5. A Flawed Work of Art.

*Copy*: This time round we've been copying and pasting with some Snow Patrol song lyrics:

"It's a mess. It's a start. It's a flawed work of art."

Take Back The City - Snow Patrol

*Paste* : Julie's project =

I recently came into possession of several long lengths of picture framing from a company who were closing down and I'd already asked my Dad [a joiner] if he'd instruct me in the way of the picture frame at some point in the future.

But I'm impatient.

And imperfect.

And I liked the thought of using the lengths of frame to create my own 'flawed work of art' - a rather wonky notice board:

I sawed into the wooden length with only a [very] vague regard for mitres, joints and angles:

I gave the whole thing several coats of white emulsion paint before sanding some back to reveal the original paint colour and the wood beneath. I added splashes of colour via yellow and peach glazes [which are actually a dimensional gelly fabric paints] and some coral non-glittery-glitter [don't know what the correct name for it is!]. As usual, I couldn't resist adding some text to my project - so I used 7Gypsies rub-ons to re-create the lyrics around my frame.

Some craft cork glued to plywood completed my new, flawed, space to pin all those vital nippets of bits and things that seem to gravitate toward me.

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Well then, that's how I've interpreted the lyrics, now what do they say to you?

• Have you got a flawed work of art you'd feel brave enough to share?


• How about a photograph of a flawed work?


• Is there something you've already made but maybe not quite finished or it didn't turn out quite how you wanted? Could you frame it / put it on display anyway despite its flaws?


• The original Snow Patrol lyrics [as far as I know] are referring to the city of Belfast, so maybe there's a city which you love and appreciate beyond it's faults.


• If you're feeling especially brave you could take a self portrait / scrap a photo of yourself - I know I consider myself to be 'a mess, a start, a flawed work of art'! I think it's a really positive attitude to have: an ego-boost thrown in with a healthy bit of realism and the idea that this is only the beginning ....

[For all you fans of Miss Neale, have no fear, she'll be along soon with her own flawed work of art. Sometimes Copy + Paste projects are like buses ....you wait ages for one ....then two come along at once!!]

Whatever you decide to do - do, do,do let us know. We love seeing how you copy and paste your ideas into such a variety of projects, which is precisely what we wanted to create with this blog.

As always you can leave us a message and / or a link to your response in the comments below and there's always The Copy +Paste Flickr group which lives to have your works of art dropped into it every now and again. Flawed or not.

Julie :)

Banana Frog Giveaway winner.

Hi there you smashing, swappy, Copy + Pasters you.

We're so pleased that so many of you dropped by to take part in our giveaway but we can only swap one of your comments for a set of Banana Frog stamps.

As promised I closed the giveaway at 21:00 [GMT] this evening when there was a total of 58 comments:
Then I let Mr. Random Number Generator do his best:

And that makes Joy our winner!

Congratulations Joy. Just one more swap stands between you and your stamps - I'll swap you my email address: nabview[at]ntlworld.com for the address which you'd like me to send your prize to. Deal?

I'll get your new stamps sent to you ASAP.

Before I go I just want to give a honourable mention to 'Jimjams' who threw in her own entry for 'original naming of a postal worker' alongside Kirsty's 'Italian Tony' and my 'The bald one in the van who knows me'. Her 'Craig's Dad' was a worthy contender!

Thanks again everyone for taking part. :) :) :) We'll be back soon with our next challenge. Until then, happy swapping!

J + K's Multi-coloured Swap Shop [+ giveaway].

A few weeks ago for our PostSecret challenge, rather than share our secrets digitally, Kirsty and I physically mailed each other our postcards. Yes, we used an actual pen to write an address, licked a stamp and walked, using our legs, to a three-dimensional postbox! I know!! We were positively Victorian!

While we may keep in regular contact with each other vie email and Twitter there was something appealingly personal about receiving something with Kirsty's handwriting on it! Not that I'm an amateur graphologist or any such, but it was nice - in a world of cyber contacts - to have in my hand something she'd sent. Something papery and handmade. Something 'real'!

All this led to a discussion about doing something else both 'real' and postally themed and we decided on a grand stash swap!

[If you're not aware of the 'Multi-coloured Swap Shop' of my title then you're probably not English and / or not my age -either way there's a quick history lesson for you here.]

What with Kirsty's recent house move and my recent craft-room reorganisation, we thought we'd put together a box of crafting supplies to send to each other. I've done this many times before with like-minded friends and it's always so much fun to receive a cornucopia of crafting supplies through the post.

It's online shopping ... without the exchange of money. Crafty-bartering is where it's at!

