A 'Premier' embarrassment

You've more than likely gathered by now that I like clothes and fashion? Am I right? Thought so.

What was it that gave it away? Was it that my previous post included a layout about the lengths [or rather heights] I'd go to to check out my accessories in a mirror? Or was it the post before that where I scrapped a photo of myself in a shiny new dress? Or maybe even my recent Project of the Day on the Banana Frog blog which starred some of my shoes and bags? Or even the .... oh, I've done far too many to list them here and a mere skim through my back catalogue [back scrapbook?]will demonstrate my fondness for all things fashion related.

As a little girl, when I wasn't dressing myself [I was a precocious co-ordinator and accessoriser] I was dressing my legion of beloved dolls. Some days my sister and I would spend hours dressing each and every one of our Barbies, Sindys and Kens with a particular occasion in mind ie: a grand wedding, which would undoubtedly be disrupted by an angry, wronged Pippa doll!! Sometimes the wardrobe duties would take so long, by the time all the dolls were suitably attired, we'd lost interest in even the most lascivious of storylines. I also remember experimenting with makeshift kimono-esque creations for my Cabbage Patch dolls using hand towels and safety pins - eat your heart out Issey Miyake!!

So, really, I've always liked experimenting with my clothes: from wanting to only wear mint green for a season in the mid 80s, to wearing a white cotton nightie over a black T-shirt to a nightclub in the early 90s. And I've often thought that my scrapping was basically an extension of the same area of creativitiy, in both of them I love to multi-layer, to add texture with accessories / embellishments and to make interesting and unusual colour combinations ... which reminds me....

Did I ever tell you about the time before Christmas when we stayed overnight in a hotel? The time when we were only going to be away for a night and the following day so we only took one change of clothes? The time when I carefully chose an interesting outfit to take with me, one which I'd never put together before? The time when wearing head to toe purple and yellow seemed bright, jolly and festive and unique? The time where it wasn't until we were unpacking in our room that I realised the only outfit I'd brough with me matched the corporate colours of the hotel chain exactly? The colours which where everywhere, from their reception area, along all the carpets throughout the restaurant bar and even the bedspreads????

Did I ever tell you about that time? No? Good! Because I'd be too embarrassed if I thought you all knew about that.

Randomness cannot lie.

My friend Emma tagged me on her blog to take up a photo challenge someone had set her, this is how she described it:
"Ok so here's how it works. You go to folder number 6 within your Photos on your computer and post the 6th photo in it."

It all sounded simple enough until I opened my 'Pictures' folder and found that the 6th one was filled with photos of my friend Brass's little boy and, as equisitely adorable as Little S was in his pirate costume at Halloween, I really don't think she or Mr. Brass would've been happy with me blogging his photo.

So I counted down another 6 folders and the 6th picture was this:
It's a photo of a tomato that I cut into a few months ago which I reckoned seemed to be looking at me. I took a photo of it so I could add it to the very sweet and funny Flickr group 'Faces in Places', a group where you can upload pictures of errrr ...faces... in like, errr...places. Get it?

So, on the hunt for a less weird photo to blog, a photo which might make me appear less odd I went to my newly re-arranged and recently-upgraded-to-'Pro' Flickr account [it's not just me who loves how you can have lots of lovely, organised sets and collections on a pro-account is it?] and I counted down to the 6th photo of the 6th set [isn't that how the Apocalypse begins in the Book of Revelation?] and this is what I found there:

It's a photo James crept up on me to take, while I was standing on our dining table trying to see in the wall mounted mirror what my stripey socks looked like with my new stripey Vans.

I don't really feel that this image quite fulfilled that 'less odd' criteria though did it? So I've given up searching and decided to go with it. So, what did we learn from this random number photo hunting adventure?

Well, I learned that there's no getting away from the real 'you'. You can wear your fancy new silk dresses and make layouts about thinking like a Queen all you want .... but at the end of the day, deep down, at the core, there's no hiding from the fact that you're really just a girl who takes portraits of suspicious looking fruit and who climbs on furniture like a mountain goat with style issues.

Get used to it.

;)

Think Like A Queen whydontcha?

This is my first layout using the Acme kit from Gauche Alchemy, and it seems to have brought out my superior, regal side!

