Off Celebrating

It's the husband's birthday weekend, and somehow it's turned into a four-day celebration. Lucky he took Monday and Tuesday off work. Unlucky for me: I'm ill, ill, ill.

His card this year is a good reflection of how I was feeling when I made it. I was just beginning to see a bit of colour again, but my head was all over the place: buzzy, frenetic, wishing my cold would fly away.

this is me, ill, in card form - could be worse, I suppose!

I used some Gauche Alchemy stuff of course - perfect for this kind of mood. New punchinella from India, ouchless cardboard and pages from an old dictionary and a music book. Most surprisingly of all, though, was the fact that I busted out my watercolour pencils after years of neglect - and I'm so glad I did. (Even if the red did turn out a bit pink - sorry, husband!)

watercolours, oil  paint and Cosmic Shimmer Mist make up this eclectic background

I sealed it all together with a home-made envelope:

that's the man's name

Happy Birthday, Husband!

Happily Ever After: Wedding Card Special

While I was happy to have gone to my first wedding EVER as a guest a couple of weeks ago* some of my friends are boasting about having five, six, seven or even eight weddings to go to this year.

*It's true! Always the bridesmaid, never just a guest. What can I do about that? You might think it's handy to never have had to choose my own outfit, but I was itching to:

Anyway... one of my friends asked me to make her a batch of congratulations cards for all the lovers out there. I duly obliged, having weddings on the brain and all. She told me a little bit about each couple and I tried to interpret that and turn it into a card. I found this immensely fun. Some of my creations:

Mostly keeping it quite simple, aren't I? I can't let myself go with cards like I do these days with a scrapbook page. I'm itching to make another layout, but have to focus this week on making flowers. Sneak peek coming soon!

Moving up a Gear

With the exception of some DT posts that will appear from time to time, I’d like to officially declare June the Wedding Month here on my blog. Not because I’m jumping on the bandwagon: oh no. It’s because we’ve just returned from a long wedding weekend where we watched our friends get married, and as their wedding was one day shy of three months ahead of ours, we always felt invincible when it came to the organisational side of things.

Until now.

That date has passed, and we are now sharing a house with a pesky but necessary countdown timer. Every now and then this little fella jumps out at you from behind doors and makes you jump out of your skin. But we’re stuck with him for a while, a while that will speed by I’m sure (even if we suddenly need it not to).

So I’m taking a deep breath, and diving into Wedding Month with the card I made for our friends. It’s a box card of sorts, in that it is box shaped and it comes in a box. I wanted to make a summery, not-too-feminine (there are, after all, both a bride and a groom involved), cute-but-not-sickly kind of card.

I repurposed the box from some old packaging I kept...

 ...I covered it with some paper from a leaflet picked up a couple of weeks ago that I matched to some MME and Echo Park papers...
 

...added some American Crafts ribbon for the pullout...

...and, ooh, stamped on a chipboard frame and then chalked over it.

The card can stand up on its own (kinda useful) and is lined on the inside so whichever angle you look at it from, it's pretty.

That's about the extent of my sharing my Wedding Month time with others. From here on in, it's almost exclusively going to be about our wedding. Self-indulgent? Perhaps. A chronicle of creations? Certainly. Interesting? I hope so.

Oh, the Bluebells!

Easter walks at the weekend were a joy in themselves. Little did we know, as we rounded a corner in the woods, that we would be met with the breathtaking sight of a carpet of bluebells, undulating up the hill, between the trees and out of sight.

I combined this awe with my wildcard challenge this month over at Scrapbook Challenges which was to make a layout using one colour that you're not fond of and an embellishment you're uncomfortable with. Mine were: lilac, and flowers. And I have to admit, the challenge proved too much for me. It goes without saying that in responding to the challenge you should come up with something you like; but I'm afraid, despite some photo printing that I'm happy with, I can't get over the lilac, and I'm not entirely in love with my page. Nevermind; I'm sure my little niece-to-be will like it when she sees it - especially as she's the model in the photos.

I also entered the layout for the Pencil Lines challenge this month (using sketch number 234). But I'm wondering, what are your least favourite colours and embellishments, and why?

