Project Life

Way back in the spring I ordered some Project Life supplies. When I ordered it was quite difficult to get in the UK and only one place was importing them. Since then Becky Higgins has partnered with American Crafts so the distribution is way better and you can buy it all over.

I pre-ordered the Midnight edition 'core kit' and a huge 12x12in binder. I won't lie, I was a little disappointed when it arrived. The cards are more like paper, some of the pockets were too small to fit cards in and there were even typos in the printed materials! The company I ordered with did send me replacement pocket pages which was good, but so many people were talking about, I thought it would be top quality. 

I decided to start using it anyway. I don't think there is anything wrong with it, I was just expecting something a bit different. It's odd when you don't see things before you order them. You get an idea in your head of what it will be like. Especially when they seem really expensive.

It's actually a good system. I like how it looks and the flexibility. I get that the cards have to be thin or you wouldn't be able to lift the album. 

And I love the yellow.

Here are a some of my recent 'spreads'. I just fill as many pockets as I like rather than filling two pages per week. Sometimes I do lots and sometimes not so much, but there is always food.

Now I am concerned that if I keep going I'll fill this album, and then what? If I fill one every six months, where would I put them?

A rare visit to the flea market

There are lots of blogs about vintage 'finds' these days. People seem to find all kinds of great things at markets and fairs which are stacked with stunning stuff.

There is a flea market in my town every week on a Thursday. Not one of those cool, hipster, look at all the great vintage stuff, type flea markets. Just the type where people sell old stuff on market stalls. I used to go quite regularly when I was younger. There was a stall just selling old buttons off uniforms. Once I bought some shockingly awful furry green curtains... but that's another story. 

Since I now have to travel a bit further for my job, I can't even visit on a lunchtime so it's rare that I get to have a trawl round the stalls. Today I happened to be off work and in town so I couldn't resist having a look. 

Check out what I found. It's a double-decker test tube rack. I'm not sure it's particularly old or anything. Maybe it's from a chemistry set? It has three rows of glass test tubes, two on the front and one on the back. The row on the back are all different shapes and stored upside down. 

I cleaned it up a bit and put a single rose in each tube. It would probably be nicer with some more delicate looking flowers, but roses were available, so I tried them first. Pretty, no?

Making rubber stamps

Remember my nearly totally free stamps I made before? Well this is a bit of a step up. You have to buy the rubber to cut them from. But they are still pretty simple to do.

My friend Em was really awesome and organised a crafty gathering at her house. Just in case you are thinking, that sounds really great ... well, it was! This is pretty new for me, I've not known a lot of people who are into the crafts before so I was excited to meet some new folks and give this one a go together.

It seems like its best to go for a simple design and to use a scalpel/craft knife to cut away the excess rubber. We tried it with lino cutting tools too, but the lines came out really wobbly :( The rubber is like a high quality eraser in a big flat sheet. A little softer maybe. You can cut it down with scissors.

I made a new set of 'flags' since I miss the cardboard ones I made before. They have a high-easiness-to- impressiveness factor. By that I mean they are easy to cut but look way cool. I also made a cloud that was a bit more difficult (curves!) and a cute little camera for when I get round to some more scrapbooking.

Em has written something a bit more like a tutorial if you are interested. Check it out on her blog.

Comic Relief macarons and cupcakes

This year for Red Nose Day a group of people from my work decided to participate in the Comic Relief Bake Off.

It wasn't a competition or anything, we just arranged to each take a day and bring in some treats. We put out a donation box and raised some cash for a good cause.

I made these vanilla cupcakes with a cherry on top and bright red macarons with a white chocolate ganache filling.

I was concerned that folks might not fancy them being that RED but they disappeared very quickly, in fact only crumbs remained by 11am. You gotta move fast at my work when macarons are on offer!

Chalkboard art - my first attempts

I'm not usually one for going with a trend, but this one has tickled my fancy. It's 'chalkboard art'. We always called them blackboards when I was at school, but now its all interactive whiteboards.

Anyway, I've made a Pinterest board with a few of favourites so far on it. Some of the best examples around at the moment are by Dana Tanamachi  an artist/designer based in Brooklyn.
 
I'm not great at drawing generally, but I do a lot of typography, so I thought I'd have a go myself. I actually drew this in pencil and used a little photoshop magic to get the effect, but I might get round to using actual chalk after a bit more practice. This photoshop tutorial is very helpful for getting the effect.

I'm quite pleased with it for a first attempt. What do you reckon?

Italy travel mini-album scrapbook

I put together some pages about our trip to Italy. It seems a very long time ago now, but I wanted to show you some of the pages since I talked about what supplies I was going to use here.

I've been trying out different page shapes for scrapbooking. I've only actually put together one 12x12 page which is the main page size nowadays. For this book I choose 12x6 inches. It's very wide!

