She Sells - or gives away - Seashells

Since I got back from Domburg on Saturday, I´ve shaken the sand out of my shoes and my luggage, washed it out of my pores, my hair, my clothes and my dog...and I´m still finding gritty traces of the seashore on my floors. I had a wonderful 3 weeks on the coast but it´s nice to be home again and to be able to eat a sandwich without any sand in it.

But now comes the inevitable part of any carefree laundryfree holiday. You´ve guessed it. The dreaded IRONING. I´m off to tackle that mind-numbing task right now but before I go, for all you folk who haven´t managed a trip to the coast this year or for those who have and would like a few extra decorative elements for your seaside pages, here´s a little freebie for you.

If you´d like this Jewelled Sea add on, you´ll find it HERE.

Wish I had time to use it myself but a huge pile of wrinkled laundry is calling my name...

Flowers For The Gremlin.

I´m sorry it´s taken so long to give you the link to the floral motifs freebie I offered you as an add on to Time Began In A Garden. I´ve had a lot of aggro lately. First of all some pesky blog gremlin got in overnight and started playing about with my design and the result was a huge margin at the top and bottom of the background with everything condensed into a little square in the centre. It took a lot of trial and error before I managed to get the appearance of my room back to normal again. After that, for some reason, the little pest suddenly decided to prevent me from posting on my own blog and I had to ask Lajuana to publish my last two posts. Then, as you may know if you have a blog yourself, we had no access to them while Blogger was carrying out “maintenance” yesterday. As far as I can see “maintenance” only entails deleting comments so apologies to those of you who took the trouble to make friendly comments on my last post. I´ve since changed my browser and – yippee! - find I can publish my posts without Lajuana´s kind assistance. On the other hand, as I now find I can also do so using my old browser, it looks as if blog gremlins don´t restrict their activities to only one...

Better get a move on before the gremlin strikes again!

If you´d like these paper flowers and leaves, you´ll find them HERE.

The gremlin can regard them as a peace offering.

PS Changing my browser was worthwhile after all! I´ve just discovered that I can now copy and paste text without having to write it twice, once in Word and again in my post.

Uhoh. Should have kept quiet about that in case the gremlin´s still around!

Garden Deco

I´ve spent the weekend getting my garden/patio deco out of its winter hibernation. Some of it, like the frog with his motion sensor, spend all year out of doors. He´s quite a useful little fellow. He croaks loudly when cats approach intending to scratch up my flower beds and sends them on their way. Appropriately, if unwittingly, he also collects slugs which take cover under him...at least until I find them. Others, like the hanging verbena, are replaced every summer and some, like the cockerel, just get rustier and more disreputable as the years go by. Having them distributed about the garden reassures me that summer, if not exactly here already, is at least on its way.


I´ve used one of the freebie QPs from Time Began In A Garden to display some of my garden deco. I think it´s very versatile as it can either be used as a potting shed window with a view of a garden or any rural scene or as a frame for a group of 8 related photos. If you´d like it yourself, you´ll find it HERE alongside previews of the kit and the preview of a completely new floral freebie which will be coming soon.

Glitter Anyone?

I´m still playing around with gold and glitter styles along with some swirl shapes and brushes. As with my Valentine motifs I´ve been experimenting using a combination of both, and again, as it seemed a shame to delete them all afterwards, I´ve kept a few. So for all the glitter fans out there, here they are. They blend in well with this month´s featured kit, Heart Of Gold, which you´ll find HERE along with the above freebie plus a little bonus gift for those of you who missed it first time around.

OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!

Of all the rose bushes in my garden the white tea rose bush is my favourite. Not because it´s prettier. It isn´t. And not because it smells more fragrant. It doesn´t. What it does have which sets it apart from all the others is its remarkable ability to change the colour of its flowers. Sometimes it produces a white rose with just one scarlet petal. Sometimes it daubs red over several roses and occasionally it goes all out to astonish me by producing a whole cluster of red roses. It´s so quirky it reminds me irresistibly of the scene in the Red Queen´s garden in Alice In Wonderland where her gardeners are hastily painting all the white roses red and are caught literally red-handed by that ferocious monarch bellowing, "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!" See for yourself...(I promise I´ve recoloured nothing apart from taking liberties with Tenniel´s wonderful black and white illustrations.)

Click on the image for a larger view of my quirky roses.