Folds and Feathers

My final assignment for the Mini Book Anonymous DT was to create a mini book on the theme of 'Folds and Feathers'. After 3 months of thinking, thinking, thinking, I finally stumbled across the perfect idea.

An accordion spine book, with...not feathers, but birds. The cards inside each feature a facet of me and fit the mini's title of 'Many a Feather' (like 'many a string to my bow').

I created another video for this mini - and yes, this time I tried to make and talk on film! Check me out! Feedback as always is most welcome. For now, though, I'm going to depart as I've been up ALL NIGHT working and I am a little delirious. I'll just say a big thank you to the MBA team for giving the DT such inspiring challenges and giving me reason to push my boundaries. I would never have done these things without you!

Twig by Twig, Feather by Feather

Well, it's Sunday morning, so grab a cup of tea and settle in for a nice long post full of sumptuous photos. But watch out for an embellishment overload!

Back in September one of the things I bought from the craft fair was a Basic Grey Chocolate Chip mini chipboard album. I don’t normally buy things like this, preferring to make the structure myself, but it was on sale, and I already seemed to have an idea in my head, as well as the colour scheme, which was inspired by the GORGEOUS American Crafts ribbons I had just picked up:

This little apartment in Belgium has been our home for around a year now, but it's only over the last few months that I've really felt settled. The mini, made to capture the feeling of finally finding where home is, contains only one photo. Instead of pasting in pictures, I made use of lots of my materials – journalling shapes, tags, ribbons, stamps, paints, and more – to embody the homeliness I'm experiencing right now.

I mainly used Basic Grey's Pyrus and Marrakech and Kaisercraft's Up, Up and Away paper, because the neutral tones really made the colours of the ribbon pop:

I painstakingly outlined every page with stitching using a white pen - I did it first on the front cover and thought it looked so good that I just carried on.

On each page there is a little bit of hidden journalling; I wanted to keep it private, yet still show off the sentiment:

I got to use one of my new 7gypsies transparencies:

I also used an old clothing label and a business card from my most recent tattooist:

And generally, lots of stamping, stickers, rubons and paint and ink splodges:

I really love these American Crafts ribbons. I love the colours they've inspired me to use. They are my new favourite thing, for a little while. How about you - is there one little product or group of products that has led to total inspiration for a while?

Back to Basics

The next installation in my mini-album rampage is called 'Nature and the Girl'. It's a light-hearted record of a visit to Kew Gardens, London, and my slight apprehension of the great outdoors (which, of course, is a long way from the controlled environment of Kew Gardens!).
I used cardboard - an old cardboard box that was happily decorated on one side (thanks, Ikea, for selling nice-looking but flimsy storage solutions). I painted the other side green, very roughly, so some cardboard still showed through. And then I panicked about Christmas colours... but the autumn colours in the photos inspired my choice of papers and just about brought it back from the brink of Yule.

I kept to one style of journalling throughout, to give the mini-album coherence and consistency, and threw in a few chipboard letters here and there to brighten things up.



I made all the flowers from scraps of paper, fabric samples, buttons and brads, enjoying more and more the rough, haphazard effect.

The papers I used were from the Cosmo Cricket Early Bird range, as were some of the embellishments, and the bird stamps were from Inkadinkadoo.

And it all came about because of the colours in this photo:

Easy Craft Projects Challenge

I've recently become aware of the ECP Challenge blog, and have decided to enter their Spring challenge. It's my second ever entry to a craft challenge (oh, wait... is this where I should mention my victorious record in primary school craft challenges? Um, well... it was a few years ago... probably should just move on...).

Anyway... my motivation for this creation was that my first winter in Belgium felt soooo long and was soooo cold that I was probably dreaming of spring a little before it arrived. I created this card with a new set of stamps by Artemio and a small handful of new chalk inks.


I like the fact that you can layer the twig and flower stamps, and the way the bird stamp is slightly larger than the shape it was stamped on. I find this card clean and simple, with a definite Spring element to it.

Home is Where the Heart Is

A couple of my friends just moved in together, and I'm going to surprise them with this housewarming card. The paper I've used to cover the house is from Toga:

The little insert with the birds stamped onto it is where I wrote the good wishes:

And I folded a useful stand so that the birdhouse can be displayed on their mantlepiece: