I Scrap, Therefore I am

A little share........

2012-02-01T21:44:00.001Z

We've had an external hard drive horror here, and I've lost all my photos from July onwards :( What a nightmare.....but at least everything prior to that (since around 2006) has been saved! Small mercies!

Anyhow, whilst going through what had been saved and reorganising everything, I came across this little page and realised I hadn't blogged it.....
A couple of months back, Helen set a "pinterest inspired" challenge on the Sarahs Cards Blog, and the following pins inspired my page.

The cool aqua and peach/gold tones in the first picture set the tone for my colour scheme, and the stacked map butterflies inspired both the theme for my page and the map embellishments (which were jointly inspired by the third pin). The photo was a silly snap of us singing our hearts out on one of the long journeys to Mr T's parents house.....the first heart is a map of where we started our journey (our house), the second is about mid point, roughly where we took the picture, and the third heart map is of our final destination at the in-laws.

I simply took a screen shot of the locations I needed on Google maps, then opened this in Photoshop and added a warm filter before enhancing the yellows and blues to match my colour scheme a little more closely.

I'm currently working on this months challenge for the blog, and it's going to be a fun one, so keep your eyes peeled over at Sarah's Cards around the 11th :) I also have the February kit to play with, and it's a good one :)

Thanks for stopping by xxx

I guess that's why they call it the January blues.....

2012-01-17T23:01:00.002Z

Aaargh I'm in my annual January funk and I can't shake it. I don't know what it is about every New Year, but January feels me feeling deflated and down. Even as a child I'd hate the whole post-christmas back to school routine, and it's stayed with me as an adult. I don't mind winter and dark nights, so it's not that. I feel perpetually jealous of people who relish the concept of a new year meaning a fresh start and fresh opportunities - to me it feels flat and like anything worthwhile is a million miles away. You might think I;m being stupid and that it's just a state of mind and that thought patterns can easily be changed to be more positive - but believe me I have tried and I always feel this way until mid February. Bummer. It may not help that I have a big birthday just a few weeks away and I feel that I have accomplished very little during my 30 years. Poo balls. Big ones.

I haven't checked how my exercise goal is effecting my weight loss yet - I had a chinese instead! *rolls eyes*

I am, however, feeling strangely creative. Maybe finding solace in making things will help me shed this crappy feeling. The old granny sunburst squares have seen the light of day. I feel really inspired to scrapbook - I've had a stint of 12x12 for a while and switching back to 8.5x11 has inspired me a bit......here's two pages I did this week for the Sarah's Cards blog -

The first documents and aweseom day we had back in November. I saw an appeal in the local newspaper looking for a special child to be Santa's helper for the day to help open his grotto - I sent off a letter about my niece and she won! We had a fab morning starting with a special VIP breakfast, some lovely treats for the girls including personalised presents and face painting, then Ellie opened the grotto and got to walk through the winter wonderland before meeting the big man himself.

Incidentally, I scrapped another part of the day using the December kit:

My second page for the blog was:

Going back to 8.5x11 is a refreshing change and I am enjoying it....I'm seeing Project Life all over the place and I suddenly really want to give it a go (although, by the tone of the start of this post it may be all doom and gloom I'd document lol!)....however I'm not sure I'd have the time to stick to it, so ordering the multipockets will be a waste if I don't see it through. I may see how I feel in a few weeks and pick it up if I am still interested.

And on a complete tangent....anyone watching the BBC Stargazing live thing? I will admit to be totally fascinated by the skies - they both amaze and daunt me by their sheer vastness and the mysteries and wonders that lie therein. I landed a job back in October taking a Year 6 class on their residential trip, and the highlight of the week for me was taking them on a midnight walk (sssshhhhh - it wasn't really midnight, but they didn't know that!). We walked along the beach and nestled in some sand dunes out of the wind, waited for our eyes to adjust to the pitch blackness, untouched by light pollution, and looked at the constellations. It was a fantastic experience for everyone - due to the world we live in, many of the children had never been out in darkness like that before, let alone had the opportunity to really look at the sky at night. Anyway, after the programme last night I installed Google Skymap on my phone and I haven't stopped fiddling with it since - who knew that bright star out the front was really Jupiter?! Amazeballs! If you haven't already got it, and like gazing at the night sky - down load it now! Tis free!!

xxxx

Fizzle fizzle...

2012-01-07T16:33:00.000Z

Well my New Year resolution has so far got off with a fizzle rather than a bang...all thanks to a rather spectacular bout of the flu....I started feeling unwell on New Years day but it gradually got worse until I spent Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in bed. I am up today (well, on the couch under a blanket, rather than in bed sleeping!), my temperature is a bit more stable, and I'm not in so much pain (I swear somebody had filled my bones with a mixture of lead and firecrackers that exploided whenever I tried to move!), and I hope the chest and head cold symptoms will bugger off pretty soon too.

Cos as soon as they do, I can crack on with getting fit. Here's my new little friend who will help keep an eye on me, my Mii, Tubbs!!

Ain't she purrrdy, if a lil bit more than lardy round the middle?! ;)

Which reminds me of one of the pages I created with the December Sarah's Cards kit. I decided to use a photo that I like of a time when I had achieved success before as a source for motivation and inspiration for my new quest - I think I'd lost just over three stone at this point and felt really good. I also have some right humdingers of me at my absolute heaviest too- but it's all about positive mental attitude and moving forward isn't it?! Plus....if I scrapped those I'd have to share them with you lol, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone ;)

Mr T has been a little angel looking after me this week bless him....I am lucky to have him you know :) Here's a page I made documenting "our story" with the same kit:

He turned 30 last week too, proper ole boy he is now! If he wasn't so good to me I'd have to consider trading him in for a younger model ;)

Catch you all soon xxx

2012, here we come!

2012-01-04T01:00:00.000Z

Oh my goodness, am I the only one to be blinking and open mouthed in disbelief that we are now in 2012?! Where on earth did 2011 rush off to? Last year sped by and here we are in shiny new 2012. I hope you had a lovely Christmas and a happy new year to you all :)

Since moving in in early Summer, I'd been looking forward to Christmas rolling its way around and decorating the house all festively. I'd planned to make a lot of our decorations, firstly for budget reasons, and secondly just because I enjoy making things!! However, when it came to it, I couldn;t find much of what I wanted in the shops anyway. I had a few ideas as I'd been pinning things on my Christmas Pinterest board for ages and there was a definite trend towards a scheme of silver, white and natural materials such as jute and hessian, so I had to make most of them. I'm really pleased with how out first little cosy Christmas here came together.

I'll make no apologies for my photos as they are all unedited and a mix from different cameras and my phone - if we waited for me to edit them I'd never get around to sharing them!

The piece on the top of the tree is very special....it's a traditional German tree topper and belonged to my grandma; she'd at some point mannnny years ago bought it here on one holiday from her homeland and she was very proud of it. It is hand blown and despite the fact that for the last few years I'd always gone and put her tree and decorations up for them, I was still surprised at how very fragile it is. It meant so much to place this on top of my tree, although incredibly emotional to be not be placing it on top of my grandparents tree for the first time in years.

The deer candle holders too were from Nanny's - they sat on top of her tv all year round but I thought they'd make lovely festive focal points - I sat the large one on a piece of flat wood to give it a bit more emphasis.

When I saw this hessian banner I knew I wanted to make one myself to hang over the lounge mirror.....

And inspired by two simple wreaths here and here, I created this for the lounge door.....

The flowers on the wreath were inspired by these decorations, and I made a few to nestle in the boughs of the tree too.

I was struggling to find white tree decorations that I liked, and stumbled across these white clay tags online, which gave birth to a "salt dough" decoration idea:

If you are interested in whipping up a batch for yourself, see my tutorial over at Sarah's Cards here. I also crocheted a few things for the tree, including these "puff centered" stars I found on Ravelry.

I took this idea, added a bit of hessian and rustled up some snowy candle jars:

My lovely friend Clare got me a little set of Christmassy people decorations last year that you sew up yourself....I strung them into a little garland and hung them from the lid of the piano - so cute!!

And my favourite thing that I made myself, directly copied from this idea here, is these two stockings to hang from our dresser - I had to get the sewing maching out and everything so I was mightily impressed by my efforts!!! The blingy broaches were an absolute bargain -some costume jewellery found on ebay....it cost me just under a fiver for both including p&p :)

So those were the highlights of our Christmas decor, proudly sponsored by Pinterest!!!! ;)

The craft extended a bit towards gifts too.....Sarah's Cards retreaters will remember the fab little cartons we demonstrated for Make & Takes......well I thought they'd be a fab alternative to cards/envelopes for money and vouchers.....I also added a candy cane between the carton and the decorative bits for an added festive feel.

And here I am....in all my sleepy, tripple-chinned glory on Christmas morning.........

Which brings me nicely on to my new years resolution......remember all that weight I lost...four stones?! Well it's creeping back on at an all too rapid weight as I've been so innactive, so my goal is to get fit and exercise more again, and hopefully loose all those pounds (and more!) in the process. I can do it, yes?!!!

Happy New Year xxx

Clickety Click!

2011-10-03T18:35:00.001+01:00

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a massive passion for photography - it was one of the things that brought Mr T and I together, so is a very important part in our lives. Sadly and frustratingly I have less and less time to get my camera out and go on a snapping session, which is having an impact on my scrapbooking (and blogging) as I have less pictures to play with.

So, I am trying more and more to make use of my phone more to grab shots of the everyday....I've downloaded a few little apps and my favourite at the moment is one called "fxcamera" which turns out some cute little polaroid shots :)

It also has a lomo effect lens

and a fish eye lens

all in the one little app. Very handy! I've discovered that they print very nicely too, complete with the polaroid border - so I'm hoping this will help my scrapbooking and recording my daily life here much easier. All I need now is for Google to make a decent blogging app for Android and I'll be away!!!

Anyway, I digress......Mr T and I had a little waltz though Porthcawl last weekend, it's a completely tacky seaside village complete with a decrepit fairground, but there's always something to see and it's become one of our favourite places for a quick Sunday evening walk, harking back from the days when we'd spend our last hours together on a Sunday strolling along the coast before he had to go back to Gloucester for the week. Awww so glad those days are over - I hated Sunday goodbyes!!

So let me introduce you to an item that I'd like to call "Porthcawl in Polaroids".....lol ;).......Grab your Kiss Me Quick hearts and take a stroll with me.......

Elvis ain't dead....he's living in a motor home down Porthcawl....

Surf's up!

There's always some shiny motor mo cycles on display!

Sweetie stalls......

The fairground...

Is this the only remaining Wimpy in the world?!!!!!!!

The obligatory "win a gold fish" stand. To save the winner all the hassle, I think this one was already dead.

Elvis t-shirts. I should point out that it was Elvis Convention weekend. Elvis was everywhere. Check out the tshirt in the bottom right corner....either the wind was blowing the cotton fabric in an amusing manner, or this rare high quality made in China garment commemorates Elvis' little known stint as Frankensteins' Monster.

Claw of death. No thank you!

Me and the T Boy soaking up the sights and sounds!

I should also point out, before Bridgend County tourist board sues me, that Porthcawl also has a pretty little harbour and a beautiful beach calle Rest Bay a little further around.....it's not all Kiss Me Quick and sticks of rock :)

Thanks for looking!! xxx

Making the cut!

2011-09-19T12:18:00.000+01:00

For my blog post this month at Sarah's Cards, I chose some gorgeous Authentique papers from their Uncommon range. After several days of drooling over them, (cos they really are fabulous - a very heavy weight, luxurious feeling paper with an appealing, slightly dimpled texture. If you like My Minds Eye, you will love these babies!), I finally got to work on this project:

Click on any of the pictures to view a larger image

I decided to focus on the technique of handcutting - it's the one technique above all others that seems to divides paper crafters. People either love it, or hate it, but I honestly couldn't function without snipping details from paper and making my own dimensional embellishments from flat paper. So I set about showing how by taking a flat sheet of paper, like the yummy Unique from the Uncommon range (OMG I wish I could paper my walls in this loveliness!)....

...doing a little bit of this.....

and this.....

...you can come up with something really textural like this for your page :)

For the full tutorial, and more detailed pics, check my post out here. It's always worth checking out the blog, as the Design Team has a wealth of inspiration to share and there's always something interesting to feast your eyes upon!

Thank you for stopping by here, as always xxx

Twinkle Twinkle!

2011-09-11T10:00:00.001+01:00

Here's the last layout I created for this months Sarah's Cards kit.....I love this one! It's hard for me to tear away from patterned paper (pardon the pun!!) but I wanted to try something a little different and was really happy with how this turned out.

Some mist layered up with the grid trnasparencies made for a perfect background:

Before misting, I used some hand cut star shapes as masks, which once my layout was assembled with the transparencies in place, I stitched around to give them more definition, right on top of the plastic.

See, it's always worth playing around with something different to your usual style - you may find you like it!!

However, my love for pattern and colour combining is deep so I'm sure this minimalistic thang won't last long!

Catch you all soon :) xxxx

One for the boys...

2011-09-09T10:00:00.003+01:00

I love it when you get a kit that, whilst at first it seems obviously girlie, when you look a bit closer they can make some awesome male looking pages!

So I was pleased when I made this page from the Home Town Summer Sarah's Cards kit of my lovely Mr T enjoying a bit of park life with his lil girl.

