broke, leaving me watchless. I couldn't just go and get any old watch strap - it needed to match the watch face. With hindsight I could probably have just fitted a new buckle, but that didn't occur to me at the time. Eventually watchstrap searching came to the top of my To-Do list and within two days I could wear it again ... and annoy my friends with the LOUD ticking it makes. Funnily enough today I was on time!

Learn Something New Every Day

My UKS team-mate, Mary "Buttons" was lucky enough to win two places on Shimelle's Learn Something New Every Day course ... and offered the spare place to the first team-mate who wanted it ... ME! Thank you again Mary :o)

Anyway, I've managed the cover and the first page for my Learn Something New Every Day album from Shimelle's class.  I decided I would use up a 6x6 paper pad that was in a goody box from Indigo Mill's retreat last year - beautiful papers, but I don't really do 6x6 ... so I've combined this with some A5-ish white card and we'll see what happens.  The front cover has another example of decorated chipboard to show the ladies at the Pink Booby Crop next month as well as trimmings from the first few sheets of the Black Market Society papers - waste not want not remember!  I changed the title from "Learn Something New Every Day"  to "30 days hath September" because I still haven't quite got my head around the learning something new part ... so my book will just be a collection of thoughts that I've "thunked" each day during September.

The first page for September shows the supplies that I have collected together from Mount Stashion ... all based around the three rather bright colours of the papers .... lime, pink and yellow ... should be an eye-watering eye-catching book by the end!

Eventually I will borrow my friend's Bind It All to fix the pages together.  I have learnt my lesson with projects like this and find it far more sensible to bind them at the end, after I have rectified things like putting the photos in upside down, spilling wine/tea/blood (yes, those craft knives are sharp!) on my pages or touching the Diamond Glaze before it has dried!

Learning to scrap quickly!

I thought I'd squeeze in a quick final class for The Studio cybercrop before the midnight deadline!

The class from Ania was very inspiring and I have used up a LOT of scraps from last year's Journal Your Christmas and made a little gift for my daughter to boot!

The only trouble with speed scrapping (with me at least) is the mess!

"Quote Unquote"

I was inspired by a brilliant little project from Audrey Yeager on the recent Studio cybercrop to make a "little" tag book of my own.  I say "little" but I got rather carried away ~ as usual my brain had bigger plans than is quite sensible in terms of available scrap time.

First off, I decided rather than do a 10 page booklet with just 10 aspects of something ... I'd do an A-Z of interesting quotes: several hours of surfing later I had a range of quotes that included words for each of the letters of the alphabet.

Then, rather than do a nice small format (the example project was just 4"x3") I decided to make each page 6"x4" ... and sew the quotes in strips on each page and ink and stamp and .... you get the idea!  Take a molehill and make a mountain every time, that's me.

The chipboard shape on the front cover was twice as big - I cut it in half before stamping and embossing and the back cover is graced with the other half as well as the word "Unquote".

The pages are made from double sided Scraperdashery Shakespeare quote papers (although I haven't actually included any Shakespeare quotes in my A-Z), with small cardstock squares to contain the quotes. I had fun with the machine, sewing the quotes on securely and then I went a bit mad with various blooms and buttons, all stuck on with Diamond Glaze in the hope that they'll stand up to some handling.

The next little project on my blogging adventures is to try and make a slideshow to show each individual page ... but not tonight!