Finished Friday
Hello friends, remember me?
Long time no write despite telling myself at New Year I was going to get my act together, design and create more projects, especially for workshops, make more stuff, especially new display boards for events, and post regularly, especially here and on social media generally. Epic fail on all those fronts, no excuses, just struggling a bit to figure out my new life, and finding my abilities to multi task and my need to create have abandoned me, not totally, but enough to find all of it a bit too challenging. On the plus side I have quietly been facing and sorting out some of the puzzles I have to solve along the road to independence. So many details I had never given a thought to as the Headmaster and I were a team, in life and in business, each doing our bit and not wasting our downtime in discussing the detail of what that consisted of. So, I didn’t know you have to take his diesel gas guzzler to a major service with a minimum of half a tank of fuel in order they can add the fuel addy stuff, how exhausting driving is when you hate it, how to get some height to an event stand when 6’ gridwall doesn’t fit in said gas guzzler and how the **** do you build said gridwall by yourself anyway without decapitating yourself or anyone else, the list seems endless with new ‘things I never realised’ popping up like a game of whackamole! But, while failing to do about half of the things I had thought somehow I could, it does mean I have done about half the things I needed to with six events exhibited at all by myself, a compromise found for the grid problem, driving home after every event to keep events profitable, but acknowledging that Gateshead was a step too far to drive up, build stand, do event, pack and load stand and drive home, so next time an additional overnight required. On balance I’m doing OK, not where I thought I would be, but I have decided that is well, OK.
Once upon a time the Headmaster bought me a pretty little bracelet which spelled out in morse code ‘Just breathe’ something he regularly said to me when I was panicking about something or other. It still sits in a dish by my bed and I have decided that I need to make that the top priority on every day’s to do list and some days that may be all I manage, but I will gradually try to add the things I thought I would already be doing and that will be, well, OK.
This is the first, of hopefully many, regular, Finished Fridays, a layout I started last month at Stratton Scrappers crop but ‘mislaid’ ie slotted back to front in my album so unidentifiable, all the layered elements adhered together just not attached to the base layers.
It started from a leftover bag of Floral Bits from the Simple Vintage Weathered Garden Collection, I don’t normally buy these type of embellishments as I can often detail cut images from the papers and create my own, but I loved this collection so much I bought everything! I had used all full sheets from this so took two sheets from The Simple Life collection also from Simple Stories to give me a base & frame and using all the pieces that included the white flowers from the Bits bag, plus a few of the butterflies, and arranged them as a rough wreath shape. I am a very slow and indecisive scrapbooker so this took a very long time lol!
I then stamped out in Versafine Clair ink in Shady Lane and die cut lots of images from the Sizzix/49&market Framelits die set (666705) onto the remaining scraps form both collections to create the tickets and tabs which I arranged as part of the wreath shape creating two main embellishment clusters.
I glued the wreath pieces and the photos to each other so I had just one piece to handle whilst I used some small stamps from my collection to add some interest to the background again using Shady Lane ink. Finally, I added foam pads to the reverse of the wreath to attach it to the base. I was thrilled with these photos, just taken with my iphone, when I printed them out and the whole layout really reflects the tranquillity and peace of my favourite day in Fife last September spent at the Royal Botanical Gardens in St Andrews, an amazing place.
Back soon x
