My infrequently updated blog

The Cheap Domestic Goddess

2012-01-23T21:02:00.001Z

For the second instalment in my Austerity cooking, I thought I'd share my Cheat's Cannelloni.

If you've had a hard week and it's only Monday, don't bust yourself up about not making the red sauce from scratch. Just use about 1.5 jars of the pasta sauce of your choice and some passata, but be aware that the cost will be higher.

You will need:
2 Large saucepans
Lasagne dish or roasting tin
Mixing bowl

Ingredients for the red sauce:
4-6 medium onions
2-3 red peppers (capsicum)
2 cans chopped tomatoes
1 large jar passata
Crushed dried chillies (leave out or moderate if serving to kids)
1/2 tube tomato purée
Balsamic vinegar
Worcestershire sauce (optional if you're catering for vegetarians)
2 tsp sugar
Splash soya sauce

For the cannelloni:
8-12 lasagne sheets
500g Ricotta
500g Baby Leaf Spinach
Cracked black pepper
Mint (can be left out)
2 cups grated cheese (the stronger the better)

Method (red sauce)
Dice the onions finely and place in large saucepan in oil and cook until translucent.
Dice the red peppers finely and add to the onion
Add the chopped tomatoes
Add the passata and the purée and stir thoroughly
Add a splash of balsamic vinegar, Worcestershire sauce and soya sauce and the sugar. Stir thoroughly and taste. Add more of the sauces if needed.
At the last minute, add about 2 tsp crushed dried chillies
Leave to simmer for about 1/2 and hour stirring occasionally until the flavours have combined.

This is usually enough red sauce that I can make the cannelloni dish, a lasagne and at least one other pasta dish during the week. If you divide it into portions, it freezes well, making other meals easy. Add some kidney beans and some chilli powder, with a bit of mince and you have an easy chilli.

Method (cannelloni):
in the large saucepan, boil some water and add a slosh of oil. Add the lasagne sheets to the boiling water one at a time. Keep the water moving around the sheets until they are soft and pliable. This takes anywhere from 2-5 minutes. Remove the sheets one at a time and place them on a non-stick baking sheet or similar to cook.
Once you've thrown the pasta water away, wilt the spinach down for about a minute - just enough that most of the leaves have lost their shape.
In the mixing bowl, add the Ricotta, spinach, mint (if using) and cracked black pepper and mix until thoroughly combined.
In turn, lay a lasagne sheet out lengthways and spoon about two tablespoons of mixture onto it. Spread from the end of the sheet closest to you up to about 1/3 from the other end.
Starting at the end closest to you, roll the sheet up like a roulade.
Complete the remaining lasagne sheets until all the mixture is used up (this allows you to add or subtract mixture from completed sheets as needed).

The Construction:
Spoon enough red sauce onto the base of the lasagne dish to cover the bottom.
Lay the lasagne rolls in the red sauce
Spoon more red sauce over the top of the rolls.
Sprinkle dried chillies over the top
Sprinkle grated cheese over the top
Dust with dried oregano or Italian seasoning
Bake at 200°C until cheese is golden

Serve it with crusty bread and a robust salad or on its own.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Repurposing Cards - The Photos

2012-01-14T20:49:00.001Z

Hello cybersphere! I've been asked to share the photos of the Repurposed Baby Announcement/Christmas cards, so here goes nothing. Let's see if my blogwriter can do what I want it to do.

Firstly, the original Birth Announcement card:

I took a black and cream paper stack and cut a series of 10cm x 15cm panels and distressed the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink. Then I cut some ATC sized cards from black Coredinations card stock and embossed them with a script Texture Fade (which I can no longer find listed on Sissix's website). I sanded the ATCs to reveal some of the lighter core and then inked around the edges with Walnut Stain Distress Ink.

I stamped the Baby and Postcode stamps onto cream card stock in Black Soot Distress Ink, cut them all out and then edged them with Vintage Photo Distress Ink. Then it was just a case of assembling.

Using a standard card blank, I wallpapered the front of the card with the black and cream panel, then added the ATCA card. The baby and postcode stamps were then arranged on the ATC and two small heart gems were stuck to the Baby plaque.

Now, the Christmas card:

I removed the Baby and Postcode stamps and the black hearts.

On cream card stock, I stamped the lamp post and the holly leaves from these two sets

I cut them out (sitting in front of the television one evening) and inked the lamp post with Aged Mahogany Distress Ink and the ivy with Forest Green Distress Ink.

I stuck the lamp post on the edge of the ATC, and the holly leaves on top of the lamp post. I filled in the holly berries with Red Pepper Dimensional Pearls.

Easy, really.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Repurposed Christmas Cards

2012-01-13T22:20:00.002Z

Nearly two years ago when my daughter was born, DH asked me if I would make birth announcements or should he buy them. Given that G at that point was sleeping a fair amount (mostly on my Mum), I was prepared to give it ago. "How many do you want", said I. "Oh, I don't know. Lots", said he in reply.

Now, "lots" in my book is now clearly different in my definition than his. But I didn't know that at the time. Mum and I went shopping for bits and I ordered inserts from a printer friend of mine.

I made 100.

We used 30.

A year later, at the approach of G's 1st birthday, I wrote the details of her party on the back of the inserts of another 30 and sent them out as invitations to all the people who wouldn't necessarily read email or who might especially like to be invited by post.

That still left 40 sitting on the shelf.

As usual, I set myself up with a task list of things I needed to do this Christmas and completely forgot about cards. You see, having been brought up a Quaker and told that all days are as equally important as Christmas, and we should treat every day as sacred, Christmas cards were something that mostly got bypassed in favour of making cracking gifts for ours friends and families. DH came home from work about 2 weeks before Christmas and asked "Do we have any Christmas cards left over from last year?".

Argh! Busted!

I have a lovely studio filled to overflowing with things that I could use to make Christmas cards. In fact, I need to sort through it and throw some of it out. But I've got a half-built kitchen in there at the moment and it's been used as a general dumping ground since G was born.

Could I get in there, find what I needed and come out alive?

Then I remembered the birth notice cards. They weren't pink and fluffy because, as those of you who know me know, I'm not a pink and fluffy type of person. So, could I do something that would turn them into tasteful Christmas cards? This meant that I would only need to grab a box of Distress Inks and one or two stamps. Survival of the studio chaos was possible!

With the use of some adhesive remover and an evening in front of the television cutting out lamposts and holly (and the removal of the birth announcement sheets), I have created 39 lovely Christmas cards.

39? What about the last one?

I've saved one card to go into G's baby scrapbook.

I have all the bits needed. They're in my studio somewhere.

PS. For those of you interested, I will post a title tutorial on how I turned the birth announcement cards into Christmas cards.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The Cheap Domestic Goddess

2012-01-13T22:06:00.002Z

Since G was born, my life has changed drastically - just as I expected it to before some of you start screaming "I told you so"! I've become a bit of a domestic goddess, in a small way. Finally, 22 years beyond my graduation, I no longer live like a student, washing a dish as I run out.

But with the cost of living skyrocketing, I have to find imaginative ways of cooking interesting things for G that we are prepared to eat too, so that I'm not cooking twice and that if she decides she doesn't like it, I don't end up throwing it away. I'm also finding ways of hiding vegetables into things - not because she doesn't like vegetables, because she does as long as they're cooked into it, but because as she gets older, we like to be out and about and it's useful to be able to take a healthy lunch with us. Just read the nutritional value of a McDonalds Happy Meal, and you'll never buy one for your kids again!

So, as I've been cooking tonight, I'll share with you my Austerity Sausage Rolls.

Ingredients:
1 pack pre-rolled puff pastry, because life is too short to make puff pastry
500g diced casserole beef - I buy the Basic stuff
2 medium onions
2 or 3 small carrots
Ground black pepper
Italian seasoning, or herbs of your choice
2 large eggs

I have a food processor to do most of my cooking. Again, life is too short to cut up everything as small as it needs to be as far as I am concerned, but you can cut it up by hand if you wish. You can also use a blender, but work in tiny quantities because you want things chopped, not puréed.

Method:
1. Peel the onions and carrots. Using the knife blade in the processor, blitz until finely chopped.
2. Transfer into a mixing bowl and do the same with the carrots and put them in the same bowl as the onions.
3. Set the processor going and drop about half of the beef into the bowl until it is finely minced. Put into the bowl with the onions and carrots and repeat for the other half of the meat. Add it to the bowl when done.
4. Break one egg into the bowl and add the black pepper and herbs. Mix thoroughly.
5. Break the other egg into a mug and beat well.
6. Cut the sheet of pastry in half and set aside. Dust your bench with a little flour and roll the pastry out to about 18x18cm, and cut in half. Repeat for the other half.
7. Take one strip of pastry and visually divide into three sections lengthwise.
8. Scoop 1/4 of the filling out of the bowl bit by bit and lay it down the centre third of the strip.
9. Paint one of the side strips with the beaten egg.
10. Roll the other side of the pastry over the mixture and continue to rollit over the egg washed third so you have a roll.
11. Paint the beaten egg along the top of the sausage roll.
12. Prick the length of the sausage roll with a fork and cut into 6.
13. Repeat for the remaining strips.
14. Place on a greased baking sheet (or use a non-stick baking sheet) and cook at 180°c for 25-30 minutes until the top of the pastry is golden brown.
15. Once cooked, place sausage rolls on a wire rack to cool.

There are a variety of other fillings that you can play with:

Pork shoulder with onion, sage, celery, and peppers
Chicken thighs with tarragon, onion, celery, peppers and mushrooms
Turkey with chicken livers, onions, chestnuts and maybe a little cranberry sauce
And for the vegetarians: Butternut squash, potatoes, onions, carrots, peppers and rosemary, with breadcrumbs (roast the squash and potatoes rather than chopping finely).

Basically, a good filling requires a central ingredient that has enough fat to cope with the mincing process. If it doesn't, the finished roll will taste incredibly dry. Cheaper cuts are better for this as they are usually higher in fat than the better cuts. I had to add butter to the turkey filling, but any fat would have done the job and I had to remove the skin from the chicken for the chicken filling as it just goes stringy rather than mincing.

Secondly, too much raw vegetable will make the filling too liquid when it cooks and the rolls will collapse. For a meat sausage roll, a 60/40 ratio works best. For a vegetable roll, mix in a largish quantity of breadcrumbs so that they absorb that liquid during cooking.

