Far, Far Away

I've been away for a while... yup. Lost a lotta contact. Missed a lotta happenings. Feels like a lot longer than 3 weeks since I've blogged, but it's that. It's been a good month since I've been able to make anything, that's for sure. Something snapped, I guess. In the househunt time condensed and my craft room gathered dust. I'd like to say that in this time we've gotten ourselves a nice little property, but it's not the case. Not yet. A standard has been set, though.

I'm gonna get back on the blogging horse, and visit all of you and see what I've been missing. I hope you'll all come back and visit me, too. I've missed this contact.

Anyway... deep breath...limber up (stretch, stretch)... what have I actually managed to scrape together these last few weeks?

Well...

...a wedding invitation order took up a lot of my time:

But that's OK because I made someone very happy.

There is an unconventional colour challenge this month at XOXO:

For which I used pink and orange. All the time I was thinking 'yeuch' but then I remembered fruit salad penny sweets and embraced the challenge - and I was really happy, in the end. There's a bit of Washi tape in there, some fabric ribbon, lace and other fabric - all from Gauche Alchemy. There's a bit of Crate Paper's Random stuff in there too.

Oh, I got my hair cut:

Yeah, that made me feel goooooood.

I've also been playing around with my camera, trying to learn a thing or two about its manual settings...

OK, work in progress - but I'll get there.

And I went to a gig - another time, another story... but I took my camera:

That was one awesome night. I will come back with the story another time because I'm gonna scrap it. Like, ASAP.


All righty, I think that feels OK - I'm blogging again. I'll go warm down now. Hope to see you all on the rounds again! Thanks for stopping by to say hello again!

I Go Out Walking...

A little while ago I showed the sneakiest of peeks of a project I’m going to be working on all year. Well, today’s the day for the big reveal over at Gauche Alchemy!

I always knew I was collecting postcards for a reason. (Apparently I have a bit of a thing for them.) Turns out this is it. I used to have hundreds covering my bedrooms walls at university – you know, the kind they give out as flyers or adverts or art – but they were long gone, recycled in one of my fits of ruthless cleaning over the years. Now, each time we go to a bar or museum or someplace similar we pick up the interesting ones, and the collection was starting to add up again. So now is my chance to give them all a reason to exist! Read on…

My aim for this year is to make up a mini book, filled with 52 postcards, each of which is scrapped with a photo taken during a weekly walk, with each photo inspired by a weekly prompt. The idea’s not new, I know, but I did think that the Scrapbook Challenges forum could benefit from a year-long project like this, so that is where you can find the prompts and members’ responses to those prompts if you’re interested in playing along (some catching up will be required by now, but the load is not too much. Besides, the prompts are guaranteed to get you thinking!).

I WILL stick to this project

this Gauche Alchemy boot wasn’t made for walking, it was made for adorning my mini book

go out walking - you might find dinosaurs (or other exciting stuff)

I’ve been keeping to the programme on the photograph front, and I’m almost up to date on the scrapping, too. Here’s what I’ve done so far, photograph-wise:

Thanks to Gauche Alchemy and their eclectic array of products, I was able to pick and mix and create a cover for this mini book that was perfectly suited to the theme of going on walks and taking photos. Here’s how the cover came together:

Products I used (all from Gauche Alchemy)

Color Kits – It’s All Gravy, Blue Streak, Purple People Eater

PVC Punchinella

Ouchless Cardboard
Mail Art kit
Nearly Nekkid kit

Regular Punchinella

I can’t tell you strongly enough how easy it is to come up with projects from the GA Color Kits – with them, a project pretty much makes itself. For example, I’ve nearly used up the whole Banana Hammock kit (even though it’s a difficult colour for me), and I’ve got a project in the pipeline using the (peach?) kit which is a colour I NEVER thought I’d use. On top of everything they’re great value because you get a lot of bits and pieces and some really unusual items in them. (I’ll tell you a secret… when I applied to be part of the Gauche Alchemy DT, they asked me which of their products I liked the best. I spent a paragraph gushing about how inspiring these Color Kits were – and that was just from the product photos in the GA Artfire store! Now I’ve got my hands on them – wow. I have not been disappointed!)

