The 'Book of Secrets'

This is my post for The Scrappy Tree this week :)

So my Mother's Day present for my dear Mum this year was a workshop at The Stamp Attic called the 'Book of Secrets' which was a day of steampunk awesomeness taught by Andy Skinner; I hadn't been familiar with Andy's work before spotting his class on the Stamp Attic website but the techniques he uses are AMAZING so check his blog out here!  He also has a range of stamps which are fab too, I can't wait for the release of the new fairground ones which you can see on his Facebook page here.

Top view of my 'book'!

We did have to leave the class a little earlier than we'd expected but thankfully lovely Wendy sent me a few photos of the class to share :)

Wendy's workshop space at The Stamp Attic all ready for class

Wendy and Gayle in happy smily crafty pose

Andy Skinner teaching!

I spent the day absolutely boggled at this amazing thing forming in front of my eyes!  We started out with a book-shaped wooden box, some card, paints, and a few die cut embellies.  Andy walked us through putting the whole thing together and bit by bit you forgot it was ever made up of those component parts because it just turned into this gorgeous, rusty, steampunk book!  Absolute genius :)  We'll definitely be looking out for some more of Andy's classes!

We picked up some class kits of the paints we used, I can signpost you to look for drybrushing techniques on Andy's blog if you want to see how we built up the layers, and to look for some of the die cuts on the Stamp Attic site.  I added a few Tim Holtz Idea-logy safety pins and an 'altered' dog tag when I got home after I messed about adding some more paint :)

Pardon the photos, was waiting to catch the sun here in Wales and then the camera battery ran out before I was finished! lol
Rather than opening like a traditional book, the spine slides out to reveal a drawer inside for goodies :)

Have a wonderful weekend, especially to Kristin and Julie from The Scrappy Tree who are spending the weekend at a retreat with some good scrappy friends of ours!  Have fun girls!!

Gayle xx

The trouble with being organised

How long is your to-do list?  I have all the best intentions but haven't yet found the best way of doing one.  I often make a new one and add things to it that I've already done because of course the most uplifting thing about a to-do list is, well, crossing things off!

On paper? I lose them.  Online?  Well I can't always get online and then they're not up to date and I forget about them.  Tattooing them on my forehead?  Slightly too permanent and I'd run out of available skin before very long.

Quite simply I do have to admit to not being organised.  I have a diary which I couldn't live without, but I only check it when it occurs to me to do so!  Which is not often enough.  And sometimes, just sometimes I feel like the things I write in it are just inconvenient reminders of the things I didn't have time to do this week/this month/this year LOL

If you read this and you're an organised person, please please give me some tips on how you manage!  I think
that the only way forward in completing everything I need to get done is to get more organised somehow - help bloggers help!! loool

Neglectful!

So I've been managing to post fairly regularly at The Scrappy Tree but neglecting my own blog a bit so I do have some catching up to do!

The number of times I've come to my own blog and written a few words on a post, and then just logged out again because catching up is such a mammoth task!

I've decided that the best way for me to move forwards is just to signpost anyone who's interested to The Scrappy Tree to check out blog posts there (most of mine are on a Friday or sometimes Saturday if I'm a little late) and to post here as and when I can from now on instead of looking at the mountain of catch ups :-D

Welcome back, Blog :)