I´ve used one of the freebies from Heart Of Gold for this page. The quick page with its bouquet of roses and jewelled heart-shaped frames seemed ideally suited to display not only my whimsical rose bush but also the equally whimsical drawings from my vintage copy of Alice In Wonderland.

If you´d like the QP, you´ll find it HERE.

Capturing Spring

Here on the Dutch/German border the temperature is gradually rising, the frost and snow have gone and the evenings are drawing out. For each of us the signs of reawakening life are different. For Wordsworth it was the sight of "a host of golden daffodils". For me it´s a pool of white snowdrops. This is snowdrop country and they´ve suddenly sprung up everywhere, in their hundreds in my garden and in their hundreds of thousands in the surrounding countryside. They lie in little puddles under trees among last year´s dead leaves and in large lakes in grassy fields and along the river bank and to me they´re the harbinger of my favourite season. For me summer here is too hot and humid, Autumn the sad dying back before the icy chill of Winter but Spring is a fresh green time of new beginnings and I wish I could capture and keep it.

(click for a larger view)

If you´d like the floral gold and glass frame I´ve used to capture my snowdrops, you´ll find it HERE

Have A Heart!

After I´d posted that simple tutorial yesterday, it occurred to me that your own PS font browser would be especially useful for previewing dingbat fonts as the PS preview is of even less use for them than it is for viewing conventional fonts. If you take the time to spell out the entire alphabet, you´ll be able to see all the dingbats on one page. When I did that myself I discovered lots of useful dingbats which I´d never have found by the usual trial and error method because it simply takes far too long to try out one after the other until I´ve found something I can use. I´ve been making gold and glitter styles just for fun recently and had been considering creating a Valentine kit using them. Well, I found the ideal dingbats to practise on, namely 2Peas GGs Love Me. I had so much fun trying out my styles on them I got quite carried away and ended up with a whole pageful of glittering Valentine motifs. It seemed such a shame to delete them I thought I´d offer them as an early Valentine Day gift. So, if you like them....have a heart. In fact, have 14 hearts! You´ll find them HERE with love from me to you.


Almost forgot to say that these elements are all on one page so you´ll have to cut them out yourself but, don´t worry, I´ve left plenty of space between them so it shouldn´t be difficult.

From Slides To Photos

For years all the slides my husband made during a wonderful holiday in Tunisia lay forgotten in the attic until the slide scanner I got for Christmas encouraged me to bring them down, dust them off and convert them to photos. Said like that it sounds easy, doesn´t it? Believe me, it wasn´t! What looked like tiny blemishes and scratches, once converted to a 70 inch photo, were simply enormous and the very prospect of editing out all those monstrous flaws was so daunting I almost gave up before I´d started. In fact it was actually a little easier than I´d imagined as the very size of the photos was in my favour because I soon discovered that the larger the blemish the easier it is to remove. I chose one of the worst to practise on as it was such a good example of what a photo shouldn´t be that it gave me the chance to try out a variety of Photoshop´s editing tools. Here it is warts and all, though in this small format only the largest blemishes are visible.


First I used the Spot Healing Brush to remove all the blotches and freckles. Luckily they were mostly in the background as I´d rather leave the reconstruction of faces to a cosmetic surgeon. There were too many distracting odd bodies floating around in the sea so I ruthlessly eliminated them using the Clone Stamp Tool which I also used on that huge scratch on the right. Later I regretted having spent so much time on that. You´ll see why on the finished photo. Then I altered the brightness/contrast and after that the only editing left was to straighten up the horizon to prevent the sea from spilling off onto the page. That was really easy - you´ll find a simple tutorial HERE - and my only regret was that it also entailed amputating even more of our feet than in the original slide. Still, no pain, no gain. After that the proportions of the photo didn´t look quite right so I trimmed off a fair bit at each side until it was almost square. Here´s the result...

I used a couple of frames from Flight Of Fancy and held them together with a jewelled clip from the kit. Then I made a pair of flip flops from 2 background papers and attached them with the gold safety pin. You can see a preview of the kit HERE and, if you like, you can also pick up a little gift or two.

Creating A Cameo

This 1930s studio portrait of my aunt, as you can see from the original below, was in very bad condition when I got it and it took quite some time to restore.
This is what I´ve done so far. It still requires a little tweaking but it´s a lot better than it was. The easiest part was replacing the damaged border. I´ve made it white but may change it to a light sepia to reflect the age of the photo. If you´d like to try this easy technique, you´ll find a tutorial HERE

I think it looked even better after I´d faded out the edges and framed it to create my own cameo.

