Adventure February 2014

Hello My Dear Readers

It's that time when another month rolls around and I review my words of the year, Clean & Adventure. I'll skip by on the Clean this time around. I'm still incorporating it into my life and I have great plans in the year regards it. However, nothing of note happened during February.

Adventure on the other hand was to be found aplenty in the shortest month of the year. Most of it occurring in the last ten days. I sneaked a scheduled post in last week to throw you off the scent but I've been away in Switzerland, surrounded by stunning snow-laden mountains and glaciers.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I began the month downloading and completely failing at the game, Flappy Bird. I deleted it the day before the inventor pulled it.

The beginning of the month also saw terrible floods in the UK but here in the North West, we had an evening of hurricane force winds such as I've never been in before. The devastation to the trees around here was quite something.

Then, for Valentine's Day, Nick & I between us, experimented with creating a pizza with a base made from cauliflower instead of the usual bready dough.

The rest of the adventures come from the holiday in the Swiss Alps. We did it all by train and it included a day travelling on the Glacier Express, taking us deep into the snowy mountains. The trains had panoramic windows to enjoy the breathtaking scenery and it may be a cliche but it really was.

There were several new culinary tastes to be had on the holiday but I selected for this page, the incredibly moorish cake, biscuit type things. It's like deep friend batter coated in icing sugar and they taste of doughnuts. I could have eaten the country's entire stock of them.

At one of our stops along the way, we stretched our legs walking across a frozen lake. For no reason better than neither of us had ever done so before.

Finally, as a lesser first, I bought a never-tried-before lip balm from a Swiss branch of the Lush chain. The staff were as lovely as they are in the UK. In the cold climate, it was a mistake not to have packed some balm. I was chapping where no guy should be. When faced with the array of different varieties that Lush sold, the girl at the counter pointed to the Honey version and told me that this was the one best suited to those who love kissing. In that moment, I was sold.

And that has been my adventurous month. I could prattle on for pages and pages about the holiday and I'm patting myself on the back for keeping this post so succinct. Between us there are well over a thousand photos to sift through and oodles of wonderful memories. So when I have a moment, I intend to create a slideshow of the best so that we can happily relive the holiday for years to come.

For now, there's only the grim reality of washing and ironing :)

An Impressive Scrapbooking Tool

I was listening to the latest episode of the Paperclipping Roundtable the other day. It's all about Christmas pages, which isn't my favourite topic but actually despite the festive theme, it was an enjoyable hour spent with it playing on my headset as I strolled down by the river.

If you are a regular listener, you'll know that at the end of each show, the panel choose a pick of the week and one of them lead me to an astonishing new online tool.

It's called The Story Swoop and it's from Debbie Hodge.

On the podcast, the panellist who picked it, enthused at how well it worked. She picked an ordinary photo that held, so she thought, no particular story and after running it through the Story Swoop, ended up in tears, with the tale it elicited. So I thought I'd try it out.

I picked a random photo which I thought as ordinary & without a story. Honestly I put no thought into it. I uploaded it to Story Swoop and followed their instructions. And blow me down, it happened to me too. I had no idea how it would work but I ended up with a story and a layout, and a lump in the back of my throat, from a photo I initially felt had no tale.

I'm not saying that Story Swoop will only give you poignant stories. That's just a coincidence. It's designed to help you come up with all manner of journalling. So it's worth giving a go to see what happens.

Yes, it's about my Mum. Yes it comes about from her illness. And actually, for the most part I'm okay about it. She's been ill a long time. Long enough for grief and sorrow to pass along into acceptance. But there is a chink in the armour. I do miss lots of little things, true. But it's Mum's smile and her laugh that will always catch me out. It's a quality she and my brother share. Unlike those two, I rarely laugh until tears roll down my cheeks. But to them it's as natural as breathing.

And it's that quality and how it affects me which came to light when I wrote about this photo.

I want to try this clever tool again. To pick another random photo. Perhaps without a person in it this time and see what transpires. I'm crossing fingers for a funny fable next time.

