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.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Well not quite but it is a cat on a brick chimney in France. Well almost as its not  a real cat but one made of iron that has just been place there possibly to stop the birds from flying down??At any rate it fulfils this weeks CSI challenge which is here

and here is my interpretation:

in retrospect I should have put the photo more into the centre but I really wanted the stencilling and painting and chip to show so refused to move it. It doesn't look right but heh it'll do. (not said that for a long time).

better blogger

Yes well, in order to be a better blogger there has to be something to blog doesn't there? We had our 12 hour festive crop at the weekend. What an array of lovely food ranging from salmon and chicken with salads to cupcakes and donuts for lunch followed by chips and gravy in the evening. More eating than scrapping. We also treated ourselves to some new papers so that we all had the same range to scrap with. I managed 6 layouts two of which just need some tweaking. Here are the four that are finished:

The first one is for the Punky Scrap Rebels challenge here and uses their sketch. The photo is of a work of art that uses household bits and bobs to copy famous paintings.

 This one is of a Son et Lumière show projected onto Rouen cathedral depicting the passage of the impressionist era.

As he was waiting for me to finish the packing in Honfleur hubby decided to have a quick nap in the gardens of the hotel we were staying at. Fair game-who could resist taking a photo like this.

My niece has done some amateur modelling in her time so the title seemed apt. I took the photo ages ago when we spent the weekend together visiting Steven in Leamington.

I used the same paper range -Daily Grind for all the layouts.

I may even have the others to blog tomorrow. Who knows.

Bad blogger

Back in November at our crop it was my turn to set the class. I thought I'd go right out of our comfort zone and set a project rather than a layout so produced this:

The house itself was originally plain white but was painted and crackled and painted a bit more. All the products are Paperartsy including the stamping along the bottom.