LittleBirdyScraps

WOYWW #137

First of all, I must apologise for my pathetic efforts at bloghopping this past week.  Many thanks to those of you who visited this 'ere blog without the courtesy of a reciprocal visit from me.  I did have a couple of goes and got round a dozen or so blogs, but things is bad here.

I have The Cough still, which is making me feel extremely tired and driving me to my bed by half nine each night.  This despite the fact that I've got a 4000 word essay to finish by next Thursday and I'm not quite sure what it's going to be about yet.  Eeek.  And I have an interview tomorrow for which I'm about to prepare, and another one next week.  And another one the week after.  Double eek.

However, I will try to do better this week.  And here is what's on my desk, because my camera is working again, yay.

I have to tell you the story of this. 

Last week we trotted along to our Concepts in Education session at uni, which was about our first mini-assignment this term.  We already knew it was a 'five-picture story', and that this would involve coming up with visual representations of five stories taken from our experiences of education.  This is the first one, which I had already shared in a previous session.  And I'll share it again in a minute, but first let me tell you the exciting bit.

Our lecturer had invited along a guy who works at uni, who decided three years ago that Facebook shouldn't be his world, and so closed his account and instead invited people to send him, or bring him in person, postcards.  Yes - postcards.  So our lecturer thought it would be an excellent idea to ask us to make postcards for the assignment.  I was bouncing up and down with excitement.....

And here is the story.

When I was about five years old, we used to have a tradition at my primary school of holding a Daffodil Competition each year.  The bulbs would be ordered, and when they turned up we'd take them home and grow them before bringing them back in for a grand showing and the chance of a certificate.

This particular year, my Mum gave me my Daffodil Bulb money and off I went to school, clutching it in my hot little hand...Only I forgot I had it until after the register had been called, and when I offered it to the teacher she couldn't make a note of the fact that I had brought it in.  So what she did was - she put it in her pocket.  Of course the intention was to make a note in the register later, but obviously she never did, because when the Daffodil Bulbs turned up several weeks later, mine wasn't there.

I asked where mine was, and was told that I hadn't paid for one.  But I did, I said, I brought the money in.  It's not in the register, said the teacher.  No, I said (because I am possessed of an excellent memory) you put it in your pocket for later.

Well, that was the point at which it all kicked off.  By saying that the teacher had put the money in her pocket, I had apparently accused her of stealing it.  She went to the head teacher, who rang my Mum, who told her that I had been given the money.  But they refused to believe my story about the teacher putting it in her pocket.  I can still see her now, standing there in her long beige cardigan and her red kilt, putting the bloody coins in her pocket.

I was taken into the head teacher's study and grilled for what felt like about a year.  The head teacher, who was a horrible, pointy, wizened monkey-faced woman with ludicrously dyed black hair, asked me what I had done with the money.  I kept saying that I'd given it to the teacher, and they didn't like that, which made me cry.  Instead of accepting what I said, the head teacher and her two 'helpers', who were big well-built middle-aged matrons, loomed over me repeatedly asking what I'd done with it.  I kept saying I'd given it to the teacher, and they insisted that I was lying.  Eventually they told me that I must have spent it in the tuck shop.  I said that I hadn't.  But they kept on and on at me, and said that until I admitted to spending it in the tuck shop, they wouldn't let me go.

I don't know how I'd fare under interrogation should I ever be taken in by the CIA, but I tried for a long time to tell the truth.  In the end, however, it was easiest to just lie and say I'd spent it in the tuck shop.  I thought that this would be the end of it, but no.  Next they had to get me to say what I'd spent it on.  To me this seemed ridiculous, since I knew that I hadn't spent it in the tuck shop at all.  We were constantly being told not to lie, and now I was being forced to tell a lie on top of a lie.  This made me cry even more, but they wouldn't let up.  After about another year I gave in and 'admitted' to spending the money on peanuts.

So they let me go.

But that wasn't the end of it.  Because I had given in to them and made up a lie about spending the money in the tuck shop, these women decided to make a big fuss about my original 'lie' - that I'd given the money to the teacher.  So I became A Liar.  Every opportunity they had, these women would make comments about me lying - always in front of other people.  Once my tongue swelled up - I have no idea why - and I remember standing in the line to go to lunch while the two 'helpers' had a loud and lengthy conversation about What Happens To Children Who Tell Lies.  That was a field day for them.

It doesn't end there, either.  I won't tell you the Saxophone story, because I'm probably beginning to sound like some deranged paranoic.  Suffice to say that years later it suddenly dawned on me that She Is A Liar had been written all over my school file and sent with me to Secondary School.  I couldn't work out why my teacher had a hissy fit one day when I told her what had happened to my saxophone.  It made no sense.  But then I realised - and lots of other things fell into place.

