Out Of a Box

When get It Scrapped asked for a page about dressing up, my hand shot into the air. Me! That would be me! Ever since my sister and I repurposed an old laundry basket and filled it with a net curtain, my mum's undergraduate gown and half a bridesmaid dress, I've loved putting on a costume. Which is probably why it didn't take me long to realise that I had, in fact, already told many of my dressing up stories.

I thought back to No Show Rose , a page I made when I hadn't been scrapbooking for very long . I thought about my costumes over the years: the witches, the Mary Poppins straw boater, the boy band bow tie (we had a "B" party, I cut felt shaped undone bow ties and the four of us wore black trousers and white shirts), the back to front superman with the blue school knickers over the red pyjama bottoms (you're right: there hasn't been a page about that one, though there's still time); and eventually I found a different story

which pulled all of the others together.

I had to wear a "national costume" for a Girl Guide Thinking Day parade. I had a pretty dress my mum had pulled together with very little notice. But I discovered that that's not my kind of dressing up, unless I'm choosing the clothes. Pulling together a character is much more my style.

More pages about dressing up and wearing disguises at Get It Scrapped

Happy (Inter) National Scrapbooking Day

....one of our favourite days of the year! (especially when combined with Yarn Shop Day, as it is today in the UK...)

If you are looking for somewhere to hang out, may I suggest the We Love GB! (Gossamer Blue Fans) FB page, where there will be a series of challenges with gift certificates for winners and an overall grand prize of a 3 month Gossamer Blue subscription for the person who completes the highest number of challenges. 

While you pull together your photos, and maybe a pair of scissors, I'd like to share what I've been scrapbooking this week. I'm not going to call it a cautionary tale, because it's meant to encourage, but I'm going to warn you that it's not easy viewing. If you are sensitive to scrapbooking-gone-awry, probably you should look away now. No- not quite yet, I'll show you the version I LIKE first:

Now, before that it looked like this:

Not much different? There's one change: the piece of rumpled up green (GB exclusive) paper I took from the side of that photo above and slipped underneath the little orange house, just to hold it down on the page. The ripped and torn paper might be a hint of what actually happened. It wasn't pretty...

On Wednesday afternoon I got stuck into some scrapbooking. My May Gossamer Blue kits arrived and I couldn't wait to get started. So I went in hard and fast and I made this:

It has all the elements I had wanted and planned for on my page: stitching with tiny embellishments added (because I wanted to showcase all the lovely pieces in the kits), a progression in the story, from the shop to home; and colours from the kit which picked up the colours in the photos. I even gutted that border paper so I could flip it over and use the brown dotted reverse side for my title. First page finished! I posted it on IG. And about an hour later I decided that I didn't like it one bit. 

Now, this has never happened to me before. I've had plenty of pages that haven't turned out the way I planned, some I've been able to remake before I've stuck anything down, a few I've added to at a later date, even pages I've simply said "you'll do, you are just for me to look at, and you tell the story, so you'll just have to go in my album the way you are". But I've never had a page I wanted to disown and then rip apart completely. So I thought today of all days would be a good one to own up to it, to say - if you've had fun making it and you love the result? Perfect; if you've had a good time at your desk and you aren't so sure about the end product? No worries, it was a great way to spend an afternoon; and if you want to take it apart, do it. It's paper. We play with it. That's what it's there for.

I played. I took everything apart. I chose a smaller canvas to see if that would help me decide what I really wanted: the smaller you work, the less room there is for extras you don't need. I changed the border paper for one with a higher contrast. I kept the idea of the stitching, but I used it more sparingly. I even took away a photo (just gives me an excuse to make a little entry in my Traveler's Notebook instead). It started to look like this:

And I knew I'd done the right thing. A few extra touches - more black to hold it all down - and I was..

...home. I wanted to make a layout to show off the beautiful things in the May Gossamer Blue scrapbook kit. I hope I got there in the end. And I hope I've inspired you to dig into your supplies today. Happy Scrapbooking Day!

Building Bricks: a Scrapbook Page

When Get It Scrapped asked me for a page on which I had combined some embellishments in stacks, I had all kinds of ideas -3D flowers, maybe, or butterflies with decorated wings - but as I flipped through my photos I thought the best plan might be to find a picture in which "stacks" had some real meaning. And then I found one of the Berlin Wall.

