Counting Down

I might have mentioned here that there would soon be a plethora of grey-plus-a-colour pages on my blog. Scrapbook Challenges' sketches are helping me create layouts right now, which is good because there's no time to think up sketches of my own. Here is this week's:

I'm counting down to the big day, and it's already a lot closer than when I made this layout.

Look! I used pink AND hearts! I'm really pushing my boundaries!

That dotty, puffy heart above is from a Gauche Alchemy Color Kit - you'll see lots more products in the coming months!

Gifts from the Heart

My fiance's best man (well, one of them) - in fact, the one who was the first person we told face-to-face that we'd gotten engaged - had a 'saw this and thought of you' moment recently. He sent me this present:

It's a collection of hand-carved wooden stamps in paisley designs. I can't wait to use them!

Letters

A quick post as I'm off for a long weekend with my bridesmaids. More wedding decorations under the belt - this time, I've decorated wooden letters for our initials.

The cork ampersand was particularly fun to do. Give it a try - it looks amazing!

Singing Praises

Scrapbook Challenges has its weekly sketch up and running. This week it's brought to you by the very talented and punky Nat and looks like this:

My first reaction to my page, when I'd finished putting it together, was disappointment that I hadn't managed to get the skulls in - I so wanted to include them, but the creative journey took me away from them and sometimes it's just the way things go.

Last month I sang a couple of songs with my fiance and his friend at a gig of theirs. Big deal for me, trying to get back to those days when I was happy to stand up in front of the whole school and read out poetry I'd written. But I did it, and felt good. And I'll be going back for more.

Using tiny pieces of cardstock and patterned paper: at this rate, I'll never use up my scraps.

This page has sent me off on a journey that I think will be a long one. I am loving grey plus a splash of colour now, so look out for many more pages in this colour scheme. Grey has allowed me to even use pink, a not-favourite colour of mine - you'll see in a couple of weeks when I get to share that page here. And I'm looking forward to trying out grey and orange, and grey and green, and grey and aqua... if you have a favourite, let me know!

Vintage Summer

'Vintage' is the word of the summer - not just for me: it's hugely popular in the UK right now. The first Augsut challenge at Punky Scraps is not going to disappoint, or diverge from this theme.

The challenge is to allow yourself to be inspired by this image:

I so wish I had time to play along with this one... I think I'll save it for later. Happy scrappy Sundays, everyone!

All Work and No Play makes Cheryl an Impatient Woman

Yep, it's been like that for about 3 weeks. Just when I thought I would start to wind things down with work so that I could spend some time on the wedding preparations, people start banging at my electronic door to have this done and that done by, oh, when do you want it? Yesterday?

Sigh.

As a result I've got little to share on my blog except for an invisible but definitely present mounting panic. I'm in dire need of some zen. So, a few deep breaths and I look to my camera for calm... and, it turns out, hopefully inspiration too.

Here are a couple of photos I took with my new camera the day we got lost in the woods. As I was playing around with the settings, seeing what differences I could make, there was an eerie calm all about, a silence more silent than usual. After the photos, there was nothing familiar along the path. Even the trees and the ferns were different. And for a full five minutes we walked, and wondered if we'd stepped through a window into another dimension.

Next up, a photo of the ceiling of a bar in town (yes, they are beer trays). The bar is called Delirium, after one of the beers it sells (Delirium Tremens, 8.5%). This beer's logo is a pink elephant, because apparently that's what you'll see if you drink too many of them. I guess how many you can see in the photo depends on how drunk you are.

Then there's the awesome moment when the singer of a rockabilly band we went to see stood on his bassist's double bass (which had a pretty sweet paint job) and rockabillied out for a few seconds. Awesome, Voodoo Swing, awesome!

And finally, just because:

My new camera, a very early birthday present (thanks mum and dad!) is a Canon PowerShot SX130 IS, and after having checked my records I have to say that only pictures 1, 2 and 5 here were taken with it. Pictures 3 and 4 were 1 month BC (Before Canon).