Ending the blogging drought..

Ha! This has got to be my longest post EVER! I started uploading the pics at 5pm and now, after a trip to the out-of-hours Dr, (him at home, not me!) I can finally complete it at 10pm!

Anyway, I thought I'd quickly share a few cards I've made recently and try to break the blogging drought that I've been in.

Firstly, I made this for 'The Wife', otherwise known as my teaching partner. She's affectionatly known as 'The wife' because I joke that I see more of her and talk to her more than I do my husband! It's her birthday today so I made this using inspiration taken from Pinterest:

(dodgy stamping, but I couldn't find my plastic block for stamping so had to improvise)

Using up the scraps of paper left on my desk, I then made:

and

Several months ago, I made this for Suz Mannecke ~(check out her blog using the link at the side of my blog):

And then using some scraps of vey old Crate Paper, I made these ultra simple and very quick cards:

Thanks for looking. xx

Catch up!

A few pics of the weekends LO's:

Loving the 8.5" x 11" size cardstock:

Still have some more Lo's to share but they still need a few finishing touches so I'll upload them ASAP.

T4L.

Team challenge #1

Oh dear! I can't believe that it's been over a month since I last posted (actually I've been so blinking busy that I can!).

Over the next few days I have a few of my recent LO's to share so I will get around to posting them soon- keep checking back to see what I've been upto whilst I've been AWOL!

Anyway, I promised my lovely scrappy friends over on UKS a team LO challenge so here is the first one:

I love sketches and I have a bit of a thing about scrapping in squares at the moment too so this sketch from pagemaps was ideal. Your challenge is to use this as your inspiration and to create a LO/card/papercraft item from it!

This is my first take on the sketch:

and this is Kelly Yowler (pagemaps DT member) take:

Have fun and I look forward to seeing what you make!

Royal Wedding Review

• TV on since 7:30am




• 14 hours of Royal Wedding coverage watched and counting




• 3 rows of WillKate bunting put up and taken down




• 20 balloons blown up




• 2 flags waved




• 12 friends to celebrate




• 1 bottle of bubbly drunk




• 1 block of battenburg cake eaten along with about 19 Will and Kate themed cupcakes




• Miscelleanous amounts of Earl Grey Tea brewed




• 1 wedding tiara put back away again




• Umpteen happy tears almost shed

I'm so glad we don't have Royal Weddings every week. I've loved the build up. I've loved the day off work. I've absolutely loved the pomp and ceremony but boy, am I pooped now!

Playing along with the Scrap factor

UK scrappers is currently holding a Scrap factor competition to find some of the best scrappers in the UK. Alongside the competition is a chance for others to play along with the competitors using the same prompts.

Week twos prompt was to take a print advert i.e. an advert from a magazine or newspaper and use that as the inspiration for your LO. I chose this advert as I had a photo I wanted to scrap for my version of the Project Life album:I liked the white square in the middle and originally envisioned the title, main image and writing in this section to be three distinct areas perhaps in large blocks of patterned paper. In the end I turned the make up bag image into my photo and used the smaller images around the make up bag as my embellishment cues.

The advert writing became my scalloped area and journalling spot and the title was placed in a similar place to the advert.

To match the patterned paper, I pulled out the blanket stitching element and mirrored that around the edge of my central paper.

TFL xx

Signs you know summer is on it's way

1. The weather is much warmer -loving this!
2. The days are longer (loving waking up to the sunshine too!)
3. You have dusted out the BBQ
4. You dig out and freshen up all your skirts, shorts and summer tops
5. You pack away your jumpers and winter gear
6. You don't need to take a coat with you when you go out
7. You scare the neighbours with your white legs
8. You shave your legs for the first time in months (see above)
9. You comtemplate digging out the self tan but aren't sure whether this would look like you were 'trying too hard' (see above!)
10. You know that next week you'll be back to wearing jumpers/taking coats out/covering up etc (assuming you live in Britain!)

Some pics of the lovely spell of weather in our neck of the woods:

A spontaneous picnic and my gorgeous nephew smiled at me for the first time!
I was trying to enjoy the sunshine. Emma thought I made the perfect 'horsey':

Time for icecream:

Too warm for some:

Time to play:

Thanks for stopping by. I'd love to hear what you've been doing in this gorgeous weather!

Return of the Astronut!

These photos had been waiting to be scrapped since Christmas and so I had them all ready to go in a homemade kit of papers and embellishments. However, the finished product turned out completely different to how I imagined- to start I'd only envisioned a SLO! The star themed lace cardstock never got touched either. Funny how these projects evolve... I misted the background using some chipboard pieces as masks. I think originally the pieces were actually meant to be flowers, but they looked like gears and cogs to me! The background paper was the reverse of old Crate Paper that I had lurking about. I used some Cogsmo paper from Cosmo Cricket (again old stash) and cut out all the cogs. I put one large one on the left to balance out the 3 photos on one side and one at the top to fill in some of the space. I also put this one slightly over the join to link the two sides together. I also added a cluster of smaller cogs here too using foam dots to make them pop from the page. Taking inspiration from the Cosmo paper I could see arrows that were made with perforated lines so I hand stitched arrows around the cogs using my WRMK Sewing tool. I added a couple of the element cards from the Cosmo Cricket line as well as a Fancy Pants star acetate border that I had lurking in my stash box and some alien/monster stickers that I bought from Paperchase. Some scanned images as I couldn't photograph it well as a DLO (excuse the fact the scanner has cut the edges off). LHS: RHS:

The title was a play on words and was a favourite line of mine from ToyStory3 which is my sons favourite movie. He was desperate for a Buzz Lightyear at Christmas which made me think of Rex's line in the movie when Buzz goes 'all Spanish' - "It's the return of the Astro-nut!" . Typically I didn't have enough alphas in one range so I delved into my spare lettering stash and pulled out a range of font styles in co-ordinating colours. To make sure that the play on words is highlighted, I underlined the word 'nut' using hand stitching.

My only issue with this LO is that the paper has curled slightly where I misted it (I'm v.new to misting)- I'd appreciate any tips on how to stop this?

Thanks, L xx