Meanwhile, somewhere in the Netherlands...

(this one is a project long in the making. a true labour of love.)

Last year, we planned a surprise 30th birthday trip for two friends to come see us, and then go see a favourite band in the Netherlands. It was such an intricate plan, with us only telling them at the last minute that they'd need to pack their passports, and such an exciting secret to be keeping.

The band, The Slackers, were playing their end-of-tour gig at a bar in Sittard, where they'd previously recorded two live albums, and we were going to be part of it.

Their flyer started me off on my colour scheme - black, white and yellow.

Their own 'tagline', from one of their songs, gave me the title. I used an acetate cover to add more interest and dimension to the front page.

Their singer, with his odd, funny in-jokes, gave me the style: he kept talking about events in comic-book terms ('meanwhile, somewhere in the Netherlands'). I went heavy on the layers for the front page, too - loads of paint, ink, gesso, newspaper and glue.

 

And the genre of music gave the pattern: ska. Behold the ska car! First I painted this wooden car shape with white acrylic paint, then stamped the checkers on. After I covered it with a layer of crackle glaze and waited for it to dry.

 I love this photo of the three best friends.

We got a bonus band, too. The New Town Kings.

I used the Fun Days kraft patterned paper and chipboard pieces from MME. They were a perfect background for the stamping, painting and inking.

The filler for this frame was an awesome find from my mum - wrapping paper from Tesco!

An amazing double gig ended with us partying with the two bands in the cool May evening air. What a day. What a brilliant surprise.

Just a Note

Well, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We certainly did.

I have a little story to tell today. It's about the time when I got married, and I forgot to bring my vows with me to the ceremony.

I had been thinking about what to say for months, rewriting, deleting, starting again... I never thought I would have such trouble. I've always been able to express myself in writing - much better than in speaking. Anyway, I was planning to write them out by hand and take them with me. But in the rush of things (you can read about my veil incident here) I clean forgot. It's not like I'd committed them to memory or anything - I needed those vows!

I remembered just in time to quickly scribble from memory a few of the things I wanted to say. But for the most part I was so mad at myself, and felt like I was doing the husband an injustice, that I rushed through them and failed to make the moment what it should have been. At least, that's how it felt, but he will say otherwise.

So to make things up to him, I have now written out the vows in full. I popped them in an envelope and gave them to him on Christmas morning. I also gave him this:

music, cake, love - our wedding in a nutshell

It's a Tagxedo representation of my vows, rendered in the wedding colours and framed for posterity. He loved it (of course!).

Tagxedo makes you feel clever

I'm still annoyed that the one time I really truly needed to express how I felt, I fell down. But it could've been worse, and it certainly doesn't mean that I don't feel what I tried to say I felt. This print, though, makes me feel a lot better. It's added the full stop to my sentence, the vow saga is now over, and I feel complete.

And on that note, I'll announce here that I'm going to take a little break from blogging - just a week or so while everyone recovers from Christmas. See you in the New Year!

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).

Sharing the Love

As we're approaching the end of February, I'd like to fit in one more love-themed posting: this time, I'm moving the focus away from me and sharing the love with My Talented Family instead.

First up, my little bro. You may remember me gushing about how my brother's surprise craftiness blew us away at Christmas. Well, here are the photos to prove it!

The vinyl bowl and picture frame:

 

 

And the bag he made - replete with French seams:

Next up, my mum. This is only a tiny snapshot of her talents. Really, she should write her own blog to show them off. She made me a bag for Christmas too:

And when we first announced our engagement, she set to work making a book in which we could record all the developments as we organised the wedding. It took us a couple of years, but we're finally able to use it:

 

 

 

 

 

And now for my dad. He's been involved in the crafty stuff, too. Unfortunately I can't get to the Christmas decorations I wanted to show you so we'll just have to make do with feathers and glitter (yep...!):

 

 

 

'What the....?' you may be thinking. Well... he likes to go fly fishing, and tying flies is a pastime of his which would often see him coming to me to borrow nail polish, old tights and hair ties. I can assure you that these flies look exactly like the real insects they're imitating (in other words, really quite gross).

And finally for now, my fiance. He plays guitar and, along with a trumpeter friend of his, has been playing to crowds for the last year and a bit. A bit of blues, a bit of ska, a bit of everything - but all interpreted in their own special way. They sound amazing - take a look at them in action!