Anne's Corner

Frosty Sunday

2012-01-29T02:19:00.000-08:00

Brrr.... Happy Sunday all, and a bloomin' chilly one it is too!! Keeping it short today as I have a ton of domestic chores to plough through if I'm to buy myself any more crafting time later.

Sugar Hollow Creek's (LOVE this blog!) theme for this week is Blue, Brown and Cream so here's my offering:

The text is a rub-on from a really old DCWV book that I found. It's not exactly a Valentines card but hubby may find himself opening this in a couple of weeks time! LOL!!

Have a great Sunday all, and fingers crossed for lots of lovely snow! Thanks for stopping by :o) xx

A card - Woohoo!!!

2012-01-27T09:09:00.000-08:00

Apart from the batch of very quick and simple cards I made for Christmas, I haven't made a card for absolutely AGES, and last night I remembered why!!! I have been trawling the net for inspirational challenge blogs so that I can pick up some mojo and get back into the swing of things. I decided that I wanted to have a bash at The Shabby Tea Room's challenge this week where the theme is Sparkly and Bright. Ooh, lovely and blingy - they also have the most gorgeous inspiration photo

and stipulate you use the colours White or Cream, Silver and a splash of pink. Happy to oblige - I may have been a little heavy-handed on the splash of pink but I've definitely used all the ingredients requested. I'm also including it in the Sugar Creek Hollow challenge this week where the theme is Go Girly. They want you to make a pretty and feminine card which uses a vintage image. So here is my card:

Now, I do have some dignity which is why I have decided not to show you a photo of my dining table after this one card was completed!! THAT'S what's been putting me off getting into cardmaking again. Sheesh! Y'all must know what I mean? However, it's all out again now - stuff everywhere, so now I am going off to find another challenge because I can feel my mojo rising again..... Bring it on!

Thanks for visiting me, and if you've left me feedback {{{{{HUG}}}}} and MWAH! xx

Allsorts Challenge - Needles and Pins

2012-01-24T09:20:00.000-08:00

Happy Tuesday peeps! Today I have decided to join in with this week's Allsorts Challenge theme which is Needles and Pins. In my quest to improve my sewing techniques I have made this adorable little sewing kit which I love lots.

I have made quite a few of these now, but this was my first effort - I'm pleased to say that they DID get better! LOL!!

There have been a couple of others but they are currently sitting (un-photographed!) in friend's handbags as they were given out as gifts. The dressform kit is going into my own handbag but the other two will be joining a few of my other projects on Etsy, just as soon as I get around to sorting that out!!! Minefield! Each of my kits comes with needles, pins, buttons and thread - enough to get you by in an emergency!!!

Hope you like them. Thank you so much for passing by :o) xx

Tando Challenge - Ice White

2012-01-03T02:13:00.000-08:00

Day 3, 2012, and my Resolution to keep my blog active is going strong! LOL!! My first blog challenge of 2012 is over at Tando Creative Challenge where the theme is Ice White - ooooh, perfect for a post-Christmas theme. And here is my pic before I go into a long explanation:

I took my inspiration from the photograph for the theme. I know Christmas is over but I'm actually feeling like I want to start getting ready for next Christmas!! In the summer I bought myself Tone Finnangar's Sew Pretty Christmas Homestyle because I just fell madly in love with the projects she makes. One of those projects is the most adorable vintage-style boots and ice skates. Well, not being a stitcher I thought I would be content to just gaze and "Oooh......Aaaaah..." my way through the book, but I wasn't! I dug my sewing machine out and had a go at a couple, then I did a couple more, until eventually lots of my friends found they had one in their Christmas stocking!! Then yesterday I came across the Tando blog and found their Ice White challenge so I decided to make this for the theme. It's the first Ice Skate I've made and I've discovered I'm going to need a touch more patience if I am to make more! LOL!!

Hope you like it! Thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Happy New Year!

2012-01-02T09:05:00.000-08:00

{{{{{{{sound of tumbleweed rolling......}}}}}}}}
This place has become a bit of a ghost town of late! OMIGOSH, where does the time go??

Well, just in case anybody does happen to drop in, I would like to wish you a very, very happy, prosperous, successful and lucky 2012!

Wow, it's a long time since I blogged here but I do aim to change that during 2012. Life is very busy at the moment but happy busy! Work is the best it's ever been and my DH got the promotion he very much deserved back in November. We still have no cash to spare - does anyone? But we do have a lovely new company car, our health and lots of lovely friends so no complaints from me!

Papercrafting became a bit of a bore for me recently - probably just a case of missing mojo, so I have diversified. I rediscovered my sewing machine and am currently trying to get to grips with fabric crafting for a while. Lets see where it takes me!

In the meantime, if you are here I'd like to wish you all the best for this New Year - please let it be a good one for all of us! Thanks for dropping in! xx

Christmas is-a-comin', and Delicious Doodles are BACK!!!

2011-09-02T04:51:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday all, and a HUGE Welcome Back to the Delicious Doodles Challenges! That's it, Summer is officially over and the team have gathered once more to create some wonderful creations with Teri's fantastic images. We have some fantastic themes to whet your appetite over the coming months, and to kickstart you off, the theme this week is "A Fresh Start" The task is to use something new on your project and show it on the challenge blog. You don't have to use one of the billions of fab images that Teri has on offer, (but it would be lovely if you did!). Once you have delivered your project the Doodlies will choose their favourite and the winner will be allowed to choose 5 digi images from the shop!

So please pop over there, get your stash out and get creating. If you want some inspiration, take a look at the fabulous creations that the girls have been making, and please say a big HELLO to our new teamies, Suzy (Ike), Jane, Jodi, and Helen (Croms).

Without further ado, here is my offering using Teri's "Snowy Postbox". This is a gorgeous nostalgic image that really appeals to me and I know that it will appear on many of my Christmas cards this year! There is also a US Mailbox version available - go check it out!

My 'new' thing is the nestie I used to cut the appertures. Although in one sense they're not brand new to me - they were a Mother's Day gift earlier this year - this is only the second time I have used them, so technically, they are new! The image is new to me too as this is the first time I have used it.

Well I hope to see as many of you as possible over at the DDChallenges. Just to let you know also that from today, the challenges are going to be fortnightly so you have lots of time to enter - you can enter up to 3 times if you like!

Thanks for stopping by here, and have a great weekend! :o) xx

Shabby Tea Room - Birthstones

2011-09-01T04:26:00.000-07:00

Very quick post from me today - I seem to have found my blogging legs again and am really enjoying playing about with paper and inks again.

Here is a CAS card for this week's Shabby Tea Room challenge which is 'Birthstones'. As I've just had my 49th birthday last week, I guess that makes me Peridot. The Westie die has been sitting in my stash for quite a few months now so as I'm on a drive to use up everything I own before splashing out on anything new, I decided that it was his turn to take centre stage!

Hope you enjoy, thanks for popping in! :o) xx

An amazing find!

2011-08-25T09:15:00.000-07:00

Wow! I couldn't believe this! My big summer project this year has been to give my boys' playhouse a makeover. It's not finished yet, but they insisted I give it a name and after much discussion we came up with "The Shabby Tea Room". This came about one sunny afternoon after I'd baked yet another batch of scones and we decided the playhouse would be a great room to sit in and have cream teas!

Anyway, today, after I'd made my loooooong overdue post, I decided to go hunting for a challenge blog to fire me up (I was meant to be doing Christmas!!!) but amazingly I stumbled upon one called "The Shabby Tea Room" Wow!! I couldn't believe it! And as far away from Christmas as you can get, their challenge this week is "The Sweet Days of Summer" and you have to make your own flowers and use Pink, Peach, Green and Neutral colours on your card or project! So I went away and I made this which I'm submitting to the challenge:

I cut the heart from wood, painted it and distressed it by sanding the edges and across the face. I then inked the edges using Tea Dye then stamped directly onto it using Versafine. The flowers were punched using a MS Hydrangea punch and coloured using Promarkers. It was then finished off with some pearls and bling and a hand-written Welcome!

And here it is hanging on the new den - this is just a sneak peak - I'll post before and after photo's once it's completed!

Well I feel a bit like a bus - nothing for ages then two come along at once! LOL!!

Have a great day - there definitely won't be any more pics today!!! :o) xx

It's feeling like Autumn already!

2011-08-25T02:00:00.000-07:00

Hello blogland! It's been a long time since I was last here but I have been keeping busy! Such a lot has happened since the Spring and there hasn't been a lot of time for blogging. Both hubby and I have new jobs. I am going to be working in KS1 again from September and really looking forward to it. Like everyone else in the country money is tight so new stash is a big 'NoNo' these days and I've been turning my talents other crafts. I've dabbled with e-Bay (yuk!) and cleared out a lot of stuff that I no longer use, and I've even sold some of my home made stuff which cheered me up no end. Let me show you some of the things I have been playing about with since I last blogged.

A couple of my wooden plaques. I made loads of these earlier in the year and managed to sell every one of them. Many of them were made to order and they were going out quicker than I could make them so I didn't manage to photograph every one of them.

This was something that I saw out there in blogland and I just absolutely fell madly in love with and really had to have one. The tut is here and although is in French, it was really easy to follow. It was very time-consuming though and although I would love to do another, I can't imagine I'm going to find time between now and Christmas.

These are some apples I made using the pattern in Tone Finnegar's Sew Easy Christmas Homestyle - I have rediscovered a love of sewing!

Technically not stitched, but using up fabric bits anyway. We spent last week camping in Devon and I visited a gorgeous giftshop in Brixham called Hob Nobs. There were just so many beautiful things in there, and I saw some gorgeous padded frames on the wall and was immediately inspired so I came home and made this.

These are my felt version of 'doodling'! LOL! I sat with my bag of felt and some cotton wool balls and just played, and I came up with these little cupcakes which I then stringed together with some beads

Finally these mini cushions were made using tiny bits of fabric that are really no good for anything but the bin. They are 4 x 4 in size and were chopped from odd scraps. I stamped on the white cushion and was really pleased with how clean the image came out. I used Versafine ink and wasn't sure if it would bleed or not, but as you can see, it stamps beautifully on cotton! I really don't know what these would be used for but a friend has since advised I should have put lavender in them - duh! Why didn't I think of that!!

It might not look much but I have been doing a lot of decorating - my dining room and en-suite have been given a makeover (which took longer than I wanted it to!!) I have also been painting furniture - I was very enthusiastic about that...... till I started! Groan..... it takes FOREVER!!! Definitely a job only to be embarked upon when you have absolutely nothing else to do! Pah! as if! And my current project is also nearing completion - this was a biggie! My boys' playhouse has been undergoing major refurbishment over the summer. Pics of that to follow, as soon as I've done!

Well that's my lot for the moment. I hope you like! Today I am going to put my fabrics and sewing machine away and make a start on Christmas! Term starts again soon and I have a very busy year ahead so I want to make a dent in my cards now if I can.

Thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Ahem..!!!

2011-08-24T03:14:00.000-07:00

Can I still get in here??? OMG, when was the last time I used this thing?

Hoping to have some new stuff to show soon - as long as blogger will let me! LOL!!

Bearly Mine, Happy Birthday!

2011-03-01T07:57:00.000-08:00

Good morning bloggers. Oooh, it's been a bit nippy in these parts for the last couple of days - fingers crossed for a bit of warmer weather now that March is here!

And if you're feeling like getting in the mood for Springtime, look no further than Donna's latest fantabulous creations all with a Spring theme. Oh my goodness, they are just DIVINE!! And best of all, she's having a sale for just one week (ends 8th March) where you can buy all 3 sets for just £12! I promise you will be drooling for evermore over these gorgeous papers.

And if you're feeling like you need to be challenged a little, what better place to begin with than the Bearly Mine Challenges blog where the theme this week is "Happy Birthday". Nothing too difficult, but there are loads of fab goodies offered by our very generous sponsors to be won by some lucky ladies (and gents if you fancy playing along!!!). The sponsors this week are:

Bearly Mine Designs (2 sets of papers, winners choice)

Wild Orchid Crafts (selection of flowers and lace)

Tickled Pink Stamps (2 digis or 1 rubber stamp of winners choice)

Go Kreate (3 gorgeous rectangular dies worth £13.99 each)

Please go and check out our sponsors and see what other delish goodies they have to offer.

