Smart Words

A few people out there in the cloud are talking about the new answer to Wordle (Sian, your finger is on the pulse as ever!) - and so I will too.

Tagxedo is a cute, easy-to-use little app that makes pretty things happen to words. You have to play around with different colour/layout/orientation combos, and different amounts of words and which font(s) you choose, to get a shape that you're happy with, but in the end, you end up with word (sm)art like this:
 

It's pretty. But I looked at it aftwerwards and wanted to bling it up a bit. This is when things get dangerous - I'm liable to ruin something in search of a (possibly unreachable) goal. So I "reined" it in a bit. I kept bling to a minimum and it gave it just the right amount of Christmas sparkle, don't you think?

a sparkly eye for christmas time

You can even create your own colour theme (if you don't know all the HTML colour codes by heart (!) then go here for some simple assistance). 

I have made a couple more but since they are Christmas presents I'm bound to secrecy until after the 25th. Go check out Tagxedo and link back here - I want to see what you create!

No Regrets

Often it's too easy to dwell on the past, to go over things that didn't quite happen the way you expected and analyse them for how they could've been changed or avoided... I'm guilty, sometimes, of this - like most people. But I do make it a daily challenge of mine not to live this way. This year one of my resolutions was to stop worrying about the passage of time and see how much it slows down (it works, by the way), and an aspect of this change was adopting the 'No Regrets' mantra.

this project is subtitled 'my tidy catharsis'

This was put to the test almost precisely two months ago today. Awake at 7.30am on my wedding day, and with 6 hours ahead of me in which to get ready, I was blissfully unaware of the stress that would bring the morning to a close. The car (you've already heard that story, about which I have no regrets, by the way) was due to take us away at 1pm. So, in a leisurely, calm mood, I had my nails painted, and had some coffee, breakfast, and then some champagne. Then it was My Turn - I sat in The Chair and began to have my hair and makeup done. From there, I was facing a clock dead on. I watched with anticipation as both hands approached the 12, then with discomfort as the minute hand hit the 6, and then with rising panic as it passed the 12 again, and passed the hour hand pointing at the 1.

Five minutes later my makeup girl finally gave me a Murray Walker-esque 'Go GO GO!' and I ran downstairs, literally jumped into my dress, had my bridesmaids zip me up, and ran back upstairs to grab my bouquet and my shoes. Outside there was just time for a quick photo and then - uopa! - into the car we squashed, and sped off into the busy centre of Brussels.

It would be two hours later before I realised that I'd completely forgotten to put on my veil - the first accessory I focused on in my wedding planning to embody the image I wanted - and a further 5 hours after that that I realised I'd completely forgotten to write up my vows for our personal ceremony - leaving me with a scribbled piece of paper of half-remembered things and huge gaps where I had wanted to put the love in.

Today, these two issues are still smarting. But in the grand scheme of things, neither caused the world to end, neither ruined the wedding, and neither were unfixable after the event. We will have a 'Rock the Dress' photo session next year, and I will wear the veil. I have written up my vows in full and in the way I wanted to read them, and will give them to him soon. I'm moving on, with no regrets.

...none whatsoever.

For more similarly themed projects, get yourselves over to the Punky Scraps blog this week for the first challenge of November. You'll love what the team have done, and you'll probably love the challenge, too. Thanks for reading my stress story. Now it's out there it feels much, much further away and an entirely tinier problem. See? No regrets!

After the Market

Yesterday I was at market. While many of you I'm sure were having a nice, relaxing Sunday, maybe at home or maybe strolling around a craft fair yourselves, I was behind a stall. Operating (or trying to) in French. And today I'm exhausted :-)

I just wanted to show you a few things I made for sale.

...Some altered wooden hanging hearts...

...a clipboard (I confess, I copied the one my mum made for me below)

...some embellishments...

...some gift tags (actually these are leftovers from a batch I made ages ago)...

...and some tags that my mum made for me to sell...

...as well as a couple of altered frames...

There were some other things I made too, but I'll share these another day - have to catch up on some sleep now!

Project Restyle

The other week I came across a great little venture started up by Elsie at A Beautiful Mess called Project Restyle. Since it just happens that I have oh, about a million restyle ideas, it kind of made sense that I would join in. If only to make me actually get onto them and get them done.

My first one comes in the form of a picture frame. Not too adventurous. Just dipping my toes in the water. This is what it looked like before I got started:

It wasn't even wooden. It was coated with some weird vinyl paper with a grain design on. I didn't discover this until I came to stamping on it - my hand and the stamp almost skidded off the edge and ruined the whole thing. Actually you can't even really see the smudge:

That was the Stazon phase. I'm loving the Stazon at the moment - it's going on everything I can find. Then came the Distress Ink and Cosmic Shimmer Mist phase, a short heat embossing phase, and  finally the dressing up the image phase (sadly I can't take credit for the artwork itself- that's thanks to these guys):

 

And a couple of close-ups:

 

And that's my first Project Restyle task. I'll aim for something a little bigger next time.

