trimmingthesails

An ad, a page, and a reminder ...

You probably know how much I love a good advert, especially one with plenty of 'white' space; and when this fell out of the middle of a magazine, how could I resist?

It was just perfect for the photo of our rather tatty rhubarb, the only plant we brought back from the allotment-which-is-ours-no-longer. (Though quite why we choose this specimen I am not sure - I remember my brothers and Dad and I lawnmowering over the rhubarb patch one spring in the hope it would take the hint. It didn't. Mum was pleased.) The ad inspiration made a great cover for a little page inside with some and rather sad photos, and a dollop of hand-journalling ... A similar technique gave extra journalling space for a photo of all the wonderful gluten-free products my lovely daughter-in-law sent back with Himself for me.

Combined with the Lemon Drizzle collage, the page now looks something like this ...

I confess to enjoying 'keeping up to date' - despite all the voices in my head about it not being necessary! Oh, and washi tape makes a wonderfully un-bulky hinge ...

On Monday, I'll be stopping for a mid-month moment again, and you are most welcome to join me again, or for the first time, for Simply A Moment.  It will probably be Tuesday before I am able to post, with the linky as usual, so please remember there is no rush - it'll be here for a fortnight!

Wishing you a lovely weekend, full of happy things ... :).

A centenary for WOYW (9 March 2011)

I know. I can hear you all from here. "Is that really your work desk?" "Have you tidied up specially?" No, actually, it often looks like this. Being a simple soul, I can only focus on one thing at a time, alas. I regularly envy the glorious desks I visit, cornucopias of gorgeous colour and shape and texture accessed at The Stamping Ground, with the lovely Miss Julia. But right now, this is as good as mine is going to get - the next spread in my This is 2011 album, with the pages from the second half of February. A bit of a hybrid again, with a striped pocket (paper is KI Memories, I think) holding bits from my birthday bash, and some journalling ... 

Here's the desktop version before I printed the left-hand side onto card, and the images onto silk photopaper. To ring the changes from previous pages, the text and pictures are reversed, I've rounded the corners for variety, narrowed the strips of colour on the journalling bands and deepened the colours on the strips this time in lieu of making them paler. (Bother, just seen a spelling mistake! Resisting the temptation to reprint ...). The taupe-coloured card behind the photos features here because on its reverse is the page celebrating Gladys; my pages are two-sided in this album.

 And as I am a hundred-posts-old today, I'd just like to say a heartfelt thank-you to all of you who come and visit, read along, converse with me, or just pop in and sit on the porch for a while. I am gladdened and honoured by your company. :) Wishing you Wonderfulness On Your Wednesday ...

Frustration rules OK ...

 It was my creative friend Sian's post this week that got me thinking. About style, being in and out of comfort zones, whether we have a recogniseable style or not, or are still looking ...

Flicking back through the albums and pages I'd made before I learnt how to design on the computer, I had a sudden hankering to start with a photo again, and pull together papers, card, bits and pieces, and see where it went. I thought, quite excitedly, that I could seek out multiple patterns (goodness knows, I have plenty of them!), find the boxes of brads, and do physical things like punch holes noisily and shout 'Sorry!' Could I even (sharp intake of breath) put things at wonky angles?

This is what transpired. Not very wonky, or very patterned, as it turned out, though I did try hard with the any-which-way stitching. it's the story of my Mum and bear from last week ...

The rest of the journalling is hidden: the large tab pulls it out. I'm still not sure about those free-floating leaves, and may well go and gently ease them off. I think they're too big. I need a smaller punch to make leaves about the size of the patches on the soles Teddy's feet.

Did I enjoy it? Well, yes and no. Yes to the pleasure of handling some real things. That was fun. No to the chaos I seemed to generate around me and the sheer length of time it took me to try things out, change my mind, peel things off, rearrange bits ... I get torn between the creative satisfaction I know awaits completing the page, or at least finally realising what it needs and how to get it to make visual sense, and the frustration of experiencing the room in a mess, that's it's already very late, and that I really need to go to bed.

And you? What do you get frustrated about during creative endeavours, or does it all flow seamlessly and enjoyably? I am really hoping I am not alone!

Pockets, flaps and pullouts (1)

It all began here, as I remember, with this photo from our French holiday, a decade ago ...

It was the shutters on the windows which made me ponder how this effect could translate onto a simple scrapbook layout - the page acting as a kind of 'window', and flaps attached either side, like shutters. At the time, I was putting together an album for my daughter - a "This is Your Life". At this point, she'd had twenty-one years of it, so there was a lot to fit in. Most of the pages were multi-photo, and it became a challenge to myself to see how many photos I could incorporate in a double-page spread. This one has just twenty-six, but it was the first in which I experimented with pockets and flaps. Here it is with the flaps closed:

You can see that I hadn't quite got the hang of lining things up neatly yet! but the simple blocks of adjoining photos is a technique I came to use regularly. Clipped in position with a little metal what-d'-you-call-it and brad, the left-hand flap unfolds to reveal pockets for ...

• maps showing our journey from home, the position of the place we stayed in France, and a local map of the town
• additional photos mounted on card with a story on the back

You can see that I was heavily into throwing lots of newly-learnt features in, like unnecessary tags for titles! Having them facing opposing ways was a mistake, too. Nowadays, I would simply print a title and be done.

The right-hand similarly contains pockets with more single photos, and a little minibook recounting how we coped with a family bereavement during the holiday. Opened out in full, this is what it looks like ...

Oh, and the font is way too fussy. Yes, it may be one of those fonts typically associated with France (I'm not quite sure why this is so - was it used in Barbar The Elephant?), but a simple sans-serif would be a lot more legible.
I feel a bit wistful turning those pages. Peeping behind things, turning things over, lifting things out - I like this interactivity ... Over the next month, I am going to go back and peruse my albums to see what I can take from them (and what I will leave behind) in my next stage of multi-photo pages, ands look forward to sharing them on here.
What about you, I wonder? Are you a stunning-single-photo scrapper, or a let's-get-lots-in person? Anyone else have a fondness for pockets, flaps and pullouts? I'd love to hear from you, and be pointed in the direction of what you do!