Not One Layout. Oh No.

This is the post I was going to upload yesterday but changed my mind on hearing of the death of Araucaria.

I knocked up two very quick layouts. They're both very simple, bells and whistle-free designs. Play time, as it is for everyone, is in short supply at the moment. However, I wanted to capture the past weekend whilst it was still fresh in my memory.

The first one is about our trip to Manchester for a bit of culture and bit of shopping. And I know I say this every time I visit an art gallery, but if you're local to Manchester, go and visit the Manchester Art Gallery and see the tapestries by Grayson Perry. It's free. There are six in total, so you don't need to plan for more than half an hour there. However, I would recommend you extend your visit, like we did, with a stop at the cafe for tea and a nibble.

That was Friday. On Saturday we woke to a perfect day of blue sky and sunshine. As I collected the morning paper, the urge came upon me to boot up and go heading into the Peak District National Park. In particular, we decided upon Macclesfield forest. The circular walk we do is one of my favourites. Especially when we head deep into the woodland. There's something wonderfully ethereal and unreal about it. Mind you, there's also something very satisfying about finding an old church to sit in front of, looking out onto the hillsides and wildlife, whilst biting down on a scotch egg and drinking from a flask. Those moments I treasure. I'm a simple soul somedays.

Simply A Moment

I took a few moments out of my Friday to stop and write about what was happening around me. This is, of course, something I've done before. And it's prompted by the most captivating blog you'll ever come across, Trimming The Sails. On the 15th of each month, Alexa encourages us to pause and note the details of simply a moment.

Then we blog them in any fashion we choose, to share online.

The journalling reads:

I’m sat, as I ever am, in my office slash craft room. The house is silent, though I’m not alone.  Nick is sat downstairs. I’m guessing he’s still reading the paper. Though it’s cold outside, the heating isn’t on, so there isn’t even the faint noise from the boiler or the pipes. There’s just the scratch of my pen across paper as I mindmap my moment.

In front of me is the screen of my computer. It’s just finished playing a video on youtube. An educational five minutes showing how to draw a heart with Illustrator. I can already draw them but I’m going through a whole batch of videos to pick up tidbits. It’s those shortcuts that are always so useful. And the way the instructor constructs her shape is very different from me. I’m seeing shapes in a whole new way.

As I look up from my writing, I note there is a box of Ginger & Lemon tea bags and a tube of Molton Brown shaving lotion. Both are items I’ve placed there as an aide memoir. The Lipton tea is hard to come by. I found it in the Co-op quite by chance but now they’ve sold out and I haven’t seen them in any other supermarket I’ve tried. And it’s a really good, strong flavour. Warming too, in these cold months to come. The shaving lotion is a treat for myself at the end of the month. I want to check out prices. Molton Brown is purely a shop for occasional treats. I’m due a trip to Manchester soon, so will want to dive into one of their shops.

Behind me, taunting me, is my A3 drawing pad. The crisp white, virgin white paper on top, remnding me that I still haven’t sat down and scribbled some ideas for next week’s project. I was supposed to do it this week but I keep putting it off. Even doing this is a distraction from what I should be doing. When the house is as still as it is right now, is the perfect time to generate new sketches.

I’ve just emitted a dry cough. It’s a tickle in the throat I’ve had for about a week. It’s not any worse or better. It stays the same. Not bad enough to do something about. Just ignore it and hope it takes it’s course soon and goes.

I distract myself further, looking at emails. I’m awaiting an answer from a software company. I’m tempted to update some software. First time I gave in, I found the payment method wasn’t working on their site. They replied to say they were having technical issues. They offered up a 10% discount code. That doesn’t work either. However, the payment gadget now does. But they’ve offered a discount & I’d like to take advantage of it. So it’s still in abeyance. Waiting for them to reply.

I finish scribbling. The moment is up. I can return to my videos and play around building up simple shapes into more complex ones, twisting, tweaking, pulling and pushing them around with the click of a button.

