WOYWW 108

I am very excited that today is Wednesday!  Wednesday means that my little girl is off having a ball at nursery while I catch up on a few jobs, including of course, WOYWW.  Today though, Wednesday is special for another reason - tonight is the launch of Kirsty Wiseman's MIMM class which starts with a live on-line demo in some of the techniques we can use in our art journals (and anything else later on too).  With my new passion for inks and sprays and paints and messy play, I'm really looking forward to tackling a proper journal.  As such, I felt I should share both spaces this week, my craft room AND my art room.

Working in the art room during broad daylight works well and I'm loving having a sink nearby but daytime play is rare.  Last night I cracked on with the pirates, however, the light is very overhead so I ended up working in the shadows and the result was 4 pirates with decidedly orange skin!  I have just redone one of them and I'm waiting for it to dry to see if that works any better.  You can see the orange and the new tanned version in the pic and also to the left of the pic, all my MIMM goodies including, obvs, the Moleskine itself (wrapped in the pink tissue paper - (loves!)).

My craft room, with a box of new stash (don't tell hubs) and THAT layout still being tweaked.  Must finish it today or it won't go into the round up for the month on 2Peas. Lots of stuff to put away after the crop last week but the pirates and the MIMM come first this week.  Oh and I mustn't forget teacher presents...gah!

For more craft inspiration, whatever your pleasure, please head on over to Julia's blog with her guest poster Jan and her lovely Cath Kidston inspired makes.

I'm off to see what sort of tan my pirate has...

Bye for now! xx

One in the "not love" pile

This is one of those layouts that I like but I don't really love.

I wanted the sparkly letters to blend rather than really show up but I think perhaps they blend too much.  I am using up some really old stash with some of these layouts though so that does make me happy.  The pink strip under the photos is a really wide organza ribbon that I twisted and it looks better in real life and gives some much needed texture.  I also threaded a little of it through the felted leaf embellishment to connect the 2 parts.

The photos are just random autumn walk ones where I just happened to catch my youngest neice and B at the right time.  I can't believe how much B's hair has grown in the last few months from when these photos were taken.  It's one of the other things I love about scrapping in that I look at photos more often than I would do ordinarily and so I notice many more things.  If this was pre-scrapping, I would order the photo, get it back, look at it and then put it back in the envelope, probably not looking at it again for years.  I definitely interact with my photos a lot more now and for many reasons, especially my depression, that's a really really good thing :-)

Bye for now
xx

This, I like.

(That is, rather oddly, a direct quote from Lady Montagu to myself and hubs, on choosing the name of our daughter a couple of years ago - random fact!)

Anyway, the crop today went very well.  I managed to complete 5 whole layouts - Hurrah!  There was a new lady sitting across the table and it was rather strange, but quite nice, to be able to offer some words of comfort on really gripping the cropping bug and being aware of what to pack etc.  Like me, she had been buying stuff for a while but had only recently really started producing pages.  I was really chuffed when she admired some of my layouts and said that the layered style was definitely where she wanted to head.  Out of the 5 layouts, I really like 2 of them, like 1 of them and feel just about okay about the other 2!

So here, without further ado, is the first of the one's that I really like.  It was the first one of the day and uses a sketch by Shimelle (surprise surprise!) that she posted just last week.

I actually used Halloween papers here (the orange central strip is bats!)  And how cute is that little spade?  Yet another of the little finds from The Works :-)

I grabbed the first landscape photo I came across when I saw the sketch and as it happens, it is L's first foray into rockpooling in Newport beach.  It really made me smile when I remembered how much he loved it then and how I had just done that layout recently about how much he loves it now.  It was pure coincidence that I picked up this photo but it was nice to think that although so much changes with children, some things can stay the same if you take the time to notice them.  Yay for scrapping!

Bye for now! xx

Another one I'm not sure about...

So remember a while back I mentioned about a layout I was working on and it wasn't working (it wasn't the colour one from the other week, that was ANOTHER one...).  This was a sketch from Shimelle that was used as part of the UK Scrap Factor competition and I thought it was really cool and unusual but I just couldn't seem to make it work.  Eventually I flipped it and it looked better but still not right.  I was about to put it away when my circles fell the other way up and it was an immediate improvement.  I do like the overall layout but I was hoping for something as awesome as Shimelle's - how daft is that?!  The woman is a genius, a pro and has been scrapping for many many years.  I'm a PAHM who's not naturally creative and I've been scrapping part time for about 18 months!  Anyway, here it is..

Most of the stash for this came from a Summer kit last year by Stephanie Dymant.  The strong pink was a great match for B's cute wetsuit which is why I bought the kit but it doesn't really fit with the rest of the holiday in Wales that it was supposed to be used for!