I have already scrapbooked a sizeable number of my Berlin photos. But those ones of the wall: I keep picking them up and setting them back down again. I remember the night the wall was breached. I remember a little of the before and more of the after and I understand, now, that what I knew was not nearly enough. 

We stood beside one of the remaining sections last summer and the tour guide began to unpick its story for us; and if I were being fanciful I might say that it felt a little as if he wanted to hand us brick after brick so that we might build up our own understanding of what it had been like, before everything changed.

So I stacked up bricks with my embellishments, with the result that I saved the journaling for another page (of course I have more pictures). The layers do a fine job, I hope, of illustrating how it felt to be there, in 2016, with so much to discover.

More ideas for combining embellishments here at Get It Scrapped

April Projects at Gossamer Blue

And there I was, just about to yell hurray! Spring has sprung! when I looked out of the window and realised that the rain was on and all my washing was getting wet. That's April. And I'm happy to see it. Pretty happy, too, I was, to crack open a box of Gossamer Blue kits and start thinking about some new season projects.

First up, some green for my Traveller's Notebook. You know, if it hadn't been for the December Memories kit last Christmas, with the Traveller's Notebook inclded, I might never have discovered the simple pleasure of pasting pictures into a little brown book. I have my sock notebook, of course, but it's all about the details, the nitty gritty: an everyday notebook , instead, can be about anything at all. There doesn't have to be a story, although that's always good; a sudden thought, a pithy saying, a verse, a picture without any other home...they're all welcome here. A quick page in a  notebook is an excellent warm up for an afternoon of scrapbooking...

and so I followed it with a page about a trip we took last summer, when we were touring Scotland. We made it all the way to the Isle of Skye for the day and it was just as beautiful as we'd hoped. What we hadn't expected to find was a sunny, laid back surfer feel to the coffee stops and little shops scattered along the main tourist routes. Time to break out the Crate Paper Oasis collection from this month's Main Kit.

My second page was crafted around that "Bloom" acrylic piece. I had to squeeze it on somewhere, so I paired those "o"'s with a photo punched into a circle, and then added some more, from the Planner Kit.

I was going to make this a smaller sized layout, until at the last minute I found myself drawn to that

black and white print (from the Main Kit) as a background.

And those are my projects for today. But no fooling, I haven't packed April at Gossamer Blue away. More to come.

Sea Overleaf: a Scrapbook Page

"I want to see that map," he said

and after that we found the sea.

Thinking about summer holidays here; and road trips and fresh air and days with nothing ahead except a carefully chosen playlist, an unexpected viewpoint and a fish and chip supper ...

With a page put together for Get It Scrapped's new blog article on Telling A Bigger Visual Story

March Projects at Gossamer Blue

There's a stiff breeze blowing round here today: just the kind I love to see at the beginning of March. It's brisk, it's an energy boost, it's just what I need, because I still have lots of paper I'd like to play with. The March kits from Gossamer Blue 

- all fresh greens and pops of yellow and shots of blue - are perfect for pages about getting outside, so I looked for out and about pictures and first of all I found this one, which I took last summer when we were stuck in a traffic jam. I have a thing for Highland cattle, so I couldn't resist.

For my other projects this month I tried something something new. I have a Traveller's Notebook! And it now has two pages. This one:

Out and about, see?

And this one:

in which I paired a photo of Molly Malone with a note of our favourite St. Patrick's Day feast. It'll soon be time to fry up a batch (and what this page really should note is that it has to be eaten fresh for best deliciousness). I don't often do themed embellishments, but how could I possibly resist? 

We're off on a road trip this weekend and I'm hoping to collect some more lucky green stories. See you soon?

Everything today made with Main, Life Pages and Planner kits from March at Gossamer Blue.

They Had to Go: Good Bye Old Friends

Back in the days when library books were stamped out with a satisfying click and "kindle" had something to do with starting a campfire, I had a boss who believed very strongly in the power of the tidy work space. The surface of her desk was almost always completely clutter free

and she had a simple, very effective, way of achieving this state of minimalist perfection. She passed on every outstanding task, every query she took by phone, every note of a book she needed to find: all of it, passed on to the juniors. And then she carried out a desk inspection.