I wanted to try something a bit different to just sticking paper on top of the cardstock as I usually do, so I gutted a circle from the centre to reveal the blue card underneath, which I had misted with turquoise ink using a doily as a mask to create the pattern.

Mmmmm I love turquoise I do!!
Thanks for popping on over xxx

Home Town Summer

2011-09-07T10:00:00.002+01:00

The Sarah's Cards subscribers are busy with their latest kits they have received, which means I can show you what I made with my kit to go in the Subscribers brochure :) It was another gorgeous on this month, featuring lovely Home Town Summer papers by Pink Paislee.

First up this lil lovely using photos from our Strawberry picking adventure in June: (click on em to see em a bit better!)

Be back in a couple of days with more :)
Nat xxx

It's September!!

2011-09-05T13:17:00.000+01:00

Woah, I can't believe that it's September......Autumn is most definitely on it's way and before we know it Christmas will be here. I love this time of year though, I'm such a cuddle-up-indoors-all-snugg Winter Bunny :) It also hails the start of a new school year - wonder how much work I'll get this year and if I'll be lucky enough to get a long-term supply gig.....or by some miracle a permanent teaching job!! Doubtful though. It also heralds the start of my "Class of '98" school chums turning the big three-oh....eeek! At least I'm just 29 and a half for the moment ;)

Mr T and I had an awesome weekend to top off our Summer though! I bought tickets to go to a small Welsh festival a few months back, and we headed off there on Saturday. It was absolutely awesome (cue dodgy mobile phone pics)! Lots of exciting new bands were banging out their tunes, plus headlining were Cast

and Ocean Colour Scene

- one of my all time favourite bands and the main reason I got the tickets. Goldie Looking Chain were also there and as hilarious as ever, they were fab to watch. OCS absolutely ROCKED, and somehow we found ourselves in the front row, centre stage which was beyond awesome.

It was actually really emotional at some points......they played my fave song, Blown Away, and Simon Fowler choked up and broke into tears on the final chorus. What a moment! I was well chuffed they played that one as they didn't do it when I last saw them. Being bang centre of the front show, we made loads of eye contact, and he threw his plectrum at ME (whooop!) at the end of the show, and like a total girl I managed to drop the bloody thing and as we were so tightly packed against the crash barrier there was no way of recovering it, but Nicky caught one of Oscar Harrison's drum sticks so we came away totally buzzing :D

I can play the guitar a bit....if I had been born a man I totally would have been in a band and lived rock n roll lifestyle!! I'll just have to stick to singing along to Mr T's geeeeetar playing, dodgy karaoke and Sing Star!! ;)

I've got a load of Scrapbook stuff to share, so will schedule a couple of posts to get them up here...pop back soon to see what I've been up to :)

Thanks as always for popping by,
Nat xxx

Sad farewell :(

2011-08-27T21:55:00.000+01:00

I'm very sad to say that my Gran, or Nanny as we called her, passed away three weeks ago. I almost typed "lost her battle"..... but it was more a case of she felt it was time to be reunited with Grandpa, and refused any treatment on the ITU ward, eventually slipping away a year and 10 days after she buried the love of her life. Yesterday we finally buried her ashes with Gramps, in a beautiful spot over looking Mumbles. I can't put into words the grief I have felt over the past few weeks, but have found a level of peace knowing they are now at rest together. Thank you for your kind replies on my last post and messages on facebook, email and text...it really meant an awful lot xxx

The week my Nan was admitted, my cousin emailed my a lovely old picture of her - my Gramps was a keen photographer and loved experimenting with lenses, light and film - he even developed his own prints at home, turning the kitchen into a darkroom, when their children were small! For my blog work this month over at Sarah's Cards, I had picked out the beautiful Audrey papers to create a page; and when I realised the the feminine colours and bow motifs were a perfect match for the photo so it seemed like fate that I should use them together..

Please click on any of the following photos to view a larger image

It was hard to decide what to journal, with so many emotions and memories and things I wish I could say to her right now. Whilst looking at the picture, I began to wonder what she must have been thinking about while patiently posing, when it suddenly hit me that this beautiful woman could have had absolutely no idea of the future that lay ahead of her, and the importance she would have on two little girls, her grandchildren, many years in her future. So I went with that :) She played such a huge part in mine and my sisters lives, as did my grandpa.

I love using my Jelly Glaze pen to add a bit of shine to customise papers like I did on the hand cut cameo:

The Cameo heads are actually quite uncanny, as my other grandmother had two little porcelain bust statues when we were small, one with a bobbed hairstyle and one with long hair, just like my sister and I had when we were little, that she named after us. When I saw the two cameos on the patterned paper, it instantly reminded me of those!

I found some Liquid Pearls in my stash that I've had for years (literally - I bought them when I was an art student wayyyyy back in 1999!!) and gave them a whirl......I think I've found a new addiction and may need to buy some more colours! You can see them here on the alpha and butterfly and around the patterned paper:

The focus of my post on Sarah's Cards was to provide a tutorial on how to use the fabulous Roll Up Flowers from My Little Shoebox, just one of the latest CHA products in stock in the shop. For the full step by step, hop over to the blog here :)

Thanks as always for stopping by xxx

Not posted in ages.....so this will probably be a mammoth one!

2011-08-01T18:10:00.000+01:00

I truly can't believe that it's August the 1st already! Where is time going please?! And I haven't blogged in ages!

Been busy here with lots of little things......my grandmother has been in and out of hospital unfortunately over the past few weeks; she's gone so very frail in every way possible since my grandad passed away. I'd only taken her as a day patient for yet another set of investigations this week following her last ward discharge a fortnight or so ago, but she was admitted again last night as an emergency. I really hope they get to the bottom of whats wrong and try to make her more comfortable this time :( It's heartbreaking and very hard to see someone you love so dearly appear almost, pardon the cliche, a shadow of their former self. It was actually a year to the day last week that my gramps passed away (I can't help but wonder if that has caught up with my gran)....my sister and I have are waiting for a nice clear evening so we can mark the occasion and remember him in a special way......damn the great British weather.

Anyway...*sigh* I guess sometimes you just have to get things of your chest and I find it so hard to talk about emotional things like that.......normal blogging will resume in the next paragraph!

Arrrgh we had a nightmare 24 hours last week when one of the kitties escaped! Tootsie - the she/he cat pictured here (we always knew he'd be trouble from the very first journey bringing him home when he continuously tried to escape from the carrier box!) had discovered his jumping legs, and the fact that he can now jump onto the kitchen worktops under the kitchen window......

We decided to nip out for a couple of things late on the Friday evening, and when we returned Dexter was crying and acting weird when we realised that Tootsie was absolutely nowhere to be seen. We checked their usual hiding places and behind all closed doors, before drawing the conclusion that he must have squeezed out of the kitchen window which was open a tiny crack as the tumble dryer had been on. We'd been out of the house for less than half hour.

We immediately went out and trawled our close and the surrounding roads calling for him, but to no avail. I came back and bawled my eyes out, feeling totally irresponsible like the worlds worst cat mamma, given poor Treacle never came home when she went missing a few weeks ago :(

We repeated the search in the morning, whilst my sister contacted the local radio station and community farm, and Gems kindly contacted the RSPCA. I was beside myself - the kittens are too young to have been let out yet so he would not have any bearings in the unexplored world outside.

The Saturday night, we went out for my sisters birthday meal as arranged....leaving poor little Dexter all alone at home :( When we came back, we parked in the residents parking across the street as usual, crossed the cobbles to our house, when I thought I heard a distant little squeak.....Mr T heard it too and turned to me - we were unsure if it was a cat or a seagull but followed the direction anyway!

As we got nearer it was clear it was a cat, so we started calling Tootsie's name...although I was a bit wary of getting my hopes up as I thought 24 hours in the big wide world would be too much for a little kitten to stay local/find his way home....we tracked the noise to a bramble bush at the top of our street, and using the light of his phone to peer inside Mr T happily exclaimed that it was indeed our naughty little kitty!!! With coaxing and a bit of bramble pulling, he managed to reach him and pull him out for a big cuddle! I was so relieved and felt so lucky - if we'd returned home a couple of minutes sooner or later we might not have heard that little squeak come from the bushes up the road! What a palaver but glad he was safe and home!

We've sort of finished our little dresser. It's all painted, we just want to replace the handles, but it's not a straightforward job as the existing ones aren't simply screwed on from behind but are sort pegged and glued to the front, which is gonna make it a bugger of a job getting them off without damaging the doors and drawers.

We've chosen (and bought!) the wallpaper for the living room, we just need to find a decorator to do it now....here's a pic I found online of it as the one I took didn't show the true colours, I'm wondering if it just doesn't photograph well cos it's not right in this either - the background is more olive than cream in real life.

We worked hard on Saturday getting our gallery wall up too (when I say "we", it was actually Mr T who did all the hard work but of course it was under my strict supervision!!), I'm really happy with how our car-booty frames all turned out! I can't show you the full thing just yet as we have one tiny little frame left to put up...but here's a sneak peak cos I like to tease!!

Speaking of sneak peaks...I've been working on next months Sarah's Cards Kit.....I can confirm it's another lush one ;).....

I've also started a ripple thanks to Gertie, and I'm finally getting the hang of it five stripes in! I originally wanted to do one for the lounge, but turns out the colours I bought had a slightly different gauges to them, and found working them into each other was tricky, coupled with the fact I kept getting it bloody wrong lol. It was about a metre and a half long too, so after opening and restarting it three times and going absolutely spare, I gave up and thought I'd try with wool all from the same range!! I still had a few hissy fits and tantrums with it mind (to the point that my niece actually said to my sister "I don't want Talie to do her knitting cos it makes her grumpy, please ask her not to do grumpy knitting when I'm there").....but after opening it and redoing it a few times I think I can see where I was going wrong now...and it's looking like this.....

We've almost finished decorating the bedroom, I've invented two new terms "girlifying" and "chintzifying"...and much to Mr T's horror I feel the room needs more of both *grin* before I can say it's done. It's a combination of cream and all shades of blue so this ripple is going to be a comforter for the bottom of the bed. I have some grandiose idea of adding a strip of the sunburst granny squares in along it too....but that may be beyond my crocheting ability so we will see......

And I just want to add a gratuitous picture of this beautiful little girl who had a sleep over last night as her house is full of workmen making adaptions to her house for her........I awoke this morning to her serenading me with a pretty little tune and the words:

"Eating cheese makes me think of my aunty, cossss I love eating cheese and I lovvvvvvvve my aunnnnntttty!!!!"

Awww bless!

She's a cracker!
Thanks for stopping by, be back soon xxxx

Rocket Man!

2011-07-15T23:46:00.000+01:00

It was my turn to post on the Sarah's Cards blog today! I'm hosting over there for two days, today and tomorrow, and this time around got to play with the gorgeous Rocket Age collection from October Afternoon.

Boy did I fall in love with these papers, and woah they stretched so far! Not only did I make this page, details of which went live on the blog today here (using a grand total of SEVEN different papers - ooooh I do love mixing up lots of patterns on my pages).........

(give it a little click to see it more closely!)

....I also made six cards, perfect for men, with my left overs! Here's a group shot of the collection I made - check back over the Sarah's Cards Blog tomorrow for a picture of each card along with individual 5-step tutorials - the perfect project for the weekend!

(Spot the completed painted Welsh Dresser in that photo!)

Thanks for stopping by today and have a great weekend!
Nat xxx

Monday Monday!

2011-07-11T15:20:00.000+01:00

What a fab weekend.....anyone else got the Monday blues now?!

Well there's nowt like a bit of creativity to perk up your soul, so why not hop on over to Sarah's Cards and check out this month's challenge, which went live yesterday?

All you have to do is create something based on this sketch....a card, a layout, or anything else you feel inspired to make, then link us up to your creation and you could be in the running to win a £20 e-voucher to spend online in the shop whoop whoop!

I used it to jump-start my creativity to make this card:

All the details can be found over on the Sarah's Cards Blog, here.

Speaking of the blog, I've been beavering away over the last week ready for my next Design Team post due on the 15th.....here's a sneak peak of what I created until then.......

Mr T and I had a great weekend...we hadn't had some proper time to ourselves in ages, so packed ourselves off (with an impressive picnic) to the Swansea Airshow.

I must admit when I first went a few years ago I was a little unimpressed by thought at spending an afternoon staring at boring planes..but this is no ordinary "in a field" show....and my opinion was soon changed whilst sat next to the shimmering Swansea Bay and looking over to Mumbles, and the fact that the aircraft come so low and close to the shoreline that the beach literally vibrates as they do their breath taking dare devil spinning through the air thang! Nicky hadn't been before so I was excited to drag him off, saying it was part of his initiation of becoming a proper "Swansea Boy" now that he lives here!

The afternoon did leave me with a huge dilemma though..............
When I grow up, do I want to become an awesome wind-in-yer-face Wing Walker?

or a death-defying dare devil Red Arrow?

Decision decisions eh?!
I also felt I had the necessary particulars to apply to join the RAF Parachute regiment.....but a girl's got to narrow her options down from time to time. ;)

We finished off our day sunburnt and in Mecca Bingo of all places!! But we didn't come close to winning a penny! Mr T is awesome and we had a fab day, just the two of us :)

With the bedroom furniture renovations coming to a close, we needed a new up-cycling project to keep us off the streets, and I've been on about creating a photo wall for sometime. So we headed off to a car boot sale yesterday, and gathered a nice little collection of ornate frames to give a new lease of life to.

