Christmas Pressie!

My Doctor Who Christmas Adventure Set. I asked Santa for Eleven and now I have him... complete with Pond!

Bow ties are cool.

Woo!

I did one of those layout things this afternoon. :) Perhaps my son (oh yes, it's a boy!) has generously let me have my mojo back? Good lad.

All Married!

One of our pictures outside the registry office.

Buttonhole

My first wedding picture - one of my buttonholes!

The Angry Bird!

Here's this years pumpkin!

Pumpkin making

The template for our pumpkin, an Angry Bird.

Here I am!

Whoopeeeeeee!!!!

I Love Pablo

The current UKS weekly challenge involves Picasso and a "paint effect", so I just went for it and painted the whole thing!

OK, I'm no Picasso, but this was certainly easier on the mojo than trying to piece and paste bits of paper together. :)

Melman the Bus Driver

I'm still having mojo issues at the moment. I hope Baby Frankie will be crafty when s/he arrives, s/he's certainly sucking up all my craftiness!

Anyway, I have managed to do SOMETHING with the UKS weekly challenge each week this month. This is just a quickie shot of the current one using my iPhone. Spatter, numbers, ribbon and symbolism referencing the photo (giraffe print ribbon).

I've done it 8x8 as I have space in an 8x8 album.

I'm well aware it's not too good, but it's done!

Creative Craft World Challenge

This time the Creative Craft World challenge was for black, white and silver. I thought that would count me out, as I didn't think I had any silver, but it's amazing what you can do with acrylic paint, glossy accents and silver Pixee Stix!

My mother at the Camera Obscura in 2006 and John in 2010. I didn't quite get John standing in the same place, but it's close enough!

Ex-yellow BoBunny chipboard swirls, jazzed up with paint, GA and Pink Paislee's Pixee Stix. I've never tried that technique before and now I want to sprinkle glitter on all my chipboard!

Bad back

Stuck on a chair in the 'library' today. This is my view. The open washing machine door is starting to bug me.

Massive Weekly Challenge Catch-Up!

I did get all these done on time, but my lack of mojo and general enthusiasm has meant me not taking the pictures in time and getting them loaded onto UKS. So here are a bunch of layouts for weekly challenges taken yesterday in rather dodgy light!


Baby Blue / 3 of Something / Bunting / Celebration
Last Christmas with both sets of Parentals.


Ice cream colours / Change / Stripes / Journalling
Me as a child. I was able to use up a lot of bits of Crate Paper - Blue Hill that I've had lying around for ages.


Guilty Pleasure / Chocolate Brown / Circle
John and I indulging in morning tea at Little Bettys in York. I saved one of the doily things that go under tea cups to catch the drips - gotta love emphemera. Also managed to use one of the beautiful Lakeland doilies that I've been stroking for a while.

Different Fonts / Inspired by Nature /Make an Embellishment
Used some of the skeleton leaves that Daddy found for me at a boot sale. :)


Panorama / Stamping / Altered Lettering
This one is actually current! Grand Canyon from North Rim. Stamped journalling boxes and painted thickers.

Book Lists

Decided to scrap the books that I read each month as 6x6 layouts. After I'd made the first one I thought it would be a good idea if they were all companion pieces to the Project 12 layouts. So, from February, they all match. I'm all out of January's papers anyway, so that wouldn't have matched anyway!


January's non-matchy layout is made from Cosmo Cricket and Sassafrass Lass.


I put a star by my favourite book each month.


June isn't an exact match either, but I've stuck with the tartan theme and used the Lewis Chessman.

Hannah's Wedding

Mojoless

My mojo has gone for a wander.  I hope it comes back soon as I am completely uninpsired.  Of course, I actually do know what's happened to it so I'm not bothered.  It'll come strolling back.

My Ring

I now have my shiny engagement ring. :)

Designed by Alice at Harriet Kelsall.

York

Our posh 5* hotel room at the Cedar Court Grand, York. I've posted my review to TripAdvisor and you can find that here.

The Bottom of the Venus

I wanted to do something non-Halloween with the gorgeous new Halloween papers from MME - strokable flocking! - and this is what I made.

Everyone was taking pictures of her front and the crowds were so large it was hard to get a decent front shot. So I decided to be different, go round the back and get this angle of her instead!

I was also able to use the stamp set that I bought simply because it featured the Venus de Milo...

In which I use Glimmer Mist for the First Time!

I bought myself a set of Glimmer Mists that were on sale and when they arrived I couldn't wait to use them all. As you can see, I've not quite grasped the concept of using them lightly and subtley. The mist came out rather more as a deluge, but I guess that's part of the learning process.


Also used the Blended Ink Tutorial that I found on Studio Calico. I think I had rather more success with that than I did with the misting!

I seem to have gone from someone who doesn't stamp to someone who stamps on everything...



And this is what happened when I tried to Mist through a Crafters Workshop template!


Very runny and blobby! Another thing that requires practice. Must go in search of a tutorial!

Tatty and Tarepanda

Had a clear out of some boxes a few days ago and came across a bunch of cute Japanese panda stickers that I must have bought over ten years ago, hoarded and never used.

Also found a card a I bought with a Chinese phrase on it. I remember I bought that because I regretted not buying more cards when I was in China.

So I chopped up the card and inked it up for a title. This is a mere 18 of the Tarepanda stickers, but it's a start.

I then looked up 'panda' in Chinese. It's actually 'bear' plus 'cat' and in one of the stickers the panda is dressed as a cat!

