More Angels

I might get into trouble with this blog post! Sounds exiting doens't it? Nah its not really. We are having modem issues at the moment and we are waiting for a techie to come out on Monday and sort the damn thing out. So Jason has kindly given me his mobile modem with strict instructions to not go over 500mb, bloody thing takes about 3mb to load each page you click on. I have no idea what it will 'cost' to post a 3 pic blog post. hehe.



So some more angel stamp cards from the fabulous little musings (link on side bar, don't want to use the mb to find her page and link direct!) I think this is my fav of the ones I have made, love love love the dusky pink with the kraft



A plain background card, which I struggle with the starkness of. I think the late addition of the lime green lifted the whole design. I used some old learned techniques with this one, the angel was stamped on the white rectangle and coloured in, I then cut another angel and layered it over the first to create a mask, then I stamped the 'wish on a star' sentiment all over the top, removed the mask angel and voila. I've not used that technique in donkeys!



And then this one that I made yesterday, soft and muted which I really like with these angel designs

Also if you have a few mins (and megabytes) to spare pop on over to this lady here who has a blog post all about the article I did in SBM the other week that featured her brilliant style!

The weather outside is frightful

Well its not really is it! Temperatures are reported to be in the high 20's for the rest of this week, in September, when I am all set and kitted out for Autumn, pah, I don't want the sun now, I wanted it 2 months ago.

However its my teams turn over at Twisted Sketches this week and I choose to use a snowy weather picture for my take, here it is:



The twist was punches - easy! I layered the negative from a die cut over my picture for dimension and the layered my border punch out (the negative bit again) over a robo cut out of icicles (which I stickled the hell out of!) A few layered snowflakes glittered again and hey presto job done!

Right I am off to drag the fan back to the living room from upstairs, luckily we had not got round to putting it in the loft for winter.

The start of my winter blanket

Typical that as the weather warms up for one last hurrah this week, I have started my 'Winter Warmer' blanket!

I saw this colour combo on this blog here confident though I am in my colour choices in other things, I do seem to struggle with crochet, so when I saw this colour combo I knew it was a winner for me!

It is supposed to be a treble crochet (US double crochet) but as seems to be the norm for me and crochet I got it all arse about face and have instead done it extended double stitch. No matter it looks lovely and is a nice tight stitch, it will certainly be warm when its done!

The nice thing about this is its a sit in front of the telly and hook blanket, its the same stitch over and over and once you get going you can do it with great ease repetitively.

Its been a busy old day today, another last mintute(ish) commission that I had to get done, bedsheet washing day (ugggghhh I hate making beds), ironing, cleaning the bathroom. Jess is at netball, Joe is about to go to air cadets, 2 separate dinners to make, people in, people out and all this on not very much sleep last night. I was up at 1am eating weetabix, for some reason I got a low blood sugar attack and got the shakes! 1.30am saw Jason almost fall out of bed whilst sleeping and I had the pleasure of being up every hour for the loo! Happy days - or should I say nights!!

Inky Splotches

I love inky, grungy, paint splashes in pages but I rarely seem to be able to get them 'right' I had a little practice on scrap paper today and then transferred it onto a layout proper here are the results.

The bigger splotches are actually a ink blot stamp that I have, I love it on the school based page, it looks like someones pen has leaked! Lots of silhouette elements on this, the title, the library card, the tab card and the small notebook edge all cut on the silhouette.

As of a request I am taking word verification off the blog, although it will go back on if I get spambots we shall see ;)

Sugar and Spice

After a week of card making I felt the need to make a layout and so on Friday I sat down to create something a little different, I had and idea in my head and I have kinda managed it!

I wanted a more cluttered layered messy effect and although this is not too layered and still has my trademark white space, I really like it and I LOVE the colours on this. Fav bit? The spikey triangles, Jess can be a bit spikey at the moment with all the hormones that are flying around, nice metaphor!

Have a great weekend everyone!

This week I have mostly.....

.....been making christmas cards featuring these amazing angel digi stamps from Little Musings



Once I started creating with these I literally could not stop! They are perfect for your christmas projects and I had such fun with them.



A nice simple and effective one here, I hand stamped the stars on that background, such a lovely delicate shade of pale ice blue. A bit of machine stitching and a simple sentiment finished the beautiful angel of nicely and of course everything looks lovely on Kraft!



BANNERS!! this was a project and a half colouring in all those angels, but it was worth it, I now have a cute christmas banner which looks lovely on my Ikea Expedit in my craft corner!



Close up of the Angel Banner.



I used 2 of the digis on this, I enlarged the wreath enough so that Choir of Angels could peep out from underneath it! Lots of bright traditional christmas colours used. The background is yet another of my silhouette cutting files which I adapted and printed instead of cut, it seemed to go perfect on this particular card.



And a simple one to finish with today, choir of angels that has hand stitched elements layered on a cute paper doily, and a printed sentiment!