So.  I hate that monkey-faced woman and her smug, self-satisfied spiteful 'helpers'.  And that is why the incident is one of my five stories.  And why the postcard looks like it does.

So there, lol.

Now, if that hasn't completely traumatised you, have a hop over to Julia's blog for more desk-related wonders.  And happy WOYWW :D

WOYWW #136

Oh dear.  It's still happening.  I have no camera and cannot be faffed trying to work out how to upload pics from Daughter's.  So this week (there is a cable on the way, I believe, for my camera) I thought I would show you this.  Unlike last week's post it's not something that's physically on my desk.  However, it is on my laptop, which is on my desk, so I'm going to pretend that's good enough.  And it's topical!

This is a 'year in summary' page I did, for a page call for the Scrapbook Inspirations Ideas book, if I remember rightly.  I can't actually remember if I've shown it before, but I'm going to assume I didn't and offer it as inspiration for a similar layout should anyone be thinking of doing something, erm, similar.

I drew the title numbers freehand and cut them from a book page, aiming for a comic-strip effect.  I thought it worked quite well; I certainly got plenty of photos on the page and I might just do something similar again.  As you can see, it's a couple of years old.  I think I deleted most of 2010's photos by mistake last year, *sob*, but I'm over it now and it might be nice to try and find some from other sources, ie Facebook!

So now I'm off to finish an essay and cope with the bellyful of air which results from having a very sore throat and constantly swallowing...You wanted to know that, didn't you.

Don't forget to pop over to Julia's place for a dekko at all the other blogs listed there.  Happy WOYWW!

Happy New Year and a Resolution - WOYWW

Well hello!  And Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and still has enough money left to eat for the next month.  I don't, but there you go....:D

Now, I'm not too hot on New Year's Resolutions.  In fact, the whole New Year thing leaves me a bit cold in terms of going out and getting rat-bottomed.  If it's with a group of friends or families, not too bad - but all those people hell-bent on drinking as much as possible by midnight.....ewwwww!

However, I usually do make a resolution or two, nothing terribly ambitious.  And this year I've made myself a timetable.  What with all the studying, and work, and clearing up after these beep kids - don't get me started on that one today! - I thought I'd see how I get on with a schedule of some sort.  And Tuesday night is Blog Night.

So, without further ado, and because I can't charge my camera, I am going to show you the projects I completed for a recent guest DT slot.  They are actually still on my desk, albeit up here where I scanned them.  Hopefully by next week I will have found my camera charger and, erm, cleared up my scrap desk.....:S

We were given these lovely MME Christmas papers to work with.  I struggled a bit with this one - the colours in the photo weren't really right for the papers but I didn't want to print it out again.

These are some slightly ropey photos of a lovely trip we used to take every Christmas on the Santa Express, paid for by my ex-boyfriend's mum. 

Here, as you can see, Daughter is conveniently wearing clothes which coordinate with the supplies.  These pics are about 13 years old - great to get them scrapped at last!

These are a couple of years old - Invisible Teenager's first Christmas away from home and the sweet little tree they had in their old flat.  They're in another flat now, much larger, and this year's tree was enormous.  But the Frankie Boyle angel still lives and was perched on a sort of coffee-table tree which looked suspiciously like a bit off the top of a larger one!

Now, another resolution I have made, which is in danger of evaporating extremely quickly, is to time myself doing certain online activities.  One is playing games, and another is blog-hopping.  I don't know how it's going to work yet, in terms of visiting WOYWW blogs, but I'm hoping to do as many ten-minute stints as I can, and I will probably start from the front one week and the back the next!

Oh, and the guest DT spot was here - I've linked to the shop page because they're so lovely at ATDML and although I don't want to advertise on WOYWW, I'm making an exception! Scroll down a few inches and you'll see the gallery link.

Happy WOYWWing, folks!

Stamping on Saturday

As threatened promised, this week I thought I'd pass on some tips about choosing stamps.    There are so many of them out there, I find it very difficult not to just buy all of them....but if you're on a tight budget, or any budget at all really, this just isn't possible.

Or maybe you're a bit wary of buying stamps at all, because you don't know how much use you'll get out of them.  Certainly if you're a scrapbooker you might not be able to see yourself using them at all.

Stamp sets, or unmounted sheets, tend to fall into one of several categories:

Character stamps:  These are more usually sold individually, but often you'll find a set which includes several different figures, maybe some accessories, and maybe some decorative elements such as borders.  There are usually some sentiments included too.

