Ready for the weekend.

Well this has been a strange week! Yesterday I was at work running round like a headless chicken between meetings and running two experiments. In contrast today I was running round at home shopping, cooking and cleaning as my parents are coming for the weekend tomorrow morning. The advantage of this was that I got to spend an extra day with Alex which was lovely. We went to the park and he played in the kitchen while I cooked, and yes, he did lick some of the bowls out!

I haven't had as much time as usual for crafting, but shock horror, I have actually been thinking about doing my Christmas cards. I normally leave that until November and then make 100 all to the same design. This year having got into inchies in such a major way I thought I would make loads of Christmas inchies and then mount them onto cards in small groups. So to start this process I covered an A4 sheet of red card in scraps of K&Co Vintage Christmas paper and randomly stamped some music on it as shown above.

I then cut this into 88 inchies ready and waiting for decoration as and when I have time.

I have found some vintage Christmas card images and have shrunk these and used them to make the first two inchies as shown. I will mount 3 or 4 of these onto a card. I would love to know what you think. As my parents are around this weekend I wont be updating until Monday so have a great weekend everyone.

Love,

Caro

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Finished!

I can’t believe how fast the week is going. I guess having Monday off work has helped, but I still can’t believe that it is Wednesday already. Life is busy as usual with me running three experiments over the last two days and making some progress on my review article, Tim having a doctors and a citizens advice appointment about his benefits and Alex going to nursery for two days as a result. We will all be so glad once the appeal is over and life can get back to some semblance of normality. Alex is now completely settled in nursery and seems to really be enjoying himself, there were no tears at all yesterday or today and he had fun doing some painting, making musical instruments and got his first ‘Very Good’ sticker for bathing dolls (not surprised about this one as he loves anything to do with water!). Don’t you love his purple painting! In the evenings he and I have had great fun romping around the garden and house playing chase, playing with bricks and dancing to music. I just love that little boy and to see his cheeky smile and hear his infectious laughter is a constant source of joy to me. I haven’t done as much crafting as usual as I have spent my free time finishing writing my inchie article for PapercraftJunkies. I am looking forward to seeing how they type set it with my photos etc. I did manage to find time to make these four ATCs for a ‘fairy cake’ swap on the CM&PC forum where the rules are that each ATC must have a fairy and a cake on it somewhere. The fairies are Disney fairies (I don’t know the names) and the cupcakes were taken from a postcard I was sent years ago and kept. The stamps are from purple onion and I added sakura stardust to the fairies wings. Although it is a bit of a bizarre swap I am quite pleased with how they have turned out. I hope you are all having a good week. More soon,
Love,
Caro
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Bank holiday fun!

Don't you just love a bank holiday? I just love having that extra day off work as it means that there is so much more time to do things. I have cleaned the house from top to bottom (believe me, it was getting desperate), done the shopping, played with Alex, been to the park three times, and best of all we went out for a family trip to the miniature railway.

I have loved Steam trains most of my life thanks to Grandad who introduced me to trains as soon as I could walk. He used to take me across the fields to the bridge across the railway line every day while he and Gran were building their house, and occassionally the steam trains ran on the main line. I have loved them since then and so wanted to introduce Alex to them. I persuaded Tim to come with us, although he did find it fairly exhausting as he is so ill at the moment. The miniature railway has both diesel and steam, and we were lucky enough to get a ride on the steam trains. Alex wasn't too sure to start with but soon began to enjoy himself and we spent a lovely hour there.

I have only had time for a little crafting this weekend, mostly catching up on things that I owe people, such as another page for the cute animal fatbook swap...almost identicle to the other ones, just with a different photo and caption.

I had a mini crisis when I lost something that I was about to post out to someone and Tim made the very sensible suggestion that I should make a set of miniature files with 'IN' for works of art I have received but haven't yet filed, 'IN PROGRESS' for things I am still working on, and 'OUT' for things that are complete and ready to be put in envelopes for posting. I thought this was very sensible and made a little one. To give you a sense of scale, they are 1 inch wide, 4 inches deep and 3 inches high and they have trading cards in them.

I have joined a website called 'swap bot' to give me a little more variety in the swaps that I do, and I have signed up for my first swap which is 'favourite seasons'. I have to make and send two ATCs to a Swiss lady of her favourite two seasons, which are winter and autumn. I have also found out that she loves mountains so hope that these ATCs will be appropriate for her. They were fun to make using a mixture of stamping, embossing, photographs and embellishments.

I hope you all had a good weekend. More soon,

Love,

Caro

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Busy Busy Busy

Well the crazy week has continued somewhat. I have managed to mark both 80+ page MSc theses and have run three major experiments in the past two days as well as giving a mock viva and having numerous meetings. Thank goodness for the evenings of relief.