The uber-talented team have put together a bunch of scrummy samples to inspire you, but don't take my word for it, you need to see them for yourself! This is the card I put together using a selection of the Gingham papers. The beauty of these papers is that you can resize them before printing them out and I wanted 4 squares of small gorgeous pastel colours to use as my background so was able to do this using my Word software. The stamps are freebies from the cover of the new Simply Handmade mag - have you seen this? OMG, it's brilliant.

Well that's my lot for today. Hope you are having a nice relaxing time wherever you are and may March bring you lots of happiness and (hopefully!) sunshine! See you soon. :o) xx

Happy 2011 and Free Copics!!!

2011-01-29T02:57:00.000-08:00

I'm Back!! Happy 2011 to all who pass by! Blimey, it's been a long time but I shan't bore you with the details as to why I've been MIA for so long. The long and short of it is that both my beloved pooter and I have been in very poor health but we're both fighting fit again and rarin' to go again. My printer on the other hand is still on catch-up! Grrr....

Right then, let's crack on. Cult Pens have very kindly given our love Donna at Bearly Mine Designs the chance to offer one lucky winner the chance to win the Brand New set of 36 Copic Ciao markers. Although these colors are available as sketch markers already, they have just been released as Copic Ciao's, which is great for all of us who can't afford the sketch markers, You can see the new set of Ciao's HERE and while you're there, you might want to check out their 10% off sale that's on till the end of Jan.

Please would you help to spread the word by taking this banner and placing it in your sidebar with the headline of Free Brand New Copic Ciao's and a link back to the Bearly Mine Designs blog. Once you've done that, add your name to Inlinkz.

This fabulous prize of 36 Copic Ciao's blog candy ends on Feb 17th. Good Luck to everyone......remember to spread the word, and PLEASE make sure you follow the rules to be certain of being in with a chance for this fab prize!

In the meantime, I'm heading back to my craft space to get busying myself again. Having not created a single thing since the beginning of December last year I feel a bit rusty, so bear with me! Have a great weekend and hope to see you again soon! :o) xx

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...!

2010-12-03T23:45:00.000-08:00

21 days to go and I haven't bought a single Christmas pressie!!! OMG! I'm not the most organised person at the best of times but this year I seem to be particularly bad. I don't even want to rely on online shopping because I've heard so many tales of stuff not getting delivered because of the snow! I call it snow, but it's more like frozen flurry round here - enough to make it look like a winter wonderland but not enough to build a snowman :o(

Anyway, here is a card I made 'for the love of it' using Donna's gorgeous Christmas Sparkle papers.

These are just so pretty and girly, and best of all, they have inserts in the kit too! Here's one I used on the inside of this card.

And if you're feeling tempted, now is a fabulous time to go and bag yourself a kit or two because Donna is offering the entire Christmas Inserts kit FREE if you buy 3 or more of her digi kits. An absolute bargain, trust me! They start at around 4.00 a kit and you get sooooo many papers and other elements in some of the kits, and they are just so versatile. Can you tell I'm hooked? LOL!

Well that's my lot for the time being. There is 'work in progress' and I can't wait to show it off! Thanks for passing through. Have a great weekend and I hope it's a bit warmer where you are! :o) xx

Blog Hop Winner

2010-11-25T23:43:00.000-08:00

Happy (freeeeeeeezing!!!) Friday all! Just quickly popping in here to let you know that I did the Random Number Generator thingy this morning once all the comments had been posted, but unfortunately I don't know how to post the picture of it on the blog. However, I put in numbers 1 to 44 and it threw up the number 8, so the winner of the Partridge in a Pear Tree image is

Vicky

Well done Vicky. If you email me I'll let you know how to claim your image! Huge thanks to everyone who joined in and left such lovely comments - they were all greatly appreciated! :o) xx

Evergreen

2010-11-21T03:15:00.000-08:00

Happy Sunday all! Very quick post from me today. Over at Keep it Simple our theme this week is Evergreen and I made this really, really quick and simple card using one of Donna's latest releases - Christmas Inserts. These are fabulous LO's that coordinate perfectly with her Christmas papers, but they are so beautiful that I decided to use one of them as the base of my card and just stamp into the white area.

I have to confess that I nicked the decorated branches idea from my lovely buddy Teri who makes the most amazing projects and is a constant source of inspiration! You can't really tell from the photo here but the baubles reading 'Joy' were embossed from behind to make them 'pop' slightly from the card, but apart from the stickles glitter glue, there are no other additions whatsoever to this card - that's how amazing these inserts are!!!

Right then, that's my lot for now - I'm off to play around with some paints now. Have a great Sunday, and thanks for popping by! :o) xx

2010-11-18T23:55:00.000-08:00

OK, we're off!!! Over at Delicious Doodles Challenge, we're kicking off with a fabulous Blog Hop and we tried to make it as easy as possible for you - no weird phrases to collect or sentences to make up. No!

All you peeps need to do is take a trip round our blogs, leave some love, pop back to the Challenge blog and insert your own project via the Blue Froggy thingy. Dead easy huh?!

AND we have PRIZES GALORE!!

Each of us will be giving away, that's right - GIVING AWAY - the image that we have used to make our creations! So, if you want to win these digi-images, all you need do is leave a comment on the DT members blog. At the end of the week on Thursday 25th each DT member will announce who their winner is.

AND if that isn't enough to get you all excited,

Teri is giving away

TEN DIGI IMAGES

on the Challenge Blog, in celebration of our very first Challenge. The winner will get to choose 10 digi's from the Delicious Doodles Shop!!

BUT to qualify for this awesome prize there is a small catch! You must comment on ALL of the DT Blogs,
AND make a 'something' to enter with the Blue Froggy. No particular theme, 'Anything Goes'.

OK, so here is the Blog Hop order in case you get lost

(Team A):

Keryn

Anita

Pascale

Saskia

Ildiko

Lyn (This is where you came from)

Anne (that's me!)

and then you need to visit Terri

(Team B):

Maria

Amy

Claire

Alex

Darlene

Allison

Ruthie

Grace

Teri (Store Owner)

and then back to the Delicious Doodles Challenge Blog to enter your creation for your chance to win the fabby TEN digi-images of your choice!!

Phew! Hope you got all that peeps!

The Challenge and Blog Hop will finish on Thursday 25th November at 6pm GMT (UK time)

Each winner for the individual digi's will be announced on the DT members Blogs, so be sure to follow them if you want to know who their winners are!

The Grand Prize winner will be announced on the Challenge Blog on the morning of Friday 26th November before the next Challenge goes live later that day.

So, here is my offering using the "Partridge in a Pear Tree" image:

It's going to be 1 of 12 for my pennant banner entitled (surprise, surprise..) The 12 Days of Christmas. Teri has already released some more of the "12 Days..." images and they are just fabulous.
Wishing you ALL the very best of luck.

And here is the image that I'm offering up for my winnings:

I hope you enjoy seeing the team's samples, and I wish you all loads of luck! These are truly fab prizes!

Have fun, and Thank You for popping by here! :o) xx

Remembrance Sunday

2010-11-14T01:03:00.000-08:00

Happy Sunday blogland. Well the weather here is as grim as the mood today and the bug that has had me firmly planted in my bed for half the week has struck again, this time with my eldest son :o( We had planned a nice family day out today to blow some of the cobwebs away that I've gathered this week and make the most of the very respectable weather we've had for a couple of days. Alas, the bug has put paid to that so I guess it's back to the drawing board for me.

Well then, over at Keep it Simple this week our theme is Wonderland and I thought this image of Teri's was just perfect for it. By the way, if you register as a follower on the soon-to-be-launched Delicious Doodles Challenge blog, you are in with a great chance of winning 5 of Teri's amazing images because when we reach 100 followers, Teri will randomly draw another name from the pot and that lucky person will get to choose 5 images of their own. PLUS, if you keep your eyes peeled for the start of the challenges next Friday (19th November) you will be in with LOADS of chances of winning them because we're launching with a very special blog hop ;o)

My bg paper here is one of Donna's fabulous papers from the brand new Christmas Dreams kit which has just been released. They are just ........sigh....!!!! If you fancy getting a kit for yourself, this is a fantastic time to do so because Donna's having a birthday sale. Between now and 19th November you can buy any of her kits and CD's with 15% off. Amazing!

Also, I just wanted to mention that one or two people very kindly commented on the 'charm' on my card last week:

Well, you may be surprised to hear that it wasn't actually an additional embellishment, but actually part of the design on the paper itself! Amazing, isn't it? Even in close up it appears to be dimensional! There are so many of these gorgeous elements on Donna's papers and I can't wait to show you more samples using them!

In the meantime I wish you all a healthy and happy Sunday, and Thank You for stopping by. Your feedback is always much appreciated :o) xxx

Want to win some Digi's?

2010-11-07T01:46:00.000-07:00

Well, I know a great place where you can get your hands on 5 fabulous digi images if you're the lucky person who's drawn randomly! Over at Delicious Doodles Challenges, Teri has already done the first draw for reaching 50 followers and when we reach 100, another name will be drawn from the list (and this morning, it stood at 63, so it won't be long!!!). So if you're not already a follower, I urge you to get over there and join in! The challenges begin on 19th November and the team have some fabulous themes and giveaways - you do not want to miss out!

My card this week uses one of Teri's gorgeous new releases - Mother Mary made her first appearance yesterday and here's a card I made with the image:

I just love this. Teri makes these images so easy to colour and for this I used soft coloured pencils, blended with an eye make up sponge and soft chalk.

I had some very exciting news this week too when I received an email from Donna inviting me to join the Bearly Mine DT! No sooner had I accepted the post when my mailbox began filling up with THE most divine papers! OMG, Christmas came early! Donna is extremely generous and offers LOADS of freebie papers on her blog, but to get your hands on this one that I used here, you'll have to wait for the forthcoming launch of her amazing Christmas Dreams kit. I promise, you are going to love it!!! In the meantime, there are plenty more gorgeous kits to be had over on her blog. If you check out my Magnolia's Only blog too, I'm going to be showcasing some more of her papers there!

That's all for now. Hope you like what you see. If you do, please go check out these very talented ladies blogs and show your support for them! Have a great Sunday and thanks for stopping by! :o) xxx

Fairy Image

2010-11-01T06:09:00.000-07:00

Ooops! Sorry, I meant to post this yesterday. I had intended to do a draw for my fairy but it would be much easier, I think, just to stick it on here. Please help yourself.

If you do use it, please would you let me know because I would love to see what you do with her!

Thanks so much. Enjoy!

And breathe........

2010-10-24T01:36:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-17T03:19:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-10T01:33:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-04T07:57:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-10-03T01:40:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-10-01T09:56:00.000-07:00

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

Tag, You're It! and Keeping it Simple!

2010-09-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

OMGosh, I cannot believe that September is almost over, and I haven't yet sent off my tags to Sam for the September Tag Swap!! ARGH!!! At least it gives you comfort to know that it's still not too late - you still have about 4 hours left! LOL!!!!

My offerings for this week's challenges at Tag, You're it! and Keep it Simple are right here:

Hard to believe this gorgeous little mini album began life as an envelope!!! The inspiration came from a fabulous lady called Laura who's blog just blows me away! I have made several of these now and they are becoming quite addictive! The papers were from a kit I received well over a year ago but for the life of me I can't remember who they're by! Such a shame because I've really dragged them out over the last couple of weeks and I have nothing but tiny scraps left now.

Over at Keep it Simple the theme is Gold Dust and I made this little card which has now gone into my memory album. All the photo's are of my two boys at various stages of growth (and hair length!!! LOL!) The gold dust is the chandelier which was stamped with versamark then heat embossed with gold glitter embossing powder. Much more sparkly IRL! tut...

Well it's my turn to host the Tag swap next month so I am just going to go up the apples and pears, to see what suitable stamps I've got......(hint, hint!!!!!!!).

Have a great week and thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Hate rushing but....

2010-09-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

... as usual I am!! Just wanted to show off this card I made for the Keep it Simple challenge this week which is Bling It! I went to my friend's 50th birthday party on Saturday night and this is the card that I made for her. It's almost impossible to see on here but it is VERY sparkly! I sprinkled the chandelier with sparkly clear EP and embellished with some crystals, and again with the numbers. It was all very rushed and I feel so guilty for some reason for giving out a card that only took me about half an hour to make!

Well that's my lot for the moment - I am so behind this week so I haven't had any crafting time at all. However, tomorrow's Thursday and the best thing about Thursday's is............ I get the afternoon off!!!! YAY!!!

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a great week! :o) xxx

Craft Room Clearout

2010-09-16T23:02:00.000-07:00

I read somewhere that if you don't use something for 12 months, then you don't need it and should get rid of it because it's causing clutter! And so if anyone is interested I am reluctantly downsizing my stash of things that I haven't used for way too long.

I have created a new page on this blog of items that I am loathe to part with. The magpie in me wants to keep everything I have 'just in case' I need to use it in the future, but the sensible me knows that I have to start getting rid of things that I haven't used in ages because a house move could be on the cards soon.

I have put one or two items on for now but I will be updating it on pretty much a daily basis for a while, so even if there's nothing that grabs your fancy right now, please keep checking back as more items will be added regularly.

Also, please bear in mind that I work during the day so if you don't get an immediate response from me, I will reply as soon as I get home.

A Couple of challenges

2010-09-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

Washing done, shopping done, cleaning done, ironing.... errrmmmm.... that can wait a while longer I think! Just wanted to give a plug to our challenge blogs. First of all here is my offering this week for Tag, You're It's theme which is From the Fairy Garden.

Now, you can be forgiven for thinking that you may have seen this before somewhere, because my project this week was heavily inspired by an article I saw in issue 73 of Simply Cards and Papercraft by the very talented Su Pennick! I would love to show it off to Su but sadly I spent a couple of fruitless hours scouring the web yesterday for her blog, to no avail. So if you know her, or know where she lives in cyberland, I would be really grateful for a link. I have never in my life bought a craft mag because of the cover project, until I saw this that is. There was no way I couldn't buy the mag and I fell madly in love with the entire project. So when I came to make my concertina tag card using Su's original design as inspiration (I'm sure it would have been a lot easier and a lot quicker if I'd followed her instructions!!!!!) I never imagined how much fun I would have making it! So much so that I'm halfway through project no. 2 now!!

Moving on to my next card, this is my very quick and very simple offering for Keep it Simple.

The theme this week is Give us a Swirl, so that's what I did! LOL! The card was made using a square card mask across the centre and spritzed with my home-made glimmer mist using alcohol inks and gold mica powder.

Unfortunately, even in the close up photo, you can't see the glistening that is evident IRL - shame! The butterflies were then stamped on using a bright yellow Brilliance pad. I think the black swirl is Inkadinkadoo - but don't quote me on that! The text is a rub-on.

Right, well that's my offering for today. Please get over to these blogs and play along with us. It would be fab to see some new players along with our fantastic regulars!

Have a great week and thanks for stopping by! :o) xxx

Woah... slow down!!

2010-09-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

Groan, I haven't posted anything for ages because time is going waaaaay too quickly right now! It was back to school full-time on Monday and despite my fears and reservations, I can honestly say with my hand on my heart that I am LOVING my new role soooooo much!!!! I am like a pig in wotsit!!!

So, without a creation to post (well I have, but I'm being lazy!) I will shout about some fab blog candy that's up for grabs! Lothian Crafts

have this fab candy to giveaway to some lucky bod who is a) a follower, b) displays their blinkie, and c) shouts about it on their blog. Now I never win any of these things (sob!) but I'm happy to give it a shout as it's a fab prize!

So get over there and keep your fingers crossed! Good luck!

Countdown begins here.....

2010-08-28T23:58:00.000-07:00

WAH!!! The end of summer is fast approaching (Ha!! that's a laugh - Summer ended in June as far as I can remember!!!!) and the school uniform drill has begun :o( None of the jobs I had planned have been finished - most of them have been started, so that's some consolation! Back to school on Friday for me - the boys still have another week off but I'm going for a TE day.

But on the plus side, it means that autumn is waiting just around the corner and I LOVE autumn. I love it's coziness, the smells, the warm colours, hot puddings, toad-in-the-hole (made with vege sausages, of course!! LOL!), and new challenges. What a super link into my next news!
My wonderful teamies at TYI have got together with our lovely friend Clare and have created a fabulous new weekly challenge blog called KEEP IT SIMPLE! It's all about clean and simple cards which everyone loves to do from time to time, and our first theme is a Christmas card in traditional colours, and here is mine:

CAS cards are a HUGE challenge for me but I do want to improve, though I fear I may have overplayed the 'simple' bit with this card! LOL!! It's a big learning journey for me and I am really excited about the prospect of learning from others how to do this CAS thing, because it really is a talent in itself I think!

I do hope we have lots of players because I love to see CAS cards and I really want to pick up tips from those who do it brilliantly - plus we have some wonderful prizes to give away from fabulously talented sponsors, as well as the kudos of being picked as one of our top 3 players each week!! WooHoo!!!

So please pop along, give us a try - we'd love to see as many as possible over there!

In the meantime, I will be back later with my tag for this week. Have a great BH weekend! :o) xx

Pssssst......

2010-08-27T00:44:00.000-07:00

There's a new blog on the block - Starting Sunday 29th August Keep it Simple! challenges will be set, and we're looking to expand the team! Let me know if you're interested!

Oh I DO want to be beside the seaside!

2010-08-15T01:14:00.000-07:00

Oh Lord, this time of year always makes me want to be by the seaside - the weather has been awful, but if I have to suffer it, being by the coast would help to ease that burden! It wouldn't matter where I was, I just love the smell of sea air, sand, fish and chips, vanilla ice-cream.... and the colours - I just love the colours of the seaside. But I just have to keep on wishing - there's no chance of me getting to the beach this summer :o( Yesterday we got in the car and just went for a drive - I just wanted to be by water so we found ourselves in Stourport! Oddly enough, it's only about 20 minutes drive from me but I just never go there, but yesterday we found these

Sigh...... Barrett's have built these gorgeous riverside apartments right in the basin so I had to go and have a look around the show apartment! WAH!!!! I WANT ONE!!! They are just so gorgeous - compact and bijou, but gorgeous! I decided there and then that if my numbers come up on the lottery, I'm going to have a weekend retreat right here!! They're not finished yet, but when they are it's going to be beautiful round there. Leaning out of the patio door, this is the view to the left of the apartment we looked at:

It's not quite the coast, but it'd do for me!!! The only one who wasn't interested was my eldest because the bedrooms were quite small and he protested loudly about the thought of having to share one with his brother!!!! LOL!!

So over to my creations for this week - Ooops!! No stamps? WHAT??? Well, I have actually used stamps this week but I'm not going to show anything yet because this post is already getting photo-heavy! I'll start with my offering for this week's Tag, You're It! theme which is {{{gulp!}}} No Stamps Allowed. Well, my first thought was HELP!!!!! but then I started to think about what I like - the seaside - hmmmm...... and so I came up with this:

brilliant fun to do and as it was meant to be 'shabby' I didn't have to be so careful about where I splodged inks!! LOL!! It was made by cutting out 3 strips of card and roughing up the edges, then the whole thing was painted with distress inks and 'highlighted' with promarkers.

Right, well that's my lot for today. Thank you for stopping by and I wish you a very happy week ahead! :o) xx

Zentangle

2010-08-15T01:11:00.000-07:00

A very quick seperate post here because of Inlinkz! Today was the first time I joined in with the Lots to Do challenges where the challenge this week is ZENTANGLE. Well, I didn't have a clue what Zentangle was so I did a bit of googling, then I did a bit of doodling! Oh Wow!! How therapeutic is this!!! It was so relaxing and addictive! I understand the 'Zen' part of the word has something to do with this??? Anyway, here is my offering.

Thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Sunday again!!!

2010-08-08T00:48:00.000-07:00

It's been a funny ol' week! I started the transformation of my craft room last week because I decided it was time to let my boys have a dining room again! Apart from anything else, it was starting to bug me the fact that my stuff had taken over in there so I set about the ruthless task of ditching stash that I've hung onto for years without using. Apart from the great big box of stickers, ribbons, flowery papers, stamps, etc. that I put aside for my friend's little girls, I managed to ditch 19 black bin bags of stuff that has been cluttering up my craft room!! I can't believe it either! A lot of it was old cardstock and papers that had faded in the sunlight, but there was practically a bag of cut-off's alone!! I do use cut-off's on my tags but the amount I'd stashed away was ridiculous! There were also a lot of storage boxes that took a trip to the tip because I knew that if I hung onto them, they'd only get filled with more rubbish! I have a lot of drawers in my craftroom too and every one of them got emptied (mind you, they're full again now!!!). And if you think that's excessive, try it yourself - it's very scary how much we hang onto witha view to using 'one day'!

Anyway, I did manage to get my craft room back and we also have a dining room once more. However, it wasn't without pain - Oh No! Stupidly I lifted one box too many and OUCH!!! My back went! So I ended up having to take a trip to the Minor Injuries Unit where I was prodded, pushed and pulled in all directions. Many tears later (God, it hurt!!) I was prescribed some meds for soft tissue damage - Thank God, because I couldn't stand up or sit down - it was agony! However, as the next few days went by I began to experience a really strange feeling. My initial thought was that it was the tablets that I'd been prescribed because I was feeling really, really depressed! I couldn't do anything and I found myself wanting to be totally alone and getting worked up about stuff that really isn't important. So figuring that it might be down to the tablets I stopped taking them and lo and behold, this horrible feeling lifted! I still have the back pain but I'd rather live with that than the awful depressed feeling I was having - too scary!

And so here are my offerings for this week. It's our Village Show in a couple of weeks and one of the categories is to make a handmade card so here is one that I made:

inside:

I was also very honoured to be asked by my lovely friend Linda to be part of her creative team for her new shop, Jazzlin's. Linda is very lucky to have found the opportunity to combine her crafting with her career and has opened her own shop in Braintree. It's still very early days but she is doing really well with the business and is building her stock. If you're a Sweet Peas Stamps fan Jazzlin's is one of the UK stockists and Linda will be more than happy to supply you with what you need. She also stocks Belles and Whistles stamps and recently sent me this stamp to play with and this is what I created with it:

Pop over to the blog and see what the rest of the fab team have been up to!

Finally this week I have found a wonderful new place to play, craft and chat over at the Lots to Do forum. Everyone over there is so welcoming and chatty and there are lots of swaps and challenges going on all the time. Currently there is a charms swap happening and I made these three to send off to Zoe. I have to confess they were heavily inspired by my lovely friend Sharon who sent me something similar a couple of years ago (though I can't deny her's were much more beautiful!)

Blimey, have you fallen asleep yet?? That's all for today - unless you fancy popping over to my Magnolia's Only blog where I am showing off my monogram tag this week for the Tag, You're It! theme. Have a great week ahead and thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

ATC's - Wings

2010-07-24T08:28:00.000-07:00

Wooo, it's been a loooong time! It's not that I haven't been doing anything, I just haven't had time to blog but now that school's broke up I hope I'm going to get a few more chances over the coming weeks.

My first offering for July (OMG, it's nearly over!!!) are these 3 ATC's which I have made for the Stampman's brand new ATC swap. The first theme is "Wings" so I drew these 3 (almost) identical wings. I am so pleased that the swaps have started again because I love to make ATC's and often use my hand-drawn originals on them - it's a great excuse to release a bit of pent-up creativity that doesn't always work on other stuff!

So if you fancy getting your hands on one of these babies, you'll have to take part in the swap and who knows, you could find one in your return pack at the end of this month. There's also a fab giveaway prize too which is a very tempting incentive to draw you in too!!

Thanks for stopping by and hope you're enjoying the weekend wherever you are! :o) xx

Inspired by...

2010-06-13T05:08:00.000-07:00

Happy Sunday all! Have you ever seen a painting or card, or any other crafted creation and thought to yourself "Oh Lord, I wish I'D done that!"? Of course you have, every one of us is inspired by others, whether that be other bloggers, famous/non-famous artists, crafters worldwide..... Every year in Bromsgrove we have an Arts Festival. It lasts for two weeks and there are a number of performances and street artists and concerts etc. take place all over the town. One of the things I love most is the Art Exhibition at one of the churches because it brings together some of the most amazing works of art by some extremely talented local people - one day I would LOVE to have the guts to exhibit something myself but up to now I haven't had the bottle! This year I found some mounted but unframed pictures by a lady who I think is called Linda someoneorother and I just swooned at them! Unfortunately though I wasn't in a position to splash out and buy them so I took these photo's of them to remind me how gorgeous they are and to aspire to be able to paint this good - ha! then I woke up!!!

The picture above is a painting of Chaddesley Corbett Post Office. I just love this lady's style of painting and I would give my eye teeth to be able to paint like this. Over at Tag, You're It! this week our theme is Inspired By..... and I chose this picture as my inspiration to make this Good Luck in your new home tag. This is my second tag for the June Swap which our lovely Janet is hosting.

I'm not fooling myself by imagining it's anything like as good as the original, but it's a start and it was such fun to paint - even though this was actually my 4th attempt!! LOL!!

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

Too hot to sleep

2010-06-05T23:29:00.000-07:00

Ugh! It's a fact that us Brits are always talking about the weather - maybe because it's so diverse. And right now it's just tooooooo hot! I'm really tired this morning because I just couldn't sleep at all last night! Instead I spent half the night tossing and turning and listening to Joe Public's solutions to Britain's binge-drink culture on TalkSport! I even had the fan blasting out all night but I just could not get comfortable. I did do my bit for England yesterday though - we're not footy fans in this house (thank the lord!) but I am feeling a bit left out by the red n' white craze that's taking over the country right now. But there's no way I'm going to be hanging flags and pennants out of the windows here so I made my hanging baskets using only frenzy red and vanilla white petunia's, and now I feel quite patriotic! LOL!

So, over at Tag, You're It! this week we're starting our June Swap. We are really hoping that many people will join in this because at the end of it, we all get back 4 lovely surprise tags from the other players as our lovely teamie Janet has offered to collect all the tags in, mix 'em up and re-distribute them for us. I know from doing this many years ago what great fun it is not knowing what you're going to get in return and how lovely it is to recieve something from another crafter that you may not even know! Our first theme is Needle and Thread. All our themes are open to interpretation, and although it was absolutely my intention to get my sewing machine out and do some proper stitching, unfortunately I just never got round to it so I went for the faux stitch look. You see the problem is, my workstation (aka dining table!) was in such a horrid mess and I felt that I just had to clear it all and get things put away. So I did and there was lots of room for my sewing machine then..... but there's nothing more enticing to me than a lovely clean workspace and an idea brewing in my head, so out came the stamps, out came the inks, brushes, acrylic blocks, d/s tapes, papers, scissors, box of scraps, flowers, pearls, bling, ribbons, the glitter glues, and lo and behold, it looked exactly the same again in no time at all - and still no room for the sewing machine! So I gave up domesticity - it doesn't suit me! I did however manage to produce this:

Very, very simple, but then I think tags should be. The image is coloured with distress inks and stickles and the sentiment is a home-made rub-on which I'm very impressed with and intend to make many, many more!

Today is the last day of the holidays - back to school tomorrow and my therapy starts here. I calculated that I have only 34 more school days to go before the 6 weeks holiday - great, except that my baby has exactly the same number of days left at First School. I'm struggling to imagine him beginning a new life at Middle School from September, though he's really cool about it - he just seems so young to be joining 'the big kids', and it's going to feel pretty strange for me being at my school without him..... Oh lord, get me a therapist, quick!!!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a happy Sunday - I will be spending it at the Cinema and Frankie & Benny's entertaining my son and his friends for his 9th bithday bash! Thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Sweet Pea Stampers - A sprinkling of fairy dust

2010-05-31T01:13:00.000-07:00

Whoops! Here I am again - 2 days in a row, it must be a record for me! I'm not in peak condition this morning, but save your sympathy, it's self-inflicted!! LOL! My SIL invited us to a barbie yesterday afternoon because the weather did a complete u-turn - it was glorious and the atmosphere was fab, and I'm afraid that I not only drank too much, but I committed the cardinal sin of mixing my drinks! Sooooo stooopid and I think I got off pretty light with just a thumping head and tiredness! I can just hear my mum this morning saying "That'll learn ya!" LOL!

Anyway, here is my sample card for this week's Sweet Pea Stampers themes - this week it's A sprinkling of fairy dust. so I used a bucket-load! OMGoodness, this card has so much diamond dust glitter on it that I'm thinking of getting it insured! LOL! The papers are Websters and I used a sketch from this weeks' Stempeleinmaleins challenge, which I've only just discovered but they have some fab samples so I was inspired to join in!

Well that's my lot for today - hope you like! Why not pop over to Sweet Pea Stampers or Tag, You're It! and join in with the themes for this week. Hope to see you there! Thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Tag, You're It! Heaven Sent

2010-05-30T00:36:00.000-07:00

Bloomin' heck, this weather wasn't heaven sent, was it!! I'm freezing! Happy Bank Holiday weekend, bloggers. Typical BH, cold, wet, miserable - and the weather's not much better!! LOL!! First of all I want to say a huge THANK YOU to all those who left me comments about my Supporting ASC course, and those who have already offered to answer questions for me. I have deliberately not published any comments because I promised total confidentiality and I will email you all individually if I haven't done so already. Thank You!

Right then, over at Tag, You're It! this weekend our theme is Heaven Sent and here is my offering:

I dunno, something is missing - in my minds eye I'm seeing a sillouette of swans or geese flying across the moon, but I don't have a stamp to show that, so try and picture it if you can, it might add that something needed! LOL!! It's a really simple tag - the background is just chalked and I masked off the 'moon' with a punched circle of paper, then I stamped on the sentiment (I love this!) and gave it a blast with some glimmer mist - but then I think tags should be simple. If you like tags, and you like to receive artworks from other crafters, I URGE you to join us throughout June because we're hosting a Tag Swap! Everyone who plays along with our themes has the opportunity to send all their June tags to our lovely Janet who will mix them up and re-distribute them so that everyone receives a lovely surprise in the post! Why not pop over there to see what's what and take a look at all the other gorgeous tags, past and present, we have to offer!

Thanks so much for popping in and I hope you have a great BH weekend! :o) xx

Can You Help?

2010-05-25T23:51:00.000-07:00

I'm currently on week 4 of an 8 week course entitled "Supporting Children with Autistic Spectrum Conditions" and I am seeking your help. I have deliberated long and hard about doing a Level 4 Accreditation - last week I had decided once and for all that I would just do the course and get my attendance certificate. However, I have now decided that I would be wasting a golden opportunity if I don't do it and have therefore enrolled (OMG, what have I done!!!)

Last night at our course we were introduced to a number of young people and their friends and families who were very happy to talk to us about living with their condition and although we got to ask many questions, I still have loads more that I would like to ask. There are hundreds of books, You Tube documentaries, films, etc... and by enrolling on the course I get access to a huge library of resources, but in my mind there is nothing like hearing it "from the horses mouth", if you'll pardon the expression.

I wanted to ask if you are somebody who cares for or supports a child with ASC, or if indeed you yourself have autism/aspergers if you would be willing for me to contact you via email to ask questions? I would like to build a bank of people who live with or care for/support people with ASC in order to get a variety of experiences. It goes without saying that confidentiality is my number 1 priority and that no information you care to impart would be passed on to any second party - it is solely for me to gain a better understanding of all areas of the spectrum, and help me to prepare my assignments.

If you would be happy to let me email you, please could you drop me a line to my email address and I will contact you at the earliest opportunity.

I would like to extend my grateful thanks in anticipation. :o) xx

Running with the Pack!

2010-05-23T13:00:00.001-07:00

Happy Sunday all! Phewwwww!!!! Sooooooo hot! Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining - too much! I had the most wonderful night's sleep last night after I dug out my huge fan and just left it running all night - bliss!! Well, today was the day - what a scorching day it turned out to be for the Bromsgrove Race for Life! But I did it, despite the fact that I was so hot and sweaty that I finished up looking more like Jimmy Saville that Jimmy Saville does!! Oh the shame of it! LOL!! But here we all are showing off our medals with HUGE pride and a sense of pure satisfaction. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I feel really motivated to get out and walk some more. I've made myself a promise (you heard it here first!) that next year I will jog it! We did jog some today but the heat was so unbearable that it just wore you down.

The next picture was taken at about 1km mark - it's quite scary to see how many people were in front of me, but when I turned around I was sooooo happy to see that there were just as many, and more, behind me! My biggest fear was being the last to finish but I reackon that there must have been at least 1500 after me - plus the girls here (some of my colleagues) were brilliant and we just kept spurring each other on, and we crossed the finishing line 54 minutes after we set off! Not bad eh?!

My first commitment next pay day is a decent pair of trainers - I have blisters on my blisters, but I also have a Remington foot spa which proved to be a Godsend this afternoon! LOL!!!

Onto my Tag creation this week - our theme today is A Whiter Shade of Pale and we are asking players to make an all-white tag. We're not really cruel though, we do appreciate how difficult it can be so we have allowed minimal colour, as long as the overall impression is that of a white tag. Here is my DT offering:

It's to say THANK YOU to all of you who very kindly sponsored me today (it's still not too late if you're wishing you did - the link is still at the top of my blog). I did pledge to raise £150 but unfortunately I only succeeded in raising £120 so far but I'm hoping that some of the people I missed at work last week will kindly sponsor me retrospectively!

Well I definitely won't need any rocking to sleep tonight - I feel shattered now. My boys are both going off on their school residential trips tomorrow and I am in need of Separation Therapy! Boo Hoo!!!!!

Hope you have a great week, and long may this sun shine! Thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Vintage Romance

2010-05-16T00:25:00.001-07:00

Aaaahhhh..... That's me and my boy back in August 1998 when we were young and gorgeous!! LOL! Our theme over at Tag, you're It! this week is Vintage Romance so I scanned one of our wedding photo's and sepia'd it up a bit! Unbelievably, although it was only 12 years ago (he says it feels MUCH longer!!!) our photo's were shot on 35mm and we had to do a deal with the photographer's to buy the negatives!! The bride wore lilac and cream - a dress I bought off the peg from Dotty P's the week before! We headed off on our annual holiday to a little cottage we used to rent just outside Oban, and stopped off en route to tie the knot at Gretna with my faithful pup Rosie as my bridesmaid proudly sporting her new tartan collar (though she hid it well here!!)

I had a moment of excitement and fame yesterday when the joke I sent to Rick Wakeman for his Planet Rock show was read out on air! As if that wasn't enough, 10 minutes later he revealed that I was also the winner of last week's Lyric Theatre! ROFL!!! My Saturday mornings are geared around Rick's show - he is so naughty and hilariously funny, and plays the best tracks and his interviews with rock legends are always brilliant! We went down to Devon a few weeks ago and I timed it perfectly so that we could just be hitting the motorway as Rick's show was starting, and with any luck, arrive shortly after it finished. So when the bloomin' engine died on the M5 with half an hour of the programme still to run I was furious! Not only did me and the boys and my dogs have to stand under a motorway bridge in the freezing cold and incredible noise for over an hour till the breakdown arrived, I missed the last half hour of Rick!!! Argh! Then to add insult to injury, Terry came home with a courtesey car that hadn't got DAB radio! Outrageous!

Thanks for stopping by here and if you find yourself with time to spare this week, get yourself over to TYI and make a beautiful romantic vintage tag of your own to show off! Go on, you know you want to!! :o) xxx

A Testing Time.....!

2010-05-10T07:52:00.000-07:00

SATS everywhere!!! KS1 at work and KS2 at home! Still, it hasn't been as stressy as I was expecting it to be. My eldest was told to 'just have a relaxing weekend' by his teacher on Friday and trust me, he carried out her instruction to the letter!! tut! If only he would do what I tell him with such enthusiasm! LOL!!

Anyway, over at Sweet Pea Stampers we have a pretty theme of Pink, Green and Brown and we would love to see how people interpret that. I used Sketch Saturday's current sketch to make my card. My head is just so full of stuff that I HAVE to do at the moment that I can't seem to be 'free' with my creativity so I followed the sketch almost exactly and I have to say I'm not one to usually put my images at a 'jaunty angle' and I felt a bit unsure at first but having decided to just go with it, I am really pleased with the result and it's a great sketch that I will definitely use again!

Well that's my lot for today - I thank you for stopping by and I wish you a good week ahead. If you're at a loose end at all it would be great to see you over at Tag You're It! or Sweet Pea Stampers! :o) xxx

Sweet Pea Stampers - Sketch

2010-05-03T00:16:00.000-07:00

Happy Bank Holiday Monday folks! Brrrr.... what a chilly one! Quick post from me today because I've already spent ages updating my Magnolias Only blog and I really need to crack on with some domestics!

