And breathe........

Phew, thank goodness for half term!  It's been a really busy week, but great fun.  We had Arts Week at school this week and we have packed in such a lot of fabulous activities.  The highlight of the week for me though was on Friday when we took the class to the library to see an exhibition by a local artist by the name of Fran Rogers who's gorgeous artwork absolutely blew me away.  Fran does the most gorgeous, gorgeous maps of local villages and lanes and I came away from there so full of inspiration.  She runs a class on Thursday afternoons apparently, which is fab because that's my afternoon off!!!  However, I've had to leave my number with her as she's fully booked at present! Argh!!  What she has done though is inspired me to get my pencil out again and draw, and, with the help of my Linda Ravenscroft "How to Draw Fairies" book I created this little beauty.  If you would like a copy of this image then please leave a comment and I will draw a couple of names next week!

Over at Keep it Simple this week our theme is Take a Bow (bow rhymes with No! LOL!) and here is my offering.  It's another of my Friendly Plastic scraps creations, moulded together using the lacework technique and cut to make the bauble shape.  The top of the bauble was just cut to shape and warmed to stick to the bauble.



Well that's my lot for now.  I have a number of gorgeous new images from Teri's Delicious Doodles to play with this week and I intend to make the most of my week off using her fab creations.  

Thanks for stopping by and hope you have a great Sunday!

Friendly Plastic - A New Addiction

Oooh, it's a frosty one this morning - I got up to find my car completely white today, and funnily enough I had a dream last night that it was snowing!!  It wasn't a complete whiteout, just an early snowfall, IYKWIM?

Many, many years ago I bought a couple of sticks of Friendly Plastic and I did something stupid with them.  I used to have a compartmentalised box full of embellishments and the sticks of FP had been stored inside this box and I left it in the conservatory.  When I came to use them.........  well, I'm sure I don't need to spell it out!  Needless to say I never used FP again and all my embellies were completely ruined!!!  However, Liz Welch's many appearances on C&C recently has whetted my appetite once more and I ventured out and bought some more sticks of FP and I just cannot stop playing with it!  It's incredibly addictive stuff.  I'm sure there's a million things that can be done with this stuff and I can't wait to explore the possibilities, but these are my first pieces that I want to share.

This is my card for this week's Keep it Simple challenge.  I think I took the 'Simple' aspect a little too literally because having already created my charm, the card took me about 3 minutes to assemble - but I love all that white space!!!

The charm is a chipboard diecut coated with gold UTEE and filled with FP.  It's so dinky, but it was great fun to make.

My earlier pieces weren't exactly a raging success so I kept all the pieces and chopped them up into tiny fragments and I made this bangle using Liz's lacework technique:

Then I made this necklace

and this is my favourite piece

 

I do have one or two other pieces that I wanted to share but to be honest, with this new blogger format, I lose the will to live!  For some reason it's only allowing me to upload one pic at a time and I have to close down in between each one in order to add another photo!  Ridiculous!

Anyway, I hope you like the pieces.  Have a great week and roll on Friday - it's half term!! YAY!!!

Thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Busy Weekend

Hi all, thanks for stopping by.  Very quick post again from me as I have a very busy day ahead.  Only domestic stuff, but among that is WAY too much ironing so I need to save as much time as poss.  Here are my projects for this week.

Over at Delicious Doodles, Teri has released a brand new gorgeous Jewelled Fairy image this weekend, and this is how I used her in one of my projects.  Remember the other Mushroom House project I said I'd begun a while back?  Well this is it completed - it has sat around waiting for her to be launched I think!

this is the front of the card

open up to reveal a secret door

and here is the jewelled fairy in her secret garden.

Over at Tag, You're It! the theme for this week is The Jewellery Quarter.  Here is my tag inspired by this project that I saw on Faye's blog last week!  Thanks for the inspiration Faye!  As soon as I saw it I went off to google a leather-look technique and I found a brilliant one here  and here is my version



here's a close up of that 'leather'

Oooh, I could easily get addicted to this technique - it was such fun!

