Goodbye 2010

I had a very lucky scrapbooking year in 2010. I was lucky enough to be part of some really great design teams and enjoyed a number of guest designer spots too. I was published in Scrapbook Inspirations and Scrapbook Magazine and I won a Pagemaps.com competition and a UKS cybercrop prize. The year has ended with the wonderful news that I was chosen to be a GoGo Girl on the ScrapaGoGo design team which I'm so looking forward to. I also had lots of fun running The Studio summer cybercrop and earlier in the year my Birthday blog hop and I enjoyed teaching a couple of classes in real life too. So I thought I'd have a go at applying for the Scrapbook Magazine scrapbooker of the year competition. Lord knows I don't need the prizes, but I would so love to be on the Desgin team :) Sadly, my luck ran out but I did have great fun creating the three LOs I needed to apply and I thought that I'd share them with you today as we leave 2010.

Thank you to everyone who's read and commented on my blog over the past year. It makes my day to know that someone is out there :) I hope that you all have a fabulous New Year's Eve and an even more fabulous 2011 x

More Cybercrop Creations

This year during the cybercrop there was a choice of classes each time slot. The first challenge was to produce a layout that depicts the perfect Christmas. I used some of Tessa's gorgeous flowers for this one.

Elf in Training

Happy Christmas Everyone! I hope that you all have a terrific day and create some wonderful memories xx

I was determined to get my LaplandUK photos scrapped before we got to Christmas and I have another set of photos. I only got around to scrapping last Christmas during the cybercrop earlier this month after all! One of the activities we did at LaplandUK was a visit to the elf factory where they were making puppets for good children. Connor helped to make a puppet and this photo depicts the experience.

Supplies:
From the ScrapaGoGo December Kit 'Winter Warmers'
Bazzill Cardstock Candle Glow Medium
Bella Blvd Lovey Dovey Circle Of Love
Maya Road Kraft Collection Bulk Mini Tickets Strips
May Arts Ribbon Apple Velvet
American Crafts Thickers Grasshopper
Crate Paper Sew Brads 'Snow Day'
From the ScrapaGoGo January Kit 'Elementary my Dear'
May Arts Ribbon Fuzzy
Crate Paper School Spirit Home Room

Crate Paper Snowday Phrase stickers
American Thickers Nutmeg
Doodlebug designs inc. Loopy Lou Ladybug
Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist Cranberry Zing

Bucket List

In the January Kit 'Elementary my Dear' from ScrapaGoGo there is a set of Maya Road frames. I'm not usually a big one for frames but I thought I'd perhaps use them for a review of 2010. When I sat down to do the LO though I found myself thinking about the future rather than the past and decided to do my Bucket List; a list of things I'd still like to achieve be it this year or next, or the one after that :) Each frame is different and I've inked, papered and painted each one before adding a photo or some journalling. I used photos from Google so need to credit
Rowan Watson, Amelia Critchlow & Seapics.

Slip and Slide

One of the interesting things in the ScrapaGoGo kit each month is the hybrid collection. I made it my mission to use as many hybrid elements as possible on this LO 'Slip and Slide'. This photo is one of my favourite of 2010 and was taken at Legoland. Connor is having so much fun! In the January kit 'Elementary My Dear' there are wooden veneer stars. I used these to draw around before sticking a few on too. I folded the paper up with double sided tape to give it a 3D feel and then added other elements with 3D foam squares to give more dept and texture too.

Handcutting happiness!

Handcutting can be a real pain, but if you have something good on the TV in the background you don't even notice that you're doing it I find. For me, it was 'Miranda'. How funny she is!! Anyway, I used the January kit (Elementary My Dear) from ScrapaGoGo again to create this LO 'Legoland Lad'. I used some hybrid stars, some letters and a Maya Road frame as masks for my glimmer mist and then cut out more elements and letters and stuck them on top of the misted areas for effect and depth. I'm pretty pleased with the overall effect.