At Sweet Pea Stampers this week we have a sketch for you, as well as some fabulous blog candy and amazing samples from our wonderful team and fabulous guest opportunities! Moving quickly on, here is the sketch:

and here is the card I made using the sketch.

Can you spot the difference!!! duh! Without boring you with details, we had an emergency dash to make yesterday and I forgot that I needed to put some finishing touches to my card. I didn't get chance to photograph it till this morning and it was only when I'd uploaded my pics that I realised I had forgotten to put the pearls on the end of the strips! Argh! So here's what it should have looked like, LOL!!!

Hope you have a great BH Monday, and thanks for stopping by my blog! :o) xx

Tag, You're It! Butterfly's Kiss!

2010-05-02T00:43:00.001-07:00

OK, instructions on how to make this tag. You know when you make a card and start with a sheet of A4 cardstock, you then trim it down to make it 5x5 or whatever size... you get a couple of strips of card that you trimmed off. What are you going to do with them? Throw them in the recycling bin or save them 'for a rainy day'. Then one day you find you have heaps of scraps of card that are just in the way, taking up space and are probably never going to get used. Well, here's what I do with mine. Grab a box of chalks, or inkpads - whatever is closest to hand, and whizz some colour all over, randomly. It really doesn't matter how it looks because you then take a black inkpad, a stamp or two and stamp away to your hearts content! Next I trimmed the strip of card down at the points that I liked, punched a fancy edge 'for the heck of it' and stuck it onto another of the offcuts, punched a hole in it and threaded a ribbon! That's what tag-making is all about. It doesn't have to be elaborate or time-consuming. Sometimes, as in this case, if I find myself lost for inspiration I will just go through my tag box and maybe play with it some more. Here I just added a bit of stickles and a couple of gems but I made a foul-up with the middle butterfly by spilling some Glossy Accents on it. You can't hide that stuff, it will always shine, even after you've wiped it off!! LOL!! So I just punched another butterfly out in a circle shape, added some sparkly stuff and hid the offending area! This will end up on someone's doormat one day with a simple Thank You message written on the back and hopefully someone will enjoy receiving it as much as I enjoyed making it!

That's the really nice thing about Tag Art - it doesn't need to take an age to make one, you can knock them out while you're waiting for the kettle to boil! They're great for experimenting on and they don't have to be perfect, but they generally look very beautiful when you've finished them off with a gem or two and a bit of ribbon!

So if you've got a cup of tea to make at some point this week, why not pop over to Tag, You're It!, feast your eyes on the delish samples the team have provided to inspire you and while you're waiting for the kettle to boil knock out a tag with butterflies on using up your paper and card scraps that you can show off and inspire others - go on, you'll be glad you did!! :o)

Thanks for stopping by and have a great BH weekend!! :o) xx

Sweet Pea Stampers, Under the Sea

2010-04-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-25T01:24:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-04-18T04:01:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-07T06:42:00.000-07:00

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....

2010-04-05T10:23:00.000-07:00

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!!!

2010-04-03T22:51:00.000-07:00

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

Sweet Pea Stampers No. 2

2010-03-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

Over at Sweet Pea Stampers this week we have our second theme "All that glisten's IS gold!" And we are also being sponsored by our lovely teamie Amy who is the proud owner of The Purple Crafty Frog and who is exclusively licensed to sell the gorgeous images of Ching-Chou Kuik in decoupage sheets. Now I am not a decoupage person at all but I can assure you, these are just soooooo gorgeous I'm being converted, and if I were to be the person who wins 3 sheets of my own choice, I would be ecstatic! It could be you if you play along with our theme this week!

So here's my offering:

These stamps are so much fun; I showed some of my finished painted images to a friend of mine who just oooooohhhh'ed at them saying that her little girl would love these, so I stamped a few out for her to colour in and the feedback is that she is totally smitten with them! Who wouldn't be!

Well that's my lot for today - I couldn't blog this yesterday because blogger was playing up and wouldn't let me post any pics! Oh well, better late than never I s'pose!!

Have a great week - Oh, and keep an eye open around Sunday, I have a special treat in store for some of you!! ;o) ;o) ;o) xx

Do you love Sweet Pea Stamps?

2010-03-20T23:44:00.000-07:00

I know HUNDREDS of you do, and my lovely friend Pascale and I have been absolutely raving about them so much lately that when she hit upon the fabulous idea to start a weekly themed blog, I perked right up and agreed to do it with her! We have some beautiful upcoming themes all ready in place, and Lynette who makes the stunning Sweet Pea Stamps has given us her blessing to go ahead with this and has offered us monthly giveaways - how amazing is that!

And now we're looking for a few inspirational card designers to join us over at Sweet Pea Stampers - could that be you? A DT call has been published here and Pascale has created this fab sketch to help you. So far we have already been joined by Amy and Debbie who's amazing creations are certain to inspire - go check out their blogs and see for yourself!!

So if you're one of those bloggers who is mad about Sweet Pea Stamps and you think you would like to join our lovely, friendly band, get over there and show us your wonderful creations; we'd love to hear from you!

Pascale's sketch

and here is the card that I created using her sketch as a guide. Now it's your turn - we'd love to see what you do with it, and wish all of you the best of luck with the DT call!

Thanks for stopping by - have a great week!! :o) xx

Total Whiteout!

2010-02-20T23:24:00.000-08:00

Yay!!! I love snow so, it was a very welcome surprise for me to wake up to Winter Wonderland again this morning.... eurgh, that sounded like a cheesy link to my Sunday playground, but there was no pun intended - honest! But.... now that we're on the subject, why not get over there and play along with us this week. Pascale has made a fab sketch to follow, the theme is open, and Chris from The Sketching Stamper has very kindly donated 4 of her magnificent digi images to one lucky player who's name will be drawn randomly next Saturday! You will find a copy of the sketch on my sidebar, and this is the card I created using the sketch as a guide:

I mentioned in my previous post that I have had a lot of fabulous opportunities to paint again this week, and the cards I've made are below. I'm not embarrassed or ashamed to admit that I will happily allow myself to be inspired and influenced by other people's art, and Kim and Chris between them, with their fabulous painting skills, have this week enticed me to get my distress inks out again and try to use them more creatively, and I am so delighted with the results. My mojo was also lifted when I received a plate of Sweet Pea Stamps - OMG, Fantasy Art at it's best! These are just adorable and such fun to play around with, and I think they go perfectly with these gorgeous Websters papers! See what you think:

And they don't mind a bit of glitter, these girls!! They remind me of Girls Aloud - the last one, I think looks like Cheryl Cole!! LOL!

A little tale that made me splutter this week. We were watching The Weakest Link and one of the contestants introduced himself as an Antiques Dealer. My youngest's eyes nearly popped out of his head in disbelief as he exclaimed "How does he get away with that??" I thought for a moment, wondering what he was talking about, and when I asked him what was wrong with that, he replied "He just admitted he's an Antique Stealer!!!" ROFL!!!

Thank you for popping in here on your journey, I hope you liked what you saw and hopefully left with a smile and maybe a little inspired yourself! Have a great week ahead :o) xx

Just a little Thank You!

2010-02-20T05:26:00.001-08:00

What a fab week I've had largely due to the beautiful creations of two fabulous ladies in particular because their amazing work has inspired me to get paintbrushes out again and try a bit of painting with distress inks. I have spent my free time this week having the most wonderful time with my paintbrushes and my deflated mojo has taken an upward turn and I haven't enjoyed myself so much for ages!

I have created this award especially for those two ladies, Chris and Kim, and for my wonderful team mates over at Winter Wonderland whose creativity never fail to inspire me. They do everything with such good humour and they are all so kind and considerate and they very much deserve my grateful thanks! So I want to pass this onto, in alphabetical order

Avril

Danielle

Joey

Lesley

Lynda

Pascale

Sam

Sue

Teri P

Teri S

Thank You so much ladies, every one of you, you make blogland a wonderful place to be! Please feel free to pass this onto anyone who inspires you too! :o)

XXX

Websters and Tattered Angels

2010-02-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

OMGoodness, it's February already - worse, it's almost halfway through February and I haven't blogged yet! I wanted to say a big Thank You to everyone for their lovely kind comments on my offering for the I Love Digi DT call. Elaine very kindly did offer me a place but sadly I had to turn it down as I have now been booked onto an 8 week intense training course which I cannot miss out on, but I wish them loads of luck for their launch next week.

In the meantime, have you seen Websters new products? OMG, they've teamed up with Tattered Angels and over on the Inspire ME site you have the opportunity to win some gorgeous products. Get over there and see for yourself! Swwwoooooon!!!!

Well I'm going to go and have a play with my Websters pages now - I've seen so many gorgeous inspirational projects over there that my mojo needs pulling down from the ceiling right now!

Red & White Stripes

2010-01-31T00:04:00.001-08:00

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!

2010-01-28T08:57:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-01-24T00:43:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-01-17T00:58:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-11-29T01:23:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-25T09:25:00.000-08:00

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!!!

2009-11-22T00:29:00.000-08:00

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

Creatalicious Challenge #4

2009-11-16T23:31:00.000-08:00

Hi fellow bloggers - I have been a baaad blogger lately. Lack of time is my only excuse - that and having to compete with Club Pengiun! My kids are nuts about this game and trying to get anywhere near the computer while they're playing that is a non-starter!

I love this time of year - the Christmas Production rehearsals are now in full swing and I love to watch the children giving their all as they belt out their lines, and there's been more than a couple of discrete chuckles enjoyed by the staff already!! I cannot wait to go and see "Nativity" at the cinema - judging by the trailer, it's an absolute must for anyone involved in School Christmas Productions!!! LOL!!

Anyway, a little late I know, but finally I get to blog my Creatalicious Challenge card. The challenge this month is to make something for Christmas, use lots of glitter and snowflakes. My card is another easel card; very popular at the moment, and once you've made one, you can understand why that is, they're great fun and really impressive! This one was especially quick to make because all the elements you see (apart from the snowflake) are from the K&Co Swell Noel collection. I have absolutely loved K&Co's Christmas papers this year, but these chipboard pieces have been a very welcome addition. The only trouble is, they're double sided so it seems such a shame to glue them down to card - they would probably look better as free-standing figures on a 3D display!

Anyway, that's my lot for today - hope it won't be long before I have something to blog again!

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

Sunday is good!

2009-11-08T12:20:00.000-08:00

I've treated the family to a freebie day out at Warwick Castle today! It was a special Teacher Taster weekend so I registered and went along. We had a fab time. Apparently they've re-branded themselves "The Ultimate Castle". I have to confess though, I was a little more than shocked when I saw the price increase from last year, plus an additional £7.50 pp if you wanted a tour of the dungeon! What used to be labelled "The Ghost Tower" has now been transformed into "The Princess Tower!" and it's all very pink and girly - not that my boys appreciated it one little bit!!!!! LOL!!

One of my forum buddy's, Lana, set us a weekend challenge with a sketch and after being inspired by a card design I spied on Magnolia-licious challenges blog, I came up with this:

It's a very quick and simple, but very effective design. You start with a sheet of cardstock, 11" x 5.5" plus an additional square of 5.5" - this will be the front of your card. Score the 11" x 5.5" piece at 2.5" and 5.5" and fold as shown below. Then stick the 5.5" square piece onto the folded down portion. You also need some kind of 'anchor' on the base to hold the card up - I used the sentiment as my anchor.

Over at Winter Wonderland we have a sketch this week with the optional addition of a Pantomime theme. I'm afraid I'm not much of a panto person so I just stuck with the sketch. We also have another giveaway from the wonderful Regina of The Cutting Cafe, so if you are needing to make a start, or just add to your Christmas Card stack, get over there, join in the fun and who knows, it could be you who walks away with that fabulous candy!!

Well if you made it in here, I'd like to thank you for passing through and I wish you a pleasant and safe week ahead! :o) xx

Aaah, the weekend is here

2009-11-06T08:24:00.000-08:00

The first week back after half term is always quite tiring, but I am soooo glad that it's now Friday evening because I am exhausted!! Partly because I missed 3 precious hours sleep this week, but I'm not complaining because this was the reason why:

OMG, I saw Fleetwood Mac at the NIA in Birmingham!! They were incredibly amazing and I shan't go on and on about it and bore the ass off anyone, but I have to say that it was one of the most momentous occasions of my life! Stevie Nicks is every bit the Goddess and when I grow up I want to be just like her!!
But getting back to reality with a big bump, here's something I made earlier! I loved it but it kind of pales after the previous pics

Thanks for stopping by - hope you enjoy the photies!! :o) xx

It's November!!