To read Alexa's beautiful journalling and others who have joined in, go here. Bring a cup of something warm with you too. I promise you'll become addicted and spend more than a moment reading them.

Whopper Whelks

Apart from Macarons, you may also know from reading my blog that when in France, my other foodie treat is seafood (Fruits de Mer), especially and above all else, Whelks (Bulots). Whenever we drive over there, our first food shop always includes prawns, whelks and occasionally, shrimps.

Back in Manchester, seafood is rarer than Macarons. I've only ever found live whelks in Manchester's Food Market. And on average, I come across them once a year. So when I do, I buy everything they stock.

But I have never seen them so late in the year.

Until now.

And what's more, these weren't your average whelks either. They were giants. You can see from the photo in my layout. I placed a whelk saved from my last trip abroad next to one of these beasts. Over twice the size!!!

So there I was, walking through Manchester, carrying a large white bag containing two kilos of whelks. And I bet I was the only one. They were even plonked onto the seat next to me on the train journey home. Thankfully, no-one enquired about what lay inside, clattering around.

We cooked them up that evening, let them cool and tucked in with lashings of naughty mayonnaise plus a decent serving of dark green veg.

Well, we don't have them everyday now.

It's Been A While

It's been quite some time since I last produced a scrapbook page. Especially a hands on one. My scrapping has very much morphed into that of a digital format, which I print out and stick in my album. I've lost the joy that can be had from going with the flow and just making a page without the use of computer software.

So whilst I was listening to a podcast from Paperclipping Roundtable, my ears pricked up at the end when one of the guests mentioned an idea she had for a different way to scrap. Her thought was to make two layouts, each 12" x 6" format. On one she would place the journaling and the other she would have the design with photo and embellishments.

Now I'm not keen on going down the 12x12 route again with scrapping. I'm staying with A4. But it made me think. Could I journal in the bottom third only, leaving a blank square space above to design as I choose, in a more hands on approach? No computers, no sketches. Just photographs, paper, stamps and embellishments (flat ones at that). To just enjoy pushing stuff around a square space until I was happy.

And this is what happened when I put that thought into practice.

You all know by now that last month, Nick had a hernia operation. Well, for me, the story in that episode was not the operation itself. It was the fear of an unexpected worse case scenario. Of course, everything turned out perfectly fine. It's now easy to laugh it off and admit what a dope I was for panicking in the first place.

As for the scrapping. I loved doing a design without a plan. Just pushing papers around and seeing what gives. It felt like crafting should feel like. It loses something when done completely digitally. I'll definitely be doing this more often.

As always, thank you ever so much for dropping by

Being Bold

Good Morning My Lovely

I trust you've had a wonderful weekend with or without a bank holiday. It's certainly been sunny and warm here. Most unusual for the extended break we have at the end of August. It's typically known for being shockingly wet. So it made a welcome change to spend a good part of it outdoors.

Now if you've been following me here for some time, you will already know I'm a rabid fan of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It's been a while since my last visit and both Nick & I were itching to see the new exhibits. So on Friday, we trundled off to take in the fresh air and cultural delights.

By the end of our visit, I came away feeling strangely enthused by the works of the current exhibitied artist, Yinka Shonibare. It's even affected my latest scrapbook layout...

Yup. I've gone all vivid with bright colour for a change. I'm more typically drawn towards an earthy palette and desaturated hues. But I have to say, I'm loving bright colour today. Okay, it's a one off. It fits the mood of the piece. I love colour but I'm not one for over using the in-your-face neon colours. Though I have heard on the crafting vine that neons are very much on trend.

Maybe I'm caught up in the joy it brought to see such colourful sculptures, on a warm day, out in the countryside, soaking in gorgeous panoramic views. I felt completely calm and like a kid on his summer holidays. 

The rest of the weekend was spent pottering around. No plans, just going where the mood took me. Even tried to finish the trashy novel I'm reading at the moment. Oh and as you may see, I spent a little time tinkering with my blog settings. With a little bit of googling, I learnt how to access a wider range of fonts.

