Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year! And this year is the year of the Goat (or sheep) but anyways its my year!. Today in inspiration of Chinese New Year I thought I would take me and my Nan to Chinatown. The dancing of the dragons is happening this weekend but it was still a lovely atmosphere to be in with people handing out red envelopes for luck.

I have also decided this will be part of my photography challenge 'Just for Fun'.

Week 8- Just for fun 

While there I picked up some very yummy  Chinese food items to go with my Chinese meal I was cooking later that night.

I will say the biscuits was hard to decipher but I figured out they were a blueberry cheesecake I think but they are so yummy and in very adorable package. We brought a red bean bun that my nan looked very interested in and when warmed it was lovely. I should visit Chinatown more often really. For dinner I thought I would cook a receipe from River Cottage- Veg which was the 5 spiced Chinese winter stir-fry. And this was amazing and lovely going with my peach soda with a glass ball inside to create the fizz.

For dessert we had some peanut and sesame seed mochi. Now I love chocolate mochi so thought I would give this a try. I will say if you like peanut butter than this is your thing. I personally wouldnt be able to eat too many though but they were worth a try and different obviously.

Me and my Nan in Chinatown

Happy Chinese New Year to everyone! 

Upgrading the Diary

Last month I brought myself a diary so I could keep track of my blogging posts, work, appointments, birthdays and obviously anything photography related. I brought this lovely diary from paperchase and just loved the print automatically.

The diary at the start is a little bit boring as I didn't know really what I could do or use on all those big spaces on each day and then I though why not turn it into a little simple art journal/ doodles in relation to that day. Obviously I can't do everyday but if I can document a little bit of my life every now and again it would be nice to look back. I have plenty of patterned tape and washi tape and thought this would be perfect to separate out the months of the pages doing only at the beginning of the month and on page that has a special occasion. I then added a couple of stickers here and there just to brighten it up a little.

To remind me also every Monday I have stamped a camera and then wrote what each photography challenge is that week so fingers crossed this will help me to remind me I need to do this!

You never know depending how nice the page is I might even let you guys have a look, on the day of course

Vintage Image Halloween ATC.

Okay so this is a little bit of an odd swap I have joined this month. Halloween in February! But I could not resist as I just love Halloween and this atc has to be one of my favorites.

I used a Tim Holtz image cut out and used crushed olive and black soot ink for the background. I just love it. Hopefully doing more of these swaps will get back into card making, scrapbook etc.

Dress Making

Okay this might be partly to do with the fact that The Great British Sewing Bee has started but I thought I would give it  ago at dress making again. I have made plenty of skirts in the past and one dress a couple of years ago that I don't feel turned out to well but I'll put a picture up of it anyway. (Just found I don't actually have a picture of the final dress but here is the top half)

I thought I would venture again into the world of dress making as seen as a I have at least 4m of Vintage fabric I have had for a few years and have never done anything with! Maybe partly because I was too scared to cut it! I was looking for a vintage pattern but came across this one in a New Look book and thought it was quite late 40s early 50s in style. It reminded me of a vintage dress I already own. 

I'm not going to lie but the dress looks very ill fitted on the model so hopefully I can make mine a little more fitted. Plus the fabric I have will go perfect. Along with the little extras I brought when I was at home. So far I have attached the bodice to the gathered skirt and I am not going to lie my gathers are not really even but it is all a learning experience.

I will post a picture when it is done, I might try and get my friend to help me out on that one though. 

Valentines Day

Today is Valentines Day. This is my first valentines day being single after 3 years and do you know what I do not care. I believe Valentines Day is not just being around your boyfriend/ girlfriend/ fiance etc. Valentines Day to me is spending it with your family and friends the people you love and know people love you in return. After I moved out and moved to London my parents brought me  a metal plaque with a lovely saying. I could not get a good photo of it but I found the quote through google and would like to a share it with everyone.

Whether your single or wit your partner this valentines day just remember you are loved by everyone!

Little Catch up on my Photography Challenge.

Okay so I haven't been brilliant with keeping up to dates with this so here is the last two weeks I am missing.