Here's the booty we scored, laid out in how we envisage the wall placement to be, it's seven foot long and I had to stand on a chair to fit it in to the pic!:

With the exception of the white frames, which we bought new (we need to get another tiny one to fill in that little gap), we picked up this little collection yesterday for a grand total of £8! All the frames were glazed so we were really happy with our finds :) Check out the kitty giving his seal of approval too!

We looked carefully (read RUMMAGED) for frames which had decorative or unique little details and texture:

The blue/gold frame in the first picture contained an original etching by a local artist which is very sweet - it's of daffodils so quite patriotic too so we are thinking about getting a new mount for it as the one it's in is a tad mouldy, and displaying it in a new frame. Happy days.

So the idea is we will unify the frames by painting them all one colour to match the room - a nice olivey green. Except I bought the wrong colour paint (damn those misleading colour charts) so we are busy using it as a base and adding loads of different acrylic paint colours to try and make it more olive and less luminous green! Eeeek!

All fun and games eh?! Hope you all had an equally enjoyable weekend. Thanks for stopping by, will catch you all soon xxx

Pwddy Tats!

2011-07-05T12:42:00.001+01:00

Thanks for all your comments about our knobs lol - we've finished the large chest of drawers now and are very happy how they have turned out so once we've done a spot of painting in the bedroom I'll get some pics up :) We've picked wallpaper for the living room this week too so it's all go on the decorating front - we just need to find a decorator now who can do it as the wall we want to paper is a fiddly job.

Anyway, I just wanted to nip on and post a picture of this little lovely that I made for a friend who's as big a cat lover as I am, she's received it now so I can share a pic! Isn't he a cute lil cat?!

The original pattern can be found here (you need to sign up to get access to the patterns but it's free and takes moments). He's supposed to be felted but the wool was acrylic so it wouldn't work. I also moved his "hands" as I wanted him to be sitting on all fours. His cute lil tail, which you can't see, helps him stay sat in the upright position.

Speaking of pwddy cats....our lil girl Tootsie, that we struggled to find a suitably girlie name for? Well..............after a little show she put on yesterday, turns out she is less of a she and more of a he! Whoops! So now we have the dilemma of renaming her/him or leaving the poor little thing live with a less than butch name!

She....I mean he, I just can't get used to it!!....he came and sat on my knee the other day when I had my camera out....

Super cute! She then proceeded to yawn as I had my finger held on the shutter release....and I caught these funny shots - she looks like a beast, especially in the last one as her mouth closes again!!!!!

Right, I'm off as I have some delicious October Afternoon stash spread out all over my desk upstairs that needs some creative attention :D

Thanks for stopping by :) xxxx

Knobs!

2011-06-28T13:30:00.001+01:00

Yes - knobs! Who would have thought such a wholesome and pure young lady like myself would have got so excited about something like that?! And not just one either - but six beautiful, shiny knobs!!

Ha, ok enough of the innuendo! But I am excited!

Remember the chests of drawers I bought to make-over for our bedroom? Well I really wanted a lovely, vintagey country feel to them, and thought the way to achieve this would be with some pretty, old fashioned ceramic knobs. But after looking at the prices of the ones I liked, and weighing up that we need 18 altogether (or 24 if we decide to change the ones on the wardrobe to match!), it suddenly became a verrrrrrry pricey up-cycling project!!! Thankfully, creative inspiration struck and I came up with a way to imitate the look I wanted......as I do lol, using the original handles ;)

Pretty! So being the nice kinda gal I am, I thought I'd show you too :)

Start by gently prepping the knobs (am I gonna giggle every time I type that?!), with the finest grade wire wool you can get your mitts on, and then give them a few coats of primer. Make sure you let each coat dry thoroughly and wire wool in between each, it's a but time consuming but really worth the effort for a good finish - remember ceramic is really smooth and so we want our paint job to be as flawless as possible.

Once nicely primed, you can add the base colour to your knobs. I went for a crisp white, and I just used ordinary matt emulsion that I had handy. I used an artists paintbrush - I had a voice echoing through my head from the distant past saying "use the right sized brush for the job" and this worked nicely. I also found that by putting the screws from the knobs through squares of cardboard made handling/painting them in one go much easier, and also left them free from sitting on (and sticking to!) a surface as they dried. I gave them a couple of coats, again giving them a gentle wipe with wire wool in between.

Now this is where the magic happens ;) I decided for that totally vintage cottage feel, I wanted floral details on my knobs, and that a decoupage-like approach would be the solution. So a quick look on flea-bay turned up thousands of pretty and cheap paper napkins, and I settled on these lovely pretty lil pansy designs. I had plenty of napkins in the pack to make every handle identical, but Mr T and I decided a collection of eclectic old knobs was the way forward for us! First step was to carefully snip out the pansies we liked.....

....and then using a tough glossy polyurethane varnish, carefully adhered the flowers to the centre. Once dry, I added further coats (leaving each to fully dry and harden before starting the next) until I had smooth and ultra glossy knobs, like these:

Here's how they look in situ on the finished bedside tables:

A little reminder of how the furniture looked before we started:

And how the two little ones look now:

Perfect for our cosy little bedroom, and the soft home-spun feel we want to create throughout our home. Now I just have the task of making a start on the large chest of drawers......wish me luck!

Thanks for stopping by, as always xxx

Kits are out!

2011-06-24T16:39:00.001+01:00

Allo! I tried posting this a couple of days ago but Blogger was having a meltdown and not letting me add any pics......so here we go again......!...

From the forum over on UKScrappers, I can see that many of the Sarah's Cards kit subscribers had a lovely surprise over the weekend when their kits arrived a little bit earlier than usual! *Big Grin*.

Which means I can show you what I got up to with the kit here. This months features the lovely Social Club line from Cosmo Cricket.

First up is one of my two lil moggies:

Next, one documenting the costumes Mr T and I slaved over for weeks last year in preparations for Gems' awesome surprise Halloween party for her other half's 30th birthday:

(loved the chipboard circular arrows in the kit!)

And finally, a nice pic of "The Rock":

I forgot to stamp the number one on this little tab - it is not meant to say "no" lol!!! Whoops!!

Hope you all have a good weekend, whatever you're up to :)
Love xxx

First post done!

2011-06-16T21:26:00.000+01:00

My first posts on the Sarah's Cards Blog since the DT took control went live yesterday and today, here's a quick look at my projects:

A page using the some lovely Lily Bee papers......my focus for the post was a detailed tutorial to create the shadowy "vignettes" on your photos - so if you are curious or fancy dipping your toe into the vignette water, have a gander at the tutorial.

My second post contained two super quick home decor makes....

Nip over to the blog for full details and more pictures of all the projects.

I also want to share one of the pages I made for using the last kit from Sarah's Cards too.....using the gorgeous For The Record line from Echo Park.....it was my favourite of the three I made for the subscribers booklet:

We went Strawberry picking a few weeks ago with the girlies (Mr T's little girl and my niece), and it's been aaages since I've shared any photos that are not craft related (mainly cos they are in a massive set of folders on my PC waiting to be edited......helllooooooo Tenby pics from last October and London pics from February for a start!!), so here's a couple from our fruity frenzy that I thought I'd share....

I love this one of my sis and niece:

This just totally sums up these two crazy little girls:

We honestly had strawberries coming out of our ears for the next week, and they were so cheap!! Yum!

Thanks for stopping by as always xxx

Challenge time!!

2011-06-10T22:31:00.001+01:00

It's lovely to be reading the feedback over at the Sarah's cards blog, everyone seems to be enjoying the new frequent posting schedule we have and the awesome projects that the DT have shared so far. My first post will be a tecchie tutorial and is due next week, so keep your eyes peeled!

Meanwhile, today sees the first new challenge, set by Lou! To take part, you need to create a card or page inspired by clothing. After a rummage through my wardrobe I settled on these items:

And here's the page I created (click on it to get a closer look):

The scarf provided the cue for the soft blue colour palette, and the contrasting crocheted edging inspired me to use felt embellishments to add texture to my page and to have a go at crocheting on paper, something I'd seen on Pinterest! (see further down for a quick how-to if you wanna give crocheting on paper a go!).

The muslin panel on the blouse inspired me to play with the idea of white on white and translucency - so I spent time layering up pieces of velum to build subtle depth. I loved how layering them up altered how visible the patterned paper was underneath.

It also inspired me to use white barely- there ghost letters to create my title:

The blouse is very feminine and has elegant little touches, such as the big bow and ruffled edges, which inspired my choice of embellishment which have a similar elegant feel:

Even the label inside provided some inspiration - the doodle effect heart inspired me to stamp some hearts onto note effect paper:

*side note - see them nice velvet frames and birds - pound shop bargain! Get innnnn!!!

Incidentally, my title - "I want to have adventures with you" was inspired by a piece of text/art work on pinterest....there are so many things I want to do with Mr T, and it seemed a fitting way of marking this. We plan to build our list of potential "adventures" on the back of the page. The photos are from our trip to London earlier this year.

So, as for the crocheting on paper thing. First off, you need to know how to do a (US) double crochet stitch....here's a great video tutorial which will have you happily hooking in no time at all!

I used wool for mine as I really wanted to reflect the nobbly bobbles on my scarf, but I think embroidery thread would look beautiful for a more intricate project and I'll be trying that in the future.

So, once your au fait with all that jazz, grab the paper that you wish to create a crochet edge along - cut ready to size of course - and punch evenly spaced holes along the edge. I used a Cropodile as it meant I also knew my holes would all be at the same distance from the edge as well as each other - you can just measure this with a ruler and mark with a pencil if you don't have a cropodile but are luckily enough to have time on your hands to faff about with such things!

The holes act as the previous row of stitches would on traditional crochet, use them to go in and out of. So to start, simply begin your first double crochet (DC) in the first hole.

To create the shell appearance of the edge, complete three DC's in each hole,

Then slip stitch into the next hole, as in the picture below, where you will then complete another 3 DCs

Slip stitch into the next hole, and repeat until your edge is completed! Simples!

My massive list of crafty to-do's is still on the go, but I finished the cute little bird garland and I loooove it!! It was so quick and easy, I need to make another one I think! Will get some pictures soon.

I may have mentioned before that Mr T is an I.T. thingymabob (too technical for me to begin to comprehend - apparently!), and he has built a new website....you know how they say necessity is the mother of invention? Well we love cooking, and have been collecting recipes from all over the place for a while, some stored on paper (some of which we've lost), some typed quickly on the laptop, others copied and pasted from the web, others in loved cookbooks that are getting ruined by greasy splashes in the kitchen...........so he decided to build an online "notebook" of sorts where we can keep all our recipes in one safe, easy to access location. And the good news is that you can too! It's here, at Nom-a-licious, and anyone can sign up and use it!

Not only is it the perfect digital storage solution for keeping all your recipes in one place, hopefully, as more people join up and add their own ideas it will also become a great resource to find new inspiration for your own meals. Mr T would be chuffed to see the site grow, so get on it! It's really simple to use, particularly if you are already used to publishing blog posts, and there is a clear, step by step "how to" here if it's all new to you. So no excuses, get sharing your recipes as we could do with some new ideas for the weekend (especially if you have some tasty healthy recipes to share!!)

Go check it out :)

Thanks for stopping by, see you soon xxx

So excited.....

2011-06-02T15:05:00.000+01:00

About so many things right now.........

Firstly, did you check out the new style Sarah's Cards blog yesterday? The fabby Lou has kicked us off in her arty inky style with a fab tutorial into creating your own background papers - perfect for jazzing up older stash with fab new mists, stamps and paints. Fun fun fun! Stay tuned one of us bring you a new project or tutorial every few days, with challenges, give aways and offers thrown in the mix too!

Speaking of offers, there's a new subscriber offer on Sarah's kits too - new subscribers can bag themselves an American Crafts album for their trouble......see here for the full details :) Go! Go!

Mainly I'm excited about living in our new pad and all the projects I have in mind for this place! Nicky and I are both quite creative - or at least enjoy trying to be!! - and having both spent out fortunes for shop bought furniture and trinkets in the past, we have decided that this time round we want to build treasures together, making things from scratch or turning old drab items into fab :) So excited about this!

Our first project is some bedroom furniture. We have a gorgeous, ornate cream wardrobe that we love, (darn I should have got a picture), so we set about looking for some chest of drawers that could potentially match it. I stumbled across these beauties on ebay....(pic stolen from ebay lol!)

I loved the shaped backs and the feet......so we snapped them up amidst a vicious bidding war - they are really lovely solid pieces - and have set to the long process of sanding - priming - sanding - priming - sanding - painting - sanding - painting........zzzzzzzz.......... so far the bedside tables look like this...we've a way to go yet!!!

I've also been on the look out for a lovely Welsh dresser, but have been pipped to the post on everything I'd bid on.........so imagine my delight when I found the PERFECT unit in a charity shop yesterday!!! I have just minutes ago taken proud delivery of it..........can't wait to start renovating it, so excited!!!

Twenty five bargainous pounds that cost me!! 25!! I am so chuffed with it as it fits perfectly in the space! And I can feel good about helping the British Heart Foundation too ;)

Got lots of other projects on the go too, mainly down to Pinterest and finding loads of inspiration for things I never knew I NEED to do on there.....I'm awake at night thinking of all the pretty things I've seen on there that I can do myself!

