Pockets

Shimelle has posted about the joy of pockets in your Christmas journal, and I couldn't agree more!

I am a pocket junky. I love bits that come out and unfold and then slot back in (The Jolly Postman is my absolute favourite children's book because of this). I've made  five for my journal so far, but it may end up that pretty much every page has some sort of pull-out element.

This one is my favourite. It's a 12x12 bracket sheet cut into quarters and stitched together. A card or tag fits in the middle.

The ornament and Santa stamps are Tim Holtz for Stampers Anonymous.

I love this one too. A tag slots in behind Santa (a detail cut from Paperartsy paper). That tinsel's a bit wonky. Have to go back & fix that.

This one has a vertical pocket, that something will slide in behind (not the paper shown below, but you get the idea).

Finally, this is a 6x6 page protector, stitched down the middle to create two deep pockets. I've cut a single sheet of 6x6 in half and attempted to stamp a similar pattern on the plain back. It'll mostly be covered in journalling or by a photo anyway.

Ribbon flower

Made using this tutorial

I made this hanging for this month's UK Art Raffle. The theme was circles, so I used a Tim Holtz clock mask that I got at the weekend. My friend bought them by mistake, thinking they were stickers. Ha! As any fule kno, masks are used to create relief effects and of course you cannot use them as stickers!! Oh she may have appeared irritated, but trust me, one day she will thank me for pointing that out at length several times.

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Rrrrrr, I'm getting well and truly in the Christmas mood though, so come on December! I've signed up for Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas project (a page a day between 1st December and 12th night) and am using acrylic 8x8 covers for it. I've made some of the pages in advance, but I'll wait to make the others up until I've got a few entries under my belt and I know what direction I'm going in. Or alternatively, if the whole thing falls into disuse by oooh, day 8, then I've not wasted too much paper on it. (But of course that is not going to happen because I am on top of Christmas this year and absolutely will find the time each evening to sit with a small alcoholic beverage and reflect on and record the day's seasonal events for posterity.)

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I have also bought an artificial Christmas tree. I have mixed feelings about this, because I have always had a real tree at Christmas. When I was growing up artificial trees were one of my mother's key indicators for common-ness, (together with watching ITV and buying anything from the ice cream man) and while I have always fought against such nonsense I can't deny that artificial trees just don't seem right. Until earlier this year my FIL worked at a local garden centre and we always got a really nice, big tree for free from there, but he has retired this year (without so much as a thought as to our ongoing tree needs I might add!) and so we are left to fend for ourselves, tree-wise. I can't be doing with spending £30 each year on something that's going to shiver all its needles off by New Year. Plus the disposal of the real tree was getting to be a bit of a headache. My husband, invariably in a bad mood with Christmas by that time, always insists on chopping it to pieces to get it out of the door. By the end it's like that scene from Shallow Grave when Christopher Ecclestone goes mad and starts frenziedly hacking up the body. By contrast, wrestling an artificial tree back into the box in which it arrived will, I am confident, be a doddle.

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So I got one from B&Q (WHOOP! WHOOP! - "common" alert!). It cost £30 (WHOOP! WHOOP!). Apparently it is a "Luxury" model and has "Cashmere fronds" (WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP! etc).

More felt Christmas decorations. Damnit, there's a credit crunch on, people!

I made this, ahem, "charming", folksy Christmas felt star. Just to be clear, the legs and stitching absolutely are meant to be a bit wonky and bent out of shape. I think you'll find it's part of the piece's naive charm, actually!.

If I was Elsie you'd be lapping this up.
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Anyway, I thought I would make a few of these, and then it is just a short leap to pretending to dh that I also made the wreath below, and that I have not been out blowing the heating budget on Christmas frivolities.

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No, to be honest I don't think he'll buy it either.

Why is it the boys have the best eyes? Joe's are big and blue and fringed with the longest lashes I've ever seen.

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I think the papers are Basic Grey and Urban Lily, the chipboard arrow is Bazzill, the flowers are Primas, my Scrapdreamie blinkie prize. There are also some American Crafts stickers from the April Bad Girls kit and some Doodlebug Frills.

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Nothing much to report back this week. We got a rescue cat last week, Heather. Dumb name for a cat, but she answers to it, so it seems pointless changing it. She's not allowed out yet in case she legs it, so all doors and windows are kept closed and we operate an airlock-like system between the porch door and the front door.

