Card Challenge Week 22/”First, there is the Neopolitan prince.”

The card challenge as ever by Natty, thank you.

Monochromatic today, I have been inspired by Olga Heldwein as well today.I love the delicate but chunky look of her work.

Shakespeare. Well I thought of this line as my new stash was opened. Thank you Creative Craft World, ace service from Lou.

“First, there is the Neopolitan prince.” I do actually know this play as it was a syllabus text. I remember the drama of it very well. I also remember thinking that my english teacher would make a good Shylock on stage, though he did tend towards the theatrical. It wasn’t The Globe. There was a bit of arm flourishing. There was ‘pronouncement’ of important parts. I remember that it was hot summer afternoons with the sight of the sea in the distance when we studied it. I remember enjoying it but anticipating it’s end too so I could escape. So it must have been last lesson. Must have been.

So why that line? Dear Lizzy Neopolitan 6x6 was in my stash box. I used the greeny-blue spotty paper as the bottom scalloped circle

Night x

 

 

Project Life Week 19 & 20.

Considering I was on holiday last week, I am not quite sure how I didn’t manage to post week 19’s PL? Anyway here it is with week 20.

Week 19

Lots of journaling straight onto the photos and printed, a little bit of ephemera from our trip to Cornwall. Our new lamp from the lovely Port Isaac Pottery.

I am trying to take my own advice to get in the photos. I exist, I put this together and therefore I really ought to be in it. Bah! I made Mum get in them, she was thrilled too.

Lots of journaling about how we were feeling going through a tricky phase.

Week 20

More ephemera this week. A post-it note from Louis to say good nighit (sic) and wish me luck (for my first run in a while the next day), a wrapper for some olympic mascot branded chocolate (it really isn’t the right message is it, so nice though!), a note from a new, good friend, Anne included in a thoughtful parcel she sent me, thank you.

Sian linked up an app that gives photos a cartoon edge, Halftone. Brilliant, has given us a real giggle this week

Screenshots of my longest run last week and the GPS route. Also a QR code again. I love having those in the album very much. I have blurred this one out as it isn’t just Ali in this one.

Still loving this project, it has already nearly filled my first album.

 

Card Challenge Week 21/”Feed'st thy light's flame”

The card challenge as ever by Natty, thank you.

I was a bit bemused this evening as what to do for the challenge of ‘use a recently learned technique’. I don’t believe I have learned something recently. However, I did pinch the micropore tape from the first aid kit to make my own washi tape. I wasn’t wild about the result and I had many other scrappy jobs I should have been attending to so I left it. I did use the tape though, plain and unaltered and I loved the effect. Lovely soft texture, able to see patterns below and can stamp and write on it. I doubt it will make it back to the first aid kit.

 

I am not too happy with it, it’s too flat, but it will be fine for a quick card if needed.

I didn’t have much time tonight either which hasn’t helped with the mojo.

Today, the Olympic Torch Relay came through the village where I work and to the town where I live It really was magic, I was so sad to not be with my boys watching it. I was very sorry not to see Jonathan Edwards do his leg of the relay, he used to live in our town and he was so emotional he was crying and couldn’t speak to start with. Awww.

So by the time I got home and they all watched my footage and I had watched their footage, (Mum very kindly helped out with Ali’s class walking them there, helping out and walking them back), it was gone 8pm! She took loads of footage and photos which no doubt will feature on a layout soon.

Trying to find a Shakespeare link hasn’t been so easy this week, I couldn’t think of one for a start. So I searched ye olde internet for a reference to flame and this is what I found.

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory.
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding.
    Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
    To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

–William Shakespeare

Sonnet 1. It’s meaning and context has very little to do with the Olympic Torch Relay, but never mind! The point at which I decided to go with it was when I read “Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,”. That just happens to be Suzie’s photo prompt of the day for those of us that are following that challenge. Ornament. So I think it is the right quote for today.

Monthly Challenge/‘Christening’

I found the colour combo challenge this month on UKS quite tricky as the colours were all so rich, but as I decided to just get on and do it for the points, I realised that I didn’t have to use lots of the colours, so I didn’t.

Some gesso, some croco paint in bronze, some cosmic shimmer mist in lava red and distress stain in fired brick, generally splattered and sponged with a few pieces of papers from my scraps box and it was done.

Although looking at it, I think I will go back round the strips with a fineliner to outline them, they look a bit too floaty random.

The photo was as the title suggests from mine and Rich’s christening. Mum still cannot believe that she managed to get two different kinds of red for us to wear. I still can’t get past our haircuts

The service was at St Helena’s the church on Lundy where we lived, there have been so few children to live on the island that Mum suspects there may not have been any christenings there since, or at least very few. I think I might try and find out more about that.

Co-incidentally, talking to my boss this week, his great-grandad was the stone mason that built St Helena’s. Small world.

