TAGGED!

The rules:Start with 7 random facts/habits about yourself. People who are tagged have to write their 7 things on their blog. Then choose another 7 people to get tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment to tell them they have been tagged and to read your blog.


1. I used to be a fully qualified Certified accountant (FCCA)

2. I took a degree in Neuroscience at Sussex University a few years ago. I am very proud to report that I got a first!

3. I drink 2 or 3 cups of real coffee each morning, very rarely any after lunch becasue of the caffiene content.

4. I have Italian ancestors (my gggrandfather came over from Milan in the 1870s )

5. I love most genres of music, rock, pop, classical, country and western, jazz, soul, but not too keen on rap, indy, garage etc!

6. I ALWAYS have a drink of hot chocolate at bedtime. I always take sachets with me when I go on holiday.

7. I won a beauty contest once! I was Miss Metal Box Portslade 1978. DH and I had an all expenses trip to the factory in Speke, Liverpool, for the national finals!

I tag:
MJ, Jan, Kym, Beth, Kelly, Karen, Paula

Worthing Museum Costume collection

19th century dress

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18th century waistcoat. The detail on the embroidery is exquisitely dainty

Detail on embroidered waistcoat. 18th century (I think!)

17th century jacket. Look at what fantastic condition this is in!

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More detail

Pam invited me to a special opening of the collection of costumes that Worthing Museum had on Saturday. We met at Lorraine's jewellery workshop, where we had a picnic lunch on the lawn! I hadn't been to Lorraine's workshop before so it was really interesting to see, and she showed me how she gets the patterns on to the aluminium that she uses to make large chunky bangles and earrings. Bit too expensive for me though!

At the museum, we looked at the collection on show, very dated displays, and now a bit boring to be honest. But, then we went upstairs to the main collection, and were gobsmacked! We saw racks and racks of dresses, mostly 18th and 19th century, but some 20th century as well. We rifled through them a bit, and found some really bright and vibrant colours which suprised us novices! There was drawers and drawers full of buttons, buckles etc, and racks of shoes! We were shown some waistcoats and aprons with the most exquisite embroidery, and a little jacket from the 17th century! Think how old that must be!


It was absolutely fascinating, and I now want to be a volunteer at the museum! I'd love to find out more about costume, and go to the costume society talks and symposiums, but I'm not sure I've got the time atm!

When I grow Up

Shimelle suggested that we gather all our stash together and take pictures. Well, I have decided to use my 7gypsies chipboard book, and the lush Stella Ruby papers. Just in a few mins I gathered together this lot. What a great way to do a project! And do you know, I am going to start with the journaling!!! Never done that before, but this project is mainly about getting it down on paper, so I am going to write my story first before I touch scissors or glue!

Inchies for Tandastamps swap

More tanda inchies! I loved doing these, even though I wasn't sure about 'faces' as a theme. I painted some watercolour paper with twinkling H20s in several shades of brown and gold, then stamped it with Paper Arsty stamps 'shorthand'and 'tapemeasure' with black Stazon. Then, I sorted through all my stamps and used all the faces! Some are Paper Artsy, some are Tanda Stamps (red indian and totem pole!), some are random! I used some of the words from the stamps I had used, and then cut words out of my old books bought just for that purpose (although 1 of them is a travelogue of Italy, and I was using the Milan pages today, which is where my ancestors came from, so perhaps I should read it first!

scrappin' - Stories of 2 LOs

Here's 2 more for my NY album. I'm really pleased with it so far, and especially these 2! Ice skating in central park was one of those WOW moments, am I really here? So I wanted to do it justice! I chose the green to complement the LHS LO of Central Park, and the dark colour complements the main photo well. It took a while to decide how to place the photos, and I cropped the little ones a bit to make them fit together. Then I chose embellishments to match, and found the Dawn Bibby white tiles for the title. But I only had 1 of each letter, so couldn't do the whole title, needed 2 'i's you see! So I dug deep and found the metal letters. I just love these 7 gypsies labels. I've journalled on it about the WOW moment! The flowers and ribbon came next, and then i wanted to write in different fonts on the little yellow square, so some is stamped, some is rub-ons. And then the words 'remember' and 'adventure' were rub-ons too. I did this at the Brighton and Hove crop on Saturday, and it came runner up in the Page of the day competition!

This skyscraper LO started off as a challenge at my Crawley crop. It had to be 3 photos, monochrome and have some metal on it. I wasn't going to go for the obvious B&W monochrome, but these grey and black Bazzill sheets just looked so good! Sky Scraper is written in chipboard, Maya Road, I think. Sky is simply inked with a black ink pad. Scraper has been covered in cardstock, sanded and inked at the edges. IRL it does look a bit messy! Which isn't really the look that goes with the sleek modern skyscrapers, but never mind!

The design is a scraplift from an Australian Scrapbook magazine, but you would never guess, cos it's turned round and is very different! The bling is Heidi Swapp, boy it is gorgeous. The chipboard flowers are Lil Davis I think, and the metal centres are from natalie at the Crawley crop. Aren't they fab? The stitiching was inspired by Kirsty Wiseman's LO at the Scrappers Paradise Photography day. Oh and the swirls and flourishes are from sandra, who was showing off her cuttlebug, and I decided to try the flourishes, and then thought, wow they'd look good on my LO!!!

So that's how I decide how I do a LO. Very haphazard don't you think?