I can't help thinking about her almost every time I go to tidy my desk now, here at home: a desk which is often piled to perilous breaking point with stuff I might need in a minute. And I thought about her and that "tidy desk, tidy mind" mantra again when Get It Scrapped asked me to contribute to their new "Story + Design" on Clutter and White Space.

Clutter? I think I have a story or two. I can't show you the page I made for the class - it turned out to be about piles of books - so I made another one for here and now. And it's about piles of magazines:

Maybe you remember this photo from last year? I eventually loaded into the car every copy of Mollie Makes, from issue one, complete with kits, and I took them to the charity shop. And it felt good. But not for long. I still have to deal with the boxes of fashion and interiors magazines. If they would just budge up a bit, I'd have more room for wool. They'll have to go. I know it. But I'm stuck: are they worth taking to the charity shop too? Or is it straight to the recycling centre? Answers on a virtual postcard, please..

February Projects at Gossamer Blue

That's it, over and done. Any Christmas decorations not back in the attic by the end of January have to content themselves with a spare bedroom resting place for the next ten months. It's February! Time to move on!

I always find the month of love an interesting one in the scrapbook kit club world. Of course I'm on the lookout for a pretty kit; but at the same time round here we don't traditionally send more than one single Valentine each, and we don't decorate for the day; so I look forward to getting inventive with my supplies and my stories. I like Valentines with a twist. Gossamer Blue, bring it on!

Remember this story? Maybe you were in, when we did a Valentines postcard swap here on the blog and made sure that over fifty of us each had a rattling letterbox that February.

I still had a little stack of photos of some of the cards I received, so I put together a page (and of course, as I made it, I thought about how we really need to do it again some time soon).

Next, a page about a labour of love: the pokemon socks I knitted for Little E. He sent me a neat picture

of his feet all cosily striped up in the self patterning wool which

used broad bands of red and white and narrower rows of pastel pokemon colours. The big "X" and "O" you can see tucked behind the diecut clusters are all cut from a single sheet of patterned paper in the Main Kit.

So, that was two pages. And then I guess I got round to feeling the love after all. Maybe this is a real Valentines page

which was inspired by the eighties colours I found in the pink and black of the Simple Stories sticker sheet in the Main Kit and by a conversation I had with The (Not So) Small One (believe me, there's a lot of love going on round here at the minute, but I'd need all kinds of security clearance to tell you) and by our old student cards. I backed some stickers with the black card from the Main Kit and of course

I had to include Bowie. It's full eighties, or nothing at all. Which reminds me, someone here wanted me to look out some old Morrissey albums. Keep a good thing long enough, as my Grandma used to say.

Everything today is made with the February kits at Gossamer Blue. There's a new planner kit this month. Watch this space.

Occupational Hazard

Do you think that you could bear a little red and green today? It's quite cheerful (such a grey day here!) and not at all Christmas-y, I promise. It's a page about last summer, when we were in Berlin

When I posted it on instagram someone was kind enough to query my spelling in the title. Believe me: if I've made a mistake I want to know about it, especially on a page I've made on request. So I double googled and I think - hope- I'm in the clear this time and haven't embarrassed Get It Scrapped.

The ampelmannchen are the little traffic light men who are seen lighting up pedestrian crossings in Berlin. They first arrived in 1961, in East Berlin, behind the iron curtain, but following the fall of the wall they achieved cult status and began appearing on souvenirs. Now they play their part in promoting tourism (with a website here): the Fair family is only one of very many every year who has browsed for gifts, wolfed down sandwiches and made use of the facilities under the distinctive red and green signage. Thanks, Ampelmann!

This page was made for a Get It Scrapped piece on using active white space. You can find it here.

Wabi Sabi Scrapbooking

Mmm...make a page that's perfectly imperfect: what do you think?

When Get It Scrapped asked me for a layout designed around the principles of Wabi-Sabi I had to do a little research (as it turns out my dear friend Alexa had explained it perfectly on this post from a couple of years back). It's the Japanese notion of impermanence and imperfection; that nothing lasts forever, nothing can be finished, that simple is good, authentic is best.