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She is brown tabby and white. I momentarily considered taking the dark tortoiseshell cat they had, who, whilst not as sweet tempered, would have looked stunning scrapped against some of the Cosmo Cricut papers I have. But obviously it would be wrong and shallow to let ones choice of cat be guided by scrapping aesthetics, and so Heather's placid temperament (and more neutral colour tones) won out.

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She is a good cat and a pretty cat. I will post some pictures of her in due course, as I know for a fact that there is nothing more interesting than photos of other people's pets.

I wanted to record some of the stupid nicknames I call my two year old before I forget them (I've already forgotten most of what I used to call his brother - if I do a similar LO for him I'm going to have to make a few up or face some difficult questions!).

He won't let me call him most of those names now. "I not "Foofalot", I just "Joe". I just a boy."

This week's Daring Cardmakers challenge:

"Your card can be any theme you like, just as long as it's got something you'd find in a Haberdashery Department on it."

Buttons, a bit of stitching, Basic Grey paper, Cuttlebug Birthday embossing folder, Cricut flowers, Limited Edition ric rac stamp.

TFL :)

An 8x8 of my youngest when he was about 6 months old.

I am bowled over by this photo. It's a detail from this larger, fairly nondescript shot of him lounging around in one of those baby nests.

I've never used it before because you can see his scabby head. He has a scabby head because he had very bad cradle cap and used to scratch it a lot. We thought he was bald, but not long after this photo was taken I picked the cradle cap off and found a luxuriant mane of hair under there.

That last sentence doesn't make me sound very good, does it?

I have never previously mucked around with my photos. What goes in through the lens I pretty much scrap. I haven't figured out how to use either of my printers properly, and the nitwit photo editor I have never seems to do the same thing twice, so I always thought what's the point? But I was looking through Kirsty Wiseman's lovely site last night and her gorgeous work inspired me to have a crack at mixing things up a little.
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I downloaded Picasa and found it brilliantly easy to use, very menu driven and consistent in what its does. Of course, it coming courtesy of Google and being free probably means it's romping round my hard drive right now with a view to reporting back my every keystroke to its sinister, faceless masters. Still, it had a whole bundle of quick fixes and I didn't have to use any skill or judgement to get some really nice results, so really, what ya gonna do? It's probably waaaay too basic for the Kirsty Wiseman's of this world, but for me it's a giant leap forward. I bet this is how Annie Liebovitz got started!

I kept the LO simple so as not to detract from the photo but I think I will re-scrap a busier version as this is a bit too pared down for me. The stitching around the edge was done using the Cutterbee thingy again. Once again it didn't prick through the cardstock. It was good for establishing an even pattern for where to sew, but surely it should actually go through the card? Maybe I'm using it wrong.

Wednesday Stamper - BUTTONS are the new challenge for the next 2 weeks! Got some favorite buttons you’ve been wanting to use or a new idea to use them? One button is just fine as well and it doesn’t matter whether you use a store, homemade or stamped button.

I decided to go bright and funky in defiance of the miserable July weather. The flower stamps are by a huge Making Memories foam set - fab value you get 25 -30 for around £10. The stalk is from a Francois Reed Woodware set. I find them a bit tricky to use, they don't give a very sharp impression.

The stitching was done using one of those Cutterbee pricking thingies I got yesterday. Have to say, I am not impressed. They failed to prick through the thin cardstock I used, opting instead for a half-hearted dent . I had to go back over the area punching through with a needle before I could start sewing. V. poor.

Another quick card, this time for F-I-L.

Mr Glitterati bought one yesterday in John Lewis, but I was so outraged about a) the fact he hadn't asked me to make one and b) the price (£4.99!!! And there was nothing on it, just a couple of die cuts FFS!!) that I made him take it back and insisted I would make one instead.

"You see" I said as I was tucking into a poppy seed muffin in the cafe afterwards, "my crafting actually saves you money!"

I figure this should go some way towards deflecting any criticism about the Bind it All machine, chipboard, journalling stamps, beads, beading needles, beading chain, bead board and wire cutters that should be arriving any day now. Oh and the light up magnifying glasses they showed on QVC, mustn't forget those.

This week's Daring Cardmaker's challenge was to make a card featuring felt. I made a couple using my mini sewing machine (£10! bargain!). The effect I was aiming for is "folksy", therefore the stitching is meant to be wonky, ahem.

I haven't used a sewing machine since 1983, when I attempted to attach a waistband to an electric-blue skirt in Mrs Davies' Home Economics class. It all ended rather badly, so all things considered I was reasonably pleased with these efforts.