I challenged myself

Now, how many of you have given yourself a little scrapping challenge? For instance, a item of stash you havn't used yet (but bought it ages ago), a paper line that is your favourite (and you don't want to cut it up), or a very easy challenge like mine - to make a page in 1 hour!!!!

I decided to get everything ready, kids were in bed, hubby was out, stash collected (paper choosing can take me a long time!) and photo chosen. Below are the items used in my challenge.
Ready, Steady, Scrap !

2 Hours Later!!!!! I had failed my challenge quite dramatically and I know I shouldn't use excuses but the roof on my little house took AGES!
But I was pleased with the results and that's what counts.


Thanks for stopping by and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

True Friends

Below is my contribution to the True Friends blog for challenge 61, the theme is gifts for animal lovers.

Have you received or given a pet/animal related gift this christmas or a past christmas that you still cherish, why not show us you page at True Friends blog and whilst there have a look at the design teams contributions.

Hope you had a great time over christmas and santa left you lots of crafty goodies, I got some great scrapbooking books and I will let you know about them in a sort of book review over the coming weeks. Thanks for looking in on me.

Merry Christmas

Hi all, just wanted to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas and a very crafty New Year.

Last minute preperations are a plenty but having 10 minutes off to post a page I have just finished ( glue still wet! ) it is quite pastel for me but as it is about having a baby I thought it would be appropriate.

Anyway have fun with the sales, hope you find lots of nice goodies (especially the crafty sort) and I will post again soon.

Blog Love

Welcome to my blog and let me share with you a blog I discovered recently, it is so bright and lively with cards, scrapbooking and lots of ideas to create great gifts. The blogs name is Bean Talk and it is the official blog of Jillibean Soup who produce some gorgeous papers etc.
Check out this page by one of their designers Summer Fullerton and if you click HERE you will see some other lovely pages that feature titles that have been made with corrugated card which I think looks great.
Hope you enjoy looking at my blog love and in case you didn't know, if you follow a link to a blog and it is not the current date on the page, if you click on the blog header it will refresh the blog to the most recent post. If you follow the link to Bean Talk above you can refresh it as the post is not the most up to date page. Happy blogging.

Sandy's challenge.

For those of you who attended the last craft club meeting ,you might remember Sandy giving me some bits and pieces and challenging me to make a card with them. Below are all the items I received and at first I was really not sure I could make anything with them .

But today I decided to give it a go and here is my finished card and all I used extra was some silver card to mat the patterned paper. I used one of the paper candles with the flame cut off to place the sentiment on.

If you click on the images you can check up on me to be sure I didn't use anything else Sandy!

Blog Love

I thought as a new feature that I would share with you some of the great blogs that I come across on my travels, so here goes one that I found last week and is now in my bookmarks.
It is American Crafts blog with cards and scrapbook pages featured, I just loved the simplicity of the page below and thought how quick that design would come together.
Why not click HERE to see the beautiful work on show.
Hope you enjoyed my 1st Blog Love feature, check back soon to see what else I found.

Mondays challenge

Here is Bradfield Craft Clubs challenge entries, the theme as well as the sketches was blue and pink.
This is the sketch for the scrapbook layout and it is from 52 weeks 52 sketches blog again (my favouite sketch site at the moment).

This Fan- tastic page is Pams.

This foam fun page is mine.

This bright and happy page is Joans.

This is the sketch for the cards and it is from Sketches by Tamara blog .

This is Linda P's card - love the papers.

This star struck card belongs to Chrissie.

Spring has sprung on Joan's card.

Well that was our last club meeting for this year but check back in January to see our Christmas pages and our cards with the theme of green and yellow.

I will still be posting the crafty bits I get time to make but I am going to have to pack my craft stuff away at the weekend to make room for a Christmas tree!!!!! But I will not be put off and will craft somehow, even if I have to do it on my landing.

Preparing for Christmas

I confess!! I've been a bad blogger!!
It's been 12 days since my last blog posting and the only pathetic excuse is Christmas . I know we all have the same time/crafting/ family constraints and I have been making cards so my hands have not been idle. Am I forgiven?
But we are here now and I have my layout from challenge 60 at A True Friend blog to share with you. The theme is preparing for Christmas and the very talented ladies at ATF have been busy showing you what has been going on in their pets worlds whilst we have all been busy preparing for the special season.

This is my take on the theme, it is our cat Molly who loves to sit on paper that has found it's way to the floor for whatever reason. This time I was attempting to wrap my nephews pressy and gone to get some sellotape and when I came back Molly had plonked herself down on the wrapping paper. She was sitting there looking cute and innocent and of course my mind immediately said 'photo opportunity'!
I have to give credit to my girls for helping me come up with the title as I had drawn a blank, so we did a little brainstorming and came up with "Wrap me up,I'd make the Purr-fect present".

Well I won't leave it so long next time, I will be posting Bradfield Craft Club's challenge in a couple of days as it's our last meeting tonght before the holiday, so check back soon.