News

This is one of the gorgeous photos that natalie O'Shea took at las months photography workshop. I love them all (well, except one of them where I look pregnant!!!LOL, perhaps I shouldn't wear a smock top at my age and weight!!!)

Life has been pretty good lately, the weather has been superb, more like July than April! It has been really warm and sunny for a couple of weeks now. The garden is looking really spring like with the gorgeous blossom and that lovely fresh lime green of the new leaves!

M and I had the week off last week. In fact, I worked Wednesday evening, so had from the Thursday before Good Friday, a whole week and a half. It was lovely having plenty of lie-ins! It's the first time in 5 months I have had any time off except the bank holidays, since we went to New York in fact. Highlights of the week included a visit to Uppark, a NationalTrust property near Petersfield. We went on the motorbike, and it was a gorgeous ride through the country side of West Sussex. Uppark is famous for a massive fire in late 1980s, and the restoration work that went on afterwards. We didn't have time for the fore exhibition, so will have to go back soon. We went to london for thday and walked along the South bank with our cameras! Nicholas came, he is quite keen on his camera atm, and takes some good pics.

On Friday we stayed at home and pottered. Dump run(I cut down the Pampas Grass in the font garden just before easter), and I managed to persuade M to repaint the hall, stiars and landing, and that we should have a new carpet! YIPPEE!! It is all done now, just got to get measured up and carpet ordered. We will probably go for the same as the lounge as we are very pleased with it.

I've done a bit of gardening lately. I am going to try (as I do every year!!!LOL) to keep on top of the bindweed!! I have decided to try and spend just 20-30 misn per day pulling it up. I reckon that could get me on top of it all summer. Watch this space!!! I still need to do march in my garden journal. I am doing daffodils for March. can't decide whether to do tulips or blossom for April.

When I grow up.....

This is Shimelle's latest class (www.shimelle.com), called When I grow up. The first exercise was to reflect on what I wnated to be when I was little. At first, I couldn't remember what I had wanted to be, except when I was older (scientist, researcher, teacher, etc).

Then, suddenly in a flash, like these creative thoughts come to you (LOL), I remembered wanting to be a jigsaw puzzle checker, doing puzzles to check all the pieces were there (yeh, I know, I should work in a charity shop!!!). I used to sit for ages doing puzzles (I think they were Disney), not very big, so I was able to finish them quickly, and I would time myself, trying to do them quicker and quicker!

The more I thought about thsi, the more I wanted to do my children's story about it. Actually it has turned out very deep and meaningful (LOL). There is the TIME factor, how I try to do things quicker and quicker, and there is the DIFFICULTY factor, how difficult life becomes when you are a grown-up! And then there is the metaphor of the puzzle pieces fitting together, making up the picture of my life! Deep and meaningful over now!




Once upon a time, there was a little girl who wanted to be a jigsaw puzzle checker. When she was 10 all she did was do jigsaw puzzles.







She knew that if she was to be a real jigsaw puzzle checker, she was going to have to be quick! So she timed herself, completing puzzles quicker and quicker!









Many years passed.... Sometimes she did huge 1000 piece puzzles of mountain scenes that were very difficult.







She got married to maurice... and had 2 lovely children. They both enjoyed doing jigsaw puzzles too.











But now, the little girl has grown-up, and is still finding pieces of puzzle that fit together!










I have really enjoyed making this book! Papers are mainly scraps from my stash, but you will recognise quite a few of them. The book is a child's board book that MJ gave me to alter at one of her crops.

Thanks Shimelle, for getting me well and truly out of my box!

Scrappers paradise photography/scrapping day

Here is Geraldine, Angela, MJ, Karen and the wonderful Natalie O'Shea (standing up)











Playing with shutter speeds. Background in focus, car blurry, depicting motion.











Practising panning. Car in focus, background blurry












Blurry background - low f no.













Lesley (lesleyuk)


















Kelly (kellyg)


















Geraldine (ladyscrap)



















The lovely and very talented Kirsty Wiseman











View from my seat!

I had a fab time at SP P/S day yesterday. Thanks to Natalie and Kristy for organising! Lots of organising goes in to a day like that! There were about 30 of us wanting to learn more about our cameras. In the morning we did lessons on shutter speed and aperture settings. Although I already knew most of what we did, it was fab to try it all out with my new camera, and refresh my mind (been a couple of years since I used a SLR camera) , and it gave me confidence to fiddle with my controls!!! I had read some of the manual on Friday, and was a bit gobsmacked to say the least - there are sooooo many controls to change! White balance, ISO, speed, aperture, and then lots of different settings in between!

We took photos of each other and a flower for aperture priority setting, and moving cars outside for Shutter priority. The car drivers were all honking and waving, with a line of 15 or so cameras on tripods! I took over 200 photos, and have just spent some time deleting a whole lot of them!

In the afternoon we did some scrapping. We used a 'star' photo that we had taken with us for Kirsty's class, and she taught us a new technique - glossy accents on acetate to 'frame' the photo. Natalie's class included some really scrummy papers in bright pinks and oranges, and some alcohol inks. We used the photo that Kirsty had taken of us in the morning.

It was a really super day, and has given me the taste for a weekend retreat! I met loads of people I knew (4 Scrapettes!) and then some people I hadn't met irl from UKS, and then some people who don't go on UKS. Oh and Natalie did a mini photo sessions. Looking forward to those photos!