And G's verdict "I love Mummy's sausage rolls". That's enough.

How Time Flies…

2011-04-18T00:16:00.001Z

G is now 15 months old. Four teeth and more hair. She is crawling everywhere and pushing boundaries to see what she is capable of/can get away with.
This is my current favourite photo, but I've been looking back through all her photos and she has changed so much!

Big Stamping and Scrapbooking Show at Ally Pally

2011-04-09T20:49:00.005Z

Today, I went up to London and spent the day at the Big Stamping and Scrapbooking Show at Alexander Palace - or Ally Pally as it is commontly known. All in all, it was an okay day. There were some highlights and some extreme lowlights.

The highlights first:

If I were able to give out awards, there is one particular stand I would give one to. For me, if it were a movie, it would've one the Oscar for Best Film. Remembering that the stands at these events are temporary, haphazard and need to attract attention because there is a lot of competition, www.laviniastamps.com had an amazing stand.

The stand had a great flow. There was a demonstration table at the front stage left of the stand with the products ranging around the back of the stand and the register at front stage right. So, once people were attracted to the demo, they could work their way around the stand, picking up product as they went and pay at the register at the end. Right next to the register were a selection of tiny, mini stamps that have probably been fitted into the waste space on the sheets. These were priced at £1 each, so someone could pick up three or four for not a large outlay. Additionally, across the top of the back of the stand were hundreds of samples. The stamps required to make up the stamps were directly underneath those samples - very clever. The stand was packed. While I was there I could hear people all around me saying "I need those stamps to make that card, and those stamps to make that card". No sample used less than 7 stamps. The only downside was the stamps were pricey. Probably 20-30% more than I would normally be prepared to pay for an unmounted, acrylic stamp. But the demonstration being done was simple with impressive results. Even I, in my cash-strapped state, walked away with three stamps.

The award for best customer service has to go to www.decoupatch.co.uk. Again, their stand was clear and it was obvious what they were selling. Although they had no demonstration going, it was obvious from their samples, what you could achieve with their products. They were selling papier mache items that could be covered with their bright colourful papers, using glue and a brush. Once you had made your selection, it was clear where you needed to pay and to whom. The lady in the queue in front of me was buying a small papier mache giraffe. "that's £3.95, or you can select two sheets of paper and we'll give you glue and a brush for £7.95". The woman accepted. Brilliant. She walks away with everything that she needs to get started and they've doubled their sale in 20 seconds. OK, it didn't work with me, who said "No. I'm going to ink them", but her response was "Ooh. That sounds interesting, if I include our business card in your bag, will you send us a picture when it's complete?". Has she won me over, or what? Their only mistake, I believe, was not checking out the competition. They were selling wooden cutout words and had LOVE in a square, a la Making Memories for £10. The stand directly behind them was selling almost exactly the same item for £4. Did they not notice when they were setting up? If they didn't, hmmm. If they had and it had been me there, I would have either brought the price down (not necessarily to match, but closer) or pulled that item from the stand.

The lowlights:

The award for the worst stand goes to a company tucked down the back of the hall. They also were selling only acrylic stamps. But a huge difference. No demonstration going on, no samples to speak of and then hundreds and hundreds of stamps crammed onto hooks, with each design butted right up against the next. Admittedly, they were grouped by theme, but just looking at the display gave me a headache. My friend expressed an interest to look and I just said I couldn't concentrate. Too Much Information...

The rest of the show was a bit of a disappointment for me. Although I think footfall was down from the last time I went (which was pre-recession), it still felt very crowded. This made it very difficult for people with mobility issues to get around. They do get an extra half an hour before the show opens, but that is nowhere enough time to see everything before the walking hordes arrive. I felt most sorry for one woman behind me at one stand who was in a self-pushed wheelchair and therefore didn't take up as much space as someone in a mobility scooter. But this made her less noticable and there were people stepping in front of where she was trying to go, oblivious to her plight and no one with her to back her up.

I felt that the number of show offers was down considerably. It used to be that nearly every stand was offering a deal of the weekend. Only a couple were offering anything at all. One stand offering stamp sets for £8.50 each, or three sets for £24.00. Hmm. £1.50 off? Really? Considering that most of the shops will get more footfall over the course of this weekend than they might get in a normal weekend (even taking into account that most of them will have closed their businesses back home for four days), or in fact a month of weekends, they can afford to do better deals. It encourages repeat business. Two positive days at this show are better than thousands worth of advertising. Just being there means I learned about half a dozen companies that I didn't even know existed and some that I thought had gone out of business were still there. The good ones will probably get business from me in the future. The bad ones I will actively ignore.

After the show, I met up with a lovely group of people from the Yahoo Group, All Things Tim. While fanatics for all things that have Tim Holtz's signature on them, they were enthusiastic about lots of other things and we had a great opportunity to share the spoils of our spending sprees!

Anniversary

2010-08-03T21:31:00.001Z

Today is the first anniversary of my wonderful Dad's death. I miss him terribly and it makes living so far away that much harder.

But I can't let that anniversary be the only thing that will mark this day for the rest of my life because that would be not what he would want. For example, the 3rd of August is my best friends birthday and she is a vibrant, wonderful, strong woman who is very much alive. Happy Birthday Sharshi!

Additionally, each day brings new things for me to discover with my new daughter who will be seven months old at the end of this week. Days are so full of her that I don't get a chance to dwell on other things. The lovely thing about babies is they force you to live in the here and now because that is the way they live.

So, Dad. You're missed. Terribly. But I hope you won't mind if I stop missing you to change your granddaughter's nappy.

Preoccupation

2010-07-29T13:20:00.001Z

Some of you may have been wondering what has happened to me. Well, Genevieve did. I'll post more at another time but here is the new addition in my life.

The joys of coming home

2009-06-23T09:28:00.006Z

This is the photo of an Australian citizen. I thought that when I came home to Australia, that setting myself back up in the country of my birth (and where I have lived for the majority of my life), would be a relatively easy thing to do.

How wrong I am.

The healthcare system in Australia is a subsidised affair called Medicare. Every citizen is entitled to Medicare. However, if you're a returning citizen there are certain criteria you need to meet to be able to apply. Firstly, they want proof that you are permanently back in Australia - which, effectively I am for the immediate future. So, they want proof of bill of sale of your house in the country you've left or proof that you've closed your foreign bank accounts. Or, they want a rental agreement/bill of purchase on a house in Australia or utility bills or an Australian bank account. Since I have not sold my UK house, closed my bank account, rented/bought a house in Australia, I don't have any of that information. But hey, I have my Australian passport, birth certificate and marriage certificate so if I get the Australian bank account, it should be easy.

Hah!

I applied for an Australian bank account today. No problem. The passport and certificates are enough for me to open the bank account, but they need proof of address in order for me to be able to withdraw from the account. So, the helpful guy at the bank suggested that I apply for an Australian Tax File Number - apparently you can do it online. You can. But not if you're Australian. For some strange reason only known to the Australian Goverment, Australians have to go down to their nearest post office, obtain the correct form, fill it in and post it to the tax office.

The annoying thing about all of this is that the purpose of this is for me to get healthcare while I'm here. If I had come into Australia on my UK passport with a visitor's visa I could have got Medicare assistance without any issue - apply online and everything. Easy. But not if I'm Australian.

Another thing: I've come back to Australia to look after my elderly parents while my father deals with terminal Leukaemia. I cannot work while I'm here because they need my help too much. We've heard about so many people who've obtained help from the government for various things and my family has never needed to ask for help so we're new to this whole system. Because I'm Australian, with a possible exception, I may have to wait until I've been back here two years before I can apply for any allowances. I'm not intending to be here two years, so we'll have to see what happens.

It's just so frustrating to have to go through this: Applying for allowances will be easier if I have Medicare, can't apply for Medicare until I have a bank account. Can't apply for a bank account until I have a Tax Office Number (or ironically, Medicare).

Round and round and round we go...

Goodbye R496 URD

2009-05-29T18:09:00.006Z

I sold my car today. It has been an integral part of my life for the last 11 years and it seems strange to not have a car, even if this is only going to be for a short while. It is so integral, that I cannot find any photos of it to post here. (but thank you to my friend, Missus Wookie for finding one). It's funny how you use something every day for so long, but when you go back to look, there's no other record of it's existence other than out-of-date paperwork in your filing cabinet.

This car was my first company car when I joined Conchango back in 1998. There were four Golf GTIs ordered for new staff and VW were just about to releast the Mark 4 and didn't have any in stock, so they recalled one from each of four other right-hand drive vehicle countries so that we could have them. I believe mine was the New Zealand version - air con and a sun roof. Someone got the South African one - no sun roof, but air con so good you could have stored your beef next to it. There was also an Australian one - air con, no sun roof - and a Japanese one - air con, no sun roof, a great stereo system as standard.

If all four of us turned up to a company do, there'd be R495 URD, R496 URD, R497 URD and R498 URD all parked next to each other. Mine was the only purple one so I never tried to drive one of the others away by mistake after a company do.

I'll miss the car. It's been good to me. The guy I sold it to said that the clutch was going and the gearbox was making a funny noise. The clutch hasn't changed in 10 years and the gearbox makes the same noise it's always made, so I guess it just proves that Golfs are the reliable cars that every one says they are. Their reputation is intact.

Extreme Papercrafting

2009-05-25T12:42:00.004Z

I've been spending the long weekend at a science fiction convention - Plokta.con. Lots of silly stuff has been going on but one of the workshops at the beginning of the weekend was "Build a model of Howl's Moving Castle". I had no idea what it was I was getting myself into, but hey, it involved paper, scissors and glue so it couldn't be all that bad, surely.

Well, here it is. We estimate that approximately 10 people have spent an average of 7.5 hours each working on (some, like me, have spent more, some a lot less), and today (Monday) we completed it!

This was a free download from Epson Japan in 2004 when the movie was released. It has since come down off Epson's website and some person with initiative has done a (kind of) English translation for the instructions, and posted it up somewhere else. When I find the URL, I'll post it for you.

It was designed to be printed on standard weight paper in

A4. We printed it in A3 which is 40% bigger and I'm so glad! At A4 size, there are parts of this that are so small, I would go cross-eyed trying to cut it out.

If I had to print it in A4, I'd probably run it through my Silhouette software and get the cutter to cut it out.

It was great fun and having so many people collaborating probably made the whole process easier because when the sketchy English instructions became incomprehensible, we worked out where things were supposed to be by committee.

