Tag, Free Papers and a FAB award!

Friday already?? This week has just flown by, and yet so much has happened I can't remember the details! However, I have had some chance to play with my stash this week - not a lot I grant you, but what little time I did have, Oh Boy, was it fun!! I was sent these papers by Nat of Craft Buyer to give away on the Tag Challenge blog. The papers are called Allsorts and they are sooooooo luxurious. They are fabulous designs but the quality is just superb - they have a satin finish and are gorgeous to work with. Here is the sample tag I made - probably the quickest and simplest tag I've ever done. The papers are so gorgeous that I decided to let them do all the work for me!

If you fancy winning a pack of 36 of these 6"x6" papers, pop over to the challenge blog, make an untraditional shaped tag, link it to the blog and your name will go into the pot to be drawn at random, and the winners (for there are two of them!!!) will be announced next Friday! And don't worry if you're not one of the winners because very soon there will be another two packs of the equally gorgeous Christmas papers to give away, but that's another challenge ;o) LOL!!

I also have an enormous cry of gratitude to my lovely friend Dawn who has sent me THE most amazing award. This is the Wylde Women Award (isn't it just gorgeous!!!)

and here is what it's all about:

1. You can give it to one or one hundred or any number in between - it's up to you. Make sure you link to their site in your post.2. Link back to this blogsite (www.tammyvitale.com//) so Tammy can go visit all these wonderful women.and remember the Purpose of the Award: To send love and acknowledgment to women who brighten your day, teach you new things and live their lives fully with generosity and joy.

So I decided that I'm going to use this award to send to all those lovely ladies that I used to be in regular contact with before I had to go out to work for a living!! One of the best things about working from home was that I was able to keep in touch more often. These are some of the ladies that I miss so much since my home job ended:

Elaine

Carla

Audrey

Deb

And there must be hundreds more, but blogger seems to be playing up today and it's already taken me 2 hours to prepare this much!!!! ARGH!

Hope you're all set for a fab weekend - I know I am!!! Thanks for popping by! :o) xx

Foiled again!

A real quick post from me today as I'm still mopping up the tears from this morning's Leaver's Assembly!!! WAAAH!!!! I was doing jus' fine till the children stood up and sang "Somewhere over the rainbow" and it just kicked in and the tears came rollin' down the cheeks, and the more you try to stop, the worse it becomes. Of course it didn't help having my son sat in front of me rolling his eyes because I'd probably embarrassed the heck out of him, but Hey, that's what being a mum's all about isn't it? If not, I've been getting it soooo wrong all these years! Anyway, here's my creative offering for the day - it's my tag for the Tag, You're It! challenge this week, the theme being Fairies. I used a set of the new Dovecraft fantasy stamps, and my favourite current 'ism' - hot foils - I can't stop foiling everything - I love it!! If you fancy a chance of winning a set of your own fairy stamps, just like the ones I used here, get over to the blog, play along with the theme and you're name will go into a hat to be drawn next week and the winner announced on Friday! Good luck everyone, and thanks for popping by! ;o)

Edited just for Penny: Here's the best close-up I could get that shows the foiling - it's quite tricky to photograph this stuff and show it off at it's best:

Y.ou K.now Y.ou R.ock!

This is a brand spanking new challenge blog which has been set up by Deb and Julie called Y.ou K.now Y.ou R.ock - check out the site and see for yourselves the story behind their venture, and take part in the challenge; "Take a look at the CD in your player. Check out the art on the cover and be inspired in some way! We're not going to be literal here. Just take an element that you like and use it in a card!"