First up is this little arrangement of hearts in a bottle.....

Source: whipperberry.com via Natalie on Pinterest

So quick and easy to do, and perfect for using up paper scraps :) Here's my take on it:

I spied this and fell in love.....

Source: sewmamasew.com via Natalie on Pinterest

and made a start on it last night - I absolutely loved sewing it and didn't want to put it down to go to bed, can't wait to pick it up again and get it finished! I'm using beige and olive tones to compliment what will be our living room colour scheme!!

Something else on pinterest that caught my eye was this....

Source: weheartit.com via Natalie on Pinterest

which I thought would be cute garlands strung down the centre of our plain cream curtains....found a gorgeous pattern on Ravelry and have started these, they are really quick and fun to whip up:

Also working on a cute baby blanket for Mr T's sister, it will be a gift for her friend...it's a nice pattern but it's very slow! You can't see it in the pic but the wool she chose has a soft silver thread through it, very cute.

Here's the pic of it that accompanies the pattern on Ravelry - love it in that colour, gorgeous!

I'm still working on the granny throw too - trying to work systematically to make sure I use all the colourways I like!! My latest batch was using shades of purple.....

On the topic of throws, I stocked up on these yesterday to start (hahaha when I get some time you see!!) a ripple throw for the sofas

.....excited about getting going on that but I think it's going to be another monumental project -I'm wondering if I can do it in smaller sections and then add them together when done as it's going to weight a ton on my lap when working on it!

And I'm also beavering away on the latest Sarah's cards kit and my first blog post for the new blog.......there really are not enough hours in the day!! If what they say about rest for the wicked is true I must be a naughty gal ;) ;) Loving it though - so full of things I want to do right now to cosy up our home and make it all pretty!

Kittens are settling in well - although Tootsie is a proper mean madam and although she finds the litter tray for number two's she seems to be struggling with the concept that it can also be used for wees too, preferring my slippers and shoes to vacate her bladder in. Sadly, Treacle, aka Grumpy Queen cat, has not been home since last Friday :( She's 10 years old and I am very reluctant to say she's strayed because of the kittens as it's not in her character to be so put out to wander off: she's "put up with" three other cats, litters of kittens, two dogs and four chickens in the past, as well as babies and toddlers. I have a very sad feeling that something has happened to her, nobody has seen nor heard of her though so I still am in hope she may return from her walkabout. Miss you Treacs :( xxx

Thanks for stopping by! xxx

Challenge Time!

2011-05-25T07:00:00.001+01:00

Just a little heads up....... you still have until next Monday (the 30th) to enter this month's Sketch challenge over on the Sarah's cards blog. Give it a go, cos I designed the sketch this month! And you could be in with the chance of winning a £10 e-voucher to spend in the shop and the chance to feature along on the blog with next months challenge if you win :) All the details can be found here.

Speaking of the blog.....there's a few changes a'happening over there as of June 1st - so if you're not already a reader bookmark it and get it added to your readers/blog rolls pronto! There will be more giveaways, each Design Team member will be bringing you an exciting project, class, tutorial or how-to every month, and the monthly challenge prize is doubling! Whoop!

We'd love some feedback and increased reader participation too, so if you have any requests or suggestions of things you'd like to see more of, let us know :)

So, June 1st, be there, or be square ;) ;) xxx

Introducing......... Dexter & Tootsie!!!!!!!!

2011-05-22T10:41:00.001+01:00

Waaaaaaaaaaaaah! Aren't they just too cute?!?!

Mum saw the advert for kittens looking for a good home in work, so Mr T and I went to look at them one evening this week. We knew that one was black, and the other black and white, so in the car we discussed how we'd probably take the black and white one as we already have Treacle, my nine year old black cat.

So we got there, and had cuddles and I could see Nicky mouthing something at me....I was like "What? What?!".......and he was whispering "Let's take both!".............awwww :)

And good thing we did too.........look at how this lovely little brother and sister sleep.....imagine separating them!!

The black one is the little boy, named Dexter after one of Mr T's fave tv shows. I struggled with naming mine, until I realised that although she had four white paws - she had just ONE black toe! So Tootsie seemed both appropriate and unbelievably cute :)

Dexter really relies on his sister, he's quite shy whilst she's just bonkers! If he's exploring and suddenly realises he's on his own, he cries and cries until she comes to him. He stops immediately, and she lifts her paw onto him as if to say "It's ok bro, I'm here". Awwwww!

Poor Treacle isn't taking the new family members too well though! They just run up to her and want to play, and she greets that with hisses and growls. She's not a happy bunny! She'll get used to them.

Which reminds me of one of the pages I made with last months Sarah's Cards Kit, about Treacle and my niece and the affection she's developing for the cat.

The Echo Park "For the Record" papers were lush, and I loved all the little embellies in the kit, like the chipboard labels, which I stamped and then stuck alphas onto for my journalling.

Right, I'm off for some kitty cuddles....perfect way to spend a windy Sunday Morning xxxx

DT Pre-retreat challenge!!

2011-05-17T20:37:00.000+01:00

Yep, more retreat stuff!

Prior to the retreat, Sarah set the DT a challenge - to decorate a Prima Canvas Apron to wear for the whole weekend.

I loved the apron but must admit, as papercrafts is my main "interest" shall we say (in other words, my only skill, if you could even call it that!), I was absolutely stumped as to how I could create anything that would last the weekend without getting torn or falling off...... I had a hunch that repro Herma was not going to be up to this challenge!

I resolved to using my class for inspiration, and decided on a large felt embellishment and drew the colour scheme from the papers we would be using, and here is my finished result.

Here's a close up of the decorated pocket panel:

So, it wasn't exactly rocket science, but I thought I'd share with you how I created the look, cos I'm nice like that ;)

I started by masking off all round the pocket quickly with thick parcel tape, and added my main word using some American Crafts stickers.

As the apron was made of heavy canvas, I thought it was perfect for a bit of acrylic paint treatment, and used turquoise and blue paint straight from the tube, spreading and mixing it across the apron with a spatula. I wanted it to look like it was being spread from the one side where my main embellishment was going to be (the same as I cluster my items when I scrapbook teehee), so used the paint heavily on the left side of the pocket and then spreading it out more thinly towards the right side.

To add the splattered effects, I "stamped" using the metal rim of the tube of paint itself for large circles and dabs, and added smaller dots and spots with wrong end of a paintbrush:

Once all the paint was dry, I carefully peeled away the letter stickers to reveal the untouched canvas below. To complete my design I created flowers and detail on the butterflies wings from the papers that were used in my class, and clustered them with some buttons, prima flowers and a bling swirl created with my bejewller and hot fix rhinestones. I stamped the smaller words with Stazon - it worked a treat!

And the solution to the herma fixing quandary? Good ole thick PVA! I used it to attach the ribbon trims too as I got bored stitching all five of them on by hand!

The flowers I made really were quite bulky and I wondered if they'd fall off over the weekend with all the battering the apron would take, but the PVA held fast and my apron totally stayed in tack. Plus I had the bonus of peeling all the pva off my fingers afterwards - mmmmmmmmm!

Just in case you noticed the teeny butterflies I stamped along the waistband and frilled hem - I made the stamp myself as I didn't have one small enough from some spare red rubber on an old stamp using my butterfly paper punch. Yes, it was incredibly fiddly and time consuming, and no, I won't be doing it again, but hey, I know own a custom butterfly rubber stamp lol!!!

Each apron by each DT member was totally different.......take a look here to see what the girls came up with :)

As always, thanks for looking xxx

Appologies!

2011-05-15T01:30:00.000+01:00

Sorry for my little break, but I have lots if good excuses I can assure you!

Firstly we had a week away in Cornwall over Easter, and then we moved house, so Mr T and I now have a new pad of our own - complete with a spot that I can call a craft room whoop! ;)

It's only today that our landline and Internet have been installed so normal blogging will resume shortly I promise, I have the latest Sarah's Cards kit creations to share as soon as I upload the photos :)

Until then I'll leave you with a super quick page I created way back last November using Lilac House from Fancy Pants. I'm sharing it now as these two " sweet" little darlings had their very first sleep over at our new house last weekend - and kept us up verrrrrry late and awoke us extremely early the following morning too lol, so it seems apt to share it with you now:

The "Garden Gate" paper from Fancy Pants Lilac House collection is an ideal solution for a scrapping fix when you're short on time, as I found that the lovely frame pattern was perfect for creating an almost instant page. I simply popped a picture over the pinwheel frame design on the paper, cut the "sweet" label from the Cards paper for my title, and embellished simply with some adhesive pearls, a heart and star from the elements stickers, and a small hand stamped strip with my journalling. Simple and quick, but effective!

I'm also working on a new crochet baby blanket for a friend of a friend; it's completely different to anything I've done before as I've only ever done crochet in the round, but it was an easy pattern to pick up and it's coming along slowly but surely. My granny squares are on the back burner at the mo until this gift is done, and then I have my sights on a couple of soft wave ripple throws for our sofas like my very clever buddy Gertie has done here, if I can manage to source a pattern that I can actually understand!!

Thanks for popping by, as always :) xxx

Happy Campers!

2011-04-14T08:00:00.003+01:00

Firstly, thank you for all your congratulations on Mr T and I getting engaged in the last post! We are so happy and excited about the future :)

Now for a little scrapbooking!

The Sarah's Cards DT usually operates in two halves, with one team working on the kit each month and the other working on blog assignments. So we thought at the retreat it would be fun to for once all work with the same four papers and see what we all came up with, as there is a huge variation of styles between the 10 of us. So somebody chose the new Campy Trail line from American Crafts, and we all got beavering away with the goodies.

Everybody's completed pages were totally diffferent so be sure to have a gander at them all here.
Here's what I came up with:

I used the gorgeous woodgrain stamp I bought at the retreat (which just happens to be part of the Campy Trail line and can be found here),to stamp onto a chipboard frame to jazz it up a bit.....and spot the made by me roses again which I'm a tad addicted to at the mo!!

As you can see I love me a bitta woodgrain, and not only did I use it as my background, but also cut the coloured woodgrain spots from one of the papers to make journalling spots decorated with stamps and rubons.

The hoot banner rub on (and the "Great Outdoors" and "Fun" text) were also from the Campy Trails line, and the stars are WRMK stamps - I love their little packs of stamps and they are soooo affordable, I have a few of them in my stash!!!

The photos were taken last October during a caravan weekend away in Tenby (ha how fitting!) - I can't resist a go in the park, even more so after dark!! Running them through a cross-processed action in Photoshop and tweaking the levels and colors a little made them perfect for the bright colours of the papers.
Thanks for looking as always xxx

Excitement!

2011-04-10T23:16:00.000+01:00

So....I made this card here for my fabulous man....

using this sketch here...

As you do, I tweaked it a little! For a start, I had to have all the elements touching each other - that "floating" sentiment would have been enough to set my OCD tendencies off otherwise ;) And as it was a card for a man, I switched the ribbon for a border sticker, and used to hearts on a safety pin in place of the flower.

So why did I make Mr T a random card, and what's with the sentiment on the front?!
.
.
.
.
Well last friday, he gave me this little beauty.....

and asked me to marry him!
So a handmade card was the least I could do really :P
xxxxxxxxxxx

Bokeh

2011-03-31T20:45:00.000+01:00

It's been a busy old week here, and I feel I've neglected my blog a little, so to avoid beginning to slide down the slippery slope of blog abandonment I thought I'd share a quick post of something a little different......

I've been admiring "bokeh" photography light effects for ages, and the other day whilst Mr T was tinkering on the computer and I was sat at a loose end I decided to have a little go - I was quite pleased with the results!

Here's what I started with, a painted jar filled with fairy lights.........pretty!

And here's the effects I achieved playing with bokeh:

Classic round bokeh, I had made some different effects with different sizes of blur but this was my favourite:

Heart bokeh <3

A jar of hearts, so cute!

Star bokeh:

A jar of stars - everyone should have one!

Sharper bokeh:

And so went a fun hour or so playing around with my camera trying something new :)

Be back soon with some scrappy stuff, thanks for looking as always xxxx

Before I forget......!!

2011-03-21T15:41:00.000Z

With all the excitement of the retreat, I almsot forgot to show you the last page I created with the February kit from Sarah's Cards, featuring the gorgeous Glitz Love Nest papers. Doh!

So with much ado...here's my last page, A Winter's Tale....

Inspired by the work of fellow team member Rachael, I decided to design a page with a central round shape.

I knew I wanted to use both sides of the “Block” paper but my design wouldn’t allow for any paper wastage, so set about carefully cutting a circle shape that I had marked out from the centre using a craft knife. I was then able to use the pattern on the other side by flipping the circle shape over and placing it back into the space it had been cut from. As there were one or two small gaps where the paper edges met, I punched out circles from the brown Bazzill and used them to create a scalloped border which covered any mismatched areas.

The little journaling cards made lovely matts for some of my photos. I created some flower embellishments using patterned paper and circle punches, adding a small pearl from my stash to the centres. The snowflakes and rhinestones were also from my stash, but completed the icy feel I wanted for my page.