Dad's album

2009-04-27T16:04:00.003Z

My sister, Beth, and I have been working on an album for my Dad. He keeps joking that if we don't hurry up, he'll be dead before we finish it. He has no idea how true that is. It's one of those things: just as soon as you think you've finished it, you come up with just one more page to do.

This is our sister, Susan doing her page. She's actually more of a scrapbooker than she thinks she is. She made a scrapbook of one of the trips the orchestra she's in did and I think it is wonderful. This is her doing her page for Dad's album. You can just see me on the other side of the table. We have this set up in the living room at Mum & Dad's place so that we can work on the album and spend time with them. It has actually worked out very well. Everyone who comes to visit gets a chance to see the process and many of them put in their 2 cents worth.

Dad is hale and hearty at the moment. As you can see from this picture, he is looking pretty good. His little brother came over from Canberra and told him "you're a fraud. You're not sick, you're just seeking attention!" (in the kindest possible way).

This is a picture I asked him to pose for last week. The card he is holding in his hand is one of thousands that we have in the garage. From about 1974 to 1994, Dad was the Chief Examiner for the Biology exam for getting into University. In the pre-computer age, he needed an efficient and cheap way to keep track of exam questions. These cards are about 20cm x 10cm and have punched holes around the edge - just large enough for a size 10 knitting needle.

The idea is that each card has the question printed on the front. Then along the top of the card, the first choice option is for which section of the accompanying text the question relates to. There is a choice option for whether the question is Multiple Choice, Short Answer or Essay, then there is a sub-section choice and a section for how the student must answer the question (display Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis or Evaluation), as you want a balance of these.

The idea was, he made his first choice (which section), insert the knitting needle into the first slot, then shake the stack of cards. The ones which fell out where all the questions relating to that section. Then he inserted the knitting needle into the question type (for example, Multiple Choice), shake the stack out and the ones left were the multiple choice. Then insert the knitting needle into the sub-section and shake (you get the idea now) and that gave you possible questions. He'd then insert the knitting needle into, say, the Knowledge slot, shake them out and that would give him all the questions in that Section, that were Multiple Choice, in a particular sub-section that would require the student to demonstrate Knowledge. It was actually quiet an ingenious system. He never translated it to computer, because the time that it would have taken to write such a database and then enter in all the data would have simply taken too long.

But by going through this process year, he could turn up to a paper-setting meeting with possible questions already determined. He could also keep track of which years the questions went into to make sure that they weren't repeated too often (as current students get past papers to practice on) and later on, he also recorded other data about how well the question had performed which would allow him to modify or replace bad questions.

Really quite clever when you think about it.

Another bunch of lovely people

2009-04-27T15:55:00.002Z

My sister-in-law, Meredith, has been an avid stamper since before I left Australia in 1991. Last week, she asked me to do a demonstration/mini-workshop for some of her friends which I was happy to oblige.

I showed them a bunch of techniques they can do with Distress Inks and other products from Ranger. I got them to do three of the tag techniques and then we did a mini project where they took an ATC-sized canvas which comes with it's own mini-easel and they decorated using Adirondack Dimensional Pearls.

This week, Meredith invited me to join her little stamping group where Lucy was showing them this fabulous card. It uses one sheet of A4 or 8.5x11. Her card has only two pockets, but with a little modification on my part I got three pockets and I could've put in a fourth if I'd wanted it. This photo doesn't do it justice. We used Distress Inks and a little Perfect Pearls to give the labels a little bit of shimmer.

All craft products seem a little expensive over here (I guess if you have to ship it halfway around the world...), so I understand why they haven't been able to invest in some of the stuff I have.

2009-04-04T04:23:00.003Z

These lovely people are two of the staff at a fantastic store here in Perth called Scraptivate - this is Mel (on the left) and Megan (on the right). This store has got some of the most amazing stuff and talented people working there, presenting Scrapbooking in an artistic way.

They have two Australian-made products that are great: The Collections range is pre-cut chipboard shapes and there's just been some new releases hit the store after the Australian equivalent of CHA. They also have some amazing German Scrap - black angel wings! - all exclusive

to Scraptivate.

My sister, Beth took me down there the Sunday after I arrived. That it took 6 days to get into this store is a dissapointment I'm not sure I'm ever going to live down. UK Stores would kill for this much space to spread out in. One whole length of the store is full of paper racks and she's got everything from the popular US manufacturers, plus some stuff I've never seen from Australian manufacturers. I'm working on her to get Scrapperdashery, but if you'd like her to get the Poetry range, please go in and tell her. I can't put up photos of all the amazing artwork that was dotted around the shop as there simply isn't space, but check out the amazing houses and things on this table.

I'm learning to let go

2009-03-28T00:24:00.005Z

Spending all my waking hours with Dad is suffocating him - he says he doesn't want people to sit around and watch him die, which we're not - so I've been finding things to do and music has always been a great escape for me.

Two of my sisters sing with the University of Western Australia Choral Society (UWACS) and they are currently rehearsing the Mass in B Minor by Bach (lots of notes), so I trailed along to rehearsal with them last Wednesday night. Last night, we went to see the Perth equivalent of The Sixteen perform it. The group is only 18 members strong, but they are all professional singers. The choir was fantastic. The Alto and Soprano were okay (enunciation is a good thing, people!). The orchestra was reasonable but they were mostly students from what we could gather (there is no listing in the programme) and they were using early music instruments and to quote my sister Susan "Bach is the reason more modern instruments were invented"

It was performed at St George's Cathedral which is gothic-style but made out of brick, not stone as the only local stone is Limestone and I'm not sure it would be strong enough to hold up that style of structure.

But it was warm. I'm determined to not be like a Wingeing Pom and complain about the heat, but even some of the locals were leaving because it was too hot. Yesterday's daytime temperature was 37 Celcius (98.6 Farenheit) and the Fremantle Doctor was late arriving (about 3am) so the evening was warm. I had taken a light jumper with me just in case the clear skies heralded a cooler night. I needn't have bothered.

It's great to be home

2009-03-27T04:43:00.002Z

I'm at home in Perth now and it is great to be here seeing the family. Zandy is with me and will stay for three of the four weeks that I'm here. My brothers are both flying in from their homes in Tasmania and Northern Territory in another week and we're having a celebration for Dad on Easter Saturday.

We've spent a lot of time just sitting chatting so far. Dad is being prompted by many people to talk about his life and things that he has done, so I'm learning new things about what he did. It's giving me an opportunity to clarify some of the stories I've heard over the years and get the story straight. We all thought that there would be plenty of time for this - even he did - so we're now cramming it all in.

Yesterday, an old work colleague dropped around and we got the whole chronological timeline of his working career. It was great because Frank would say "Graham, do you remember such-and-such and the time they did that?" and Dad would respond and we'd get the whole story with clarity of detail that was surprising since some of these things happened 35 years ago. He says it's because he forgets these things until someone prompts the memory and then it just pops into his head as though it were yesterday.

The tubes you can see in his neck are connections that allow the hospital to take blood when they need to without having to puncture more holes in his arm. He says that the arm connections were stinging, so by going straight into the neck, it is much easier. His blood count is down so they'll give him more reds next week, but his platelets are up to 101 (apparently something around 150 is normal and they don't give platelets until they are down to 10) but we're keeping an eye on him. If he starts to feel woozy then that is an indication that his reds are down and we need to get him to Emergency so they can give him a transfusion.

Now that I've seen him in person and spent time with him a lot over the last four days, I'm prepared to let go and see other people. So, I'm spending time with my sisters singing today and going to a performance of Bach's B Minor Mass tonight.

Life is okay.

A break in service for a little while

2009-03-17T09:42:00.002Z

Just to let you all know, things are going to be a little interrupted for a while. I'm going home to Australia to see Dad. I'll be gone for about a month. I'll only update this blog if there is news to share - one way or the other.

Retailers: If you're planning to place an order with Scrapperdashery, I can still fulfill orders from elsewhere in the world. The only two things I can't fulfil are non-stick craft sheet sold by the metre because I have to be here to fulfil a special order like this, and solid-coloured cardstock as my distribution agent doesn't have any in stock at the moment. But all the patterned paper is still there and there are discounts applying until the end of March.

I know you'll be thinking of me and supporting me through this, so thanks in advance for that support.

Judi

2009-03-08T18:19:00.003Z

For those of you who don't know him. This is my Dad. Mum took this photo of us together at Stonehenge last year when they came over from Australia to visit me. We had nearly 5 wonderful weeks where I took some time off work and we spent some great time together. We drove up to Scotland to visit Mum's Aunt and then down to Darlington to see where Dad's family left England from. The best bit for me was finding all the Hodgkins who are buried in Darlington Quaker Meeting House Burial Ground.

While they were here, Dad helped out on my studio, working on some of the plastering with me. He told me yesterday that my sister-in-law had shown him how to get to my blog so that he could see the studio and he was so chuffed to see that I was nearly completely moved in (I'm not sure that I'll ever be completely moved in).

Unfortunately, I am welcoming my own mortality this week with the news that my father has terminal cancer - leukaemia in fact. I'm 10,000 miles away and feeling rather helpless. We all disagree with our parents at some stages in our lives, and I'm no different. But they are the only ones I've got and knowing that at 40 I'm about to lose one of them is heartbreaking.

So, I'm going home to see him, let them both know how much I love them and share time with my immediate family. So, if I don't respond to queries, questions and anything else as quickly as you would expect, I am sorry and I'll be in touch with you as soon as I can.

Classes coming up at Stamparty

2009-03-07T11:04:00.005Z

I will be teaching series of classes at Stamparty in Aldershot over the next couple of months.

This Thursday, 12th March:
3.30 - 5.30pm Brayered cards. This is a fantastic technique that I have to give credit to Michelle Zindorf for. Learn how you can stamp images for a completely different effect. Your cards will pop and people will wonder how you managed to get this card looking like it does.

6.30 - 8.30pm Clear Acrylic Albums. Using the new clear acrylic albums from Papermania, we'll do a number of techniques that will enhance the transparency of these albums, involving paper, alcohol inks and other mediums. You can either put photos into this, or not as your choice. Black & White photos will work the best.

Saturday, 21st March:
10.30am - 12.30pm Perfect Pearls. These mica pigment powders are unique in that they have a binder built into the powder, so require no additional input to make them a permanent shimmery addition to your cards and scrapbook pages. This is a technique class and you'll have the opportunity to learn a number of techniques that you can take away with and incorporate into everything you do.