2009-11-01T00:42:00.000-07:00

One thing we've not had a lot of round these parts lately is rain! Until it happens, you forget how long it's been since the last time, and the truth is, I can't remember! And then this morning it came back... Oh boy, it's coming down in buckets this morning! What a lovely start to November.

This week's theme over at Winter Wonderland is Jingle Bells and I used K&Co. Christmas Cheer papers and a cookie cutter to create this hanging decoration. And it really jingles too - see the little bells at the bottom! They are so sweet, but unfortunately they came in a bag of mixed sized bells and I've used up all the little ones on this banner.

So, if you're still waiting for inspiration to get started on your Christmas Cards, take yourself over to Winter Wonderland and have a look at the fantastic samples the girls have created for you. You might even get lucky and win Joey's amazing blog candy giveaway!!! Good Luck!

Thanks for popping by and have a great week! xx

First day of the hols

2009-10-26T08:45:00.001-07:00

Sigh, I was so looking forward to having a lazy ol' lie-in this morning, but DH's alarm went off at 5am and that was it, I never went back to sleep again, so at 5.45am this morning I was downstairs fiddling around with the old Video Recorder. It's been such a long time since we used it that I'd forgotten what it was all about. Years ago when I first got hooked on crafting I used to love doing One Stroke Painting. I bought pretty much all the kits at the time and nothing was sacred - if it didn't move, it got painted!! LOL!! And so just lately I got it into my head that I need to find all the books and get doing it again, but the first thing I needed to do was brush up on the tutorial in the form of VHS tapes of Donna Dewberry showing me "what fun" it is to paint leaves and flowers on everything. The next thing I did was order myself a new set of brushes and I'm chomping at the bit now, excited to get going again!!

So, while I wait for the postie to deliver my new brushes (haw haw.... wonder what month that will be!!!), I decided to play along with the Sugar Bowl challenge. I love this one - I haven't had much time to play in there since I started my new job in September, so this was a great opportunity. There was a sketch by Kathy and here is my take on it

Also, yesterday, I came across a fantastic website for digi fans - The Sketching Stamper! Christine is an amazing artist and has created the most wonderful images. This pointsettia is one of hers which I coloured using Promarker pens. Unfortunately, I had this fabulous idea to put 'water droplets' (glossy accents) on the petals - it looks really good IRL, I promise, but it just doesn't translate well in photo!

Well that's my offering for today. Thanks for stopping by. :o) xx

Back to Blogland!

2009-10-25T01:03:00.000-07:00

OMG, what a couple of weeks I've had! I shan't bore you with the details but the long and short of it is that my computer went into a coma! Talk about panic! It's very scary (and very sad!!) how much our lives depend on the smooth running of our computer's! Not only could I not participate in the Winter Wonderland theme last week, I also couldn't upload my pic for the Creatalicious Challenge, nor take part in any other blog challenges. However, that didn't matter as much as the fact that all my planning for the Autumn term is stored on my computer (now backed up onto an external drive - let that be a lesson to you m'lady!!!!) and the hundreds of photo's that I took on holiday this year were still on there waiting to be copied onto an external drive, as well as the many, many digi images I've acquired just lately!! However, after researching lots of would-be fixers (who's general response was "I can't guarantee I can retrieve any of your files but I can take it back to the factory settings for you!"), my lovely friend's husband came forward and offered to take a look at it for me. A couple of days later, he returned to me a virtually brand-new computer, all cleaned up and with extra memory, new hard disk and best of all, he managed to retrieve ALL my files (which are all safely on an external drive now!!!), and charged me £20 for his time! What an absolute darling!!! Mwah!

Creatalicious Challenge #3

So, without further ado, here we go again. First up is the offering I made for the Creatalicious DT challenge. The challenge is to use scraps of paper and make your own flowers. I made this matchbox advent calendar because I wanted to make something practical and I've always loved these whenever I've seen them out there, and they are unbelievably simple to make! The flowers were made by stamping out a free Paper Artsy heart stamp that I was given at the recent Artisan show near Leamington Spa.

Over at Winter Wonderland this week we're having an Open Theme. Our lovely team member and fantabulous graphic wizardess Teri is giving away 3 of her amazing digi images to one lucky person who plays along with us this week, so if you're one of those players, I wish you loads of luck because Teri's images are just so fabulous and easy to work with. Teri very kindly sent all the team a dove that she created especially for us for this week, and here are a couple of the cards that I made with the image - but you really must go over there and see what fantastic creations the other girls have made with it also!

And my final offering for today (so far!!) is my take on this week's Friday Sketcher's sketch. This gorgeous sketch was supplied by Claudia who's work I always adore! I coloured my image using Promarkers and the bg papers are by Papermania.

It feels great to be up and blogging again, and with a whole week of half-term ahead, I'm sure I'll be back before next Sunday! Have a great week and thanks for stopping by on your travels! :o) xx

Promarkers - Recipe and any colours

2009-10-12T00:13:00.000-07:00

OMG, it's Monday again and I haven't been anywhere near my blog for a week!! Where does the time go? A little tale for you. This week I have been helping a group of Y3 children to make a poster about bikes. Two of the children in my group sat with blank faces, and when questioned replied "I don't know how to draw a bike". In truth, I've never tried to draw one myself but armed with a bucketload of confidence I helped them draw one step-by-step, figuring that if I start with a triangle frame, the rest will fall into line. It did as it happened, and between us we managed to produce a pretty impressive bicycle, though I say so myself (though my mother always said "Self praise is no recommendation!!!" LOL!). Later that morning I took another child out of the class to help him with the same task. He too sat with a blank face so I immediately picked up on the fact that he probably didn't know how to draw a bike either, so off I went again on my step-by-step explanation. After I'd finished it, he still had the same expression on his face so I asked "Does this help?" and he shook his head. Oh dear - what now? He then looked at me and said "I was going to draw a good bike!!!" ROFL!!!!!

OK, so I shan't be attempting any more bikes. But here's my offering for the current Promarkers challenge. Use any colours you like but you have to follow a recipe which is 3 shapes, 2 papers and 1 ribbon.

Thanks for popping by and have a great week! xx

Promarkers - Cool Aqua and Apricot

2009-09-30T07:50:00.000-07:00

Talk about being out of my comfort zone!! Cool Aqua and Apricot? If you sat me down with a box of colours and gave me a month to come up with a new favourite colour combo, never in a million years would I have put these two together. Not because they're not suited, OMG, they go so beautifully together, but they're so far out of my comfort zone that I would never come up with this, which is why I am so delighted to play along with the Promarkers challenges. They make me play with colours I wouldn't normally work with and come up with some pretty striking combo's!

So here's my card for this week - another addition to my Christmas stash - YAY!!!!

In addition, this week's challenge states that you must use a flower on your card - I used two - sorted! :o) The image is another of Inger's amazing free digi downloads. This lady does the most amazing images - this one is called "Waiting for Santa" and I just think she is soooooo adorable! So Thank You Inger for another freebie - they're gorgeous!

Well that's my lot for today - I have a hard evening slogging over assessments ahead of me so I need to keep it brief! Have a great day all and thank you for popping by, and in particular if you've left me some feedback, it's always much appreciated! XX

Promarkers - just in the nick...!

2009-09-21T10:09:00.000-07:00

Nothing like being on the 11th hour, is there? It's all happening at once here. One of the best things about my new job is that my youngest son is at the same school so he can now bring friends home from school with him which he was really excited about - 'cept that it's happening pretty much every evening at the moment! And as soon as they get here they're straight onto the computer and the only reason they get off is either to eat, or to let my other son on to do his homework! Having said that, even if I do get to bag a turn, I don't have time to anyway!!! However, things feel a little more settled and routine this week so I'll soon get back into the swing of things.

In the meantime, here is my Promarkers offering for this week. This is for the Polka Dots and any colour theme and I have to get in quick because it's the last day for the challenge!!! Watch this space for a more organised 'Me'!!! YAY!

Thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

What happened???

2009-09-16T10:37:00.000-07:00

OK, who nicked Monday and Tuesday??? OMGosh, I have been soooooo busy and have completely lost time! I love my new job so much, but I keep falling asleep within minutes of arriving home!! This is bad practise that I need to nip in the bud so now I daren't allow myself to sit down until everyone's fed!!

Anyway, I've lost so much time I'm on catch up BIG time! First of all, here is my offering for this month's Creatalicious Challenge. The challenge is to make a creation with the colour combo pink or plum,with burgundy and green. Also add some sort of lace,ribbon or fibre etc. and here is my offering:

I found this clock on the Reduced shelf at Tesco for £3 and I thought it would be perfect for this challenge. I could be wrong but I think the paper is Anna Griffin - I've had it for a loooooong time so I'm quite confident that is probably is!! The flowers are all from Becs' own store and they are absolutely gorgeous!!!

Then I was sent this gorguss image from my lovely buddy Lesley so I used it on this card for the same challenge. The paper, lace and flowers are all from Becs' store.

Then over at Winter Wonderland this week we are doing Vintage Christmas. I found this lovely image on a Joanna Sheen CD and thought he was perfect for Vintage!

Oh well, rushing as usual! Hope you're all having a great week! Thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Winter Wonderland and Friday Sketchers

2009-09-06T01:38:00.000-07:00

Boo Hoo! This is officially it - the last day of the summer holiday. Although I've technically gone back to work, the children aren't back until tomorrow and it feels quite weird. My youngest is going back to his last year in first school and that is so scary. In the meantime, my eldest will be doing SATS this year, and that's even scarier!! LOL!

So, here's my final offering for this week. Over at Winter Wonderland we're paying homage to Frosty the Snowman and I found this gorgeous digi image to make my card with

and in fact, digi images are a new phenomenom for me. Thankfully my printer ink seems to like Promarkers so I have been looking around for new images to play with, and I found this, and some more delightful freebies over at Inger's place. Inger is a designer for Panduro and her images and papers are just absolutely amazing, and she makes the most gorgeous projects. If you've not yet discovered her, go take a look for yourself.

I used Inger's image on my card for this week's Friday Sketchers offering. It was a lovely simple sketch to follow and here is my take on it:

And that's all my playtime gone for this weekend now. Time to have a last minute run through to make sure that everyone has everything they need before the bell goes tomorrow morning! Have a fun Sunday and thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Girly and Glittery

2009-09-04T03:14:00.000-07:00

OMGoodness, what a surprise!! My card for last week's Promarkers Challenge got picked for the winner's podium! How exciting is that! I've never won a blog candy thingy in my whole life so I was over the moon!

This week's theme is Glittery and Girly and the colour choice is yours - well, I had the most fabulous fun with this one, ask me to add glitter and I'm happy to oblige - I just need to be told when to stop though! LOL!

My photography's not what it could be - you can't really see that the blue mount background is glitter card, and the big strawberry on the image is glittered too, as well as the embellishments, so I did a close up to show that I have gone to town with the sparkly stuff!!! LOL!

Thanks for stopping by here, and have a great weekend! :o) xx

Passion for Promarkers and Inky Impressions

2009-08-26T04:34:00.000-07:00

Feeling a bit sniffly today :o( Not ill, or anything dramatic like that, just a bit below par. Possibly because I've had a fantastic summer break with the kids and my gorgeous hubby has taken lots of annual leave this summer too but he's gone back to work this morning, and the weather has turned horrid! We've been out and about pretty much every day and spent a glorious week in Devon, and today I'm being very domesticated and sorting out everything in readiness for going back to school :o( Part of me is really excited because I will be starting my new job (HURRAH!!!) but I feel strangely nervous too.... ooer! But, unlike lots of parents who have been counting down the minutes since their children broke up, I am completely the opposite and am counting down the minutes to half term!! LOL!!!