You´ll find the original cameo, which I´ve used in the blog header and which you can also see on the right, in Shabby Chic Rooms Part 2 where, if you´d like to create your own personal cameo, you´ll also find a link to the frame and even to a room to hang it in!

A New Year. A New Look.

I´ve only been in this room since November but I feel quite at home in it already. I´ve enjoyed keeping the Victorian doll company on the couch, drinking tea from the china cup, making calls on the antique phone and welcoming visitors. But I felt it was time for a change and a new look. Few women can resist moving their living room furniture around now and then...well, as long as someone else does the actual lifting and moving! With a virtual room it´s easy not only to move it but to replace it entirely along with its deco. It´s also a lot more fun to design a new room than to sweep and dust the old one...so here´s my brand new room furnished and decorated using Part 2 of my Shabby Chic Rooms Collection. I hope you like it. If you do, you might like to have a room of your own to display your treasured photos. You´ll find one HERE. Have fun with it!
Happy New - scrapping - Year, everyone!

Dora´s Snow Angel

I sent Lajuana a photo recently to show her how much snow we have here in Germany while she´s basking in the Texan sunshine and she sent back this lovely LO which she created using my freebie snowflakes and Noel Nouveau. I think the doggy paw prints are a nice touch and Dora would too if she wasn´t too busy trying to wrench that stick out of my hands to notice anything! Thank you, Lajuana. At least it was sunny enough for me to need my sunglasses that day even though it was so cold I had to be muffled up to my chin and down to my eyebrows.
By the way, if you missed the Christmas presents, you´ll find them HERE

Who Needs Snow?

It may look pretty decorating my robins Christmas card but I´ve had enough snow to last me a lifetime. In fact I´ve got so much this winter I´m giving it away so if you´re not feeling chilly enough already, get your woolly hat and mittens on and shovel it up HERE!

Angelic Trio

These are some of the angels from my collection of Victorian ephemera which I´ve used as Christmas cards over the years.

I´ve also made angelic postage stamps for my Christmas card envelopes. With a little added glitter they make lovely stickers and page headers. But I´m sure you´ll come up with ideas of your own, so if you´d like them to decorate your own Christmas projects, you´ll find them HERE.
Merry Christmas, everyone!

Cross stitch cards

Embroidery and cross stitch have always been among my favourite hobbies and I enjoy creating not only large pictures but also small greeting cards for special occasions. Here are just a few of them.

I made this mouse for a friend whose birthday is in early September. I couldn´t resist making it look 3D by using various glass beads for the blackberries.

The angel is my favourite Christmas motif. I´ve used it not only for cards but also for Christmas tree decorations. Sometimes I stitch the heart onto plastic and sometimes, as here, I make it out of Fimo.

Of these three the bear is the only one I´ve kept so far. I must say he was easier to stitch than extract!

The frames are from my nostalgic Christmas kit, Noel Nouveau, which you´ll find HERE along with an early Christmas present.

Fooling The Birds

With the first snow and winter fast approaching, I thought it time to replace the autumn garland of apples and berries on my front door. It´s made of lacquered polystyrene and looks remarkably real, so real in fact that it seems to have fooled even the birds! Not only did they peck large holes in the "apples" but they even tweaked out some of the berry twigs and scattered them on the steps. At least the wooden snow angel which replaced my nibbled garland should survive to greet another winter!

The bird pendant and frames are from my kit, Vintage Patina, which you can see HERE, and also pick up a freebie or two.

My table centrepiece, on the other hand, IS real AND edible though I don´t think the birds would enjoy those hot chilli peppers!

After Deco-Pages

After Deco-Pages closed its doors I had nowhere to call my scrapping home until Lajuana aka scrapladyandmore offered to design a room for me to display my work until all the former DP members get back together again under one roof. Here it is at last and all thanks to Lajuana – with a little hindrance and interference from yours truly. As you can see, she also helped me to move some of my furniture and knick-knacks. At present they´re all from part 1 of my Shabby Chic Rooms Collection but the great advantage in having a virtual room is that it can be changed at whim. Since the entire collection consists of 196 items, the permutations are endless...Here´s part 1. Hope you´ll like it enough to call back again sometime to see the other 2 parts of the kit and maybe pick up a freebie or two.