Hello everyone! Can you believe it? I’m not only posting on a Wednesday, but I am living up to the “scrap” part of my name. Hallelujah for a creative pulse!I mapped out a very simple template in my notebook and when push came to shove, actually used it. And used part of my growing Ali Edwards stash. AND pushed past that “it has to be perfect” mantra that I so often am crippled by. Super happy that I got our short Sydney trip journalled.
Yes! We went to Sydney. Just Si and I, and our plans to catch up with some friends and lots of shopping and exploring. It was a much needed break from reality and allowed us to refresh from day-to-day stress and come back to the family a little bit happier. Well, I am… we crammed a lot of shopping in, with two Costco visits (cannot wait until it opens here in Auckland! My fav purchase is the Ott Lite now gracing my stitching table), Sydney Tools (even I could have cut loose with their Makita selection, let alone other stuff), Target (I like that I can buy some clothes for work that no-one else will be wearing) and other places, but the best customer service came from Peter Wynn’s Sports Score in the main street of Parramatta. We’d been there before, but this time we got talking (eep) and got a perfect something for each of the boys. On Saturday Anne (feather stitching) took me to her stitch group meeting out in Bligh Park & I enjoyed the fellowship & meeting Judy in person. It was a hysterical ride home (until we hit, literally, Judy’s drive).Stitching wise I have done the bare minimum. Fairy Tales got a few strands in while we were away (airplane cattle class is not conducive to stitching) and there’s been so much going on at home/work. I may be behind the scenes in the retail group that I work for, but Labour Weekend thru to New Years is a long silly season.
Last week was Year 7 Week 4 and about the horcruxes. Because there were 3 people to share the load of the horcrux, we had to stitch 100 on each of 3 WIPs – so Shakespeare’s Fairies, Home of a Needleworker and the Mill Hill Celestial sleighs each got 100. Then for a bonus 1 point per 100, we could chose one of those WIPs and keep going – I chose to forgo extra points and complete the Celestial Sleighs. So that’s two more ornies finished before Christmas!This week is W5 and about Travel. We have to do 100 on 4 tasks and I’ve managed to get Fairy Idyll to fit 3 of those and knocked off 150 stitches last night. My other piece has to match a Freshwater Plimpy (don’t ask) so I’ll start to bead my Mermaid of Atlantis.Anyway, must go back to work mode now. Have a great week!
Category Archives: scrapping challenges
WIP Wednesday #240
Hello everyone! I’ve been super busy this last fortnight, stitching, walking, reading, cleaning, running around after family members & I can’t wait to take a break! One highlight was a repeat dinner with the Harpur family, who brought Aurora with them. Two weeks ago she was the length of Simon’s forearm/hand – now look at her! She’s 5 weeks here.
I didn’t post last week as my pieces were all over the show as I worked away at the various #schoolofmagicalstitchesandliterature tasks. All up, this last fortnight has seen the start & finish of Hello March (500 for words), 200+ more stitches on Nantucket Rose (enabled), 600+ on Shakespeare’s Fairies (various challenges) and 700+ on Tapestry Cat (two challenges). I have just stitched more on TC in a week than I did in all of 2018. He nearly has a tail! This is a lot of stitching but with our national holiday, Waitangi Day, I got extra walking and stitching in. And market shopping. Nom nom on the Whitestone cheeses and Selash cured meats. And perfection at the Franked stall – imported, handcrafted items from Cambodia where there is a story behind the item, & it’s helping differently abled people.
I also finished my January Project Life pages. I’m choosing to do these in a 6*8 album as it’s more personal to me, not for the family. There’s some stuff that involves others (I asked Mase to fill in the Back to School card) but they won’t get this until I’m passed. Mase does look at it, but he knows if it’s hidden journaling, it’s private to me & he’s not to read it yet.
And on Sunday, Louise & I got up early and walked around the harbour on Tamaki Drive. We started at St Helliers, went up to Achilles Point & watched the sunrise and a cruise ship come into the harbour, picked up coffee at Mission Bay and eventually got collected at Royal Akarana Yacht Club. 7.2km in all of super-quality time with my girl.