1.30 - 3.3opm. Melting Pot. This is a great class to bundle with the Perfect Pearls class as we'll use them here too. Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel can be used to make all manner of beautiful embellishments and even jewellery pieces. There are so many things to do with the Melting Pot that I'm not sure we'll fit them all into one class - but we'll try!

Wednesday, 25th March:
3.30 - 5.30pm. Grungeboard. It's not chipboard, it's not fabric. What is it? It is one of the most versatile products to come out of the head of Tim Holtz in a long time. Learn a number of things that you can do with this marvellous product.

6.30 - 8.30pm. Decorate a cigar box. If you have been to any of my workshops before, you will know it’s a bit messy but the results are always fantastic. We’ll cover this cigar box in paper, remove the paper hinge and replace it with real hinges and box corners to make a box that will have people wowed.

Wednesday, 15th April:
CANCELLED. Sorry.

Saturday, 25th April:
10.30am - 12.30pm. Creating backgrounds with colour wash. This is a messy class, so don't wear precious clothing. We'll get really messy, making beautiful backgrounds with this industrial-quality fabric dye, change the colour of ribbon and paint with it.

1.30 - 3.30pm. Brayered cards. This is a fantastic technique that I have to give credit to Michelle Zindorf for. Learn how you can stamp images for a completely different effect. Your cards will pop and people will wonder how you managed to get this card looking like it does.

There will be more classes coming up, so come back to see where and when.

Experimentation Time

2009-03-01T12:46:00.004Z

I've been doing some experiementation over the last two days - the studio is clean and orders from Stitches have been sent off to dispatch.

This first experiement was a result of a failure - and I coudn't let it go until I'd found out a solution. I ran a sheet of brass through a Cuttlebug embossing folder to produce a fantastic, highly detailed image. But I wanted to crackle it and Distress Crackle paints won't stick to metal. So, I coated the embossed metal with black Gesso, waited for it to dry, then sanded it down to expose the brass underneath. Next time, I know to paint a thinner coat. Then I glooped (that must be the technical term, right?) Black Soot Distress Crackle Paint over the metal and left that to dry. There is a very fine crackle as a result. I sanded it back again, but was unhappy that I couldn't see the crackle all that well because of the black Gesso underneath. So I painted over it with Gold Precious Metal (from Vario), working the paint into all the cracks, then wiping it off the surface before it had a chance to dry thoroughly. I love the effect and the photo just doesn't do it justice.

To finish it up, I wrapped two pieces of gold ribbon around the bottom, stamped a PaperArtsy image in Versamark and embossed it with Ranger Super Fine Detail Gold powder on black cardstock, vcut around the image and mounted it with Pop-Up Glue Dots (Glue Dots UK). I couldn't find my gold mirror card, so I mounted it on a Tomato Paste tube which has been flattened in my Wizard and used the Glue Dots to mount it on a Black Glossy (Ranger) card.

This next piece was more of an experimentation. I met a lovely company at Stitches called Vario (when I find a like to their website, I'll put it up here) and they very kindly gave me some stuff to take home and play with.

This is an A5 gessoed canvas that I picked up from Hobbycraft. I base coated it with Turquoise Precious Metal paint, then stencilled Tim's Time Masks with Gold Precious Metal Paint. I let the whole lot dry thoroughly, put Tim's Time Masks down again and smothered Vario's Transparent Croco (crackle medium) over the top and let it dry. I came back this morning and the cracking is very impressive. However, the transparent Croco had dulled down the Precious Metals, so I went back over with a paint brush and repainted the Gold and Turquoise in.

These mediums are fantastic. The Precious Metals will adhere to all manner of surfaces: glass, ceramic, wood, metal and can still be used in normal applications. They're water-based, so the brushes simply was out. The Croco is best applied with a spatula or foam brush and laid down really thickly. The label says at least 2mm, but I applied it a lot thinner than that in some places and got a beautiful crazed look to the crackle. The best bit, is that I can paint over the transparent to give it colour in particular places. The leaflet even shows it being used on glass. Wow!

Again, the photo just doesn't do this justice. I can't see a way of getting the glistening effect to show up in a photo. You'll just have to come to my studio to see it for yourself.

For those of you who thought my studio was too neat

2009-02-25T13:07:00.004Z

After the posting where I shared my nearly finished studio, I had a number of comments back from people that it looked very neat. I knew it wasn't going to stay that way. Here is what it looked like after I'd come back from Stitches:

I have done some tidying since this photo, but there's a long way to go. So, you can see, it goes from neat and organised to extremely disorganised rather rapidly.

2009-02-19T21:24:00.002Z

Hey guys, I'm back from Stitches and we had a great time. You can see how good the booth looked. That's Wendrie setting up for a Make N Take and Zandy folding promotional leaflets for me.

The white signs you can see are Sold Out signs. That means that some of my stuff is now gone - never to be seen again. If you're a retailer and reading this and you want some of the end-of-line products, you need to let me know now because the remainder of stock is going up on the website next week and will hopefully sell out straight away.

Yesterday, I met up with Stacey & Jeff Caron and Kim Hupke and showed them around London a little. We ate lunch at Harrods and then walked around the store. Stacey bought the most gorgeous collar for the St Bernard (who's name escapes me at the moment) and had so much fun going back into the Egyptian room and trying out different perfumes. After much procrastination (and refusing to buy one that had Martha Stewart written on the bottom of it), we found the perfect, simple teapot and a selection of teas, tea ball and strainer, so now the Caron's have exactly what they need to make the perfect cup of tea. We spent so much time in Harrods that we didn't make it to the Victoria & Albert museum.

So we caught a taxi up to Piccadilly Circus and admired the lights, then walked through Leicester Square where all the movie premiers happen, up to Covent Garden where "My Fair Lady" was filmed (Jeff liked these gas heaters so much that we had to

have him pose in front of one but apparently they look good but aren't that heat efficient), down The Strand to Trafalgar Square and back up into Soho where we found a reasonable Chinese

restaurant to have dinner at.

I had to get some work done today, so tomorrow I am going back in tomorrow morning and we're going to aim for the Victoria & Albert Museum. They've got a lovely exhibition on at the moment showing costumes of the Tsars and since Jeff's family came from Russia, I hope we'll enjoy it.

After the V&A we're hoping to make it to the London Eye to do a flight. I've recharged the camera so I'll share photos of it with you tomorrow night.

We had more snow today

2009-02-05T17:17:00.006Z

The snow arrived again. This is more snow than I've ever seen in this country. Everything was covered in about 4 inches of snow when I came out to the office this morning. So I just had to grab the camera and get a photo.

An artist needs refreshment during the day and I've been taking a Kikkoman Soy Sauce bottle up with me to the studio with milk in it for my hot drinks during the day. Today I was treated to my own personal fridge on the deck just outside the door.

This little guy sits on the wall at the bottom of the garden looking down the stairs. He was looking extremely unamused by the snow by the time I took this photo.

Zandy couldn't get into work this morning because the roads hadn't been gritted sufficiently so, after lunch we went for a walk down to the river.

I love the view over the fields nearby. Absoutely beautiful. As long as I don't have to work in it, I love it.

So this has been my work today. It's the poster for our next concert. If you want tickets, I can get them for you too. The background was created with alcohol inks on glossy cardstock. It's a little blotchier than I normally do. This is really thick photo paper. As I carried it up to the studio, the paper got wet and damaged the emulsion. I inked over the top and the blotches show through the inking.

Snow it's not!

2009-02-02T16:48:00.007Z

For those of you who haven't heard, the UK had the worst snow in 18 years fall today. Now, I love snow, so I think it's brilliant. But I have noted that when the snow falls in Britain, the entire country screeches to a halt. This year it has been fun to watch the chaos because they were warning us about this snow two days ago. But a lot of councils didn't deploy the gritters so this morning when we all woke up to a white carpet, the roads weren't prepared. DH got sent home from work at lunchtime so he's working in the house, while I'm up here in the studio.

Speaking of which: this is the studio in the snow. Isn't she pretty?

I promised you more photos

2009-02-01T19:36:00.026Z

I'll try to give you a 360 degree tour of the room so that you can get a feel for how it feels at the moment. Today, we moved in two of the three desks that will eventually be in the room. Now, if you look over to the IT corner, you can see my glass-topped desk and my Herman Miller chair that I picked up at an auction for a 6th of it's retail price. The desk will host my computer and main printer and the bench next to it will be my main repair station and the location of the other two printers. Underneath the bench will be storage.

This is my craft table. It's an old kitchen table that a friend of mine gave me. I've now covered it completely with a non-stick craft sheet to protect the surface. The second photo shows the 13" square light box that has been sunk into the surface. It's facing toward my IT desk so that (once I've got my desktop working again) I can watch DVDs while I craft.

This is my craft desk from the other side. As you can see, from my seated position, I can reach most of the things I need without having to move too far. My Distress Inks are on a display next to me and I have a little netting bag with my Cut N Dry foam squares easily reachable.

Right, so this is a close-up of the bench next to my desk. The drawers are from Ikea (but they don't make them anymore, pity) and they are screwed to the wall. Underneath, is a curtain pole that is designed to be hung from above and about 120 curtain rings with clips so that I can clip all manner of things to them. It's working out really well. To the left of that is a letter organiser thingy that I have all my cutting mats in. There are three stamp displays that I picked up from a store going out of business. On top of the drawers is currently where I'm storing my Radiant Rains, Colour Washes, Zig pens, Heat guns and little clock radio so I can listen to Radio 4.

Above the drawers I have two cupboards that I bought off eBay. One is currently where all my Bind-It-All stuff is stored. The other side doesn't have much in it yet. Fixing it to the wall was interesting because the fixings that came with the cupboards originally where broken and my plasterboard walls weren't strong enough. I screwed a piece of timber across the top of the inside of the cupboard which afixes it to the wall, and then put another piece on the bottom to support from underneath.

If you turn 180 degrees upon yourself, you can see my bench that I showed you yesterday that is covered with non-stick craft sheet. Because I like to keep this clear for when I'm doing really messy stuff, it is also a really good place to put out stuff that I need to photograph at the moment. However, I have another glass desk that will go in front of this bench. So, I may move the non-stick craft sheet over to the bench on the left.