I thought it might be interesting to share with you how I built up the layers into the finished page, so here goes:

• I love to use patterned papers for my background and, as coral and teal are two of my favourite shades, I couldn't wait to use the amazing 'Botanical Bliss' paper from Tinkering Ink.
• I loved the 'queen' and 'ring' images - from a sheet of definitions from a vintage kids' book - and liked the way the colours in the Queen's dress echoed in the backing paper. Now I had to think of a way to make 'queenliness' the theme of the page ... and I remembered the photo of me wearing a new dress on my birthday. And as the dress is peacock green silk with bronze devore scroll designs on it, a serious dress for me, I reckoned I have every right to look that haughty and celebrate it too ;).
• Then comes my most anticipated point in pulling a layout together ... selecting which decorative bits and bobs within the kit colour co-ordinated with my dress and the papers, including: the fabric across the bottom; the wine bottle label beneath my photo; the rather stately Burlesque dancer from a Playboy magazine and then the strip of what I thought was formica edging but what Amy tells me is non-slip stuff you stick to the bottom of your bath![down the far right].

Yes, you heard right, my kit contained a combination of vintage girlie mag pages and DIY store treasures!!! And that's precisley what puts the Alchemy into the name [as for the Gauche part ...well, they recruited me didn't they? And I'm more than capable of fulfilling that part every now and again!].

• Finally I picked out the green and blue enamelled earring along with the gold leaf-shaped pendant to add a little decadence and a level of be-jewelled-ness befitting of my self-acclaimed royal status!

• In addition to the kit contents all of the soft-'furnishings', the ribbons, trims and flower, [which again, matches the Queen's dress. Oh, how I never cease to get excited when I detect a colour match!!!] were from my own stash. As was was the crown upon which I wrote my title "Think like a Queen. A Queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steping stone to greatness" which is a quotation from Oprah Winfrey.

A touch of coral and gold, some lace, a new dress, a little of Oprah's wisdom ... how can I fail to think like a Queen with all that going on ... now where did I leave my lady-in-waiting ......

Look!! Free stuff!!!

Over on her 'Scribbles and Scrappin' blog the lovely Leo [from Crafty Templates] is offering two lucky someones amongst you the chance to win one of these two very, very delicious kits:

And what do you need to do to be in with a chance? Simply leave a comment on her post and she'll draw a winner at random.

That's it. Simple as that. Who said that you can't have something for nothing? I'd enter it myself, only I might be accused of nepotism, bias and preferential treatment if I happened to win!

Now don't ever say I'm not good to you .... go on then... go forth and win something. :D

Think of 'ACME' ...

...and what picture do you get in your head?

Something like this? Me too! I think of Wyle E Coyote trying all manner of weird and wonderful products from the Acme Corporation in his attempt to catch Roadrunner in the Looney Tunes cartoons! But think again because there's a new coyote in town ... and ... and I'm getting my analogies all tangled up! Allow me to explain. The Gauche Alchemy girls have decided to upgrade me from being their 'Designer at Large' for Autum 08 - to a permanent team member where I'll be designing with [and here's where the explanation bit really kicks in] their Acme kits!! I'll hand over to Amy to describe exactly what one of these is:

"What is an Acme kit, you ask? Well, it’s a kit full of various great stuff that hasn’t found it’s way into any of our monthly themed kits. It’s a little bit of anything and everything. We’ll be offering them for sale soon. In the meantime, keep in mind we will make one for anyone who requests one and gives us a price range to work with. How cool is that?"

Well actually ... it's this cool:
After it's long trek from sunny Arizona to still-pitch-black-when-I-get up England my pizza box of vintage goodness arrived just in time for my recent birthday. And it's wonderful!

If you've ever wanted to get any of your men-folk interested in your crafting I'd recommend you invest in a Gauche Alchemy kit. Both my partner and my Dad have spent time scrutinising many of the weird and wonderful items of ephemera that Heather and Amy pack into their kits. All I could hear was their exclamations of: 'I remember those board game pieces'! 'Hah! A match-book!' and 'What's that?'.

It was also full of lovely squares of fabric, 12x12 papers and jewel-y 'bits' and bobs, my favourites being:
1. a chunky vintage watch-face which my genius of a sister suggested would make a great helmet for a little fabric doll - imagine a little face peeking out from behind there!! Too cute!
2. and one wonderfully tactile and entirely adorable domino piece. [Domino pieces can be adorable - I've decided].
So what more could a girl ask for? You get a box of pretties which also keeps the boys quiet for a while???! Perfection!

Watch this space for future Acme projects ... that Roadrunner had better watch his step!