Week 4- What inspires me: Well this was quite easy but I could not think of a way to photograph it apart from just photographing my books and I have the photographers work. Both Horst and Tim Walker are what inspired me to become a photographer in the first place. I just loved Horst surreal style and then the quirky whimsical style of Tim Walkers work. Both from different eras but I feel they have similarities.

Week 5- Sweet/Hearts: Okay, so this will be my first year without a Valentine, sad I know right. Anyways I saw these adorable dozen heart shaped biscuits and knew they would be perfect. Better than my original idea which was just to get a packed of the sweetheart sweets and photographing them.

A Trip First Class

Today was my final day spending some time with my parents, and it was time for me to head back home to London. Now of course I had to travel in style so I went first class, which little tip if you book a month in advance is really cheap plus if you have a railcard it's an extra bonus cheap bonus on the price!

The seats are comfortable and the service was lovely today. For example, I couldn't open my bottle of water so the guy that was handing out teas and coffees help me to undo it and mentioned they always seem to have a problem with these and it pays off for him going to the gym. Maybe because I have started going to the gym I might be able to open really tough bottles of water.
The journey was quick and pleasant while I was sat watching Sherlock Holmes, that I never got to finish as we had pulled up into London St Pancras with 30 mins left to spare on my film. I will probably have to finish that off tonight.

Week 7- Black and White

I know I have not been brilliant posting for my 52 week challenge, but the theme for this week was black and white and with a little help from my mum we suggested I could photograph the station. Now I have never really looked at the station but it has lovely architecture (here I go again with the architecture) and the metal work looked stunning so a perfect opportunity for black and white.

If anyone visits this station just take your time to have a look at the building and look up its superb.

My little shopping spree

I am finally off work for the week yay! So for the first half of my week off I thought I could go and visit my parents after they came back from their recent holiday adventure you can follow their adventures through their blog called Mr and Mrs Scrivs on tour . Yesterdays travel on the train was pleasant and relaxed, I mostly sat watching a film on my tablet, Rock of Ages. If anyone has yet to see this film you need to!

Well today I thought I was having my hair appointment but it turns out it's tomorrow. I decided to have a little walk around the town I spent my secondary school years. I took a little visit to a shop called wilkos who do lovely things and good prices and what a bargain I got! Not only did I pick up a couple of cute notebooks with a cute fable foxy keyring, which may I add the whole folklore range they have at the moment is lovely. While their I picked up a lovely ceramic cream camera reduced from £5 down to £1.50. Now I had seen this before last year but here it was again today. I took it to the till and I had a slight issue with a notebook that should of been 40p and after the woman adjust the items and the prices on the till it turns out after I paid and left the store I only paid 40p for my camera! Definitely bargain!

I am a little unsure now whether to decorate it or just keep it plain, but it will either go on my shelf with my vintage camera collection or on my windowsill. The other deal of the day was this lovely blue nail polish which I brought from tkmax.

All i seem to have is bright tones of red. I use to have a lot of varied colours but never worn them because of were and what I do at work so nail polish for me is kind of a luxury thing to wear. This one will be a lovely addition to my red collection. I nice bright pop of blue. Hopefully will be wearing this week before I head back to work.

Retro Valentine atc

Sorry for my delay in blogging I have had something really important to prepare for which was to become an Shift Supervisor for Starbucks and after all my panicking ( I am just terrible in interviews) I passed so yay to me!
So again sorry for the lack of blogs this week. Okay back to this post. Back in the day, well a couple of years ago,  I used to do swaps, one of my main sites for swapping on was swap bot. I use to enjoy it particularly in receiving gifts from America (they always have the best stuff). Anyways so I thought I would try and get back into swapping again starting off somewhere small; ATCs.
I use to do a lot of these swaps and it also gets me back into being creative again with all my crafty goodies. So here it is my retro valentine swap.

It was pretty simple to make I used Tim Holtz valentine papers found in the seasonal pad. I cut out the doves and heart from a section of the paper. It is simple but I like simplicity on both atcs and handmade cards. I hope you like it.

PS I also forgot to mention at the beginning of the week it finally snowed in London! But did not settle sadly, which I guess is a good thing because even an inch of snow on the ground will bring the whole of London to a complete holt.