So what that means is that I've been enjoying Wabi-Sabi style scrapbooking all along. That's what I like. I'll very often leave a sewing thread dangling on purpose, or draw a wobbly line, or cut freestyle with my scissors instead of a trimmer, because I know that if I do these things, I'll leave a little of my "hand" on the page. You will know, in other words, that I've been there. (And if you've been hanging round here long you'll now be expecting me to quote my scrapbooking dream: that someone will find an album of mine years from now and feel something of me on each page. I want that album finder to be able to say look: her handwriting is much neater on this page, what made her concentrate that day?) 

Ah, you could say: the idea of an album sitting for years on a shelf isn't very Wabi-Sabi. Maybe that's right. But maybe I have an answer. 

I don't mind altering my layouts. They don't go onto a shelf and stay there, untouched. I make a page, I photograph it and share it. But that doesn't mean that it's finished. I might add an extra embellishment (because sometimes it's only when I see the photo that I realise what's missing. That's a good tip. If you are struggling to get a page to come together, take a photo and pin it up, then step back and look at it with the critical eye that comes from being one step removed). I might take away a piece (and if that leaves a little hole that needs patched, I'm fine with that). Chances are I'll add more writing, which might even cover the page and detract from the original design. But that's no problem. The words count. Is that Wabi-Sabi?

For this particular page I was pleased to find the perfect subject. A hand knitted jumper, in a natural colour, in pure new wool: that's authentic, that's imperfect (somewhere, I'm sure, if you look closely). It has recycled buttons; and when it has been worn enough here, it will probably be recycled in its whole, or moved on, or re-knitted. Nothing lasts forever. 

And that can be a strangely comforting thought.

More ideas on scrapbooking Wabi-Style can be found here at Get It Scrapped.

Memorandum Monday: I'll Wager a Fully Stuffed Turkey

Gah! I wanted so much to have it finished. I got back from Granny's last night and knitted at warp speed so that I would have a picture for today.

The Wrong Picture: not a pokemon sock but a page, made for a "Nordic Christmas" theme at Get It Scrapped

Because there is a "first" in among the red and white and black stripes of a small pokemon sock: the first time I have tried on for size the sock of a seven year old boy and said

...yep: a few more rows and I'm on to the toe..

Which says something about his feet and mine, though I'm not sure exactly what, except that a size two is a size two is a size two; and after years of hoping, my feet aren't going to grow, but his surely will and I'll be knitting a new pair next year.

also not a sock..

So: the toe. I'll start on it in a minute, after I have strategically placed the mince pie ingredients where a baking-inclined student might chance upon them in between dropping by to ask for a lift to the foot doctor (don't ask) and heading back out to collect her brother from the airport. It's that kind of a day here: when there's a hope in the air that things - Christmassy things - are starting to come together and sheets are being put on beds and rooms dusted and wrapping paper pushed safely out of sight. Oh, it'll be pulled back out again before the end of the week, I'm sure: Uncle Dave will be here on Wednesday. He may have shopped, he may not (there's everything to play for, Sian: what do you fancy?); but I'd wager a fully stuffed turkey that he'll ask to borrow a roll of wrap. That's fine. Wrapping paper I can do. Mince pies (a couple of dozen would start me off, thanks Sian, by my bed, think of them as a reverse hostess gift) not so much. Maybe I should start rolling pastry?

not even close...

With delighted, continued, grateful thanks to everyone who has made a memo over the last year, and to everyone who has encouraged us to keep on writing by waving and saying hello. It has been a real pleasure, each Monday, to drop by and see what's new with you. So, for the last time this year

  Deb, Helena, Eileen, Mitra, Mary-Lou, Ladkyis, Maggie and Alexandra

all made a note last week. Go on: give 'em a wave! And have a wonderful week.

Sneaky Selfie

Sometime at the beginning of the summer, I found a catalogue lying on our doormat. It was unlike any other I'd seen since the "Clothkits" brochures of the '70's, with line drawings of the clothes on offer, alongside the photographs of the dozens of possible combinations. It was by Gudrun Sjoden

and although I didn't buy anything, I didn't throw the catalogue away, which is always a sign I'm thinking about it. So when I discovered we were going to be close to an actual bricks and mortar Gudrun store, in Berlin, in August, I had to have a look around. And take pictures. I couldn't resist.

And, no, I didn't buy anything; though I did try on a tunic and I brought home the autumn catalogue, which has been in my bedside reading pile ever since.