Rockin' the Sketch

When I made this sketch I tried out something with a sort of multiway title... well, I've tried it again. This time it's a bit simpler, so it works better.

That's me, though. I never start off simple, and then work my way up to something. I always try the hardest thing first, and then cut back when I realise I can't quite make it. What does that say about me, I wonder?

Anyway, here is my layout for this week's Punky Scraps challenge - a very punky sketch from Nat.

it's not just a skull, it's a skull with a 'tache!!!

I actually had a really hard time with this sketch, because it was so white-spacey. I really wanted to stick to the white space, too, but as I worked the page just kept spreading. But in the end, I'm happy with how it looks because I love bright colour on black, even if it is all a bit tidy.

Punky Scraps challenge #41

There's that multiway title I was telling you about - 'he rocks my world' and 'she rocks my world'. I love the speech bubble feature on this page because it is playful and really works as the thoughts of the subjects in the photo.

Go and see what other DT members did - you'll love their creations - and even join in yourself!

Inspiration – The Debate

Everyone talks about inspiration – where theirs comes from, what they use to get inspired, whether it’s an overused term or an undervalued part of life, where it touches borders with copyright infringement and stealing…

… but as far as I’m concerned, human consciousness is one huge living entity anyway. It always has been. It just takes, now and again, one individual in the right place at the right time to stand up and put an amazing idea out there, and then other ideas will spark off of that one and other people will have their own ideas and… so on.

Everything we put out there – whether it be our skills, our talent, or even our personality or our words – is an amalgamated, processed version of everything we’ve ever put in. We absorb information (read inspiration), then we recycle it; or, maybe a better word is upcyle.

In the past this process has gone rather slowly. It went quite slowly for quite a long time, in fact; only in the last 200 years has it sped up. And the acceleration is exponential – now, with the web at our fingertips (and probably soon to be linked directly to our brains), the sharing, processing and reusing of ideas has exploded into a constantly moving, ever-evolving quasi sentient thing where if you sit still for one minute you get left behind. Lawmakers can’t keep up with it, that’s for sure. Intellectual property law has been acknowledged for centuries, albeit unnamed, but only became commonplace a few decades ago, and it and its counterparts haven’t moved fast enough to be effective in providing a good set of reactions to the changing environment.

So where do we turn for inspiration? I talked in my guest post here about turning more and more to sketches… although even this is a foggy area: with so many sketches from different sources each week, and a limited canvas, it’s inevitable that overlaps occur. What do we do, then? Should we be concerned?

I think, at least in the online scrapbooking community, that old rules should still apply and be applied: do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. Or, an it harm none, do thy will. It’s common decency, and common sense. Even though when I look around I think I see mostly people who do not live by the same values as me, I’m somehow still convinced that people willing to be part of a community act in that community with these values in mind. There are always exceptions, of course. But those people, I just keep away from.

So, again, where do we turn for inspiration? If we become too scared of breaking the rules, however fuzzy they are, that we can’t move, there’s no point in continuing. Stasis is… inhuman.

This week, Natalie of Punky Scraps picked out an image for us to be inspired by. I had a ball – in fact, such a good time making a layout from this image that I will return to it again and again as I begin to incorporate some of its elements into my own style. And it made me realise: since she’s been running Punky Scraps, Nat has always offered an inspiration image every month. They’re much more than a colour palette, more than a theme or a style. I don’t know where she gets them, but they really work for me.

big, bold and bright - I love it!

printed rainbows - thanks, Sass!