Alex has been great fun in the evenings. He has really got into playing with his bricks at the moment, emptying them all over the sitting room floor, trying to build towers..three high is his record, knocking my towers down, putting bricks into and out of their box and generally carrying them around. This evening was the first time the weather has been nice enough to go outside this week so he went for a quick run around the garden before bed and we played peek-a-boo in the wigwam.

Much of my free time has been spent researching my article on inchies...I need to finish it by the end of next week! However, I have managed to do a little crafting in the form of mounting my Oriental inchies into a frame. Surprisingly it took ages to get them all lined up. They look great framed as a little set and I am really pleased with them. Imagine how cool 100 inchies would look all together as an overall collage!

Anyone who knows me will know how much I hate sewing (I take all my mending down to Somerset to my Gran!), so imagine my surprise when I found myself responding to a friends challenge to make a fabric inchie. I found this really hard, but did come up with two designs onto a background of felt. Unfortunately the stitching is a bit all over the place so I am not sure I like them much, but you need to try things at least once. I don't know that I will ever make another one, but at least I can say I have tried now! Have a great bank holiday weekend everyone, lets hope there is some sun.

Love,

Caro

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Crazy week!

This is turning into one crazy week! Work is completely mad at the moment. I have three papers that are in preparation ready to submit for publication (hopefully soon) and I have a large review article which I am trying to write. I have to say I am finding the review article tricky as it is an update of something I wrote 4 years ago and I keep finding myself unintentionally plagiarising my own work! Daft, but there you have it. I also have two masters theses to mark and every time I sit down to mark or write I get interrupted by something. We also interviewed for the technicians post this week and there has been a bit of argy bargy from some of the unsuccessful candidates which hasn’t been easy. Hey ho! On a positive, while still slightly crazy note, I have been invited to write an article for an on-line crafting magazine on inchies! The magazine is Papercraft Junkies and is downloadable for free here. I was stunned and thrilled to be asked and I am very much enjoying the research that I have been doing for it. There are some simply incredible works of art that have been made on 1x1 inch canvases and it has been fun to find out what people do with them. Alex has been hilarious this week...he still thinks that making blowing nose noises is the funniest thing and he absolutely loves the theme music and cartoons of Monkey and Pigsy that are shown for the BBCs coverage of the Olympics. Whenever I watch it he can be found dancing and staring at the screen. He is starting to play more and more with his shape sorter and can easily get the square, hexagon and flower into place...the heart is more difficult and he gets a little frustrated with it after a while and just sticks it through the exit hole instead! We have had so much fun chasing round the house amid squeals of laughter...it is just a shame that it has been so wet so he hasn’t had much time outside this week. He was better going off to nursery today, which was good, a bit quiet, but he didn’t cry which was an improvement. Apparently he didn’t cry all day, loved painting with rollerball paints and he was given his first well done sticker. I was very proud of him. While still recovering from my cold I have felt a bit do-less so it has been nice to have a project of researching inchies. While doing the research into what people do with their inchies I realised that a lot of people use them as embellishments for cards and came up with the idea of cutting a larger image into inchies and then mounting them onto a card as an embellishment. I have made a couple of cards like this and am pleased with the results. I would love to know what you think. More soon,
Love,
Caro
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Wish I could...

...breathe! My nose has been like a dripping/running tap constantly all weekend and has kept me awake for much of both nights. Consequently I haven't felt up to doing very much which is a shame. We went a did our usual family shop on Saturday morning, I have done some washing, cleaning and tidying and played with Alex, but that is about it for the weekend. I have enjoyed the Olympics though...we seem to be doing so much better than usual it is wonderful.

As I have been blowing my nose so much this weekend Alex has taken to copying the movement and noises that I make so he puts his hand up to his nose, wobbles it from side to side and makes a blowing noise with his mouth...it just cracks me up as it is hillarious!

Alex and I went to the park twice this weekend, the second time he found the only puddle in the place and spent a happy 20 minutes splashing in it...he was soaked by the time we came home, but I guess that is part of the fun. He enjoyed it, and there was no harm to it, so I really didn't understand the attitude of some of the other Mother's who looked horrified at me letting him do it, and one actually came up to me and said 'He shouldn't be allowed to do that'. I couldn't believe it... I just said 'there is no harm to it...it is a nice day and he will get cleaned up and dry when we get home' and then ignored her. I was stunned. Why shouldn't a little boy be allowed to explore his surroundings and be a boy?!

I have done a little crafting this weekend in the form of this scrapbook layout of our summer holiday destination this year. The layout is relatively simple because I didn't want to detract from the photos of the scenery from the village of Itchenor. The journalling reads 'Our first family holiday with Alex was perfect - sun, sea, sand, wonderful scenery, great day trips out, lots of fun and laughter, and all without leaving England'.

