Tuesday 31 March 2015

Happy Birthday Dad

It's my Dad's birthday today, so of course I made a card for him. I used Card Sketch #46 from Sketch-n-Scrap and I'm managing to link up just before today's deadline.

It's a simple sketch, but I made a few versions of the card before I had one that I was happy with. I matted the main design on contrasting cardstock and all my stripes are the same length. I also moved the sentiment onto one of my paper strips.

All the strips came from the same scrap of stripey paper, so they have the same texture although they are all different colours. The star is an old button, and I added sprinklings of mist and clear sequins.



Supplies
Card - Crafty Templates
Cardstock - Papermania, Payper Box
Paper - Robin's Nest Boys Stripe
Button/Sequins/Peel-Off - from Stash
Ink/Mist - Docrafts

Sunday 29 March 2015

Jubilee Greenway - North Greenwich to Cutty Sark

Whoops! I've got a long way behind with blogging my walk along the Jubilee Greenway. I've walked three more sections since my last post, and I'm in Westminster now (though it might be a while before I can carry on due to a gammy leg).

Last post I left you in North Greenwich by the O2, and I moved on again on 6 February. This was planned to be a short section, so that I would have time to look around Greenwich Park and the Royal Observatory afterwards.

Leaving the station, and heading away from the O2, I put enough distance between us to get a decent photo, though this scrubland is going to be built on soon:



The next stretch of Thames is industrial, with wharves and aggregate plants.



Looking 'backwards' gives better photos than looking 'forwards' on my route, but I can see the towers of the Old Royal Naval College silhouetted against the sky ahead of me.



I reach East Greenwich and a more residential area with lots of old listed buildings such as the Harbour Master's Office (now flats) 


and the Georgian houses of Union Quay


where I find the ornate door knockers that I need for the Winter Photography Scavenger Hunt:





There is a private garden opposite the houses, with an interesting memorial:



Back to the waterfront, with an anchor to mark Anchor Iron Wharf



and a final chance to see the O2 behind it:



Down another residential street,



and past the Trafalgar pub, with a statue of Admiral Nelson:



This brought me out by the Old Royal Naval College. Sadly a film crew had taken over the area, but at least I'll be coming back here and can have another wander round in a couple of weeks without their equipment being in the way.




Next along the path is the Cutty Sark, the nineteenth-century tea clipper that was the fastest ship in the world in her heyday


and the entrance to the Greenwich foot tunnel, the twin of the tunnel I'd used at Woolwich:



It was the end of the Jubilee Greenway for today, but I had plenty more to see in Greenwich. I started off by wandering around the outside of the Naval College and taking a closer look at two intriguing obelisks



The one on the left is dedicated to Lieutenant Bellot of the French navy who perished while on a mission to find Sir John Franklin's expedition which was had itself gone missing in the search to find the north-west passage. The obelisk on the right is a memorial to the officers and men who died in action in New Zealand in 1863-4.

On to the National Maritime Museum, 



with the expected statues of Sir Francis Drake and William IV,






plus the unexpected - a giant ship in a bottle:



Finally I entered Greenwich Park and started the long haul up to the Royal Observatory, home of Greenwich Mean Time. 



I've rarely had better views from the top of the hill. This is the Old Royal Naval College, with the towers of Docklands behind it,



and the view east over the City, where St Paul's Cathedral is now dwarfed by skyscrapers with silly names - the shard, the gherkin, the walkie-talkie and the cheese grater (I kid you not!).



The twenty-four hour clock takes some concentrating to be able to read the correct time:



and below it are the old official British units of distance:



And finally, of course, we have the Greenwich Meridian, for the obligatory 'one foot in each hemisphere' pictures.


That's it for today, but I've already walked the next section, that will take me along the River Thames to Tower Bridge.


Friday 27 March 2015

Breathing Space

I've felt a bit in the doldrums with my scrapbooking recently, with making pages feeling like a chore just to fill my blog with regular content. I've not really felt inspired by either my photos or the challenge blogs that I follow.

All that changed on Monday, with the publication of the March Week 4 sketch at Let's Get Sketchy. At last, here was a sketch that really made me want to create a page.

The biggest change that I made was to use hexagons for my page. For a long time, I didn't have any hexagon dies so I would convert sketches with hexagons into pages with squares or circles. It's slightly ironic that now I have a sketch with squares and I've gone for hexagons instead.