We have all the amenities here. That's a coffee machine and a water cooler. The water cooler also doubles as my water source for cleaning brushes etc. Immediately to the left of this bench, are the double french doors.

Excuse the rubbish boxes on the floor. Now, I have to explain this large frame. This is the frame for a "cupboard" that forms part of my stand at Craft, Hobby & Stitches. It gets clad in white corrugated plastic and provides a great storage space during the show. I will clad it after CH&S is over, but the plastic is too tall for the ceilings in my studio. To the left of that, you can just see the start of the storage area.

My stamp storage. I've removed most of the wood blocks from my stamps (and they are now providing nice heat for us on our fire) and stored them in a combination of CD cases and file folders. Everything fits neatly onto this shelf and at the moment I even have space for my Wizard and Big Shot. This shelf was given to my by a friend who has returned to New Zealand (thanks, Bron). There is even space for my chipboard shapes on the top shelf.

Okay, so this is the storage. These are two Billy bookcases facing three Sten shelving units (both from Ikea, but Sten is now discontinued). At the moment, I am simply dumping things on these shelves as they come into the studio in vague categories. I will do more organising once everything is in and I know how much stuff I have to put away. I also have left-over stuff from the construction of the studio stored here and again, that will be moved out - either to one of the garden sheds or given away on Freecycle.

These shelves will also hold all my books and magazines that I keep. Being a book person, I have quite a few so this may take a bit of sorting out, when the time comes. You can just see agains the back wall, my Really Useful storage boxes that will hold all manner of small bits and bobs once I'm more organised, but currently just hold extra screws from the building.

These are the Sten shelves I referred to above. I have bought some inexpensive boxes from Tesco to sort things out into and this process has started today. Somewhere I have a labeller which I will use on everything.

So, that is the tour of the studio as it currently stands. I do need to do a lot more, because I looked at the house office today and was gobsmacked as to how much craft staff I still have to move up and that doesn't even start to take into account the IT stuff that has to go up. Anyway, this week I will be concentrating on moving all the stuff that is still in the barn up so that my neighbour can have his barn back. Then, I have to prep for Stitches, so I probably won't journal about the studio for a while.

If you're trying to find yourself a place to build as a studio, I hope that this might give you some ideas. If you're not, then hopefully it has been a little entertaining!

I'm creating again

2009-01-30T19:14:00.008Z

I've moved enough stuff into the studio now that I can be creative again. Which is wonderful and just in time to pull together more stuff for Stitches which is in two weeks' time. I found this beautiful clock in my local supermarket after Christmas for £10 so it went up today.

I created these canvases a few months ago. I love Paris. I particularly love Le Tour Eiffel and I'm working on getting images of it all over my studio. I bought these coasters off a tourist trap seller's stall on the banks of the Sienne when we went over in 2007. I picked up these canvases from Hobbycraft and painted them with Adirondack Dimensional Pearls (the stamps are also done with the Pearls) before adhering the coasters on with Glossy Accents.

Today I've been working on two projects: The first is an altered cigar box for a class I've been asked to teach. I don't think this sample is finished, but it's definitely something to start with.

I removed the lid and as much paper as would tear off by hand. I then took some Midsummer Night's Dream paper and sprayed Interferance Violet Radiant Rains on it and ironed it dry. I covered the lid seperately, but have learned that you need to trim the lid down first or it won't fit once covered with paper. The inside of the box is covered with watercolour paper that I painted the Adirondack Dimension Pearls on to tie it in with the Scrapperdashery paper. I reassembled the box with hinges, added a clasp on the front and added corners to the bottom of the box. The lid was stamped with Tim's stamps in Pitch Black Adirondack Pigment Ink, then dusted with Black Sparkle Embossing Powder. I messed up a bit with the stamp, so I took three Prima flowers, covered them with Pitch Black Pigment Ink and dusted with Black Sparkle and set it.

My other project today as been to work out what the best Make N Take I can do at Stitches can be? It needs to be something that can be done in less than 10 minutes and that retailers might want to recreate when they get back to the shop. This little tag book uses one sheet of 12x12 (Romeo & Juliet), Radiant Rains, Distress Ink, Pitch Black Adirondack Pigment Ink and Black Sparkle Embossing Powder. It uses two sections of O-wire and the Bind it All to hold it together. It's simple, but I'm not sure if it's simple enough. Need to think about it more.

So, how is the rest of the studio coming along? Well, I haven't shown you any photos of it for a while (because my camera has been on the blink). So the photo of the cigar box shows you the work surface that I have covered completely with non-stick craft sheet. Wonderful stuff. So easy to keep clean. The corner that my computer equipment will go into is now ready for me to start moving in. I have network up in the studio (I'm writing this from the studio as we speak), so I need to move my desk up and then start to get the computer equipment in place. The desk will go where the white chair currently is. Behind the desk is a set of Billy bookcases, facing a set of Sten shelves that I painted white. This is my main storage and still needs sorting and organising. Somewhere in storage I have a label maker so that everything can be labelled once it is in it's permanent home. Underneath the benches, I have loads of Really Useful Boxes full mostly with paper.

This is the opposite corner - the one where the bench is entirely covered with craft sheet. There will be a desk going next to this. You can just see my paper racks to the right of the photo and I have a little oil heater which I can roll around the studio depending on where I'm working most that day. I have to be careful: this place is so well insulated that it doesn't take much to warm up and if I forget to turn it down, it gets too warm quite quickly.

I will take and share more photos so that you can see how things are progressing. But not right now, I need to go find dinner.

2.5 day workshop

2009-01-16T08:04:00.002Z

We're about to start the last day of my workshop here in my studio. The girls have been doing fantastically.

On Wednesday night we managed 16 techniques and yesterday, clawed our way through another 30 or so. But, that still leaves another 34 techniques and they have to complete their projects after that! So, we might have to miss out one or two things along the way...

The girls say they've eaten better here than they do at home, so no complaints on that front. It didn't help that one of the toilet in the house decided to block up on Tuesday night. No time to call out a plumber, so we're having to restrict ourselves to only using the other two toilets.

I'd love to share some photos of the event, but when my camera came back from repair just before Christmas, they'd stuffed up and it still wasn't working. I had hoped that it would be back on Wednesday, but no messages, so I guess not.

Just know that we're having a blast of a time. We're all three of us exhausted - me from teaching them all this stuff and them from having to take in all of this information!

Classes:

2008-11-22T12:02:00.006Z

I'm teaching some classes in the next two months that may be of interest to some of you if you're in the locality.

Firstly, this Thursday (27th November) from 7.30 to 10.00 ish, I'm teaching an 8x8 album class full of sliders, pockets and pull outs. This little wire-bound album is a great opportunity to learn how to add interactive elements to your projects. Although we're working in an album format, most of them can be adapted and scaled down to card projects. If you're interested in attending this class, contact MJ at sales@everymomentmatters.co.uk or call her on 07708 951 575.

On Wednesday, 3rd of December at 3.30pm and repeated at 6.30pm, I'm teaching a class on Perfect Pearls from Ranger at Stamparty in Aldershot. In this class, I'll teach a large number of different techniques that you can do with these marvellous mica pigment powders. Plus, because we're leading up to Christmas, I've got a great small project to add to the class that will brighten up your Christmas. If you want to book a place on this class, please email Alison at sales@stamparty.co.uk or call her on 01252 321 999.

Finally, I'm teaching a workshop at my house. The dates are 14-16 January 2009. The workshop will run from 3pm on the Wednesday, til 6pm on the Friday. This will be a technique workshop. The format will be as follows:

Wednesday:

4.00-6.30: Techniques

7.00: Dinner at the restaurant across the road

After dinner: we can continue if people want to

Thursday:

8.30-9.30: Breakfast

9.30-12.30: Techniques, stopping for breaks as people wish

12.30-1.30: Lunch at my home

1.30-6.30: Techniques, stopping for breaks as people wish

7.00: Dinner at my home

After dinner: we can continue if people want to

Friday:

8.30-9.30: Breakfast

9.30-11.00: Techniques

11.00-12.30: Start work on our project

12.30-1.30 : Lunch at my home

1.30-5.30: Finish projects

5.30-6.00: Pack up and clean up

The price for this workshop is £180. This includes all the food including eating out on Wednesday night. It also includes all the materials we'll use during the classes, plus a significant amount of goodies for you to take home with you.

I have accommodation for two people sharing a queen sized bed, or there are local B&Bs that I can recommend that are a short hop, skip and a jump away. There is no extra charge for accommodation if you stay with me, but you will need to meet the cost of the B&B, should you choose that.

If you'd like to do this workshop, please let me know via the Email Me link at the top of this page. I need to know if you'd like to attend by Christmas. A non-refundable deposit of £50 will need to be paid by the 24th of December, with the full amount paid by the 2nd of January 2009.

Lizzi's Album

2008-11-17T14:41:00.014Z

A very good friend of mine asked me to create a scrapbook for her daughter's 18th birthday. Daughter had requested one that she can put all her favourite photos from school into.

You have to remember that when I scrapbook, it generally takes me two hours to create one page. The birthday is only two days away and I still have to get my day job out of the way and our Concert on Saturday really ate into crafting time. Plus the majority of my stash is still in storage. However, I'd picked up a bargain pack of papers from Costco made by Memory Stor and some of their albums.

So I decided to set myself a challenge. Could I create an album with limited stash and tools? Actually, what I've found is that it's faster to create an album if you don't have the worry of what photos are going to be in it! I'm not matching colours in photos to the album. I'll leave it to Lizzi to determine which photos she wants to put on which pages. It's quite liberating, actually!

I've limited myself to one sheet of each design. Besides the paper (which admittedly is 100 different designs, double-sided), I have glue, double-sided tape/photo squares and Distress Ink (because you're not going to get me to create anything if I can't use Distress Ink). My tools are limited to my Sissix Big Shot and only two dies, plus two texture plates, one set of Build-A-Swirl clear stamps by Prima, a non-stick craft sheet, Cut-N-Dry foam and my CM circle cutters. Everything else is off limits. I've managed to make and photograph 13 pictures in total and these are displayed here.

I'm going to continue working on the album tomorrow and hopefully have something complete for her mother to pick up on Wednesday. I hope she likes it.

I have to apologise for the poor photography. This was taken with my mobile phone as my camera is being repaired.

The Technology

2008-11-17T09:47:00.002Z

All the benches have been put in now and I'll put up photos of them once I have them.