I also made some more inchies, this time using one of my favourite subject materials - steam trains. The backgrounds are the K&Co map paper stamped over with a vintage writing stamp and some postage marks, then the words and pictures are added on top with either gems or brads. I then inked round the edge to give them definition. Do let me know what you think. That's all for now, More soon and have a great week everyone.
Love,
Caro
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Feeling rotten again!

Yes, yet again my darling son has passed on his germs to me and I have a stinky cold with flue like symptoms. Maybe it is his way of letting me know exactly how rotten he has been feeling! Despite it I have been at work trying desperately to get things finished off and organised before the weekend. I have so much to do that I really don’t want to get behind. I have finally started writing my review article about the different lab methods that are used to study vessel formation...the more I look into it the more I realise how long this article will be as there is so much information to include. It is going to take ages, but I am sure I will get there eventually.Alex is so funny at the moment, and very much into his dancing...any music that is played near him and he starts to dance. This morning for some reason he was singing to himself and then dancing and then giggling like mad, which was hilarious for us to watch. He is also into games of peep-boo in a big way...he will put his hands over his eyes and we have to say ‘where is Alex?’ and then he pulls his hands down and we say ‘There he is!’ to great giggles from Alex. That smile and infectious laugh is enough to melt anyone’s heart. That said, he is starting to tantrum a bit when he doesn’t get exactly what he wants and the photo above is of a cross little boy! I have managed to do a little more crafting this week despite feeling rather do-less as a result of my cold. These inchies used the same background as before but this time I distressed them a little with a brown inkpad and then stamped the Chinese symbol in StazOn ink, added Chinese newspaper to some of them and edged them in either black or brown, added the pagoda images and then either a gem or brad. I am currently trying to decide what to do with all these inchies, whether to join an organised swap somewhere or just put them up for swap on the forum and see what happens. I also managed my scrapbook layout of this week loosely based on the latest PencilLines sketch (#97) and is entitled ‘An elegant birthday girl’. The photo is of my Mother at one of her many 60th Birthday parties and the journaling reads ‘Mother celebrated her 60th Birthday in style with an afternoon tea party, an elegant family dinner, lunch in the house of lords and a dinner party with friends. That’s the way to do it!’ The colour scheme was chosen to match the colours of her clothes and the white lettering on the black background added the feel of elegance to it. I would love to know what you think. Have a great weekend everyone. More soon,
Love,
Caro
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Just to let you know

There are quite a few people with blog candy - crafting gifts for people who visit their blogs - at the moment. Why don't you check out:

A card is for life - the blog candy draw finishes today

Katherina's - wonderful blog candy to celebrate 100,000 hits finishes on 16th August

Jean - some lovely blog candy to celebrate her birthday finishes on 18th August

Jane - celebrating a year of blogging finishes on 21st August

Lauren - celebrating over 1,500 hits on her blog, finishes on 22nd August

Enfy - celebrating 65,000 hits in 8 months, finishes on 26th August

That is all for now, I will be back with my regular posting on Friday evening. In the meantime have a great day!
Love,
Caro
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Busy week so far

I don’t seem to have stopped at all over the past few days. Work is chaotically busy as I am trying to write two different papers at the moment. One is a write up of some data generated in the lab to do with blood vessel formation in healing wounds and scars and the other is a review article of lab techniques used to study the process of blood vessel formation. However, everytime I sit down to try and write I get interrupted by someone wanting to ask me something or discuss something with me. Total madness...I only managed to write a single paragraph today! I actually worked from home yesterday which, despite Alex only being in nursery for a few hours, was much more productive! To make up for the hectic work schedule at the moment I was given a lovely surprise gift of some crafting bits and pieces from Kath Wilson (LazyKay) partly to cheer me up, but also as a thank you for co-ordinating the ATC train of thought. It was such a kind thought and I really appreciated it.
Poor Alex is still full of cold and coughing for England which is keeping him awake so the poor wee lad is shattered. He is also teething and this tooth seems to be giving him more trouble than the others so far so he will be happily playing and then burst into tears for no apparent reason which is sad. We went to play outside in the garden yesterday which was lovely, but the grass was damp and he was feeling clingy so that only lasted 10 minutes. In comparison when I mentioned his bath he excitedly ran to the bottom of the stairs and started to climb all the time saying ‘Baff, Baff!’. He obviously preferred to do that yesterday! He has been to nursery again today and was apparently much better than previously, less tears and he ate most meals (including things he wont eat at home!). However, at the end of the day he was totally shattered and needed to go to bed early!
I have now completed the ATCs for the pocket and ATC swap. There are 8 needed in total so I did duplicates of these four. I am quite pleased with the way they turned out and feel that they go quite nicely with the pockets as shown in the second photo.
I have also made some Oriental inchies using the left over pieces of card from the pockets. I added some printed Chinese newspaper, some images of geisha girls, a typed word and gold heat embossed edging. They were fiddly to do, but well worth it and I am pleased with the result.
I have also made some others using the same background, this time edged with ink and then with a Chinese Carnival butterfly image cut out, highlighted with sakura stardust and mounted on foam pads. It is amazing what a difference the different methods have made so that these look quite different from the Geisha’s. I would love to know what you think about these inchies. More soon.
Love,
Caro
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Poor Alex...