Anyway, I've played along with the Passion for Promarkers challenge again this week because I have become completely addicted to using them! However, this week was an almighty challenge for me because the colours they chose to work with are Lavender, Lilac, Amethyst and Aubergine. Eeek!!! I'm just not comfortable with purple at all but surprisingly I enjoyed using them more than I expected to, so I made two cards!! LOL! The first one was a free digi image which I got from Inky Impressions blog - they have some gorgeous stamps! I even made the flower on this card myself using my Promarkers ;o)

Well, that's my lot for today - I have to get back to my domestics! I can hear my oven screaming for a scrubbing! LOL! Thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Passion for Promarkers - Prussian and Pumpkin

2009-08-23T02:44:00.000-07:00

Happy Sunday folks!! Very short post from me today as I'm rushing off to have a jolly with all my boys in Stratford on Avon!

Here's my offering for this week's Passion for Promarkers challenge where this week the colours to use are Prussian and Pumpkin, but with the addition of a Halloween theme.

And over at Winter Wonderland this week the fabulous DT have created amazing samples for this week's theme which is "By Candlelight" and here is a snippet of my own card.

* Edited by request - The cardstock was embossed using a cuttlebug folder - I just love it, it's so classy and I can't stop using it!! LOL!! The candle is literally two 'sticks' of plain white card, with a very slight arc cut out of the top strip. The top was then dabbed with versamark and dipped in white UTEE and heated. While it was still hot I dipped it in again and again (about 5 times in all) until it was really thick then I let it gently run down to give the melted wax look. When it had cooled I mounted it onto the other strip with some foam pads, drew a flame and filled that with stickles - that wasn't enough so I also dipped it into a very fine white glitter!! Once the flame was dried I cut it out and glued it in place. The flower is a ready-made one from my stash and the greenery is a Stewart Gill punch from Craft Obsessions! The main image was mounted onto red card, then fixed to a plain white card - very, very simple and will probably be my 'Production Line' card this year, so if you're a work colleague of mine, close your eyes now!! LOL!! Here is the full card:

Must dash - I can hear the engine revving and sounds of impatient boys shouting!!! Thanks for popping by!

A brand new challenge!!!

2009-08-14T23:50:00.000-07:00

Yay!!! It's the 15th of August and a brand new challenge blog has arrived - Creatalicious Challenges. Bec and Cheryl have set out their first challenge which is to make something for a man (in honour of Father's Day in Australia next month) which incorporates the colour brown and use some metal on your project! As we had Father's Day in June here in the UK, I decided to make something that I've wanted for a long time - a message board!

I started with a box canvas and inked up the edges. Then I took a photo of all my boys and sepia'd it before printing it onto Lazertran (printable decal paper). I painted turpentine over the canvans and laid the soaked decal over it and sprayed it with a gloss sealant. From experience I know that the sealant reacts with the turpentine and crackles, although on this occasion, not as much as I would have liked. Then I added the text and a rub-on quote and stapled chicken wire all over the canvas. I managed to dig out a bag of tiny pegs from my stash to use to clip messages to the wire. Then to continue the theme I made the tag and foiled parts of the letters to give it a distressed feel!

So, if you want more inspiration, pop over there and have a look at some of the other fantastic projects that the team have created! And the best thing about this challenge blog is that you don't have to rush out and get something finished quickly - there's a whole month before the next challenge is set, and next time I hope to remember on time that Australia are actually 12 hours ahead of us so I need to blog a day earlier!!!!!!!!!

Another new challenge

2009-08-14T07:05:00.001-07:00

Oooh, I do love Summer holidays!!! I have had a great week playing with my stash and taking the opportunity to do a bit of blog hopping. I've missed so much stuff going on out there while I've been working full time and being able to take part in different challenges has been really exciting! Today's offering is from the Sugar Bowl Challenge blog which is another that I've not had chance to participate in until now. The challenge is to use a Sugar Nellie stamp along with Judy's sketch and to add your own handmade flowers, and here's what I came up withI've coloured it using my Promarkers again - omgosh, I am sooo in love with them - maybe I might even get round to using them on a different image! LOL!!

Thanks again if you've popped by, and especially if you've left feedback, it's always appreciated! :o) xx

Passion for Promarkers - Cocoa and Rose Pink

2009-08-12T03:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a moment I've been looking forward to - taking part in the Passion for Promarkers challenges! I've been eyeing them up for a few weeks now but without the essential ingredients I've not been able to play along. Anyway, curiosity got the better of me and I had to see what it was that everyone was getting so excited about so I invested in a few pens for myself.....then a few more..... and a few more..... OMGosh, they are wonderful!!! I think I may have found myself a new obsession! Now all I need to do is find the 'right' cardstock - the stuff I've been using is a little too porous and I find the inks bleed a little. Not enough to put me off though! LOL! And here is my first completed project using the pens. This week PfP are asking you to use Cocoa and Rose Pink as your predominant colours. This is one of my favourite colour combo's (let's be honest, anything with brown is a favourite colour combo for me!! LOL!)

I have used other colours too - don't ask which, I just love blending with these pens!! I hope my friend and neighbour hasn't discovered my blog because this is a card that I made for her birthday on Sunday. The 'Wishes' text was cut from a sheet of K&Co. and I rubbed on the 'best birthday' text from a mag freebie that's been lying around my stash den for goodness knows how many years!!! A touch of Stickles on the white text for that added pizazz and Lo, we have a birthday card!!

Thanks for dropping by, and don't forget to keep an eye out for Creatalicious Challenges which starts on Saturday 15th August - it's going to be a heap of fun!!! ;o) xx

WOOHOOO!!!!!

2009-08-10T05:08:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah!!!! How excited am I??!! I've been AWOL because I've just spent a glorious week in the Devon sunshine (except for Tuesday - just don't go there!!! Grrr.....) and I came home feeling much chilled and, well, zonked to be honest. And in pain too - some berk who's brakes were faulty decided to follow us down Porlock Hill and she obviously had no control over the car and hit us, giving me whiplash!!! I'm not too bad at the moment though, fingers crossed!! Anyone who's familiar with Porlock Hill would know that you don't take a car with faulty brakes down there - it's a 1:25 gradient!!! Sheesh!

Anyway, I woke up yesterday morning to some really, really exciting news - I've been selected as one of the Creatalicious Challenges DT members!! YAAAAAAY!!!!! And I cannot wait for the 15th August when it gets going because Bec and Cheryl have got some absolutely mouth-watering challenges lined up that are sure to get you inspired and creating!! I finished my first one this morning and can't wait to show it off to you, but you're going to have to wait a few more days........ In the meantime, if you've not heard about it, why not pop over there now to see what it's all about and take a look at this FAB celebration candy that the girls are giving away to a lucky, lucky, lucky player!!!

Well, I haven't finished anything that I can show off this week (except a ton of holiday washing, but that's not very exciting!!!) so I thought I'd leave you with a pic of my beautiful little man on the beach....... what a darling!!!

Thanks for popping by! Have a great week! :o) xx

Bizzy Becs New Blog

2009-07-30T02:33:00.000-07:00

There's a new monthly challenge blog about to be launched called Bizzy Becs Creatalicious Challenges which goes live on the 15th August and each month thereafter, and they're looking for 2 DT members. The girls have put a lovely sketch on the blog for wannabe's to use in their submission which is right here:

and here's what I created using that sketch:

There are so many 'cardmaking' blog challenges around that it's nice to do something different from time to time so I think this blog could be one that I will use regularly even if I don't get picked for the DT. My note holder is nothing more than chipboard covered with K&Co papers which I built it up following the sketch. The notepad itself is made using a bind-it-all and I even filled the barrel of the pen with some rolled up coordinating paper!

Well, keeping it all crossed that the ladies like my offerings enough, but also for the other girls who are submitting their own creations! Either way, I'm sure there's going to be lots of inspiration coming from the team and I wish them loads of luck! Thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Making decorations

2009-07-26T00:26:00.000-07:00

Helloooo Blogland - I've been making Christmas decorations this week for the Winter Wonderland samples! I also have some news that I want to share which has got me very excited indeed. I am about to change my profile which says I am a School Secretary so that it reveals that from September I will be a fully fledged Teaching Assistant!! YAY!! As per with me, it all happened very, very quickly indeed. There I was outlining my plans for the coming academic year one day, when the following day I get word of a vacancy that was just tooooo tempting to resist. So I put in my application thinking "Oh well, if I don't hear anything, at least I have the comfort of knowing I tried". Monday comes around and a letter arrives inviting me for an interview on the Friday - ooer!! Now for the difficult bit - telling my Head about it. I don't know why I was so worried though, she was soooo supportive. So I had my interview. Honest to God, I was never so nervous - if they'd asked me what my name was I wouldn't have been able to tell them! However, within half an hour of me arriving back at work I received a phone call offering me the job!! Fantastic! It's what I've wanted to do for so many years, it's what I got my qualification for last year and I am soooo chuffed!!

But back to now - why not pop over to Winter Wonderland and play along with our theme this week and you could also be in with a chance of winning some fabulous papers kindly dontated by our very own Pascale - who, incidentally, has made a demo of her decorations this week which can be seen on her blog. Thanks for popping by! :o) xx

Bonus blog day

2009-07-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

It's not very often these days that I get the chance to do mid-week blogging but I came upon a new theme site today and I had to have a go. I say 'new' - its been around for a few weeks now but I only discovered it today. It's called Stamp with Us and their current theme is Children's Cards. This is an area I don't get to play in very often these days but my great neice is about to have her first birthday so I decided to use the inspiration from the DT and join in by making her a card. It was great fun because I went for a rummage around my old stamps and found LOADS that I had forgotten I had and can't wait to use again. I thought I'd got rid of this little darlin' yonks ago, I didn't realise he was still sat on my shelf!! Now there's a blast from the past! LOL!!

Thanks for stopping by!! xx

Countdown....

2009-07-12T01:48:00.000-07:00

Sunday again - just one more week to the 6 week holidays here in England! I know that Scotland are already enjoying theirs but I think I'll just about make it to the end of the week. The children are so excited and I am really looking forward to the break!

Here we go again with another Christmas offering. Over at Winter Wonderland this week we have a fabulous giveaway from Regina Easter of The Cutting Cafe. Anyone who knows Regina's products will tell you how fabulously simple to use and versatile they are, and they cost pocket money to purchase, plus you have the added bonus of having them stored on your computer for ever! And they are timeless too - go take a peak if you are in need of some inspiration, you'll find lots there. This is a gift bag that I made using the Heart Bag template:

OK, so it isn't a heart, but her templates are such that they are easily adaptable to any occasion.

The theme at Winter Wonderland this week is Christmas Present, hence the gift bag, but I also made this card which was a double challenge for me because I wanted to see if I could make a card without using any obvious Christmas papers - Yay! Great fun!! Get over there and play along with us, build up your Christmas card stash and be in with a chance of being this month's winner of Regina's fantastic giveaway!

Thanks for stopping by! Hope to see you in Winter Wonderland! :o) xx

Christmas Past

2009-07-04T23:42:00.000-07:00

Phew... what a scorcher!!! I don't know about you but I have suffered so bad this week in all the heat. It's been a mad week altogether! My office is like a greenhouse and no matter what I did, I just couldn't get any cool air into it at all. My poor little dog has really not enjoyed it. I came home on Wednesday to find huge clumps of fur all over the carpet and he was there tugging away at it in a desperate attempt to stop itching - it must have been killing him! Thankfully our house is very cool in the summer (freezing in the winter tho'!!!) so at least it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I managed to get their hair cut though and it seems to have helped a lot. Hardly the weather to be thinking about Christmas, but I still managed to get my card done for this week's Winter Wonderland theme which is Christmas Past. This Thomas Kinkade stamp was perfect for me because (although I'm not Victorian, despite what my kids may tell you!!) the scene reminds me so much of what Christmas was like when I was a child. It was quite a difficult image to paint though - I certainly don't have TK's talent for capturing light (Lord, I love that man's paintings!!), but nevertheless, it was great fun (if not time-consuming) to do.

Well that's my lot for today - if you find yourself with an hour to spare, why don't you put something together for the Winter Wonderland theme this week and you could find yourself being the lucky owner of these fab stamps too!!

Thanks for stopping by - have a great week!! :o) xx

Sunday again!

2009-06-21T04:30:00.000-07:00

Now, I don't know if this is a common occurence worldwide - it's certainly not around these parts, but one night this week I woke up several times during the night and it just didn't go dark!!! At around 12.30am I got up to get a glass of water and I couldn't believe how light it still was outside. And then on Friday I realised I hadn't imagined it as I read in the paper that it is a rare phenomenom called Noctilucent, or Night Shining. It's got something to do with droplets of water in the atmosphere being so high up and the sun's rays catching them..... don't ask me, I don't do science, but it was fabulous to witness!!

