pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}


Our all our exploration of the areas surrounding Bangkok, I believe Ko Kret was my very favourite. Ko Kret is a small island in the middle of the Chao Phraya river that runs to the north of Bangkok. It was created as a bit of a byproduct really, as a sort of river by-pass was built in the 1700s and Ko Kret was the bit of land left when the river took its new course.

It is popular with the locals but it’s a weekend destination and we spent the day here from Friday morning to afternoon. During that time it’s all but deserted and it was so quiet we could just wander around and see everything without worrying about the hustle of the visiting crowd – more a peek into everyday life here.



Ko Kret is filled with terra cotta potteries – mostly making a variety of clay pots but also some individual sculpted items. Of course it’s all quite breakable so there are scenes like this here and there all around the island. We were invited in to see the entire pottery process, so I’m saving that for a post all its own. I could have watched them create pots all day.


We walked the island on a path that takes you in a full circle. I think most people probably do this by bicycle as it is quite a long path and you can rent a bike as soon as you step off the ferry, but as we had plenty of time and the temperature was quite nice, we decided we would just walk. (Admittedly, the cooler temperatures came hand in hand with cloudy skies rather than the beautiful blues of the earlier days, but it stayed dry so we couldn’t complain.) The ferry to cross the river, by the way? It will cost you two baht – that’s about 4p in sterling or 6 cents in US dollars. Each way, of course. Worth every penny!

Walking the path, there are several temples, mostly in this style with red, green and gold. There’s also a white and gold buddha garden, which is a silent fenced area with statues of buddhas from all different times and regions – quite interesting to see them all together, from skinny and shiny interpretations to stout characters carved from wood.


I am quickly learning a temple isn’t a temple without some chickens! Chickens walk freely all over the island, but there is something that makes me giggle about chickens searching for their enlightenment. My Gran has always said I should write a children’s book called There’s a Hedgehog in my Garden. I think it could have a sequel for the other side of the world called There’s a Chicken at my Temple, right?

We passed the school here and I loved this little touch – a chalkboard on the playground. When I was little, I loved the excitement of getting to write on the board, so I think this is quite sweet that they could write here at breaktime. The mix of doodles, Thai and English may have made the sentimental teacher part of me melt. Just maybe.

Everything here is quiet and simple, but there’s also a lovely feel that there isn’t progress for progress’ sake. Some there are shrines and statues that have been here since the late eighteenth century with this weathered look.




But also a fair bit of sparkle here too! I may have a slight obsession with needing to check out every reclining buddha we pass – as a result of the song from Chess. Forgive me! But also, they are pretty darn impressive. This was the first we had seen with all the ornate carving on the feet.


There are spots on the island that are relatively busy – meaning there are shops and places to eat, not that there were lots of people about – and then also places that aren’t touristy at all, where we watched farmers and monks. Just so lovely from start to finish. Though if you ever come here, be sure you have some excellent bug repellant – as you can guess, there’s plenty of water here so plenty of mosquitos ready for lunch!

Stop by tomorrow for a look at my favourite part – the Ko Kret potteries.

xlovesx

Comment [8]

Throughout 2011, Two Peas is hosting four free online scrapbooking classes that last all year – and you’re invited to join in! On the first of each month, there’s Scrapbook Stamping with Nichol Magouirk. On the tenth, there’s Products Every Which Way with Shannon Tidwell. On the twentieth, there’s Stretch a Sketch with Jennifer Gallacher. And on the thirtieth of every month? There’s me! I’m teaching a class called 4×6 Photo Love.

Each month we’ll be scrapping with 4×6 photos – with a twist. In January, we’ll work with one 4×6 picture. In February, two pictures and so on right up to December, when we’ll scrap a twelve 4×6 pictures! Each month’s class looks at one technique or design principle for making that number of photos work. Some single pages, some doubles. Some pages have interactive tricks for including more pictures. So you can take your standard size prints and whatever supplies you have on hand and join in the fun!

