Things I’ve Learned this Week

Well, looky here!  It’s Friday again, and we all know what Friday means ….  it means that you come to school to learn all the valuable life gems that I’ve learned this week (whether I wanted to or not) so that you don’t have to!  (It’s my personal kindness to society.  I learn all this stuff and just tell you about it so that you’re warned!). lol

So … what have I learned this week?

I’ve learned:  That I shouldn’t eat Magnum Ice Creams  . .  because …

. . . .  the Gods of Ice Cream and Chocolate all get together and have an absolutely bally hilarious time laughing at me as tiny bits of the chocolate covering drop off the ice cream lolly, straight onto my top;  my decolletage;   or, if they manage to actually get past my chest, straight onto my lap.  And … sometimes all three!  I end up looking like I can’t feed myself and need a carer to assist!

I’ve learned:  That a silhouette isn’t just the title of an image of a person, or dog, tree, building etc.,  that you can only see in a solid colour – normally black, grey or brown (but I’ve seen them in other colours).

In actual fact Silhouette is the name of a French Minister of Finance, way back in the 1700’s.

Etienne de Silhouette (French Minister of Finance) put up taxes massively for the French upper classes,  during the seven years war.  Because of these high taxes,  paintings (a favourite of the upper classes)  were way too costly (and there were no cameras around during that time – surprising as that might sound),  so they came up with a very cost-effective way to have ‘pictures’ of their loved ones,  family, friends and pets.  They had picture cut outs of them instead of paying a ludicrous amount for a painting.

Having a talented artist cut out your daughter/son, dog, mother etc, out of paper,  was an exceptionally cheap way of getting around the taxes put on paintings.

So because of this ‘high tax’ time in France, anything that could be made cheaply was always linked to Etienne de Silhouette, however the little paper cut outs have retained the name Silhouette to this day and it’s known all around the world.

The final thing I’ve learned this week  . . .  is that when I see something (craft related) which I instantly fall in love with,  but I tell myself that the set is too expensive;  –  and  besides which:  what if I don’t use them enough to get my monies worth out of them?;  –  and … well,  surely I have enough things in my amazing craft room that I really shouldn’t be buying anymore ?. . . .

I’ve learnt that I should bally well ignore myself and my guilt conscience and purchase the very things I so desperately want when they’re available – and before they’ve sold out. The promised new supply of said things (I was notified by the craft store) would be here in … July. No ..  August.   No ..September …  and then when the date in September rolls around and you call the company up, with your bank card clutched in your grubby little fist … the company say that “the suppliers are really messing around and only half of the stock has turned up from over-seas!” …  AND THE MOST WANTED THINGS OUT  OF ALL THE THINGS I WAS GOING TO BUY,  ISN’T EVEN BEING MADE AT THE MOMENT BY COUTURE CREATIONS (in Australia) YES, STAND UP AND OWN THE SHAME THAT COMPANY!

And the craft store where I was going to buy them from has said that they’re actually not really very sure if the company  (Couture Creations) will even put them through for making them again as they were originally out (in Aus) in the very early part of this year so to Cout.Crea., they’re kind of ‘old stock’ and they may be moving on to a new range now. (These products [dies, papers, embossing folders, chipboard decorations etc]  only came to the UK around the early part of June, and then at that time they were only available from Create & Craft.)

I nearly cried when I got off the phone today. It made me cross and miserable,  I think simply because I was getting so excited as the day drew nearer for me to be able to buy them.  I’m now faced with either doing without;   buying them from an eBay seller in Australia (at a higher price and then add the postal charges for posting to the UK);  or … buying a set of these from Create and Craft at a higher price than I could have paid if I’d just have bought a whole bloomin’ lot at the beginning when they were on a Special Offer price.  [sigh]

Ahh [sigh] we live and learn, we live and learn.   Time for more chocolate I think.

Well …  I don’t know about you, but I’ve had trouble with my days all week.  I thought Tuesday was Monday – all day I kept saying that it was Monday. I’d gone back a day!

