Sweet Pea Stampers, Under the Sea

Ow, I'm in agony! I don't know what on earth I've done but I woke up this morning with such a bad back. I did do a spot of gardening yesterday but nowhere near enough to give me such pain today! :o( I normally have quite a high pain threshold but this has really worn me down today so I think a nice warm bath and early bed tonight might (hopefully!!) help.

Anyway it's Monday so it must be Sweet Pea Stampers day and this week our theme was "Under the Sea" and I was so happy about that because I got to use this gorgeous mermaid on a card. Isn't she just divine? The image was painted with distress inks and the paper is from my good ol' trusty "Once Upon a Time" pad by DCWV. I don't know how long I've had these papers for but they keep coming out again and again and I still love them as much as I did when I first saw them.

Right then, I've just had some new stamps delivered and they are screaming "Come and play with me.....!!!" so I must obey!

Thank you for stopping by and I hope to see many of your own gorgeous creations linked to the Sweet Pea Stampers blog! Have a good day! :o) xx

Sunday Flourish

Happy Sunday bloggers! It's been a looooong week! My eldest son is due to take his SATS in a couple of weeks and he was cheering his little head off last week when he heard on the news that some headteachers were boycotting the KS2 tests. However, he came home with such a grumpy face on Monday when he learned that his school are NOT among those who will be boycotting them! LOL!!! Not sure why I find it amusing though - it's a bit of a headache for me because I work in a Y2 class who are preparing for the KS1 SATS and I come home and help my eldest with his revision too! Wake me up when May is over!!!!

Back to business..... over at Tag, You're It! this week the theme is "With a Flourish" Basically we are just adding a flourish of some kind or other on our tags this week. It was a quiet week last week but I hope we get more players this week because we so love seeing other people's work and get such a lot of inspiration and drive from them and it helps us come up with new themes. So if you are someone reading this post, please pop over to TYI and make a tag for us to ogle - we do love to see them!

Well that's my lot for today - my plans to do some gardening may have to go on the back burner because the weather lady got it completely wrong - huh! there's a first eh? I had planned to get the barbie out this afternoon after I'd finished painting my fence and planting some stuff but I came down to cold and rain this morning. I'm not complaining because my little pond is almost bone dry!

If you're here, I would like to thank you for stopping by and wish you a great week ahead! :o) xx

Spring is in the air!

Doesn't it make you feel soooooo good when Spring is here? My forget-me-nots have begun to blossom and I know from past experience that by the end of this week I will have a beautiful blue carpet across my front garden and I'm so looking forward to it!

Yesterday we got back from a fabulous holiday in Woolacombe - the weather has been so perfect and I feel completely chilled! Definitely not in the mood to return to work tomorrow :o(

Anyway as I've been away I haven't been able to post my tags from last weeks Tag You're It! and Sweet Pea Stampers themes on my blog, so here they are:

This is my Tag You're It! tag - the theme was "I can see clearly now" and the idea was to use acetate on your tag. Now, I cannot lie, I really struggle with acetate. I never seem to manage to do anything useful with it, but I was really pleased with this tag.

By sheer coincidence, the theme on Sweet Pea Stampers was also to use acetate on your project, so as I had the bit between my teeth, I made a second tag:

I have used this week's Tag, You're It! theme, as the perfect excuse to re-open my Magnolia's Only blog because I have re-discovered my love of the stamps and have begun to use them a lot more again lately, largely due to the fantastic inspiration from some of those lovely Magnolia DT members and bloggers out there.

Well that's my lot for the moment - I have a stack of stuff to blog but I won't bore you with it all in one go! LOL!! Have a great week and I hope you're enjoying the sun! Thanks so much for stopping by, and if you would like to stop by my Magnolias Only blog, I'd really appreciate that too! :o) xx

Tuesday Taggers - Make a Tag

Happy Wednesday! I don't half love end of term holidays. I had a mad moment this morning and picked up my Planning Folder for next term, looked at it for about 3.2 seconds and put it away again! At some point during this holiday I really do need to do some serious planning but to be honest, I'm loving having all this free time to paint and stickle!!! LOL! I joined it with Tuesday Taggers this week because they're having a Tag theme - anything you like as long as it's a tag. Well you don't have to ask me twice, I love tags and having no particular theme to work to was quite therapeutic. It did take a couple of attempts though - sometimes an idea in my head just doesn't translate onto paper, and after a bit of playing around, I came up with this:

The stamps are a U-Mount set that I bought from The Treasury at Kidderminster which is a fabulous little Aladdin's Cave which I discovered by accident the week before Christmas when my hubby went to wish his pal, the owner of the Launderette next door to The Treasury, Greetings of the Season. I sat outside in the car for half an hour wishing he'd hurry up and wondering what on earth they could be talking about. Little did I know we had parked right in front of this little, but fabulously stocked craft shop! Half a wasted hour!!!! LOL! I've been back many times since then though! ;o)

Thanks so much for passing by and have a good week! :o) xx

Slow down....

Bloomin heck, Monday's nearly over already! Last Thursday I was sooooooo looking forward to 2 weeks of nothingness, but I haven't stopped for two minutes yet and it's already Monday! Never mind, I've had some fun - I've managed to get a few tags made in advance and a couple of cards. First up is a card I made for this week's Just Magnolia challenge - the theme is to make a card with more than one fold, and this is my offering

Gatefold Inside

I did actually make a card for last week's sketch challenge too - it was the first time I'd taken part in these challenges, but sadly I didn't get round to photographing it in time but what the heck, I'll show it anyway!! :o)

Over at Sweet Pea Stampers this week our theme is "Fairies live at the bottom of the garden" and I made this little box to show off my painted image.

close up

I've decided I'm going to have to take a crash course in photography - I'm really not impressed at how my photo's are coming out these days but I don't get what it is I'm doing wrong!

Well that's my lot for today - I hope you're all having a good holiday and if you're feeling a bit at a loose end, why not get yourself over to Sweet Pea Stampers or Tag, You're It! and have a bash at one of these fabulous themes :o)

Thank You for stopping by! :o) xx

Happy Easter!!!

I hope you're not too stuffed with chocolate, and despite this bloomin' awful miserable weather, I hope you can manage to get out somewhere nice and relax. I have had National Trust membership for over 20 years now and normally I would be packing a picnic today and heading off somewhere, but I can tell by just looking at the sky above my garden, that today's picnic will remain tucked up in the fridge! :o(

Now, I told you I had something exciting for you today, didn't I? Well, after a lot of discussion and planning, my wonderful friend Sam and I have decided that we wanted to re-launch the first blog we ever shared together, Tag, You're It! and today we are as excited as we were two years ago to the day when we first introduced it to Blogland! There had been so many changes since we first started the blog that we decided the fairest thing to do was to give it a complete Spring Clean and start anew with a whole new bunch of themes and samples to inspire. We also have two of our lovely friends, Pascale and Linda join us in making samples and we hope that many of our old friends will join us with our weekly themes.

To kick us off we have chosen for our theme "On A Bough" and here is my offering on that theme.

So if you find yourself at a bit of a loose end on Sundays, why not pick up our theme and make yourself a tag - you just never know when you're going to need one!! ;o)

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great Easter week! :o) xx