• Why would you buy character stamps?  Well, if you like to make cards using this type of image, you've probably got plenty.  You might be attracted to a particular manufacturer such as Stamping Bella or Kraftin Kimmie, or maybe you're after something for a specific occasion such as 'get well' cards.
• What might you use them for?  Apart from making cards, this type of stamp can be used for scrapbooking - you can use a decoupage technique to make layered embellishments, for example.  This looks particularly effective with fantasy characters such as fairies, or cartoon/retro images.  I used one here:

Can you see her? 

You can also use little figures on other projects such as ATCs, for which they're a perfect size,  and if you make batches of cards for children at school, they're extremely useful!

• Is it worth buying a set/sheet of character stamps? This is a personal thing, obviously, but I think you need to look critically at what's included in the set.  If you really like a character stamp, I would suggest trying to buy one individually, as realistically you're not so likely to use the other elements in the set.  However, individual character stamps which include a sentiment or two are very useful indeed.
• In conclusion....Having said all that, I wouldn't recommend making a character stamp set your first purchase.

 

Decorative elements:  Images such as swirls, borders, medallions, flowers etc.  These are extremely useful, whatever type of project you like to make.  It's tempting, when you're trying to work out what to spend your precious pennies on, to decide that you don't need any more decorative stamps because you've already got some.  Next time you're looking for just the right swirl, or the right size circle frame, and you can't find it - make a note of it.  Decorative stamps are a good thing to look for in the sales, and a carefully chosen selection will be useful for years.

• Why would you buy decorative stamps?  They're useful for just about everything - scrapbooking, cardmaking, mixed media, journaling, and so on.  You might already have several borders or swirls as part of other sets, but look at the possibilities for using a set of images designed to go together.  Can you layer them to make floral motifs?  Could you create a frame with corners using the stamps in one set?  Are the elements interactive?  One of the best sets I've bought is the Prima Build-a-Frame set, which I've used here:

It's a simple idea - you combine the elements to make frames of any size, and there are some images which will work as corners or just decorative elements.  I've used this on ATCs as well, so it works at any size. 

• What might you use them for? Again, this are great for making embellishments on scrapbook pages.  You could use a border to make journaling cards, or buy some journaling stamps which are pretty versatile in themselves: use one underneath a flower or title to add layers, or make one into a flower centre.  Scalloped borders are very versatile - I've used them to make roof tiles, waves, and the edges of rolled flowers.  And don't get me started on swirls!  Medallions are another extremely useful design, like circles in general.  If you're a cardmaker you can use decorative stamps to make layered background papers, or to frame/accent your focal point.
• Is it worth buying a sheet/set of decorative elements?  I would say, yes!  Choose carefully, and think about starting an 'I wish I had...' list.  It's easy, particularly when a sale beckons, to forget all your good intentions and buy something a bit mad! 
• In conclusion:  I think that decorative stamp sets are great 'working' stamps that you'll use again and again.

 

Mixed sets: Probably my favourite, purely because they're such good value for money and I can often satisfy several needs at once with just one set!  A good mixed set of stamps with include the following:

A background design

One or more focal images

Decorative elements

Words/sentiments

And - if it's interactive, you've hit the jackpot! :D

 

Let me explain.....

Here's a set from Artistic Outpost, one of my favourite manufacturers

The background image in this set is the printed seed packet - but look!  On the left is a seed packet, from which you can trim the sentiments in the middle, to leave you with a frame, or you can stamp the marigold print on top of it, making a complete seed packet.  So it's also got an interactive element.  And you needn't stop there - that blank seed packet could have anything on it: the girl with the wheelbarrow, the flowers underneath, or an image from somewhere else entirely.

The focal images are the girl, and the flowers at the bottom.

Accent/decorative images are the bees and the strawberry.  You could use that strawberry to make background paper, or stamp, mask and stamp again on the seed packet.  How about using it on shrink plastic, or in a metal-rimmed tag?  I've heat embossed it on a frame and it looked really sweet in bright red.  The bees could make a border, or a little tag; I cut mine out separately but they can easily be put back together on a block. How about stamping them in a ring, all facing inwards around a simple daisy image, for example?

Think about how these different images would look as second-generation imprints - pale, background interest.  Can you heat emboss them, colour them, paint them or shrink them?

Here's another set from Paper Artsy:

The obvious background image is the grass at the bottom.  But you could use the flower head  or the swirl, repeat stamped to make a background, too.  That little 2p stamp could be cut out and used as an accent, maybe covered with Glossy Accents or made into a flower centre.   Repeat stamp it in a row to make a border or frame - this would look lovely if you coloured them with different pencils.

