Further Crumbs

I always like to give everyone a week's notice for Storytelling Sunday. So here you are - it's on next week! Come one, come all. If you haven't joined in yet, please let me encourage you to pick a picture and jot down a few words. That's all it takes.

Here's one I made earlier as a follow on to last Sunday's page

Little E came for a visit on Friday. He inspected my crumbs. He hauled his toy Dyson out of the car.

"I am, he announced, "all about the hoovers."

Have a great Sunday! (and I'll see you back next week?)

It's Taking Shape..

..over at the Quirky Kits blog today. I'm cutting up photos right here

with a page about the fun we had on Deb's Pot Luck Bog Hop (remember, in March?). Come and see!

This page will make an appearance too:

with its journaling:

"So you are on the school trip, having spent the last month with your Mum telling you it will be freezing and you need to wear a vest. Where do they take you? A rugby stadium. Sure enough, it's perishing and your camera battery fails and you do wonder where the fun (or the "education") is in that. But all the same, you save your ticket and you come home and you have develpoed an interest you never had before..boys, Rugby, which came first?"

 Leo has opened up subscriptions for the next round of kits which will be going out at the end of May. All the details are here

I

these kits!

Everything You Ever Thought Was True..

..about scrapbooking.

Oh. I'm feeling in a devilish mood today. Devilish enough to play - devil's advocate. So I'm throwing a few thoughts at you. Just for fun. I'm pondering instead of sticking...what if everything you've ever believed about the process of scrapbooking turned out to be wrong?

Let's see..

• "Coordinating paper collections make things fast and easy."  Oh, come on - you pull together an outfit every morning and it's fit for the day. Of course you can pull papers on your own!

or

• "Everything on your page has to support your theme." Mmm..maybe you should simply use it because you like it

or

• "Inspiration is all around and just there for the taking." What about - whatever is in your own head is perfectly you, perfectly fine and you are going to love it. Think of the hours you don't need to spend on the computer.

or

• "Every page needs a picture, every picture needs a story." How about - you want half an hour's relaxing with some scissors in your hand becasue you like cutting things up and sticking them down. And that's enough already.

or

• "Trends are pointless." In the grand scheme of thing I guess they are. nut maybe they're fun and something new is always worth a try. At the very least all the banners will give us something to smile over in five year's time.

or

• "Everything needs to be carefully preserved and acid free." Now, as a librarian I should be recommending deacidification spray and telling you to look out for foxing. But, know what? There are plenty of Medieval manuscripts still around. At the rate we keep buying kindles and sending emails we won't have any written words left to preserve anyway. So, you know - keep writing, keep sticking, don't worry.

And that's enough to get started! What scrapbooking rules do you think are made to be broken? Any rules you never follow at all? Any here you agree with or vehemently dislike? Let's talk..

Oh, and a photo for today? I couldn't find my devil horns, though I did turn the dressing up box upside down. Would Minnie Mouse ears do instead?

Crumbs!

So Little E called the other morning, just as everything was getting away from me. Again. I told him about my week.

"Uncle Dave says I'm having an existential crisis and I probably need to read some Sartre," I said.

"Oh," Little E replied. "I think you need to get out your hoover and clean up your crumbs."

With thanks to Alison for the brad which she very kindly sent as part of a care package earlier in the year

Maybe they're both right. But I think I'll start with the crumbs. Then I can get the biscuits out again.."

Grey polka dot paper from the April Gotta Craft kit. Book page from a pack of Plundered Pages by Julie Kirk

Sketchbook365

Hurray, Scrap365 has a new sketch challenge blog! I know lots of you are big BIG sketch fans, so I wanted to let you know right away. You can find it right here.

You'll see a sketch to play along with, prizes to drool over and lots of inspiration from the Design Team. See you there..

Oh, and you have picked up a copy of the latest issue, haven't you?

That's my flower on the front.

Photo365+1

Photo 365+1? It's been a while. I'm still taking a photo every day, still looking forward to checking the prompt and coming up with a picture. Here are some of my recent favourites, starting with ..

..entrance

You have all seen our black front door, so I looked for another and I found this one. It's the entrance to a miniature shop which I made after a trip to Cape Cod in the 1990's. We saw lots of craft and folk art shops and I decided to make one of my own when I came home. Inside it looks like this:

small

I took this one by holding my camera in through the front window. That's a quilt I sewed and you can just see the corner of another, rolled up to the left.

Today I also have..
..pastel (our Easter pinata)

lots and lots (our Easter eggs)

elegant

and girly (my necklaces in Ikea jewellery drawers)

Thanks for the inspiration Suzie! Over a hundred photos already? We're nearly a third of the way through the year! Have a great Friday.







Have Book Will Photo

Today I'm back over at Quirky Kits. Right here with another guest post and a page. I'm talking black and white:

and I'd love you to take a look. 

Run, Sian, Run

if you're a regular round here you'll probably already know that I'm not a runner. I don't mind a good walk. Running? Not so much.

But there was a time, many years ago, when I pulled on a pair of shorts and I persuaded my little sister to join me. We were world class Olympic athletes. We were the best of the best. Of course we were. We had numbers pinned to our vests.

This is the second of my pages this month for Gotta Craft.

Stars, circles, rosettes and banners cut with the Slice and rub-ons added from my stash.

Any Olympic memories going right back in your family?



April at Gotta Craft

Thursday morning. I'm hoping you've all had as nice an Easter time as we have. We visited Granny, we picnicked with friends and we went to the seaside. But now it's back to work..

