Crafting in the car: Barry box

My Blogger app gives me no control over photo placement.  It's at the bottom of the entry so go have a look and come back.

I'll wait.

Okay?  No comments from the peanut gallery.  Those are Barry's legs.  LEGS.
This is a box from an online makeup shop that I have re purposed for yarn storage and dispensing expressly for making many Barrys.  I have decided that I want Barry bunting in my craft room,  so I will need to take this box with me so that every spare moment can result in an arm, a leg, a body or a head.  As you can see,  it fits quite nicely on my dashboard. 

WOYWW #303 - Hole in the chaos

Hello!  And hello especially to my fellow deskers!

For those of you who don't know the acronym in my title today, it means What's On your work desk Wednesday.  This is where I'm at today:

I spent some time tidying the desk up.  There are still piles here and there because I burst in today like a headless chicken looking for something.  Found it and left.  But before that it was looking pretty good.

There is actually work going on here... I started sticking a title down on Monday night and I walked away from it, not to return until now.  I'll be finishing it up soon.

Why is the scrapbook page upside down?

This title needed to be lined up with the top of the photo and it was too far to reach and still be accurate.  So I turned it over and I'm laying the rest of it down now, all in reverse.  You'll see the finished article soon enough if you read this blog on days other than Wednesday.  :)

Want to participate in WOYWW?  Want to snoop through some other peoples' desks?  Go here:

http://stamping-ground.blogspot.co.uk

If you've written a post about your desk along with a photo, copy the link to your clipboard beforehand.  Then you can paste it into Mr. Linky and join in with us!!

Happy Wednesday!

Cameron's Sports Day 2012

I made two identical pages like this, one for Cameron's school album and one for the family album.  Not a whole lot to say about this one except that it's some shade of red Bazzill, with blue mats punched in this cool border, another one I borrowed from Wendy at the same time as I borrowed the one I used on Victoria's Sports Day 2012 pages.  This punch makes the edge look like it was paper-pierced and the little tiny blue dots all over the table when I was finished were amazing. :)  Also, it left these little moustache shapes and I glued one of them to my face and took a selfie.  I don't know exactly where that is, but I think Facebook might be where to look.... if you're that bothered...

Anyway, voila and all that.  More scrapbooking to come soon.

Me on a Monday

It was a Crafty Delivery Saturday followed by a Surprising the kids Sunday kind of a weekend.

I took Wendy's craft tote over to her place on Saturday and we got a great deal of crafting and "buy it try it" done.

The first photo is of two of the whopping six cards I made by patching together some scraps,  and what was left after first  two.  I still had enough to make a seventh but it would have been fiddly and probably not so nice looking so I put the leftovers in the bin.

Me on Monday?

Slow start to the week because I can.  Eggs Benedict with a friend.  A walk around Rochester in the sun.  A quick shopping trip and lunch grabbed on the way to a meeting with a teacher, then a nearly completed Zentangle (sans shading) in the afternoon. 
That's the second photo.

And that's  Me on Monday.  Here's where I give a wave to Sian at:

http://fromhighinthesky.blogspot.co.uk

She is the original Me on a Monday and compiles a list of other Mondayers you can visit.  Happy Monday everyone!

Make Believe Show 2012

Victoria went to an acting, dancing, singing activity group called Make Believe when we lived in London.  She enjoyed it and made friends there.  At the end of the year they did a show in an off-west-end theatre with a semi-pro cast backing them up.

Victoria was in three numbers- A B C by Michael Jackson,  Under the Sea from The Little Mermaid and finally,  The Lion King.  For that last one, she decided that she'd rather watch the rest of the cast behind her so she sat down on the stage with her back to the audience!!

If I was a pushy stage mom I would have been fuming but you know what?  She was having a blast.  And that's what matters.  Make Believe is a fun place for kids to learn to sing, dance and act and actually enjoy doing it.  If you're a pushy stage mom and expect perfection from all the little ones sharing the stage with your star, I'm terribly sorry...

Vixie and her Mammy

Mammy is the name that we traditionally are calling our maternal grandmothers.  I was the first, because my Mammy had a nanny in the South of the USA and they called their nannies Mammy.  She loved her Mammy so much that she wanted to be called Mammy one day.

(Clarification for anyone who speaks with an Irish accent, in the USA, Mammy is pronounced the same way as Americans pronounce "Ma'am," which isn't very helpful unless you have heard that in a movie or some such... as Mammy and "ma'am-y" would sound the same in Irish too!!!)