The bird or the flower head could be focal images, and there's an interactive element too - the 'secret garden' phrase will fit into the film cell as will 'take flight'.  The film cell itself is just asking to be layered - cut out the cell, maybe stamped onto a section of a photograph or another image, and layer it with foam pads over an identical image stamped onto your background.  Like this:

This is particularly useful, too, because of the 'flight' and 'nature' themes.  Any of those words could be used on an ATC or a card for universal appeal.

Now, obviously this is only my viewpoint - you may well have an entirely different opinion about choosing stamps.  But hopefully this has been useful to some people.  How about going off to browse some stamps online, and see if you can develop a critical eye!?

What would you have, if you could choose just one stamp set?

WOYWW #119?

Yes, I think so.  I think it is definitely #119.

What's on my desk this week is a pile of layouts which I have been forging through in an attempt to use up as much stash as possible because I can feel a SHOP coming on.  There are lots of luverly things I want, and don't need AT ALL, such as some Lily Bee and some Cosmo Cricket and some Kaisercraft Christmas doodads. 

So I've photographed them, and here you are, and it serves you right for clicking on my link cos now you have to look at them.

(No cheating now, you're not allowed to cover your eyes or hide under the table.)

First one is a holiday photo, and I've used one of the WRMK kits I picked up in TK Maxx for 3p - or something silly.  With an album.  I kid you not.  (Well, I think it was a fiver, all in.)

Now, I've been looking at all these LOs and thinking 'Hmm....what does that need?'  And I have a theory which proves true time and time again - that when you see your work on screen, about to reveal itself to other people, the missing element suddenly becomes obvious.  That one up there needs some doodling.

The next one needs a bit of yellow ribbon on the left, there.

...and three buttons on the bottom right.  Trust me...:D

Next one!  I made this with the acetate shapes created here.

Bit of a rubbish photo, actually, but I feel this one needs no additions.  Unlike the following:

I'm struggling a bit with this one, but I think it needs some more vertical/horizontal accents.

Then there's this one, which DEFinitely needs something but I really don't know what.  My instinct is to put a vertical line down the right third, but this would bisect the big photo and I don't want to do that.

The next one uses lots of leftovers, I was a bit worn out by the time I did the title....sorry about that!

(I always like the look of these Western/surfing/ranchy woody campy type papers, but they always end up looking like gravy when I make a page with them...)

Anyway.  Just one more.  You must be getting fed up, even I'm bored.

I think this is the one I like best.  ALL sorts of leftovers on here which I picked up off my desk. 

Youngest got in BIIIIIIG trouble after I printed these photos off because I left the photo viewer open on my laptop and Visible Teenager saw that Youngest had been mowing the grass whilst wearing Visible Teenager's shoes!!!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately Visible Teenager is a bit odd and I can never make up my mind whether I should have had him looked at.  I worry sometimes that he's got a touch of Aspergers - not least because of the way he overreacts to random things.  The other day he got very angry with Youngest for walking around with no top on, and threatened to hit him.  I asked if he would be hitting his student housemates when he starts at Uni next week, and he said, without a trace of irony - Yes.

Visible Teenager says he's looking forward to going to Uni, and when I asked him today if he was perhaps a bit anxious about it - last night he yelled at me for refusing to get out of the bath so that he could use the loo, when there's another one downstairs; then he kept Youngest awake all night by shouting at him whenever he started snoring or sleeptalking - he gave it a few moments' thought and said - No.

I don't believe him, and on Sunday we'll be driving down to Portsmouth with whatever supplies and home comforts I can afford to buy him, in view of the fact that my grant hasn't come through yet......D:

In the meantime, have a hop over to Julia's blog where all this snoopy prying started, and get a look at all the other lovely workspaces.

Tag Swap and a last-minute WOYWW #118!

The other day I received through the post some tags from a swap I took part in on UK Scrappers.  It's the first time I've done a tag swap and there was some blood, sweat and tears involved in making them!  Well, a bit of swearing anyway...:D

The theme was The Wizard of Oz, and I'm very pleased with myself for NOT rushing online to buy an appropriate stamp set.  Since the link didn't have to be too overt I settled for the following:

Well, I say it's not overt and then I show you red shoes and a yellow brick road!  The shoes were from a See-D's Vintage stamp set, they're the perfect size.  The yellow brick road is a Katzelkraft chain-link stamp which I hadn't used at all before this. 

Here's a No Place Like Home jobbie.  I lurrrrve that stamp of the girl, and I was rather pleased with myself for managing to think of that masking trick.  I need to be a bit more creative with my stamps.  You know, rather than just buying them by the buckletload and then gazing at them...

