An art holiday at home

This week has been quite lovely. Staying home from work without any plans to go anywhere...it's nice to have time just to be.

One of the things on my lifetime to-do list is an art holiday - preferably one of those ones somewhere in Europe that's warm and sunny with great food, cheap wine and lovely scenery. That's not really in the budget this year, so instead I am making an effort to make art at home - starting with getting out the watercolours and experimenting.

Hopefully I will have some finished works to show you by the time I go back to work...

Favourite photos

This photo is one of my all-time favourites. It's taken me a while to scrapbook it, because I wanted to do it justice. And there is SO much I could write. (There is some hidden journalling on a tag behind the photo). Sometimes, though, you just have to get it done. Things change, feelings change...let's get it down on paper while it lasts.

Project Life?

Project Life is a massively successful system that has taken over the scrapbooking world this year. Instead of doing pages about single events, scrapbookers use pages with lots of little pockets to record individual photos and journalling cards. It's mostly done on a weekly basis to record every little moment. Lots of people are doing it. 

My trouble is committing to a long-term project. I like scrapbook pages because they are single items and 'completeness' doesn't really extend any further than a 12x12 spread. I've taken part in annual month-long classes in September and December every year for the last 5 years and I only have a 50% completion rate on those albums. So I think attempting Project Life was always going to be a bit ambitious. Instead, I've used it as a bit of inspiration to get back to doing monthly review pages. I last did these in 2007 when I lasted until April, so I've already managed to get further than ever before. Currently operating two months behind....but when you consider that I am also scrapbooking a holiday that took place two years ago, that's pretty good going really. 

Flowers

Don't you just love flowers? I do, but then I'm easily pleased. Mum and Gran love flowers too, so for their joint birthday earlier this year, I bought loads of bunches of roses and mixed them all together for a huge, multi-coloured bouquet.

I'm also loving this embellishment under the photo (which neatly hides my foot in the photo). Paper + chipboard + washi tape....and those little wooden cameras will be featuring in a lot more pages in the future for sure.

Insta-Morph

I haven't done a Morpheus page for a while. Mostly because I felt like I was always doing pages about him, and there are other stories that need telling too. And then I realised that I'm always taking photos of him, just not scrapping them. Instagram is a wonderful thing (find me! @wightkate) and I've been taking lots of photos of Morph with my phone lately and making them look wonderfully vintage. The square format is also great for a different look to my pages. I've just had a big batch of photos printed, so you can definitely expect to see some more instagrams in my albums.

Something different

I think this is as close to minimalist as I get. A white background counts, right? One of my favourite photos from this year, Mum and Gran's birthday lunch in February. My 2012 album is already really full, and I can't tell you how happy that makes me. 

A summer burst of creativity

I don't have a lot to say, really.

Well, I do have a lot to say but none of it makes a lot of sense. I think I need to go back to keeping a journal to get some of this stuff out of my system. But to sum it up: life is full. I am mostly quite happy. I still face challenges, but I am growing to meet them. And that's not a bad place to be right now.

Also, I have made a LOT of scrapbook pages recently. Something about the wet summer weather we are having just inspires me to stay inside and create. And I definitely can't complain about that.

This page? Probably the most complicated page I've ever made and it certainly took the longest. I started it three times with different background papers and kept changing my mind. Then I had already stuck down the photo and the title card, so I had to stick with those, but I changed the background again to make a grid of punched squares. Then I layered on the doily, the title, some stamping, that cluster of embellishments....and then it still didn't look right, so I decided to continue the quilted effect by sewing across some of the squares. After the first one, I realised doing them all was actually going to drive me insane, so I chose random ones across the page. Then I decided I wanted buttons. Then I had to thread embroidery floss through each button and use a glue dot to stick them on the page. I *think* it's finished now, but I'm still not entirely sure!