But then …  I thought Wednesday was Thursday – so I went forward a day.

And yesterday I thought Thursday was today, Friday,  and I began to panic that I hadn’t got various things done and had run out of time!

Something is wrong with the wiring in my brain.  It’s shorting somewhere.  Either that … or I’m a dope.  Hmmmm … [thinks for a moment  . . . .]   Yes, I agree with you.  I’m definitely a dope.  Hang on, hang on a cotton pickin’ minute  …  what’s all this talk about a BRAIN?  I’m getting rather ahead of myself here, aren’t I?!   I don’t have ‘a brain’.   I have …  A BRAIN CELL.  That, dear reader, is a very different thing altogether!

Ahhh, life could be so much more simple if I just listened to my brain cell.  But I insist on confusing it and making it feel like I expect more from it.  Poor New Ron.

Aw look …  Have a wonderful weekend my friends.  If trouble comes a calling, don’t answer the door. Decide to have a great day, each morning you wake up.  It’s as simple as that.  Two choices.  Decide or have:  A)  a good day.  – or – B)  a bad day.  I know which one I’m going to choose. …  well, New Ron does.  lol

Sending my grandest of squidges to you.  Be nice to each other.

 

 

 

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I’d swim oceans for you.

I dedicate this tag to my wonderful husband – because  I’d swim oceans for him.

As some of you know (from my last blog post) I had a divil of a job photographing this tag.  (Many thanks go to Kim Styles for her helpful suggestions!).  I’ve chosen a selection of photos from the two and a half million that I took, and hope that they give you even a little ‘feel’ of this tag, which has an under the sea theme to it.  (how strange is it Kim that you and I both chose an under the sea theme for our latest projects?!)

There are various bits and pieces on this tag …

• the fishing net – I made myself out of white string, because I didn’t have any proper net.
• Two metal charms  – the smaller of the two star fish (caught in the fishing net), and the little silver sea-horse.
• The two-tone shell,  purple and silver,  is actually a real shell which I coloured up using Sharpies.
• Sequins – in four colours
• A tiny plastic shell
• The pearl (in the clam shell – bottom left of the tag) – is from a broken necklace.
• The Ammonite, the Anchor, Conch Shell, large silvery Star Fish and the Clam Shell – are all made from die cuts.

I’ve taken photographs using different lighting, or without lighting at all, in order to try to give you a hint of what this tag looks like when seen with the naked eye.

The ammonite (close up in the above photo) was stamped with embossing ink, then embossed with silver powder from Tonic and finally coloured using Spectrum Aqua Artist’s Markers.  It looks gold in this photograph above – but that’s because (I think) it’s picking up those peach, warm yellow and soft brown colours I used to colour up the ammonite.

The greeny brown looking smudges in the background are actually gold.  I coloured up the tag with the teal you see, then sprayed a little misting spray in gold, to just add a kind of  warm twinkle to the look of the ‘sea’.

The Clam Shell was cut from a die (top photo, above),  backed with some card and then manipulated into the shape I wanted it to be.  I used a variety of different coloured embossing powders then, sprinkled into different places,  to give it that wonderful, ‘mother of pearl’ look to the inside of the shell.

This (in the above photo) shows the original die cut next to the end result – so that you can see how it’s been shaped to look like a ‘real’ clam.

The photo above shows the two different colours of card I used to actually make the base of the shell, along with the finished shell.  The pearl I fixed in place using Glue Gel.

I’ve included this – ↑ – out of focus photo in the hope that you might get a rough idea of what this looks like in ‘real life’.  If you squint at the picture and wait a second until your focus corrects itself through your squinted eyes, you might get a different ‘look’ and show you what I was aiming for.  (if you right-click on the photo, then chose ‘open in new tab’ – you should get a slightly bigger picture to make things easier for you).