Hope everyone has had a lovely weekend - we had a relaxed one here spending time walking through a lovely park with Mr T's little girl and a trip to the cinema last night. It was an exciting trip to the cinema for me, as we had the "Gallery" experience at the Odeon, where you sit in sofa-like two seater chairs that are really comfy and you can curl your legs up on, and you get unlimited nachos with toppings, popcorn and soft and hot drinks. Very good value for money - which I think matters to everyone at the moment!

We saw Battle: Los Angeles, and I have to admit I thought I'd be bored as I'm not one for "boy" films with guns and armies lol, however, it was actually about alien invasion and whilst I quite enjoyed it, Mr T thought it was crap!!! No pleasing some people eh?! ;)

Catch up with you all soon xxx

A Right Pair of Charlies

2011-03-16T10:35:00.000Z

During the retreat, there was a sketch challenge for the delegates, so the DT decided to join in just for fun with some of the lovely new stash from CHA.

Cue some of the gorgeous new papers from MME's Hattie and Gertie lines and some Stella & Rose acrylic stamps, and a pic of Mr T taken with no other than Charlie Chaplin (lol) along the South Embankment during our trip to London, et voila.......

Gentleman indeed.....lol.....

Like the little roses? Made 'em myself I did :)

New punch put into action to create the frilly doily edging!

It took me all weekend to finish - I can't believe the other DT girls found the time to make two or three pages ;)

And speaking of sketches, this month's sketch challenge is up on the Sarah's Cards blog....it's a really versatile sketch to kick start your scrapping, plus there's a chance of bagging a £10 voucher for the shop; perfect timing for the new CHA arrivals :D Get on it!!! xxx

What a Hoot!

2011-03-12T20:01:00.000Z

So, as I might have mentioned (ahem!!), I spent last weekend at the fab Sarah's Cards retreat - and here is the class I taught to three lovely classes of ladies all day Saturday. My feet were like beach balls and my back was in agony by the end of it, but it was well worth it!

My class focused on the technique of creating your own embellishments with felt and sewing - and in good teaching style I was armed with laminated, step by step flashcards to guide the attendees through the sometimes murky and frightening world of blanket stitch! But I also looked at how to make banners and bunting in a flash, as they are everywhere in the design world at the moment!

A close up of the banner:

And here's the bunting:

When not busy teaching, running make and takes and other behind-the-retreat-scenes business, I must admit to taking full advantage of shopping in the fabulously stocked shop we had set up. Here's a few snaps of what I bagged -

I was actually reeeeeeaaaally good - there was so much beautiful paper on offer from all the new CHA releases, but as I have paper coming out of my ears and not a lot of room for maneuver, I decided to try to stock up on something that will utilise my existing paper stash - namely punches, stamps and mists!! (well that's my excuse anyway!) Some totally irresistible sheets of Sassafrass did make it into my basket though as I thought they were super versatile and can't wait to make my own embellishments from them :)

Needless to say the mists, stamps and punches have all been exercised well already, will share some photos of the projects soon :) As a result, I am having a paper free day and am catching up on some of my crochet instead, whilst watching films and snuggling up to Mr T :) Perfick!!!

Have a great weekend all! xxx

Flower Rosettes

2011-03-08T15:15:00.000Z

Wow, what a fortnight ! Firstly, my birthday celebrations and a lovely day in London, and then the fabulous Sarah's Cards retreat. It was a fantastic weekend, the design team are a fab bunch of girlies and we always enjoy getting together, and it was awesome to meet all the lovely, lovely delegates, some of which I've met before and are already lucky to consider as friends. Roll on November for the next retreat...places have already sold fast but a few are still available here.....

Sad side of all this is I'm unable to, at present, share ANY photos with you, either from London or the retreat....late Thursday night, when I was busy editing and printing pics for the weekend away, my main PC with all my photos and that is connected to my printer succumbed to a scummy virus and died :( Gutted! Thank goodness I have my laptop for Internet access, and Mr T, aka IT Techie fix it guy, thinks he can recover all my data and rebuild the machine..... just as well as all my photos from the past two years and all the wealth of teaching resources and lesson plans I created over my three year degree are on there too. Eeek! Fingers crossed. However, I've pinched this pic of the DT taken at the weekend from fellow member Vanessa.....so all is not lost!!.......

In creative news, inspired by this tutorial, I had a go at making some flower embellishments today, one of which ended up being turned into a super-quick card!

If you fancy a go, check out my how-to here on the Sarah's Cards Blog.

Have a great week all xxx

Key to my Heart

2011-02-23T19:13:00.000Z

Well what a couple of days it's been! Mr T took me out for lunch on Monday as a nice start to our week off and he ended up with food poisoning! He seems to be on the mend today thankfully (I'd like to think it was down to my tender loving care, but erm.......lol!), which hopefully will continue as we've got a days sightseeing in London planned for tomorrow! I'm looking forward as I haven't had a good day out with the camera for ages, however I am a little daunted by the crazy time we have to get up in the morning in order to have a full day in the big smoke!

So in honour of my poorly sicky man, here's another page I made with this months Sarah's Cards kit.

I made some simple flowers by punching scalloped circles, snipping into them and rolling them up into rough flower shapes. The double sided papers work really well for this, and they are simply finished by pushing them flat and popping an adhesive peal in the middle.

I loved the metal key and lock embellies, and wanted them to be a main feature of the page, so created a die-cut heart matt for them, and added a scalloped edge by adding punched circles around it to draw more attention to it. I didn't actually add a title to the page - sometimes words don't say enough you know? - so the lock/key/heart combo served in lieu of one.

Right then, I am off to check the weather report for tomorrow, I bought a cute little dress to pair up with some leggings so I'm hoping it's not going to be freezing in the capital....and I best get an early night too :)

Thanks for visiting xxxx

Lickstick & Lusher

2011-02-20T17:09:00.000Z

Afternoon all, hope this post finds you well and having had a good weekend. Had a nice lazy one here, with Mr T and I generally chilling, a bit of crochet time for me, and a brief and leisurely saunter through town. I needed to stock up on some hair colour as my roots are rather desperate for a touch up - eeeeek!

We are looking forward to a nice week together; Mr T is fortunate that his work is term-time only, and as it's my birthday later this week we have lots of little bots and bobs planned - hopefully some opportunities to get out with out cameras.

The Sarah's Cards kit subscribers have started receiving their February kits from their lovely posties, so I can start to share with you the pages I created using the lovely Glitz Love Nest products.

First up is "Lickstick & Lusher".......my niece has always referred to lipstick and blusher in this way and it's always tickled me, I actually think they are quite apt descriptions! My sister took this snap of her playing with some "play" makeup Santa brought her, and not only was it a great opportunity to document her amusing little saying, but the colours in the picture were perfect for the pretty floral paper in the kit.

Plenty of doodled stitching helped visually anchor the Crate Restoration stickers and my punched butterflies to my layout:

More of what I created with this lovely kit to follow later in the week :) Enjoy the rest of the weekend xxxx

Love Birds ;)

2011-02-14T07:00:00.002Z

Being a generally busy girl, it means that when I scrap I usually find myself working on projects with the wonderful kits for Sarah's Cards, so it was nice to find some time to sit and create a page purely for myself, using my own stash.....I must admit my box of long-neglected purchases was a bit dusty and I'd forgotten what I had in there!!.....

But anyway, in celebration of being all lovey dovey and Valentinesy, here's what I created. Seriously, who knew I had so many birdie themed items - but they provided good inspiration for the title!

I don't tend to use plain cardstock as a background for my pages, but couldn't resist the urge to play with a bit of misting!

I love that Mr T and I share the same initials - sad isn't it?!!!!
If we ever get married (and geeeeez I hope he's not reading this and thinks that's a hint!!!!!), my initials will be....NAT...how cool is that?! It's an improvement on my current (but amusing) NAG!

I created the bling swirl using my Bejeweller and three different colours of stones.....it took bloomin' ages lemme tell ya!

Happy Valentines day to you all, whoever you are sharing it with xxxxx

Burning down the house!!

2011-02-10T15:43:00.000Z

Been on the old card wagon again lately......may have some news about that in a few weeks.....*insert mysterious looking face here*

With Valentines day just around the corner I made this. However Mr T will not be receiving it as he has already seen it lol! Which means I have 3 days in which to find myself another yummy man in order to make use of the card!! ;)

The white doily thingy you can see was a little experiment I had into heat embossing on acetate......hahaha needless to say I won't be in a rush to try that again. I had mixed results, some were actually quite good, but I'm not sure it was worth risking life and limb and nearly burning the house down for! I decided to use this "result" of my experimentation as it worked well with the oval scallop punches, however that's just a happy accident as the lovely Prima stamp I used is actually very much ROUND in design!

Assault by heatgun soon inadvertently altered that!!!

Here's a couple more I've made recently:

Happy crafting, catch you all soon xxx

Ippety Skippety.......

2011-02-03T16:50:00.000Z

Actually I am all skipped out.....I feel totally exhausted and have no idea why. Maybe I'm working out to hard at the gym?!!!

Even when I'm tired though I still feel the need to do something creative, so drawing whilst snuggled up watching tv was a prefect solution earlier this week. And thanks to the suggestion from the lovely Rachael, may I introduce you to Rapunzel....

I promised a little update on my crochet blanket....it's the first "practical" item I've made so it's interesting...it's coming along slowly.....it's much more vibrant than this in real life.......

As you can tell I got a little impatient and had to sew a few squares together as I was desperate to see what it looked like (and check that it did indeed resemble some sort of blanket!!!)......Meanwhile I have a nice little growing pile of these....

I received this lovely hat box stuffed with smelly goodies for Christmas, and it's made the perfect travel solution for my work in progress....

I tend to take it to Mr T's every few weekends....once his little girl is settled in bed we tend to have dinner and watch a film, so I've been sneaking my hooks and wool out at these opportune moments and whipping up a few squares in front of the tv :)

The lovely oriental rolling pouch of hooks you can just about spy popping out here was a thoughtful lil pressie from Mr T himself as I'd lost my old set. What a lovely lil thing he is :)

I was a bit naughty this week and decided to treat myself to these beauties that I saw going for an absolute bargain on fleabay.......I've been looking for a tape measure stamp for a while but not seen one I can justify spending out on, so when I saw this pack I fell in love.....all the borders are really usable which is unusual for me: there's usually something in a pack that I don't like or won't use, but I've got ideas for all the embossing patterns in this lot.

I got the herringbone one too as i felt it would be an alternative to my beloved Swiss dots..............which incidentally I have LOST!!! Before going away with the Sarah's Cards girls in November, I streamlined the stash that was inside my rolling robox to take just the essential stuff I knew I'd use over the weekend, which included putting a see-through box with most of my acrylic stamps and my swiss dot embossing folder to one side.............in a safe place.......ahem!

I have turned the place upside down looking for them but can't find them anywhere and the only thing I can think of is the box was mistakenly thrown away when I had a big clear up just after Christmas. Gutted!!!

Well I'm off to play with my new toys, maybe in conjunction with the lovely kit I have waiting to play with here from Sarah, featuring the gorgeous Love Nest papers from Glitz......there just might be time to get your subscription here...... if you haven't already ;)

Catch ya soon peeps xxxx

A Post of Unshared Pages

2011-01-24T16:40:00.000Z

Sarah sent me these lovely Estate Sale papers from Bella BLVD to play with a total age ago, and they were long ago shared on the Sarah's Cards blog, so why I have forgotten to share them here I don't know....so with much ado..... lol.......

The first is an update on the page I created way back here. Obviously my life has changed in ohhhhh so many ways since then (do I sense a song lyric there somewhere?!) so it felt fit to readdress my "little list" of hopes and dreams and document these as they stand now. I recorded them on a little secret journalling tag that I created that pulls out from underneath my photo. I was really happy with this one.
.

Next up's a bit of a montage of the night of my graduation ball. I had so many pictures from this special night (just as well really as I can't actually claim to remember the whole evening **blush**) that I wanted to include that I decided to create a photomontage in photoshop. As all the pictures were of varying sizes and orientations, even arranging them as best I could left some gaps in my design. Once generally happy, I printed off my montage, and solved the white gaps by sticking patterned paper in those spaces.

I love the last page I made with the collection :)...... The journalling simply says "This is my favourite photo in the whole world Right Now".....and it's still up there in my faves even though we have an ever rapidly expanding collection of pukey wukey lovey dovey sicky ucky photos together ;)

Catch you all soon folks :) Hope to get some pics of my crochet blankie in progress up soon :)
xxxx

Coloured Pencil Love

2011-01-12T13:42:00.000Z

Since i can remember, I have always, always loved colouring pencils and they way you can build up depth and mix colours with them. I'm Lucky that Mr T has always been creative too, so since meeting him I've got back into things that I hadn't tried for a while. That includes working on these fairy tale story characters......

I wanted them to be quiet similar to each other stylistically with wide faces and closed eyes, leaving their costumes and props to give their identity away. Hopefully it worked and you can tell who these girls are supposed to be?!

I'm thinking about Snow White and Goldilocks next.....any suggestions?!

Also thought I'd share a couple of cards....

Mr T and I joined the gym last week and last night was our first proper training session.....it's been a while....and needless to say I am ACHING today! Although, it could be the 15 minutes high velocity hula-hooping I did yesterday afternoon on the Wii Fit......turns out I'm a bit of a virtual hula-hooping pro!!!