And now, onto something that I DO do - Christmas!! Yay!! Over at Winter Wonderland this week, we're feeling Blue - but in the happiest sense of the word! And here are a couple of blue projects that I made using my new Sugar Nellie stamps - and if you fancy owning one of these stamps (plus some stamped images of the others!) get over there and play along and you will be in with a chance of winning one in next Saturday's draw!

So if you made it here, I'd like to thank you for popping by and wish you a great week ahead!! :o) xx

Aaaah Summer...

2009-06-16T11:49:00.000-07:00

Don't you just love it!! But heck, what's with all the greenfly??? And where have all the ladybirds gone??? I put a citronella candle outside a couple of days ago - it is absolutely black with deceased greenfly now!! YUK!!! But summer has more up-sides than down-sides - tall glasses of Pimms being one of them, and earlier this evening I had my first Pimms of the summer! Sighhhhh.... LOL!!! Before that though I had a chat with my friend on the phone - she was feeling proper sorry for herself because her DH was going to be home later than normal and she was sitting outside with a cup of tea, so I quickly whizzed a Pimms kit together for her, drove it up the road, rang her doorbell and drove off!! LOL!! She texted me a very happy response!!! LOL!!

So here's a few offerings from me this week. I've been playing with my Monotone markers and although I'm far from perfect yet, I love playing with them and I LOVE the effect they give. This first one is my offering for Saturday Sketchers.

It was actually my second attempt - this was my first tryout,

and this was my third go

Winter Wonderland is proving to be a lot more popular than any of us anticipated this early in the year, and we are having such a fantastic time with it, and the enthusiasm from all the talented players is very encouraging, making it such a pleasure to be a part of. This week our theme is Let It Snow! The title speaks for itself really!!! This was my sample card which took me an age to make but I truly cannot remember enjoying making a Christmas card as much as this one. It is sooooo lovely being able to make my cards at this nice slow and steady pace and hopefully I will have a collection at the end of it that I will be proud to distribute. So pop over there and play along - we have some really fabulous projects and lots of wonderful giveaways line up too, and we have some very exciting news we're going to share soon about a fantastic regular sponsor!!!!

Hope you're having a great week and enjoying the sunshine - if you have any, of course!! Thank you so much for popping by! :o) xx

Winter Wonderland, Week 2

2009-06-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

OMGosh, it's Wednesday already and I haven't blogged!!! It's week 2 over at Winter Wonderland - week 1 proved to be a brilliant success and it was very reassuring to know that there are plenty of other people out there who want to get ahead for Christmas too. I had a big twinge of excitement yesterday thinking about all that spare time I'm going to have to plan for Christmas knowing that making cards isn't going to be a headache for me this year!

So, A Christmas Carol is this week's theme - basically, just sing a Carol or two and be inspired by them. Here is my "We Three Kings" card which used a stamp that I'd bought about 4 or 5 years ago and haven't ever used yet!! I think it might feature again on my Christmas cardmaking this year!!

Whatever you're doing, I hope the weather is being kind to you (it's horrid here!!!) and I wish you a great week! Thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Off we go!

2009-05-31T00:03:00.000-07:00

I've had a busy ol' week with one thing or another, but I shan't bore you with the details because I am sooooooo excited to remind all blog-challenge lovers that today some fabulous blog-buddies and myself have launched our Winter Wonderland blog. And if you love Christmas, but would prefer to do it without all the stress that goes with it, then this is the place for you because we're going on a slooooow journey to the festive season, but preparing for it well in advance. So come along for the ride, join in the fun and get yourself into the spirit of things - come November, you'll be so glad you did!!! ;o) And Teri has a fabulous stack of blog candy to giveaway to one lucky winner too - what more incentive could you want!!!

So, to kickstart, here is my first offering for our first theme - Oh Christmas Tree:

And just for the fun of it, I also made a contemporary one as well - a bit out of my comfort zone but I got the idea from a card I received from a lovely forum friend last year and I really liked it, so this is my version:

And then I also used this week's Saturday Sketch to make this little gift box. There's nothing like crafting for Christmas in the sunshine, let me tell you!
So I hope to see as many of you over there joining in with our weekly themes. They're not all going to be cards, we have a few crafty tricks up our sleeves too ;o)

Thanks for popping in, see you in Winter Wonderland! :o) xx

Half Term is here!

2009-05-23T07:46:00.000-07:00

It's half term! Hurrah!! I've got a stinking cold! Booo! Typical, just as I was about to catch up on some domestics I get struck down with this awful bug! Still, at least I've got a week off, and a pack of Beecham's All-In-One so with any luck, this thing will pass soon enough!

I have a couple of goodies to show off again this weekend. First here is my offering for this week's Friday Sketch:

And then here is my Saturday Sketch card:

I did make another twinchie too but for some reason blogger doesn't want to show it so maybe I should take that as an omen!! LOL!! I bought some gorgeous little pots in Hobbycraft today so I'm going to go and see what I can make with them now! Thanks for popping by and have a great weekend! :o) xx

End of another weekend

2009-05-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

Oh well, that's another one over with - and this one seemed to go quicker than any other in recent weeks - where do they go? I have been quite productive though this weekend. I have another couple of Christmas cards out of the way - I'm not going to show these yet though but I'll give you a teaser - this one is for the new Winter Wonderland blog which the girls and I are VERY excited about:

I also joined in the usual weekend sketch challenges - here is my offering for Friday Sketchers:

And here is my Saturday Sketch card

Well that's my lot for this weekend. Thanks for popping in and have a great week! :o) xx

Something completely different

2009-05-16T00:34:00.000-07:00

And here it is - my first ever twinchie! Actually, that's a big fat lie because this finished product was about my 25th attempt at getting it right, and I'm still not convinced I succeeded! Whoever would have imagined that two little inches could give you so much grief!! (stop it...!!!!!) When I saw that Carol had launched her new challenge blog I decided that I would embrace the concept of trying out something completely difference - I didn't realise I'd end up ripping my hair out!! LOL!! But not to be deterred, I soldiered on and came up with this:I know that twinchies have been doing the rounds for aaaaaages, but I've never fancied trying them out before, but despite all the aggro I had with mine, I did in fact enjoy making it so I will be tuning in again next week to see what the girls have in store. Check it out for yourself! ;o)

Back soon...... :o)

Sleigh bells ring.....

2009-05-10T10:32:00.000-07:00

...are you listenin', because I have something really exciting to tell you. No, I've not gone completely mad (yet!) but I have used this week's Friday Sketch once more to make another Christmas card - and the reason for this is because in just a couple of weeks time some of my lovely bloggy buddies and myself will be launching a brand new weekly challenge blog called "Winter Wonderland". It's a little bit different because the aim is to get people to possibly make just one Christmas card a week so that you won't notice how many you'll have built up in your stash till nearer the festive season, and you won't need to panic and be last minute (like I always am!!!). And it's not only about cards - the themes are open to scrapbookers, ATC'ers, mini-album makers, painters, stitchers, all crafters in general! Pop in and see for yourself what it's all about.

So without further ado, here is my offering for this week's Friday sketch (with a little added sparkle courtesey of my fab photo editor!!). Thanks for popping by! :o) xx

Another Friday Sketch

2009-05-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

OMG, it's Wednesday already and I'm only just getting to put my Friday Sketch card up! Gorgeous sketch again this week and I really loved making this card. It would have gone up earlier but I had a nasty accident last night and couldn't do a bloomin' thing! I went shopping, got home, kicked off my shoes, unpacked my bags, and while I'm in the process of putting things away I managed to knock a can of beans off the side which went "SMACK" straight onto my big toe. I couldn't make a sound because the pain was soooooooo intense, and I went really light-headed and felt sick! (what a wuss!!!!) I didn't even realise at first what had happened, just felt this intense pain. So I limped into the living room, sat down and noticed that my big toe nail has gone a horrible shade of black! OMG, I never would have imagined that it could be so painful - and I normally have quite a high pain threshold!!

Anyway, here is my card - my first Christmas Card of 2009. Nothing like getting ahead of oneself, is there!! LOL!! I hope you like it because, you never know, you might be the one to receive it!!!! However, it won't be the last ;o) ;o) ;o) Come back soon and I will elaborate :o)

Have a great rest-of-week, and thanks for popping by! :o) xx

Weekend again!

2009-04-25T01:08:00.000-07:00

Hurrah! I love weekends! This one started out a bit miserable, weather-wise, but then look at the plus side, all those new plants I put out last weekend have had a good soaking which is brilliant because I've forgotten to do it!!! My calendula's are looking perky again....oooer!!! LOL!

Anyway, it's the weekend so that means sketch time again, and here is my Friday Sketch offering. I kept trying not to use Daisy again, but she is so irresistable that I just had to colour her in to kickstart my weekend craft time!

You'll have to use your imagination a bit with the circles at the bottom - I did try adding buttons, brads, flowers and even punched circles but it just wouldn't work, so I figured the pattern on the paper would suffice!

Thank You to those who offered me advice last week with my blog invite problem - it turned out that I had put the wrong email addy's in!! DUH! :o)

Have a great weekend and thanks for popping in! :o) xxx

Sketch Friday

2009-04-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

OMGosh, it's the last day of the Easter Hols :o( Where'd it go? Well, I know where it went for me - I spent the first week nursing two sick little 'uns! It didn't stop us getting out and enjoying ourselves (although my eldest didn't have as much fun as the rest of us :o(...), and the second week has gone in a blink of an eye! My big fella was 10 yesterday - unbelievable - and now we're constantly watching our P's & Q's and looking over our shoulders because he had a new DSi Lite for his birthday and we keep catching him sneaking up to take our photo's and morph our faces - that bit is hilarious, but when I discovered that he had been recording me swearing at other motorists, I realised that none of us are safe anymore!!! LOL!!

Anyway, here is my offering for this week's Friday sketch. I did a bit of masking on this image which is something I haven't done for a long time.

And now I have a blog question which I would love if someone could answer for me please? I have created a new blog which I am sharing with a few friends only my invitations aren't going out for some reason. I have added each of their email addy's in the permissions section and I'm pretty sure I've followed all the instructions on blogger Help, but they're still not getting the invites, either in their normal mailboxes or their spam files. If anyone can offer any advice as to how this is done, I would really appreciate an email from you with the instructions.

That's my lot for today - time to get back to my decorating, I think! Thanks for popping by! xx

Hurrah for Easter Hols!!!

2009-04-04T02:56:00.000-07:00

Saturday Sketch

Oh my, does anyone else feel as relieved as me that the Easter Holidays are finally here - well, they are at our schools! I went to see my 7 year old in 2 performances of his play this week - they did a fantastic job of a musical called "Minibeast Madness" - absolutely brilliant. However, he wasn't so enthused about his part....."a segment of a millipede.......not even a whole millipede!!!" (darling, you don't have enough legs!!! LOL!). Then last night my eldest came home from school with the biggest smile on his face - earlier in the week he and I constructed a model for his Easter Egg competition at school. I was extremely careful not to get too involved, after all, it's his competition - I was just on standby to find things for him to use from my stash, and to glue things on while he worked on other bits. Anyway, he came home last night with a huge grin and the 1st prize in his hands for his "Egg-stinct" dinosaur! LOL!!

Also this week I picked up a very cheap book at my son's bookfair (and when I say cheap, I mean outrageously inexpensive!). It's all about drawing fairies, so I got my pencils out and I drew this image which I've used on my Sketch Saturday card this week. It was huge fun to do and I'm hoping to be able to spend some more time over this holiday doing more!

Well Thanks again for popping by and I hope you have a great week! :o) xx

Busy Busy....

2009-03-25T11:55:00.000-07:00

Loads going on here but not a lot I can shout about a the moment, but I'm busy working on a number of mag projects simultaneously - Oh boy, it feels good to be busy again! So without further adieu I'll leave it brief with my Saturday Sketch offering. I really loved using this sketch and I couldn't resist using Daisy again - she's such a darling!

Big Thank You's again for Teri who left me this fab award on her blog this week

I promise I will pass it on - probably at the weekend with my Tag for this week's Tag, You're It! challenge!

Thanks for passing by! :o) xx