Thank you for stopping by

Experiencing Firsts in London (and was I sworn at in a posh retail store?)

Well what a weekend I've had. So much has already happened since my last post. All good, I hasten to add (well, Nick had his bike stolen outside a department store where we live which obviously isn't good but we're being pragmatic about it, no-one was hurt, no devastation was caused). So, yes. When I last wrote, I mentioned I was dropping in on London for the day.

The day started disgracefully early when my alarm clock rudely pulled me out of sweet slumber at 5.00am. In fact, as I walked to the train station, I just had to pull out my camera to capture the beautiful red sky as dawn was breaking.

The train journey down was wonderfully peaceful and I arrived in London at 8.00am, feeling like a little kid with the giddy buzz of being in the capital once more. First stop was King's Cross St Pancras station, home to the Eurostar trains, for a spot of breakfast at the oh-so-expensive but oh-so-delicious Le Pain Quotidien. Patting my stomach, where it was newly lined with scrambled egg and mint tea, I headed to Borough Market. There's no way I can go home unless I have paid a visit to Mrs King's and purchased a couple of her sinfully good stilton pork pies.

Next stop, was Laduree (well of course, you knew I would), where I experienced my first first of the day. Okay, I didn't experience it until later that evening to be strictly honest, but I opted for a selection of their new marshmallow flavours. The photo above doesn't show them as we'd munched them before I had the opportunity to grab my camera.

Opposite Laduree, was Fortnum & Masons, where I purchased a couple of boxes of my newest addiction, Smokey Earl Grey Tea. Now, inside my rucsac were a couple of very strong cheeses which had definite nose and I could already sense their pungency seeping through. I knew that people would be avoiding me by the time I sat on the train home and I could clear the underground out in minutes. I needed a plastic bag to wrap them in. So, when I went to the till to pay for my tea and saw the guy put them in a plastic bag, I asked ever so sweetly if I could have a spare one (which I was going to wrap my cheeses in). This is where I had another first.

I could be wrong but I'm pretty certain that as his head was bowed, pulling out another bag, he muttered just under his breath but ever so slightly audibly, words which were close to "for luck's sake". In a store renowned for it's overly polite staff too!!!! I hadn't told him my intention for the bag and I wonder if he thought I was just another oik wanting a freebie souvenir. I do hope I heard him correctly as it really made my day. Bless him.

Finally, at 11.30am, the real reason for going to London had come around. To meet an online friend, Richard Pettit,  whom I became acquainted with when we both did the 30 Day Challenge back in March earlier this year (do check out his wonderful vlogs). We have spurred each other on and become friends and we kept threatening to meet up one day. Well I impulsively decided to just book a ticket and do it. So there we were, meeting each other, in the flesh for the first time, in South Kensington.

And it didn't end there. Ordinarily, we could have met up, had a drink and some lunch and chatted the day away. But Richard had made plans already to meet up with a group of Illustrators and Artists. He offered to cancel or instead I could come along too. I chose to pack my pad and pencils.

So the next firsts are all linked in. Meeting a whole new group of people, sketching in a public place with them and visiting Christies. Yes the Christies. It's rather like visiting an art gallery with museum combined. Plus there's all sorts from vintage to contemporary to see. They had no problem with having a group of us littering the place and drawing away.

Finally, Richard & I headed around the corner to my favourite place, the V&A for lunch. Once again I was lucky enough for the weather to be warm enough and allowing us to eat outside by the water feature. Bliss.

Time ran on and I missed my allocated train home by 30 seconds. Thankfully, the trains run every twenty minutes and the one I eventually caught was virtually empty. So yet again, a peaceful journey.

Loved being impulsive! Must do it more often.

Thanks for dropping by and indulging me this wordy post. I do hope you had a fun weekend too with plenty of memories made.