Hopefully my aches and pains will subdue and I'll be back soon to share some scrapbook pages! Love to ya all xxxx

Happy New Year!

2011-01-04T11:30:00.002Z

Happy New Year to all in blogland! Hope you all had a lovely time of the festive season!

I had a lovely, but very busy Christmas; with Mr T and I frequently shooting back and forth the 35 miles between our houses to keep all the families happy :) He's gone back to work today after having over a fortnight off and I am missing him very much already (bleeeurgh, I know, pass the sick bucket!!!)

Here are some quick festive snaps:
We were good girls and boys in this household! (And then my sister turned up with her presents and it really got crazy in mum's little living room!).....

Mr T and my mum were both obviously sick of the fact that I'm a freezer (and whinge about it too!!) as they both got me one of these snuggly pink slankets!!!

Little Miss:

Me and my best girl ;) She's getting so grown up!

Mr T celebrated his birthday between Christmas and New Year......

And a lovely time was had by all!!

Sarah sent me some lovely items from the gorgeous Fancy Pants Lilac house range (find them here!) to play with, and here's one of the pages I created with it. When I first met Nick he was living and working up in Gloucester. Sunday evenings were precious before he had to head back for the week, so we always tried to get out and take a walk somewhere lovely before he dropped me home and hit the road. It seems like a lifetime ago now although in reality it was just a few months, but it felt important to document.

I'm into folding the petals of punched flowers at the moment and inking them to give them more depth, brings them to life a little more me thinks.

Catch you all soon my lovelies :) xxx

2010 Drawing to a Close............

2010-12-29T21:13:00.000Z

Well 2010 is coming to an end, and what a year it has been :) My resolution for 2011 (at least one if them) is to blog more often. I've always been put off by the time it takes to upload and resize and position photos, but blogger seems to have addressed most of these things so I really have no excuse!

A lovely Christmas was had here, without a fair lashing of the white stuff! Totally magical :) Imagine the surprise we had to wake up to this view last week from my bedroom....If it wasn't for the fact I don't have a wardrobe in my bedroom I'd have thought I'd been transported over night to Narnia :)

Both Nick and Mum were snowed in from work, so Mr T and I did the honorary thing and trekked to the local Co-op to buy bread and milk.....it wasn'tt even panic buying, we had genuinely depleted our stocks of them anyway! However a sign in the coop stating that customers were limited to two loaves of bread and two cartons of milk each did make me laff!

Here's Mr T looking dashing in his winter woolies at the start of our hike;) Man, this boy is lethal with snowballs!!

Knee deep in snow:

Me, trying to look ladylike and half-decent after being pelted with a torrent of Mr T's snowballs from hell for over two hours. I think my face says it all really!!

The snow finally melted yesterday with some rain, but we had a good 10 days of the thick stuff on the ground which is the most snow I've ever experienced.

Which reminds me of one of the pages I created using Sarah's Cards Christmas kits of my first ever experience of snow!:

I'm busy working on something like this at the mo....

will post some pics of my progress soon!

Wishing you all a very happy new year, and here's to more blog posts in 2011!! ;)

xxxx

October Sarah's Cards Kit

2010-10-22T15:20:00.000+01:00

The October kit from Sarah's Cards this month is a cracker, they are always lovely but the beautiful Crate paper Restoration line this month is stunning. I think the subscribers have largely received their kits now, so I'm free to share with you what I created with the kit.

Fab kit isn't it?

In other news, I am over my glandular fever - yipee!

I spent last weekend in Tenby with Mr T and his family which was lovely, I have hundreds of photos to edit which feels a bit daunting at the moment but as soon as I have done so I will share some with you; it's such a beautiful seaside village.

Catch you all soon xxx

Feelin' Peachy....not!

2010-09-08T15:36:00.000+01:00

My title was originally in reference to the fabulous Peachy Keen kit from Sarah's Cards that I had to work with last month, but then I realised I am infact not really feelin peachy keen at all. That's thanks to glandular fever! Yuckety yuck! I'd heard that glandular fever was bad but I'd always presumed it was a bit like flu. My symptoms have been apparent for a week now, and to be honest I feel worse now than I did at the start!! Considering I should be looking for work it couldn't have worse timing really, although I guess it's small mercies that I didn't get a permenant teaching job as taking what could amount to the first half term off ill would not look to great would it?! Mr T is laid off with it too, so we are currently making a fine diseased pair!!

So, anyway, without much further ado, here's what I created with the kit!

I'll Always be your Little Chick

Mr T

Jelly & Icecream Joy

The kit flowed beautifully and I loved that is was equally versatille to create masculine and feminine pages :) Bargain!

Thanks for looking as always :) xx

The remains of the June Kit.....

2010-08-31T22:32:00.000+01:00

Here are the other two pages that I created using the June kit from Sarah's Cards....

My niece has a weird obsession with shouting “rock and roll!” at the top of her voice at the moment, so these snaps of her paying with a guitar seemed a fitting way of recording this phase!

I wanted to try something a little different for my title, so used the alphas as masks for some red acrylic paint. Once the paint was dry, I stamped a vine-like rose tamp over the centre of my title in Stazon. Once dry, I carefully peeled away the stickers to reveal the grid pattern of the Club paper underneath. I then very carefully applied a layer of glossy accents to the letters to make them stand out more form the paint and to give a contrasting texture. When this had finally dried, I added a few black adhesive crystals from my stash to give a true glam-rock feel! I also transformed one of the chipboard buttons in the pack my covering it with red paper from the kit, and stamping it with the rose stamp I used on my title, before adding a layer of glossy accents and a bit of sheer ribbon.

I loved this off-the wall quick snap that we caught of ourselves larking about with ice-cream in the mirror, so I wanted my page to have a fresh summery feel with a bit of a chaotic twist to reflect the fun of the afternoon!

The Sunset paper made the perfect summery themed background, and I loved the way I could use the alphas straight on top of this for a subtle effect, ensuring my photo remained the focus of the page. I added a quick flash of colour to the page by layering small strips of the Club and Merriment papers as a mat for my photo. I used the swag Bazzill trim underneath these, but as I didn’t want the bright red to overpower the page I wiped it with white paint, which also served to highlight the Swiss dot texture. Using the plain side of the Adventure paper, I stamped a small barcode and cut out a butterfly, which I also ran through a dotty embossing folder and wiped with white paint. I finished my page using one of the journaling spots, AC badge and bling embellishment.

Now that I've started working through the back log of stuff I haven't shared on my blog I'm looking forward to showing you what I've been up to most recently! Will be back with more layouts from Sarah's latest kits in a few days :) xxx

Remembering the Sunshine!!!

2010-08-17T14:11:00.000+01:00

So I introduced you all to the lovely new Mr T in the last post. He's into all things creative too and is really inspiring me at the moment to dabble in things I haven't done for a long time, like drawing and painting. I've done a couple this week hat I'm pleased with and hope to crack the camera out on them later so I can post them on here. I'm toying with the idea of popping them on Folksy to see if anyone would be interested, being a poor, penniless ex student who can't find a job lol, but I lack confidence and art is so personal I'm not sure whether to do it or not.

We've also been out with our cameras no end too...here's a couple we took at Margam Park, way back when the sun was shining! It fees like a lifetime ago, it's hard to remember that Sunshine now isn't it?! It's a dim and distant memory! Spot the love heart on the tree! Don't you just love nature?!

It seems like a lifetime ago that I worked with this kit now, but the June kit from Sarah's Cards featured the lovely Tree House Collection from Pebbles, so I thought I'd share the pages I made with it over the next couple of days :) Naughty Blogger won't let me share them all at once.

The kits arrival coincided with that short-lived nice weather but it meant that I could drag my poor little niece into the garden for a sunny photo shoot...and a bit of dandelion clock blowing!

Will upload the other two pages in the next few days :)
TFL xxxxx

Where have I been?!

2010-08-12T21:08:00.004+01:00

It's been a busy couple of months, but I have been nagged to update my blog! So here goes with a quick run down of where I've been and what I've been up to.

Firstly, was busy getting this done with:

I graduated!

I got a 2:1 with honours, so I expect you all to formally address me as Miss Natalie Grant BA(Hons) now ok?! :P I'm so pleased to have got my degree and my qualified teacher status, and am equally pleased for all the fantastic friends I made along the way who qualified with me. We worked bloody hard for it! My grandad sadly lost his long battle with cancer in the last fortnight. While we had been preparing for this for sometime, it was still hard when the time to say goodbye came. He had deteriorated considerably and rapidly over the past year and the quality of his, and consequently that of my grandmothers, life had suffered, so it is somewhat of a relief to know that he is now out of pain and can rest peacefully. He was an amazing man; a quiet, gentle soul; a true gentleman who really taught me so much in life. I have my grandad to thank for many of my passions, such as photography and art, and I truly feel honoured to have had 28 wonderful years with this awesome man as my Grandpa. Sleep peacefully Gramps xxx I have also been rather busy falling in love with this lovely young man *blush*. I'm all fluffy and tingly and loved up and feel constantly in awe that I have met someone so amazing; someone who enjoys the same things in life as me, who just "gets" me, even my often bizarre sense of humour. And he's a sloppy ole bugger too so I'm loving his sweet little gestures and romantic notions :) *blushes again*. He's ace :)

Oooh, I've also reached Four Stone in my weight loss journey! Lots more to go but I'm feeling so pleased at getting to this point :)

I've of course been very busy designing for Sarah's Cards and have lots of things to share on my blog, so will be uploading them soon, regularly too I promise!! As Mr Lushness also shares my passion for photography I have also been out and about taking hundreds of photos so hope to get my lil tushy into gear and get some of those up on the blog asap too. I'm gonna be busy :)

Catch you all soon :) xxx

2010-06-07T22:50:00.026+01:00

Hmmmm despite my best intentions I am still no good at the whole keeping the blog up to date lark! Must try harder!

Well........I have finished my degree! Hurrah me! My results should be out in the next three weeks, and, providing I pass, graduation is in July! Fingers crossed! It would be a bit of a bummer to have worked so hard for three years, gain my QTS (qualified teacher status) and then fail the degree at the last hurdle :P I have applied for a job too...yes "a" job......just one.....as there are very few teaching jobs coming up in the South Wales area, unless you're looking to be a head teacher. Nope, not quite there yet ;) Would be nice to at least get an interview just for the whole experience, but with the number of applicants they receive for every post around here I'm not expecting too much.

So time to share with you what I did with the last kit I worked with for Sarah's Cards...and maybe a little sneak peak of the fun I had with the June kit too :) Cos I'm a tease like that ;)

The yummy glitzy foiled paper in the kit was a perfect base for a picture of my sister and I at a recent wedding, taken by my mum. It took her about 100 shots to get this bless her, she finds my "big camera" a bit fandangled!! I created a simple mat for the photo and my title using both sides of the Bloom paper, adding some of the beautiful glossy Hambly rubons along the edge of the turquoise side and trimming it to follow their contour. Glossy Hambly rub-ons how I love thee!! Ditto the Pink Paislee artisan tape. There was plenty of flowers and butterflies on the papers to indulge in a bit of hand cutting too! Overall it's quite a simple page for my usual style, but I think it works :)

*edited to add: ok, so I thought, for once, uploading pics from Photobucket would be quicker than doing it from my hard drive. Yeah it was quicker...but photobucket's gone on some crazy re-sizing rampage despite me having been back in and reset my photos about 100 times...so I appologise for the crazy giant half shots...if you wanna see the full pics click on em and view em over at shite bucket...I mean photobucket ;) xxx*

Whilst moving back to my mums last year, Millie escaped in transit, and we haven't seen her since :( so it felt fitting to make a page in tribute to her. I wanted the page to have a cosy, home-spun feel to it, so did so by using a combination of machine stitching and the Hambly rubon stitching in the pack. I inked and distressed the edges of the papers to give them a worn, comfy feel.

I enjoyed having a play about to create those layered butterfly embellies for my page. I cut four butterflies from the Flutter paper, two intricate designs and two plain. On the larger intricate butterfly, I used a craft knife to remove the white areas, creating a delicate lace effect. I ran the two plain butterflies through a polka dot embossing folder to add texture before layering them in pairs and embellishing with an adhesive pearl.

I added even more texture to my page by ruching the lace on a mat of rippled cardstock, which I sanded back to again give a worn, shabby feel. Oooh gorra love texture :)

My last page was using a this picture taken of my niece at a recent wedding and the shimmery Mod paper in the kit was just perfect for it as the grey background and bold motifs matched her pretty dress perfectly. The paper was gorgeous but very busy, so I wanted to let it show, so went lightly on the embellishments to balance the design. The Pink Paislee tape was perfect for creating a “barely there” mat for my title. eee love that tape!

So.....what goodies lie in store with June's kit?! I can tell you that it's yum...check it out for yourself here... :)

Thanks for stopping by :) xxx

Techno techno techno techno!

2010-05-10T22:19:00.004+01:00

Well we have had a rather fun few weeks with absolutely no phoneline or Internet connection in this house. Just great when you're working on your final dissertation! Never ever ever think going with Talktalk is a good idea......you would not believe the hassle we have had, it really is to long winded to go into, freakin idiots!!! However....the BT homehub is innnnnnnnn daaaaaaaaaa houuuuse so I'm happily up and running in cyber space once again. Happy days!

