enter the mirror maze

In Prague we had great fun poking around in the mirror maze - it's a bit like a Hall of Selfie Opportunities!  It was one of those labyrinthine places that has the mirrors placed at cunning angles convincing you that you can step forward into a space only to find yourself smacking into a mirror that is tilted so that your reflection doesn't appear until it's too late.  As I said: lots of fun! 

I wanted the page to reflect the mirror aspect.  Partly because I just made a frankly obvious yet terrifically amusing pun by employing my sharp wit and razor intellect on the interplay between the words 'mirror' and 'reflect'.  But mainly because I wanted to try my hand at backwards writing.  Not 100% convinced by the result as it keeps making me look twice, as though it's backwards.  Which I suppose it is.

Never mind.  Things can never be too bad when you have an envelope to play with.  Huzzah!

I also wanted to incorporate the maze idea by using little arrows as embellishment.  I cut them out of a sheet of patterned paper and popped some of them up on foam.  BOOM! Dimension.

Kisses xxx

P.S. I love half term!

and another date

The boyfriend and I have been together for just over a year now.  Yay!  And I've been thinking back to our first few dates.  I never scrapbooked them but I did write about them in just in case I wanted to look back on those thoughts some day.  Well, it turns out now that I do want to look back on those early dates, and so I've made a page about the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th times that we went out together.

I thought you've probably had enough of seeing those little while envelopes on every single project I make lately.  So to really mix things up and take things in a completely different direction, y'know, creatively speaking, I have had a real re-think and come up with an entirely new concept.  

Vellum envelopes.

OK, there's still a hand-cut title, a camera makes an appearance and I've decorated with little wood veneer hearts and ink platters.  And the journaling is on little cards you can pull and and read.  But vellum envelopes are obviously NOTHING LIKE paper envelopes.  You can see through them!  So you can see the writing through three of them and the confetti I filled the fourth one with. Whole new look.  Clearly.

OK, so nothing's really changed, but I am still completely in love with letter-writing style and the amount of journalling I can fit in the envelopes finally allows me to ramble on at length without any worries about whether or not it will all fit in the space.  By the way, there are now 4 envelopes on this page.  2 envelopes no longer satisfy my addiction. Meanwhile, I cut flowers out of one of the last bits of Sassafras paper I have.  I miss Sassafras!

On the plus side, I very much like the more muted pieces in Dear Lizzy's Polka Dot Party for American Crafts.  Lots of patterned paper goodness.  I would like some more!

Kisses xxx

P.S. Drama this morning involving a flooded basement car park, a fire engine, burst pipes and the water being turned off.  I had enough in the kettle for one cup of tea, but I'm down to blueberry gin now...

the happenings of january

I can't help feeling that 2014 is disappearing awfully quickly!  But January has been busy and full of lovely things and while they won't all get scrapbooked, I would like them all to be remembered.  I've been making more of an effort to collect ephemera as I go: business cards and tickets, leaflets and postcards, anything free that will remind me where I went and what I did.  And now the month is over, I've collected it all together to keep.

My new method for saving ephemera works like this: everything I've collected this month has gone into an envelope.  (Envelopes? Really? More envelopes?  Yes, I say, many more envelopes).  I've discarded things that are bigger than 6x4, or trimmed them down to keep the important bits.  Then I've drawn out a little calendar page for January on a 6x4 piece of white cardstock and I will match each ticket and card to the appropriate date, jotting them in on the calendar. Then it all goes into the envelope and I wrote the month on the front.  Simple, effective, memorable.  

It really didn't take long to put together which is a bonus because it doesn't eat into my scrapping time.  Some of the things in the envelope have already been scrapped about, some will never get scrapped, and some are waiting; a little reminder that there is something I can come back to and another story I can tell.

And so begins another month.  So far, I like this system.  I hope I can keep it up!

Kisses xxx

P.S. Off to brunch in London with my brother now.  Note to self: grab a business card for my February envelope....