If you recall the page entitled "My Grampa," It is made with basically the same stuff, just a bit more girly looking. :)

A Rainbow of Scrubs

A Rainbow of Scrubs.  It is what it says it is.  I just found it cool that you could buy scrubs from Wal-Mart in so many colours.  I made this a very basic page that I'm sure I have some sort of name for in my head but it doesn't translate into anything I can type.  Basically this kind of page is anchored either on the left or right with a piece of patterned paper and has a number of other layers, some torn, some punched, whatever, and then I put a smaller little cluster of strips up in the corner to echo the main layout.  I think I picked it up when I was doing Shimelle's Pretty Paper Party.  You will see a lot of this from me.  This time, I added a title cut from a Sizzlits set and a small filigree butterfly cut out of the same paper as the border punched layer of plain cardstock.  Other than choosing a solid background colour (I think this is Jacaranda by Bazzill) and matting the photo on white, that is absolutely it.

Shimelle's Pretty Paper Party had a lot of takeaway value for me, the most interesting part being the analysis of patterned papers and how to unify several patterns without making your eyes water.  I also love her Creative Stash Dive project, wihch combines several patterns and solids and using all of it up to the last possible scrap.  Great video which is included in the Pretty Paper Party class if you're interested.   Shimelle.com is the place to go if the class is still available.

Brusho Birthday Card

Ah, Brushos.  I have seen beautiful results but I am still a very young Jedi. I am not in control of their immense power... yet.

Here is a moody birthday card I created using one of my many experimental Brusho sheets.  I used a Tim Holtz stamp from the Birthday Blueprints set and applied liberal amounts of Stickles.

WOYWW - Slightly Less Chaos

Well, hello lovelies.  It's Wednesday and I am attempting to participate in What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday.

The mother of all WOYWWs  (and a list of participants) can be found at 

http://stamping-ground.blogspot.co.uk 

if you'd like a peek at some other desks...

Mine is slightly less chaotic this week, but only because I have moved the magazines into A Magazine Rack of all things!!!  We'll see how that goes...

I have been shoving aside piles to make a little hole to craft in and this table is over Six Feet Long.  Oh dear.  The spaces I had made now contain the remnants of an emergency Mother's day Cardmaking session with the kids and a stolen Floral Punchcraft moment on Sunday.  I must find time to tidy up again.

Centre stage this week are a few practice impressions I made of my Stampin Up Sale-a-bration Lotus stamp set.  It's a multi - step stamping technique and I decided to see which combinations of my 36 new Memento ink pads (yay) looked best. 

If you would like to see my picks so far, click the photo to enlarge it. 

That's all for this week... go over to stamping ground and see what everyone else has been up to!

Buy It, Try It: GlitzCraft Satin Paste and Stencils

I am posting a Buy It, Try It on a Tuesday.  Call me a rebel... Wendy of scrapbooksandcookbooks.blogspot.com is posting Buy It, Try It items as well... or here's hoping...  she is the one whose idea it was. 

The day after I bought them, I tried out my GlitzCraft Satin Glitter Paste and Stencils. I love the look, and since I have plenty of stencils and plenty of other uses for stencils, I thought this would be a great addition to my supplies.

I got them at the Make It Show in Farnborough.  See a previous post for full details of what I bought.  Suffice it to say this was my one major impulse buy because the demo was just too good!

I experienced some roll - under when applying the paste but I'm sure it's just technique and.with some practice I'm already getting better at it.

Anyway, here's some photos.  If you want to know more, pop over to Youtube and search GlitzCraft and you'll probably find a demo.  Enjoy!

Me on a Monday, 16 March

Today I'm waving to Sian from high in the sky because I'm taking part in her Me on a Monday blog thingie!

Well... this weekend has been a Sleep Between Races Saturday followed by a Squeeze in a little Craft Time Sunday.  And of course it was also Mother's day, but since my babies were seeing their grandmother at the weekend,  my own Mother's Day was Friday.  I got lovely gifts from my babies and we spent time together making cards for Nanny in the craft room. 

Today I'm hoping to continue the crafting.  I think I've been successful as I'm sitting here in the car with some card toppers that I made, just adding inky edges to them.  Nice and portable.

So that's me on this Monday.  How was your weekend?  If you want to join in,  check out who participated last week over at http://fromhighinthesky.blogspot.co.uk

(Hopefully that link works.  If not I'll be back to fix it...)

Meadow Barn Table Gifts part 3

I won't bother with posting the insides of these.