Finally, over at Keep it Simple this week our theme is Seeing Stars and this is my VERY simple card that I made for my dt sample:



Thanks so much for stopping by.  Hope you have a great week! :o) xx

Tag's for October Swap

Just a quickie here to let you know that over at Tag, You're It! our theme for the October Swap is Feeling Fruity and I'm hosting that swap.  The idea is that you make 3 tags based on the theme, send them into me by 25th October at the latest, along with a SAE and I will mix it all up and send you back 3 tags from the other players.  It's great fun and it's always lovely to receive another blogger's beautiful art through the mail, and there's always the surprise element of not know who's you're going to get!.

My tags were made using a SU set and a tapestry twig stamp along the bottom edge - very, very simple!  A bit of glitter and bling here and there and voila!  I was really pleased with them, and I hope whoever receives them will be just as chuffed!

Thanks for stopping by!  :o) xx

Happy Sunday!

Oh boy, it's grim out there today!!  Autumn is definitely upon us.  There is a very soggy and unnattractive carpet of dead leaves all over my driveway but I'm afraid it's way too wet out there to go and gather them up at the moment.  Will this rain ever stop!!

However, Autumn is definitely my most favourite season of them all - each of the seasons has it's own virtues and I love all of them for their own, but Autumn is somehow more special.  It has a magic about it with it's richness of colours and spicy, comforting smells, the crunching of leaves and snapping of twigs and the crackling of bonfires;   I carry nostalgic and romantic memories of Autumn in my childhood around with me all year long and it feels like a big warm hug any time of year.  This is the time of year that I go mad with home-made soups and crusty bread, and I love to make apple charlotte which is something that just doesn't seem to work at any other time of year!

Here are some of my creations for this week. First of all I wanted to show this card which was made using one of Teri's Delicious Doodles - as soon as I saw the image I just swooned!  I LOVE The Green Man, and I bought the image immediately and yesterday I printed out another one and made this card with it.

Check out that quote - isn't is just the most gorgeous quote!!  I found it on the web yesterday and thought it was perfect for this card.

Next up is a Christmas card I made, again using one of Teri's gorgeous images (by the way, they're all available for you to own too!!!!)

Awwww.......  as a Westie 'mum' I couldn't resist this gorgeous little fellow!  But if you're not a Westie person, Teri has lots of alternative cuties in her Christmas Stockings - go see!!

Finally, I'm showing my Keep it Simple offering for this week where the theme is Thank You.  And nothing could be more simple than this card:

The whole thing was made using my Scrapbook Artist kit with a digi scrap kit that I bought from The Creative Cottage - these kits are beautiful and very easy to use.  I printed out two copies and cut out the butterfly on the second image to use as decoupage giving the card a little dimension.

That's my lot for now.  Hope to be back soon!  In the meantime, thank you for stopping by and have a great week ahead! :o) xxx

Oh Happy Day!

I have been so excited about making this announcement - I have been chosen to be on Teri's fab creative team over at Delicious Doodles and I am delirious about it!  I have always been a big fan of Teri's art ever since she started showing them off on her blog and her images are just so wonderful to work with!  I have a fab (cheap!) Epson printer and the ink is (thankfully) compatible with Promarkers and Copics!

So, just to start the ball rolling here's a card that I made recently using one of Teri's images:

Oh boy, this was such fun!  I made the dp using Digital Scrapbook Artist 2 and the kits that came with an additional CD-Rom called Daisy Trail.  I took a basic background and added some 'embroidery' and  'crackle' to it then added the image as a photo.  Once it was in position I used the transparency tool to take the image down so that the crackles would show through the skull.  A few digi diamonds and sparkles later, I printed it out and coloured the rose and added highlights using promarkers.  The text was added using the fonts on the kit and enhanced using their text effects feature!   Love it!!

So, why not go over and see what my other fab teamies have created - I tell you, there is some amazing talent among these guys, and then get yourself over to Delicious Doodles shop and check out Teri's amazing images for yourself - they're gorgeous!!!

Thanks for stopping by! :o) xx