Brummie Blogger

I'm inspired

I must be feeling inspired by this class I'm taking. Either that or there's something in the water today, as for the first time in quite a few weeks, I've not only started a layout but I've sat down and finished it as well. Not only that, but I'm now blogging about it and I'm about to post a photo of it. It's a flamin' miracle!

I had a good think about yesterday's day two prompt, but to be honest I could have quite happily sat all day looking through photos trying to find 'just the right one' to do the assignment with. When I read today's prompt, I knew straight away what I could do so I thought it would be better to do that and be caught up than get even further behind. When I do come across that perfect photo for day two, I'll just do that day's assignment then.

So, today's task was to incorporate a list onto a scrapbook page or your blog. I do have rather a lot of Disney Photopass photos from last year still waiting to be scrapped, and I'm running out of ideas of what to do with them. A list sounded a splendid idea so I've picked a photo that has a nice background showing The Tree of Life in Animal Kingdom and made a list of things we like to do in that park. I'm feeling very 'Disney-ish' at the moment so it seemed appropriate. The best bit is, I can repeat the process with photos from the other three parks so that'll be a few more layouts completed in double quick time.

 

The list says:

• Riding on Dinosaur
• Eating frozen bananas
• Watching the tigers
• Going on Safari
• Walking round The Tree of Life
• Visiting the Gorillas
• Looking for Pooh and Tigger

Paper used is all Basic Grey Marrakech, stickers are BG Marrakech, Prima and Mustard Moon.

Taking a class

I found out that my friend Bev was taking an online class called Blogging for Scrapbookers, which is being run by Shimelle. It sounded intriguing so I went over to the website to see what it was all about. I liked the look of it. I really do need a kick up the backside where my scrapbooking is concerned and I haven't been blogging much lately either. So on Sunday afternoon, Stephen signed me up as my birthday surprise.

No, it wasn't me that was surprised. It was Stephen - I didn't tell him until today. He was very surprised, but when I thanked him and told him how much I was enjoying it so far he just smiled and conceded that he did have very good taste when it came to getting me presents.

The classes started yesterday but as I was a bit late signing up I didn't get my first prompt until late on day one so I'm a day behind now. I'm hoping to do two days in one on one of my days off this week but if not, I won't stress about it. I'm off on holiday while the class is running so I'm bound to get rather behind then - I can't see any scrapping getting done while I'm away although there'll be plenty of blogging. Plenty of blogging!

So, on with Day One and my intentions for the class. I'm hoping to blog daily but I won't worry if I don't. I'll try to do something, even if it's just a few lines. What I'm really hoping to get from the class is to get into the habit of blogging more and to start Scrapbooking again. I know blogging is a very useful tool for scrapping, which is one of the reasons I blog so much on holiday. When I come to scrap the holiday, I can pretty much cut and paste the text to use for journalling and I have the dates/times/places all there without the need to look anything up. Plus the sense of fun and adventure and awe is still there when I blog about a day feeding giraffes or going up in a helicopter so I hopefully capture that in the post, and then in the scrapbook page too. What I need to do, is learn to do that all year round.

As requested, I've taken photos to document my working space. I have a long, narrow craft room. I Surf and blog at one end, and scrap at the other. I also scrap in the middle as I have another desk, but that's taller and is used mostly for stamping and painting as I prefer to stand for that.

This is my Blog space. Note the essentials - Ipod, coffee, Winnie-the-Pooh mouse mat, selection of dictionaries and reference books.

 

This is my Scrapping space. Most of the storage is on Ikea units, and is out of sight on the right. Sewing machine strictly for scrapping only. I hadn't realised how untidy it was under the desk until I looked at the photo. Maybe I'd better tidy that up a bit...

There, I can feel all virtuous now - Day one task complete. Maybe I'll even do a scrapbook page for it at the weekend when I've more time.

Decorating binge

Last week's decorating binge went really well. The back bedroom/gym is done apart from a few bits that can't be completed until we can move furniture into other rooms when they've been done. The front bedroom is coming along nicely. We emptied it, which took a lot of doing as it was full of clutter having been our living room for the past twenty years. The charity shop has had a windfall! When it was completely empty, we stripped wallpaper, ripped up carpet, removed skirting, and sanded and filled the walls. I spent several hours chiselling glue off the back of the plastic skirting so it can go back on when the flooring is down - that was fun, I like playing with hammers ;-)

We've just been doing some more wallpapering - a couple more hours after work tomorrow will finish that and as the undercoat is on the woodwork, it won't take long to do the painting. We need one or two coats of paint on the wallpaper - we've used lining paper again, and then the floor can go down.

