Pogo Printer

I used my Pogo printer to print these photos. The print quality is kind of what you'd expect for under £20, but I like the size of the prints (sort of cigarette card size)& it's quite refreshing not to be able to fiddle and photoshop stuff prior to print out. What you take is what you get.

Stamps are are mix of Tim Holtz, Sassafras and Technique Tuesday. There are two splots of red wine on there, too. Lord knows how they got on. I do remember spilling wine once, but I'm pretty sure I managed to miss the layout - I checked. So I must have spilled wine twice then. Hey ho. 

I realise this makes me sound a bit of an old lush...

(The boys had their heads hanging over the edge of the bed btw, that's why they look a bit weird.)

Busy, Busy, Busy...

Look very carefully at this layout. Squint a bit, and sort of adjust your focus, as though you're looking into the middle distance - a picture of a woman and a boy will magically appear!! Trust me, I stuck it down, I know it's on there somewhere.

This is an example of not leaving well alone; of finishing something and then just having to go back and fiddle and add and titivate until eventually the whole thing becomes overwhelmed and at odds with itself.

I started with the photo and the fish backing paper, because - hur hur - we were at the Anglesey Sea Zoo. I threw in some more patterned papers, offcuts mostly, and it didn't look too bad. But I should have stopped there. Instead I carried on in some sort of Frankensteinian frenzy, piling more and more on. "Live! Live, damn you!!" Now it just makes my eyes hurt. There's entirely too much going on and I don't know what to focus on.

We've been to Anglesey Sea Zoo more times than I can count, usually at the insistence of  the ginger ninja in the picture. Odd, because each time he's raced round it in about 20 minutes, barely registering anything on display. That's about twice the length of time it takes his dad to do IKEA though, so maybe it's just a man thing.

I was quite pleased with last week's result, so I had another go at Skinny Saturday today, which had birds as its theme.

This mixed media business... It's not as easy as it looks, is it? Lol, ah well...

This year, to avoid getting jumped by Christmas when I wasn't looking (again) I vowed I would make Christmas cards on the 25th of every month. Then, come December, I would sit back and smugly laugh at all the panicking losers who didn't have the foresight to get organised during the year and make them in advance.

So here we are, seven 25th-of-the-months later. And here it is, my, um, second card of the year. And the first one only got made as part of a challenge. Despite my good intentions, I just never seemed to get around to doing it. If there is one thing that defines me, it's my disorganisedness. And my insistence on using words that don't exist. (Why isn't "coughter" a word? Why??)

The stamp is by Karen Stolper for American Art Stamps. I bought one at Port Sunlight earlier in the year and liked it so much I bought the company. Well, I bought a lot, anyway. I really like them, they are cute and funky at the same time.

The papers are from last year's HOTP Christmas pack. I embossed the patterned paper with my Cuttlebug Happy Birthday folder by accident, thinking it was the Christmas one, but it doesn't really show. The problem with this card is really the appalling scalloped edges on the mounts. I bought two pairs of scalloped scissors a couple of weeks ago, and they're just rubbish, they chew up pretty much everything I try to cut. You can see the edges on this example are fuzzy and not crisp.

One pair was a cheap Dovecraft pair, so I suppose you get what you pay for but the other were Fiskars and slightly more expensive. I've tried cutting through foil to sharpen them a little but it doesn't seem to work. Ideas, anyone? Am I doing something wrong? Also, do any of the Cricut carts or Cuttlebug dies have scalloped edge shapes on them?

This week's Wednesday Stamper challenge:

Let’s see your creative pieces (with at least one rubberstamp) using HATS which can be interpreted as you see fit.

This isn't as stampy as I'd like for WS. I originally tried to create my own background but it went horribly wrong and I ended up reaching for the Basic Grey instead. The woman in hat stamp is Oxford Impressions, the Carte Postal stamp behind it is All Night Media. There's also an Autumn Leaves swirl stamp on there somewhere - I did it with a Ranger acrylic dauber in a sort of peachy colour- although I'm blowed if I can see it now.

I quite like this card but I'm cross that I couldn't do what I actually set out intending to do.

Oh gawd, it's gone all white.

I stamped onto some tissue paper and then applied it to the canvas with mod podge. It's still looking suspiciously white after an hour. I don't think it's going to do what it says on the tin and dry clear.

The mod podge I used is gloss rather than matte. Wonder if that makes a difference?