Hi hi!
Big day at Pretty Towers – I’m finally getting my first jab this afternoon! I’m very prone to reacting to any sort of medication or treatment so I won’t be surprised if I feel like poo on a shoe tomorrow. Luckily Mr Pretty will be on hand to look after me, as he does so often when any of my conditions make life tricky. I’m so lucky to have him in my life and despite the passing years, 29 years in July, we’re still totally besotted with each other.
Such romantic pictures, huh? We don’t normally “do” romance and as a result, I very rarely purchase any Valentine / love themed stash so this class by Nicki Rowland at the March Go Go cyber retreat was a nice break from the norm. We used a paper from Simple Stories Sweet Talk that was made up purely of tags – blank on one side with a patterned top and then the other side has icons, sayings and patterns on. I’ve subsequently purchased every one of these types of papers that I could find.
The mixed media background was quite a wet start and even with the Bazzil Marshmallow cardstock it still warped a lot by the time it dried. I sprayed the back of the layout and sandwiched it between two Silhouette mats and then weighted it down to dry and this really helped to flatten it a bit before I carried on.
I really love how this turned out with just small pieces of 2 patterned papers and lots of stickers. Like with the blooms on the bunny layout the other day, ordinarily I would feel almost guilty for using so many stickers but when you have a kit for a class like this I have no such qualms!
With the Shimmerz paint in blocks in the background, then the layers of tone on tone tags and then the same tone of stickers on top, it creates a cohesive layout that doesn’t feel overwhelming even though it has loads of “stuff” on it. It’s definitely a style I’ll be trying to recreate in another layout – I just love Nicki’s layouts and I’m so happy that she chose this collection to work with so I could document a rare romantic scene, including this very pertinent phrase “I only have fries for you!”
Mr Pretty, Miss B, Luigi and myself, once restrictions lifted in the very first lockdown, decided to go out for dinner because we were all desperate to go somewhere other than walking distance of our house. Restaurants were open by this point but we didn’t fancy eating where people were serving in masks and gloves (we’ve since changed our minds of course!) so we decided to do a doorstep visit to my Dad who lives near the sea. We got some fish and chips and sat on the sea front watching the paddle boarders as the sun was setting – perfect. Simple things isn’t it? Simple things…
Stay safe and keep smiling x
572 /
Hi hi,
I’m gradually getting back into the swing of things after my recent blip with my arm (and subsequent mental health). One of the big differences this time is that I knew what I had to do (rest my arm) and try not to get frustrated about it… ahem… Easier said than done I know, but after a few days of total rest and anti-inflammatories, I was able to start doing a few minutes of scrapping at a time. Eventually I managed this layout.
This page was a class at the most recent Go Go Getaway cyber retreat taught by the lovely Lorraine Morris. I hadn’t completed it at the time because my ‘happy’ was already well into a decline and I couldn’t cope with following instructions etc. I completed some of the challenges instead while we chatted in our little on-line bubbles, which was lovely, so while I was sad that we couldn’t be together in person, I was at least able to ‘park’ the classes and come back to them.
The focus of this class was obviously the bunny bow which we had a template for. Miss B soon snaffled that and created an Easter card for a friend – so cute! The bow is painted with 2 Shimmerz paints – Gosh Garnet Inklings and Pink Lemonade spray. I’m such a novice when it comes to mixed media so I love these classes for pushing me on my messy journey.
The papers and die cuts are Maggie Holmes Marigold collection and the sequins are a gorgeous mix from Lucy Abrams. I struggle with these big blooms generally so they’re not something I would normally purchase myself but it’s funny how when someone gives you ‘permission’ to use loads of them, you find it a lot easier!
In our retreat kits we had a pack of Amy Tangerine puffy stickers as a gift. I thought the gold in them worked really well with the lettering, sequins & die cuts and that the dark pink matched the variegated thread and flowers really well too. Using the Hello from the stickers meant I could save some of the precious Garden Grove Thickers too. Everyone’s a winner!