You know when you’re stood on a beach and the waves come in and lap round your feet … then just as the water slips back again, there is that magical moment when the wet sand twinkles magically in the sunlight?   Well I was after getting that magical twinkle … and at the same time I wanted things to look like they were floating beneath the sea, being pulled gently by that fishing net.  When you’re holding the tag in your hand you get this sort of fuzziness around the net and because it’s all higgeldy piggeldy, it kinda looks like it’s floating beneath the sea.

The ‘Recipe’:

• Stamps and Dies used on this tag are all by Couture Creations, from their Sea Breeze collection.
• Various colours of Tonic Embossing Powders
• Twinkle Embossing Powder by Personal Impressions, in Turquoise Sparkle
• Colouring Pens used are Spectrum Aqua Artist’s Markers.
• Card stock used for die cuts was all from off-cuts.
• All the rest of the ‘stuff’, is all from stash.

Thank you so much for coming and sharing this tag with me.  I cannot explain how much it means to have you here.  If you’d like to leave a comment, about this tag or anything else: asking a question, to introduce yourself, or even just to say hello – I’d be thrilled to pieces to hear from you.  Comments are such a genuine pleasure to me as I look on them as your way of leaving a footprint behind so that I know who you are, can say hello to you, and it’s just such a lovely way to get us all talking to each other.  So please feel very welcome to say hello.

Well, that’s me done and dusted for another day.  All that’s left for me to say is …  Have a wonderful Monday.  May it be the beginning of a lovely week for you.  Be safe out there and … if you’re old enough to remember Sgt Stan Jablonski:  “Let’s do it to them before they do it to us!”.  (I know Sgt Jablonski meant something else,  but by that I mean … let’s be nice to other people before they get the chance to be nice to us.  Somehow,  I’ve found,  it makes me feel like I’m walking on air when I’ve made someone else smile.  Try it.  It’s a wonderful feeling).

Have a truly great week all. 

If love is blind, then why is lingerie so popular?

If love is blind … then why is lingerie so popular?

I had so much fun making this card.  It’s a large 8″x8″ card, made on white cardstock.  The pink, rose and printed papers (at the two corners) are all papers which came free with magazines a while back;  and the gold mirror board and flat gold card (die cut into a rectangle doily) were from my scraps drawer!

I’m very much a thrifty crafter and won’t waste great papers if I can save them – so where I knew I wanted to curl back I simply used a large triangle of paper to cover the corners of the base white card.  ↑

The sentiment was stamped onto gold card and embossed in black.  I felt that it needed more importance, so choose to use one of a selection of light-weight wooden frames – this one is warmer to look at than the photo shows.

I stamped out the basque ↑ onto the same colour of pink paper as the backing paper, embossed it and then attached it to a little hand-made, wire coat hanger.  I punched a hole in the rectangular doily and ‘hung’ the basque from it.

If you look closely at the basque in the photo above ↑ you might be able to see that I used a white pen in places.  This was to place ‘light’ in the places that natural light would have fallen on parts of the basque in real life.  The ribbons, the seams, bits of the lace, etc etc.

I stamped peacock feathers ↑ over the paler of the pink backing pages, and embossed them with a pale pink, twinkly embossing powder.  In the photo above you can see the embossed feathers.  (I was checking the page for placement of the basque on the doily to make sure that it would look right.) ↑

Added roses in three shades, and some sprigs of a lilac type flower in white and pink. ↑

 

Close up photographs ↑ of the corners ↑ which were curled back so that you can see the patterned paper underneath and the two different colours of pink papers.

Although I’d  curled and glued corners I wasn’t entirely convinced that the glue would hold, so I chose a large, warm pink brad for each corner to pin the paper in place.

I attached the rectangle doily, which I’d die cut on my Ebosser, to a piece of gold mirror board, then cut around the doily so that the mirror board fitted the doily exactly.  Everything was then fixed in place, and voila!  One more card added to the pile for charity.

I had lots of fun making this card and loved the way it’s turned out.  Hope you like it too.

Have a truly lovely Sunday all!

Sending love out into the ethernet  –  so grab some as it flies by!