...he has yet another stinky streaming cold...goo everywhere poor boy! To add insult to injury Tim and I decided that he really needed a hair cut and so we used the clippers to give him a number 4 all over, which he hated. He looks very smart, but I miss his unruly locks of hair. Now he has short hair the resemblance between him and his cousins is much more pronounced! With his cold he has gone off food including bananas which are usually his favourites. The only food I have managed to get into him is wheetabix and desert stuff surprise surprise!

Yesterday was miserably windy and wet all day so we had to stay inside, but today, despite blowing a gale, was at least dry and occasionally sunny so we went to the park and as he looked fed up with the swings etc I let him run round on the big playing field for some of the time which he loved.

I have done bits of crafting this weekend. Yesterday I finished off the 15 historical inchies using photos of Nana (my Great-Gran) her husband and her parents. I am thrilled with how these have turned out and feel that I am finally making inchies of the quality that I have seen elsewhere on the net.

I also used the same technique to make a further 9 inchies with music and words on, but these were much brighter and were on the theme of 'songbirds'. I found various bird pictures on the net and minaturized them and added them to the bright backgrounds. Despite the backgrounds of the two sets of inchies being similar I have managed to create a different feel which pleased me.

I was also persuaded to join in an unusual Oriental swap on the CM&PC forum whereby you make a card that is 9x12 cm with a pocket on each side and then an ATC to pop into one of the pockets. I have to make 8 of these for everyone who is joining in. So far I have made the 8 cards (all identicle) complete with their pockets, but have yet to decide on the ATCs to go with them. The two photos are front and back of the pages. That is all for now so have a good week everyone. More soon.

Love,
Caro

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Singing and dancing!

Alex loves music and whenever we play any music -classical, rock, pop, jazz (it doesn’t matter what) - he dances to it. Well, I say dance, it is more like bouncing up and down but it is a definite response to music. In the past few days he has been ‘singing’ as well, there is a definite tune there, even if it isn’t recognisable and he dances when he does it so we know he is trying to make music. It is so cute! I hope he grows up to love music as much as I do. He is getting much better with his shape sorter too which is fun as it makes him giggle when the shape crashes inside. Alex loves anything to do with water and especially bath time, so I usually end up soaked at the end of it, but it is great to see him so happy splashing in the water. I do so enjoy playing with him in the evenings that it is a shame to send him to bed, although it means that I get time for me after he goes. As I have been feeling a bit better over the last couple of days I have been back at work. Everyone has been incredibly supportive about me not getting the grant and we have been discussing the way forward with that particular project. In the meantime I have been working on several different projects and catching up with paperwork. I have 46 job applications to read through and short-list which turned up on my desk today...I will be reading those on Monday! Poor Tim is having a tough time at the moment as the fact that we are going to appeal for his Incapacity Benefit is really stressing him, I just have to be as supportive of him as I can at this time. I have now finished all the cute animal fatbook pages for the swap, as I said, they are much the same as each other, so were relatively quick to do, but were also really good fun. I had a sudden panic yesterday as I realised that it is my brother’s birthday this weekend and what with everything going on recently I hadn’t made him a card. I threw this one together in a bit of a panic, and although it is not a style I would usually choose for him, I think it has worked out OK. The central image was made using alcohol inks and a Stamps Away image stamped with StazOn black ink. The swirls/flourishes are from Purple Onion. I hope he likes it!
Having had a reasonable success at challenging myself to do something more creative with inchies I have made a start on my inchies for the historical/vintage swap. For these I wanted to challenge myself even more to do something approaching a collage. I will be making 12 of these for the swap, but have only made this one so far. The inchie was covered with K&Co dictionary paper, then distressed with different inks, then a piece of music torn and stuck over part of it, distressed separately and then the whole lot distressed some more before adding the edging, picture and word. The photo is actually of Nana (my great-gran) when she was 6 months old. Sorry this photo is a bit blurred - I will post a photo of the whole set when I have finished them, but I am delighted with the effect and will be making some more complex inchies (or deluxe inchies as Tim calls them) in the future. Have a great weekend everyone.
Love,
Caro
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