I filled the Christmas ones with some chocolate coins and one white Galaxy gift bar.  This time, I packed each little book with four individually wrapped Crispello.  They're a bit like if you broke a kinder bueno bar into individual pieces, only bigger.

There's a video tutorial on how I made these on my YouTube channel,  Happy Accident Studios.  On that video I give the credit to the one who inspired me on Pinterest.  One of those ad - packed sites like buzzfeed had hijacked it but luckily the lady watermarked her photo so I could find her.  She makes beautiful work. 

Meadow Barn Table Gifts part 2

Open and shut, here's four of my table gifts.  I may not post the insides of the rest of them tomorrow... they all look sort of the same on the inside.  I decorated the outsides very simply so that I could stack them all in the basket without damaging them.

Meadow Barn Table Gifts

Just a quick one,  I have spent a weekend with a fabulous group of crafty ladies in a barn conversion on the Welsh border.  Everyone brought a little something to give out so it was like a mini Christmas!  Or all our birthdays at the same time.  I decided to make the same chocolate boxes I made for my husband's colleagues over Christmas,  but this time they were all different.  It was fun but took quite a lot of time.  I will be dedicating a few blog posts to them because there are a lot of photos.

For now,  here they are in the basket they were brought in.

Uncle Jamie DLO

I'm really happy with this one.  This is a DLO of photos taken of my brother Jamie, his girlfriend at the time and my daughter Victoria.  It really captures their silliness and his Proud Uncle Moment while we were stealing a moment for food at Chipotle.

I wanted it to have a tatoo-ey feel to it because my brother had collected some nice ones since I last saw him.  I love his Finnish Lion tattoo that says Sisu, which can be translated as Courage but I think it's more like "Balls" or "Cajones." My mother's side of the family is half Finnish and many of us carry some stereotypical Finnish traits, the aforementioned Sisu being one of them.

I didn't see nearly enough of my brother on this particular trip and I haven't been back since.  I hope to see him in the next year or two at the latest.  I miss him.

Vixie and Grampa

Here's a simple page of my daughter and my father hanging out together.  She calls him Grampa.

I used a solid bright pink smooth cardstock, some scraps from Basic Grey collection packs, handwritten journalling and a die-cut alphabet for the title.  I think it's a Tim Holtz one, maybe Market Text or something.  It's one of those 12-inch Sizzlits dies with the alphabet and numbers on it.  I like using these, especially if I have a lot of titles to cut out at once.  It's also great to get right down to the last scrap of paper as you can just lay a small rectangle over the letters you want to cut out and roll it through.  I have even double-stacked thinnish cardstock on parts of the die and achieved a good cut on both layers.

This photo was taken in the McDonald's I used to work at in High School.  It was a lot busier then.  They have scaled it down quite a lot.  There's less seating, fewer cash registers (tills), and the layout is almost unrecognisable.  Very strange... but then it has been 20 years!!

Vixie's 1st Flight

'Tis Saturday the 7th of March and I am somewhere in a barn conversion near the Welsh border with some crazy ladies.   Here's today's page.... well, one I made earlier.

Another quick scrapbook page.  I had more story to tell than photos, so I chose a piece of lined 12x12 cardstock and I added my story and some doodles to make things more interesting.  I also found some textured tape and thought "Oh what the heck" and threw it on.

Yeah, that's pretty much my creative process with this one.... Impressive.  :S

Trip to the USA 2012 - The Start

I have a huge project ahead of me-- one of many outstanding scrapbooking projects-- and this one looks to be about 50 pages.  I went to my home state of Massachusetts to see my cousin Rose get married, and to meet up with a part of my family that I hadn't seen in over 20 years.  This is going to be a big one!

A year ago or more is when I started this.  This particular page, I just wanted to fill with photos.  The middle white rectangle that was left was so uninspiring.  The scalloped square isn't much more than that, but at least it's something.  At least this one has a story on it.  I have neglected my journalling for far too long.  Stay tuned for more of our trip.  This is Victoria at Heathrow Airport in May 2012.

Two Easter Layouts

Hey, get out your party horns!  This is my 500th post!  I thought I had more... when KraftyKaren reported her 1000th, I thought for sure I'd done as much.  Not so!!!  Happy 500th to me!

More scrapbooking!  These pages were mostly done last year.  I have been working on putting finishing touches on them.  This one needed a title, and as it's a school thing, it will be going in my album.

This orangey one has more photos on it and will be going into Victoria's school album.  I like to keep the school layouts simple because they will hopefully all fit into one single album and I want it to be less bulky.