Everyone's been busy.

Monday's craft club was a very busy affair with everyone making christmas cards or scrapbooking I think we all realise that this time of year there is so much to do a so little time!

Here is the sketch for the scrapbook layout's that we were using last week it is from 52Sketches, 52 Weeks blog and the challenge was to also use paint somewhere on your page.

Here are everyones take on the sketch.

Sandy

Linda

Jacqui

Pam

Joan

Kerry

Here are the cards that were done using a sketch from the Sketch This blog
and the theme was christmas.

Maggie

Maggie

Sandy

Sandy

Jackie

Jackie

Linda

Kerry

Six Today card.

A girly card today for my little niece , thought I would try something a bit different to my normal cards with a circle mounted on the shorter edge and of course those butterflys!

I am still liking the decorated area around my cards that I show you and even borrowed my daughters tatty teddy for that extra girlyness!

Thanks for visiting.

Brrrrr!

Ok Winter is officially here, wet, cold and those horrid dark nights.
Sometimes I look at my cats and think that they have it so easy in winter, they find themselves the most warm and cosy place in the house and there they stay!
But I suppose if we didn't have winter we wouldn't appreciate the other seasons so much.

This is the first page as a member of the design team on A True Friend which has now been posted and the theme is Winter Nights. It's all about our cat Tammy who loves to sit in front of the fire on cold nights and the fact she is the only one of our three cats who does so.

Do you have pets that have a cosy place on cold nights - why not visit the True Friends blog and show us your layout, we would love to see your take on this subject.

Cute kitty card

Another birthday card ( no butterflys this time), the cat is a die cut from Lili of the valley and the papers are from a scrapbook kit from DCWV.
I picked up a tip from Shimelle's class that I am doing about taking a photo of your project but putting something pretty around/ behind it and then taking the photo so I had a go with this card and was pleased with the result. What do you think? or do you already do this with your projects - let me know I would love to see them!

I just need to get myself a stand for my layouts so that I can do this with them aswell.

Mondays club meet.

Hi everyone here is this Mondays club makes, the scrapbook sketch is from the great 52sketches 52 weeks and can been seen here and the card sketch is from Page Maps site,but I can't find the sketch again! ( the cards will give you an idea of what the sketch looked like.) The layout had to have an animal theme and the card was christmas. Thanks for looking.

Sandy

Maggie

Pam

This is Joans take on the sketch, with an extra circle photo.

Jacqui has done the sketch to the letter except she used 2 photos of her tortoises.

Linda has turned the sketch around to accomodate the large photo of her camera shy dog.


This is my layout and I went mad with a sewing machine and my new embossing folder. And yes that is the teenage me with our lab.

Joan has made this card recycling some old cards from last christmas!

Jacqui's modern xmas card features some embossing that the photo does not show too well, but I can tell you it looked great.

I've been chosen!!

Just thought I would share my excitement with you all because I can't believe I got picked, I am thrilled but nervous now that I have committed myself to produce pages on a regular basis and I will be worrying if they are good enough.
What is she ranting about I hear you ask?
Well I recently sent some examples of my scrapbooking to A true friend blog which I have been following for a while, they said they wanted to extend their design team and invited people to submit their work.
I received an email yesterday telling me that I was invited to join their design team!!! I just hope my pets won't mind the extra photo's I will be taking of them.
I will be submitting two pages ( or whatever the challenge is) a month, so along with the craft club I run and all the usual day to day stuff I'm going to be a busy little bee, so if anyone wants to volunteer to be my housekeeper just let me know!

New Lamp!

Now that the night's are arriving so early and some of the days are not so bright I asked my DH about a daylight bulb for my lamp and the darling bought me this instead!!!! A brand new daylight lamp that fixes to my table.
It came from Maplin online and was on promotion so he was happy. It is soooo great now to see my papers in their true colours even when scrapping in the evenings!

Here is a photo of the clamp that fixes to the table, but the good thing is that the lamp arm slots into the clamp so you don't have to keep taking it on and off the table.

Last but not least - hidden under a flap on top of the lamp head is a magnifier! So with my failing eyesight ( nothing to do with age of course - I just need to eat more carrots ) I can see even the smallest of embellishments and where I'm putting them.

If you would like to check it out at Maplins click HERE.

Thanks for stopping by.

8"x8" challenge

Have you ever limited yourself to scraps or non 12"x12" papers? This was the challenge I set for my friend Helen and me, we each had this 8"x8" kit by Me and My Big Idea's but we also had to do a two page layout with said kit!

But of course Helen rose to the challenge and made this absolutely gorgeous layout with added gems for extra sparkle. Well done Helen.

Funnily enough initially we both thought of doing a circle based layout but Helen changed her mind and went with rectangles. I stuck with my initial thought and made this layout because of the circles in the photo's.

Our next challenge is squares so if you enjoyed these pages check back to see how we got on!