Dolly's Dreamings

Sunday madness

You know how it is ... it's a lazy day. It's Sunday. All is right withthe world. You are relaxed and chilled.

Perfect day to convince the other half that, rather than wait until half term, when I only have a week off, we should decorate the dining room NOW!

Well I almost convinced him.

We have at least measured up and are off to look at possible furniture tomorrow.

The dining room and downstairs cloakroom are the last two rooms we have to do - well redo actually. It means that within the last few years we will have done the whole house and decluttered and freshened and updated.

We'll see how we get on tomorrow with a view to bringing our dining room into the 21st century.

I have been scrapping today and made a page using one of the colour charts as part of the Explore course I am doing.

I have loved the whole concept this week of exploring the idea of colour. What do dolurs say to me? How to colours make me feel? Why do I gravitate to specific colours? It has been a great journey to undertake and I feel I have learnt a great deal.

Plus Shimelle linked to some wonderful sites that I want to detail here as I will be using them again and again I know.

The first is my favourite. It is called Design Seeds and I love the way the colour combinations are shown.

In the end I chose to work with this one - Kilim hues.

 I scrapped another Californian page (and also the house challenge for UKS) I used the photos of Las Brisas, a wonderful hotel we stayed at in Palm Springs. I had found the pictures difficult to scrap as the colour contrasts were so strong witht he red bouganvelia and the desert and the blue sky. The colour swatch really helped pull the colours together. I will be using that technique again - believe me.

 

 The other colour site was  colour lovers   which is good but I don't love it as much as Design Seeds.

Today I am thankful for

• the pleasure in feeding the cats special treats

I was sent this e mail today and there are some good truths in it so I figured I would share.

A  Birth Certificate shows that we were born 
A Death Certificate shows that we died 
Pictures show that we have lived! 

I Believe that just because two people argue, it doesn't mean they don't love each other. And just because they don't argue, it doesn't mean they do love each other.

 

I believe...
that we don't have to change friends if we understand that friends change.

 

I believe.. that true friendship continues to grow,
even over the longest distance. Same goes for true love.

 

I Believe... that you can do something in an instant that will give  you heartache for life.

 

I Believe....that it's taking me a long time to become the person I want to be.

 

I Believe...that you should always leave loved ones with Loving words.
It  may be the last time you see them.

 

I Believe.... that you can keep going long after you think you can't.

 

I Believe....that we are responsible for what we do, no matter how  we feel.

 

 I Believe...that either you control your attitude or it controls you.

 

 I Believe....that heroes are the people who do what has to be done when it needs to be done, regardless of the consequences.

 

I Believe....that sometimes the people you expect to kick you when you're

down will be the ones to help you get back up.

 

 I Believe...that sometimes when I'm angry I have the right to be angry, but that
doesn't give me the right to be cruel.

 

 I Believe...that maturity has more to do with what types of experiences
      you've had and what you've learned from them and less to do with how
      many birthdays you've celebrated

 

I  Believe.....that it isn't always enough, to be forgiven by others. 
Sometimes, you have to learn to forgive yourself.

 

I Believe....that our background and circumstances
may have influenced who we are, but, we are responsible for who we become.

 

I Believe....two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different.

 

I Believe...that your life can be changed in a matter of hours by people who don't even know you. 

 

I Believe...that even when you think you have no more to give, when a friend cries out to you, you will find the strength to help.

 

 I Believe...that the people you care about most in life are taken from you too soon.

 

The happiest of people don't necessarily

have the best of everything;
They  just make the most of everything

they have.

 

Colour me happy

 
So summer has arrived then!

 

I have wandered away a little from the Explore class prompts but I loved today’s which was all about colour and what colours are your favourites. What colours move you, what colours have particular associations?

There were some fascinating ideas in the prompt and they really got me thinking.

Children will often ask what your favourite colour is and it is a question I find really hard to answer as my favourite colour differs in different contexts and has changed with the years.

If I think of clothes then I tend to wear a lot of black for work, but accented with brights, whereas out of work I tend to wear far more neutrals. I really don’t have a favourite colour to wear, but I do have a colour I never wear. Yellow. I don’t think I possess anything in my wardrobe that is yellow or lemon or even orange.

