Displaying The Doilies

I'm in a mood for finishing up projects at the minute. Better make the most of it while it lasts, I thought, and set out for Ikea where I found exactly the right little square box frame to display my embellished doilies:

I only had eight doilies to start with so I added in a little centre square with my name and the year and framed it up ( this picture shows it before the glass went on ) and I think it's going to turn out to be my favourite project of the year.

Lots of you have said you would be interested in a "Pass The Book" chain like the one featured on Silver Pebble. Let's do it! I will be taking a blogging break of about a week or so shortly and as soon as I'm back we'll make a start. But I need some suggestions: what sort of book would you be interested in?  A craft book? A cookery book? (Or would they be too hard to pass on!)  A classic? A book about writing, maybe? Please let me know what you think and we can give it a go. Now, where did I put that librarian's stamp? I know I have it here somewhere....

Finishing Up The Doilies

That's it. I have no more doilies. I only had one packet to start with and I had used four already so I had eight to decorate and here are the last two:

I think I'll mount them on squares of patterned paper as Christine suggests and put them in a frame, three groups of three with one square for some journaling.

I'd still like to keep on layering things up though. You don't really need the doilies as a base; a simple scallop punched circle would do, or a very simple circle and a pair of cheap scalloped scissors which is all I've got just at the minute:

It's a great way of using up older supplies and little scraps and its a good way of experimenting with combining colours. I'm going to use this one on a yellow and grey page I've got planned.

Today I'm Loving...how many of you I managed to hoodwink on Sunday with my creative statements! In the interests of open and tranparent blogging I now have to admit that the two true ones were.....

......the Downing Street one and the Fireman one. I did have that conversation outside Downing Street on a school trip when I was nine; and I did try to push someone out a window on another school trip when I was a teenager. Jacky was right. He was very annoying. I met him at a reunion not long ago and he said Isn't it great that I'm still alive and you're not still in jail. I had to agree.

Tumblr Tactics

I've been paging through my Mum's scrapbook again, and reading your stories of your own cuttings albums, and musing about the way everything moves on. There's a new way, now, to put a collection together and in between making more of my doilies

I've been taking a look. I've been visiting Tumblr. It's kind of hard to explain, you really need to check it out. You sign up for an account - quick, easy - and then there right in front of you, you have a virtual cuttings book. A noticeboard. An album ready to be filled with online inspiration. You can add photos, links, quotes, all the bits you scribble down or add to your desktop: it can become what many years ago would have been called a Commonplace Book.

But this is a computer Commonplace Book you can share. It's microblogging. Finding something you like and pinning it up where others can see. To get started I read the Studio Calico blog post "Where Shall We Store Inspiration" and then I found other tips here:

• Tumblring (All things tumblr)
• Devsnippets Spicing Up Your Tumblr Experience
• The Blog Doctor

I haven't done any customise-ing or favourite-ing or following yet. I'm just noting a few things down and seeing how I like it. Because you don't know til you try. It's Still High In The Sky.

Back to the doilies, then..

The Daily Doily

I don't know when I last enjoyed a spur-of-the-moment project as much as the one I'd love to show you today!

It started at the weekend when I was looking for something to replace the All About Me shaped hole on my desk (thanks again Mel. It was great) and into my blog reader popped another wonderful post from Christine Middlecamp. Her scrapbooking blog was one of the first I ever found; and I'm still captivated by her compelling, honestly told lifestory and her stunning scrapbooking style. Over the past couple of weeks she has been running a series of tutorials on The Embellished Paper Doily : what a wonderful way of getting a little bit of the Christine look.

So, I took my little packet of Martha Stewart doilies (they came in a kit)

and I started to play along with this:

A tutorial is such a great way to try something new - buttons and bling together, for example, is something I would never have tried without a gentle push - and to see how tchniques take effect. I'm really starting to love the extra dimension the black framing gives on these. A new set of instructions went up today and I can't wait to get started..