The Olympic Flame is coming to town tomorrow. We are all excited. I am at work so I shall walk up and watch it go past as it is only in my work village for 5 minutes. My Mum and the kids will be having a party as it is staying 2 hours in our town and everyone is going to the sports fields for all sorts of Olympic themed fun. I didn’t really get a great deal there!

Card Challenge Week 20/ROYGBIV

 

Thanks, as always, to Natty.

The prompt this week is Rainbow. Great word, a bow across the rain.

I have really fallen for clouds at the moment and my local scrap store had a cloud embossing folder this morning so it had to be used

So the Shakespeare connection this week. The mnemonic to learn the colours of the rainbow as learned at school when I was knee-high (and used today), was Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain.

The famous Richard Of York was King Richard III’s father. King Richard III is one of the history plays.

Lots of links for me this week, Richard is my brother’s name and it would have been his 37th birthday today.

The opening words to the play are;

“Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun (son) of York

And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house”

So, clouds.

Also my Dad would often proclaim the first line when something was going wrong. It would be more sonorous and doom-laden the bigger the problem

It is the anniversary of his dying this week so that has given me a good memory to help get through.

So this was the 100th post. A massive thank you to everyone that commented and became a follower, it has made me very happy. The winners are Anne from the commenters and Karen from the followers. Congratulations. Can you please email me at jennie.hart@me.com with your details so I can send your prize?

 

Ten Things On The Tenth

Time for Ten Things, Shimelle’s lovely link up blog hop. Actually, this evening now i’m home there doesn’t appear to be one! I’ll plough ahead regardless and i’m sure you all know how to find Shimelle’s blog!

Ten things I am looking forward to this summer, in no particular order.

1. My friend’s wedding on June 1st. She has worked really hard on it and it sounds as if it will be just lovely, the actual wedding is in a beautiful hotel overlooking the sea and a great beach. Co-incidentally the one I blogged about here for Storytelling Sunday at From High In The Sky (there are still a few days to enter yours or just settle down and have a good read). Then at a lovely country barn conversion with a huge conservatory for the reception. I am especially looking forward to it now that the invites are finished.

2. A family trip out to Cornwall on Sunday. So fair warning to you lovely Cornish folk, if you hear a lot of noise it will be us lot.

3. Pay Day + Online Browsing = Stash Happy. It might be this? Decisions.

4. The Jubilee.

5. The Olympics.

6. Watching the fox gloves grow. and the rest of the garden.

I mentioned on Sunday to Mum that the foxgloves were growing as I watched, so we put it to the test. We made a mark on it’s prop cane and tracked it through the week. Wow. The wind hasn’t done it any favours, it’ll need to be tied again tomorrow, they need to grow in a hedge really.

7. Swimming with the boys in the sea this summer.

8. Having a holiday from work next week.

9. The family picnic we have planned for the August Bank Holiday weekend where we will all get together from all over the south of England and spend the day and night together.

10. Saying Thank you to my lovely readers and followers of my blog by giving away a couple of prizes. My next post will be my 100th! So please leave a comment on this post and I will randomly pick one to send a prize to. I have another prize to send and that will be to one of my followers. I am so thrilled that 19 of you follow me, if I could have 20 new followers every 100 posts I would be so happy, again I will randomly pick one of you. I will leave it open until Monday night, 8pm GMT. I will then post up what your prize will be and post it out next week.

That’s them then, the Ten Things on the Tenth. What are you looking forward to this summer?

Project Life Week 18

It has been nice to get back into the swing of project life. It is still my favourite crafty thing to do at the moment. Part of that is due to the generous nature of some of the project life design team and some inspiring women doing this around the world. Because of them sharing their work and ‘how to’ tutorials I have learnt so much about the project, technology and photo editing. I have found so many new things to learn. It has been time consuming, but also a brilliant way to spend a few hours learning.

Left-hand side protector.

 

I was thrilled with the HD video quality on the iphone and have taken about 40 little videos so far. I thought it would be easy to copy and paste the video into a blog or online somewhere for me to store it. No, I have had a learning curve with that. I now have it nailed though I think with a system I am happy with.

This is one of the videos I took this week, just for an example I have loaded it in here, but I also wanted to turn it into a QR code to add to my project life for me to link back to the videos easily directly from browsing the album.

I have been intrigued by the QR codes and using them on my phone and so when one of the brilliant ladies over on the Project Life thread at UKS-thank you Jackie linked up to Mercy Tiara – (Tracy) using them as part of her project life I needed to be able to do it, like, immediately! So I have sorted out how to do that, then I found a tutorial on how to re-colour them to match your page and so I had to practice that. Well, you can see how I have been diverted!

So here is the QR code that I printed and added into the album. 

Right hand side protector with the QR code.

It’s blurry and i’ve lost the light Sorry.

A close-up though of the dog