trimmingthesails

Layer it on ...

... said Miss Smith, in her Just One Sketch class. And in honour of my now-retired purse, I did. I couldn't resist the doodling - for up in the grey and mild mists of the hills, my eyes are desperate for a bit of colour. So thank-you to Basic Grey, a clutch of felt pens, and my favourite stamps ...

Due to family circumstances, things are about to get a whole lot busier here in the next few weeks, and creativity may need to flourish in even smaller pockets of time and with slightly sparser postings. But rest assured I will be visiting you all as much as I can - as well as pondering Miss Smith's next move, for I hear on the grapevine that it may involve a page with no photos at all ...

Round and round ...

... the garden scrapbook page, said Miss Smith in her Just One Sketch class. Encircle your design. Celebrate curves. Which this page, completed at my nearest crop on Saturday morning, attempts to do. You'll see from the orginal design (right) that I tipped it sideways (after a fashion), used the previously journalled narrow strip for a photo, rounded edges and cut out a semi-circle. That left room for a bit more journalling in my Quotes and Notes series for my children. And with the friendly and creative company of the circle of scrap friends, plus cups of tea provided by the lovely Emma and Ali, it wasn't too painful to put together without a computer ...

(Journalling reads: The west of Ireland had some pithy sayings. Here are some of your Grandma Mattie’s favourites; a few of them may also be of Belfast origin, from where Grandad Jack came and where Grandma did her nursing training at the age of eighteen.
“I’ve seen a better-lookin’ face eatin’ hay” (disparaging).  “Does your mother know you’re out?” (to someone behaving stupidly, implying they should not be outside without a parent).  “Who’s ‘she’: the cat’s mother?” (if you referred to her as ‘she’, rather than ‘Mum’, in her hearing).  “Were you born on a barn?” (if you left the door open). “I’ve seen people die with less fuss” (designed to put your in your place).  “If the wind changes, you’ll stay like that” (whenever you pulled a face).  “If you’re not careful, you’ll fall in that shough (ditch), and then you’ll be up to your oxsters (armpits) in clabber (mud).”  “You’ve got bags under your eyes you could plant tatties (potatoes) in”.)

I am wondering what design challenges await us this week!

Down the design rabbithole ...

I'm beginning to feel like Alice in Wonderland. We're busy exploring the rabbithole of our design in Miss Smith's Just One Sketch class: we've flipped, reversed, and expanded - and now we're shrinking. Make it smaller! said the Queen. Fearing the next sentence might be "Off with her head!" if I didn't, I did.

Not having anything in a pale honey colour for the background,  I had a little play and came up with this; you're welcome to a 12x12 copy if you'd like one for your own scrapbooking or cardmaking.

Honeygrungepaper: download here

So without more ado, here's the story of me and The Bike:

(Text reads: This is the third bike I’ve had as an adult. My first was much loved. By the time I had realised at university that a bike would be useful, no shops in town had an affordable one left. With a handful of ten pences, I stood in a phonebox and rang every secondhand bikeshop in the county. No luck. Despondent, and with my last coin, I stabbed at a random number in the phone book with my finger, and rang a total stranger fifteen miles away to ask “I don’t suppose you have a bike for sale?” They did. A train journey later and it was mine for ten pounds. I rode it for twenty years. Happy days!)

And hope you have a happy day too. :)

Walking an edge ...

How to fill a whole page from edge to edge? Now that was the challenge set by Miss Smith: tell a story, fit in a photo, keep some semblance of the original design, and - the bit that made me quake! - fill the space. Having long wanted to use this picture, and inspired by the wonderful John McWade of the design site Before and After (see his current video), I flipped my original design sideways, split the long horizontal bar in two above and below the photo, and added a story or two - or eight.

I know. I left a bit of white space above the text in the left-hand column. I tried, truly I did: a camera icon, an arrow, a button, a bow, another mini-photo ... just couldn't get it to work. I got visual indigestion. Will it be enough to fill the brief - whaddya think?

Up here, the rumours of more snow are rife, but I'm pretending it's not going to happen. Mum and I have some fabric inks to try out, a bundle of prepared cotton, and a pile of logs for the fire. Hoping you have a lovely weekend - and see you Monday?

Story Telling Sunday (February)

This is really my Dad's story, and without more ado, here he is ...


(This page and story are doing double-duty today. It will be part of my Quotes and Notes pages for my (adult) children: snippets of things they might not know about me, their dad, their wider family. Miss Smith's class Just One Sketch is providing the focus - prompt five requires the using of our own sketch in a colourway we might not normally adopt. I'm not sure that swopping white space for black space really counts, but in my defence I did add a row of tiny light green squares!).

Hoping you have a very happy Sunday browsing Sian's wonderful store-house of treasures over at Story-Telling Sunday ...

 

Tip it sideways ...

... said Miss Smith in her Just One Sketch class. So I did - just to see what happened to my original sketch. Ninety degrees anticlockwise, and portrait morphs into landscape (in more ways than one). See far right? With the vertical strip of text above the Q and N? This seemed to work fine on the first (portrait) page, but I didn't think it looked good in landscape: a bit cluttered and clumsy. So on the principle of "If in doubt. take it out", I did ...

What do you think? Right decision? No, you'd have left it in? Why? All thoughts welcome - I do love a good natter about design! :)

 

Quotes and Notes (for Miss Smith)

It might be fun, I thought, whilst taking Miss Smith's class Just One Sketch, to have a theme: something to pull the sketches together. And so Quotes and Notes was born: a collection of ... well, just what it says on the tin, quotes and notes, written with my (grown-up) children in mind. They might be favourite quotations and thoughts, or mini-stories from my and their Dad's lives they have not yet heard. They may even get a copy one day! In the meantime, here's the sketch from Monday, interpreted very simply...

Over the last three months, Julie of Letting The Days Roll By has been masterminding a group of us in a project called Pass The Page: a kind of scrapbooking Chinese Whispers, and this Friday at noon all will be revealed - to us as well as you, for we've only seen the page before our own! Please do join us in some hopping around the blogosphere to see how the initial design has evolved - I think there might even be some nice things to win.

Time for some tea and A Little Something, I think - though I might give the condensed milk a miss this time. :)