The photo of the daffodils with the fields behind is our view from the sofas in the barn that we usually go to twice a year for our scrappy friends retreat. We sit there watching the lambs, having our morning cuppa, sighing happily and chatting about pretty paper. We normally go at the beginning of March for our first visit of the year so I went with Hello Spring for my title, as Lorraine had in her original. We just about got there last year before the human malware issue forced us all into the first lockdown and hopefully it won’t be long before we are back there again.
Stay safe and keep smiling x
607 /
Hi hi!
It’s really outside type weather isn’t it? But here is my inside-desk for ‘What’s on Your Workdesk Wednesday‘ nonetheless.
With a lot of rest in between and regular anti-inflammatories, I can manage a little bit of crafting now – huzzah! It has done wonders for my mental health I can tell you, even if I do say naughty words when my ‘timer’ runs out and I aggravate my tendonitis too much. One of the things that really sets it off is twisting my wrist, in particular to pick up and put down my ATG, so Mr Pretty has given me the heavy plant pot on the right hand side to act as a stand – ta da, no twisting! You can also see my hand cream in there too to remind me to use it every time I sit down.
You can also see my jungle water bottle there as usual but I’m making a concerted effort to drink a whole one every day. Water, hand cream, soothing breathing exercises, daily walks or gardening and a little bit of crafting, are all snippets of self care that are keeping me going.
I wonder if anyone can guess what I’m making here? The photo is the view from the barn we normally go to in March for our scrappy retreat. The layout is one of the classes from a recent Go Go virtual retreat that I didn’t manage to do ‘live’. I wasn’t in the right headspace for instructions and I’m learning to go with what the brain wants and adapt accordingly. If I had been there in person, as planned, I wouldn’t have felt that I could change course like I did at home, so that was one benefit of the event having to go virtual.
Well, will you look at that?! Self care, learning to adapt, finding the positives – all good stuff huh?! And I have booked a trip to Wales in a couple of weeks too (sadly to put the cottage back on the market) so there’s even things to look forward to as well.
I’ve had a break from Instagram because of my hand (which didn’t affect my driving, please don’t worry that I was driving one handed or in pain – it was a good position for my achey limb). So, instead of my normal #throwbackthursday I will leave you with my tote bag (well not actually leave you with it, you have to give it back, it’s just for show).
It’s quite clever, it looks like a normal tote bag but it opens out (as shown) so you can get to both sides (and build a barrier to other people at crops…) I’ve now positioned it at the back of my desk, partly to keep things in easy reach and prevent repetitive movements, and also to stop things falling off the back… I took these photos a few weeks ago but you can see from my desk shot that it needs a tidy up. The triangle tiger / pig thingies are book marks made by Miss B that actually work really well – I just need to move them to an actual book…
Well that’s me for this week. Put the kettle on crafty friends, I’m on my way. In the meantime, stay safe and keep smiling x
817 /
Hi hi!
Welcome to this week’s What’s on Your Workdesk Wednesday, which this week is called WHW – that’s Won Handed Wednesday (I know, but WHW is better than OHW…) No, I can’t craft. Yes, I’m still sulking. I’m very vocal about my sulking when Mr Pretty has to help me get dressed. Thankfully I can still drive when I need to. But will you just LOOK at this uncreative desk…
Several diaries (yes, needed to start using those again), lots of Daddy paperwork – hospital appointments, operations (scary at his stage of life / health), banking, finally selling the car, overdue for his second jab, all hard to deal with when he lives 45 minutes away with no internet and we don’t have Power of Attorney (don’t even go there…). Profound deafness, the beginnings of dementia, and lots of ADHD in the family make life very… interesting…
So, with no crafting to cheer me, I set about planning a layout for a guest designer spot involving snow. Which led to this box being delivered. Plus two more on the way…
Oh yes. When I break a no-spend, I go hard. My last crafty spend was November! My defence – we don’t have much snow here on the south coast so I avoid snowy themed stash. But of course this year we did have some and I wanted to scrap it for this DT challenge. So I HAD to buy snowy items, didn’t I? Say yes, everybody.
