The layout I did last night and the one I did this afternoon, click on them to see them bigger 🙂 I am off to see Ben Lee tonight with two of my bestest buds 🙂
Creating Catch-Up
I have been making a lot of little things recently but have put off posting about them as I have not taken photos, well now I have.
Made Cranberry Muffins again last night, but this time I used whole meal flour and raw sugar instead of the plain and white it calls for, didn’t end up adding rolled oats though – next time 🙂
Over a week ago I made Amy Butler’s Nappy Bag, the fabric I used is Floral Song #2055 from Print Concepts. For the interfacing of the bag and one set of the pockets, I used iron-on wadding to give my camera extra protection when it is in the bag. I didn’t add the mobile phone or bottle pockets either.
When I make this bag again, which I will because I do like the style, the strap is going to be cut thinner as it is really wide on the pattern (10cmish) and longer as it doesn’t sit in the right place on my body. Also going to make the whole bag narrower and round the corners. Just a few changes 🙂
In the way of scrapbooking have done nothing for me in quite a while now, but did manage some layouts and cards for an upcoming thing. Speaking of that, my next challenge is up on the Scrapbook Creations website – the prize this month is great, go on and enter!
After seeing the Ramona Peep Dolls by Roxy at Etsy, I showed them to Mum and said I have to learn how to Crochet as I want to get the pattern and make one, yeah well I can make a standard chain all right and can do a couple of rows, but yeah going to take a while before I can attempt Ms Ramona 🙂
After seeing Hillary’s Shrinky pins on Wee Wonderfuls moons ago, I picked up a pack of Shrinky Dink Plastic whilst at a new scrap shop the other month. To make the shapes I used a spirograph (idea from Jodi) and the Owl Stamp from a ColorBox Stylus Moulding Mat, though most of the owls look more like cats to me.
But that is not all, I have started painting glass again in preparation for Christmas, all the ornaments I am working on at the moment are only partially completed so no photos yet.
The big thing is that I have discovered the wonderful joy of Needle or Dry Felting. It Rocks! I visited Gerry’s yesterday where I picked up some needles and two bags of wool tops in Grape Jelly and Bean Sprout, such yummy colours. On the Bus home, I made a die, which is about 1.25″ on the sides, it isn’t perfect but it gave me the hang of how to do it. I have made some more little things as well, one of which is a flower that I made based on a tutorial by Maitreya of Craftlog, I need to add a middle yet. After making and playing, I have ordered some more needles and a pack of primary bright wool from ebay. So many ideas, so much time 🙂
Eye-candy of the day – Rosy Little Things
new things
We are now half-way through our mid-semester break and so many things have happened in the last couple of days.
Visited two new scrapbooking shops near me, one of them even had FontWerks!! and the other wants me to teach!! I have no idea what to do there. What to teach etc. What do you want?
Now, I haven’t been scrap shopping much since coming home from Iceland. Maybe once or twice when there was a sale but not really shopping.
Here are some of the cute papers I picked up at shop that asked me to teach.
From left to right, the papers are: MM, Junkitz, Deja Views, Junkitz, Art Warehouse, Lil Davis, MM, Junkitz, MM, 7G and Sassafrass Lass.
Picked up at the other store some paper from Two Busy Mums and Mara-Mi 🙂
Went to see Kaliope yesterday for a haircut/trim/repairing the dodgey job that was done in London. My layers are so much softer now and there is less weight in my hair now. Then she ironed it, wow! I mean I have a straightner/crimper thing that I got when I was young, it fixes the ends in a pinch but would not work/take too long to do the whole head. Wow, my hair is all straight and light, it feels really weird sort of like half of my hair is missing. Will take a photo later, it is so different.
Why is that hair-dressers always chide you when you put your hair behind your ears? It always cracks me up, any hair-dresser I have gone to, always chides me when I tuck my hair behind my ears as soon as the cut is done. Lol, can’t stand hair falling in my face.
Back to scrapping, have done 2 layouts and half way through another one, just playing and haveing fun. Had the rest of my Iceland photos printed off yesterday for the book I am working on, sort of more a portfolio than a scrap book. One matted photo per page with the shooting details and notes about the shot. Simple yet very classy 🙂
escape.
Yesterday was by no means the nicest day.
From all the essays and work I have handed in over the last two and half years of uni, I have always felt that the mark I received was the mark I deserved. However that all changed yesterday.