I've not finished the covers for it yet, but here are some of the pages:

Making a tiny 'project life' style album

I have seen a lot about the Project Life scrapbooking system and wanted to try the idea out for myself without investing in a lot of expensive stuff. So I made this smaller version.

I used this folder which is available from Paperchase. It's the same one I used for my December Daily which you can see here. You can also get a range of pages and some plastic pockets from Paperchase too. They have a full page pocket and one for two 6x4 photos. It's a three ring binder, which we don't use a lot here, but I just use a single hole punch to get the holes in the right places where I used paper pages.

I enjoyed having a go at this so I think I will go ahead and pre-order one of the new editions which are coming out this year.

New project: Italy scrapbook

If you've been reading a while you may know that I got married a couple of years ago. My new Husband and I went on a trip to Italy for our honeymoon and had a fab time. We travelled by train a lot and saved lots of tickets, maps and other bits and pieces. Unsurprisingly we also took hundreds of photos! We've never printed out any of the pictures. I'd like to get a nice photo book done but in the mean time, I'm going to choose a few and make a scrapbook.

Since January is generally a bit of a ... frugal month, I've spent a lot of time picking the right supplies for this new project. I want to use some things I've already got but also add a few bits to bring it all together. In the end I chose some papers and tabs from Pink Paislee's Portfolio collection and a great stamp made by Kaisercraft. I really like yellow at the moment so I've gone for a yellow, grey and turquoise colour scheme. Hopefully it will work well with the pictures and stories I want to tell.

Book list 2012

Last year I recorded all the books I read for fun. I wondered how many I'd get through and whether they would be new to me or mainly old favourites. Here is the full list from 2012. I've copied it from my 'Books tab' so that I can start filling that with 2013's list.

So assuming I remembered to write them all down I got through 35 novels, nowhere near my target of 50 (seems like I really slowed down in the second half of the year). 22 were new to me and 12 were re-reads. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline was one of my favourites and will probably appear in my re-reads list next year. 

What was your favourite from last year?

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What have you been reading? At the beginning of 2012 I decided that I would keep a list of all the books I read during the year. I wonder how many I'll get through? I'd like to find a book club too so hopefully I'll be reading some books I wouldn't normally pick up.

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It's August now and I've read 26 books this year. I think 50 would be a good target. I've joined and left a book club. I was reading books I didn't like, what's the point of that? Maybe I'll find another I like more.

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(r) means that I'm re-reading a book from my bookcase
(book club) means someone else chose it


The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (r)
Virtual Light by William Gibson (r)
Idoru by William Gibson (r)
All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson (r)
The Dark Tower: Gunslinger by Stephen King
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (r)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (book club)
Kraken by China Miéville
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (book club)
The Door into Summer by Robert Heinlein (r)
How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Márquez (book club)
Lightborn by Tricia Sullivan
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (r)
The Technician by Neil Asher
The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks 
Death of an Expert Witness by P.D. James
Pure by Julianna Baggott 
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline 
Mockingbird by Walter Tevis
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Burton and Swinburne in the Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder
Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne  (r)
Original Sin by P.D.James
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens  (r)  not all the Christmas books - the others are rubbish
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer  (r)
New Moon by Stephenie Meyer  (r)
Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer  (r)
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer  (r)

December Daily

Have you ever made a rule for yourself that was totally arbitrary?

I decided that the next thing I would put up here on my blog would be my December Daily album. Turns out that was not such a great idea. It's taken a little longer than expected and I've missed posting lots of other Christmas stuff in the mean time using my stupid rule as an excuse. Maybe I'll add some of those things in later (my blog, my rules, right?).

Anyway, let's back up a bit. Last year I started getting interested in Scrapbooking. Ali Edwards (who I've talked about before) does a project every Christmas called December Daily. It records a story a day from the 1st to the 25th or the 31st of December. You can choose what ever format you like, so there's nothing to buy, which is handy and I love Christmas so I thought I'd have a go myself.

I used a 6x8 inch folder from Paperchase and started making some pages to fit inside in November. It's still not quite finished. I knew I wouldn't have time to do each page on the day, there's lots going on in December, which I suppose is part of the point?

Here are a few pages from my album. It was really fun putting it together, just playing with paper without any pressure for it to be perfect. I tried not to buy lots of extra stuff either, I bought one 6x6 paper pad and some wooden embellishments. The rest is things I already had or picked up along the way. I got all the photos printed at Boots every four or five days, they are mostly 4x3 inches. I arranged two pictures per 6x4 'photo' and just got them printed normally.

December Daily cover

Title page - I'm going to put my name on that tag and finish the
inside cover at some point

December 1st was pretty busy

December 2nd

December 4th - not so exciting

December 16th - THe Muppet Christmas Carol at the cinema

December 20th - the bottom right bit is not finished, but I love the rest,
so I thought I'd include it :)