ScrapaGoGo the details :)

ScrapaGoGo kits are just wonderful. One of my Uni friends recently sent me a message via FB to say that she liked my LOs on my FB page and wanted to know how to get started. I recommended to her that she get the basics and that a kit is a great way to get started, try new things and work out what you like and don't like. That holds for seasoned scrappers and card makers too I reckon as it's so easy to get set in your ways and miss new interesting products.

The January kit is full of cool products that I hadn't noticed on the market, let along had a play with. The first product I'd like to highlight is the Maya Road Bingo Markers. In the January kit you get a set of 31 numbers. I used them in this LO 'Special Gingerbread Ingredients' I used them to highlight what went in to the gingerbread at Lapland UK to make them extra specially yummy!

I'm a GoGo Girl!

You may remember that I recently reviewed a 'ScrapaGoGo' kit for Scrap That! reviews. I was so impressed with it that I instantly signed up for a monthly kit. Not long after that ScrapaGoGo put out a DT call and I applied. I am delighted that I was picked to join the team, and am now a GoGo Girl! Yippee :) The first kit I got to play with in the role is the January Kit 'Elementary my dear!'. It's so so yummy. You can see it on the ScrapaGoGo blog right now, and you can see my four designs along with the other designers work here. I hope that you'll be able to see why ScrapaGoGo is the UKs No. 1 kit club :)

ScrapaGoGo Blueprint

ScrapaGoGO has a fun extra on it's blog. It's called 'Blueprint to Go' and there is a sketch each month, along with some examples of how to use if from the designers. Why not check out the January one today and don't miss the sale either :) Here's what I did with the Blueprint x

Sunday Challenge at 'The Studio'

My term with 'The Studio' is almost up and the DT call went up at the beginning of the month. I've had so much fun with the challenges over the last year and I'll be sad not to be part of this great team after January. This week was a nice quick pre Christmas Challenge:

I know that most people are ultra busy in the run up to Christmas, so this week your challenge is to take a photo of something that puts you in a Christmassy mood! Then, once all the festivities are over, you'll be able to go back and scrap the picture at your own leisure.

We visited LaplandUK earlier this month and my favourite photo of Christmas so far is taken in Mother Christmas' kitchen where Connor decorated a gingerbread man.
Check out what the other DT members are finding Christmasy right now x

Snow day!

It's snowing today so my plans have been cancelled and my little one isn't interested in going out to play in the snow for some reason. So, it's time to catch up on my blog I reckon :)

Since I last wrote there's been a cybercrop on UKS. I enjoyed it and thought that the classes were well spaced. The challenges were a bit samey by the end of the weekend but I played along as much as I could and have some LOs to share with you.

The first LO was my precrop challenge and I created it using the Silver 1045 sewing machine that I had on loan for this review. I love the machine so much that I asked my Dad to buy me one for Christmas/Birthday and I've not been disapointed. The precrop challenge was to use a card as inpiration. This is the card I used and the LO I created as a result.

It's a little bit different for me :)

Scrapagogoing a bit grungey

I loved the Scrapagogo Kit again this month. It's just gorgeous and there are lots of things I wouldn't have tried otherwise in it. There are lots of pinks to start with and I so rarely use pink. But it so happens that I have photos of my cousin's daughters from earlier this month and the colours fitted perfectly.

From the kit I used:
Echo Park Life Is Good Brown Floral
Bazzill Basics Cardstock Whirlpool
Echo Park Life Is Good 12 X 12 Alpha Sticker
Maya Road Organza Roses Ribbon Small Olive (12")
Maya Road Kraft Collection Doilies
American Crafts Dear Lizzy Enchanted Prince
Prima Sweet Taffy Blue (1/4 pack)
Crate Paper Restoration Phrase Stickers

and the other supplies are:
Dictionary page
Martha Stewart butterfly punch
Staples
Glossy accents
3D foam squares
Acrylic paint pink and brown
Small chipboard butterfly
Maya Road tickets and ‘November’
My Little Bit of Whimsy blackbird pin
Thread