The most important thing for me with these layouts is just to get the dates on them so that I can put them in the right year section of the school scrapbook.  My large gap in scrapbooking meant I had to do some detective work to find out the dates.  It was a quick job but precisely the kind of thing I tend to procrastinate about.

WOYWW, Chaos Edition!

It would be easier to say what's not on my desk this Wednesday.  Things that were spread all over the craft room had been moved out of the way to accommodate the guest bed for my father-in-law.  A lot of it went on to my workspace.  Now I'm trying to pack for a crafty weekend away and it's only going to get worse.

Let's see... What is actually on my desk?  I know that somewhere under there is my son's scrapbook that he started of his trip to Barcelona.  There's a little plastic tub with die cuts in it.  Closer to the top layer is a stack of Craft magazines, some with the freebies still attached. 

I've been perching stacks of other things to pack on the table as well, but most of my packing us done now.   A few more things to go, then I'll be ready to go.

Next week, I hope that I can have some time to make it workable again.

Thanks everyone who commented last week!  I will make the time to come and visit you in return.  Happy Wednesday!

For more Wednesday goodness,  check out stamping-ground.blogspot.co.uk and follow the links.

Sports Day 2012: The Single

School events are kind of confusing because of how I scrapbook.  The kids each have their own school scrapbook that they will take away with them when they leave home, plus I have our family albums.  So for each event, I could be making 2 or even 3 separate pages or layouts.

This single page is for the family album.  The double LO is for Victoria's school album and I have used the same colours and supplies for it.

I still have a thing for Kraft paper and card so here it is on the background.  I can't remember what colour I used for the borders and mats but it is cut with a punch I borrowed from Wendy.  I believe it was a Martha Stewart punch, but I can't remember if it was Arabic or Moroccan something or other... perhaps Wendy will comment on this entry and let us all know.... :)

Me on a Monday - Buy It, Try It!

First allow me to wave at Sian from High in the Sky.  This is because I am following along with her Me on a Monday posting theme.  :)  For others doing the same, check her blog out on a Monday!

It was a Hey Big Spender, Shop Til You Drop, then Go Home and Play and eat Takeaway kind of a weekend.  I went over to Wendy's Friday night so that we could get up early and leave for the Make It Show in Farnborough on the Saturday.  We had an interesting journey, arguing with the Sat Nav lady (we've named her Felicity) about bypasses.  There were a few little roadworks bits but otherwise the journey was smooth sailing.

At the show, we were very good girls and only bought what was on our lists.





Okay, no.

I posted on Saturday about that.  It was the fastest shop and blog that has ever happened to me!  Started shopping at 10am, blog entry was up before 4pm.  Sweet.  Must be some sort of record.

My shopping companion (who has once more 'won the shopping' by spending the most) and I went to an American style Diner in Farnborough for lunch because the selection was less than it had been in previous years and Wendy was uninspired by what was on offer.  I played it safe (it's easy for an American to be disappointed in an American style diner in the UK or anywhere for that matter) and ordered Chili Cheese Fries.  I was afraid to order the Philly Cheese Steak lest it be one of those disappointing places that didn't know how to cut steak for a cheese steak.    The chili fries were so good that I will be trusting the Cheese Steak next time we come round.  Lovely food.  The place is called Sidewalks if you're ever in the Farnborough area.  It's on a one-way system so be careful and watch the signs for parking!  Ooh look at me, I'm like my own TripAdvisor.

We got home and photographed our shopping and blogged before getting started on some playing!!!!  I actually set out to play with my new toys from the show, so now I am moving on to the Buy It, Try It or BITI section of my blog for today!

For BITI, which is also slated for a Monday, I am waving to Wendy over at Scrapbooks and Cookbooks.

Today's BITI is a flat-packed MDF ribbon holder from The MDF Man.  I originally went to the MDF man for a letter rack and a remote control organiser but neither of those were available.  I was happy to see this ribbon rack though because I don't have that many reels of ribbon and I would like them to be organised.

I painted it with Autentico Chalk Paint in Byzantine.  I am planning to sand it back to its undercoat of Bathstone that I put on first and then rub some of this lime green Liquid Pearls on it to give it a crazy distressed look. 

I have also used some of my other lovely purchases from the day, but I'm not entirely sure yet whether there is going to be a BITI week or whether I'm just saving it for next Monday!  Meanwhile, why not go over to Scrapbooks and Cookbooks, or better yet, join in with us for Buy It, Try It Mondays!