We had to have something peridot green (for August) on the tag, and also a metal element.  On this one I used gold foil, which Jean Hardy of Crafty Individuals loves so much.  I have to say I'm with Jean - but I can't get it to work with a glue stick like she does.  Probably my cheap glue sticks, but I find a Quickie glue pen is ace!  You have to be patient and leave it to dry, but then it grabs that foil like nobody's business!

This is my favourite tag, and I'm touched that Leanie, the swap host, sent it back to me.  One reason it's my fave is because I used the acrylic flower I made here, after a light-bulb moment when I realised it was peridot green!

Now, I made three other tags in the same vein - ie, book page with a definition circled, and a design relating to that word.  But I didn't like the other three, despite spending quite some time on one of them...!  Instead, I ripped them to bits, hehe, and redesigned them all like this one:

Interestingly, this was done rather quickly as I needed to finish up and clear away before I went on holiday.  So I've used the first things I thought of and it seems to have worked rather well.  It so often happens that way - without all the agonising and trying to make it perfect, I ended up with something I really like.

I was going to show you a photo of the tags I got back, which I nicked from Leanie's blog.  Just because I'm too lazy to take a photo here and upload it.  But it occurs to me that it would be much better to link you to Leanie's blog, which is here - mine is the second group, as you can probably see.  It was lovely to get all these different tags through the post but I'll need to create some sort of album for them now; I've already put my name down for the September swap!

Now, it occurs to me that I can justifiably link this post to the WOYWW lot over at Julia's blog, albeit late in the day so that I'm probably #2060 and no-one will ever read it, lol!  If you are here via another route, however, do take a look on Julia's blog and maybe have a rummage around in the huge list of participants - it's very rewarding and has resulted in many additions to my Google Reader list.

Sunday School #5

I think it's #5.  I seem to have four folders of stuff from previous Sunday Schools, so we'll stick with #5.

This is all about stash busting!  After a year of living dangerously, I've now realised that I don't have lots of moolah to spend on stash; not only that, but in an even more familiar scenario, I've got enough stash already to build a small housing estate from paper.

This week, dear reader, we will be copying other people's work.  Ssshhhhh, though, don't tell anyone.

I will say, right at the start, that some of this copying mularkey is rather time-consuming.  It's crafting, though, and it gives you something quite individual - when I say copying, I don't really mean copying - it's just that instead of buying something, you could always try and make it!

The first thing I thought I would make, was words.  Not these here words on this screen, but words to use on scrapbook pages, ATCs, cards - anything really.  I don't suppose I'm the first person to do this, but you know I'm happy to be first in the trenches and test stuff out...

Now, I've made a couple of versions of these words.  Truth be told, this is because the first version I made was pretty much a copy of some I received for a commission.  I will be showing you these, since they are a favourite; I found them very easy to reproduce and was able to choose my own words.

And this is how you do it:

Find some suitable card.  You could use paper, there's no reason why not - but thin card is my preference as it always looks like quality, guv'nor.  On the other hand, if you want a very flat collage effect, printer paper or similar would be quite fine.

I've inked up my card with Distress Inks.

Not the fabbiest photo, owing to the fact that Youngest appears to have absconded with my camera.  Don't know why, he's got a hideously expensive phone.

The slightly buckled appearance is due to the fact that after inking the card I spritzed it with water.  Don't worry about this, particularly if you're me, because after it's been through  your printer 20 times in an effort to get the damn thing to print, it will be nice and flat.

You may be asking: Helen, what sort of card should I use?

Well, I'm glad you asked that.  I've used two different sorts - the other one was a smooth-coated white card from Ryman's (used with Promarkers) which doesn't actually take distress inks very well.  It soaks them up immediately so that they are difficult to blend.  It takes printer ink very well, though.

The card you see above is from a pack they sell in Asda; it's shinier on one side than the other, and I've used the less shiny side here.  It takes Distress Inks beautifully and gives you time to blend them.  Cheap as chips, it is.

Right.  The next step is to create a Word document.

The big tip here is: Choose your font right at the start and stick to it!

Obviously this tip is of most use to eejits like me, who think it's a super idea to type out dozens and dozens of words before selecting 'all' and converting to a different font.  It doesn't necessarily work.  You may find that the spacing is different - so if you've increased the spacing in your original, boring font, once you change it all to 'rough typewriter' or what-have-you, the spaces are bigger anyway so your words are too far apart.

Or you may find that changing the font changes the size, and instead of double-spaced lines you have some which are single-spaced.  Blah.  In fact, I had to type the whole flippin' sheet out again.  So be warned...

Previously I had printed out a sheet with all the words in the same font.  For this second sheet with its rather summery shades, I went for some summery words and changed the font every couple of lines.