I haven't blogged the technology that has gone into The Studio yet. There aren't any photos of it, because most of it you can't see as it's hidden.

Doorbell: I needed to be able to respond to people at the front door no matter where I was. I have large doorbell on the front of the house labelled The Studio which is attached to a wireless unit. At my end, I have a handset that is wireless, so no matter if I'm in the house or the Studio, I can respond to whoever's buzzing and let them know that I'm on my way.

Networking: I have three cables running down a pipeline through the garden to the guest house at the back of our house. These will be attached to a switch which will pick up one cable running to the main house. Only two of those cables will probably be used to start off with (but Zandy says he'll set up Voice Over IP for me in the future if I want more sophisticated telephony up there). They will feed into a wireless switch which will also feed four cables that run through the walls over to my main work space. So, I'll have wireless and wired up there.

I also have a 16-port switch that will hang on the wall over my work area. This will allow me to have my two printers networked, plus my network attached storage as well as my main desktop and secondary laptop attached and still give me plenty of space for having customer's computers on the network. I have a nice, large screeen for my main desktop so that I can watch DVDs while crafting.

Telephone: I have a DECT wireless booster that allows my digital phone to reach up to the Studio. The phone system has an intercom facility, so Zandy can call me from the house if he needs me.

I'll blog more about the technology as it starts to go into place.

Moving in

2008-11-13T12:00:00.016Z

This is how I finished the plastering. As you can see, it's not as neat as if it had been done by a professional, but it is good enough.

I was a little concerned about the finishing where the plaster met the rafters as it really didn't look very good and I knew there was no way I was going to be able to ignore it. So I purchased some lengths of quarter-round and they have edged the bits of the plasterboard. Now that they're painted in, it looks almost professional - almost.

So, I started painting. I had bought a large bucket of brilliant white paint with the idea that I'd paint it all like that. However, as you can see in this picture, I'd put up some second-hand cupboards I picked up on eBay and against the white paint, they looked grey. I have also tried every gadget available on the market to supposedly make painting easier and I have to say that there's a reason why most painters still stick to the old roller and tray method. However, one tip I picked up from a painter was to put the tray into a plastic bag then pour the paint into the tray over the plastic bag. Work like that and when you're done, you simply turn the bag inside out over the dead paint and throw it away. No clean up of the tray required. I decided to leave the ceiling white so that I get the most light reflection and to paint the walls a gentle cream. A friend, Richard, came over to help me paint and over the course of a weekend we got all the painting done bar a few touch ups which I went back and did later. He also stayed on an extra day and helped me lay the floor which was an added bonus.

This last weekend, Zandy came and helped me put up some of the workbench. My neighbour, David, is coming back to cut down the other workbench so that it can go in place, but this means that I have started moving in. Things are not in their final places, by any means, but I've started to sort things out. As you can see, I've added another set of drawers under the cupboards. Hung underneath these drawers is a curtain rail with pincer clips hanging on it so that I can hang just about anything I want and have it within easy reach. I've seen these sold as a commercial product in the US and thought they were a really good idea but very expensive to buy and import. This cost me about £65 in total and it is exactly the length I need for my work space. It has 120 clips on it so I'm not going to run out of space any time soon.

Underneath one of the worktops I have a display stand that I picked up from a shop that was going out of business. It is designed to dispense small bottles of acrylic paints. So far, it is holding my Folk Art acrylics, my Making Memories Acrylics and my Glimmer Mists. As I unpack more, I'll see how much will fit into it.

One corner of the room has a different type of workbench on it. This is because I already had this length of workbench which I had used on the Scrapperdashery stand at Stitches last year. It seemed a pity to waste a perfectly good piece of workbench. This will be my "wet area". I have a water cooler that supplies 4 litres of water which I just refill from the tap when I need a top up. It even has the facility to chill the water and dispenses either chilled or ambient temperature depending on what I want. Not bad for £50, I thought. I also have a little kettle so I can make myself tea and coffee. At present it is also the home for my iPod speakers, and anything else that I bring up from the house, but that may not stay that way as I have other plans.

I have 40 Display Dynamics paper trays that I bought from the shop going out of business and I have another 9 that I bought years ago at great expense. I've been trying to decide what to do with them. I think they'll go under a workbench, but we'll see. It will be great to have the paper I use a lot out where I can see it.

At the other end of the room, I've put up some of the shelves from Ikea that I mentioned in a previous post. They cover most of the width of the room. Facing them I've placed two of the largest Billy bookcases and backed them with white corrugated plastic left over from the Stitches stand. As you can see they provide me with a kind of storage cupboard so that I can put unsightly things out view. It also increases the amount of space I have for storage by a vast amount. What you can't see in the photo to the left is that I have a frame (you can see two of the parts of the frame leaning against the shelves) that forms a tall cupboard in the corner of the room. This will be clad in more of the white corrugated plastic and will give me a storage cupboard for things that are too tall to go anywhere else. It has a shelf at head height so lots of the tools that I don't use on a regular basis will go there. As will some of the network that is yet to be installed.

I have yet to attach the fixings for the car roof box to the ceiling so that I can store the roof box out of the way when it isn't being used. I also have two of these Really Useful sets which are going to be attached to the wall somewhere.

So, the next week or so is going to be spent with me moving things in slowly. There's about three or four car loads of stuff in storage and I really can only move one car load a day - some of those boxes are very heavy - and I want to sort things out as I move in as much as possible so that it goes in in an orderly fashion. I hope this weekend to start moving in some of the furniture out of the house but we have a concert coming up this weekend so that knocks out Saturday. I'll see how much I can get done on Sunday.

The Shed

2008-09-28T17:26:00.004Z

I laughingly refer to my studio as "the shed". It is far more than that.

Today has been a successful milestone for me as I've decided that the sanding of the plastering is complete. I could continue to sand all the tiny imperfections, but I've realised that it is 'good enough'. This is not going into Homes and Gardens (or even Studio), so as long as the space is waterproof, clean and dry it is good enough.

I'll be putting up attachments for hanging the cupboards tomorrow which will allow me to start painting.

2008-09-21T20:14:00.004Z

As part of the building of my new studio, I need some storage. We have some old Ikea shelving that looks a lot like their Gorm range. It's been sitting around in our laundry since we moved out of London, gathering cobwebs.

It's going into the studio. I've painted it white. and it will be going up along one of the short walls. I need to buy some Billy bookcases, but Ikea is over an hour away and while they will deliver, they're going to charge me more than the cost of the bookcases to do so. I won't get those until October when I go up to London for the Muswell Hill Crop.

Studio Building – the new home of Scrapperdashery

2008-09-03T10:06:00.017Z

Since April, I've been building a studio in the back garden. I was putting off blogging it until it was finished, but people have been asking to see it and it is taking longer than originally planned because I'm doing so much of the work myself. I hope that it's completion will coincide with the release of the second "Studio" from "Cloth, Paper, Scissors" - it isn't featured in there.

If you're thinking of doing a project like this, I hope that some of my experiences will help you.

I've been thinking about this for a long time and all my research told me that this would be too expensive to ever achieve, as I wanted a space that was a decent size. Alternatively, I could do it relatively inexpensively, but would have to do all the work myself and I knew I didn't have the skills necessary. However, on a Sunday outing I drove past Phoenix Sales and noticed they had some buildings that looked appropriate. There was no one in, so I had a look in a couple of the buildings and went back on the Monday They had one of them converted into an office which looked great. However, the full cost of achieving that was £18k - again, way over my budget. But they had a shed on show they wanted to get rid of. Original price £5.6k, mine for £2k including VAT, delivery and erection.

Firstly, I needed to know if we had the space. I measured up the section of garden I had in mind and yes, there was space. Next, would I need planning permission? I did some digging and found that as long as the building was more than 5 metres from the rear wall of my house, took up less than 25% of the existing garden (including existing outbuildings), was no more than 4 metres tall from the ground to roof peak and because this is a home studio, I didn't need planning permission. You will need to check with your local council to find out what the regulations are because, frustratingly, they are not consistent across the country.

The building is a heavy duty workshop that came with standard garden shed windows which I knew would make the building uninsurable. I needed lockable windows. No company would estimate for windows or electrical work until there was a building to look at, so I commissioned my builder to build the deck. Here is my builder, David, putting the deck together.

They arrived about a week later to put the shed onto the deck base. It took them longer than anticipated to put it together so by the end of day one, I had walls but no roof:

It took them the whole of the following day to get the roof on and watertight. [First rule: everything will take longer than you plan, no matter how well you plan.] However, once the walls were up, I was able to get people to quote to put in windows and the electricity.

[Second rule: know exactly what you want before you have people come around to quote.] Draw or write down exactly what you want it to look like. If they are good, they will make suggestions. Note each suggestion down on your drawing so that as the next person comes in to quote, you can ask them to cost up the suggestions. Also, if you particularly like a suggestion, contact the previous sales person and ask them to include the suggestion in their quote – they will have seen enough to be able to include it without having to come back to visit.

By the end of the second day, I had a roof. Plus four electricians and three window companies had all come to quote. I decided to buy the windows myself and get my builder to install them. However, one of the electricians came back the following week and did the first fix.

We needed a way of getting into and out of the office. I had to really stop and think about what sort of staircase I had on it. My original plan was to have a small platform just outside the door and the staircase come down to the side of the building. From there, you would pick up the footpath and the steps that lead off the side of the raised area to the main section of the garden. Then I stopped and thought about this: If I'm carrying things into and out of this building a lot, will I be happy about doing all that turning and having to manoeuvre things up the narrow steps. I decided to increase the size of the landing so that I am able to put things down safely to open the doors and to keep the stairs as straight as possible. This was another task that I hired my builder to do, so that I could be sure that the stairs would be structurally sound and safe.

The next step was insulation. I wanted something that would make the room useable in winter, so having considered a number of products, I went with a solid foam insulation with aluminium on both sides. I had to buy large sheets and cut them down because the gaps between the rafters is non-standard. I (and later, my husband) spent the better part of a week covered in bits of foam (the insulation has a tendency to create a lot of beaded rubbish when you cut it). If I were to do this again, I'd use the standard sheeting on the walls, but the manufacturers make a special sheeting designed for roofs that expands and compacts to hold itself within the rafters. It would make things a lot easier. My builder had suggested that we put nails through the rafters to hold some of the sheets, but I couldn't make that work, so we used metal tape (the type used for insulation or for Alcohol inking) which held the sheets in temporarily until the vapour barrier was up and holding them in place. The vapour barrier was a large sheet 0f plastic which we cut down to fit each section and fitted with a standard domestic stapler. We allowed up to 5cm extra around the edges as overlap to just ensure that corners and the bottom were going to be safe.