15th November: My boy

So picture the scene: it's 6.30am on a frosty Monday morning and I'm not enjoying being up this early making porrige for my little one so the TV is on so that I don't have to entertain just yet. I have handed my little boy the porrige bowl and he says 'I'm a boy so I can't eat and watch TV at the same time!'. You've got to love and be thankful for the smile maker :)

13th November 2010: The Girls

Today we were in Devon to celebrate the lives of Primrose and Florence, my cousin's daughters with a thanksgiving service. They were hard conceived but are such lovely children and we're truly grateful that they are happy and healthy children.

Attitude of Gratitude: 5th November

I am grateful that in 1605 Guy Fawkes failed in his gunpowder plot and that we have a great tradition in this country of celebrating it with bonfire night. I love 5th November. It's my favourite event of the year.

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...

Attitude of Gratitude: 3rd November

Today I am grateful for painkillers. This is extremely unusual for me. I have a high pain threshold and I am generally against putting any kinds of drug in to my body so I rarely take so much as a paracetamol or lemsip but having overdone things earlier in the week today I am in agony today. It's my only day off work this week though and I have so much to do that I need to not be wincing with every move and I've taken two pills. They make me loopy and tired but I am grateful that they've given me some relief so that I can get some things done today. Thank you pharmacists who developed zapain!

Attitude of Gratitude : 1st November

Today is the launch of a month of attitude of gratitude on Tessa's blog.

Each day in November, we will publicly express something that we're grateful for. The hope is that by the end of November we will have trained ourselves to be a little more grateful and to remember to express that gratitude. What a lovely idea! So today I'm grateful for autumn sunshine. This is my first year owning a dog and I've enjoyed summer walks but as the evenings get shorter and the weather gets wetter I'm not so sure I shall be enjoying the walks so much. Today was glorious. The sunbeams were bouncing off the beautifully coloured leaves and streaming through the bare branches. I love, love autumn and am grateful for the occasional sunny day :)

Bubbly Monday

It's my Bubbly Scrumptious day today so I've gone back to Autumn colours :)
I love, love, love Autumn and think that it's a great season to take photos in. Yes there's not the great light of the summer that makes the colours pop, but wow are the colours pretty?! Connor and I walk Bailey dog twice a day so I get lots of opportunities to find pretty leaves at Connor height to take photos of :) I loved this one of him peeping through the yellow leaves.

I went for a fairly simple LO with this photo and simply inked, distressed and tore the edges of the cardstock before adding a torn piece of 'Indie Girl' to the page. I stuck the photo on and then placed the Prima leaves on the page with glossy accents. I also added the title and then used a sewing machine to stitch the leaves on. It went a little wrong at the bottom, so I added some sassafras lass stickers and a Maya Road mini ticket (love these) to cover it up and add some journalling. The leaves tie in with the photo and the colours really bring out the colours of autumn.

The Studio Challenge Sunday 31st October 2010

On 'The Studio' it's a sketch challenge today. Amanda says: 'Today our lovely Sara has created a sketch for us. Most of our DT love sketches, and we know a lot of you guys do too, so we're going to make it a regular feature - the last Sunday of each month will be our sketch Sunday.


But... did you think we wouldn't notice that it's halloween today? Along with the sketch, you need to make your page with a halloween theme! If you don't celebrate halloween where you live then feel free to use a different holiday theme.'

As previously dicussed I don't do Halloween and I'm therefore Halloweened out with my one LO already done :) So I decided to scrap some of last year's Christmas photos that have been sat on the side for the last 10 months waiting to be scrapped. I flipped the sketch upside down so that the title could go in the top left hand corner. I used The Glitter Girls Collection 'Treasured Memories' embossing board to give the LO an embossed edge which I inked to show it off. I also used the board to create the box below the photos. The paper's are My Minds Eye 'So Sophie', which I love.

