Saturday, February 12, 2011

Only buy it to use it . . .

Here is my take on this week's colour Q challenge.  I made it for my beautiful neighbour's 94th birthday. I struggled again to find the closest colours to the challenge (in this case 3 paleish pinks) but I love the result!  My daughter used to be into pink in a big way, until suddenly last year she switched to purple.  So it is nice to use a bit of pink every now and again!







My latest words of wisdom to myself:
"Don't buy it unless you are about to use it".
For me this means things like:
  • don't buy it just because it's pretty (or cool or funky or whatever)
  • don't buy it just because it fills a gap in the stash
  • don't buy it just because you liked how someone used in a magazine
  • don't buy it for something you hope to get around to, maybe, sometime, when you find the time, in the future . . . 
  • don't buy it just because it's on special.
None of these reasons are innately bad (especially the last one!) but they are only justifiable if there is a specific reason to buy that paper/stamp/ribbon/whatever, and the project is ready to go right away.

Friday, February 4, 2011

One hot week

We're having a heat wave in Newcastle this week, which also happens to be the first week of school.  My oldest son has started high school this year, so it's been a big, exhausting week, all round.  There's something about a bit of stress that brings the scrapbooker out in me.  When I get time (and this week, once I've got the hottest jobs out of the way and then a shower) I retreat my craft room, and to those photos which make me feel like I do really love my children and they do actually get on with each other!
On Wednesday night my daughter fell and hurt her arm.  I was concerned enough the next morning to take her to the emergency room to get it x-rayed.  Luckily her arm is fine, just a bit twisted and swollen, but it brought back very strong memories of the time 2 and a half years ago that she did break her arm, bending it quite freakishly. So what did I do that afternoon? Go home and scrapbook the memory!  The photos I took are a bit confronting if they jump out at you unexpectedly, but I wanted to include them - especially the one where she is smiling for the camera in spite of the pain and her emu-shaped arm.  I solved the problem by tucking them into a pocket behind the patterned paper, making the hero photo of the cast, covered in signatures.  Here it is, finished bar the journalling, which will also be tucked in behind.
 I also did a this page, based on on sketch 239 from scrapbook challenges .  I often seem to end up lining a bunch of portrait-oriented photos across the page, so this was just the twist I needed to do this page on the cheeky side of my daughter's personality.


P.S. cropping the heart-shaped photos meant that I could include my favourite expression without the distraction of her brother in the background!