Simply A Moment in July

As much as I'd like to join in every month with Alexa's Simply A Moment project, I find that I forget all too frequently, to stop for a minute and note my surroundings. It's not like I'm a stranger to meditation or being still, so I really have no excuse. I rely too much on my computer and all the reminders and alarms I set on it, rather than use my noggin.

This time around, the moment I saw Alexa's post, immediately I stopped and concentrated on what was happening right there and then, before any distractions could render me forgetful again.

Not every moment is packed full of riveting stories to share and I know that isn't the point of the project. Even the mundane is a riveting read when it's someone else's life. Not sure when it's my own. Maybe I will appreciate it more when the passage of time has passed. Five, ten, twenty years down the line, my daily life will be very different and this page will remind me of the difference between them.

If you enjoy reading short passages from people's lives, check out Alexa's blog and go to the links of all those who've contributed. Maybe it'll inspire you to stop and write something too.

Thanks for dropping by

French Holiday Scrapbook 2013

I've finally had an opportunity to sit down and pool together a quick holiday album for the trip we took to France a few weeks ago. It's not quite the detailed album I would have preferred but that's my fault for not taking any notes whilst we were away. Believe me, even within all the photos we took, Nick & I were scratching our heads to remember what we did each day. It didn't feel like it at the time but when you're back home, browsing through the pictures, one beach looks very much like another.

I'm uploading here the digital version, which will be printed out to go into my album. Though they don't look it, they are actually double layouts, consisting of two x A4 size. The journaling isn't my best and I would have preferred to include more stories, thoughts and feelings but time and space didn't allow. The important thing, I realised, was to do this whilst I remembered it and, more importantly had the motivation.

 Though I'm pleased with it, I'm also relieved to have finished. I'm in the mood to start scrapbooking again and I'm itching to tell stories. But holiday albums are a whole different kettle of fish to everyday scrapping. It's more like trying to put a book together, telling one long story on several pages. What I'd like to do now is take individual stories and devote a page to each of them. Those are the scrapbook pages I love to read back through.

But first, I think I can't leave it any longer. I have to clean up my craft room. Unless I can use my favourite procrastination tool, keeping busy. I'm the master of putting off tasks by ensuring I'm so busy doing anything else but the important one. Thankfully, I know from reading other blogs and Facebook, that I'm far from alone when it comes to the thought of clearing our creative spaces. Where's the Changing Rooms team when I need them?

Clean & Simple: Week 12 - The final lesson

How did twelve weeks just fly by like that? It's the very last lesson in Cathy Zielske's Clean & Simple workshop. Thursdays won't be the same now I'm no longer logging on to watch Cathy's latest videos. And though it's the end, I can at least console myself that there are two weeks I missed doing whilst on holiday, so I can still look forward to those.

It's the same philosophy I've applied to watching my newly acquired Will & Grace Box Set. I've begun at season 6. When I come to the last episode of the final season, I'll still have season 1-5 to sit through. By the time I watch up to where I began, it won't feel like the end.

Anyway, I'm, digressing. Here's my interpretation of this seek's assignment.

This time around, using guidelines from Cathy, we were asked to produce a double A4 spread. The theme was to write about what it means to have arrived in 2013. When we were younger, we may have  wondered what life would be like as an adult. Same as a lot of kids, when I imagined myself when older, it was usually what will I be doing & look like when I hit thirty. Anything older, was inconceivable.

I didn't have room in the journaling space allotted, to dwell on how unhappy I felt as a teen and the dark outlook I saw for my future. I would be completely gobsmacked if I'd had a sneak peek into my life in my thirties and forties. My peers at school took it for granted that their lives would probably fall into a standard template; get married, have kids, grand kids etc. I didn't have a clue what I would be doing or what would be out there for me. I had to find out for myself.

What would have shaken my whole world back then, would be to have seen that here I am in 2013, to all intents, married, sharing a home with someone I've been with for seventeen years. I may have had some sad, lonely years in my teens but it didn't take long before it all started to look a whole lot brighter. It does indeed get better.