Each month my class includes…
…PDF class prompt including instructions, examples and sketches
…Video episode walking you through adaptation of the highlighted technique
…Examples of paper, digital and hybrid scrapbook pages from myself and a range of special guests with varying styles
…Chat thread on the Two Peas message board
All for free!

Would you like to receive an email reminder each month when my class is live? If so, please send an email to shimelle at gmail dot com with this subject line: 4×6 Photo Love Reminders. (Copy and paste that subject line, as you won’t get added to the list unless it’s just like that! Thanks!) You’ll get one message each month when the class has been posted – no other mailings and I would never, ever sell your email list or anything else evil, I promise.

Oh, and one more thing about the class!
Here on the blog, I’ll be giving a prize each month to a randomly chosen participant too!

So why don’t we start things right with a prize giveaway today? One comment left on this blog post will win a $25 gift certificate to Two Peas, which you can spend on your choice of anything in the store – paper or digital! Just leave a comment to be entered to win! And be sure to check back later this week to see if you’re the winner.

Entries close at midnight UK time, 30th December 2010. Winner will be posted soon after that.

xlovesx

Comment [305]



Over the course of three days in Thailand, we visited three different floating markets. In one, the market sellers were floating in boats and you shopped by walking by on the land or the dock. In another, we sat in the boat and the market stalls were set up on the sides of the canal. And at Dumnoen Saduak floating market, there was a bit of both.

When we arrived, someone quickly came up to us and offered us the choice of one or two hours in a boat, and it turned out an hour was plenty of time to see everything since we were there quite early in the morning and the canal didn’t start to get busy until we were getting back on our feet. We just sat in the canoe and our guide rowed, taking us from one section of the market to another.


There are a few things that are universal as far as we have always found: Coca-Cola is certainly one of them. (So far other contenders include Pepsi, Starbucks and KFC which seems to be exceedingly popular in Thailand. There is also many a Tesco shop!) Also, I love this lady’s hat. I have a feeling she has a brilliant character.

Here’s a short little video of the market so you can get a feel for the atmosphere of this place. Think calm and peaceful interrupted by moments of intense sales pitch! Although we don’t know for sure, we assumed our guide either had friends or colleagues that made it worth her while to take us to certain stands, as sometimes she really didn’t want to push away until we bought something, but others she would totally ignore. Admittedly, we have been slightly infuriating to many a market person as we have packed so lightly that we aren’t really buying much in the way of souvenirs. I have mostly been looking for postcards but they have been dire and far between. I wish I had picked up more on our very first day as we’ve never seen a proper rack of postcards like that since. Hoping some will pop up on our radar soon!


Some of the markets we have visited are quite small, but you can see this one covers a fair bit of space. Admittedly many of the shops are empty – it looks like they haven’t always been, so I think this may be exactly like the empty shops on our high streets back home. This market is mostly aimed at tourists and fewer people travel right now, so that affects businesses like this too. If you do go here and have room in your bags, you can get things to take home for mere pennies. It’s way more fun than shopping at the airport for a shot glass and a keychain with the name of the destination.


Things were picking up as it grew closer to lunchtime. I can imagine at its busiest, it’s quite difficult to navigate the boat through everything! But here you can see how there are both shoppers and sellers in boats, plus more along the side on the bank. The colours are amazing – all the bright primary shades against the neutrals of the water.


There is one thing we do buy at markets because we don’t have to find room for it in our backpacks: food! This lady made fried bananas – some with sesame seeds and some with coconut flakes. We watched her make them and then she scooped them up to us in a bowl attached to a stick, so we could take them and pass the money back to her even though she was in the water and we were on a bridge. They were seriously yummy and the bag had more than the two of us could eat – for a whopping price that worked out to… forty pence. Thai food… of course it is seriously amazing, but it’s amazing at every level from a boat to a fancy restaurant. But there’s at least a full blog post in that idea. More soon.

xlovesx

Comment [13]

Father Christmas, I shall never doubt the powers of your sleigh now that you’ve shown you can deliver an elephant on Christmas morning!