 

hand-drawn rainbows - thanks, Copic!

loving shadows and shading here

And so, I’ve learned something. We’ve all been told to always look outside of the box. But I’ve actually only just come to understand what this means. Like when you look up into the night sky, and you have to not look directly at a cluster of stars in order to see them all; like doing those magic eye posters; like trying to remember something so hard and then it comes to you when you're in the middle of something else entirely; well, this is the same sort of thing. So, to answer my persistent question of where we can turn for inspiration, I will say, for now, that not going in search of it is the best course of action. Just keep all of your channels open, and it will find a way in.

Scrapbook Challenges Sketch 273

It's been a long time since a Scrapbook Challenges sketch came about. The transition from Ning to SC's own site has been a priority though, and well worth it.

The sketches are back now, and number 273 has produced some brilliant interpretations from the DT. The sketch:

Scrapbook Challenges Sketch #273

My interpretation is... well, autumnal (just coming out of summer). That's the mood and season I was in when I made it - and that's how long it's been since an SC sketch! So nothing very Christmassy here, but inspiration nonetheless, I hope:

a rare photo of my dad

I used a rare photo of my dad from Father's Day this year - he's holding a chocolate orange (his favourite) cupcake that I made for him (and that I have to admit were even too sickly for me).  I used a lot of different brands on this page - Websters', Cosmo, Lily Bee, Basic Grey, Crate, Sass - because I wanted to get that brightness of colours going.

still loving those circles

Here, I punched a circle in the base layer and adhered some patterned paper to the other side to show through the window.

OK - over to you! Go to Scrapbook Challenges, sign up if you're not already a member, and find the inspiration!

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!

Punky Recipe - the Star of the Show

It's time for another Punky Scraps challenge! Don't try to resist, because this one is too good to miss.

Make a page from the following ingredients:

• Stars
• No patterned paper
• Masking
• Staples
• Exposed cardboard
• Book page
• Bottle cap
• Washi tape

Credits can only go to Inkadinkado and Tim Holtz for the star stamps

Not using any patterned paper was the biggest challenge for me - the biggest to date. (At least I know the need to use patterned paper will prevent my stash from ever getting out of control.)

I used everything on the list EXCEPT for the bottle cap because I FORGOT it. I had a Newcastle Brown Ale bottle cap somewhere (it has a star on it - perfect) but I only remembered it after I finished the page.

Love stars? Love ripping up cardboard? Look no further...

Again, as I mentioned in my previous post, I spent a LOT of time thinking about this page. I left it till the very last minute, and then woke up on the last day before deadline with the idea in my head. This time, the ingredients were decided for me; it was the laying out of the page that was taking time to come into focus.

I would LOVE to see people playing along with this challenge especially, so please pop over to Punky Scraps and check out the inspiration from the DT.

It's All About The Journey

I'm loving this artistic journey I'm on, and I'm finding myself fascinated by the twists and turns a journey can take, and how each new avenue leads to change, influence, adaptation and improvement. All those terms are subjective, obviously, but I really mean them in a sense of how happy I am with my creations and the direction they are heading in.

A journey can be so many different things.

This life journey I'm on, for example: I'm married now, and I feel like we can take on the world. We will go places together. 

All this and more fed into this layout as I was making it for this week's Punky Scraps sketch challenge. I wanted to pay homage to life and living, to enjoying and experiencing the journey as we are on it, not just after it's finished.

Don't you love it when you look at something you've made and it makes you happy? I used: Basic Grey Basics and Wander paper and Wander rubons, American Crafts Thickers and Toga Alphas, Sassafras Lass bunting sticker, Heidi Swapp Ghost Alphas, Glitz transparency, Echo Park For the Record journalling card, and Gauche Alchemy goodies (feather, sequins, plastic embroidery grid, map, foot paperclip, WOODGRAIN PUNCHINELLA!) 

how great is that foot paperclip?!

Go check out the sketch and the other DT members' awesomely punky work, and share a tiny slice of their journeys too.

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!

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!

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?