Doing sooo many lovely things

In the last few months I've really got into scrapbooking. I needed no encouragement to use the papers or buy more and more of them. I started off doing very traditional lay outs, but am now trying to branch out and include bits of art and techniques from the altered stuff that I was doing last year. I'll post some pictures as I go along... In the mean time, here's a few cards that I scrap lifted from Wendy at My Little World of Scrap. She does some very lovely things.

My first bags

My first bags
Originally uploaded by calb1973

OK - so it's, umm, four months since I posted anything... But putting pictures on here about the morsbags I've been making seems a nice idea.

C

Tick tock

See, I told you it was olive green and gold! I finished it this morning whilst sitting in my dressing gown feeling rather ropey. I think I ate far too much last night and haven't been drinking enough water... The gold circles represent gold coins, which I really associate with Christmas but not really with advent calendars. (But I did put them in the wall hanging adventy thing for the (new) man. It's got a few lovey dovey notes and a pair of glorious plum cufflinks for 12th. Halfway 'til Christmas and the day we met in September - see how new it all is?) I've been reading a book called Journal Revolution (I'll check that), and it talks about using acrylic paints and caps and old credit cards to make marks on your journaling, which is what I was trying out here. It looks OK, but I want a bit more going on really. Under the brown envelopes, which are housing tags with the journaling, there are pictures of gold coins and a bit more space if the mood takes me.



Lumpy leg Lola is feeling much better and has a clean bill of health from the vet. She's also been hunting the mouse I found in the kitchen this morning. I'm not sure how it got in, or who brought it, but it was sitting behind the wine rack trying to ignore Lola, who seemed to want to play...

I've started today's page...

... no, really, I have! It's olive green and kraft paper and a bit of gold. It's for the prompt about 'counting down'. It's just that I had to go out to my quilters' group Christmas do. I'm the youngest woman in the group and there are always comments about them being my surrogate mothers/grandmothers and questions about my love life! This is my show and tell for the quilt group today. It's the lovely linen and cotton stocking for my (new) man (who I met on a boat, travelling down the Thames with lots of Criminologists...). God love him.



And the close up of the snowflake (see how similar it is to the one on my journal?!) which is what they should look like in their natural habitat.

4th December

Crikey, quite tired today. It's sooo nearly the end of term and I had quite a tense meeting today with a colleague I find, umm, challenging. Anyhooo, I came home and thought about this, which was nice, but it didn't stop me from having a nap. That led to watching Holby City... and then the time seemed to skip by.

So, as I'm a bit highly strung today (and that's without caffeine), I immediately thought of the perfect Christmas sending me right over the edge. In my head it would all be about the perfectly wrapped presents in fabulous colours with bows and ribbons and buttons, the beautifully laid table, the sumptous decorations and foods and me in my party frock, making the gravy without a grease stain in sight, a hair out of place or a shiny nose and pink cheeks. ARRRGHHHHHH! Trying to acheive this would send me to the gin bottle (which in this case is interpreted as 'a bad thing').

4th December
Originally uploaded by calb1973

As I was talking about naps (keep up!), I always think I'd like to come back in my next life as a cat - lots of sleeping in warm spots, lots of tickles, lots of cuddles (when I want them), lots of yummy food (bleargh!). However, it's not been much fun being my cat Lola over the last few weeks. She's had a very nasty abscess on her back leg. She looks a bit like a poodle at the moment, which she doesn't think is funny at all.

Traa laa laa!

D'ya know what?! I have no staying power, no will power. I start things and don't finish them. Last year I went to WW (the fat girls' equivalent of AA...) and started it all on about 4 occassions. See, no sticking power! Anyway, a bit of postive thinking later and I'm starting to finish stuff - or at least get 75% of the way through. So, day 3. I've been to work and come home and made my page.



It's got copies of old B&W pictures I picked up at a flea market in LA! Now, this might not be a fantastic thing to a few of you out there, but going to a flea market in LA is reallllly something for a girl who comes from Leicester... I copied them and pasted them onto cards with silly sayings. The Jones' had newspaper hats, as did Tiger. The girl on Santa's lap was amazed that she wasn't going to get presents or alternatively was asking for hard drink for her present. It was fun.

More tomorrow?!

Lottie

Day two

With my haste to post and to get stuff up, I didn't say anything about yesterday's page! It's an 8x8 (page protectors or not is the thing that I'm obsessing about at the moment - it's almost the equivalent of having the plastic covers on the sofa, and that's not me. In fact, thinking about it like this has made my choice, I'm going upstairs to take them out and to punch holes in my pages...Oooh, but does that then mean I've got to do teh backs of page?! Hmmm didn't think this one through.) Yesterday's page was lovely Basic Grey paper, some stamps and a bit of doodling. Marvellous.

Today's is something totally different for me. It's not me. It's bright and shiney and uncluttered and fresh. Hey, if I'm going to do something different in doing the journal, I'll do something different on the pages too. So, this is a snowflake from Kaffe Fassett fabric and was going to be put on a stripy, linen stocking, which I've not got around to making yet. I'll have to cut another out before I get stuck into the sewing again. Lots of lovely drops of acrylic paint have done the job too. They are beautifully irredescent (?sp).