Home is...

A looooong time ago I bought a sort-of printer’s tray in a funny shape. A specific shape, considering what I wanted to do with it - I wanted to celebrate the concept of 'home', which, for me, isn't a house, a town, a country; it's less tangible than that. It's a feeling.

Anyway, I’ve been working on it slooooowly and thought I’d finally share some of my progress.

I've used some of the ancient letterpress kit I found that same day to embellish

First I asked my husband nicely to sand it for me and stain it that dark red colour. Then I started collecting bits and pieces that I’d like to add to it. I cut some shapes for the wallpaper of the little ‘rooms’, and selected some photos to fill the spaces with.

'home is where the heart is' is so true for me

And that’s as far as I’ve got. Maybe in another 18 months it’ll be completed. When it is, I promise I'll share it fully.

it was a great idea, but I've been slow at completing it

So I Married a Rebel

I'm finally back - back from the wedding, the honeymoon, and the week's recovery afterwards. I can once again face Blogger. But, I need to break myself in gently... I'd love to show you all the wedding decorations, but my head is still swimming, and we don't have our official photos yet. So I'll rebel against that for the time being, and plug a layout I made for the Punky Scraps team.

Challenge 28 is a sketch that looks like this:

This was my take on the sketch:

The first September challenge at Punky Scraps, number 27, was to get inspired by this photo:

It made me want to scrap my brother:

Hop on over if you want to join in and be in with a chance of winning a prize!

Lessons Learnt

Our craft class on Saturday went down a storm - proof is a quote from one of the fathers:

Cheryl, the kids had a ball at the craft's lesson. I am amazed at what you and Chocodeline got out of them. I find just getting them all to sit down and watch a DVD is an almost impossible challenge.

There's feedback for you!

Here is a picture of what the kids made - I'm so impressed. They look so much better than I ever imagined they would:

Some things I've learned, that might perhaps serve as tips for those thinking about giving craft classes to kids:

• you're the teacher, the one in charge - they're expecting you to tell them to sit down and stop shouting. Don't be afraid just because they're other people's kids.
• never underestimate the creative potential of young kids.
• at the same time don't give them too much to do. Restlessness can come from both a too boring task and a too challenging one.
• don't give them too much choice - young kids will create within the boundaries you set them. Give them too much choice and you'll soon have a situation on your hands which you can't control.
• know inside out, upside down and back to front the process for your class. Kids will exploit any weaknesses in your plan and you'll lose them.

And I'll finish by saying that we all had a lot, lot of fun!

Home is...

Home is a smiling dog. Home is sunshine on the pillow. Home is lots of things. But, home is not a solid place, not a geographical location. It is more a state of mind. From this point of view I decorated a picture frame to hang on the wall near the front door of our apartment:


I Decopatched the frame, using paper from Toga's Ziboux range, and added simple embellishments such as ric-rac, some silky twine, a Cosmo Cricket sticker and a Toga stamp cut-out. The letters spelling 'HOME' are wooden and painted in a shade to match the paper.

I also decorated the backing paper behind the photo, in colours to match the paper:

I actually had to do this because when I took the picture I was convinced the frame was portrait... but no, it is landscape, and the picture was so perfect that I couldn't face waiting and trying to recreate it. Especially the getting-the-dog-to-'smile' part. So, it had to be resized and cropped and it just wouldn't stretch to full landscape. Anyway. Home, sweet home, is where the heart is.