When will I see you, again ?

{sing that to the tune of that song by Three degrees}! This weekend, I hope.

Are you coming to The Retreat this weekend ? It is the annual Sarah's Cards do in Warrington. I am super excited to meet up with you all on Friday. I have packed tools and supply for my class. Phew...that was a relief. A few mornings ago, I woke up in a sweat, having dreamt that I forgot to bring nearly everything to class.

You probably have seen the peek but here it is again.

See you Friday.

I am a Poet

NOT!

I had a photo of myself in Paris, the Eiffel Tower in background. There was no story as such, I was just enjoying the early morning quietness of Paris, laughing at something when someone snapped this photo.

I quite like the photo though the Tower is trying to steal the limelight. So I came up with this.  (Apologies if you've already read it on my other haunting ground, Sarah's Cards.)

steel tower

a golden dome

grand avenues

& long boulevards

an obsession with symmetry

EVERYTHING MEETS & INTERCEPT

glass PYRAMID

more conventional

BRICKS & STONES

too,

NO LESS GRAND !

 

So that was my attempt at poetry and my attempt at art follows.

 

 

I never learned to write poems at school so please excuse me if I have made some fundamental error in words not rhyming or not having the correct number of syllables etc. But I think grammatically incorrect is allowed because it is art after all!

He is a fussy eater!

My dearest son, H is getting very fussy about his food. Previously he might still consider trying something new but now, he usually says "no", just by looking at something. He doesn't eat seafood and yet, he will eat salmon but then only if it is pan-fried or roasted, hence crispy. Being half Malaysian, he loves keropok and ikan bilis ( and probably belacan! ), all fishy!  Obviously he doesn't mind the smell.

 

He used to come for a family meal out but last Friday, on our wedding anniversary, he opted to stay at home and had baked beans for lunch. The three of us went out to Midsummer House. The three of us love our food, especially sea food.

 

 

Right now the only place that H will be truly happy to eat out at is Jamie's Italian. Even then, he will opt for a burger, without all the trimmings. I made this layout for Scrap365 to document this phase in his life. Hopefully he will learn to love more food. Last night he even enjoyed battered okra for dinner. Now, that is progress!

Oh La La, It is Paris again.

I am organising the sketch challenge at Sarah's Cards this month.

I am pants at drawing up sketches. I think it is because I don't use a lot of layers of paper so my sketch ends up quite flat. On the other hand, it does provide a wider scope for introducing your own layers. Why don't you have a look at the challenge and decides for yourself.

This is my sample layout.

I have replaced the O in the title with a loop of waxed cord, underpinned with a stamped heart. The waxed cord provided an opportunity to hang a couple of sparklies. Here's a close up.

I am loving the feather mistables. I have inked and added glitter glue to them.  I used to worry about where to put them but I think they work well where I might normally use leaves.

What do you think ? Will you join us ?

The Duke and Duchess came to Cambridge

I was excited to see the date announced in the local paper of the visit by The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. I scoured web sites and read news papers religiously for the next few weeks to find out where and when. I contacted a friend to see if she'll come and gawp with me. We settled for 10am in the Market Square.

When I turned up at 10am, there was no way I could see her.  Everyone has turned up, lining up the Square. I am sure all the offices and shops have emptied out to the Square too. I managed to get onto the Square itself but with the market stalls all up as normal, there were not many places you could stand for a good view of the Guildhall. I resorted to standing on a disuse fountain in the middle of the square and managed to get this blury photo.

I managed to see both of them closer up when they walked from the Guildhall to the Senate House. The Duke was talking to everyone on my side of the road, got me very excited that he might get to me but they were told to move on just before he got to me. Boo! I only saw my friend after the group has dispersed.

I am loving the stickers from AC Soho Garden collection. I especially love the feathers.

A Day at the Beach

Fancy a day at the beach ?  Probably not right now. The new issue of Scrap365 came out last week.  I have been told I have a beachy layout featured...yay!

This is the first issue in the bumper, bi-monthly format.  I haven't seen it myself but here's a picture of the cover. I love that layout of the cover, sooo sweet. I am still attempting to do sweet, I have countless sweetness pinned on pinterest but haven't succeed yet.

 

Here's my layout, @the beach, with photos from our weekend in Cromer last summer.

 

What do you think of my fishies. It was inspired by the fish scale type pattern on this Studio Calico Heyday paper. In fact, Heyday is probably one of my favourite range from Studio Calico...I am still hoarding small pieces of scraps. Talking about small scraps, those fish are perfect for cutting out of scraps.

2013 Resolution

Happy New Year my friends.  It has been a few weeks since I blogged. I didn't get a lot of chance to be crafty or even sit at the computer to properly compose a blog post over the holidays.  Can you forgive me ?  Are we still friends ?

Have you made a new year's resolution ?  I don't subscribe to this "annual, make a promise and then promptly break it before January is out" event.  I figured, if I need to change anything that I am not happy with, right now is the right time for that change...not January the 1st. 

I am making one change right now, it just happens to coincide with the new year.  I supposed, you could say, I have made a resolution for 2013. This resolution was brought on by the January sales ( or we should now call it the December sale ). My resolution is, "No new dresses".

I have even made a layout about it LOL, I have handwritten my promise, my resolution. In some small way, if you write it down, it must be true mentality, I am hoping this will help me keep my promise to myself. What do you think ?  Am I deluded ?

I have a particular weakness for dresses, particularly from Anthropologie. All the three Anthropologie dresses featured in this layout have made their way into my wardrobe. Now I just need some appropriate ocassions to wear them.

Here are the dresses close up.

And the handwritten title decorated with butterfly sequins and sparklies.  Got to have some sparklies, right ?