I hope your Christmas day is happy and joyful!

xlovesx

Comment [11]

A very happy Christmas Eve to you! I hope today is truly magical wherever you may be!

xlovesx

Comment [6]

A very warm welcome to Natalie Elphinstone, our special guest today. I love the tutorial and project she’s created – I hope you do too! And if you do, please take a moment to tell a crafty friend. Take it away, Natalie!

Tags are becoming very popular to make these days – especially in the holiday season. But apart from using them on your gifts, have you ever considered what else you might do with them? A very easy way to use up any leftover tags is simply to include them in the way we know and love best…. a scrapbook page! So today I’ll show you how to both make some simple tags that look impressive, as well as how to effortlessly integrate them into a Christmas layout.

The key to these tags is creating an interesting background. You’ll need a few different shades of coordinating spray inks and a basic manilla shipping tag. You can see I’m not too picky when it comes to any particular brand of spray ink as here I’ve got Smooch Spritz in Grape Burst, glimmer mist in Midnight Blue and Turquoise Blue and Shimmerz Spritz in Olive Branch (which I didn’t end up using).

Start with your lightest shade of mist first (I chose Turquoise Blue) and spray it a couple of times onto your craft sheet. I also spray some water into this mix too so that each layer of colour is reasonably sheer. Then simply swirl your tag through the mix and speed up the drying process with a heat gun.

The trick here is to make it as imperfect as you can allow yourself to be! Embrace the fact that not every area of the tag is coloured, and that it’s pooling in certain areas and looking quite blotchy.

The picture above is what my tag looks like after I’ve given it two coats of Turquoise Blue, one coat of Midnight Blue and I’m ready to go ahead with my first layer of Grape Burst. As you can see – it’s all about the layers! This gives it a lovely shimmery water-colour effect.

Next I inked the edges of my tag with a similar turquoise colour as my glimmer mist, then ran it through my Cuttlebug using the Divine Swirls embossing folder. I used a white ink pad to rub over the top to highlight the embossing – and doesn’t it just look as Divine as the name suggests?!

This last step was a little gem I picked up from doing Tim Holtz
12 tags of Christmas last year. I mixed a ‘scoop’ of Perfect Pearls with a little water and then flicked this over the tag.

To make the angel you need one half-circle for the dress, and two smaller half-circles for the arms. Mine measure approximately 4 inches and 2 inches respectively. You also need a smaller circle for the head, and I used my Martha Stewart Medallion punch for the halo.

Roll each half-circle into a cone and assemble your angel. Simply glue the smaller cones on as arms, and attach the halo behind the face with some foam tape. I tried my hand at drawing some angelic facial features on mine!

To finish off my tag I added a Kaisercraft rub-on, Prima lace, bakers twine and pearls. I added some more detail to the angel by trimming her dress and sleeves with glitter and highlighting the snowflake pattern with Dimensional Magic.

The tag looks great by itself – but if you include it on a layout it suddenly becomes the main focus. It adds lots of detail and really is the central attraction (well…. perhaps second only to my cheeky daughter of course!)

The rest of the layout is fairly straight-forward by comparison. Just some embossed colour blocks (I know Shimelle is a fan of this method of scrapping!) and a few other embellishments. I’ve used the stunning Jovial collection by Basic Grey, intermixed with plain cardstock that I’ve glimmer misted in the same method as above.

This is such a cheeky photo of my 4-year-old girl, but this is a face we see quite a bit. The sentiment on the tag reads “little girls are just angels who haven’t yet spread their wings”. But I couldn’t leave it at that and added some journaling “I’m not sure how much I believe this saying. I prefer to think of you more as an angel in disguise. Because sometimes it’s hard to tell”.