So, last of my assignments and dissertation handed in. Someone pass me some lighter fluid so I can burn my guide to Harvard Referencing :) Just five exams next week stand between me and becoming a teacher :D whoop!

On to pretty stuff lol...Each month the Sarah's Cards blog runs a challenge with a £10 voucher to spend online at the shop as the prize. This month Rachel Ward has come up with a fun sketch and all you have to do is use it as inspiration for your page...... the full details can be found here along with some ideas from the rest of the Design Team. Here's what I came up with.....I'm still planning to add a few machine stitched swirls in too which I haven't got around to yet! I feel like it's lacking something and that might be the finishing touch. The pics are of miss Ellie "Scootin'" as she calls it, on the scooter that Santa left here for her last year :)

Speaking of Ellie, her best school friend became a big sister in the last few weeks, so I was asked to make a couple of cards. One was a personalised version of the Bambi card I did a few weeks ago, but I changed it up a bit. I swiss-dotted the background for a bit more texture (I felt like the last one was a bit plain in some sense and I think this made the difference), and changed the buntin ever so slightly. Happier with this version anyway. May need to make one in blue too - as one of my very best friends has just found out that it is a boy they are expecting in August :)So the new big sister needed a card to congratulate her on her new role too....so I made this using scraps I had left from the Christmas kit from Sarah's Cards.

TFL as always xxx

Sunshine at my window ;)

2010-04-16T14:57:00.007+01:00

Woo, finally some warm and very welcome sunshine. I think the long over due start to spring may very well have just sprung. Yay!

It's the end of the Easter holidays and just when many people should be returning from their holidays an Icelandic volcanic eruption brings our skies to a standstill! My poor friend is meant to be returning home from New Zealand this weekend so I hope she is not stranded! Hope nobody has any friends or family stuck in an airport anywhere - it must be miserable! Louis Theroux was on tele tonight and made me laugh, he said something along the lines of: what is it with Iceland? First our banks, and now our airlines?

Thought I'd share a couple of pages from last year, just to dispel the rumours that I'd stopped scrapping lol.... These were made using the Christmas kit for Sarah's Cards. As much as I love Christmas, I find that I don't scrap it very often, so it was nice to see that the kit was versatile enough to do some completely non-seasonal pages.

The first page is of my niece's first day at school, I cant believe that she's in nursery!Our grandmother used to call us "little scholars" when we did well at school when we were small, and I know she'd say the same of her great granddaughter - she's as bright as a button - so it seemed a fitting title for the page.And this page quite simply marks her 3rd birthday. No give away at all that these were Christmas papers is there?

Speaking of Sarah's Cards, I do believe the April kit is now available here at the shop......it truly is a beauty this month, and if you're a fan of butterflies (and hell, who isn't?!), this little gem of a kit is for you. Here's a teeny peak at what I got up to with it :)

Ta for looking :) xxxx

Please! No more choc!

2010-04-06T17:41:00.005+01:00

Hope everyone had a great bank holiday weekend........time to work off those Easter eggs here! So while mustering up the motivation for a run on the cross trainer I thought I'd post, haha!

Made a couple of cards didn't I? Not sure bout the baby one, I'm not used to working with plain backgrounds lol. But it's nice to try something different. The cute bambi stamp is part of one of the AC collections, the lovely Miss Meaden bought me them for chirmbo so it was good to finallllllllly crack them out of their packaging!

Here are a few other cards I'd made during my AWOL time from the blog lol that I found on my hard drive - cor feels like I made these a life time ago!

Ha and just in case my sister is reading, don't worry bird, I'm not "stuck in a card making groove" again lol ;)

xxxx

Uh.... thank you very much!

2010-03-29T22:21:00.011+01:00

In the words of Elvis there! Lovely to know there's still bloggers out there, thank you for your kind comments :)

So deep in the depths of the last year, I have managed to do some creative bits and bobs, so a little delve into my hard drive has revealed these lil projects....... these were created for Sarah's cards last spring.

Me and my niece Ellie at Easter last year.....
A totally cherished pic here of my cousin and I on my gramps knee when we were about three, before my little sis came along anyway. Love my gramps I do and I'm rather jealous of the fact that it's now Ellie who hogs his knee as I'm far too big ;) Ands the third page I created with the kit was this....one of my first cuddles with my sister. Another blast from the past! I think the beautiful, heady patterns and warm brown, yellow and orange colours reminded me off the decor of my parents and grandparents house when I was very young spilled over from the 70's into the early 80's. Tis all back now too, what goes around comes around eh? The papers were very comforting anyway, and helped me create these happy memories :)Been making some cards today, know lots of people expecting babies this summer so trying to get ahead of the game!! Not sure what to make of my creations though, will try to post a pic to see what you think this week ;)

Also spent the day catching up on missed episodes of Lost - it was total bliss sitting here at my desk, making stuff and watching tv on my PC. Since I've moved back home with mum I don't have my own TV (gasp!!!) and it's weird adjusting to no longer ruling where I roost and watching what I want when I want, so discovering the Skyplayer today was a godsend! Ah, the wonders of technology! I then watched a load of comedies on the BBCiplayer......bliss.....ah student life!! What more could you ask for on a rainy day?!

Forecast more snow this week I see - great :( However -could make Easter egg hunts very amusing - and at least there'll be little chance of the choc melting before it's discovered!!

Laters bloggers ;) xxx

PS...I really want a new blog header to match the new scheme. Had a play in photoshop but can't remember how to do it properly. Any whizzes out there who can help? Failing that, anyone fancy making me one lol?!!! EDITED TO SAY - oooh I downlaoded a redy made one from TCBOTB and tinkered with it in PS, much easier than starting from scratch lol ;) xx

Back in the habit! Of blogging that is ;)

2010-03-26T00:11:00.005Z

Weeeeeell howdy strangers!!

Long time no see, but I'm back...if there's still anyone out there that is ;)

There are many many reasons for my absence...the main being it has been my last year of my degree, woah how time has flown! I finished my last teaching practice last week and registered as a teacher with the teaching council for Wales today. I had an excellent final report - it is split into five areas of competence, each ranked from unsatisfactory up to excellent. I had one very good and four "excellents" so I'm ecstatic! A couple more essays and a few exams and I'll be qualified, baby!

The other reason I've been away is that there's been a massive change in personal circumstances for me. Lol, my life has always pretty much been an open book on here as that's just the way I am, so I may as well divulge that after nine years together, I left my fiance last Summer. It had been coming for a long time but I'd got to the stage where enough was enough. And that was that. It was by no means easy and has had many, many repercussions, which in all seriousness I cant go into for legal reasons as much as I love pouring my heart out on here!!

There is a new man on the scene. It's been fun so far. I think he's absolutely lovely, but I have a lil feeling that "he's just not that into me." Such is my life! So we shall see.

So I am now back residing with my mother. I dearly miss having my own home after living on my own for almost a decade. It is hard having lost everything I worked so bloody hard for......I miss my lovely home and having my own space. Cramming my life into a tiny 2m by 3m box room is hard! I also miss my chooks and my cats, I was only able to bring Treacle to my mums home and the other cats had to stay there. Sad times. I also had to ditch my lovely freelander for a banger - but it gets me from A to B (most of the time. when the doors open and the engine starts).

I've also been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, and am being referred for further tests and scans as there appears to be a further underlying hormone problem; which, in that great way they do, the doctor has not told me anything about and a sudden flurry of CAT scan appointments and specialist referrals have landed on the door mat with no explanation. If anyone has any guidance on managing the symptoms the advice would be most welcome, but thankfully I'm not looking to find myself in the family way right now!

The upside to all the stress I went through last year is that I turned to exercise, and have shed 3 stone and six pound! I still have a way I want to go yet, but it is a great start and I feel more confident about myself than I did at the start of 2009!

Me and my sis in Jan 2009

Me and my sis in March 2010

I can't believe how much my life has changed since I last blogged, but I am sure that it is all for the best. I feel happier now than ever, even though some days are still very hard. I'm still the old moaning Minnie I ever was ;)

Time to get creative has been short, but I do have projects to share so I will try to update my blog with them very soon. I'm also hoping to have a blog overhaul and make over too, so watch this space, if you are so inclined ;)

Hugs to you all, Nat xxxx

Cards

2009-06-15T18:03:00.005+01:00

I seem to be in a bit of a card making groove of late - a combination of the need for a load of cards and liking the small size of this type of project has kept me busy over the past few weeks.

Here are a few of 'em:
This one was made using the new page kits over here, I made a scrapbook page and this card with the one kit - plus have loads of it left to make more cards so they are great value for money. Eeek. More men's cards were needed with both my bro in law and cousin's birthdays in the past few weeks. Tricky - I find men's cards so hard (well, no cards are easy but men's are even harder!), so when I made a design I was happy with for my cous, I copied it for my bro in law too!!!

And finally my sister needed a card for a wedding over the weekend, so I was happy to oblige. As you can probably tell I am loving the swiss dot thing at the moment ha! I made the Mr & Mrs greeting in photoshop - I used a tag from a freebie kit I downloaded from here at 2Peas: I altered the colour and added the text, whizzed some cardstock through the printer et voila.

I can happily report that Dora the chook has made a splendid recovery and is now back in the coop and run with the other girls - happy days! Will try to get some chook pics up soon lol!!

Hope you are all enjoying the sunshine!

Nat xxx

School's out for Summer!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-06-07T18:53:00.012+01:00

Whoop whoop!

Teaching practice completed and successfully passed?

Check!

Assignments all completed and handed in?

Check!

Exams swotted for and sat?

Check!

4 months holiday until the next semester starts?

Check!

Yeeha! My second year of my course is over! This time next year I will be qualified! I can't believe how fast it is going and am so happy that I made the hard decision to leave work to follow my dream to become a teacher!

So what to do with my new found free time?!

Well I've had a fair bit of partying to do. I spent the bank holiday weekend in Bristol for a dear old friends' hen weekend. We partied by night, and mooched around the shops during the day. The lovely new Cabot Circus was fab and the cafes there were perfect for people watching - which due to tired feet we spent a bit of time doing!

I pinched this shot from the website; this square had the most divine shops and the water fountains shooting directly from the paving and splashing back down on the stones looked so pretty in the sunlight (and my aching feet were desperate to take a little stroll over the water outlets!)- but I didn't have my camera! I could have spent a small fortune in the Molton Brown boutique - quite literally! A travel-sized soap cost £15 alone. I think I'll have to wait for a QVC TSV lol!

Then last weekend, my uni class had our end of exams celebratory night out - much Champagne was consumed with special thanks to my fantastic friend Vicki, who was leaving us to return to New Zealand to complete the course there. I feel honoured to have met such a fantastic woman - she is so energetic and inspiring and constantly amazed me by balancing a hectic family life spread over two global hemispheres with the demands of the course, and her continual encouragement and support when it was needed by others. She would go out of her way to help anyone - she really was an angel, and had a wicked sense of humour and anecdotes

to match. She really will be missed by us all next year. So here is a group of shot of my fab class whilst we were all still decent and controlled lol - the teachers of the future!!!

The night after (as if I didn't already have enough of a headache) was Lee's sister's Hawaiian themed birthday BBQ. Here we are suitable dressed for the occasion with our good friends S&A. The Luau Marquee was home to the biggest and most lethal punch bowl you ever did see. "Bring it on!! " we cried!!!
The chooks are well and truly settled in - we are getting 2-3 eggs every day: we think it is just the smallest girl, Dolly, left to come into lay now.

That said, we have been nursing Dora indoors for the last few days!All four girls quickly got into a great routine of getting themselves off to bed at night - I had read that you may have to show them how to use the ladder to get into the coop for a few days until they get the hang of it, however our fab girls took to it like, erm, ducks to water. So when we went out one evening to lock the coop up for the night, we found it a bit strange to find Dora cwtched up under the ladder. Just a dizzy chook moment we thought, and Lee lifted her into the coop with the others.

But the next morning when I let them out, she slid rather than walked down the ladder and plopped to the bottom, where she stayed. I could see immediately that she'd hurt her leg and scooped her up and took her indoors amidst my tears (I'm such a wussy wuss wuss!!). We looked at her closely and sought advice and it seems that she has bruised her upper leg badly - apparently it can take them a fortnight to recover from bruising and strains :( We think she must have tumbled from either the ladder or one of the branch perches we had put in there to enrich their environment, poor dab. What ever it was - I feel so guilty! She is starting to stand and bare a little weight but is still not walking properly, so she's indoors where we can be sure that she won't fall again, won't be trampled on by the other girls and that her food and water is in reach for her. She seems to be getting brighter each day, and is bawking away at me as I type!!

So, as you can see I'm all partied out and busy chook-sitting! I have applied for a few summer jobs, but they are very few and far between with the current economical climate. So hopefully I'll be able to get on with some nice creative projects over the next few weeks to keep me out of trouble!!!!

Catch you soon xxxx

Bunches!

2009-05-18T13:28:00.005+01:00

Here's another of the pages I did for Sarah's Card's April Kit.

The journalling reads:

I learned today that you need to have a PhD in physics; a degree in material sciences; an idea of the space/time continuum; various certificates in manual handling AND violence and aggression; a large bag of chocolate buttons and approximately four hours to spare in order to put a two year olds’ hair into Bunches. I am clearly under qualified. 3.4.09

I'd printed the photo onto some canvas, so that was cool to try for a change. Must admit, I'm living rediscovering my dusty old sizzix machine again! The mini date tag, the bookplate, and the flowers were all cut from patterned paper using it.

