Along with these vague feelings of guilt about a task not completed to my satisfaction, I have a new university unit starting soon, The Photo Essay, which looks at the juxtaposition of text and photography in telling a story...that may well be interesting and give me some pointers to increase the visual appeal of this blog.
Today is the day of the birthday party which includes the long awaited Plover Dance...if I manage to video any of the proceedings I will add it here...I believe my brother and nieces have been practicing their choreography with the wings...we will see what eventuates!
Tim has finally become inspired to do some much needed work in the garden. It is high time he had his potatoes planted and for some reason he has been dragging his heels...however, he and Chris finally dismantled the large wooden compost bin that has been taking care of all our vegetable peelings, paper and other organic waste for the past couple of years. When he built it we had no neighbours on that side of the property, now the side and back of the site have units built very close to the fence line and the compost bin seemed rather inappropriate to have right under neighbours clothes lines etc.
We still have a small plastic enclosed bin which we will continue to use...along with the plastic plumbing pipe compost tubes sunk into the garden. Combined, they dispose cleanly of all our compostable waste and add to the health and productivity of this poor soil area enormously.
The compost they removed from both bins was amazing...clean and crumbly with a wonderfully large worm count. It was spread over the raspberries and rhubarb gardens and then topped with a good layer of seaweed gathered on a recent trip to Dunalley...
I found recently that I could purchase Helmar glue online directly from them so I made a small purchase just before our recent holiday. Now I am home and working on my new album I was anxious to put the ones I purchased through their trials.
I found I was having quite a varied outcome when using book pages for embellishments and projects, but thought it was probably more to do with the quality of the paper I was using. One day I decided to test the new Premium Craft Glue I had bought. It is a clear glue and acts similarly to the Helmar 450 quick dry that I have been using a lot of lately.
I adhered both these double book pages together at the same time using the same book.
The one on the left is using Helmar Premium Craft Glue, and the one on the right is Scotch Quick Dry (my previously prefered glue).
Both were air dried overnight and then popped under the Webster for a few hours to assist with the flattening process. However, the Helmar pages were completely flat and beautifully smooth before this pressing...the Scotch glue on the other hand was quite buckled and the glue lines were obvious. They remained so even after the pressing. You can see this quite clearly in the photo above where the light is indicating the surface texture of the pages...I have a new favourite! I am using it throughout the new album on the little Instax photographs, matte photo paper etc, to see if it holds up as well on other surfaces.
lostinpaper on You Tube and her blog that she posted back in August, I just CASE'd it almost holus bolus...it is so right! But then, Therese has such style that her projects almost always appeal enormously.
I don't have the stamps and dies that she has, the larger word die worked better on her card, also the flower stamp I used was a tad large and so makes the background a little busy but I am very happy with the outcome anyway. it was fast to make which is always a big plus! I used black foam to diecut the "happy" as I wanted that slight black edging shadow to help the word to pop a little.
Bye,
Di xx