If you are interested in seeing some of the other tags I’ve created in this series, or to learn how to make those origami stars you see in the photo above then I would love it if you stopped by my blog

Natalie Elphinstone is a busy doctor training in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. But in her time off when she’s not enjoying quality time with her wonderful husband and two gorgeous daughters you’ll find her tucked away in her ‘scrap-room’ crafting up a storm. She currently designs for Handmade by Suzanne and From Screen 2 Scrap You can read more about her life and her art on her blog Scrap Doctor

Comment [10]


From the older ruins of Ayutthaya, we headed to something much more sparkly and new: the Grand Palace in Bangkok. Its construction started in 1782 and new additions have continued to be built. Indeed, we saw a few towers of scaffolding while we were here.


This is an expansive place, yet the tiny details are what I found most amazing. Tiny reflective tiles hand-cut and placed in mosaic patterns to make up a rich picture, at times in the way that individual brush strokes can be beautiful both in close scrutiny and upon stepping back to see everything as one full picture.



While our last stop showed styles that were consistently Thai, at this palace there were bits here and there that reminded me of other cultures. The bonsai trees and a few of the guard statues reminded me of what we saw at the palaces in Kyoto, Japan. Whether there is a real connection there, I’m not yet sure – I’m making this note here so I can look up the influences and political connections of the time and find out! (We arrived a bit late in the day to meet up with a tour guide, who probably would have known, so I’ll ask the powers of the internet when we have a better connection than today.)


The palace has a smart dress code – our first time to test what we chose to pack in our small bags. The Boy had no problem, but I was stopped at the door for something that surprised me entirely! I was wearing a knee-length dress with short sleeves (but not sleeveless) and three-quarter length leggings. I would always think that was more modest than the same dress without leggings, right? But no – I was asked to either remove the leggings and wear the same dress with bare legs or to wear a full-length sarong, which anyone who doesn’t meet the dress code can borrow while they walk around the grounds. So no problem at all and I happily borrowed a pretty blue sarong, but it left me perplexed that bare legs would be preferred to covered! One of the ladies explained it was because anything tight would be disrespectful. Learn something new every day!


When we walked around other areas of Bangkok, there was an interesting mix of old and new, where modernisations have been added right on top of the existing culture, so you get interesting scenarios like elderly shopkeepers selling the latest in modern technology and very old buildings with signs for Western fastfood restaurants – that sort of thing. But at the palace that was notably absent. I think if you took photos here thirty years ago and compared them to today, they would look remarkably similar.

Probably something else I should try to find out, I’m sure!

xlovesx

Comment [9]

After a long flight, we made it to Bangkok, Thailand, where we are staying with a friend I haven’t seen since college. She has been an absolutely amazing host and helped us see so much in our time here. Our first stop was the ancient city of Ayutthaya. I am somewhat obsessed with seeing UNESCO World Heritage Sites (and I live just a short walk away from one!) so starting here made me giddy to check another site off the list.

Ayutthaya dates back to 1351, which means the buildings we saw were actually younger than places like the Tower of London, but earthquakes and a Burmese takeover that burned the town to the ground really didn’t help preserve things. As a result, there are many headless buddha figures found here – hundreds, if not more.

The different sites here are spread all over the town, so after walking through a few that are right across the street from each other, we bought some postcards of things that looked interesting so we could communicate to the driver where we wanted to go. It worked a charm, and we were able to see different areas of the city, from old and unrestored to shiny and new.

One of my favourite aspects of going to places like temples and shrines is looking at the objects that are part of the rituals. Candles, flowers, offerings – there is a personality to what is left at each monument. Here it was basic and often worn, but beautiful in its balance.

Rubbing gold leaf on a buddha helps build good karma, as you’re helping to keep the monument at its best, as we were told. I love that making things glittery is seen as a way to do good!

One thing I never imagined I would see: monks with mobile phones. And they posed for pictures with each other, as these monks were visiting from another area of the country. They had an amazing way of being happy and something I would describe as excited but in this completely calm way.

Heck, I was jumping up and down and clapping my hands just to have such a pretty blue sky as a backdrop to the pictures. Calm excitement? Clearly not in my nature.

xlovesx

Comment [15]