Other news.......

I handed in my last assignment for this academic year this morning!!! Whoop whoop! Exams in a week and a half and then that's year of my degree over - just one year left until I'm a qualified teacher!

I have been a Chook Mamma for eight days now, and loving it! We have four girlies - one brown who is about a year old, and three black ones who are about three months. They came at a lovely time really, as although we are still heart broken about Rocky, the girls have given us something positive to focus on.

We thought we'd let Ellie name the brown one as she'd be able to recognise that hen easily. When I first asked her she what she'd like to call her, she sang "toodle-loodle-loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-" whilst rubbing her fingers together like you would to call a cat! So I asked her again through tears of laughter, and she just said "looloo", so we decided to go with Loulou while the going was good!

Because the other three are all black, we wanted similar names for them, so we went for Dotty (because she has some brown speckles on her wings), Dora (as in Dora the NON-explorer, because in the first couple of days while everyone else was exploring their new home, she was happy just sitting on her branch!), and finally Dolly, as she is teeny tiny compared to the others and so cute!

They are settling in nicely and the brown one has been kind to us and we've had a few lovely eggs to eat this week. However........we think today that Dora may have come in to lay - fingers crossed!

We are learning lots - certainly getting up first thing in the morning to feed the birds, let them out and poo pick has been an eye opener haha, but no more than I expected! Poo picking in the rain is certainly not fun either - the weather this week has been so horrendous. The coop/run we purchased is too small really, I've since found out that everyone who purchases these models find they are too small, so plans are already underway to extend the area around the coop for the girlies - and it will have a roof and a light out there so at least when I have to go out on dark, cold and wet winter mornings (or Summer mornings at this rate!) I'll have a roof over my head and will be able to see what I'm doing as I poo pick!!!!!!!!!!

Lovely :)

Anyway, 'nuff bout chooks for now!

Hope you are well, catch up soon xxxx

:(

2009-05-10T02:21:00.005+01:00

Sad times in this family.

Rocky passed away last Wednesday, bless his doggie cotton socks. The old boy had had very good innings and was very loved by many many people, and will be very sadly missed by both mine and Lee's families.

I have to make a photostory video as part of my IT assignment due in next week, so as I was sorting out pictures and captions of Rocky for Lee's sister, I thought I may as well use them for that. I hope nobody thinks that's morbid.

The video brings tears to my eyes (I think it's the song really, it's so emotional), so please don't watch it if you're a big wuss like me lol! However I've tried to celebrate his comedic and quirky character - and I think the last slide really shows what a star he was lol ;)

Love you Rocky boy xxxx

Latest Sarah's Cards kit

2009-05-05T20:15:00.003+01:00

I do believe the subscribers have started receiving and getting busy with their latest kits from Sarah's Cards, so I can start to share my DT stuff I did with it here :)

The papers were gorgeous, and the kit had lots of little fun things like decorative pins and white overlays.

Chooks are hopefully coming very soon, just waiting on confirmation of our adopting them :)

I've signed up for an online PS class with Amber Ulmer over at SIS, looking forward to it but they've already changed the date and not confirmed when it's going to be, so I hope it's going to be good! I like her photography/editing style so I'm sure I'll benefit from it when it does run.

Catch you soon xxx

Cardtastic

2009-04-29T22:10:00.005+01:00

I've been in a bit of a card making zone the last week or so.

It was a combination of having treated to myself to a few new bits and bobs (including an owl stamp and a swiss dot embossing folder), and needing a couple of cards for different things.

First it was the in-laws wedding anniversary......the stickers look strange colours in the pic!! they liked the card anyway and that's the main thing lol.....

Then it was one of the cousins' 18th - making mens cards is soo hard!!! A couple of dots and stripes was all I could come up with lol!

And then this one I made just to have a play about with my new stamp lol!!!

Have I mentioned that we are getting chickens in a few weeks?! C.R.A.Z.Y. Well the coop has been erected and fox-proofed, so now we're working on the rest of the garden. Two sides are protected by brambles, so we thought that would be fine - until Lee watched a fox crawling through them yesterday stalking, and catching, a bird for his dinner! So we need to rethink that one. We see loads of foxes in the field at the side of the house, and I guess we can not completely keep them out, so vigilance is going to be the key me thinks.

We're also having another go at growing our own stuff this year haha! The green house is up, beds have been planted and the south-facing windowsills of the house are crammed with various seedling trays and things sprouting up in 3" pots. Ah the good life!! Sop fingers crossed for good weather. Well actually, I am leaving it to his highness - I'll stick to making the window boxes, patio and hanging baskets look pretty thank you!!!

xxx

Back to the grindstone.....

2009-04-18T18:19:00.011+01:00

Ah this weekend is the end of my Easter holidays, back to uni lectures on Monday for the first time in what seems like forever what with having been on teaching practice!

I also have an assignment to hand in on Monday, which I have currently written a grand total of 600 words for. Guess what I'll be doing tomorrow then?!

So what have I been doing for the past three weeks, if not working on my assignment you ask?

Firstly, I have been working on a shop over at Folksy as I hope to sell some of my mum's handmade jewellery over there. Maybe I'll be brave and sell some of my own handmade stuff too?!

Been busy with kits and bits. I made a lovely paper bunting set for Bubbly Scrumptious this week which I was really pleased with - you know what it's like, quite often you finish up a project and you always want to tweak it a little bit, but I was happy with these. The only thing that I was gutted about it that I really couldn't get a decent shot to show them in all their glory!!!

If you fancy having a go yourself, my instructions are here for a peep.

My sister caught a lovely photo of Ellie and I in the garden on Easter Sunday. The Easter Bunny has obviously got very generous over the years because as well as an abundance of Easter Eggs he left a swing in the garden for her too! Ok, ok, the Easter Bunny once left a massive slide for my sister and I once, however we had had the mumps or something so we couldn't eat chocolate - the massive slide was set up in the living room until we got better - it was so tall we'd have to crouch at the top so we didn't bump our heads on the ceiling!!

So, Ellie had been asking me to "come see my park" (aka the swing) all morning; she led me out by the hand and my sis snapped this with my camera. It's my fave pic at the mo. Adore the way she gives you that squinty smiley face of love, and love the vintagey brown tones I gave it in PS, reminds me of the yellowing photos I have of my cousin and I playing in my grandparents sun-filled garden when we were about Ellie's age.

Oh, and while I'm on toddler topic: I was at my mum's one evening this week and Ell was there. Mum was half watching Coronation Street and half chatting to me, when Ellie stood up, grabbed the remote control and announced "this is boring" and paused the Skyplus!!! We were in stitches, and between giggles I asked her that if it was boring, what did she want to watch instead?

Know what her answer was?

" 'Stenders........"

pmsl xxxx

Bubbly Funk Challenge!

2009-04-06T07:00:00.002+01:00

Well, while the little birdie stamp is still fresh in your minds, I may as well over indulge in a little more of him!

This months challenge over at the Bubbly Scrumptious blog is to make and use a felt bird of some kind on any project you like.

With Easter upon us next week, I couldn't resist stamping my lil fella onto some felt, and popping him on to a bright and zesty card for Easter. A bit of stitching and an odd button gave him a bit of quirky detail.

The rest of the design team came up with some really amazing projects - rather putting my card to shame! Check them all out here, and give the challenge a go - it's up for a whole month.

Ellie stayed over on Friday evening. I was asking her what she wanted for tea, and she left me perplexed for the evening by replying "poopables" everytime I asked her.

Eventually I worked out that she actually meant VEGETABLES! Ha, I think poopables is a perfect description :)

xxx

Lil Birdie!

2009-04-03T08:00:00.000+01:00

I bought a lil birdie stamp a while ago - I thought it was a bargain at 99p! So I put it to use to make some baby-themed projects - it seems that everyone I know is having babies right now!

I made this card for my friend who had her first baby, Elaina, in February, using some of the many pretty bits I had left from the February Sarah's Cards kit.Lil Miss Ellie became a "big cuz" for the first time in the same month, with her daddy's brother and his partner giving birth to their first baby, Harvey, in the same month. So my sister asked me if I could decorate a basket for her to fill with baby goodies and wrap in ribbons and pretty cellophane as a welcome gift from Ells Bells. It was really quick to do. I altered the free digi tag to the right size and colour in Photoshop, printed it out, mounted it onto kraft, popped on his name using Pink Paislee alpha stickers, and thread some ribbon through it. I then topped it off with lil birdie, and it made a sweet gift once it was laden with the baby-themed bounty!

This week has been the start of my Easter three week break! And although I have loads of uni work to be getting on with, I'm hoping to spend a good amount of time relaxing and getting creative :)

Hop you;re all having a good week xxx

Woolly Jumpers

2009-04-01T07:00:00.002+01:00

I mentioned in my last post that a group of my sister's friends have been organising several events for charity, including the ladies night. Well, last weekend was their long awaited charity Skydive, and we were all out in force to show our support. My sister's partner was jumping along with his mechanic colleagues, who dubbed themselves the "Woolly Jumpers". This is no mean feat for anyone, however he has never flown before as he is terrified of flying (he once pulled out of a holiday a couple of days before he was meant to leave as he was so worried!), and is petrified of heights.

After spending a whole day at the airport on Saturday white as a sheet and shaking with nerves, and continually psyching himself up for the task ahead, the group was eventually turned away in the late afternoon as the wind conditions were too dangerous to jump. We were unsure whether he'd be able to go through it all again on Sunday, but he truly was brave and by noon he'd made the 12,000ft jump and landed again safely!!

Chocks away!It was amazing to watch, and all the boys (and girls) were fab! If you're on my friends list on Facebook, please go and take a look at all the other photo's I have added to see the enormity of what they did on Sunday morning!

My last day at school was lovely last week. I had a party with the children, complete with games/prizes, party food and party bags (of course!). I was very lucky and had some beautiful cards and gifts, and most importantly big hugs at the end of the day, I will miss them all. But I was brave and didn't cry this year! Will be attending their Easter concert this week, so it will be nice to see them again.

Here's the last of the layouts I did with the Pink Paislee February kit from Sarah's Cards. It was perfect for the Halloween pics of Missy from last October. Speaking of Sarah's Cards, they are organising a retreat for March 2010 - and it's sold out already! Should be an exciting one I think!!!

xxx

Sweet Cakes

2009-03-29T08:00:00.000+01:00

My February DT kit from Sarah's Cards was this fab range of papers from Pink Paislee.

I haven't yet got around to scrapping any of holiday photos from last September, most of them are still waiting to be edited!! But these photos of one of the pools at the hotel in the early evening were perfect for these papers so I printed 'em off and scrapped away :)My sister's friends are busy raising money for a cancer charity and had a ladies night in January as one of their events. It was nice to have a photo of Gems, my sister and I that was actually scrappable lol, and the bright girly papers echoed the fun we had on the night!

I loved playing with the decorative tape you can just see in the right of the bottom of the page. you know how I love layering papers and embellies in long strips so this was right up my street lol!!!

Well, teaching practice is nearly over for this year, will report back soon how my final day went and whether I cried or not!!!

xxx

Cool Rider

2009-03-26T08:00:00.002Z

We got miss Ellie a bike for Christmas, but the weather has been so stinky she couldn't take it out for ages :( and had to spend her days manouvering it back and for across her living room!!!

So mid-February we actually had a lovely fresh and sunny day that was fit for cycling! We packed the bike in the car and headed down to the Mumbles, and had a great time!

I used one of the photos I took to make a page with some of the papers and chipaboard Caroline at Bubblyfunk had sent me to play with.I also used the same papers to scrap some well overdue photos from her second birthday. Glad I waited though as these papers were a perfect match for the soft play centre where she had her party! Catch you soon :) xxx

Mother's Day

2009-03-23T08:00:00.001Z

Aww it was Mother's Day yesterday. I love my mum so much, and this year I am especially thankful to be able to call such a strong, caring, inspirational and wonderful woman my mother. She is always there for me and has helped me through the toughest of times. Love you mum.

I made her this card, and the mini wall hanging I shared a few posts ago. I wish I could buy my mum the world, but until then, I think little handmade and heart felt gifts like this show her just how much she means to me.

Hope all the mummy's out there had a lovely day xxx

It's alive!!!!!

2009-03-20T18:23:00.003Z

Yup, I'm still alive and kicking, much to your disappointment I'm sure!

Been very busy over the last few weeks on teaching practice! I have had an absolutely wonderful time, and I've been lucky to have another class of absolute angels again this year! It has been so good in fact that I am now totally undecided on whether in specialise in KS2(juniors) as I'd always expected, or the new Foundation Phase (infants). Decision decisions. Just one week left with them now, but all my observations are over and I've passed this year so the pressure is off a little now and we are planning a fun fun fun Science week all next week before I leave!

As it's been so long since I last posted, I have lots of scrapbook pages stored up that I haven't shared, so I'll leave you some more that I created for Sarah's cards using the lovely Crate Paper Prudence range.

The little scalloped tag pulls out to reveal note paper with my journalling jotted on it. And my other page, with a lovely little picture of lil stinky on it!!
Catch you soon - hopefully my life will be returning to normality in seven days lol! xxx