Oh, before I go, let me remind you that the True XOXO Girls blog's January Lift Challenge is underway - my page here is up for lifting among many others. The sweet and juicy prize is donated by the Sweet Peach Crop Shop and it looks like this:

Taking Over

Christmas certainly seems to be taking over. This is my first real Christmas in the blogging world, and wow, is it filling my screen and my ears and my thoughts. Everyone is so excited and creative at this time of year.

I have a little project to show. It's a decoration that you can hang on the wall or lean on the mantelpiece. I actually used this one as the project for my Christmas craft class at the end of November. With the youngest student being 7 years old, I was a little worried that it would be too fiddly, but I was amazed at everyone's creativity, patience and skill.

My Christmas shadow box:

Decorating Christmas

Right now I'm working on a Christmas shadow box that on Sunday I'll be teaching to a group of teenagers. It's not ready yet, though, so instead I've got a smaller, less shadowy frame to show you.

It's a simple, cheap, wooden Ikea number, painted in a matte green. I cut a lot of trees using the Cricut, and I messed around in Inkscape for ages making the beautiful jumping deer (also eventually cut using the Cricut). Then I stuck everything together.

Simple, but quite cute, I think.

Halloween 2010: A Brief Encounter

Shocking. I LOVE Halloween. And how much time have I had to craftily spend on it? Not much. Not much at all. Certainly not enough.

I'm so grateful, then, that one of my friends, whose surprise birthday party it was last night, is a punky-metally kinda girl. I used my new skull stamp to make her a card, and a bit of halloweeny inspiration to make her a photo frame. And then I liked the frame so much that I made one for us too. And put the skull in it. So OK, maybe I had a teeny bit of time to make one small Halloween decoration. Ahhhh - that's better.

For the card, I added a small blue heart gem to one of the eyes. I love that. Looks a bit piratey, a bit evil, and a bit lovely too. I also used a very noisy embossing technique - which I'll show you on Tuesday.

I did the same for the skull I put in the frame. 

For the frame, I sprayed some Cosmic Shimmer Mist over some star masks and then stamped a couple of images on in grey ink. And I stamped a couple of other images in glue and covered them with flock.

And of course, I made cookies. I couldn't resist. They went into the spidery bowl for the trick or treaters who have just left - and left me with nothing but crumbs.

And finally, I found a first use for the birdcage...

 I hope everyone had a very happy halloween!

 

Art for Art's Sake

I love the circular nature of art.

In December we visited the Magritte museum here in Brussels, and I gained a lot of insight into this man's mind, whom I had only known previously for a hat, an apple and a pipe (or not a pipe, if you prefer).

In July, during the National Day celebrations, we witnessed a group of drama students interpreting Magritte and his work. My talented fiance took a photograph which subsequently inspired me to make this album (during the super-rainy August we had). But I knew there was more. I just had to wait for it to come out.

And this is what came out:

A tribute to Magritte, to Brussels, to Belgium, to art. Here are the 'don't be afraid' splodges:

 

 I used bubble wrap and a plastic cup to imprint the patterns on the canvas. And added some French newspaper and raindrops.

 I cut out the words with the Cricut, purely because I got to choose my exact font that way.

And there you go. That's my homage to Magritte. 

Texturally Speaking...

A lot of what I'm doing lately in my scrap runs deeper than paper. Most recently, it's been about getting over fears. No change today. Inspired by the 'child's style' used by Chocodeline in this project we did together, I've been playing around with acrylic paint - and lots of it.

Gone is the fear of just slapping it on. Worry about a finger smudge? - Gone. Concern over the thick blobs that will take ages to dry? - Gone. Hesitation over using 'different' methods? - Gone.

Here's a little peek at what I've been doing:

I'll show you the finished article on Thursday. Thanks for looking!

Feeling Fruity

I'm feeling very pleased with myself today as I've managed to tick something off of my physical To Do list. I've had a set of mini canvasses lying around for years - and I mean years - and I've finally finished them!

I usually enjoy making more detailed, messier and more random collages, so these turned out to be quite a break from my normal style. They're crisp, almost sparse, but there's enough on each to get the idea across. Individually and collectively they represent snapshots of us and a few of the things we enjoy in life.
I painted each canvas with a couple of layers of acrylic paint, and then covered them in coordinating, themed embellishments -simple.

Just a quick little crafty experiment to get some creative juices flowing after having lost my mojo for a couple of days.

Before you go, I have a question for you. I love cherries - their flavour and feel, but also their image and the things they're associated with now, like contemporary vintage (I love 1950's-style clothing). I also love cherries because they quite closely resemble my name :-). I'd love you to tell me whether you have a particular affinity with a fruit or a flower, and why!