Don’t bother reading if you are easily offended. That was your warning. If you continue to read, then get offended, then you have no reason to be offended, right? (Yes, I know it doesn’t quite work like that - and curiosity just got the better of some of you.)

Well, a few days ago I blogged about my personal life, and playground problems again. I never published it - the real value was found in simply writing it down, and not boring the web with details. But in a nutshell, I was suggesting that I am having problems with hormones big-time - weeping most mornings for no reason at all, and any little sunshine the week may send me makes things just a tiny bit better.

On the playground front - well, I’ve come to a stability thing there - I accept that I don’t particularly clique with many on the playground, but there are a couple of women whom I thought I got on with - they work and I very rarely see them to speak with them at all.

That took me to this morning, where one of the women actually arrived at school, and there we were, walking side by side along paths to and fro school with our daughters -who are best friends at school - and I found I couldn’t start any conversation.

She has a smaller boy - around two years old, and is also now heavily pregnant with their third child. I think sometimes that while many mothers there are talking about their toddlers and comparing notes on development etc, that I get left out of that topic because we only have the one child. But that’s no reason behind why I couldn’t at least attempt to talk about the upcoming nativity play or something. Anything.

Five months ago, I was a thriving manager of a staff of over twenty. My whole day was talking, guiding, building teams, sorting out problems and issues, meetings, and lunches and having a good laugh too. Yet now I can’t bring myself to talk at all.

And I’ve only myself to blame. But rather than kicking myself, I’m wondering if I can work on this. Perhaps I can make the best of my long days by working in the phone sex-talk industry or something. I could be doing the ironing, while grunting over the phone.

Just kidding! 

A Refreshing Change From The Tired Old Formula

Wow, is all I can say here. Katie went onto UKS to suggest she was looking for a U.K. viewpoint for her new magazine startup in the states. She led us to her blog, where basically, she tells a big tale of what it is like working in the traditional industry as a scrapbook store owner, and with the manufacturers. Must-do reading on this one.

Powered by ScribeFire.

In the post this morning came my printed calendar pages. Pixum.co.uk is currently charging only 56p per A4 print, compared to photobox and the like which are over the £1 mark. However, I’ve used commercial products at a bit of a cost, to allow me to also profile these on my business site empty Designs.

Rather than pepper the blog with detailed photos of each page in the calendar, these are available as a slideshow on empty Designs, should you wish. (Note: I currently can’t link to this, as a new upgrade to Squarespace has added a bug with the link icons).  The pages are displayed in an altered clipboard - these are fantastic, as you can simply clip in all those little date and memo notes, ticket stubs etc, as you go also - or a bag to contain these, all ready for documenting the year in scrapbook pages also.

 

 

Credits 

All calendar pages use templates, month titles, some event elements, and calendar grids from Melissa Renfro’s Commercial Use Perpetual Clipboard Calendar, available at www.scrapgirls.com

Two wonderful digital designers who provide design for others licenses have provided digital backgrounds and elements as denoted per page.

• Debbie Fisher (DebF)’s designs are available at www.pickleberrypop.com
• Liz Pike’s designs are available at www.strawberrywinedesigns.com

Page Credits: -

• January, February, March, April, July & September - Digital stash by Debbie Fisher
• May, June, August, October, November & December - Digital stash by Liz Pike

 

These are great gifts - my daughter’s great grandmother gave her these decorate-your-own wellington boots for her fifth birthday. We spent a good hour together painting them up - she filled in my drawings with paint, but after an hour got slightly bored of it. The fish design is a copy off the box the wellies came in. The frog design is my own.

The only problem with these is she doesn’t quite fit them, lol.

 

 

The following are some images from the 2008 calendar projects I have been busy doing. Because I currently only use commercial use or scrap for others licensed products, you will see that these all feature such digital resources. They are also profiled on my business site, empty Designs. Each is a personal project however - the bookmarks are for me, the calendar cubes have already made their way to my husband’s workplace, and the clipboard calendar arrived from the printers today, and is all set to hang up for next year.

Cube Calendar

Cube Calendars (2 per year) created with commercial use templates provided by Kim Liddiard and Lauren Bavin, available at www.digitalscrapbookplace.com. I simply dropped in some of this year’s digital layouts.

 

Bookmark Calendars

Bookmark Calendars made with commercial use templates provided by Kim Liddiard and Lauren Bavin, available at www.digitalscrapbookplace.com.

Also used - fibres, dogtags, laminating products. Each is double-sided, and includes some photo montaging techniques.