Then came the plasterboard (drywall). I went for 9mm depth board, but in retrospect 12mm would have been better. I would also now seriously consider getting the plasterboard that has the vapour barrier integral. It would have saved a lot of time and made fitting a lot easier. My builder came back and helped with this and I have to say, his help was invaluable. It requires a lot of upper body strength to lift the boards above your head and you want as large sheets as possible to minimise the amount of jointing you have to do. In the UK, we usually do a skim coating of plaster over the top of the plasterboard, but I don't have the skills to do that and I certainly didn't have the budget. My choice was to go down the US example and just plaster over the screws and the joints. The trick that I've done which appears to have worked is to plaster the join roughly, then place some wet paper tape over the top of that wet plaster and then put another layer of plaster over the top of that. Once that's all dry, I've sanded it down and gone back and tidied up the rougher bits.

Where the plasterboard meets the roof joists, the plasterboard is a little uneven. An easy solution is to use a little quarter-round to edge the plasterboard. This is being held in with some panel pins and is just finishing off the ceiling perfectly.

I'm in Stitches

2008-02-27T20:46:00.002Z

I got back from CHA (more on that later) on the 14th of February, picked up a hire van on the 15th and packed it, drove up to Birmingham and built the booth on the 16th and had a blast. There are so many people that I met for the first time and others who I was meeting up with like they were the old friends that they are.

It was great to see Alain and Tim were over in the UK again, but I don't envy either of them their gruelling schedules for the next few weeks. Becks and Leandra looked to be having a great time at the PaperArtsy booth, Wendy Rhodes was having a great time on her own little booth (although, without power for her heat gun until two hours before the end of the show) and as always, it was really amazing to see Barry Short again. Kim from Spellbinders was looking wonderful (albeit rather jet-lagged) and introduced me to Peggy Budfuloski from LuminArte who gave some of her lovely Radiant Rain shimmering mists. Joanna Sheen was having a great time with the people from Sakura and was very admiring of the Scrapperdashery range of papers.

I also got to meet a lovely woman, who is incredibly talented (and said all the right things about my papers) by the name of Traci Cornelius, who as well as teaching, demonstrating and designing, runs her own business. Go over to her blog and find out more about her. I also got to meet a talented crafter by the name of Els Van de Burgt who took away some of my paper to play with and came back with some amazing things using Sakura pens.

So many people were interested in Scrapperdashery products that I didn't get much of a chance to get out and meet as many people as I would have liked, but lots of them came to see me.

I have to thank Peggy Budfuloski for the Radiant Rains as I'm having so much fun experimenting with them and I also need to thank Kristen Highberg for giving me a Big Shot and some dies to play with. I'll post something as soon as I can clear the remnants of the stand out of the office and get to my desk.

Colorado - at the foot of the mountain

2008-02-05T16:01:00.000Z

I'm here in Lafayette with my friend, Jen Lowe and we're having a fantastic time.

But I digress.

I've been in the USA for a week and I haven't told you of any of my goings on. I met with Product Performers in Chicago who will be launching my papers at CHA in 5 days time. I got a chance to teach at Stampology Chicago all using Scrapperdashery paper. At present, Stampology Chicago is the only store in the USA that you can buy Scrapperdashery paper, but after CHA that will all change.

Here are a couple of the Cheque Books made by the women in my class. I was very impressed as it was blowing a snowstorm outside and some of them came way across town to meet me and do the class.

My hosts in Chicago were Ken and Judi Petersen. Ken owns Product Performers who distribute a lot of great products for different companies like Ranger and now, Scrapperdashery. Judi and I took the tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright House and Studio and more inspiration has hit this head of mine.

I taught another class on Saturday making two greetings cards. My cards are very rarely simple ones. If my husband asks me to make up a card, I generally need three days to get something together: One day to clear my work space, one day to think of a design and another to put the design together.

The Stampology people were wonderful (pictured right are: Dave, Gloria, Me, Sue and Chris). On Saturday after the class, they took me out for BBQ.

On Sunday morning, Ken put me on a plane and here I am in Lafayette. Jen and I are having so much fun. I will post some of our creations when they're finished. There are some people coming over to play tomorrow and I (unfortunately) have to fly out on Thursday (pray for snow, people. If I get snowed in in Colorado for another two days I get to play for a little longer).

On Sunday I'll be at CHA on the Product Performers booth. If you're going, come down and see me!

Shrink Plastic - the world 10 times smaller

2007-12-06T14:26:00.000Z

This is not a great photo because I don't have any artificial lights that I can use with my camera and at this time of year, the moments of good natural light are few and far between.

I was recently asked to teach a class on shrink plastic. This was supposed to be one of the items that we'd do in the class (although my plan had been to get the students to colour and decorate theirs) but it takes nearly two sheets of plastic to do this and I neglected to mention to the store owner that she needed to get in lots of shrink plastic.

It uses one of the Creative Expressions trunk box stamps, stamped onto shrink plastic four times with either StazOn or Jet Black Archival (if you're using Jet Black Archival you need to leave it for longer to set). Each panel is then cut out and decorated, then shrunk independently as you can't get shrink plastic to bend once shrunk - well, not easily. These are stuck together using a really strong glue. I've used E6000, but that is so difficult to buy in the UK. Any good strong glue that dries clear will do the job. I started by sticking the front and back panels to the bottom. Then I stuck the flaps to the front panel and the flaps inside the box to the back panel. The flaps for the bottom were stuck on the outside. Then, I stuck two of the little tabs to the edges of the top panel, waited until it was dry, then attached the flaps to the top panel on the outside edge so that I could angle them outwards a little so that they would fit neatly over the top.

Ah, gay Paree

2007-12-06T11:55:00.000Z

Paris is wonderful. If money were no object, I'd be happy to live there. But until I can speak the language better, it is not something that I would do.

Getting to Paris was easy. Get the train from our local station to Paddington, then Tube it to St Pancras. We thought we'd be able to withdraw and change money there, but no, everything isn't open yet. So we grabbed a snack and checked in. We left on the Eurostar just after 12 and 2.15 hours later, we arrived at Gard du Nord. Metro'd it over to our hotel and dumped our bags.

We walked up towards Bastille and I whipped out my camera - only to discover that I'd left the card back in the printer at home. We found a shop that sold cards and continued walking to Bastille where we found a North African restaurant to have dinner in. It was a little disappointing as far as North African food goes, but then we both like exciting food.

The following morning after a leisurely breakfast, we caught the Metro up to Clignancourt where you'll find the largest flea market in Europe with over 2000 stalls. Unless you're looking for rip off Dolce & Gabanna or similar, it isn't cheap. We had crepes and other great street food for lunch and walked our feet off. I found a great store that sells any number of watch parts that you might want. I picked up about 30 watch faces for €10. I saw some really cute old Lâncome ointment tins but he wanted €4 each and I didn't think they were worth it.

We caught the Metro back into the city, made our way to the river and walked to Pont Neuf where we picked up a boat tour and went up the Sienne where the picture of the Eiffel Tower was taken. We then went up to the Jewish Quarter in Marais and found a lovely Jewish restaurant where we were served a variety of things that went with bread until we were stuffed. We tried to get to see a movie but the only cinema nearby was only playing things dubbed into French. We gave up and went back to the hotel.

On Monday morning, we had another leisurely walk to Bastille, this time following along the top of the Viaduc des Artes which is an old railway track that has been converted into a green space running nearly all the way into Bastille, so named for all the little shops located in the railway arches underneath. We picked up the Metro at Bastille and went up to Montmartre, where we found the most wonderful fabric shops. Although I was tempted by lots, I restricted myself to six metres of the most wonderful purple/red shimmer fabric which I hope to have made into a blouse.

We had lunch in a lovely little brassarie and learned a great lesson for Paris: if you want good food, stick to what the French know how to do best - French food. After lunch it was a trip on the finicular up the hill to Sacré Coeur - beautiful but they don't allow photography inside. However, we did do the roof walk and got some fantastic photos - look, there's the Eiffel Tower again.

We gave into buying a few things in the local souvenir shops but managed to avoid the artists who were touting for business and started the gentle stroll down the hill taking photos as we went. You see, Zandy has a new camera (a beautiful Digital SLR) and so everything became a photo op.

We got back down to the main drag and walked along to Blanche and found a lovely patisserie that was doing baklava and suchlike and each picked up a snack. We walked down to the Moulin Rouge and took a few photos - well, I did anyway. Zandy's camera can't cope with as low-light situations as mine can.

Having caught the Metro back to Odeon we found a cinema playing English-language films and saw "Lions for Lambs" - fantastic movie, highly recommend it.

Tuesday was our last day and we really only had a half day. We went down to look around Notre Dame. Now, they have no problem with you taking photos as long as you don't use flash - so we took lots and lots of photos. The scale of the place is impressive. However, I'm less impressed than I would have been 16 years ago, because there are so many wonderful churches in Britain that (in my opinion) equal or better Notre Dame.

Still, the scale of the place is amazing and you can spend a lot of time wandering around it and still not see it all. We crossed over onto the south bank and wandered around until we found another cute brasserie to have lunch in. Our order had just been placed when our friends Lana and Toni discovered us, so the four of us had lunch together.

It was then back to the hotel to pick up our bags and head back to Gard du Nord where we arrived for our train with less than 10 minutes to spare.

Arriving back at St Pancras, we decided rather than rushing back to Paddington to get the first train out, hitting the rush hour and therefore probably not getting a seat, we instead went to one of our favourite restaurants behind Euston station before coming home at a leisurely pace.

I love Paris in the fall - Packing to go.

2007-11-28T09:24:00.000Z

It's funny: when I pack to go on holiday, I have a methodology for working out what I need to take that starts with how many nights I'll be staying (in this case, three), then how much walking I'll be doing (lots) and how cold it will be (very). Normally, I would then pack my three warmest items of clothing, my most comfortable shoes and my warmest coat.

But this was Paris and you don't go to Paris in just anything.

