Sunday crafting

So I am gradually getting back to normal crafting wise after the mammoth task to do Dad's book and then being ill and not doing much crafting. I have scrapped some photo's today that I love and have been wanting to do for a while.

This first LO details how lots of trampoline bouncing = static electric mad hair do!

This photo was taken of Phil and I a few days after we met on holiday in Ibiza in 1998 it still amazes to me that he has managed to put up with me for so long lol. The LO is made from the monthly kit from Creative craft world which is so beautiful this month. I also used this kit for the updated Grown LO a couple of days ago.

I hope you have all had a lovely weekend and are not dreading the start of the working week tomorrow too much :) thanks for popping by x

100th Blogpost

It is a little scary that this si my 100th blogpost already when I only started the blog towards the end of february lol. I just have a quick update with the other LO I did yesterday and my latest CJ entry.

After doing the LO about Spider I had to do one about my other cat Sylvester. I kept it fairly plain and simple with only a scrunched paper flower to decorate as the pps were fairly loud.

The CJ this fortnight was for Chris who wanted us to decorate a tag and then give 5 facts about ourselves on the opposite page. I am quite happy with how it turned out and the CJ as a whole is gorgeous.

On the reverse of the tag I carried on the "me" theme and wrote some descriptions of me around the tag spiralling in;

and this is the finished page;

Have a lovely Sunday everyone thanks for popping by x

Inspiration for a bag lady.

I am not a girly girl give me noise, sports, bold patterns and bright colours over tea parties, dolls houses, frills and pastels any day. Saying that I love shoes and handbags, I hate clothes shopping but will happily spend ages looking through a shoe department or store and love funky handbags. My latest acquisition was on Fathers' Day when I discovered our local big town had an Animal store, I love Animal the bold prints, bright colours and general sunny cheery feel of their stores appeal to me and I like to buy a bag and matching purse whenever I am able (unfortunately I cannot fit into their clothes something I need to remedy :( ). So this bag and a matching purse were bought for me on Fathers' day by husband;

I then remembered that the latest Sarah's Cards Ltd challenge was to use clothing as inspiration and although it had failed to inspire me as I said I am not into clothes too much I thought I could stretch it a little to include accessories like my bag. I knew exactly what I wanted to do and last night I sat down and hand drew and coloured a background inspired by my bag using colours I knew would fit with the pp's I wanted to use;

I was pretty pleased with how it turned out (apart from the leaves which I abandoned after those 3 and covered up lol) and here is the finished page for the challenge. I may be told sorry you cannot enter a bag inspired LO you crazy zany woman but I love it. I decided as it was inspired by one of my few girly loves I would make it all about me and so I included a typical loony picture of me as well as a small one of me with our youngest and lots of info and factoids about who I am today and what makes me tick. I hope you like this too I may be doing something similar again thanks for popping by enjoy the rest of your weekend xxx

A cat named Spider

Yes I do indeed have a cat named Spider, it is a little strange and as she is a rescue cat I have no idea why she is named Spider but that is her name. I took these photos of her having a dust bath during our beautiful weather in April and have been meaning to scrap them ever since but not got around to it so this weeks challenge on UKS was a good one to get me going :)

The challenge this week was to;

1/. Scrap about the animals that share our lives

2/. Use lots of embellishments

3/. Have a corner or side of the LO which is more concentrated

4/. Use blue

I really enjoyed doing this LO and later today I am going to do the pictures I took the same day of our other cat Sylvester.

Scrap factor

They are running the Scrapfactor competition on UKS and for those of us not competing there is a play along gallery where we can have a go at the weeks challenges. The challenge for week 11 (next week I am a little ahead of myself lol) was to take the photo's or simialr ones from an early LO and "re-do" the LO how you would make it now. I chose my 2nd ever LO which was about how quickly my kids grow and used similar photo's, the same theme and the same title but as you can see the end results are very different. The first one is the original and the second my re-do;

The perfect photo

During my epic photo search for my Dad's book I re-discovered this photo taken at Dawn's 60th birthday party in July 2006 showing Phil and his daddy's girl Kari. I printed out a large copy of the photo and trimmed away all the background so that the two of them were the whole focus.

I used my Glitz Olivia kit that I had to order from the USA as I couldn't find it in the UK and some old sheet music and tore, sanded and inked everything up to distress it all. I cut the hearts from one of the sheets of the Olivia papers and used them to make the swirl. I even gutted the rose and leopard print papers behind the photo so as not to waste any of the gorgeous pp and used the back of the papers to frame the Crazy 4 U sticker which became my title.

I coloured some card with Distress Ink (walnut stain) and then stamped a crafty individuals stamp with versamark and embossed with black glitter powder to make a little Love card. Finally I added some webbing fibre which I coloured from it's original white using my promarkers and one of the rub ons from the kit of a little bird.

I love the finished product and am going to enter it into the Glitz blog challenge for June as I followed their sketch. I don't imagine I will win though I would love to as the prize is amazing it is the new Love Games collection which is my 2nd favourite Glitz collection after these Olivia papers. Wish me luck :)

p.s. Sandra sorry I honestly didn't mean to do any crafting yesterday lol

A craft afternoon

First of all sorry Sandra I promise not to do any crafting tomorrow ok? lol

I have had a lovely afternoon playing about with mists and texture and finishing my Carousel dlo. First up my father's day card for my Dad it is a fairly simple card he isn't into fussy things;

I decided to try the playalong with scrapfactor on UKS and did week 9 which was texture and week 10 which was to use no pp.

