I've been working at home these last couple of days, planning and prepping a workshop I'm teaching later in the year, making mini books.  To warm up and get my brain and fingers into gear, I worked through Shimelle's quick project yesterday and was fairly pleased with the result.  As with any creative pursuit, it's often a slow start before ideas begin to flow and exciting things happen.

I often think that I should begin in the middle and work here and there rather than in a logical start-to-finish fashion.  Sometimes, I'm just getting going by the last page, on other occasions I run out of steam three quarters of the way through and the last pages are dull.  D  U   L   L   *

Today, I was making a simple tag book from luggage labels.  The group I'm going to work with are beginners and I've promised to cover as many techniques and ideas as I can manage - sixteen different pages as a kind of sampler, including using eyelets, brads, stickers, rub ons, ribbon, crystals, secret journalling, tags, rubber stamps and any other embellishment which happens to be lying around at the time!

The end result is fine and works well.  Phew.

It's been a fun week so far - I've had a visit from gorgeous girl Annabelle and spent a happy couple of hours helping her Mum, Lucy, to customise a few babygros.

Oh, and I've got a new toy to play with.  My next challenge is to do a bit of mobile blogging.

Could take time.

* that D U L L reference: we're going to the show on Sunday, taking m-i-l for her Christmas present.