After I'd created the document I changed the font colour to a dark grey.  I think brown or grey look better than black for these little words.  I copied the first line into a new document and printed it out to see how it looked.

Yes, I know.  It looks blurry.  Someone's got some explaining to do when he gets home.

Then I printed out the whole thing:

If you want to know what the fonts are,  I've used A Little Pot, Beautiful Every Time, Sweetie Pie, Cutie Pop, Daniel, Gabriola, Jellyka CuttyCupcakes (yep), and then Gabriola again - in that order.  I thought maybe you might like to download one or two - they're all free from Dafont.

The next thing is to cut them up.  I was prepared to use a metal ruler and a craft knife to cut the strips, but in the end my guillotine worked fine.  If you're using a guillotine or rotary cutter you'll need to take care, not because it's sharp but because after about nine or ten strips you may lose the will to live and become careless of your squareness, lol.

Then you snip them into individual words, et voila!

(Clearer pics coming up!)

Now obviously you can do all sorts of things with these.  You could mat them before adding them to a project, or ink the edges which would make them look more like the pre-made ones, although that's a bit of a faff but usually I find it's worth doing.  Or you could stamp a second-generation image over them, faint enough to let the word show.  You could doodle a little border round the words, or attach several to a strip of paper and faux-stitch them together...Here are some I messed around with quickly:

The bottom three on the right are unadorned; I hope you can work out what I've done with the rest of them.  All the inking has been done direct-to-paper.

I'm sure at some point I'll be able to show you some layouts using these - in fact, there is one on my desk at the moment destined for a UK Scrappers challenge in September which is in serious danger of having a bit of everything attached to it, the longer it sits there!

As usual, I hope this is useful and/or interesting to at least someone, lol.  Have a lovely Sunday whatever you're doing!

 

 

Phew...

Well, that's my three weeks of holidays over with!  Before anyone starts wondering whether I've won the pools, that was three weeks, each of which contained a holiday...

The first one was a brief, and very wet, camping trip to the Peak District with Daughter and Youngest:

This is an umbrella made from natural materials, by Youngest, lol.  We had to abandon it eventually when the 'handle' snapped under the strain of being forced into a backpack because nobody wanted to hold it any more...

This is a view from Lantern Pike, up which Youngest and myself struggled, leaving Daughter panting and gasping and weeping with exhaustion on the path below.  By the time we met her At The Other End, she'd calmed down and was merely grumpy.  And unfit, clearly.

Then we had four days in Perranporth, lovely Perranporth where my children like to go because there is a pub on the beach.

As you can see, it was still a bit rainy even after we'd travelled half the length of England, but there you go.  We managed a hack over the hills, when the sun actually came out and it was lovely and warm, and repeated last year's bike ride:

We like our Perranporth sunsets too, but this is the closest we got this year:

Then, last week, I had a whole seven days with my man in a different part of Cornwall.  Last year we did just five days, and he said he felt a little guilty for making me leave my kids for a whole week (his were with their mum).  But, really, they're 19, 16 and 14 - they should be able to cope by now!  Visible Teenager was in charge, which involved shouting at me every time I rang to ask how Daughter and Youngest were.  Apparently I am a very bad mother and never made a fuss about him at all when he was that age.  It was no good pointing out that when he was that age he never had to make his own way to an American Football tournament at Linford Christie Stadium - wherever the hell that is - because I drove him everywhere.

The shoutiness was interspersed with bouts of doing absolutely nothing around the house, not even the Bins and Recycling job which is the only one I have been able to pin on him.  He did, however, cook his own food, mostly in oil from what I can work out, which is why when I got home yesterday there was oil on the kitchen windows and Youngest complained bitterly about the oil slick in the kitchen sink (his job) which he claimed resembled a very large slice of processed cheese.  I believe him.

Officially, Visible Teenager's job was the bathroom-stairs-and-landing.  On the way home he rang to ask if I could buy some bags of ice so that he could bathe his poor groin (a muscular problem, I hasten to point out, in case you're seeing him in an even worse light)...monopolised the bathroom for an hour and then departed it leaving three empty icecube bags and rather a large number of empty loo rolls.  I asked him how exactly he had fulfilled his bathroom cleaning duties and he got a bit shouty about how many times he'd cleaned the sink.  (It was none, in my opinion.  His opinion differed.)

Overall, however, it wasn't too bad.  And here are some photos of what I abandoned the housekeeping for:

Polperro

Ponies on Bodmin Moor

Inside Ruth's Cottage, which was used during filming of An Edwardian Farm

Another sunset which we caught on the way home from the moors.

