This Castle Hath a Pleasant Seat...

The UKS weekly challenge involved using a Shakespeare quote. Well, of course, it had to be Macbeth. What else is there?! So I went for this quote:


The picture is John writing his postcards in the cafe at Edinburgh Castle. This took ages (to me anyway!) over three hours. Just finished it in time to watch the England v Slovenia match in the World Cup.

Twisted Sketches #54

This week, the Twist is "Bold". I chose to interpret that as Bold colours, and here it is:


I took the photo at the Camera Obscura, Edinburgh, in their World of Illusions. They have a Tunnel of Stars and if you play with your camera exposure settings you can get some fun results.





I could have spent hours in there just playing with the settings and the lights!

Mojo Jar - June Dip

This month I had "Scraplift from a Teamie's Gallery" - so I lifted from Maria.


I decided to scrap the "wonderful" chandelier that adorned one of the ceilings at the Retreat back in March! The amazingly freaky thing.

Paper Snob?

I did these two layouts last month when I thought I'd see if I really was a Paper Snob! I made a layout using some cheap American Crafts products that I bought from the home store round the corner. Now, don't get me wrong, I do like a lot of what AC does, enjoy their Remarks stickers, cardstock, Thickers, Flair, blooms, buttons etc. On the other hand, I tend to not like their papers. Maybe it's the design, or the colours.

Until I bought this cheap kit I hadn't realised that AC seem to have two types of paper. Thicker, double-sided papers and much thinner single-sided papers. They also must do a slightly inferior type of alpha as well. I made this first layout mainly using the bits that came in the kit. There were some odd photo matts in bizarre shiny card, as well as the thin papers, and non-sticky alphas. I had to re-glue the title down twice because it wouldn't stick.

There was nothing wrong with the Flair or Remarks, but in the end, I wasn't happy with this layout. So I thought I would scraplift myself and use some papers that I love with all my Paper Snobby Heart - October Afternoon's Thrift Shop - and see if what I came up with was something I preferred.


To be honest. I'm not entirely sure which one I prefer. I think I like them both. I suspect I chose the wrong subject matter for the second one. When I saw that old London map paper, I couldn't wait to use it, but the only pictures I had of London were these few of Alex, which I took at the British Musuem (circled on the paper!) on my iPhone.

Of course, as it turns out, the second layout uses AC Thickers in both the title and in some of the chipboard embellishments!

I think I still am a Paper Snob, I do prefer working with thicker, double sided papers with gorgeous prints, but I know I can use the other sort as well.

Art?

I think I did some Art today. Perhaps it's an 8x8 layout. I'm not sure. But I do know that I got my old paper and inks out again. I was, however, inspired by a couple of pieces I saw at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition on Sunday.

The artist had used full pieces of book page, highlighting certain words on the page to create a new phrase. Then the rest of the page was inked in beautifully. Obviously, I've no intention of ever recreating that, but I decided to use the highlight technique on a couple of words on these.



I'll be experimenting with this technique a bit more. I found an old book that was going to binned at work, so that should give me plenty of bits of paper.

Project 12 - May

{click to embiggen!}

This months layout features a fuzzy picture from the Diana Vickers concert, an Elephant on South Bank, London, an incoming plane in Duxford, some swans in St Ives (not the Cornish one) and a postcard for the Summer Evening at the Fitzwilliam Musuem.

Twisted Sketches #53

Now I'm back from my hols I can finally get back into doing the Twists each week.

I;m trying to do more layouts at sizes other than the standard 12x12 and I have a shiny new 8x8 album to fill, so here's one in 8x8:

The Twist this week is 'acrylic' so I chose to use bits of acrylic paint.

I'm currently on a crazy stamping / inking kick, so the background paper is an piece of cardstock in a garish blue. At least, it was before I covered it in bits of old ripped up book paper and ink (then some more layers of book and ink). The rest of the papers are all October Afternoon: Thrift Shop, in fact, the paper with the title on used to be bright yellow, but I'm a Crazy Inker!

This is John (and Melman the Midget Giraffe) in Nottingham meeting Robin Hood.

Sketchy Thursdays 6.10

I've decided to try and combine some other challenges with the Weekly Challenge that is set on UKS and to not stress too much about getting the WC (as we call it) done fully each week. I usually try and cover all the bases to get the points for the Team, but I often end up with layouts that I'm not 100% happy with.

So this is the first of the combined efforts and I've combined with Sketchy Thursdays! I'm still not 100% happy with it as I decided to use my own handwriting on it (to make a difference, to not keep using up those darned pricey alphas...) and I've never liked my handwriting. Still, makes it unique!

I am happy with the background paper, however, which started off as an 8x8 piece of white that you get slipped into page protectors in new albums. I abused it with stamps, Distress Ink (and Reinker in a spray) and then some more Distress Ink. Then I covered it all up with the Crate Paper! Oh well, it was fun and very messy.

This is another photo from Duxford last month where Daddy and I were stood under the flight path with all of the other crazy fools who don't want to fork out the money to go to the display properly. This plane was so close its wingtips didn't fit in the shot...

Father's Day Challenge

Here's my entry for the lastest Creative Craft World Challenge!

Well, the biggest challenge was choosing which picture of my Father to use and trying to avoid doing yet another Road Trip layout as those albums are full to bursting! So I decided to pick one of the most recent. I took this last month on a trip to Duxford. Each year we go and stand in 'Farmer Bob's* Field' and take pictures of the planes.

This year the Parentals are going to be away during the Flying Legends display, so we went during the Spring Airshow instead. Different sorts of planes than the ones we usually see, no Corsair and more modern fast things.

Here is Daddy, taking pictures:


and here's a close up of the plane. I think it's Sally B, but I might be wrong:


As you can see, I've chosen to do this Challenge as an 8.5x11.

EDIT: I won!

*no idea if his name is really Bob, but it's somethig to call him!