Catch-up

As you know, work has been getting in the way of my creativity and my blogging. No making = nothing much to blog about. Then I went from no making to not doing anything else overnight, and that's why you haven't seen me. It's also why my house is covered in a thick layer of dust and little bits of paper, and looks as if the complete contents of both our wardrobes have been moved into heaps in and around the ironing basket, and every door has creased shirts hanging from it.

Just after we'd waved goodbye to the visiting family after Christmas, a chest infection came to stay instead, and it stuck around for a long time. I had 10 days with a fever that paracetamol and the first antibiotics combined didn't touch, and 3 weeks of attempting to sleep sitting up. I haven't been that ill since I had something that wasn't glandular fever, when was living at home with a father who smoked. That's maaaaany years ago.

Once the second course of antibiotics kicked in and I was starting to get back on my wobbly feet again, I was asked if I would produce a farewell scrapbook for our Team Rector, who was leaving us on March the 8th. March the 8th was the only date on my calendar for the next 7 weeks. There was no life after it. "Ask me again after March the 8th" became my catchphrase. While I was deep into it, with the study floor mosaicked with black card-stock, photos, luggage tags, and printed die-cut labels (sorry and THANK YOU DH!), the Team Rector himself asked whether I would make him 60-odd hearts for the Parish Open Day on Valentine's Day. I couldn't really say "well actually I'm teensy bit busy at the moment" so I took a couple of days out and came up with these (and another 24, but you get the idea).

Meanwhile, as I had suspected might happen, the album grew into a bit of a monster. By the time I had finished it (officially at 9:40pm on March 7th) it had 50 pages and had taken upwards of 180 hours. Its sections featured the clergy and churches, parish events, parish groups, and 16 pages of messages from the people (blood out of a stone, anyone?) and matching photos of them. Sounds easy doesn't it? Nope, had to rally round volunteer photographers to snap them while the Rector wasn't about and also while he was. Subterfuge and deception right under his nose, in the very house of God!

Here are a few pages from it. I'm not going to show the personal pages, obviously. The colour scheme was black with the liturgical colours of red, green, purple and white, with the alternative colour of blue. I added gold touches as well, and used mostly the same die-cut fonts throughout for cohesiveness.

 

Here are the Team Rector and his wife receiving the album on the dreaded March the 8th. It's not easy to see here, but it's a good 3" thick and weighed enough to need both hands to hold it. I received a lovely little e-mail thanking me for it. I'm very proud.

 

That's what I've been up to. I've also made some cute Mothering Sunday things, but they will have to wait for another day. Watch this space!

Recycling

It's been so busy here. Our priest is away for a month over Christmas and the New Year (I didn't think that was allowed!) leaving minor chaos. He's one of those incredible people who keeps 200 balls in the air at any given time, without mentioning to anyone what he's doing - which is fine and admirable when he's here, but a massive waste of everyone's time trying to work out what ought to be happening when he's not around. I think I'm the only person around who minds much. Everyone else just goes with the flow, and if things go wrong they just shrug. I wish I could be like that - I care too much!

Last week I was helping Eileen while she was cleaning the Vestry for the visiting clergy. She found boxes of partially-used candles, all misshapen and melted together. I found some more in the rubbish bin when I went to empty it. Rather than chuck them all out, this pyromaniac here took them home, melted them down, separated all the icky bits and made some new candles to give to our Advent Bible study group. They loved them, and I loved making them - only playing with paper beats the fun of messing about with candle wax. ;-) I may not be paper-crafting, but it takes something drastic to drag me from doing any crafting at all.

There are a couple missing from this photo, and I still have three more to make for Christmas stocking fillers. Aren't they pretty?

I think this qualifies for Stampavie's "make a gift" challenge, and maybe Creative Card Crew's "anything goes" challenge. Let's see!

Adding to my drawers

Did I post about altering my Kotex panty-liner box to use in my scrap room? No, I don't believe I did. Back last summer, Basic Grey had brought out their Lime Rickey range, and the scrap-booking world was making lots of very excited noises about it. I looked it up, and after drooling a lot while I waited for it to arrive in Singapore, I treated myself to a few sheets of those bright and beautiful colours.

The trouble was that it was far too nice to use! Everyone who works with these delicious papers has experienced the same angst, I know. How can I cut into something that pretty? What if I make a mistake? What if I can't get any more? And there's no way I'm using this for a gift - I want to keep it! So I kept it and carried on sighing over it every time I looked through my paper collection.

That is, until I emptied my box of panty-liners which was such a useful box and too nice to throw away, but you don't want something labelled Kotex in constant and obvious use, do you? Yup, two birds with one stone:

At Christmas DH took me to the new ION Centre and we found a bookshop with a craft section upstairs, and a wonderful range of the latest SEI papers. As DH was having a bit of a panic about "what to get you for Christmas", I generously chose some of these sugary delights for him to give to me. I'm nice like that. ;-)

And as another Kotex box had recently become redundant, it got the same treatment. Good thing too, because when I went back for some more, the shelves were bare.

You can't tell from these photos, but the pink stripes are metallic, and there is pink glitter on the butterflies. The plastic shapes are by Maya Road, and I coloured them with Copics. The blue cord on both boxes was saved from paper bag handles.

I have them piled one on top of the other in my craft room at the moment, holding all kinds of oddments that I use every day. Beautiful AND useful. Can't beat that.

A Christmas Eve altered item

We just got back from Bali after a few days' pre-Christmas break with my brother. At 3:00am after a 3 hour delay when we finally landed and got through immigration, we were all obviously a little tired and useless. I was amazed when our cases came through first on the conveyor belt - that's never happened before, ever. DH grabbed his, and I stepped forward to get mine, and the lady next to DH pulled it off the conveyor. Oops! Now I must say here, that this has also never happened before. My case is a sludgy greeny brown, just the way I like it, and the complete opposite of all fashions for years.

So I decided that it needed some customisation, so that nobody would ever mistake it for theirs again. :-) Oh the wonderful thing about Stickles, is Stickles are wonderful things! These are my favourites: copper, lime green and diamond.

 

We're staying up tonight because we're going to midnight mass at the local church. The presents are wrapped and arranged around our beautiful twinkling tree, Christmas breakfast is made, the house is clean (DH took bro off for an afternoon's shopping so I could do housework) and they're now enjoying a Christmas cameo episode of Doctor Who which I'm half-watching while I post.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas, wherever you are and whatever you're doing. Be patient with your families, keep the Christmas goodwill uppermost in your minds, and above all - have a great time! Merry Christmas, one and all!