I'm trying to use up some older stuff so here I used some Anita's Dimensions flowers and some rub on letters from an Easter Do-Crafts kit, I think it was something to do with Honey and Hugs.  The title there refers to B's huge grin at spending time with Daddy (you can't really see her face that well but it is a corker!) and yet he doesn't think she is much of a Daddy's girl at all.  Given half the chance she would be though!

And talking of Dads, this was the card I made for all the dads in our family - my own Dad, Management's Dad, my step-dad, and of course Management himself (although his said "Daddy").  The papers are from that naughty pack of MME that begged me to take them home from Hobbycraft the other day.  180 sheets for £25 in grubby male style?  Yes please!

I'm off to one of my all day crops tomorrow and with Kirsty Wiseman's class starting next week, I hope to have lots of thing to share in the next few weeks :-)

Bye for now xx

WOYWW 107

So I missed last week for the first time in weeks.  I just couldn't get myself into blogging.  But this week I thought I would share my other space ;-)  A couple of weeks ago I shared my children's art area and thought it might be good for me to use it too as it is all wipeable and there is a sink there.  It has worked out really well.  It means that my scrapping space stays clean and useable and that the children get to see my art work in progress.

(This photo hasn't been here all day as Blogger wouldn't let me post it - gah!)

I'm about to do a class with Kirsty Wiseman on art journalling called Me in my MoleskinE (big E on the end for ME) so it will get well used.  Add to that, I am currently painting 4 pirate canvasses for a friend's little boy's room which you can see in progress on the worktop there.  I painted some for L's room and she saw them and liked them.  It is the first time ANYONE has liked anything I've done enough to ask me to do something for them and I feel really chuffed.  I'm not charging her for a couple of reasons.  Number 1, its not a business and she is a friend.  Number 2, they are not my designs and I can't make any money from them.  Sadly I can't find the seller who was doing the original artwork so I can't tell her how much she inspired me with her fun and quirky pictures but I will keep searching for her.

Anyway, that's all from me today but I have other creations to share tomorrow.  Pop on over to Julia's blog to have a nose at other people's workspaces, whatever their work might be.  As usual, I will get to everyone who gets to me, plus some others depending on time - oh how we crafters wish we could stop the clocks once in a while....

Bye for now
xx

Time to share some more layouts

Well I just couldn't get my head into posting this week and I have no idea why.  Bit of a virus going around the family leaving us all washed out, especially after such a busy couple of months that we are now winding down from.  Anyway, I have a few things to share, in fact I've lost track of what I've posted on here and what I haven't!  I still haven't managed to get a photo of the layout I'm not sure about but since then I've started another one that I can't make work!  I think I have a problem with colour as I've used the sketch from the double page layout that I loved the other day and it just looks.. wrong.  I've done a couple of layouts where I think I've carefully chosen the papers etc and then its not right at the end.  Any advice on this would be really appreciated.

Anyway, here is the final project from Emma Trout at Scrap-a-Mia.  This was her Make and Take which is pretty awesome really.  I just need to get the right photo to go into the little box and it will go up in our hallway.

A close up of the music paper covered "house".

And the other side.

And then here is a layout from Paula's class that I was working on last week.  I struggled with the title and journalling on this one as I used a couple of photos that I just liked, not that told any particular story.  They were taken at Beaulieu like so many of our other photos and how many layouts can you have that are about that one place, or are called Cute! Beautiful etc.  So it reads "She's Just a Girl.... but she's my girl, and she has special powers to melt my heart and give me a physical ache when I think of her."

I don't normally stitch on my layouts at all, and this is the first time I've hand stitched.  Obviously I changed it a little bit from the original class sketch but I actually quite like it.  I've got loads of embroidery floss from my cross stitch days so it would be good to make more use of them.

Maybe I'll take a picture of my half finished layout and see if someone else can tell me why it looks so wrong. In the meantime, I have a couple of Father's Day cards to finish that should have been posted this morning, oops!

Bye for now xx

Now for something a little different...

Is it just me that goes from loving to not-liking my work?  I loved the layout I showed here and so I thought I was on a roll and went ahead with another sketch from Shimelle.  I played with it for ages, finally flipping it, but it still didn't look right.  I wanted to use the papers with the strong pink in it and I wanted to use a little of the blue from the sea but it just wouldn't work.  Then the scallops that I cut flipped over and the colour on the reverse was a lighter blue and it seemed to work better.  I then spent ages playing with the embellishments.  So all in all it took me far far longer than the double page one that I loved and yet I'm still not completely happy with it.  I need to photograph it when it stops raining. IF it stops raining...