Guess what I have more! Told you I couldn't stop creating with them. I will share them with you another time!

For a Niece

Just a quickie today, a card I knocked up for Jason's Niece who turns 8 tomorrow, I started on something much brighter at first, but it looked garish and she is quite a sophisticated little girl so this seemed more appropriate for her.

I started back on the old exercising yesterday after taking a few *cough* weeks off over the summer. It was surprisingly easy, and I managed 8 minutes non stop running which I was pleased with after 8 weeks off. I managed 10 mins continuous today so even better! Combined with warm up and incline walking, a 5 min ab workout (boy do they hurt today!) and another 5 mins of boxing style exercising and I will soon be back up to 40 mins a day.

Horseyhead Nebular

These layouts are from Issue 58 of The Scrapbook Magazine. I was given an interesting assignment this month and that was to take inspiration from another (bloggers) Scrapbooking style. I chose Stacey Michaud have a look at the article to find out why, but do pop on over to her blog and have a look at her fantastic layouts.

This first one is called Horseyhead Nebular, I wanted to document Joes love of Space, when he was younger especially he was obsessed with all things black holes and Nebulars, and it especially documents that he used to call Horsehead Nebulars, Horseyheads which was so cute!

And then this one with a picture of Jessicas hair that I curled for her School Disco before the end of term.

Finally this one that was a challenge, I was given a very short deadline (3 days with which to make it and get it to them, which meant really that I had to make it and post it the same day!) It was my first time using a stock photo and also these are made from the free papers included with the Magazine in this issue. I was thrilled when I got my copy in the post today to see that it had made it to the cover - v exciting!

I have to say that I think my photos of these layouts look a lot better than the ones in the mag, for some reason they have photographed them very dark, which is not how they look, the kraft based one especially!

The Teenage Years

Hello everyone!

Its my teams turn over at Twisted Sketches this week and the twist is 'Start' Pop on over and have a look at the sketch and hopefully you will join in!

Above is my take. I have to say I was pretty pleased with this one, lots of layers and fun boy colours. That yellow paper is fun, makes it look like it is really textured and not just flat!

My lovely boy has been eager to join The Air Cadets for quite a while now but had to wait to turn 13, we popped over to our local squadron on Tuesday night to have a look around and talk the talk, and wow! If he likes it (and he might not, it is quite military and physical) I think it will be excellant for him! One of the first thing he will learn is how to iron - yes please!! Our local Squadron is quite a big one and they get more flying hours than they know what to do with and their own shooting range. I was dreading the cost, but its £6 a month and thats for 2 sessions a week, free flying days at weekends and free uniform. I think it will be excellant for his confidence and will make him more sporty (hes not!) and get him off the xbox and do in real life what he does in gaming! Can't wait to see him in his uniform. He joins on a week on Tuesday. Oh and yes, he has to get a hair cut before he joins - sob :(

Copy Cat

When I have a spare few minutes I do love a good trawl around the card making blogs inparticular the ones that deal with stamping with co-ordinating dies, they make such professional looking cards. One of my favourites is Dawn Mcveys blog. She designs for a company calleds Paper Trey Ink which you have probably heard of. I look at her designs and I want to buy the products and feel very inspired.

Now Paper Trey Ink are an American company and the shipping is more than I want to pay! But what am I saying I have over 2200 gsd files on my craft robo, and I can always find something very similar to what Dawn is using in my library, I can not only cut out these shapes (any size I want, which is more versatile that a die) but I can print them too for the co-ordinated stamp look. It just takes a bit of thought and imagination. Now if only I could get a decent photograph of what I make (they look so much better as they sit next to me!), these are not the best photos coming up, but you will get the idea.

This card I made quite simply by adapting a bracket shape and welding a rectangle to it, perforating a line down the centre and instantly I have a card shaped like one of Dawns! I also found in my library doilys and snowflake shapes that I used as the main focal point and layered and glittered them. It looks so sparkly in real life and is very pretty.

This next card is more graphic and simple. I printed the swirls in red and panelled it with some blue cardstock, I cut a doily shape and glittered and then printed out a sentiment (all these prints are actual cut files that I chose to print instead for a digi-stamp look) and cut a circle around it. Another Dawnalike card without me paying a penny

If you are a cardmaker or scrapbooker that is interested in die-cutting I cannot recommend the Craft Robo/Silhouette enough. I bought mine 2.5 years ago for £225 but they are considerably cheaper now, in fact you can get a Craft Robo Lite (doesn't have the print and cut feature) for about £80 if you look around - thats not much more than a big shot.

When I got my Robo there was a definate learning curve, even loading the software was hard work and then learning the software was tricky, now, however you use the Silhouette Studio software which is free and an absolute doddle to use. Add to that the Thousands of file in the Silhouette online store and the possiblites are endless. I bought a 1 year Premium Subscription which gets you around 150 files a month - more when they have a sale on!