I liked my Gudrun photos so much that I decided to use them for a Get It Scrapped sketch challenge; and my page appeared on their blog last week (details of the other pages and the sketch are here), round about the same time that I got an email

made using a kit by Felicity Jane

Hello Sian: you haven't tried us yet

Gudrun was tempting me, with a voucher and a gift..mmm...I could just have a look. No! Mustn't! Too many other things to buy right now.

Until today: this very day, when I had already planned to post my page, I received another email:

Hi Sian, take 20% off our tunics

It was a done deal. Gudrun even let me combine my offers and then sent me a note

You have a colourful parcel to look forward to!

I have! Forget the fact that I bought the grey one! Maybe next time I'll go bold. But first? Might need to add a postscript to that journaling..

December Projects at Gossamer Blue

My sister and I went Christmas shopping yesterday. It's our special annual tradition and this year it felt as if we had got in there early: that is until, in one of our favourite shops, we were given Advent calendars. "You're going to need those tomorrow!" the girl said. 

Of course! How could I have spent last week making pages with the beautiful December Gossamer Blue kits without registering just how close we are getting? 

I made this one:

because I wanted to use the pompom hat card from the Life Pages kit. It's true. I can hear myself sounding more and more like my own mum, especially now that I'm doing a lot more knitting. "You need a hat! You should pull that down over your ears! You aren't going out without a coat! Let me hold this up against you to see if it's long enough yet.."

The little ink splash stamp is from last month's kit. I like a touch of black to hold everything down on the page and this is the perfect size. The woodgrain layering piece I cut from some Fancy Pants packaging.

Then I made this one:

I hope the close up gives a better view of the dimension..

Those are Pink Paislee rub ons underneath a couple of the diecut butterflies.

And finally I made this one:

Because Christmas tree embellishments aren't just for Christmas... 

...and the pieces from Pink Paislee's Moonstruck collection have more than a little magic about them!

Maybe you remember how excited I was when we spotted what looked like the Hogwarts Express? 

Next stop: recording my December Memories. 

All of a Cluster

It's my turn on the Gossamer Blue blog today and I'm sharing a new page

which I made using a patterned paper  (by Shimelle, from her GoNowGo collection for American Crafts) as a design inspiration

rather than a design element. Some papers are for cutting up and some papers are for admiring; and some can teach us a thing or two about putting a page together. More here

November Projects at Gossamer Blue

Oh, I'm so glad I'm talking about scrapbooking today! That way I don't have to tell you about knitting, yesterday, and the 246 stitch pick up. That's a whole lot of sweater to get back on a needle again..

So, scrapbooking. It's November, she said, stating the obvious, but, hurray! I have always looked forward to autumn kits most keenly. I can't wait for a rifle through the paper to see if there any leaves to cut out, any embellishments to help me record my favourite stay-inside activities, any hints of what we might expect of December. And November at Gossamer Blue has it all. This is what I made:

First of all

I did a diary page. Yes: an excuse to use the leaf rub ons and cut out some leafy stamped images; but, after a couple of weeks of no real scrapbooking I did so want to cut paper, so I began without any real plan in mind. At one point this was almost a photo less page; but at the last minute I trimmed a picture of me holding an autumn leaf (taken from my instagram feed) into a little banner.

More and more, these days, my pages are turning into diary entries rather than the stories I began my scrapbooking by recording. I suppose I've told lots of the family tales I've had stored up and now we're all moving forwards.

Or perhaps looking forward, to our next adventure

I also made this one:

which came about because I wanted to see what I could do with the map printed on a 6x6 piece of patterned paper from the Shimelle GoNowGo pad in this month's Bits & Pieces kit. Of course I cut round it! I mean every word of the journaling: it could have been easy to look at this pair, on their phones, instead of looking up and around on a walk round Berlin, and roll my eyes. But although, of course, I do shout look at that! all the time when we're away, I'm still glad to see them happy to stay in touch with friends. When I was that age we didn't have that opportunity and a long summer holiday could feel isolating for a gregarious teenager. I don't mind the phones, honestly, most of the time. Unless someone feels compelled to keep up a running commentary of cricket scores..

So far,then, that's what I've scrapbooked for November. I still have a clutch of red and natural toned pages on my desk, from the Main Kit, because I'm starting to think about Christmas cards..maybe..just a little..

You?

Everything here made with the beautiful November selections at Gossamer Blue right here.