But, while one man's junk is quite often another man's treasure ....just be mindful of who you choose to swap with!! It probably won't work so well if you don't share a hobby! Who else, but a fellow crafter, would be genuinely excited by a pizza box full of your cast-offs of paper scraps, scavenged ephemera and incomplete alphabet sets? Yet, if you've chosen your recipient carefully, a bundle of your leftovers and over-purchases can make someone else's day!Opening up a packet of items which are entirely new to you [even though they may not actually be new], is such an easy and direct method of generating fresh new ideas to get you thinking, making and creating!
If nothing else it keeps the Royal Mail ticking over nicely and keeps our postmen in a job [we discovered that in the past we've both given names to our postmen Kirsty's being 'Italian Tony' and mine being 'the bald one in the van who knows me' - neither of us would win the prize for originality there!]. As Kirsty and I are both on the design team for Banana Frog we also decided to swap a few sets of Banana Frog stamp sets at the same time. This way we could both work on our August design team commitments with new products and new eyes. I knew that this would work because, several weeks ago I'd renewed my collection of stamps by swapping with the fabulous and most best Hannah Milburn - another BF design team member and I'd been inspired to use the new stamps straight away. [You can see the LO I made in the Colour Focus post on the BF blog here].

So, we've invited Hannah to join us in our logistically-challenging- summer-stash-swapping-mania and all three of us have decided to make our Banana Frog 'Projects of the Day' for August using the stamps and goodies we've recieved from one another in our swap.

Did you get all that? If not .... here's a nice colour coded list to assist you [and me!]:

Aug 9: Visit the Banana Frog blog to see Kirsty's Project of the Day using swapped items.

Aug 12: Visit the Banana Frog blog to see Hannah's swappy Project of the Day.

Aug 14: Visit the Banana Frog blog to see how I've used my 'new to me' swappy bits in my Project of the Day.

What with all this sharing we've been doing we felt it would only be right and proper to continue in our mode of reciprocation and give you, our friendly neighbourhood Copy + Pasters, the opportunity to swap with us too.

We have a brand new set of Banana Frog stamps to giveaway - kindly donated to us from Banana Frog owner Bev - and here's how you can wrest them from our hands to your own:

You: leave us a comment below, in this post, below here, here, on this post, below, here! You can say whatever you like in the comment [within reason!] but try to make it clear that you would like to entered into the giveaway.

We: will pick a winner at random on the evening of Sunday August 16th and will announce the winner ASAP after that.

Now that that's all perfectly clear [!!] I'll leave you to your comment making. I have a mound of pre-loved stash to fidget around with to create my Project of the Day from [insert image of a pig in muck here!!!].

Soon enough.
Julie :)

4. Post Secret

*Copy*:

As a wise, fictional cockney once said, 'small pleasures - who would deny us these?', and although there's probably inspiration enough in that scrap of Oliver!, it's not the one I've picked to use right now. Instead, the small pleasure that's provided our latest prompt is Post Secret.

If you don't know about this wonderful project, I'm not going to ask where you've been, just suggest you check out either the blog or one of the books, and prepare to be enthralled. The postcards which comprise the project - all submitted anonymously – are a nosy art-lover’s dream (yes – that’ll be me, on both counts). In turns jaw-dropping, wry, heart-rending and mysterious, they are somehow endlessly fascinating.

Seeing the Post Secret digest pop up in my blog-reader on a Sunday morning is most definitely one of the aforementioned small pleasures and the combination of words and pictures which make up the postcards seemed a perfect leaping-off point for a Copy+Paste challenge.

*Paste*: Kirsty's project =

For Julie and I, the big difference between our secrets and those shared on the original PS blog, is the lack of anonymity. It’s much trickier to bare your soul when people have some idea of who you are. For me, at least, it ruled out any kind of deep, dark secret (not that I have an especially murky or intriguing past) and steered me towards a more minor admission.

In the spirit of Post Secret, I’m not about to explain the reasoning behind my vegetable-based shame (and yes, I know tomatoes are technically a fruit, but when was the last time you chopped one into a bowl of ice-cream?). All you need to know is that I genuinely squirm each time I do it, but have to accept that sometimes white lies make life simpler than the thorny truth.

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*Paste*: Julie's project =

Firstly I need to say how much fun it was finding Kirsty's confession dangling from my letterbox yesterday. I'd love to know what our respective postmen/ women thought of our little revelations as they were delivering them. I hope it brought them a little light relief amidst the same old envelopes and junk mail.

Like Kirsty said, finding the right level of secret to share was a tricky one. Especially as we didn't give each other any hints about what we were going to spill! Difficulties arose when certain secrets began to demand I reveal them - like they wanted to bask in the light of all your attention after years of being smothered in darkness.

Luckily I managed to quell their cries and chose to share this instead:

Was that a secret? Did you know? Could you have guessed?

