Been a while...

I've had a bit of a block recently, return of the depression! So I've hit the Prozac again, hoping normal service will be resumed shortly....

I found a photo of me in one of my old files that I'd printed (properly, in a darkroom, when I still had that luxury!) with the aim of framing - but times have changed, so I decided to scrap it instead. It's a particular favourite - I've still got the bike, seven years later and we've done a lot of happy miles since then.


This is me on my beloved Triumph, having done a not too slow lap of the TT course on the Isle of Man in 2001.

I wanted to do a layout that combines quite a blokish lifestyle with the fact that I am actually not a fella! Hence the purple spangly bits mixed up with a spanner...

The paper is Old World from DCWV, as is the title lettering rub-on. The white swirl is Wholy Cow from Basic Grey (had to get some in there!), the purple swirlies on the photograph and silver ones on the black squares at the bottom are stamped (Autumn Leaves elegant flourishes). The little spanner is Karen Foster, and the Triumph lettering in the box is from Papermania. The Celtic thing is an old pendant, and as for the keys, I photographed the bike key, and printed it on shrink plastic to make a mini set. Oh, and the jumbo bookplate is Basic Grey too. Think that's it!

Good crop yesterday!

Well, it's raining (so no allotment or archery today), and there's no rugby on, so here I am again. Had a great time at the crop yesterday and won the challenge again, rather embarrassingly...


Most of us did St David's Day layouts rather than Easter in the end - dragons and daffodils galore, which was lovely. The crop website is here and well worth a visit. Much tea was drunk, mostly by me and Sian, and I managed not to spend too much money...

Gladys Friday

Didn't get any scrapping done today - busy with college, helping old ladies with the supermarket shopping and taking the sprog to the soft play place. Still, it's the Ponty crop tomorrow, so I can have a whole day to myself, rearranging small pieces of paper ;-) I'm only doing the mini-book class, as I've had quite a good idea for the challenge (an easter or St David's Day layout using yellow and green), which will take a while to make all the elements and slap it all together so it looks nice!

I won the challenge last month with "Oscar on the subject of Hearts", so no pressure there then. I used Black Tie paper from Basic Grey, the title was hand cut and glitter embossed, and the journalling was reverse-embossed on acetate. The red chiffon ribbon heart is attached with red gem brads, and there's little red glass mosaic tiles dotted around, I also used these to make a strip with the date on. It's inspired by a conversation we were all having in bed one morning - my 4 year old son was listening to our heartbeats and said: "I've got a little heart; Mummy's got a big strong heart; and Jay-Jay, you've got an old heart!" The layout had to be black, white & red, feature a heart and use two photographs. I hope tomorrow's effort turns out as well...

Displacement therapy...

I'm supposed to be tidying, cleaning and generally rationalising my craft area (not to mention the rest of the house), so in order to put that off for a little longer, I thought I'd do this instead.

I've only ben scrapping for just over a year, having taken thousands of photographs on a trip to visit my brother in Cairo, I wanted to display them in a slightly more interesting way than my usual albums. I've always been into crafting, and as photography is my passion, it's the ideal hobby for me.

This is my favourite layout so far, it's an A-Z of me. Most stuff I do is about my family, so I happily spent a week making 26 little tiles - each a mini layout in it's on right. Under the title block is a mini-book with a very brief life story of me as well. I didn't feel the need to mention that I love purple - kind of figured it was self evident! The paper is mostly DCWV's Old World, together with acetate, leather scraps, ribbons and other shiny things I had in my box.

My words were (not all clear or big enough in the pic): Allotment, Biker, Cup of Tea, Daydreamer/Depression, Egocentric, Flibbertigibbet, Glasses, Happiest Horizontal, Imaginative/Impulsive, Jay's favourite person, Knit, Lazy, oscar's Mummy, New rock boots, Optimistic, Photographer, Quarrelsome, Reading, Surreal, Tall, Unique (with thumbprint!), Voluptuous, Warm, eXcitable, Yak yak yak yak yak, snooZe.

This layout was the result of a very silly rainy afternoon - just mucking about with the camera on the sofa. Well, people don't always want to smile when you shove a camera up their nose, do they? Half the fun of scrapping is experimenting with the slightly less pretty photographs...