Which is what this very last homework reminded me about. There's a brilliant project called It Gets Better. You may even know about it already. It's a beautiful idea. It's a hopeful proclamation from those of us who've gone through the bad times and come through to the other side. Both celebrities and everyday folk have lent their voice to it. And I know, my younger self would have benefitted enormously from it's message.

Oh and I don't know if you can remember how I told you I kinda cheated on the last project? Well I did it again. I appreciate that you can use Photoshop to take your scrapbooking into the digital realm but if you're going to go down that route and you know all your memory keeping will be done on the computer, invest in Adobe InDesign. It's so much easier.

Have a great weekend my lovelies. I'm off to enjoy the last of the good weather and prepare for someone's birthday celebrations.

Clean and Simple Week 11 - Near the End :(

Yes it's week 11 for Cathy's Clean & Simple online course. Only one more week left. Mind you, she's given us a corker of a task this time around. Not only were we expected to create from scratch, sans template but yikes, it's a mini album. Cathy does like to sneak one into every class.

The theme for the album is Four Square and takes several topics for which the pages display four selections for each. We were invited to come up with our own ideas but heck, I liked Cathy's book perfectly and copied it page by page, adding my own minor tweaks.

Now for the photos - be warned, theres a lot of them...

And now I have a confession. I cheated! well, not so much cheated, as made life simpler for myself. The course is designed to teach folks how to use Photoshop to create digital designs. After all, Photoshop Elements is the most affordable of Adobe's software options. It wouldn't be feasible to create a course expecting people to have access to the professional's choice of software.

But for work, I have the full Creative Suite at my fingertips which includes Adobe InDesign. And InDesign is much easier for this kind of project. In fact, it is created for these particular type of project; albums, magazines, posters etc.

So rather than try to fathom out how to engineer Photoshop to produce these layouts, I used the much simpler InDesign. And my guess is that if there's anyone else following this course who has access to this software will be using it too.

Now, if I can just squeeze the time in, I'm itching to actually make something crafty and cut into my frustratingly large stack of patterned paper. Feels like such a long time since I picked up my scissors, paper and glue. :)

Clean & Simple - Week 10 : It's all a bit Cheeky!

Before you read any further, please note, to follow is a bit of a cheeky layout. It's been edited to ensure identities are hidden and bare flesh is covered. If this is likely to cause you to faint with horror at the thought, please do not read any further.

Still with me? Okay. It's Week 10 for Cathy Zielske's CAS course. And she's really turned up the educational heat with this week's homework. If you recall, last time, she had us adding our own journaling. This week, we had to produce the whole caboodle from scratch.

There was a design to follow but no template to drag and drop photos into. Oh no! This week, we had to produce the template first and then add our own photos and text.

And the theme? Well it was quite an innocuous one. The house where it all happened. Cathy's example showed her family and the home they all presently live in. I looked at the photos I had of the place Nick & I live in and felt just a teensy bit uninspired. But then I scrolled through the pics I had showing where I lived before I moved in with Nick. The ones from the third floor flat not far from the city of Manchester. It was a hedonistic time and an emotional roller-coaster of highs and lows and I have very fond memories of my time spent there.

Now this was more like it! Only problem was, that I wasn't sure I was going to end up with a layout I could post online. So I kept it light and cheeky, just on the acceptable side of ribald, I hope. And yes, there is another layout to be made one day. But the best memories I have of that time aren't for sharing here.

And I know you can relate. Yes you! That student accommodation you once shared. The tales you can tell! You know what I mean. And you know they would make brilliant stories to share in your scrapbooks. You just won't put them online or leave them around for your children/parents to read (well, not quite yet). :)

But rest assured, I'm all grown up now. The booze, fags, parties and everything else is all well behind me. I've reinvented myself as the boy next door (albeit, in his forties) who you could unashamedly bring home to your parents haha

PaperHaus Magazine

When you return from a holiday and turn on your computer, if you're anything like me, and I'm sure you are, you'll discover your email's inbox is fit to bursting with many hundreds of the darn things to be sorted. Thankfully, most of them, in my case, could be deleted.