I checked one shop but they had nothing suitable so I checked another – bingo! I decided I would add in another collection I’d been contemplating, to make it up to the free postage. But they only had half of what I needed, so I checked another shop, and had to add in another collection that will be perfect for our upcoming holiday. They still only had part of what I wanted from the actual snowy stuff. So I had to make up the postage with them too and then go to E-Bay to find the original collection pack I wanted, that actually comes free post and I needn’t have bought the other 2 boxes of stash at all. What can I say? I blame using my non-dominant hand – it knows not what it does… Or maybe the meds… The cognitive dissonance is strong in this one.
As a distraction – SQUIRREL! I offer you last week’s Throwback Thursday. This layout is about the picnic 2 days after the Twin Towers attacks where we decided to quit our jobs / take a career break and go travelling.
The photo is from a good few years after the actual picnic so I documented it as a ‘looking back’ story. I didn’t have any photos from the picnic itself apparently (pre-digital) & this pic was in the discard pile as I’d scrapped all the stories of that day – this makes a double win. I probably deserved my splurge this week after that…. if it were not for the fact that the layout was created in 2014… Ahem…
If you have any crafty confessions to make, or just a desk to share, please do link up with the lovely Julia from The Stamping Ground. There’s no judgement, no matter how many pairs of scissors / snacks / purchases on your desk. There might be jealousy. And enablement. But definitely no judgement.
In the meantime, stay safe and keep smiling x
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Hi hi!
It’s Wednesday and time for our weekly desk share with Julia over The Stamping Ground. Tricky one for me this week as I can only use my non-dominant hand / arm.
I was mid-layout when I realised that I was making my tendonitis so much worse by crafting (dagnamit). It’s been going on for a while but getting worse despite getting a ‘pass’ from housework, so I knew I had to immobilise the whole thing, including my pointing / tapping finger. I’m very much NOT ambidextrous so I’m sitting, sulking, and typing very slowly one handed.
The layout is one of the classes from the recent Go Go cyber retreat and it took me hours to get to this point, nothing to do with my hand / arm, all to do with measurements and an inability to cut a straight line. This is even with the power of 3 different rulers, 3 pairs of scissors and 2 trimmers. Indeed… Outrageous incompetence.
Aaaanyway… Here’s the watering can mini book that I was working on a couple of weeks ago.
I worked on the book for a week, took and edited loads of photos, wrote a 1700 word article (you can read it here), and only now realised that I’ve got the date wrong – last year was 2020 – how could I forget!!??
One of my favourite pages using Paige Evans Bloom Street. Chit happens…
Finally, last week’s Throwback Thursday, which came about because of my final article where I’ve made an interactive layout for our 9/11 story. I shared the full tale of that day with another layout from the same set of photos, for a new blog feature. Story Telling Saturday was an idea from another, now closed, blog that I used to love taking part in (except it was a Sunday) and I’m hoping to continue it for the first Saturday in each month – I’d love you to join me.
This page features 9 photos by way of two pull out sections so ideal for those less than perfect shots! We’d got a new camera in Singapore, but still pre-digital, about 5 months into our Round The World trip. It meant we ended up with circular photos from a new fish eye lens and that the incorrect date stamp appeared on most of the pictures. The photos are 18 years old and the layout itself is 10 years old!
I normally get around everyone pretty swiftly on a Wednesday but as well as being incapacitated I also have an in-person funeral (my very elderly aunt) so it might take me longer this week!
As always, stay safe and keep smiling x
812 /
Hi hi!
Here’s another layout from “that” September 11th, but this time the focus is on me being a wally. One nice traditional posed shot in a castle doorway, and one of me jousting. Ahem. Yes, you read that right, jousting.