So here's my interpretation. The album which is one of my most favourite's ever is Fleetwood Mac's The Dance (honest, I do listen to other stuff sometimes!! LOL!)

and here's the card:

Hmmmm..... seeing them side-by-side like this you're probably thinking "and...????" LOL!! Well, I don't do deep and cryptic - what you see it what you get - but I will explain my interpretation. I wanted to use only Pink Black and White as they're the colours that stand out most on the album sleeve. OK, it's not quite the same shade of pink but I can't afford a Set Stylist like they can so I had to make do with the closest I could find. The stamp, by Penny Black, is perfect for anything with a music theme but especially so here because of the piano keys. I didn't have any of Stevie's black lace so I improvised and used white. The quote "It's never too late to be what you might have been" couldn't have been more apt for this album as it was one of the last times the band ever performed together as a whole. I always think white pearls look classy, and they were added to pick out the classiness of this sleeve. Around the edge of the cello/violin??? I have added a touch of gold foil - despite their very checkered past I still think that the Mac's have an air of Regality (is that a real word??) about them, and that's represented by the gold foil. The broken heart is symbolic of the broken relationships within the band, both personal and professional. The actual album sleeve has an ethereal look about it which I recreated (ROFL!!!) using a bit of digi masking. So there you go, something I threw together without much thought!! LOL!!

Brilliant challenge girls - I cannot WAIT for the next one!! Thanks for looking in! ;o)

Looooong post alert!!

Grab yourself a coffee, I've not blogged for 2 weeks and I've got sooooo much to tell!

Coor, this has been a week of tears and cheers, and I have experienced more than one Proud Mum moment this week! To begin with Monday was Common Transfer Day and my eldest son went to visit his new school....sniff!!! :o( I was gutted when he came home (smiling and very happy, I might add!) and reported that ALL his pals are in one class, and he's in another. I went off in a rage but my boy proved that he has a greater degree of maturity than his mother and told me not to stress saying that he's happy and excited at the prospect of making new pals!! Tut!! Then yesterday I could have burst with pride when he was picked for the local schools bell-boating regatta. Lord it rained... and rained and rained and rained. Luckily, across the canal was an idyllic little pub and my friend and I waited for an opportune moment to leg it and watch and cheer the races from the balcony in very civilised fashion complete with a glass of bubbly - coka cola in this case!!! LOL!! And the crowing glory was that our school's Team A and Team B were the two finalists, and my boy's team won!!! HURRAH!!! So proud!

Then just as I was settling down to a cup of coffee last night, my youngest announced that I had to read his report! In fact they had both brought their end-of-year reports home and I am still glowing with pride! Both of them brought home the kind of report that I know my mum would have loved to have read with my name on the front - sadly I never gave her the opportunity to feel the kind of pride that my boys have given me! I seem to recall the words "easily distracted" being overused on my reports, and one teacher even reported "If Anne showed as much interest in her school activities as she does in her outside school activities, she would produce better results!" Oops!! :o)

I have been playing a lot with my stash this week too. Here is my tag for this week's Tag, You're It! challenge - the theme this week is our monthly colour theme and I chose Red, Brown and Cream - don't ask why, I've never used these colours together before but I found a piece of AG paper in just those colours and thought "Hmmmm..."

Last week we offered to send tag kits to 2 people as part of a challenge - we had so much interest and enthusiasm for this that we decided to send out 4 kits instead. Now I can't reveal anything about those kits just yet, but I did make these tags as Thank You's to the ladies whose names we pulled from the hat:

Then midweek I did manage to get around one or two of my favourite blogs and I was really excited to discover that the lovely and totally 'kewel' Deb has nominated me for a Brilliant Weblog award which REALLY cheered me up as it came at the 'tears' time, and was the start of the 'cheers' part of my week!!! So massive Thank You's to Deb and get over there and check out her blog - she does some fantabulous stuff and makes things in 15 minutes!!! Can you believe that!!! It would take me longer than that to find the stuff!!!! LOL!! And now, as part of the deal, I have to pass it on to 7 bloggers whose fabby blogs excite and inspire me so I nominate:

Sam

Carol

Penny

Sarah

Rosie

Dan

Silvia

Phew, that was soooo difficult picking just 7 - I could have multiplied that by 10 at least because there are so many wonderful blogs out there so deserving of this award.

Finally, my week is rounded off with the news that on Wednesday I completed my NVQ and I am a fully qualified Teaching Assistant - I just need a job that will allow me to put it into practise now!

So, if you managed to stick with me this long, go grab yourself a sweetie from the tin and big Well Done to you!! Hopefully I will get more blogging time after next week as the long hot summer (yeah, right! LOL!!) holidays begin!!

Thanks for popping by! ;o) xx