When I think of home decor my favourite always was pink and/or green. Our home was decorated in pinks and greens and I have almost expunged every bit of pink from the house in recent years. Whilst we still have green accents in a newly decorated room, we no longer have pink. Our home now is, what most would say, very bland as we have gone for a very neutral palate of cream with bright accents. And the colour we most favour for those accents has to be aqua, turquoise, teal and so on. I tend towards soft bluey green colours, nothing too bright and scary.

If I have to say what is my favourite colour to scrap with then again I tend to go for neutral tones and then I most often use those same soft blues and aquas. Ranges like K and Co Blue Awning and Basic Grey Periphery sum up my choices perfectly (and yes they feature quite heavily in my albums)

I think blues are my favourite because I love nature and beautiful landscapes and those landscapes need to have water in them. I am a water sign and water is important. If I look at my albums one I love most of all is my album of the Canadian Rockies – lush green forests and beautiful iridescent mountain lakes in colours that seem impossible to believe until you see them for yourself.

It was interesting that the prompt was about colour as only yesterday I found and put out my colour album. It was an album based on a Big Picture class from several years ago with pages on each colour using different techniques for each colour and I so enjoyed looking back through it.

These are a few pages from that album

 

 

  

And this was another class I did about colour too

 

 

One of the links in the prompt was this – have a look and see where you fall in the colour spectrum based on your choices.

 What colour are you?

Today has been a sand and water coloured day as we have done something we have never done in this country in the summer – we went to the beach for the day. People travel from all over the country to enjoy the beaches we have here and we never visit in summer, so we decided to do that today. And we really enjoyed it. We are so not beach people – we would far rather walk in the countryside, but it was a good day and we enjoyed the sea too (not as cold as I feared it would be but certainly not the warm bath of the Gulf of Mexico) We both enjoyed it but that will probably do us for the next few years LOL.

 

Today I am thankful for

• Being near to such beautiful beaches
• Colours that brighten our days

 

Such a Silly Saturday

So today has been a fairly silly day.

I didn't sleep well ..... I wonder why?

And I have spent pretty much most of the day reading through every document that I have for the whole of Junior School. Not quite sure whyI have done that (and whyI am planning to do it again tomorrow) I wrote or checked most of the documents when they were first produced. I have reviewed and revised them several times and yet I still feel the need to read them and check I know everything that is in them. It's like I am expecting to go on mastermind or something and School is my specialist subject.

I was allowed out of my cell for a while to pop to town and we got a couple of bargains we went for. Nij got two suits and a tie (really nice suits too that had been reduced several times) for a total of £77 the lot!!!! and I got a nice lightweight jacket which is cream so totally impractical but it was very pretty.

I have a page to share today which is the page I made for this week's challenge on UKS which included using a colour I loathe - yellow. Don't know why I don't like it, I just don't. I quite like yellow flowers as they are signs of spring so it was what I had to go with.

 

 

Today I am thankful for

• cheap clothes
• reading .... for today .... done!

  
 

Shades of Autumn

 
Autumn is definitely coming

I was out on a school trip today to Athelhampton House (lovely house and gardens) but ti was really cold and autumnal - so much so that i was chilled right trhough after a day outside and had Nij run me a hot bath whilst on my way home and I got in as soon as I was home. You know when you get so chilled you ache as you have been tensed up.

Thankfully, an hour on and I am warm and snuggly.

The cold weather is a small price to pay for the beauty of Autumn though. I love Autumn with the crisp cold days and the colours.

 

If I manage to download the pictures today i will share a few, but I am awfully tired so it may wait till tomorrow.

My quote of the day is

 

Today I am thankful for

• All the Chilean miners coming safely home
• Warm baths
• Autumn beauty

 

 

Colours of My World - COMPLETED!!!

I loved this class so much (I MAY have mentioned that before LOL) but it has taken me a while to get back into it since returning home. Somehow, the morivation wasn't there when I was not doing it at the same time as everyone else.

It was easy to do the pages when the prompts were fresh each week and when everyone else was working on them.