I'm going to stop there, because Youngest is downloading something and it's taking ages to show you these photos.  Don't want to overdo it anyway - I'm sure you'll be seeing some of them in layouts pretty soon!

I've got some Stamping on Saturday and Sunday School posts almost ready to go, so hopefully I'll be putting them up over the coming weeks.

Hope everyone has had a good summer and that preparations for going back to school are well underway - and I know some of you are back there already!

 

Help! What's happening?!

Don't panic, gentle reader.  It's just that it's THAT time of year again.

Having looked forward a bit desperately to the school holidays (the nature of the Special Needs of the child I was supporting last year tended to result in those of us closest to him being a hair's breadth from insanity much of the time), and having slobbed around luxuriously for two weeks, I am now faced with the following itinerary:

1. Type the word 'itinerary' in less than four attempts

2.  Book campsite for Daughter's trip to Doncaster to see McFly. We I've chosen the Peak District.

3.  Try and work out whether it is best to stay at same site and travel 100 mile round trip, twice, to drop Daughter off and pick her up again a day later, or move campsite, or drop Daughter at Sheffield to get the train to Doncaster, and whether she should stay with friend on Saturday night and be picked up by me from there on Sunday, or whether she should come back on the train on Sunday, blah blah blah....

4.  Find out where Youngest's American Fooball tournament is.  This is something he threw into the mix a couple of hours ago.  It's next Sunday, and He Can't Miss It.  I expect it's far too much to hope that, as has twice been the case with Visible Teenager, the tournament is actually IN DONCASTER......How fab would that be?  So far, all he can come up with is 'It's on the way to Lancashire......I think'.

5.  Book campsite in Cornwall.  Yep.  Daughter thinks it's a good idea to drive back down from Doncaster (four hours) and then carry on a little bit (another four hours) to Cornwall.  Mummy thinks we'll stay overnight at home. 

(Note:  Daughter's ditsiness shows no signs of decreasing.  The other week I texted her and asked her to look for my bank card in the - small! - pile of unopened post.  It will be in a window envelope, I said.  What's a window envelope?  she replied.  I told her it was an envelope with a window in it. Duh.  When I got home she informed me that her initial reaction had been to go outside the house and look in the window to see if there was an envelope.....) 

6.  Write out huge list of laundry/battery/breakdown rescue requirements for the above, PLUS:

7. ...another huge list for the following week, when I'll be going to Cornwall again with my man.

So.  The next fortnight, for me, goes: panic, laundry, pack, drive, camp, drive, camp, drive, laundry, book Asda delivery, pack a bit more, drive, camp, drive, MAD LAUNDRY PANIC, receive Asda delivery (how much do you want to bet THAT bit goes badly wrong?), let someone else drive......have week in lovely holiday cottage whilst worrying madly about Youngest who has discovered cider.

I am a bit worried about Youngest, actually.  Not that this is unusual when one is in possession of a teenage boy.  I'm not sure, however, whether I should be more worried about the fact that he is going to parties, at the age of 14, where it seems to be acceptable for everyone to be drunk, or about the pervy photo thing.

The other week he told me about the hilarious sexual gestures that he made behind the back of a female teacher.  A photo appeared on Facebook.  Oh, how I chuckled.  Then, yesterday he proudly showed me another one, taken at the drunken party, in which he appeared to be goosing a girl while she posed for the photo.  Reader, there was barely enough room for me to roll about on the floor laughing.

I'm thinking now that maybe I can cope with the mad camping/unreliable car panic, by focusing on my anxiety about having a drunken sexual pervert for a son.

The car, by the way, has taken a dislike to me.  A couple of months ago it went through a phase of Not Starting.  It went to the garage where they thought they detected a problem with the radio and charged me £170 for unravelling everything and, apparently, installing a Mysterious Noise which emanates from the radio whenever I turn the ignition on.  Needless to say, it wasn't fixed, and the car continues to give me palpitations every so often when it Won't Start on Important Occasions.  Being several hundred miles away from home and needing to get back might strike my car as an Important Occasion - so if you don't hear from me for a while it means I've forgotten the 'make note of RAC number' item on the list, and we're walking.  Me, the ditsy mare and the drunken pervert.....:D

Stamping on Saturday #3

Hello chums.  More stash-busting this week, and some more of that make-your-own nonsense as well.

Today I thought I'd concentrate on making journaling spots.  Well, actually they needn't be journaling spots; they could just as easily become embellishments, with something else layered onto the 'journaling' space.  I wasn't sure whether these should be Stamping on Saturday or Sunday School - but they've turned out mostly stampy, so here they are!