Precocious Paper

I was delighted to be invited to be part of the Precocious Paper design team and today my first project is on the blog. Check it out!

Tessa sent me some of her yummy flowers that can be bought from her etsy store. I've used two of them so far. The first is on the final Chinese Whispers LO:

( I love the large flower and the great colours)

and the second is on my recent 'Movie Icons' CJ (Part of the Around the Houses Newbie CJ that I'm hosting and playing along with since one of our newbies dropped out). There are some great Haloween flowers in store now, and wait until you see the Christmas range that's coming soon :)

Happy Birthday Baby Boy!

Another year has passed and my little boy is 4 today. I can't believe how quickly that time has gone and how much Connor has changed. Bless him!! Connor has had two parties and two cakes. The first party was with all his little freinds at the local gym club and he wanted a pirate's ship cake. Yesterday we had the family over and Connor wanted a green dinosaur cake and because it was green, it had to be minty :) Notice the K&CO paper hat? Today's challenge on The Studio was this:

"OK, I'm running the risk of scaring all of our followers away this week. It's a toughie, according to majority of the Design Team! For me, who could write until the cows come home, it was not so hard!

Are you ready? Your journalling must take up at least 50% of your scrapbook page."

So I decided to take the opportunity to write Connor a birthday letter.

Scrapbook Magazine Issue 50

I love seeing my work published. I get a buzz when I see a LO somewhere that I've not put it myself. So I jumped at the chance of contributing to the Reader's gallery in Scrapbook Magazine. Only trouble was that the theme was Halloween and I don't do Halloween so at first I had to decline. That very afternoon we went to a friend's house for tea and the Dad of the house offered to do face painting. When Connor was asked what he wanted done he said 'skeleton' out of nowhere! Perfect I thought except that I didn't have my camera with me. Luckily Tony has one of these fancy phones and he was able to take a photo and send it to me.

Have you come across Picasa? It's a free photo editing program from Google and I use it on a daily basis for all my basic fixes. You can rotate by degree, add fill or highlight or shadown, add a tint and lots of other great edits. So I edited the photo in picasa to add some green tints and lighten it all up a bit and went from this:

to this:
I mounted this on some Doodlebug 'Crushed Velvet Cardstock' beetle. So now I had my photo, but I didn't have any papers and a trip to Hobbycraft proved that they'd bypassed Halloween and gone straight to Christmas :( I'm not easily beaten though and I'm resourceful so I decided to make my own Halloween designed paper. I started with a piece of Scenic Route 'Background Blue Grid White' and a piece of safmat. On the safmat I printed some pictures that I found from google images from:
The images were from:
http://www.squidoo.com/PrintableBorders
http://www.leehansen.com/clipart/Holidays/Halloween/index.html
http://www.celebrating-halloween.com/pumpkincarving/spiders-web-pattern.shtml
http://www.clker.com/clipart-9880.html

I found so many free downloadable sites whilst I was doing this search including some great scrapbooking sites with vintage images so I was really chuffed.

The first image of the tree I stuck in the bottom left hand corner. On top of this I stuck a small piece of torn and inked paper from a piece that a friend from America had sent me years ago (New Seasons 'Holiday Scrapbook Set') and an orange ticket that Ifa Zainon sent me for winning a competition on UK Scrappers last year. I used MM coloured staples to attach the ticket too. I cut out a bat shape and stuck that flying away from the bottom corner using foam squares to give it height. Then it was on to the top right hand corner. For this I found a fab spider's web with a dangling spider, which again I printed on to safmat.

I stuck the spider's web on with the spider dangling down beside the photo and the spider web under the photo corner. I took a second piece of the patterned paper (Halloween colours!), which again I tore and inked before tucking it behind the positioned photo (not yet stuck down).