The week 9 LO is of my hubby just after we got engaged the card and papers were sanded and one was embossed to create texture and I used a rub on, metal, pearls and ribbons and fibres all with different textures. The journalling is hidden as it is a little private to be sharing on here lol;

The week 10 LO is of my DD when she was a bridesmaid I stamped the card multiple times with a background stamp using my large 3 coloured Brilliance ink pad. I misted some white card with csmic shimmer candy pink and then stamped on it in silver with a large butterfly stamp. I also stamped a flower onto some more white card in different colours. I finished it off with some faux doilies made using a medallion stamp and lots of flowers, gems and glitter for my very girly girl (dunno where she gets that from!);

Finally here is the other half of my Carousel DLO and a pic of both pages together (the first page can be seen 2 posts down) The journalling is also hidden on this one the half bracket sticking out the top pulls a card out from behind the pp with the journalling on. I really love this DLO and wish the weather had been nicer so I could have got a better photo it looks so much nicer and more colourful irl;

Thanks for popping by hope you are enjoying your weekend ttfn x

More scrapology challenges

For the first time I am entering a card challenge *eek* my cards are not that good my friend Shell (my sis) at Cards for all causes is brillint at cards but I don't have the knack of making them so pretty. But this is my attempt for the challenge which you can find here it is a birthday card for my step brother-in-law's wife (try and say that after some vino lol) using one of the beautiful Hannah Lynn digi stamps from Crafts and me;

Scrapology challenge

Here is my latest entry for the Scrapology team's monthly challenge. This is actually the first page of a double layout but I only have this page done so far. When we went to a Falconry day at the local Farm they had a carousel, I have always wanted to go one one since I was a little girl and I was not going to pass up this chance even though I am now well into double figures age wise lol. Sorry the picture isn't the best it is very gloomy here today but I hope you like it I am really happy with it and am loving this months kit from Sandra at Gottacraft :)

Normal service is resumed :)

Last night my husband wanted to watch "Our War" a documentary on BBC3 about Afghanistan done using the headcams some of the soliders wore. We had recorded it Monday evening but hadn't got round to it yet. I couldn't sit and watch it as it is too upsetting for me especially as last nights story included our Battalion and the loss of one of our troops (Jamie Janes R.I.P.) and so I was asked "are you going in the dining room to craft tonight then?" an offer I couldn't refuse lol.

I completed the WC for UKS which was a tough one for me as it had to be a busy LO with more than one picture and no white space, about outdoors and using the colour green, and use only old stash. The outdoors and green was ok I scrapped about when Phil and Joel would spend afternoons playing water pistol in the garden when Joel was little and still an only child. The old stash was a bit harder only because I had to really search to find an old set of alpha's for the title that fitted colour wise and had all the required letters! The busy bit was really hard my style is generally a bit more minimal and I love my white space but I think I have managed it :)

Thanks for popping by all comments welcome :)

Final pages

I finished my Dad's book last night and this morning. I am so pleased to have got it done in time and with time over to do cards and possibly the mini for Phil if my order arrives from Gottacraft in time (postie's fault not Sandra's). Here are the last 3 DLO's hope you like them I don't have tome to write more at the moment but really appreciate the comments thank you xxx

Grandkids and Friends

I sat down last night to do the 4 pages in my Dad's book of our kids only to find a photo missing. The photo of Dad with Kari as a a baby has vanished completely so I had to skip the baby pages and go straight to the collage of moments as the kids have grown. I managed to get us all in at least one photo too so was quite happy with how it all turned out :)

After the kids page I move on to the Friends one with my parents best friends Dawn (my mummy 2) and her husband Stan. I have just about finished my Echo Park "For the Record" papers with this DLO and am deciding whether to buy more or not. They are my favourites but I don't want all my LO's to start looking the same hmmm decisions decisions! So just the baby DLO 3 pages of pets and a final kids page to go I cannot believe that in just over a week I have done 32 LO's!

Quick update on my Dad's book

Not feeling too well today so only a quick update. I managed 6 pages yesterday as well as the latest CJ entry and a Father's day card for my FIL so a very busy weekend. I thought I'd better post these pictures now as if I left it another day there would be so many pictures you would abandon my blog running and screaming lol.

Lots to share

Sorry this is a photo heavy post as I haven't updated for a couple of days and am now up to 22 pages out of the 38 so over half way through :)

The first two pages I did Friday evening and are from holidays when my brother and I were kids and holidays revolved around the swimming pool we were complete water babies :)

I managed 6 pages yesterday the first two are about holidays firstly one of our trips to Bahrain where my aunt (Dad's sister) lives and the second my parents trip to Israel;

I then finally got to pages about myself and my brother. I have a few pictures of my brother as a youngster but none of myself so the photo's of me are a bit older and I included one of me and Phil our first christmas (1998) together in our flat before we married;

The next page details how my Dad is such a big softie! He has always gone for visits to my cousins armed with sweets which they are well aware of and so his big threats of "I'm going to give you some of that!" whilst shaking his fist results in giggling and pleading for sweets. He was the same with my brother and I and is the same with his grandchilren (my monsters) who he spoils rotten!

Lastly some photo's from the Round Table conferences. My dad was a member of the round table and later the Rotary for many years;