There endeth the Craft Robo/Silhouette sales pitch, Silhouette are paying me in cream cakes (I wish!)

Monday Mania

I've been doing a bit of crochet today, I find that I only want to crochet in winter months, not surprising as crocheting a blanket is warm work when its all piled on top of you

I've a couple more layouts to share

One think I do like about the descending Autumn weather is shopping for new season clothes, I bought some kick-ass boots at the weekend and i'm very excited about them!

Things to do Friday

Things I must do:

Take down Joseph's birthday balloons, they have been up for 2 weeks now and I am sick of seeing them, but don't like popping balloons.

Clear out the crap on the coffee table and throw out old magazines, but in my defense I have just tackled our 3 clutter drawers in the kitchen and so I have had enough! (although I prob will get this done!)

Think about what I am having for lunch BEFORE it gets too late and I end up starving and yet having to cook something that is low calorie and boring.

Actually do my hair instead of scragging it back in a messy pony - Jason must sometimes think he has married a bag lady - and in that vein, not be in my PJ bottoms when he walks in tonight!

I have painted a picture of myself a a slovenly creature and thats probably fairly right hehe I do try but have a low threshold for clearing out drawers, cupboards, laundry baskets etc!



Anywho here are a couple of layouts that I created recently for a (yet another failed) Design Team application. In the first layout I airbrushed the background with the Letraset Airjet system and then sitiched the suns rays!




Have a good weekend everybody, I have more layouts to share in a couple of days!

Sunshine on a Rainy Day

Afternoon, I'm feeling much better now after a short lie in today, the dog was not pleased with having his morning walk an hour late, he was v mournful about it all!



I wanted to craft today and first made a card, as I was tidying away I made a little embellishment from the scraps on my desk that actually inspire me to scrap a layout! Its the the embellishment on the top right with the silhouette. The background of which is hand stamped. I've never had an embellishment as a starting point before!

Happy Days

An ironic post title seeing as it isn't! I woke up with a sore throat/fuzzy head and wish I had just stayed there!

I've bent a long thumb nail backwards and whacked my funny bone in my elbow as I have gone about my business today, I think life waits until you are feeling a bit shitty and just piles it all on!

Still I was determined to get a bit of crafty time in this morning, and so I sat down to create and....... nothing! Picasa was messing me about and so I lost interest in photo printing see as "Picasa wants to take the p**s" (I do think that things are against me when I an having a day like this !!)




So I made a card, I nearly didn't bother but I saw this Jukebox and took it as a starting point and this was made, quickly and unfussily. The sewing machine also had it in for me and the bobbin ran out of thread on the last side of paper and for the life of me the bobbin would not click back in, after struggling with that for 15 mins, I had a little cry (seriously 10 secs) kicked the bloody machine (or at least the drawers it stands on and decided not to stitch the last side! As the card says "Happy Days!!"

Christmas comes early

One thing about scrapping commissions for magazines is that you are always scrapping out of season, this can be nice when you are doing summer layouts in February but ugghh trying to scrap Christmas in August when you are desperatley trying to ignore that Christmas is approaching is a pain in the bum!

And that is what I found myself doing this past week, 2 separate Christmas commissions. I am not a big photographer of big events and had to use photos that I have scrapped before (apart from one old photo I found of Jessica with Father Christmas when she was about 6)

As my blog has been a bit thin on the ground lately due to commissions I thought I would pepper this post with sneeks of my christmas themed layouts that I made. Now I am firmly sticking my head back in the sand where christmas is concerned!

Good thing is that I am now finally done and dusted with all my deadlines and I may get a bit of 'for me' scrapping done this week, or there again.........

Back to (New) School

Ahhh/Awww back to school day, mixed feelings about this! Its been so nice to have a lazy relaxed few weeks, with lie-ins and the kids for company but I do like my routines and I love that today by 9.15am I had showered, walked the dog in the fields, done all my morning jobs including hoover the stairs and cleaned the bathroom. I am however red eyed and zombified as I have hardly slept and it would have been so nice to have an extra hour or two of sleep today.

So we woke up today to sporadic torrential downpours, just what Jessica wanted for her first day at Senior School. She might have looked pretty when she left this morning, but I think she may have arrived a bit soggy! I wanted her to walk but 2 minutes after she left I had to send Jason after her in the car as the rain was sheeting it down!

Joe absolutely did NOT want his photo taken with Jess, I had to get quite shouty about it all, not so good when Jessicas friends were at the door waiting (15 mins early so I hardly could take any pics )

They both looked so smart, this will absolutely not last and by this time next week they will look like they live in a hedge - I have given up fighting it!

School Uniform is soooo expensive, those are just polo shirts but they have the school logo on them and so they can charge £10 each, they are such poor quality in the way they wash, one little mark and it will NEVER come off, and of course you have to have the school branded one, makes me a bit mad that! The jumpers are much the same!