Because of the Foot & Mouth epidemic, we had White Castle all to ourselves so we could mess about to our hearts content. There’s definitely a photo missing from this set (pre-digital) because I know Accounts too a photo from the very top of the keep, of me I laying flat out in the starfish position on the grass below. Happy times indeed and so the title was perfect.
This page was for another Go Go Cyber Retreat challenge and the prompt was paper tearing. I’d missed using the sketch the week before in the monthly crop and really liked it so I used that too, I just replaced the central block with torn strips, some of which are very narrow indeed but I didn’t want to waste a single inch of these papers from the Cocoa Vanilla Legendary collection.
The sketch featured a few stars which made this collection perfect as there were nested stars in the die cuts. I backed them with a leafy vellum and popped them up to create some texture and dimension and I distressed all the edges across the whole layout too.
To pull out the greens in the collection and in the photos, I backed the layout onto a small border of olive green cardstock. I’m gradually getting through my pile of plain coloured card, which probably means that it will suddenly come back into fashion. I don’t really follow trends as such but what looks right to the eye definitely changes with what you see around!
The sketch had a block on either side of the photos but I kept mine to one side, creating a diy tag using old hole reinforcers to add a layer under my mountain die cut. For my “sprinkles”, I added some Shimelle puffy stars and a heart and finally some dark blue enamel dots. I have hundreds of enamel dots in all colours but the darker shades of blue are really hard to come by! Let me know if you’ve found any – sharing is caring 😉
Stay safe and keep smiling x
378 /
Hi hi!
Do you ever start making a page for a challenge and then get involved in the creating and end up forgetting an important element or straying so far from the brief that it wouldn’t count? I’ve done that twice in the last couple of weeks and this project was one of them but I only realised when I came to write the blog…
The challenge for this layout was a 5-elements mood-board prompt for the Go Go retreat. There was a list of elements you could include, some inspirational photos, a sketch and a colour palette. The available elements I chose from the mood-board were the sketch, the colour palette, a 3 word title, leaves, and stitching. Can you spot where I went wrong?
No, it’s not the stitching, but honestly? The stitching nearly finished me off. I had 3 sewing machines serviced about 4-6 week ago and hadn’t used any of them since then so I decided that the busiest crop day of the retreat would be the exact right time to try it… It started beautifully for the first 5-6 lines but then had a panic attack and several things went wrong. It took half an hour to sort it out including sending videos to the lady who services them, who probably thinks that stitching on paper is a ridiculous thing to do anyway!
I stuck fairly closely to the sketch as I always do, and the colours perfectly matched the Paige Evans Bloom Street, which of course has leaves in it too. I chose this collection for the colours in the photo – the aqua notes in Luigi’s te-shirt, the darker purple in Miss B’s funky jeans (check out her hair though!), and the lilac in her cardigan, which is what the layout was all about. My cousin Marie wasn’t creative at all but when she was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer, she took up crochet. She made this gorgeous cardigan and a random huge pair of bootees for Miss B and we just about managed to get a photo of her wearing it and sent it off to Marie just before she passed away. It was indeed a “Very Special Cardigan”, which was going to be my 3 word title.
Ah. Yes. I came across this LOVE piece in the cut apart sheet and thought it would make the perfect title card for a layout that needed a pop of the darker purple. It definitely would have… on any other layout… but not one where I was meant to use 3 words! If I had realised at the time I could have changed it to LOVE this cardigan or something like that, but the moment has passed and thankfully that’s not the challenge I won the layout for!
Stay safe and keep smiling x
396 /
Hi hi!
This week I’ve been busy writing my final article for The Artistry Blog (you can read all my article so far here). I’ve enjoyed writing the longer pieces and this final commission was for interactive pages, which led me back to a story about the event I was recording. Of course the article wasn’t about my story at all, but instead how I created the interactive elements to hide extra journalling / photos etc. I also used an example I’d made previously but I’d had to grab the photos from my old blog where I used to take part in something called “Story Telling Sunday. This was the idea of Sian Fair but like many people, sadly she’s not blogging and creating in the same way anymore. I loved the idea of telling stories again though and so, I bring you, maybe once a month, Story Telling Saturday!
