Bobbing and Weaving, Ducking and Diving, Picking and Choosing

What feels like a really long time ago I made this tray – for me. There was a second tray, destined for the husband’s lap, which never got altered.

Until now.

Over at Scrapbook Challenges it was my turn this month to post a technique challenge – so, thought I, the perfect opportunity to finish this two-part tray project!

My technique? Paper weaving. I thought about repeating the sunburst effect on his tray, but since good old checkers are really his thing, the paper weaving idea fit much better:

he loves the black and white

It's not finished - I need to add his name, laminate it and varnish the frame, so I'll post a nice picture when I've done all that.

But I liked it so much I did some more on a birthday card for our friend:

the birthday boy's gonna so totally, like, flip over this

If you want to see in-progress pictures of me weaving paper, get onto the Scrapbook Challenges forum!

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In other news, the Gauche Alchemy mamas challenged me in December to make a video showing how to make a scrapbook layout with their mixed media products - for anyone who is stuck in mixed media canvas mode but wants to switch to layout mode and doesn't know where to start. Now, I want to add a little disclaimer here for the video quality: December was a tough month for me – it seems that I ate everything in my path, including all the hours in all the days, and I just couldn’t get to doing anything as properly as I wanted to. This project included. But to go with this GA blog post, here is the video nonetheless – and a promise that next month’s will be altogether more… together!

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Finally, my trusty assistant, DJ the Dog, helped me pick out two winners for the SC blog hop RAKs here on AndHandmadeToo:

Winners, PM me your addresses – there’s a long-awaited trip to the post office I have to make anyway, so I may as well send all the packages in one go!

How to Mark a Milestone

At the point of posting post number 200, I find myself contemplating how exactly to mark this milestone.

I could look back to the first days of my blogging career and be a little embarrassed by the fact that I didn't really have a clue how the whole thing worked. I could explain that, in spite of that, my original reason for setting up the blog - to easier show my mum what crafty things I'd been up to - was worthy, and has not been forgotten; I could talk about how, when I moved to Belgium, this reason became all the more valid.

I could tell you how our move to Belgium was great for my blogging career, because my need to connect again with like-minded people led me on an international journey around the internet and gave me knowledge, inspiration and friends. How becoming self-employed allowed me the freedom to experiment more with my art and my time, and enabled me to really start to find my style.

And I could reminisce about my first design team experience, how it challenged me to learn about video editing, and how that has led to a new kind of digital scrapping for me (for now I'm going to call it video scrap) - some of which, perhaps, I'll show you one day.

But instead, I'm going to look forward. I look forward to exciting opportunities from current and future design teams; to beautiful inspirational creations, posts, collaborations and more by and with those people in blogland I have come to know; and to a never-ending refinement of the 'crafty me'. I look forward to our crafty wedding, perhaps some more craft markets, and even more unknown crafty things.

And what of the present? Well, working from home and being able to observe our dog for most of the day, I've found myself really questioning what it's like being a dog. It's not a question I'll ever have answered, but I thought I'd make a page out of it anyway, just to remember this fascination and wonderment I have right now with dogs and their interaction with us humans.

I followed May's sketch on the Sassafras blog. Having only one slot for the photo, but five photos I wanted to use, I made a slidy thingy that fits through the page and out the back so that you can view any of the photos by pulling the slidy thingy left or right.

So that's it. My 200th post, up and out there, asking an unanswerable question. That's how I'll mark my milestone.

Poor Doggy

The other day I was playing around with a pile of paper scraps. Actually, I was trying to tidy up, and I dropped a handful onto a cunningly placed Basic Grey Basics sheet. I'm not going to pretend they all fell into place like this, but it certainly inspired me...

This is a page that I'm almost 100% happy with. I definitely like the direction this style is going in...

Doggie Bag

Since my sewing post a few weeks ago, I've had requests to make more bags, and, yes, I really want to make more bags. I will, I promise! The below item, however, was not exactly what I had in mind, but the opportunity simply presented itself...

It's a little bag to clip onto the dog's leash, in which to store poop scoops. We previously had a little plastic dispenser, but it was not very sturdy and kept breaking. After buying a third replacement we gave up and sought another solution: namely, my fabric scraps and sewing machine.


Keeping all the edges frayed for that dumpster chic look, I folded and sewed the top of the bag over a cord so that it becomes a drawstring bag. I cut the little doggie head and ear shapes and sewed around them, leaving the top of the head open so that I could add a popper closer, making a little pocket in which to store treats. Ain't it just rockin'?