Our First Blog Hop!

Happy Sunday peeps! That can only mean one thing - a brand new challenge over at Winter Wonderland, and if you've found yourself here, you've probably been sent to me by my gorgeous buddy Pascale. We have a a fab theme of Red and White Candy Stripes this week, and some very generous sponsors. One of my most favourite digi artists, Christine from The Sketching Stamper has very generously offered 4 of her amazing digi images ton one lucky player as a prize - trust me, they are outstanding!

And Nikki from Bunny Zoes has very kindly donated this gorgeous stamp

some charms

and these gorgeous glittery pearls, again to one lucky player

and I'm feeling generous, I have TWO of these gorgeous Rubber Stampede card and tag making sets to give away, so I shall be selecting two winners from those who leave feedback on my blog this week.

To qualify for any of the prizes on offer on the DT Blogs and for the prizes on offer from our sponsors, you have to leave a comment for each Dt member on their Candy Cane Post, and Join the Challenge this week. Very importantly though, your card or project can ONLY be for this challenge - combining with other blog challenges will disqualify you from the chance of winning a prize. You don't have to use Candy Canes but a theme of Red and White is a must :O) We hope you decide to join in with the fun!!!

Here is a card that I made using one of Christine's fabulous images - if you're lucky enough, you too could be the proud owner of this. I can tell you, there was something very therapeutic about making this very simple card and every time I look at it, it reminds me of a Victorian Fairground stall!

I'd like to thank you for stopping by here but now I'm going to send you over to my lovely and very talented friend Teri who's waiting by her blog to show you her stunning creations - prepare to feast your eyes.........

Have fun hopping around our blogs, and if you can, please join in - it would be really lovely to see lots of our old friends joining in again, and to welcome new friends and players! :o) xx

I Love Digi!

Bless her, lovely Sue pointed me in the direction of a new Digi Challenge Blog which is about to start up on 18th February called I Love Digi! Well, I do love digi, and as Elaine is looking to form a team I am offering a couple of my samples as my submission. I am really lucky to have found a disgustingly inexpensive printer which gives me superb quality prints, and thankfully, the ink works fabulously with my current favourite colouring medium - Promarkers and Copics! So I have been 'doing digi' for a while now (loads of samples on my blog!) and I have created these two beauties as my offering for the DT Call. My first offering is this gorgeous, gorgeous "Wings of Hope" carousel horse (link in my sidebar) which I coloured with Promarkers and have mounted onto Websters Paris Collection papers, which coincidentally are also digi!

My second offering uses a digi image of my own. As I have been using Imagepac for a couple of years now, I have a vast collection of my own digi images which I've only ever used for personal use, partly because I like to make digi images of my children to use in my projects and partly because they're not the 'cute' or 'girly' images that are so widely available. This is an image I made of my youngest son and I made him a calendar for his room using his image and yet more of the Websters Paris Collection papers - aren't they just gorgeous!

So there are my DT Call submission pieces. I hope you like them, and I hope that they will be enough to qualify me for a place on the team - if not, I'm available for others if you're looking!! ;o) ;o)

Thanks for passing by and if you would be kind enough to leave me some feedback it might help my cause! :oD xx

Spring is in the air!

Hi bloggers and fellow crafters! Well I don't know about you but I have most definitely got a spring in my step this morning! I was woken up about 5am by the most beautiful bird song, and although there's a nip in the air, the smell of spring is very evident to me! Even my dog sat outside on her perch with her nose in the air this morning which is a true indication that spring is just around the corner! LOL!!

You may have noticed on my sidebar that I have commited myself to taking part in the Race for Life 2010. My event is on 23rd May this year and even if I have to do the whole 5K on my hands and knees I will complete it! So if you feel that this is a worthwhile cause and you would like to contribute to it, I would very much welcome any offering you would be prepared to give - and I daresay so will thousands of others.

So, on with this week's offerings. This week over at Winter Wonderland, the lovely Pascale has designed her very first sketch for us to use and here is a tag I created using her sketch as my inspiration:

Make a date in your diary too for next week's theme over at Winter Wonderland because we're about to embark on our first Blog Hop and there are lots of goodies to be given away by our very gorgeous and talented team and other sponsors - it promises to be great fun!! So put a big ring around 31st January and join in the fun!

I've been a busy bod this week. Towards the end of last year my new bedroom was completed and I've got a lovely big space on my wall that is crying out for some black and white photo's, so I began collecting black frames to make a montage, and I have spent lots of time this week converting family photo's into black and white. During the process I came across a photo of my gorgeous hubby holding his bear. As soon as I saw it I was so surprised at how alike he and my youngest son are. Everybody insists that my youngest and I are the image of each other but I've never seen that - I see the opposite of everyone else. The same goes for my eldest son - everyone remarks at how like my hubby he is, but I only see my side of the family in him. He does have the same sense of humour as his dad though!!!!! Anyway, I found this photo of my hubby and remembered a similar one that I'd taken of my youngest at about the same age. These photo's were taken about 38 years apart and I really wanted to have them together, so I created this scrapbook page. Now I've got the bug again! I'm off to do some more scrapping when I've finished this!