I received an essay back for which the lecturer gave me 65/100. His first reason was that my essay is pieced together with notes from first year International Relations and those had no relevance to the topic of my essay. WTF? My essay was on “Why is war such an endemic part of international life?” IR theory on state sovereignty/anarchy, the images of war, etc sure as hell are relevant to the topic. Yeah, so relevant that he talked about them in his lecture on war, Good Job Matey 🙁
As well him saying that my references are a bit old. Let me see, from the nine references I had the dates were as follows; 1991, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2004 and ND – over half are since 2000!
Going to see him next week to hopefully get a re-grade, because I am not happy Jan!
Then I came home with a shocking headache from lack of water.
Home life is not something that I really talk about here because it is not something I want to broadcast to the masses. Days when Mum is away are always hard because as much as we disagree over things she in the end grounds me. Last night was not nice but I did better than I normally do and kept my mouth shut for the most time. With all those feelings in my mind of just wanting to escape away from it all, this layout appeared 🙂
new and old layouts
Compared to most people I am really slack about either scanning layouts in or posting them on 2peas, lately I have been *trying* to get more work up, this of course means that one layout I post I may have done yesterday, the next one I may have done five months ago – I said I was slack 🙂 So here are the recent layouts I have posted no always the most recent I have made. Click to see them bigger and any questions you have, just ask 🙂
yeah just being real
A long debated post on Scrapbooking or should I call it crapbooking, because scrapbookers suck. This post has swirled round in my brain for a good couple of months now.
Scrapbooking is something that has been part of my life since mid December 2001, when a friend showed me how to do a CM page, her mum was a CMC and my journey began. Buying supplies, doing pages etc, etc. I was happy, I was on a message board with other CMC’s and other customers, we had fun, we chatted, there was never any negativity, there was no burden of getting published, it was just about the photos and the story they tell.
Somewhere after my end of school trip in 2002/03, I was no longer satisfied with CM, I was spending time on 2peas, shopping local sales I was having fun, but even then looking back on it I was relatively unsettled in my work, always going was it good enough, was it hip enough? I wonder sometimes if it was because I was comparing my work to that I saw on 2peas, in the magazines. When I was CM I never questioned my pages. 2peas changed my outlook on Scrapbooking.
This afternoon I was working on some projects for a magazine that I have to have in before I leave for Iceland and I was angry, with the fact that my samples were not playing nice and working out properly. Angry with the world for random minor stuff – possibly due to lack of sleep the night before.
I have come to think that I need to refocus. I am no longer going to chase commissioned work, I will no longer submit to those random calls which are rare even for me to submit to now. I am not going to look at the gallery each day, I will look randomly every so often. I will keep on enjoying my monthly Aussie Pea thread but that may be about it. , I will keep not reading scrap magazines, I question if I will put my work on 2peas or just post the layouts here for my family and friends plus the occasional random who stumbles on to my blog searching for “blood donation fainted” “lee kwan yew quotes” “helen is silly” “skonsur” “australian secret intelligence service blog” “shiney”, “hide and seek imogen heap” plus a good stack more of weird search phrases.
Out of all of my what 16 or so published or to be published works, 2 of those were from submissions, I know I am hell lucky to have had the chances I have had, but I wonder if that ratio has influenced my view on publishing.
For a while now I have stressed the importance of being real in my scrapbooking and I am happy to see others now who are “getting real” in their scrapbooking, because sure I do like getting affirmations (praise) on my work but really at the end of the day do I a give a flying xyron what they think? My work is for me and those I love. It is meaningful for us, they would not give a flying hoot if I haven’t used the latest supplies, hell they probably wouldn’t even notice if it was a CM style page or not. They purely like seeing my photos and what I write. That is it, I could share my journal with them which has random photos and my musings in, just a white page, a photo and a pen and they would enjoy it.
What brought this outpouring on? I am starting to realise my self and what I want or don’t want. I don’t want to see to others get tangled up in a web of publishing and is my work good enough. I wanted to go public to express the conversations I have often with other girls. Below are some random comments from a chat I had with Barb today.
Helen says:
I just am disorientated with the idea of scrapbooking and what it means
Barb says:
I think you do it perfectly helen and I think doing it for money sux
Barb says:
that it is not about being in fashion but about being real? and scrapping like a mess if you want
life is too short to scrapbook to please anyone other than who is in your family (that includes sean)
Helen says:
because my family doesn’t care what I use on a page, in fact they probably don’t even care it is a CM page – they like seeing their photos, they like seeing what I have to say
Barb says:
chris just likes looking at the photos in my pictures on the computer, he couldn’t care if there are mm rub-ons, he just wants to play with my paints lol
Helen says:
exactly
I ask if there is any reason to this post, do others want to see what goes on in my mind? Then I say this is my space on the server, if one reader leaves here thinking about what they do and why they do I will feel content.