CHA

So this weekend is the big weekend for all us crafters - CHA in California is this weekend! I have a good scrappy friend who will be going, and having instructed her to take LOTS of photos; I am looking forward to vicariously living through her!

I am on Twitter and am picking up updates from some of my favourite scrappy people during their time at CHA - how much do you LOVE this 'grungecoat' as modelled by Tim Holtz?

Totally fab :) a friend of mine picked up some grungepaper on Friday, I will be sure to mention this pic to her!

To occupy myself I am catching up with Celebrity Big Brother - who knows why but I am finding it quite entertaining! I think I am nearly getting DF interested; he always wants to know what I'm laughing at! It's nearly coming to an end so I'm trying to catch up before I find out who wins :)

Rambling on a Wednesday

Okay, so today is just going to be a bit of a ramble! I have been picture heavy lately :)

I should be scrapping right now but I am sitting back and catching up on blogs, and looking at all of the wonderful things that people are creating - it's so great to have all this inspiration around you, fabulous scrapbook pages, art journal pages, altered art, gorgeous photos - I love it! And the forums, the prompts, the people - yeah for just sitting back and soaking it all up :)

I just caught sight of a tag that I made among my scrapping stuff, and remembered taking pics of it underneath my lamp on my scrapping table - I miss it so much! Never realised what hard work it would be not having a scrapping table.

So here it is, a photo tribute to my lost scrapping table...

I have been working on some gluebook type stuff today, separate from my art journal for the Caravan. Waiting for paint to dry is a LOOOOOOOONG process! It's hard to try to find somewhere out of the way to leave it dry! Someday, I will win the lottery :)

Accessorize dahling!!

Another London post! We have an Accessorize shop here at home but the London one just looked so much better! Loving this shop window.

And the contents of the shop looked as fab as the window - I was lucky enough to be bought this lovely necklace as part of my Christmas gift! I just loved all the layers and different elements to this.

Art Journaling part 2

Bit more art journaling to share :) courtesy of the Art Journal Caravan! This first one is based on a prompt from last week, but I thought it was so fun I really wanted to have a go! We needed to take some inspiration from the week's diary style used by Geninne here.

This second page uses this week's prompt, mend. I wasn't sure what to do for this one, so I searched for some poetry that used the word mend, and found this pretty poem by Emily Dickinson which I really liked alongside the image of this girl.
I felt a bit scrapbooky with this one (the flower and brad mark me as a scrapper, right? ;)

but I really loved using the paints and pens, and going a bit wild for a change! I feel like I could still add some more doodling to this one, work in progress perhaps...

Harrods

So on Saturday, I insisted that we had to go to Harrods. Even though I lived on the outskirts of London for a couple of years, I never went to Harrods! Criminal ;)

You know that you're getting near to Harrods just from the tube stations - this is the subway wall at Hyde Park Corner...

We took the scenic route and walked from Hyde Park Corner to Knightsbridge and could soon see the corner of Harrods in the distance! Can you see my mum trying to hide behind a lamp post??

This is the classic picture of those shop windows with the trademark green and gold Harrods colours....

And in the expensive shopping halls, this was one of the light fittings that caught my eye! Isn't it beautiful?

However! We were there for souvenirs so we went to Harrods Arcade!

... where they had sweeties....

...teddy bears....

...and mugs!

Plus these cute little shopping bags that totally reminded me of this month's inspiration challenge on TST! Thought of you Jules :)

A few more pics from this trip to share, but this was pretty heavy on photos today so I'll save them for another time!

VERY excited for the next art journalling prompt tomorrow!

London calling...

So on Saturday, my mum and I went to London to see the musical Wicked! It was my Christmas present from my mum this year; I had wanted to see it for a LONG time, ever since I went to New York about 5 years ago and saw that it was playing on Broadway! The Wizard of Oz is one of my favourite favourite films; apparently I started watching it when I was 3!

These pictures are outside the Apollo Victoria Theatre, near Victoria Station in London.

The picture below is inside the theatre; there was a really detailed surround to the stage, with lots of cogs and stairs that the actors used during the show.

This is a closer view of the map of Oz which later went up to reveal the rest of the stage - I loved how the Emerald City was lit up! Plus of course the map looked very scrappy and distressed ;)

And this is me and mum just before the show started, looking a bit tired already from the early start, the mad dashes around the subway stations and the bustling arcade in Harrods! (pics to follow in a later post)

It was a great day and I really enjoyed the show - thanks Mum and Merry Christmas!

Art Journaling

So I spent Saturday in London with my mum (pics to follow in a later post!), yesterday recovering and scrapping, and today cleaning and cooking!

I finished my first ever art journaling pages; not a patch on the ones I've seen, but I really enjoyed making them and you have to start somewhere, right? :)

The prompt for the first week was to journal about your chosen word of the year (a la Ali Edwards) which was just perfect to start off with as I'd been thinking a lot about this word.

From the prompts for this week (there's a new one every Friday) I chose 'accept' - this was close to my heart this week as I had a claustrophobic few days where I was feeling like I needed to get away from everybody! It was surprising how much making this page seemed to relieve the stress (once I got some time on my own of course!).

For a long time I have wanted some black gesso to play with, and when I went shopping on Friday there it was in the store! Of course I had to have some, and play with it at the earliest opportunity!