There's no decrease in the number of paper collections incorporating vintage ephemera, and much as I love the vintage look I've managed to avoid buying several of them for the simple reason that they use patterns and images I already have in my stash - either images saved on my computer, or older paper designs that are ready to be resurrected!

So, without further ado, let's take as our first example the type of journaling spot/card that has a blank area in the middle surrounded by some sort of border.  One without any lines on it, so it can easily be used as an embellishment.

There are a couple of ways of making one of these - you can use masking and stamping, or you could glue something onto something else.  Here's a masked and stamped one:

 And here's a something-glued-onto-something-else one:

 

For both of these you will need some scraps of plain or subtly patterned paper - an item of stash that's useful in many situations, dear reader.  In my scraps basket I've got a few big plastic wallets and one of them contains bits of papers like this - excellent for stamping on.

So, if you want to make a single layer journaling card, this is what you do:

Get yourself a piece of plainish paper, the size you want the finished journaling card to be.  I used sheet from a 6x6 pad, which was just lined with a red margin. 

You need to make a two-part mask.  Now, you can do this by hand using some sort of template, in which case the principle is the same as for using Nesties - which is what I used.  Because I was feeling lazy....:D

Find some scrap paper for your mask.  Initially I was going to try this with post-it notes but after some consideration it seemed that this would be rather difficult.  You'll probably see why as we go along.  So you will need some repositionable glue or tape.  I always use Zig 2-way glue - I used to think it was expensive but the Craft Barn sell it for a good price and it lasts ages.  I wouldn't be without it now.

Anyway.  Take a piece of scrap paper roughly the same size as your journaling card and run it through your die-cutting machine with a Nestie or whatever in the middle.  I did three at a time:

(Hehe, it looks like a clock!  Little things.....)

Put some temporary adhesive on the back of the label shape and place it in the middle of your actual journaling card.

Now find a stamp to use for the patterned edges.  Think about the scale of the card and the width of the border you're going to create.  I thought I'd use this PaperArtsy set:

 

Stamp your border design carefully. I chose that coupon image on the right and stamped it in Fired Brick Distress Ink:

If you look at this carefully (well, okay, not that carefully) you'll see that I could have made a neater job of stamping right up to the edges of the mask.  I didn't actually realise this until afterwards, and because this piece is a bit vintage/grungy, it didn't really matter.  However, if you want a nice join, you might have to rock the stamp ever so slightly...

Here's another one I did with a Crafty Individuals music score stamp:

The next thing you do, is you forget to take a photo of the next thing you did. *Sigh*

You'll just have to listen very carefully.....

Take the outside bit of the mask, the bit of scrap paper from which you cut the label shape.  Place this over the journaling card so that only the blank, label-shaped area is visible.  Ie, match it up!  You don't have to stick this down, you can hold it in place because you're only going to stamp one thing on it.

Now take your 'accent' stamp - I used the winged girl on the left of the set - and stamp it in one corner of the blank area.  Not the whole image, just a bit of it.  I've done one in the same colour, Fired Brick, and one in Vintage Photo.

Then take the mask away, et voila:

I was particularly pleased with the one on the left, as that placement of the text at the very top, and the numbers with the tag at the very bottom, was on purpose!

See - I can do things deliberately! 

I think it might be quite nice to cut out a tiny label from another copy of the stamp, and layer it over that top one with its very corner missing.

I also made some pink ones, using patterned paper, but I wasn't so keen on them.  Mind you, they look better on here, lol.

For these I used an oval die and a couple more PaperArtsy stamp sets.   I replaced the mask and drew round it because otherwise there wasn't enough definition.

I didn't waste the masks, either.  The two with Fired Brick on them look rather nice all by themselves, so they'll be pressed into service somewhere along the line.

The third label mask was used to make the layered journaling spot.  This was dead easy - I punched a big circle out of some pink patterned paper

I stamped it with a Tim Holtz letter stamp in Vintage Photo:

I used a couple of stamps from the same set to stamp the label shape:

(and my luverly ink splat stamp)

And then I fiddled and faffed with the label, did some faux stitching on it and inked the edges of everything with Old Paper, and stuck it together.  I used foam tape on the back so there's at least a chance of me being able to write on it!  Here it is again:

So, there you go.  (I keep saying that, don't I.)

You may have noticed that I'm making an effort to use stamps from one set each time.  My intention is to do a post about this, as personally I'm not very good at seeing the potential in a stamp set and I find it a bit confusing trying to choose something that will provide value for money.  I hope that gradually I'm learning what to look for, and maybe I could share some tips.....might have to gather a few more first, though!

I hope you've found this worthwhile reading, I certainly had fun making these journaling cards and I'll be sure to point them out to you the minute they appear on a project!

Have a fab Saturday.