However, I have persevered and I have finished. I did a couple of extra pages that were not part of the class, namely Silver, Gold and Lime, but they were colours I HAD to have in there so I added them anyway.

I considered binding it using the Bind it All (yes I am prepared to have another go with it after a lesson from Jakki) but the pages were too thick to go in and it really wasn't worth risking it, so armed with my trusty new Crop-a-dile, it is bound with book rings and rainbow fibres.

I really enjoyed doing it and there are some pages int here that I am really pleased with. I LOVE my aqua and blue pages (I think they may be my favourites) and I love the black and the white as well. The gold had to be int here as Jakki, one of the cats and Mom and Dad were in there. I could not leave Nij out and it seemed fitting to make him the gold page - the most precious of all. (It is all gold and glitter and bling but I scanned it so it killed all the sparkle (apart fromt he twinle in his eyes that is!)

Well - I had an excuse not to do the housework as I HAD to finish this book today (I used the DT work I had to finish as the excuse yesterday ... mmmm need to think of an excuse for tomorrow) so now I have finished it that is me done scrapping for the weekend. I am chuffed, however, as I have done 6 pages this weekend. I guess I can't complain about the chores now!

Kira's home

Well -she is back. I went and fetched her at lunchtime (thank you Auntie Jakki!) and it is so good to have her back.

The vet has already run the test for Feline Aids and feline Leukaemia and they were both negative, so am thankful for that. The rest of the tests results are likely to be here Monday. It is hard waiting and the awful thing is the dilemma. I don't want her to be sick with ANYTHING, obviosuly, but on the other hand I am hoping that the tests show soemthing up. That way we will have a reason for the weight loss and will have a 'condition' we can then start to deal with and treat. We are used to porrly cats. We had Simba, who had an accident resulting in the amputation of her tail and a leg and who needed medicine for the next 12 years. Pebble had hyperthyroidism and needed daily medication and Boushka has her piriton every day. The hardest is when you have no idea what it is. Cinders (Pebble's sister) was ill for months and they tried everything. She was on a lot of medicine and nothing worked as they could not identify the problem. Eventually they admited her for an exploratory op (not a great idea as she was 14 so it was risky) and they found a massive soft tumour deep inside and we let her go on the operating table. So I hope it is a 'condition' as then we can treat it. Worst case scenario would be for her to keep losing all this weight and for no-one to know why!

Because Jakki came with me Kira did not have to go in the carrier - which is a cause of great distress. However, she does have a new  smart (and hopefully safe) carrier. Pets at Home were great. they are writing to the manufacturer and I even had this swish new carrier for free. (It was never about the money or a refund or anything .... it was about making sure it never happened again) The picture is Kira inspecting her new carrier - which is very princess like and I think I may put my princess bling sticker on there to complete the look. You possibly don't notice, but she looks gaunt in the picture. Her usually round face is so thin.

I had an e mail today and I am not sure if this link will work or not but it was such a wonderfully cool video - I loved it. So here goes - trying to share it here.  If anyone knows how I can share it so it looks like a little video player and you press play please please let me know.

Download Puppet.wmv

I finished two other pages of my Colour Your World book this week, in spite of everything. I think they are easier to do than a lot of scrapping as it is colour coordinated.

The colour was green but I needed to do two pages as I love green and I wanted to do straight-forward green and also lime green.

The lime green page is of some horse-chestnut leaves just unfolding and to me it is a real fresh new spring colour. Very simple page with a frame tied with ribbons and lots of stamping.

The other green page features a fibre and fabric border and I also mounted the pictures on fabric. The fabric did not cut straigh so frayed at an odd angle and I keep telling myself it gives it a rustic whimsical feel. In reality it is just not straight. Jakki had to be on the page as her fave colour is green and I asociate her with the colour.

I have very few pages left to do and I can't wait to finish it and then complete the book, bind it and hopefully admire it.

Messing around with colour

Oooh been messing around with colour this morning. I decided I wanted to have a go at making a cover for my Colours of Your World album I have been making and came up witht his.

It was so much harder to do than I thought and it isn't right so I think I will re-do it and try and get it more even.

It was made using paint chips but I need to work on angles etc for the remake. But I liked the general idea and wanted to record it here.