..wait, did I say work? This isn't work! This is a page about relaxing made with the April kit from Gotta Craft.

Dear Lizzy's Neapolitan? Might just be better than icecream! This collection has been selling out everywhere, so check out Sandra's lovely kit while it's still available. She's mailing them out today...

..and I'm going to see what else I can use from leftover bits on my desk. That "you" was cut with my Slice from a Kraft tag I made. I think you can see where the Kraft coloured "bubbles" came from too

Have a happy Thursday! But do let me know - bath? or shower? Which do you prefer?



Happy Easter

Happy Easter from all of us here!

Have a lovely day

Today I'm Going Quirky

Today I'm blogging over at Quirky Kits. Leo makes cool kits! I was delighted when she asked me to make some things with the two latest - "Photo Op" and "Say Cheese". Both of them are beautifully co ordinated (Kesi Art papers from France - check them out!) with lovely handmade extras

..like that badge!

So if you want to see what I did with one of my photos from Rinda's Summer Scavenger Hunt  here's where you'll find me. While you are there, scroll down to pick up Leo's PDF mini book instructions too.Today I'm going quirky.  And I like it.

My Month in Numbers - March

I'm a little late to the party with my Month in Numbers this time round. But then, I've always been a bit slower with maths. That's changing thanks to Julie from Notes on Paper and her cunning plan find out all the details here). The others marvel, here, when they see me keeping count - but I'm a complete convert. It's such a neat way to pull the month together!

My numbers for the month -

30 pieces of homemade potato bread. That was 6 bits each, for St Patrick's Day
20 Things: my favourite Scrap365 article
22-6: the score in that Rugby match I was telling you about. A win.
2 new dresses: well, I hadn't bought anything since before Christmas and they were in the sale!

140: the biggest number of the month. The number of entries in The (Not So Small) One's Dance Competition. That's a lot of dancing girls to enjoy. From a bench in a Sports Hall. All day Sunday. But we did get to the end and they were second in their group.

For this page I used another variation on the strips of paper idea - it's a sketch I spotted on the October Afternoon blog - and some Kraft tags I made with the Slice, Vintage Findings card.


You can check out the other Month in Numbers entries on the Pinterest board right here

..and before I go today I want to thank everyone who contributed to such a lovely Storytelling Sunday this month. I had such a fine time on Sunday reading them all. Don't forget - the linky is open all week if you still have a story you want to share. Come and join us - you won't find a friendlier bunch of bloggers and you are guaranteed a great welcome. Everyone meets someone new when they join Storytelling Sunday!

Storytelling Sunday 2: The Words The Pictures

Welcome to Storytelling Sunday! It's the first day of April - are we going to hear some tall tales today? No time to waste, we'd better get started and find out..

My story is a true one. A sequel to last month's yarn about my aunt and her supply of teddy bears. It goes like this:

Smoke Got in my Eyes

Once upon a time (as some of you already know) I had an aunt called Ed. Ed was an excellent kind of aunt to have, even though my school friends refused to believe that she existed ("you can't have an aunt called Ed, she must be your uncle"). But she lived far away and we hardly ever saw her and this was a pity. She was a bit racier than the kind of aunt we were used to on the other side of the family. In her youth she had enjoyed riding about on the sidecar of my dad's motorbike; and she liked a visit to bingo, followed by a quick nip of whisky. Her indulgences (and the other side believed there were many) ranged from filling her bath completely full (what a waste of hot water) to using tinned potatoes (we only have fresh here). Personally, I love a big bath and I'm a fan of potato in any form. Top of the list, though? She smoked.

Anyway, one day, when Auntie Ed was in her eighties and suffering very badly with arthritis, she phoned, right out of the blue, to say she was coming for one last visit. Her plane ticket was booked and could we pick her up from the airport, half past three, Monday. There's lovely. (She was Welsh.) We ran about getting ready, making essential preparations for the arrival of one very sick, but very feisty, old lady. What was the first thing I bought? An ash tray, of course.

So, she arrived. And we had a wonderful time. I drove her about in my new car, that week. She admired it greatly, even though the low seats probably made her uncomfortable. She stroked the badge and asked me if I could maybe go a little bit faster, really let the engine roar?

And then Auntie Ed went home.

Auntie Edna, with me. On an earlier visit

Of course, some time after that we got the call we had all been dreading. Auntie Ed had passed away and we were very sad. I was thinking about her the next morning as I unlocked that car and got in. I drove down the street and I kept on thinking about her and suddenly, suddenly, I could smell cigarette smoke. It was all around me, filling up my nose and settling into my sweater; and there was nowhere it could possibly have come from. The road was empty and the vents were closed. I breathed deeply and what came to me was Ed's raucous laugh and her wildly generous nature. I looked again to see where the cigarette smell could be coming from. But there was nobody there. Or maybe there was. You decide.

And that's my story for this month. Have you got one to share? Of course you have! A photo and a few words (or maybe the few words without the photo?) or something a bit longer. I love them all! Create your post with an introduction (so your readers know what's going on) and a link back here and come on over. The linky stays open all week, so if your story isn't ready for Sunday - no worries!

The small print - which I'm not making small because I would like you to read it. I firmly believe we are telling stories in the round here. One person starts and then turns to the next. You can't do it in isolation. So I'm asking everyone who adds a link to say hello to at least a couple of the other storytellers. To make this even easier, how about turning off word verification, just for today. Please think about it. Now, let's read..