2016 is dead, long live 2017!

Ok it's not officially over yet (at time of posting anyway) but it is the last day, so as well as the last of my declutter and the usual crafting stuff, I'm going to review my resolutions that I made at the top of the year, as well as letting you glimpse a sneak peek of next year's. First of all, the last declutter of 2016.

Mango and Papaya shower gel. The scent doesn't stay long with this. A bit of a disappointment really.

Alphabet strip die. As you can see by the various dents it's past it's best. I've used this a lot, but I've now invested in some thinlit alphanumeric dies, which will remove the need for putting a die through the machine so many times in order to cut a simple phrase.

Rusty blades. Only a poundland set so it's not much of a loss.

Toothbrush. Don't worry that's not tooth gunk! I've been using it to spatter metallic colour on things, but I was too lazy to wash it and now it's useless.

Body butter. Damn body butter! Had enough of it long before it ran out but I persevered. Mostly.

Stitching wise this is where I am up to with the current one.

A little progress, but it's still going to be a good couple of months till it's finished.

I was a little low this week, and as such I didn't feel like doing any crafting. But it is pointless having a crafting blog with no crafting in it, so I grabbed a few things, sat down at the table and waited for inspiration to hit.

I started off by inking a small tag with distress ink, adding versamark through a stencil and adding Verdigris embossing powder, as well as using ink through another stencil. I then added a sentiment, and used my new distress crayons to ink the edges. Once that was done I started with the embellishments. I added a scrabble tile that I inked, cut some spring greenery out and inked with vintage photo and peeled paint inks, and added some flowers. Finally I used Lindy's embossing powder on a wooden embellishment, added a photo from Tim Holtz photobooth set, and used crackle accents, taking care when dry to take a couple of bits out. The picture I chose had a handwritten message in the corner, so I cut that off and used it in the corner of my tag. Finally I added a gingham bow.

I like to think there is a story attached to this. An old woman, sitting there alone looking through treasures of her daughter who she lost. The last letter from her, some flowers she pressed into a book the day she was born, and a cracked photo, the only one she has left. It's a bit melancholy admittedly.

Onto this year's review. If you remember I had five resolutions. They were to save 250 a month, to walk or cycle or do weights every day, to finish the first draft of one of my books, to finish my Beauty and the Beast cross stitch, and finally to give up fizzy drinks for one year. Well I am pleased to say I completed all tasks successfully! The one thing I am disappointed about was that the fizzy drinks and the exercise (which admittedly I did kind of do the minimum a few days) did not do what I hoped they would do for my weight, but then that's my lack of willpower when it comes to chocolate etc, which is something I will work on.

2017 is going to be a little different. I'm not going to set myself five resolutions, but one big one. Or rather 52 little ones. That's all I'm going to reveal about them right now, apart from a clue to the first one.

At the stroke of twelve,

resolutions start anew,

last year forgotten.

Ems