I have loved the class so much (and it has been fun with a friend doing it too) as there are techniques, ideas and it is just so much fun to scrap to a colour theme and thing about what that colour means to you in your world.

There are still more colours to come - 2 more weeks I think, plus I want to do some more additional colours of my own.

I have also made my Circle Journal for next year's class CJ - which I won't bother posting as it isn't great, but the girlies will love it. Once again I have covered the journal with vinyl wallpaper as it has to stand up to a LOT of handling and sticky little fingers. I embellished it with flowers and beads, but if they get damaged I can easily redo that at the end again.

Last night in front of the telly (well it means that I am not shut away and can be witht he CFH who are scraproom banned ) I did this quick little layout -literally a ten minute job.

Quick digi page using elements from Kelly Simpson Mommy Dearest Kit and quote from Amanda Slagle (MandaBean)

Picture is, of course, Emily ... and what an expression!!!

Phew it's hot

Gosh it is hot today -a nd the forecast is hotter for tomorrow too. But what a great time to live near the seaside eh! Not that I ever go mind you! I am a sit in the garden and chill out sort of girl, which is what I have been doing today and plan on doing for the rest of summer if the weather holds.

It was too hot though - so I have retreated in and just finished another page for the Colours of my World class.

There are always such great techniques for the classes but I didn't have any of the supplies I needed this week so did my own thing.

As my album is very much a scrapbook album rather than an art journal it would not have been right to not have any fur babies in there at all. And when I think of brown I think of my brown spotted girl Kira. Both Kira and Fiki are brown spotted Bengals, but Fiki is a rich mahogany colour. Kira is warm and brown and soft and silky. So here she is on my brown page.

Funnily enough I also scrapped her in a quick half hour page last night trying out my digi stuff. I wanted to use the overlay and the heart and the doodles, so I did. They worked fine and judging by how many people have downloaded them they must work fine for others too.

Now, the decision is whether to go back out in the garden and sunbathe or do the cleaning. mmmmm - tough call ...... NOT!

Love in black and white

I am so loving this class - thank you so much Carole.

This is my take on the black page. Now I don't do collage ever and so this one was really really hard for me and I am not sure I have pulled it off.

The pictures are of Mom and Dad, on their wedding day and then the bottom one just a couple of years before I lost Mom.

There are lots of things ont he page that don't really show up but have significance for me.

Overlayed over the picture at the top, just sort of resting on daddy's shoulder, is a dragonfly on a transparency. There is always a dragonfly on my pages about Mom and Dad because of the story of waterbugs and dragonflies.

There is also a transparency with stamped music to show the love of Daddy's music. The flowers are Maya road sheer blooms edges with black and the file tab and frame are Narratives.

All the papers (and one of them has lots of little dragonflies on) are all sticthed and at the bottom is the ribbon that took me ages to alter. It was sheer black ribbon from a box of chocolates and said chocolate devotion all over it, also in black. I folded and sticthed the ribbon to hide the chocolate words and just leave the devotion, coveringt he joins with lots of hand sewn beads. None of it shows ont he scan really.

I found it a very hard effect to achieve and I am not sure it is balanced and works (I am so used to doing clean simple linear pages that it looks odd to me) but I loved trying out something new.

And did I mention - I am lovingt he class.

Right - it's almost lunchtime so I am off to sit in the sun in the garden!

White

I am loving the Big Picture Scrapbooking class - Colours of Your World.

Each class makes me so happy scrapping that colour (well apart from yellow and even that wasn't too bad)

I am a little late doing this weeks pages. I haven'ts started black yet but this is white.

Each week there is a different technique to try and a different style to try and this week it was crumpled up tissue paper and gesso and tags.

I opeted for 6 pictures I had taken of things that were naturally white - various blossoms, flowers, the snow, white crashing waves and a white tiger.

It was, as all of the other classes have been, great fun to do.

It's amazing how many shades of white there are.

Other than that I have had a very quiet day really - made my next class page for our local crop, read more of The memory Keeper's Daughter (which I have to say I am not enjoying) and just enjoyed a generally lazy day.

Must get my act together now and do my chores though