I haven't posted any pretty pictures for a while so here's a layout I did a few months ago but hadn't got around to uploading ->

We took advantage of one of the perks of staying on Disney and went to several 'Extra Magic Hours'. This was Epcot at night. You can see the delightful wristband that Stephen is wearing so the cast members know we're allowed to be there. They fasten them on well - they don't come off without scissors.

Epcot is lovely at night, especially when the fountain is going and I'm quite fond of this photo as the dark hides the other people lurking behind us.

All this uses is Basic Grey Granola - paper, chip sticker, border sticker and alpha stickers. I do love Granola - blues and browns - bostin'!

Almost as cute as meerkats

We spent quite some time watching and photographing these guys on holiday last year. They are cute, aren't they. Not as much as Meerkats, who I can watch for hours, but still pretty adorable. I think it's the way their tails wave around when they walk and the way they lounge around. They make for some very scrappable photos so here we have yet another layout.

More Basic Grey, this time Archaic. I'm going to be gutted when that's all gone as it's by far one of my favourite lines. There're a couple of Prima flowers on there and the alpha is QK Frankie. Based on a Becky Fleck sketch from the book.

 

The layout was done before the weekend, but of course I've only just got around to uploading it. I've been rather busy since I broke up for this week off work doing work on the house. We now have a gym set up in the hottest room in the house - where else - but it was a room full of pretty much just 'stuff' a few days ago and now boasts a treadmill, music, and a tv & dvd to distract from the actual exercising. Not to mention the redundant aircon unit from the coldest room in the house (don't ask). I think that's not bad going.

We're currently working on the next room, which will be a spare bedroom. It's now empty of the 'stuff', and it's amazing just how much stuff there was in there. Seven bookcases for starters, plus two built in walls of bookshelves floor to ceiling and both eight foot long. Yes, and just think of all those books I had to sort through and be ruthless with 'cause I did not keep all those bookcases and the shelves have all gone. The charity shop is very happy.

There's just a wee bit of wallpaper to come off then the carpet will come up and we're hoping to be at the putting wallpaper back on stage at some point tomorrow. I'd like to think we might get some floor down before the end of the week but that may be a tad optimistic as we're out for dinner on Friday and I'm out cropping with Chris and the girls on Saturday. I'm very much looking forward to that as I haven't been down to Paperarts in ages so it'll be grand to see everyone again.

Tiger's eyes

Tigers. Can't resist 'em. This one was a beauty, and he was so close. Ok, there was this huge pane of glass between us but you can't see that in the photo so the larger of the two pics looks darned impressive, if I say so myself. I really was only about four feet away from him, and that only because he was on a walkway above my head. Isn't he just gorgeous. We had this love affair going on for about ten minutes, just staring lovingly into each others eyes. I'm pretty sure he was comtemplating me as lunch more than anything but that's ok. It's in his nature...

So, a layout. Yes, I really am on a roll now. I'm reading less and scrapping more. I've even put down my books long enough to clear out the room that will be the gym and later today I'll be moving some stuff back into it as Stephen managed to put a lick of paint round it yesterday. Photos to follow.

Right back to this layout. Here is today's offering. Scrapped last weekend but it's taken me this long to get around to photographing it...

Paper, stickers, alpha are all Basic Grey Granola. Background paper donated by Ang as she knew I'd have some Tiger photos knocking around somewhere. Thanks Ang :-)
Becky Fleck sketch from the book and umm, that's about it really. TFL

Rhinos and sketches

I do like a good sketch to get me kickstarted into scrapping. Sometimes the resulting layout looks nothing at all like the sketch, sometimes it's a carbon copy, but it always gives me a starting place which is what's needed. I've got books of sketches by Becky Higgins which I pull out occasionally but usually now I look at the monthly offerings by Becky Fleck and the book by her, which I use a lot.

That said, I'm always on the look out for new sources of inspiration so when Louise put some sketches on her site I thought I'd have a go at using one of them. Now I'm not sure if this looks much like the sketch as of course the folder of photos I pulled out didn't have just the right size of photos in it, but it's similar. The main elements are in pretty much the same places which saved me all that tedious moving bits around for hours.

