Green tea

Sounds perhaps not your average flavour for an ice cream especially when teamed with cinnamon biscuits and bean paste. However it is standard flavouring for all sorts of things in Japan such as green tea Kit Kat biscuits. Can you imagine? Mind you they also have strawberry flavour kit kats too. Clive succumbed in Kyoto and it was lovely (once we got the words 'bean paste' out of our minds). As this fall in the remit of Jemma's may challenge I have entered it.

NSBD

It was National Scrapbooking Day on Saturday. Hubby laughed when I  told him that. He didn't take it seriously at all. I tried to explain that it was similar to The Draw for football fans but he didn't quite agree. Never mind, I still managed to do a few layouts prompted by Wear Crafts who did take it seriously by giving us various prompts on their blog and Facebook page. This one is of Sarah on the tube in Tokyo and was inspired by Lesley G of Ohblogitifyoucantbeatthem . Clive took quite a few of her so this is one of many.Ive used Glitz designs Wild and Free papers and used a Stampin Up chevron punch.

This next one using the same range of papers from Glitz Designs is also of Sarah taken when we came across a hat shop one evening. We'd never seen so many casual hats in one shop. It was done for SJCrafts bingo challenge:

I was spurred on by Jemma who is on the DT so I couldn't really say no could I?

masterboard

Completely inspired by Jofy's master board over on the Paperartsy blog las month, having the same  stamps  and it being in my favourite colours, I had no choice but to replicate it. I say replicate but in fact mine is nowhere near as pretty or as full as hers. I was a bit afraid of it looking too busy so was a little reserved but when I compare the two I think mine is too empty. However it is my first attempt and there will be more masterboards (or is it a marsterboard -that is the debate had with Jemma yesterday) to come. So watch this space.

Yesterday

Cue for a song? not really, yesterday was our crafty get-together. I love it. I didn't do very much but it was great anyway. I did do this layout for the Kaiser weekly challenge. Not one I've done before but just fancied having a go. It's based on this sketch:

 I decided to miss the hexagons as I'd already done on like that so went for punching the circles out of one of the new Kaiser ranges.

It tells the tale of our first meal and our last meal in Japan.

Did the next lot a while ago but forgot  to upload them.
This one speaks for itself.

You can't imagine the enormity of Mount Fuji until you actually see it. It is immense and very overwhelming.

and lastly, a view of Tokyo taken from one of the two towers of the Governmental building:

Washi tape

Got to admit, I love wash tape but hardly ever use it. In Japan you can find it in abundance, every colour, every width and every price. Far too much choice for someone who, when faced with choice, runs away from making a decision. I did get us some but couldn't make too make decisions so limited myself to taking photographs of it instead.

I used the Scrap365 sketch for this layout.

amazingly

I can still find my way around my blog. Amazing because it's been so long since I had anything to blog but last month Michele and I went on a retreat. Mojo was not with us but thankfully lots of nice people were and so we did our best to produce.
First up is a layout I did having challenged Jemma who was sharing our table, to move out of her comfort zone and take inspiration from what I was doing and I would do something graphic from looking at the layout she was doing. 
So here we are:

The story is that we went to the Todai-Ji temple in Nara and had the opportunity of writing on a roof tile to be used when the present tiles need replacing. It was probably a tourist thing to do but to me it felt quite spiritual (despite my middle name being Cynical). 

In Japan there are, as one would expect lots of shops specialising in fans and, in fact, one of the first shops we came across was indeed a fan shop.

Not the most beautiful of the ones we saw but just the first one.

Everything they do in Japan is done beautifully or maybe that should read 'prettily'. we came across quite a few shops in Kyoto selling jars of sweets like these ones:

This latter layout was inspired, I think, by a challenge but can't quite remember where I saw it now. It'll cop me to me. Credits to you if its yours. Let me know.

There were more layouts done on the day but they are not quite finished so I may return sooner than I have this time. TFL.

several weeks later

…and I have actually done something crafty. Inspired by Finnabair's wonderful canvases I took the opportunity to create one at our monthly crop. It took two sessions to complete but I love it. The colours are from Luminarte silk paints available from The Artist Trading Post. Unfortunately the photo does not do it justice as you can't see the true colour and the sparkle. Believe me the sparkle is beautiful. I love it so much I have just ordered more to do another one of Michael.