However, it was a wonderful surprise to hear back from PaperHaus Magazine, saying that the layout I had submitted had been accepted into their latest issue.

I am truly honoured to be included in this stunning online publication. Page after page of gorgeous layouts and papercrafts. AND IT'S FREE! If you haven't seen this magazine before, go make yourself a cup of tea (or pour yourself a large G&T, I'm easy) and treat yourself to browsing through all four editions. After all, you deserve a little me time surely. Of course you do.

Clean & Simple - Week 9

Hello all - yes I'm back from a fantastic holiday in France. I'll share photos in a future post, once I've sorted through the thousands of photos that have been downloaded to the computer. There's going to have to be a severe edit. No doubt I'll be up to the early hours one evening this week, going square-eyed.

However, for now, I still have online classes to catch up on. Chief amongst these is Cathy Zielske's Clean & Simple workshop. When I left for foreign shores, I had completed up to week six. Weeks seven & eight were whilst I was away and I'll tackle those once the twelve week course comes to an end.

Which means, I'm up to week nine. Who'd have thought I was a mathematical wiz?

Strictly between you & I, the layout should be a hybrid but don't let on. I've decided to keep life simple whilst I'm limited for time (all that post-vacation washing doesn't put itself in the machine & then dry itself, mores the pity) and leave it as a digital layout.

This is the first week I've done of this course, where we've had to create elements of the page ourselves, especially the areas for the journalling and titles. Mind you, though there was a little more freedom this time around, I went for the easy option and copied Cathy's example almost exactly.

The theme was Places I Love (as you can see) and I have to admit that before I sat down and brainstormed a list of ideas, I had only the faintest glimmer of how much I love to be near water. I mean, I knew it to some extent but not how deeply entrenched it was. Believe me, the answers I came up with were as much a surprise to me. It's like a light has been switched on and yes, I see it. I'm at my most serene and contented, when I'm near water. It's just one of the many reasons I get a kick out of scrapbooking.

Well, it seems the sun has followed me home and the garden is flourishing. The temperature's still on the cool side but it won't stop me brewing up a pot of orange & cinnamon tea and taking it outdoors to enjoy. I'll hopefully be back on here with another post sometime in the week, with photos of France :)

Clean & Simple - Week 6

This will be the last page for the Clean & Simple class where I will be up to date. I'll be on my holidays when the next few lessons are posted, so expect me to be playing catch up when I return.

This week, Cathy wanted us to experiment with Extreme Minimalism. And well, for the most part I did stick with the design but I couldn't quite keep the whole page as a clean white canvas.

I had to just help it along with a texture but I did at least keep it as soft and subtle as I could.

I have to say i'm not sure about the theme but i'm going with it. Cathy is encouraging the idea of creating layouts which tell an honest story of our lives and not always the picture perfect view we normally capture. I have no problem with scrapbook albums being given a makeover and showing only happy smiley memories. But equally, I am willing to include a photo with journalling that I might not wish to look back on.

It's a digital layout so it's easy to hide on the computer or if I wish, place in the wastebasket. I'm sure it's a problem that many people have. Do they want to remember their loved ones as they were before illness or as the person they became because of it? I'm sure there's a place for both memories but ask me on another day and I may change my mind.

Time will tell.

Clean & Simple Week 5

My poor little blog will feel neglected soon. I haven't sat down and crafted or sketched anything at all recently. So nothing to show. I have spent a bit of time re-sorting out my dies into a new filing system but it's not worth photographing. Not unless you want to see plain brown ringbinders with sheets of dies inside.

However, I am still on Cathy Zielske's Clean & Simple course and committed to staying up to date. So I do now have the latest layout to share.

It wasn't a page I could easily create quickly by doing a digital version (which was rather the point of the lesson I think). The crafty Mrs C had designed a hybrid layout for us which included pockets. And as she said in her video presentation, it's not easy to recreate pockets in digital format.