Hope you all have a lovely week!
YAY Friday.
I’m pretty happy to have got to the end of the week! It’s been fairly chaotic & with the league season kicking off properly for our house (now that Tag has finished) it doesn’t look like Saturday will be a day of rest. I think that for my own wellness, I will need to go back old-school and adopt Sunday as my day of rest. This will mean doing some housework every day during the week to gain a “day off” but long term, I suspect this will be best. What do you think? How do you balance work/home/rest?
My top things for the week include:
- It looks like the Screaming Teen has decided his next step & is signing up for an academic course. It’s a combination of sport & management & PT but it’s a step forward.
- My new devotional arrived – and thanks to Book Depository, it was postage free & I had a good laugh when it arrived with a wine voucher (I’ve passed that one along already). The devotional is already working for me. I was able to carve out space (even tho I was at work) to shut the door and spend 10 minutes with God. And Pinterest for the last few moments, as visually pretty things are working for me right now. It will be interesting to see where I am at in 40 days.
- I re-discovered Ali Edwards and have ordered the kit, an album & some stamps to do Week In The Life. You can go to her blog www.aliedwards.com if you’re curious, but expect some scrapbooking/journalling things mid-May. My parcel shopped from Oregon this morning. Double yay!
- I went to Stitch Group on Tuesday & had a really good laugh. Barb & Linda have the best sense of humour. Next month it’s at ours. Eeep. I hope the house elves aren’t on strike.
- I’m pretty-much up-to-date at work, after Conference took me out for three days last week. I’ve even passed 39/60 Axonify modules, altho I’m getting very tired of the things. And one more week of my boss being in China equals more time to deep dive into issues.
- I love the sounds coming out of this song. Current earworm that I am sharing! Love Spotify. Sorry Elizabeth – you won’t like it but you might have liked the Brene Brown lecture that was on audible instead?
November Goals Revised
Just to recap, the November goals were:
- Complete my portion on Lenna’s RR (which hasn’t even arrived as yet) STARTED
- Stitch the Austen bookmark for Jenna COMPLETED
- Stitch the Mysteries bookmark for Kerry COMPLETED
- Finish the arms of Persephone and back-stitch from the face down PARTIALLY COMPLETED – I side-tracked and completed all the wallpaper to the right-hand side
- Stitch a couple of Christmas ornaments including a “do not open” for my office door NOPE Just the one finish, which was technically December
- Make Mase a couple of pairs of boxers for summer jammie pants NOPE
- Send off the overseas Christmas cards – already addressed most so just have to write notes! COMPLETED!
I don’t have many goals for December. This month just gets hectic, so I like to allow myself some breathing space.
- Set up planner for 2016 with monthly layout for stitching goals & rotation notes, and Week-to-View for the normal stuff, including blog planning COMPLETED
- Work out what WIPs I am taking into “16 in 2016” COMPLETED – I only have 8 including one I need to start, so this could be pathetic!
- Stitch Lenna’s RR portion – Moonlight Laguna mermaid
- Keep up with December Daily. I’m opting to use a Heidi Swapp album in a different format from normal, and a Project Life kit that isn’t Christmas-y at all, but I thought better suited for our Summer. I’m also printing the photos on our printer here at work daily & I’ll re-print on proper photo paper later on. Better to have everything recorded than to stop like I did last year as it got too much.
- Start Mermaids of the Deep Blue so it’s a WIP to take into “16 in 2016” – technically a bit of a cheat, but there you go.
Here’s the kit image – you can see it’s not a normal December Daily at all! The designer is Cathy Z, who used to edit Simple Scrapbooks. I like her clean style.
December Daily prep
Si was out tonight so I started to pull together my DD for this year. The big goal is not to journal every day (I can catch up) but to not spend on the papers etc. I did buy the Stampin’ Up PL 6×8 & a heap of inserts but I want to get some hand dyed fabric from Catherine for the Nora Corbett reindeer, & that needs to be matching so best that I purchase enough for six at the same time.
