The skeleton in the cupboard and other tales....

Good morning you all. Just managed to roll myself out of bed and stagger to the coffee machine to get myself in gear. Had strange dreams all night, and feel rather shattered just now, but I think by the third bucket of coffee I should be fine!
Yesterday I started on 2 more books. One is a concertina book, and the other is just an altered note book. The note book has been painted with gesso and then covered with decopatch paper, that has been flying around here for some years. After covering it I gave it 2 coats of mod-podge to make it a bit more finger-print resistant, added some end papers inside made from the beuatiful bags from LaBlanche, my fave crafty supplier, and added a ribbon with some beads as book mark. Now I have a pretty note and sketch book to take with me and jot down all those ideas which invariably occur when I have nothing to write on!

The second book is a concertina album. The covers are made of wood-board. I covered them first with pages from my antique book, painted them with mod podge, and added the photos when it was quite dry. The photos - of my Mum as a little girl, and my Great Auntie, were both taken in 1918, at the end of the First World War. They have been printed onto trnsfer foil and ironed onto canvas. I frayed the edges a bit before fixing them on, and then added some lace and beads. As the book can be used and opened from both sides, I will have 13 pages to use for phtos, and there are some smaller pages sewn in between, which will be nice for journaling.

I will report on the progress of the album in the next few days.

Then I made something really and truly horrible, ghastly, scary. If you are squeamish, shut your eyes before looking! There's a blog called *Haunted House Designs* where they like ghastly things, a sort of all year Halloween programme. Their challenge this week is to make *necro neckwear*! As the only 2 festivities that get celebrated in my house are halloween and my birthday (both horrible occasions!) I thought it's never to early to start making the decorations, so I'll stop rambling and show you my altered pearl necklace:

It is complete with lots of bones (Alas, poor Yorick!), wobbly eyes, a large red bead to represent gellied blood and a bell to call the dead....And I was wondering why I had bad dreams last night! What did Shakespeare say in *Hamlet* - *I could be bounded in a nutshell, and still think myself king of infinite space, were it not that I had bad dreams!*
(NB - she seems to be awake now if she's using quotes!)
And on this lovely note I will leave you for today. Have a great day, take care and thanks for visiting!