Grinding and Sight-Seeing

I forgot to upload this one in time for the Weekly Challenge on UKS last week, still it was done in time. You had to use brights, ribbon and a page size that you don't often use. It's been a while since I did an 8x8, so I went with that. I've also been wanting to use up more of my scraps, so I made this from Christmas papers. Next challenge to Self will be a non Halloween layout using Halloween papers. I have a lot of them now and very few pictures from Halloweens.

Just a quickie of Edinburgh Castle. You can see me reflected in it...

Creative Craft World Challenge

Here's my entry for the latest Challenge at Creative Craft World. This time it was a sketch challenge, gotta love a sketch!

{The View from from Welches Dam RSPB Reserve}

I've been doing a lot in 8.5x11 recently, but forgot to scale the sketch to the paper after I decided to flip the sketch! It was after I stuck the title down that I realised what I'd done wasn't what I'd planned to do, still, I like it.

My process was different this time. After spending ages colour coding my buttons, brads, cardstock and blooms they're now all easy to get at, easy to pull out the pots that match the photos... it's lovely!

I'm not going to sort my papers by colour. I'm still too much of a Paper Snob to let certain Companies mix with other Companies! But I do know what I own and what the colours are, so I pulled out all my pieces of red and green for this in the hope that I could mix them up. It didn't go as well as I'd hoped, the main papers are still both from the same collection (Cosmo Cricket - Garden Variety), but there is a Basic Grey rub on in there, and a punch from a matching paper and a Fancy Pants overlay that's been sitting around for ages.


Layering! Hurrah! Thanks to Wendy and Christine I will never let an unlayered embellishment near a layout again. :) Besides, it helps me to overcome my Snobbishness and mix up those Companies. This one fetaures stash my Dad bought from a boot sale, BG Cupcake, BG Boxer, Crate Cottage, Prima, American Crafts and a flower that came from goodness only knows where!



This one is my favourite. It's a shame that the Boot Sale Stash only had one piece of each item, so that's the ruffley green ribbon all gone and the red button with the doodly edge all used up. Still, must stop stroking and start using.

Project 12 - July

Once again I've had to take photos in less than perfect conditions, which is a shame, because I'm actually really happy with the way this Project 12 turned out. Best one in my album so far.

{click for full size}

I left some gaps for stuff I don't necessarily want plastered over the net, they're filled in now.

Excessive Pink

Wow! That's a lot of pink buttons.

Buttons...

I think that's enough buttons for now!

Sorting Flowers

Decided the flowers needed to be stored by colour. So I've started with these divisions.

They look a lot better. I did the buttons yesterday and they also look as though they'll be easier to find / use now.

Twisted Sketches #59

I've not tried posting a layout from my iPhone before. No playing with it in Picasa and Paint Shop Pro, just direct from my craft table to my Blog!

Of couse, it also means I won't really know how it looks until I get online properly, but it's an experiment!

The Twist this week was "stars", of which there are three. Or four if  you count the huge star that is Melman.

Papers are by Scrap Within Reach, Industrial Park collection.

Layering

I've been practicing my layering! I like some better than others and
they do look better in real life.

Up Up and Away!

Haven't touched anything but the Kaisercraft for days! Here are the latest three - you need to click to enlarge:

The Breitling Wing Walkers do their wing walking at Duxford before the Flying Legends fly past. It all looked like great fun until you realise that they have to climb off the wings and back into the planes in mid-flight!

One of the balloons at Albuquerque. I took this one especially because of its patchwork look and thought it would be a fun one to scrap. It's taken me almost two years to get round to scrapping it! Used my Martha Stewart butterfly for the first time and adapted an idea from the Studio Calico blog. They suggested creating faux washi tape using the material tape you get from the pharmacy, I thought I'd give it a go by stamping onto masking tape. Seems to work!

Another balloon from Albuquerque. For more information on the Zia of New Mexico click here.

Very bizarrely all the photos on the layouts have brightened after I took their pictures! On the layouts the colours in the photos are much more muted as I used the desaturation technique on them. Running them through Picasa to sharpen them up seems to have brightened them up as well...

Design*Sponge

Came across Design*Sponge today in my general blog surfing at work. Some great things to look at and be inspired by, but most of all a City Guide to Bristol! There are some places listed there that I'd never even heard of.

Next trip home will certainly have to involve a trip to Mouse to Minx on Christmas Steps. Never even knew it was there.

Excellent!

Storage Issues!

My new punches just arrived. They're too big, they take up too much
room! What on Earth am I going to do with them?!

They're pretty cool though... :)

Albuquerque

One of the latest Kaisercraft lines is Up, Up & Away. Well, rather obvious that I'd have to have some of it, plenty of uses for balloony papers. I bought the clear stamps as well, they feature three balloons and a nice journalling ticket. Plenty of practical uses and hardly an indulgence!

Used Merly Impressions for the first time as they specialise in Kaisercraft and WOW! Awesome service. So quick, emails to let you know they've dispatched, such a simple thing and yet many companies don't do that. The package was parcelled perfectly as well, attention to detail! Not to mention her sending three of the Kaisercraft magazines as well. Such fun to browse through and get inspiration from.

This was my first time using Kaisercraft paper as well, but I can safely say that I'll be back to Kaisercraft AND Merly Impressions in the future.

One of the tips in the magazine was to desaturate photos so that they match the earthier tones of this collection. So I did. Here's a layout with an ex-bright photo that has been desaturated. It looks so much better like this.