I packed two pairs of my best jeans, then tops that would look nice on their own, but could be layered with other items and still look good. On the footwear front, I conceded that my walking shoes would have to be taken because there is no other way I can walk around any city for three days in anything less, no matter how grungy they look. And although it is the warmest coat I own, there was no way I was going to Paris in my flourescent yellow jacket with reflective stripes on it, so my full-length winter coat with fake fur collar was taken.

OK, there are limits to how good I'm going to look given the base that I have to start with, but the yellow jacket would have had people asking me directions and that wasn't an option.

Uploading photos - Vista, Grrr!

2007-11-23T13:16:00.000Z

I've got some photos of work to put up and now I've found another snag that is preventing me from doing so: Windows Vista!

I can't find my original install disks for my Nikon camera (but it was bought when my computer was XP and Vista was just a beta product in Microsoft's eye), so I went to Nikon's website to download the appropriate stuff. Can't find anything there quickly. Knowing that I'm running out of time, I figured I'd just put the card into the card slot on my printer. Guess what? Vista doesn't recognise the card reader on my printer.

So, the only way I can currently read photos from my card is to put it into the PCMCIA converter I sensibly bought when I got the camera, and insert that into the PCMCIA slot on my laptop. Slight snag there: the laptop only has a 20Gb hard drive on it and it is too full to take all the photos on my card, so I have to send it to a shared folder on my desktop.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is: I won't have any pictures up just yet, but I made a really cool thing with shrink plastic the other day that I want to post, so as soon as I can, I'll have photos up there.

Blog Tagging

2007-11-22T10:39:00.000Z

Oh no, Jen's tagged me. This is a problem because I'm not sure that I know 7 people who blog. I'll start with one and see if I can add others.

Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself (on your blog, we all want to know them).
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

And here are my 7 random facts:

I trained as a professional dancer - but you wouldn't know it looking at me now.
I am a computer geek who has the ability to talk to people - a rare thing in this day and age.
I've never had a career. I've fallen from one job to the next which has resulted in where I am today.
I constantly struggle with my artwork. I am often disappointed that what appears from my hands does not resemble what was in my head.
I appear to be very outgoing. However, I have a very negative image of myself.
I can block out things around me and focus fully on one task regardless of the mayhem ensuing around me, but turn on the TV and I can't do anything else.
My dream is to have a successful business running from my own back garden shed, with my (as yet, unborn) children with me.

I'm tagging the one person I can think of now and hope she doesn't mind. Then as I find more people, I'll tag them too.

Sally Lynn
Becky

Shiny... Shiny...

2007-10-06T12:26:00.001Z

It is here. The photo isn't as good as the publicity shot from Antec because I don't have a clean, white room to photograph it in. You can see all the cabling around it and just to the left of the photo you can see DH's computer tucked away. My laptop is sitting on the top and you can see my Quickutz Silhouette reflected in the front door.

It really is as shiny as I thought it might be. Now, the question is: do I Alcohol Ink it or leave it shiny and plain?

Altered computers - what will they think of next.

The cheek of some people

2007-09-29T15:54:00.000Z

My day job is a computer consultant. I provide help, advice and goods to people whose lives are so busy that they don't have the time to do the research that I can do for them. One of the services I provide is sourcing computer equipment for them. Basically: they tell me what they want to do with a computer, outline all their issues they're having with their existing solution and I solve all those problems.

Mostly, I end up building computers specifically geared for their needs. You know: buy all the separate bits and put them together.

When I first set myself up doing this, I registered as a reseller with a supplier. In order to get an account with them I had to practically sign my life away in blood. I had to provide company registration documents and sign a lengthy legal agreement which said that I was buying these items specifically to resell and not for my own personal use. The upshot of this was that I was supposed to be able to buy this equipment a wholesale prices.

The wholesale prices that I'm getting just simply don't allow me to make any money at all. If I compare the prices I can buy individual items for with items on the Internet, my supplier might be one or two pounds cheaper. But, if you add their £14.95 standard charge on the top, when some of these Internet places will ship for free, suddenly their prices aren't at all attractive. Additionally, I don't have to sign any legal agreements with these people, nor do I have to provide them with any proof of my company. In addition, these people have a consumer-inspired returns policy which allows me to return something if I a) don't like it or b) ordered the wrong one by mistake - neither of which I can do with my supplier.

The only advantage that I can see for working through my current supplier is that I can usually get everything from the one place and this didn't use to be the case. But the competition have stepped up their game and I'm now finding that 9 times out of 10, I can get everything from one of the competition.

For example, I'm looking for a really spiffing case to replace the case of my computer which I've just sold to a customer. I've bought three cases from the Antec Performance One series for customers and I really like them. They've brought out a Special Edition (pictured above) with shiny polished case. Technically, under my agreement with my supplier, I'm not allowed to purchase this for my own use. However, I've just found it on another site for .30p more than my supplier is selling it, but with free P&P, making it £14.65 cheaper. I've ordered it and it should arrive on Tuesday - providing I'm around to receive it.

If wholesalers like mine aren't prepared to go argue with the manufacturers about the prices generally available to the Internet stores, I could be sent out of business. My only saving grace is that the majority of my customers don't come to me for cheap prices, they come for good quality service - which they get, every time.

How time flies

2007-09-28T22:15:00.001Z

I hadn't realised how long it is since I last made an entry in my blog. I've been prompted to update for two reasons. Firstly, a great friend of mine has finally entered the world of blogging and I've added a new section of my Favourite Blogs with Jen's as my first entry. You really should check her stuff out.

The other reason is that we recently took a holiday to Darlington in County Durham which is where my Great Grandfather was born and my Grandfather spent his first four years after the family returned from Madagascar. All of the family has now either passed away or moved away from the area so finding references to Hodgkin was quite difficult. However, my Great Grandfather's wife was from the Pease family and his Grandfather on his mother's side was a Backhouse and that made things a lot easier. Pease and Backhouse were sponsors of Stevenson and his passenger railway and were the financiers behind the Stockton to Darlington Railway. As we wandered around Darlington we found lots of references to these two gentlemen and their predecessors. Backhouse was the co-owner of the bank that is now known as Barclays and Pease was in partnership with three others in a bank which sold out eventually to what is now Lloyds TSB.

The old family home is so big that not long after my Great Great Grandfather (Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin) died, it was sold to a Methodist couple who donated it to the Methodist church and it is now Elm Ridge Church. There has been some modification to accommoate a large expanse for a church, but one of the rooms has a picture of Jonathan B's wife Mary, two of his watercolours on the wall and a photo of Jonathan B and Mary sitting on the back steps of the house. Ironically, the room is called the Hodgkin Quiet Room - you don't normally see Hodgkin and Quiet in the same location!

We also spent some time in the Quaker Burial Ground behind Darlington Meeting House. There, all the relatives are lined up in a row. Unfortunately, some of the older headstones have been laid against a wall which is now being intruded upon by the roots of the trees, but on the whole I got lots of photographs, including a photo of my Great Grandmother's grave. The members of the meeting didn't understand why Lydia was buried in Darlington when she'd originally come from down South. I tried to get them to understand that she had probably held with the view that when you marry, you take on your husband's family. When she died, she died a Hodgkin, so it was only fitting that she be buried with the rest of the Hodgkins.

I'd like to go back and spend some more time in the library at Darlington Meeting House. There is a whole wall of bookcases full of books by family members that I'd like to sit and look through. I mentioned that there is a Hodgkin Pedigree Book (which I thought was unusual) that has the entire family listing in it, and was told that there was also a Backhouse and a Pease Pedigree Book. Finally, I can learn how the families meet up. Until three generations ago, Quakers didn't marry non-Quakers so the same names creep up a lot in a Quaker family tree.

No photos of completed work yet

2007-05-21T10:39:00.001Z

I would have loved to have some photos to show you of finished work, but I simply haven't had time. I have some photos of the Moxley Retreat, but this one seems to capture the essence of how the weekend went. I drank far more than I should have but it was a blast.

Zandy and I took off to France for four days at the end of April to celebrate 20 years of marriage. We packed the small tent into the Mini, along with the air mattress and the huge sleeping bags and found ourselves a small campsite in a village called Condette, not far from Hardelot and used that as a base to go exploring. The mornings were started with a walk to the Boulangerie to pick up croissants and pain au chocolat, then a simple lunch of bread, cheese and salad (and on Saturday, sand as well) and lots of opportunity for walking. The weekend was a little marred by Zandy getting mild sunstroke on the Saturday. He had less than one glass of wine at dinner and then started acting like he'd been drinking all day. He had sufficiently recovered by the Sunday evening to eat something, but for a while there I thought we were going to have to come home early.

I seem to have developed a fetish for French ironwork. Nearly every house we walked past had the most beautiful ironwork on it, from large doorways like the picture here, or small details above the door. I love digital cameras because I could take loads of photos. Charging the battery for the camera was a slightly trickier task as we got a pitch without power. I took the charger with me to the shower each morning and set it to charge while I washed, hoping that no one would "adopt" it while I was in the shower.

But I didn't stop at photographing just the ironwork. I now have hundreds of photos of stone fretwork. I am hoping that the beauty of some of it, will inspire me in my artwork in the future. This one, was taken in Abbeyville, where we stopped for dinner on Saturday. The light was perfect for getting crisp, clear images of the detail.

The Moxley Retreat

2007-04-18T10:10:00.000Z

Well, I got back from the Moxley Retreat on Sunday evening and this is the first opportunity I've had to post about it.

What a brilliant weekend we all had. This has got to be one of the greatest bunch of people that I have ever had the honour to play with. Barring a couple of minor problems, everyone was friendly and uncomplaining and we all had a blast.

It was so lovely to see Martha Murphy again and to take her classes. Martha's and my styles are so far apart that every time I do one, my boundaries are pushed to the limit. What Martha can do with solid-coloured cardstock is amazing.

I would have liked to have participated in more of the classes but we spent so much time partying that I was too tired in the morning to be up for the first classes. Becky gave me a challenge - it was one of those little easel cards, so I inked it and stamped on it and it came up wonderfully. But I gave it to Becky so don't have a picture to put up.

I did work on one other piece and I'll put it up as soon as I can get a nice photo of it.

2007-03-06T14:25:00.000Z

Making the move

2007-03-06T13:15:00.000Z

I've been posting to LiveJournal for a while now but been frustrated by the ability upload larger photos of my artwork (I'm sure it can be done, but it's not my forte). If you want to view my previous posts they are available at http://judip.livejournal.com/. But I'm leaving it open for the moment until I've managed to cope with the transition across.