Next it was the full spider's web and spider's turn. Again this was printed on safmat but then I cut it in half. Once I'd peeled the backing off and stuck the spider down, I put the backing on top of the safmat and used Maya Road Glimmer mist from Bubbly Funk. Once I removed the safmat backing the spiders web was clear, but the glimmer mist extended from it.

Now I stuck the photo in position and stapled the top left hand corner with coloured staples again and towards the bottom of the photo also. I took a final piece of the patterened paper and tore and inked it. This was stuck at the bottom of the photo. I printed a row of cats and dancing skeletons on to safmat.

The skeletons were printed small enough to fit on to an orange ticket from my stash from Indigo Mill and the kitty cats were stuck under the patterened paper. I used an orange journalling tag from Elle's Studio 'Chic note tags' and finally I stuck the second half of the spider's web on. Using a black pen I followed the line from the spiders web at the top all the way around the LO.

For the title I found the most Halloweenish colours I had (orange and purple in this case) and stuck them on. They are American Crafts Thickers 'Sprinkles' lavender and
Doodlebug 'Shin dig' Tangerine. I went with the title 'Dem bones, Dem bones' because it's Connor's favourite song right now and has sparked his skeleton fascination. And here is the final LO all complete:

And it's in shops today :)

Getting in to the Christmas spirit

I still have lots of Autumn photos to scrap but on Saturday I received a pizza box of goodies from Bubbly Funk and I couldn't resist getting started on the Christmas products. I love the Christmas goodies but it was the little gingerbread men that really caught my imagination this weekend.

I'm really looking forward to Christmas this year. My son will be 4 years old and he's so aware of what's going on this year. It's going to be so exciting and I can't wait. We've made biscuits for Father Christmas every year (except the first one when he was only a couple of months old and I was still in shock ;) )but I'm not sure he's really 'got it'. This year he will though so I couldn't resist covering this little gingerbread man in Basic Grey paper and added some glitter dots for eyes and buttons.

I found a little box in the charity shop for less than a pound and I covered it in two Basic Grey papers. The edges of the box and the gingerbread men are sanded and then inked with versa. One of the fabby chipboard rectangles from deluxe designs became a great message board and I used some small alphas and an October Afternoon 'gifts' sticker to say 'Biscuits for gifts'. I hand cut some holly to mimic the paper from the green paper and stuck some red buttons on top for berries.

I used glossy accents to stick them to the box.

Autumn- my favourite season

• Cardstock
• Sassafras Mix and Mend – Fancy Free
• Sassafras stickers
• Adorn it- rub on alpha
• My little bit of Whimsy embellishments
• Prima flowers- e line and roosevelt
• Chipboard flowers and leaves
• Buttons
• Ribbons
• Lace
• Chipboard round
• Mist
• MM Coloured staples
• Red string
• MM Panorama tickets
• Maya Road Jonathan chipboard alphabet
• Brown ink
• Acrylic paints; yellow and orange

I love the Autumn. I love the colours; the oranges of pumpkins, the yellows and reds of the leaves. I like the sunny evening walks, kicking up leaves and picking up chestnuts. I tried to capture some of the feel of autumn in my LO that is hot off the press tonight (and therefore captured under awful light and I'll re-do it in the morning).

I started with a piece of Sassafras mix and mend 'fancy free', which I tore to a size about 9x5 before inking the edges with VersaMagic Jumbo Java. I positioned the ribbons and lace and attached them with glossy accents, foam squares and staples. The photo is mounted on a piece of pizza box to give it height, and to allow the prima Rossevelt to tuck behind it.

I tucked a Deluxe design circle base behind the photos and rubbed on the adorn it alphas for my journalling. The 'autumn' in the title is painted with acrylic and once it had dried I inked the edges. I squirted in the top and bottom corner with glimmer mist and inked around the edge of the cardstock. I used glossy accents to stick some red sting on the top corner of the LO and to stick an acorn embellishment as if hanging from it. The chipboard and sticker flowers and buttons are dotted around the LO to give it more depth and interest.