Becki’s Ramblings

Just had a horrid few minutes. Tried to preview my last post - and it disappeared! Nowhere to be seen for ages! Aaaarrrggghh! The thought of having to type all that over again - nooooooooooo!!!! Keep calm, Becki, keep calm. Really. Keep calm.

Then (thanks be to Blogland) all of a sudden, there it was again. Don’t know what happened, but I’ve learned my lesson. Save, save, SAVE. Scary time - I’m soooo glad it reappeared. Can you see me putting the flags out from where you are???

Anyway. Back to blogging. And saving regularly. (Did I say I’d learned to save?).

I realised a couple of days ago that the deadlines for various CB swaps were almost upon me. Don’t know where the time goes to, honestly. Frantic hours of trying to plan and to BE CREATIVE. Really ought to know by now that it really isn’t the best way to do things. Okay. Sit down. Cuddle the cat. Have cup of tea. Have chocolate (thanks Laura!). Maybe have another chocolate. And another. Oh crumbs - where did they all go? Surely little ol’ me didn’t eat ALL of those!!! Move away from the chocolates. Further away. That’s better.

Creative juices flowing again, I managed to get everything done and posted in time. I can relax now, and leave it all to the postman. Putting out of my mind the fact that last month’s ATCs went walkabout for weeks…

Here’s what I came up with:

This is for the May bookmark swap. The theme was cakes - I had these gorgeous little cake embellishments hidden away in my stash. The pale pink paper was in my “bits” box - I’m finally remembering to check there before I cut into any new paper, just in case. I was so pleased it went with the cakes.. I hope whoever gets it likes it…

For the May card swap, the theme was “female birthday”, and this is what I came up with. I have a whole case ful of scrummy border punches that I bought from Ideal World ages ago, and I really don’t use them enough. This is only really simple, but I think it’s effective for all that. I hope Nessa thinks the same when she gets it!

I’m pleased with these ATCs. The theme for this month was butterflies and I used shrink plastic for the butterflies (coloured in with the trusty Sakuras), then some tiny little stamps for the flowers. The sky was some more paper from my bits box, left over from a page I printed out from my Crafters Companion Florals CD ages ago, and the grass is layered up using green paper and funky foam, cut into to give it the right kind of texture. On each one, one of the “layers” of grass” has been inked over with a darker green ink, and the funky foam has been inked over at the edges with blue (odd, but seemed to work, somehow).  I didn’t want to send them off, so I hope the post doesn’t lose them!