the A list

I created this layout for the Dreamgirls challenge about first liners - your favorite first line in a book - actually with my English Lit background, I have lots of first liners but I decided to take a photo of my collection of Alice in Wonderland books and use the first sentence from the book:
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"
I used Harlee-Quinnz Butterfly Garden paper and accentuated the butterlies with little gems. The pink/brown/turquoise paper with the birds and flowers is cut from a vintage postage letter (remember those ones that you could write a letter on one side and then fold it in thirds and address it on the back); the chipboard butterflies are from K&co; I made the fabric flower from some Amy Butler scraps; and I stamped the A with an old Heidi Swapp stamp.
My incompetence with stamps is decreasing bit by bit but I had a disaster with this layout yesterday afternoon when I was working on it. I wanted to use one of my new stamps on the bottom right to offset the A on the top left so I selected a beautiful one that is like a frame around journaling lines and practiced it over and over on scrap paper till I felt confidant. Then I stamped the paper and it didn't all come out right so I restamped it and tried to fill in with a Sharpie pen - disaster! it looked hideous so fortunately I had a 2nd sheet of this paper and I carefully removed everything and put it all on the new sheet. the colored cutout section in the middle was larger that it is now as I had to carefully cut off the stamped part - I was able to save most of the background paper to use as cutouts or for a card.

I was feeling pretty terrible and frustrated - both from the disaster with this page and from my cold, which I can report that I really do have one. Thanks to everyone who wished me well. Hopefully this will only last a week or so. I did go in to work today as I felt pretty much okay this morning but as the day has worn on, I am tired now, but all in all, not too bad - just stuffed up.

I started another project last night after dinner - Candy Shoppe has a challenge to make your own background paper so I used 2 of the HQ stamps to stamp a background - and it came out pretty cool (As you can tell, I am currently obsessed with improving my stamping skills). Depending on how tired I am after dinner, I will try to finish that layout tonight and post it tomorrow.

and a quote about home and hearth:

Home is the sphere of harmony and peace,

The spot where angels find a resting-place,

When, bearing blessings, they descend to earth.

- Mrs. Hale

ttfn