So though there was plenty to do on computer first and print out, there was also a good deal of proper scrapbooking and papercrafting involved. I even dusted off my stamps and added swirls as a border.

As simple as the final result is, it still took about 4 hours from start to finish to make. Who knows how long it would take me if I had to start from scratch and design the template too. It always tickles me when I see articles devoted to creating cards in ten minutes or scrapbooks in half and hour. I've never been able to manage it.

I'm a complete tortoise when it comes to crafting. Old, slow and in need of a tub of daily moisturiser lol. The only difference is that you find me munching on lettuce leaves as a treat!

Hope you are enjoying the bank holiday weekend. I'm off to make some lunch and settle down to watch a Hitchcock film. I realised that though I know the titles of his films, there are a lot of famous movies I've never seen. So far I've been entranced by Spellbound and delighted in Notorious. I think I'll take a peek out the Rear Window next.

Clean & Simple Week 4

I'm being a mega swot again today by completing my homework only hours after the file reached my inbox. In my defence, the template this week was fairly easy. For starters, there was only one photo required and the other design elements were also simple to produce.

This week we had to journal a list about someone special. Naturally I chose my CP/DH/OH/SO or whatever the heck I'm supposed to refer to him as (I still haven't settled on a term I'm happy with). Anyway, I nabbed this photo of him from the file containing the photos from our recent trip to London.

I chose the picture of when I managed to snap a photo, sat outside Laduree, partaking of tea, in the Burlington Arcade. Cathy's advice was to try converting the photo to black & white, for it's advantage in covering up a multitude of design problems and looking arty to boot.

The papers are all Prima. The background comes from the Engraver collection whilst all the collaged elements come from Botanical.

I love following Cathy's clean style for this course and I adore the resulting pages but I know that it's more CZ than me in the design. I'm soooo tempted to start adding more dimension and elements to it and take it further away from CAS & more into another style altogether. Though I am pleased to be doing scrapbook layouts again. I hadn't realised how much I'd missed it.

Clean & Simple for Week 3

It's week three for the Clean & Simple Workshop. Cathy prepared us with two more videos, explaining the principles of design and a how-to for using the digital template, supplied this week for download.

We were supposed to produce a photo essay around one event with several snaps taken at various angles. I may try it out one day but I don't have anything relevant in my photographic history at the moment.

So I played a little fast and loose with the theme and instead put together a montage of photographs depicting the same event, even if taken at different times. As you can see, that theme is my energetic moggie, Basil, doing what he does on an average, everyday.

Teacher may decide to rap my knuckles for such blatant reinterpretation of the assignment this week and I may find myself sat in the corner of the room wearing a conical hat, emblazoned with the letter D.

However, it does mean that I'm still keeping on top of the homework and not falling behind. I'm crossing fingers that next time I'll have the appropriate pictures for the set project :)

Cathy's Class, Week 2 - Count Every Blessing

The Clean & Simple Workshop has come around again and it's week two. Lessons are posted every Thursday and I'm being a bit of a swot in doing the assignment nice and early. Well, I had a spare few hours and I know I won't have any other time. Thankfully, I'm not a newbie to the world of Photoshop, so the learning curve wasn't quite as steep as it could be.

It's also a fully digital page this week. I suppose it doesn't have to be but I'm happy to have just as it is. Whilst time is short, I can easily print this out just as it is and place in a scrapbook.

The theme behind the page, is to document ten things you are grateful for. A template was supplied but not quite as cut and paste as the week before. This time around, Cathy put us to work and we had to piece together elements of the design ourselves. So there'll be a lot more diversity this week in the class gallery. And we could choose our own colour scheme, hence the muted palette I have used here.

Mind you, seasoned pro that I am, I still picked up a few nuggets this week as well of being reminded of some principles which have been quietly forgotten in the back of my brain.

I may be prolific in my blogging this week but it won't last. A busy week ahead means I probably won't  find as much time to play and create. Will hopefully be back on track by the end of next week