In the meantime, I thought I would share a couple more of the projects from Scrap-a-Mia.  These two layouts were from the class by Emma Trout and involved a lot of intricate cutting and embellishment using the papers from Websters Pages.  I really enjoyed doing something different but I don't think its really my style at all.  It was good to see how you could build up a page by using different elements of the papers and it was also good to use different sizes too.

This is an 8x8 but some of the bits are refusing to stay put so it will be the first thing in my album with page protectors at that size (my other one is just a ring binder format).

And now Blogger is playing silly bloggers so I can't upload the other photos from the other projects so I will try again tomorrow.

Bye for now xx

  

4x6 photo love for May

I think this might be my new favourite layout!

I used Shimelle's "4x6 photo love" sketch for May so we're using 5 photos which is a help to anyone who has loads of photos of the same thing and yet can't bear not to scrap them all!

I couldn't resist using my new wave punch on this layout and I also got to use some dies that I bought last year and haven't touched.  I've been saving the gorgeous aqua woodgrain paper and this was the perfect time to use it.  With all the letters and 3 sheets of patterned paper used, it is probably one of my most expensive layouts ever but there are scraps left over and I didn't use a single "e"!

In keeping with the video of ideas from Shimelle, I painted on some Glimmer Mist around the straight edges.  Except that mine is so subtle that it is pretty much invisible!  I used Dazzling Diamonds, which is the first mist I ever owned, as I didn't want to add colour just glimmer.  I painted the lines and then added some to the clusters but I don't think I will bother with that colour again!

Ample journalling room gave me space to witter on about how much I loved watching the kids poking around in the rockpools, whatever the weather.   The beach at Newport in Pembrokeshire is wide, hard, sandy and quiet so you can drive your car onto it and set up camp for the day with as much stuff as you like.  This is brilliant when you have children and an elderly relative with you and it also means that there is plenty of sand to play on without being near the water.  The rockpools are what the children love best though and we spent many happy hours there pottering about looking for ever bigger crabs or more and more unusual specimens. We can only assume it will be the same again this coming summer.  And that's totally fine with me :-)

Bye for now

Lisa-Jane
xx

WOYWW 105 - the great PiF reveal!

I think I actually squeaked out loud yesterday when I realised that my PiF had arrived from Lisa.  It was such a great thing to be involved in, exchanging handcrafted gifts with people who were strangers before last Wednesday but from now on will hopefully be friends.

So here is my desk for the week, part way through sorting scraps, buttons and ribbons, and part way through a layout about B.  I just need to add some stitching as it was part of a class - typical me that I changed it a little bit from the example we were set ;-)

And here is my lovely gift from Lisa, this wonderful door hanger which is now inside my craft room door (to prevent little fingers investigating....)  The flowers are gorgeously shiny and the colours are just beautiful.

And here is my effort, not quite as I would have liked but this is all new to me.

It came out a bit brighter than I anticipated despite my best efforts to grunge it up but there is a lot of me and a lot of love in it.  The music paper, hearts and vellum butterflies are things I use often on anything that is for me (like my notebook).

So there we go, that was the week that was.  Check out more desks on Julia's blog 

Bye for now xx

WOYWW 104 - The Anniversary is here!

How exciting!  To be part of something that crosses the world on one day a week, where people share their desks, be they creative or not (but they mostly are), tidy or not (but they mostly are not!), and now we get to share some real craft items between our community too.

We are celebrating the 2nd year anniversary of Julia's great idea "What's on your workdesk Wednesday" and it involves Paying it Forward to the person next on the list to link up with their work space.  I've been working on something but as usual I'm not happy with it.  Its tricky for someone like me who normally is purely a scrapper, to make something to give to someone else - who wants a scrap book page of someone else's kids they've never met?!   Anyway, I had better get on and finish it so it is ready to send today!

Seeing as I can't show you my own workspace, I thought I would share my children's workspace.

This area is half utility room (through the arch) and half wasted space but with a tiled floor and a sink, away from the rest of the house, it seemed perfect for a messy play area.

This is where the children do their painting, junk modelling, play dough, sticking etc.  In theory.  Of course they want to drag it into the kitchen but the idea is there.  It is part way through having a sort out, hence the mess but there is an easel and usually a child sized table.

Now that I have started to play with inks and paints more and more, I am starting to think that maybe I should use this space too!  I'm already planning a trip to Ikea for some suitable storage for this area on the walls but I like that the children have a gallery here too but it gives me something to think about.

It's L's 5th birthday tomorrow and we have my MIL staying (she always brings cakes...) so things are hectic here but I am going to grab a cuppa, peruse the other desks, and find out which poor soul is going to be the recipient of my ....... (well that would be telling wouldn't it!)  Pop back tomorrow for the reveal ;-)

Bye for now.