My photo is of our tent, on a camping holiday last August. I used the 'Breathing Space' title to mean 'sufficient area to permit freedom of movement' and it refers to two things - the extra space in our new, larger tent; and the space we had in the campsite (compared to some we have visited where the tents are crammed tightly together). It could also refer to the relaxed pace of life when camping, and the space to recharge our batteries before the return to work, college and school the following week.

Supplies
Paper - Simple Stories Awesome, Simple Stories Take a Hike
Letters - Simple Stories, October Afternoon
Stickers - Simple Stories
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Hexagon Die
Fiskars Apron Lace Border Punch

Wednesday 25 March 2015

Desk Calender

I suppose that March is  a bit late in the year to be making a calender, but that is what I was doing last weekend. Until this year, I have always had one on my desk at work, generally a gift from a client or a freebie from a printing company. This year, no one obliged, and I have really missed it. 

However, I do have a surplus wall calender, and although a wall calender isn't practical for work, I thought that I might be able to turn it into the desk calender that I crave.

I started off by cutting the calender parts away from the pictures on the wall calender, and choosing complementary cardstock and paper for my project. I was guided by the teal print on the calender for this.



My calender pages were 7.25" wide so I set out to make a stand from one sheet of 12x12 cardstock. I cut one piece at 12"x8" and scored across it at 1", 6" and 11" from a short side. Then I cut a second piece at 8"x4" and scored along its length, 2" from a long side. I folded along the scored lines to make two tent shapes.


I stuck these two together, with the smaller tent going inside the larger one, and being glued to the two flaps.



I stuck a panel of patterned paper to the front of my calender (forgetting to photograph it, but I'm sure you can imagine that) and punched holes through the frame and my calender pages. I was originally going to use book rings, but they just looked too clumsy, so I switched to cord instead. Mine was so springy that my knots kept coming undone, so I used a little PVA glue to hold them in place. 



Once the glue had dried, I rotated the cord so that the knots are on the inside of the frame, out of sight, and I decorated the front of my calender.



All done, and this now has pride of place on my desk at work.

Supplies
Cardstcok - Bazzill
Paper - K&Company
Doily - Papermania
Butterflies - Prima
Washi Tape - Tesco
Ink - Docrafts
Cord - Unknown

Monday 23 March 2015

Winter Photography Scavenger Hunt

Spring is officially here (even if it doesn't feel like it yet) and the Winter Photography Scavenger Hunt organised by Eileen and Joy is over. I spent the final day (Saturday) catching up with all those photos that fall into the 'I know where it is; I just need to take the photo' category.

The original list had 20 items, plus two that could be substituted if necessary. I was on 13 last time I checked in, but I've made good progress in the last two weeks, and actually got all of them, if you accept my interpretations of the prompts. If not, I have both substitute items too.

Here are all my winter finds:

1. Reflection in water
13 December - Grasmere

2. Someone wearing a funny hat
13 December



3. Ornate door knocker
6 February - Greenwich




4. Breakfast



5. Something that is over 100 years old
2 January - Old London Bridge alcove



6. Winter weather
It's been a warm winter here, not much frost or snow, but plenty of rain (which is quite hard to photograph).



7. Someone dressed for the season
Me, in my winter coat.



8. A fish
21 February - Thames Path




9. Festive lights

10. A letter shape in nature or in an object
11 January - North Woolwich



11. Polka dots
21 March - I'm a scrapbooker. I have paper, including polka dot paper.



12. Silhouette
21 February - City of London



13. Stained glass window
11 January - Plaistow



14. Partly built new building
20 January - Greenwich Peninsula



15. Bunting
21 February - Brunel Museum, Rotherhithe



16. A collection (of anything)
21 March - Some of my Pocket Dragons



17. Texture
12 December - ice on the car roof



18. Shadow
10 March - Mine, on the Golden Jubilee Sundial, Westminster




19. Street musicians
10 March - South Bank, London



20. Nativity scene  - compulsory and can’t be substituted.
21 March - I started the hunt after Christmas, so I thought I'd missed my chance for this one, but this is an illustration from my Children's Bible.




Alternative A - New life
21 March - Shoots on our snowball bush



Alternative B - A decorated tree
21 December - Royal Exchange, London




So that's it. Another hunt over. Come and see what everyone else found via the link-up In Eileen's Playroom.

And then start counting the weeks until Rinda launches her Summer Hunt.