My cover is deliberately simple. I don’t want this to clash with other stuff on the shelf. Plus I’m not a frills person.
Then a whole heap of stuff for the inside. Mostly a variety of Project Life cards, but the filofax inserts fit too. Brads & flourishes from Kaiser, Basic Grey scraps; this is on a budget.
While I haven’t totally planned each day, I do have a basic layout. And cards will be added once the season is over and they no longer need to be displayed. So write to me, people, & I’ll return the favour.
Planning to succeed. Whoops, that sounds a bit pratty.
Saturday
I am completely loving this song and video right now – one to download and put on replay on the iPod! Fireflies
noting too the physical version of Becky Higgin’s new kit Project Life is available to order – but at over $170 shipping I’m having to decline! Just as well she’s bringing out a digital version 🙂
today’s project – scrapping an altered tin
Got a bit bored today – the intention was to clean out my stash. Instead I got sidetracked (as you do) and here’s the result. I’m quite pleased with it – my first attempt at altering anything.
What you need:
- a clean tin (mine measures 5.8 x 9cm)
- strip of paper – I’ve used a 8.5cm wide strip of Bazzill. I then measured and concertina foldered this at 5cm spacing, with one space being slightly larger than the others – this gives 10 spaces for phots/journalling and one for the title (I chose to use the largest). I’ve inked this (Versa color 174 charcoal), punch a hole in the centre of the largest sheet and instead of ribbon, I’ve used twine as the pull tab. I also used the corner rounder on the pages, as the edges of the tin are rounded.
- photos – here I chose 13 random ones from some of the places we’ve been as a family so far this year.
- Rub-ons – using from the stash Making Memories Heidi
- Pen – a plain black Zig marker
- Glue – I just used plain PVA that was in the boys stash and to decorate the lid simply, a Pebbles, Inc sticker that’s been in my stash for a few years too.
I have seen some other altered tins that are highly decorated on the outside but that’s just not my thing. I have been thinking about how I could alter some other tins – maybe tags in one of those mint tins with the hinged lids? I can see myself buying Fisherman’s Friends and tipping out the contents…
Well! And Good Intentions…
Had a “catch up” meeting today and walked away feeling very unsure. The HR person was from AU I think, and didn’t even know the laws relating to my situation and redundancy. Hmm.
Thank goodness for the Department of Labour.
My good intention is to spend time tomorrow with Z (off school, another eye infection) and get this project 365 album up and running. I think I have figured out how to create my own pocket protectors and have asked Megan (Sugar Spice blog as listed in my “following”) to confirm. Of course this does mean that I will need to get my Nana’s bernina record 730 serviced…which it hasn’t been for 13 years, but hey. The struggle there will be keeping it in my hands and not MOTAT’s!
Simon would probably like to point out that I should be completing the curtains with the machine. Or mowing the lawns if they have dried out some more – which is something I like doing, as the chamomile smells soooo nice…
CK project 365
This is something that has me so excited! I was about to go onto Becky Higgins’ blog and complain that my email to the CS still hadn’t been answered when I saw this post – they are offering free downloads to people who couldn’t purchase the kit before it sold out! Yay!
Download zip file here (Mac and PC):http://beckyhiggins.com/blog/
and it has jpg elements that you can open in Photoshop, type over, save again as jpegs and print like normal photographs – I like that! Her post is Jan 10th.
All I need now is a 12*12 binder, some divided page protectors and I’m all go. But thinking of waiting this until Surprise is born as it would be kinda cool looking back over his/her first year.
December Daily – day three
Simon spent some time with Gloria, Carolyn’s flatmate and packed some essentials on Tuesday night. He passed the bag onto HR, who passed it on to an Andrew, whom I met at AKL airport – just like in a spy movie!
The quote is Christmas is not so much about opening our presents as opening our hearts. Janice Maeditere
sewscrapmuse 