Let’s start with the layout and then if you want the story that goes with it, you can maybe grab a cuppa, curl up & continue reading.
I came across the photos for this layout just randomly in my box and they seemed like a good size for the sketch challenge at the recent Go Go Cyber retreat. They were taken 20 years ago so printed in the old smaller format, which I have to say, is about perfect – 6×4 feels too big these days but 3×4 can seem a bit lost. Anyhoo, the sketch required a lot of small layers which was great for using up some scraps of Cocoa Vanilla Legendary. I’ve really been trying to bust my CVS boy collections so that if / when they bring out the next one I don’t have the guilt of adding to an existing pile!
I thought for ages about the title but then I hit on the word History and it was perfect for the bigger story and the castle photos too. I used some gold Shimmerz paint to pick up on the gold in the Pink Fresh lettering and along with the enamel dots and some bits from my tiny pieces box it was done. It’s a great sketch and an easy one to use although I did faff a lot with the layers to get sufficient contrast. Never underestimate my ability to make an easy thing difficult…
So what was the big day in history? If you’ve spotted the sub-title at the top you can guess that it doesn’t have anything to do with the historic monument where the pictures were taken, although Mr P did point out the twin tower connection.
20 years ago I was working for the police as an analyst on major crime, sex offences, gun violence and drug crimes. The work was challenging and my boss was a bully. I was also studying for my psychology degree with the Open University. Most of the country had been badly affected by the Foot and Mouth virus and this had impacted my work too. We desperately needed a break. We decided to head to the family cottage in Wales via the Brecon Beacons as we’d never been.
The area was like a ghost town because there were still a lot of restrictions in place surrounding farmland etc, and the children had just gone back to school after the summer break. We had White Castle all to ourselves and we went a bit mad, jousting, saving each other from dragons, generally being daft and carefree. We got in the car to drive back to the hotel and the cassette tape had run out so I turned it over (how very old school…). In those few seconds we caught the news that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. And then another. We never pressed play, just continued to listen in shock and horror at what was unfolding.
We’d intended to spend the rest of the afternoon reading and drinking tea but instead we couldn’t stop watching the news about the terror attacks on the TV at the end of our four poster bed. From then on it obviously dominated every conversation, every item in the paper, every story on TV (remember there were only 4 channels back then too). We left for the cottage the next day trying hard to avoid the news.
The following day we grabbed some french bread and soft cheese and “ran away” to the beach. We remember actually hiding in among the rocks at a really small beach with our backs against a tree trunk. I documented this story on this layout here but as a memory when we went back to the beach years later as I hadn’t taken photos at the time. It’s nice to see that I had used a border when I made this layout several years ago using Crate Paper’s The Pier collection!
A few weeks earlier we had been trying to decide where to go next on our holidays and we were tying ourselves in knots with so many places we wanted to go. What we really needed was a long multi-centre holiday! As we sat on that beach, hiding from the horrors of the terror attack and the horrors I saw daily at work, we decided that a long multi-centre holiday was exactly what we were going to do. A year long, multi country holiday to be exact.
Exactly one year and 1 week after the attacks on the twin towers, we landed in New York for the first stop on our Round The World Trip. I took a career break, Mr P left his job and we found someone to rent our house to cover the mortgage. Of course, we had an incredible year. It’s really strange to think that on this day, 18 years ago, we were wandering around Bangkok and SARS was about to become a significant issue!
Remembering that event and the ensuing decision and subsequent trip has made me very nostalgic, and it has reminded me that I have hardly scrapped any of the trip at all. I hope that you’ll come back for more stories, some might be about our travels as I create the layouts for that album. Stories are important, it’s why I scrapbook. I’d love you to drop me a comment about why you scrapbook (if you do) and what your “what I was doing on 9/11” story looks like.
Stay safe and keep smiling x
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