sad, neglected little blog of mine....

...I'm sorry little blog - I promise to do better! and do better for you lovely people who stop by this blog and see the same picture/blog post... apologies to you too....

so, to go some way to making amends, over the next few days (maybe a week depending on how many worthwhile snippets I find!) I'm going to share some of the Instagrams I've posted (and some I didn't, thinking they'd make it to the blog, but didn't...).. and other stuff that I hope you'll like....

These little bites of ALBOTAT (A Little Bit Of This And That!) are going to be in no particular order what so ever.....  (well, I'll put some thought into their order of appearance but not too much - lets just get them out there shall we - less overthinking! lol)

Lets start with this:

It was Mr JoFY and mine's wedding anniversary last week - 11 years - and each year he buys me a lovely bouquet of flowers which includes ornamental cabbages as they were in my wedding bouquet...

The cabbages are gorgeous - and not just the tops - look a the fabulous colour of the stems! (and no they don't smell, people ask that when you tell them you like cabbages as flowers)

.... and this morning I changed the water in the vase and threw the 'dead' leaves in the sink - look at the gorgeous colours!

How's that for a colour scheme!

Lush!

Yellow!....

... as in:
1. BANANA Frog Project of the day.
2. a colour I don't 'like'
3. the colour of the page I made for LSNED - Day 15

All the stamps used on the above page are Banana Frog - from the 'circus stories' and 'all about... journaling' sets.  I'm telling you this because Typepad wouldn't let me upload ANYthing over on the BananaFrog blog where I would normally put Banana Frog projects and information. ggggrrrr.

Yellow
I'm not a big fan of yellow.... - I don't wear it, I don't decorate with it and on the whole I don't craft with it... but this week (and last week come to think of it)(lol) I was in a phenomenally bad mood - seriously bad mood but I still had to make a page for my LSNED scrapbook - making a bad mood page didn't seem like a very positive thing to do so I set out to create a page that was so ridiculously sunny, bright and perky that it would be the polar opposite of my mood.  This is how the yellow page came about... it may be the only yellow page in the whole album - we'll have to wait and see...
I like how it turned out - threw on some of my favourite things (Buttons! couldn't resist).. and the page has sort of worked in relation to my mood: the colour is so not me that it makes me smile.
Who knew. lol

Big sketchbook...

My big sketchbook is where I think about bigger projects - sketches, colours, to-do lists - this way of thinking comes from studying for City & Guilds where the courses require you to keep a sketchbook that shows process and progression... it definitely helps me focus... (and I'm less likely to loose a sketchbook than bits of paper here and there!)

aaanyhoo this page is samples of things that didn't turn out quite as planned as I was working on them, but even though the end result wasn't successful I really liked the colours.. 

And more importantly I learned something along the way:  its seems that embossing powders do have a shelf life (I've often wondered if they do) because the older (gifted to me) pot of embossing powders weren't sticking - they sort of melted into the page rather than sit on the surface as you'd expect... still resisted ink but not with a nice sharp image)

But as I said I really liked the colour combination so I thought I'd show the photo. Distress inks used are frayed burlap and broken china, the stamp is Purple Onion, and the lovely patterned paper on the right-hand side is Rum&Raisin from PaperArtsy.

Colour schemes eye candy...

These ads were in the ES magazine on Friday - love the clour schemes...(especially the one of the left)

The picture on the right isn't so much for the colour scheme - though it does have a lovely vintage feel to it - its more for the loviness of displaying items in big jars like that! Nice, very nice!