My project is something of a double copy. While my content was indeed inspired by Post Secret [a site which I find absorbing and reassuringly human] the style in which I composed my confession was copied from this very cool, hand drawn magazine cover :

Seeing as how Adam and Joe make me laugh so very, very much I felt it fitted perfectly with the nature of my revelation.

The original artwork is by 'Rupert' from the design collective: www.thisisrude.com and you can see a closer image of it here. [It's definitely worth a look if you like the feel of retro / 80s old school illustrations and doodling].

It's your turn now to struggle with your inner big-mouth who wants to tell all ... and the sensible you who has that fine, upstanding reputation to maintain! Good luck.

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So, now you know a little more about the two of us than you did at the start of this post, we’d love to take a nosy at your secrets, too. If you play along, remember to leave us a comment below or drop your images into the Flickr pool.

We promise - hand on heart, pinky-swear and everything - that, however blush-worthy they are, we won't tell a soul.

...and you, and you

flurry [noun]: a sudden, short period of activity, excitement or interest

"Readers’ comments have prompted a flurry of giveaways on The Copy + Paste Project this week."

Yep, today it’s my turn to tear up scraps of paper and pick a pair of winners from my trusty bobble cap. Inserting your own drum-roll here, the lucky pickees are:

Congratulations, lovely commenters! If you want to drop me an email with your contact info via the link on this page, I’ll get the cuff sent off to Anne, and Little Yellow to Sarah. 

Thanks so much to everyone else who entered and left such kind comments. There were also a couple of people who asked about the buttons on my yellow screensaver. You can find the set here (they make up part of a vintage kit from Kitschy Digitals) and, if you look closely, you’ll see they’re the same set used on the yellow glove, necklace and journal projects in the original yellow post. I’m planning to post a customise-your-desktop tutorial over on my blog in the next day or two, for anyone who’s not sure how it works (I’m no techno-genius, so it’ll be a pretty straightforward affair). The yellow buttons, although super-cute, aren’t a pre-requisite – you can use clip-art or photographic images, as well as your favourite digital scrapbooking supplies (even the free ones!).

So, I think that’s just about it from our little flurry of colour-themed excitement. Regularly scheduled Copy+Pasting will resume shortly. Although, no post being complete without at least one pretty picture, I think there’s maybe space for one, last yellow hurrah, courtesy of some Flickr favourites.

OK ...you win.

Good morning. It's only 08.45 and yet I've been up over an hour and I've managed to write all the names of people who left comments on my giveaway post on scraps of paper and select six names at random and distribute the prizes accordingly!! Either this was a good start to what will be a very productive day .... or else I've peaked early and burnt myself out already. We'll see .....

In the meantime, here's how the fickle finger of fate decided things:
Clair[at]ObstinatePursuit: yellow brooch
Carmen: black brooch
Lisa: white brooch
polkadotsoup: tag book
digital misfit: tag book
Arianna: tag book

Please send your addresses to either:
thecopyandpasteproject[at]googlegroups.com this doesn't seem to be working - so please use - nabview[@]ntlworld.com OR
if you prefer, and are a Flickr member, you can send me a Flickr mail via my 'nabview' account.

Then sit back and await your delivery.

I wish I had something for all of you as I hate leaving people out [I guess that's what years of being chosen last at school does for you!!]. The least I can do to thank you all for playing along is to point you toward another giveaway on Gauche Alchemy. This time it's a blue kit they're offering.

.....mmmm blue .....I like blue. My latest most favourite of favourite dresses is this one:

I really love it. The colour is painful in it's loveliness, it's pure silk yet was a £25.00 bargain: it's as near to perfect as a dress can get! Plus, I almost made it my response to Kirsty's 'Six Impossible Things' prompt as, when I'm wearing it, I feel so very, very much like Alice Through the Looking Glass.

Anyway...I'll love you and leave you ... .I think I can feel a blue based project coming on .....

The King of Infinite Coincidences!

Do you remember our first project which was based upon a quotation from Shakespeare? If not, you can read it again here.

Below is the project I made in response to Hamlet's line "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space":

Now here's the weird coincidental element ..... we were in Borders bookshop yesterday afternoon and, while I was crouched on the floor of the Philosophy section flicking through a book on paradoxes ['cos that's the kinda girl I am] my other half drew my attention to this:

I swear that I had not seen this book cover when I made my project.

How incredibly weird is that? To be so very, very similar .... to have used the same head shape ... pointing in the same direction even ... with practically the same quotation?

A few weeks ago, on Radio 4, I heard a mention of phenomena such as this, where two people spontaneously and simultaneously produce similar inventions, works of art, pieces of music etc. I was really interested in the idea at the time ... and now I think I need to investigate it further!