Well I hope you're all having a good weekend and life is treating you kindly! Thanks for stopping by here and have a good week ahead! :o) xx

Hello? Where did December go?

It's me!!! I'm back! Blimey, it's been so long since I last blogged, I've almost forgotten what to do! We had huge computer problems again before Christmas and it just causes so much anxiety. Thankfully our fabby PC-mad friend came to the rescue again and all was well with the world. So much has happened since I last blogged and there have been soooo many giggles along the way. Mainly with the Christmas Production I was involved with. It took over my whole life! If I wasn't pushing kids onto the stage, I was dragging them off, shouting their lines out to them, making props and basically trying to keep myself from drowning in a sea of madness!! LOL!! And then there was Christmas itself - FABULOUS!! What a wonderful time we all had. And then rapture.... Snow!!! Days and days and LOTS of snow! I was in seventh heaven!

But getting back to blogland. This week at Winter Wonderland we are delighted to welcome two new team players on board - Sue and Danielle have agreed to join us to help create inspirational samples to keep the Christmas Spirit alive throughout 2010. I can't speak for anyone else, but somehow Christmas seemed more special to me this year - I certainly hadn't gotten bored with it despite making a Christmas creation most weeks last year.

We have a colour combo theme at Winter wonderland this week - Burgundy and Teal, and here is my creation

Well that's my lot for today - don't want to overdo it, do we!! LOL! If anyone still passes this way, Thank You, I appreciate it! Have a great Sunday all! :o) xx

Christmas is coming...

Argh!! Too quick!! I have had so much fun over the last few months making Christmas Cards and decorations, but it's almost time to get them all out and sent and it still feels like it suddenly jumped up from nowhere!! Mind you. I'm better prepared for it this year than I have been in the past!

Our theme at Winter Wonderland this week is to stamp a candle, or make a candle holder. Regulars will know that all our themes are completely open to interpretation - after all, it's YOUR Christmas, not ours. We only want to provide inspiration and motivation. And so I was delighted to come across a pot of candle gel that I'd bought from Lidl a couple of years ago and never did anything with. But I have now. I melted the gel and whipped it like mad to try and create bubbles in there, even though the instructions said "Pour carefully to prevent bubbles" - there still weren't enough for me though! So while it was still warm I sprinkled some chunky glitter and glitter stars onto it. Some of them sunk but It didn't matter because enough stayed on top to get the effect I was hoping for. And oh boy, you should smell it!! I poured some "Sugar and Spice" refresher oil into it and it smells good enough to eat. However, when I came to decorate it, I was wishing I'd used a different jar - I didn't achieve quite the look I had in my head, but I can't do anything about it so I have to love it as it is!! And in a week or so, I will add a match to it and pray it still smells as good as it does right now!

Thanks for stopping by, and hope you have a good week! :o) xx

Vintage Promarkers

Hi bloggers! This is a midweek special from me - I saw the Promarkers challenge this week and was immediately fired up! I haven't done Vintage for such a long time, and to my recollection, I've never tried to do vintage with a 'cute' stamp, but it really whet my appetite, and this is what I came up with. The colour choice this week is free and I stuck to the Browns using mainly Sandstone, Cocoa, plus various flesh tones.

Thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Loadsacardz!!!

Phew, it's been a busy ol' week, very tense and quite emotional at times, and I thank God that I am so blessed to have my three wonderful guys to come home to at the end of the day! But it's another week gone now and another one closer to Christmas OMG, how close?? Just about 33 days, I believe, and I received my first Christmas card on Thursday! But you're going to have to wait a couple more weeks before I can show it off because it was from Vicki, one of the lovely guests we have helping us over at Winter Wonderland. The theme over there this week is to make something without using any Christmas images or Christmas dbg papers!! That was a challenge, but one I thoroughly enjoyed, and these are what I came up with:

Both of these were so incredibly simple. The wreath was made by cutting out a chipboard circle and then cutting out an inner ring then sticking the leaves on. It's so basic and simple that I shan't embarrass myself or insult you by giving a step-by-step guide! The second card was simply a computer generated text with a swirly stamp in the corner, a touch of bling and a splodge of glitter, Hey Presto, CAS!!!

Next up is this week's Promarkers challenge. I haven't managed to play for weeks due to other stuff taking over my life, but I was determined to play this week and Oh my, what a challenge - the colours were Marsh Green and Burnt Umber. Well, they're not top of my colour combo fav's but I gave it a shot, and Hey, isn't that what a challenge is all about?

And finally for now it was my lovely friend Penny's birthday this week so I made her this Easel card. I bought the stamp a loooooong time ago when Penny first moved to the coast and never got round to using it, but I finally managed to do something with it this week and here's the result. I figured that as it was such a busy image and the bg paper is a bit, well, stripey, I didn't need to put a lot of 'extras' on it and decided to keep it 'un-fussy'!

Well that's my lot for now. I hope everyone is keeping safe and warm and these awful storms aren't giving you too much bother. Thanks for stopping by, I hope you leave with a smile on your face and maybe a little inspired! :o) xx