And there....

Wasn't any snow, not even a teeny tiny flake :-(( It has been freezing cold with a biting wind, and of course we had more rain!

Was on a course, second bit of Challenging behaviour, about as useful as a chocolate fireguard. Things went from bad to worse when chap from the Youth Offending Team bored us rigid explaining what his department does... er like what has that got to do with helping us control yobs? By that stage in the day we had that glazed look in our eyes... and couldn't wait to get out of there.

Kept on thinking that I could be at home, doing something useful like scrapbooking, or adding to my card box. Or equally important - watching tennis!

Pic I have uploaded tonight is my iris fold card, a cat, naturally! Made it for my cat mad friend's birthday. I like iris folding almost as much as I like decoupage, something very therapeutic about those two techniques. Iris folding can be fiddly, cutting all the strips, but once that is done it is really nice to sit and build the picture. This was a kit, half price (!) from my craft shop, a bargain I couldn't resist! I've had a couple of attempts at making my own iris fold designs, not quite got it yet, but I shall persevere.

Just heard a crafting friend moaning about how whatever she attempts is going wrong, think we all go thru this, short periods when nothing seems to work out. I used to just give up, thinking that I'd start afresh next day, now tho I try to work thru it. Usually I do some decoupage, or the iris folding, something I know will work, rather than trying to put together a card from scratch. I think you need to just produce one card, then you feel a whole lot better. I remember at Christmas doing one of the exploding boxes, I'd decided to use the embossing paste and a stencil, on two attempts I smudged the embossing paste. I was really starting to get frustrated, plus the box was looking really messy, I knew I was rushing things. So I had a little break, a nice cuppa, thought about my problem, that now the inside of the box was a mess... so how to rescue the box, and make a success of the embossing paste? Simple, use some extra card, then mat and layer it... which is what I did, I'd messed up the box cos the paste had made it damp which in turn had buckled the card, instead of waiting for the card to dry I'd rushed to correct the mistake and only made things worse. I do have to tell myself that I am not working to a deadline, or against the clock... ! Similar thing happened on a swap card, I was using a very large stencil, and the paste kept smudging in places... solution - mask off some of the stencil, so reducing the area - success! I've found with the embossing paste that you have to be careful which stencils you use, not all work with it.

Oh well, half a day in work on Saturday morning then got a whole week off! Hopefully my other QVC goodies will arrive tomorrow then I can start catty scrapping.