 

I used June sketch No:3 which is here

The title would have been bigger - I did intend to do it on the Craft robo but by the time I got around to that bit, Stephen was in bed and if I tell you that the robo is directly beneath the bedroom, and if you've ever heard a robo, you'll understand why I used my 'bug instead.

Also, I really needed to use a teeny bit of Archaic on there. No layout is complete without some Basic grey. And yes, I could have printed the journalling directly onto the background but I'm a wee bit in love with my new spellbinder dies so I needed to use those.

So, it's similar to the sketch, but the important thing is that I started off using a sketch, thanks for that Louise, and very quickly, with no faffing around, had a completed layout. With actual journalling on it.

The other layout from the weekend

Yes, I did actually manage to decide on an alpha for that layout and it is finished. Goodness, what a riot of creativity that box of stash sparked. Four layouts in as many days. I like this one best of all, I think. I love this photo - well it is Winnie the Pooh, and the colours in the pretty new papers went perfectly with it, even it it doesn't look that way on screen.

 

The paper is Graphic45 Botanicabella, there's stitching, old bazzill chips, spellbinder usage, sizzlets, a prima flower and all inspired by a Becky Fleck sketch.

A scrappy weekend

Oh yes, not only were two layouts produced on Thursday, I did two more over the weekend too. One was completed yesterday and the other just needs me to make up my mind which of my many alphas will look best on it and then it'll just take a couple of minutes to finish it.

This is the finished one. As you can see, we're back on the Disney photopass ones.

 

It did start out using more of my shiny new stash but it didn't work as well as I thought it would with the photo so out came the Marrakech which, let's face it, is made to go with Goofy photos. And yes, before any smart alec points it out, that is a peacock hiding its head under the photo. There's no way I'm going to be using a peacock sticker on anything any time soon so let's pretend it's just a pretty pattern, ok?

I did use some of my new distress stickles and ink on the very old chipboard, and there are some dots of stickles down the edge of the photo as well. I had fun with that - I haven't played with stickles for ages and these are lovely and grungey coloured.

Right, let's see if I can narrow down the selection and pick an alpha for the other layout and then hopefully I'll have something to stick on my blog tomorrow...

With a little help from my friends

I'm feeling an awful lot better today. I've had lots of cheery messages of support from friends, including a few sneaky hugs. I've been reading some teen vampire novels, (comfort reading) and listening to The Killers practically non-stop. Yup, feeling better.

It also helped a huge amount when this arrived today.

 

A pizza box with some seriously gorgeous stash in it. Ink, paper, card, bling, flowers and three beautiful handmade cards. The stash is just very, very lovely and very, very me. The cards were perfect, and the messages inside two of them almost had me choking with laughter. I have some very good friends - Thank you.

And, I was so chuffed with my new stash, it actually inspired me to go and do some scrapping and I was beginning to think I'd forgotten how. To start with I was in a bit of a quandary. That lovely sheet of paper on the top is double-sided. Double-sided paper/card, I'm convinced is designed specifically to drive scrapbookers insane. I mean, which side do you use when they're both stonking? So, I solved the problem by scrapping straight onto the sheet then turning it over and scrapping onto the other side. Both sides used and amazingly I've produced two layouts in one afternoon. And - I still feel like doing more!

But, before I get carried away, here's the two I did today, using my shiny new stash. You might know I'd have giraffe photos ready to scrap.

 

And on the back of that is;

 

Right, loads of lovely stash left to play with, what shall I do next...

Good grief - it's a layout!

In a mad spurt of creativity I've finally finished the layout that has been sat on my desk for the last several weeks. It's mainly consisted of the background cardstock, the Crate paper die cut card, the Hambly transparency and the photo during that time. A Bank Holiday challenge to use three of something on a layout prompted the three fonts, hence the three part title and it sat for another week after that.

Today I gave up, and pulled out the Basic Grey. Archaic matched nicely and I'd already used the alpha stickers out of the collection pack so a couple of stickers and a brad from the set, plus some photo turns with brads to help hold the transparency in place, and I'm calling it done.

I used to scrap so much quicker than this. Is it because I'm reading more so don't have the time? Is it because I've been concentrating on other forms of crafting temporarily? Or is it because once I get my backside in the computer chair it doesn't want to seem to move again? Perhaps I should learn to use the off switch...

Anyway, now it's finished, you may as well see it. Sigh, not much to it really, is there. Still, another one done, and I do quite like that transparency on the photo so it'll do.