Playing with my new toy...

....my new Bind It All !! This is a little mini book/album I have done for friends who got married last weekend - I have left spaces for a few photos. I have seen the lovely Bo Bunny chipboard books, but thought I would have a bash at doing something similar myself, and printed off some large letters in Word, and then handcut them out of chipboard. Covered it all in some weddingy papers, and added some 7 gypsies stickers and a dash of ribbon, and then shoved it into my Bind it all LOL.



Then I decided I had really ought to do something with some of the many photos we took at Disneyland Paris in October 2006! So I made a little book with 6x6 pieces of bazzill, added some strips of disney papers, and 4x6 photos, then made some covers out of acetates, decorated with ribbon, and shoved all that through my bind it all too!!

I have been to a mini crop at my neighbours house this afternoon, thanks Pam, and I have nearly finished a LO and made a start on a book in a box all about New Zealand - I managed to cover the box LOL. When they are done I will share....
Thanks to Erika too for her yummy bananachocchip muffin, and Kara too for putting up with my awful singing to the 80s soundtrack!

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As promised....

..... more pages from my Dad's album.


These are my favourite pages - I didn't want to share all of them, you might think you are in some kind of nightmare slide show scenario LOL. I used the same pagemap for all the pages, it took some of the brainwork out of it, and allowed me to complete it quite quickly.

I am really peeved he won't get it for the actual day, but I hope he likes it when he does get it :)

But, I did have a good post day myself - I got my Bind-it-all machine, so now I get to make mini books to my hearts content :) Need to hide it from Mark though, as he was quite taken with it! I have a few ideas in the pipeline too :) so watch this space.....

I also went real life shopping today LOL, visiting my LSS and ordering myself a Cuttlebug for Christmas - yay! I have my trusty Sidekick, which has been a solid and faithful servant for many years, but I wanted to get something that could cut slightly bigger... and I want to use those gorgeous Cuttlebug embossing folders!! So I am upgrading, but my lickle sidekick has a new home already - Jemma will have it!

I also found myself a large wooden U which I am going to alter... I fancy a bit of home decor scrapbooking.

Jemma commented yesterday that the "rogues gallery" we have on our stairs is looking a bit shabby now, and could I "do something pretty cos the frames look rubbish..." The only problem is that I did these multi photo frames pre scrapbooking, and used original photos (shock horror) and cut them, and stuck them with DST (aarrgghh) and these frames have been hung in direct sunlight, so the photos are now sun damaged and I can't get them out cos of the DST.....AARRGGHHHHHH!! I am hoping I can save some of the photos, or at least replace some with other photos, and maybe do some canvasses... A lot of thinking to be done on that one somehow.....

And talking of thinking, I still haven't thought of anyone to tag.....

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Tagged!!

Thanks Paula for the tag.... so here goes....

4 places I have worked
Local newsagents, Thurmaston, Leicester
Gateway Supermarket, Leicester
Dr Gray's Hospital, Elgin
Victoria Filling Station, Forres.

4 places I have lived
Stapleford, Nottingham (where I was born)
Thurmaston, Leicester (where I grew up)
Rosia Court, Gibraltar (Mark was posted there)
Kinloss, Forres (where I live now)

4 places I have been on holiday
New Zealand
Disneyland Paris
Corfu
Dominican Republic

4 favourite foods
chocolate
Chicken Tikka Massala from Asda curry pot LOL
Banoffee Pie
Pineapple cheecake (can you tell I have a sweet tooth LOL)

4 places I would rather be right now
Christchurch, New Zealand
Gibraltar
Stash shopping lol
Findhorn beach

I shall be back later with 4 people to tag, and some pictures of my Dad's 60th album, which is now finished, but due to the Mail strike will not get to him in time for his birthday :(

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Card making frenzy!!

I have spent a bit of time over the past few days making some cards. I purchased the new Lola Rose image stamps from Pink Petticoat, and just had to print some out and colour them in LOL.

Here are a few cards I made with some birthday images - the papers are Doodlebug, and an unbranded sheet which I got from a pack in Tescos, and the buttons are also Doodlebug. The sentiments come from the Girly Curly sentiments set, also from Pink Petticoat.

















Then I made a start on my Christmas cards !! These are from the same set of image stamps, and the papers are Doodlebug papers that I got free with an old copy of Scrapbook Inspirations.














The sentiments come from the Girly Curly set again.


I had great fun watercolouring them in, although I was a bit nervous at first, seeing as printer ink is not very waterproof. But using a waterbrush and taking the pigment straight off my watercolour pencils and onto the paper seemed to work very well.

So thats 10 christmas cards down, don't know how many more to go!! At least its a start, not bad for me, usually I start them in December....

In the beginning...

These are the first few pages from my Dad's 60th birthday album. I am using a 6 x 12 format, and a Halfmap sketch from Pagemaps. I am loving how quickly it is coming together, and I am using up alot of scraps from my scrapbox too - the only thing I have purchased for this project so far is the album itself - a 6 x 12 Landscape album from Bazzill!

I have done a few more pages to my Learn something everyday album too, although I have ground to a halt again after nearly catching up... Life just seems to get in the way... Oh and the fact that I am helping Jemma make an authentic looking 1800's highland croft out of a shoe box and copious amounts of raffia.....

I have also been rekindling my love affair with Pink Petticoat this week, I have lots of their CDs and downloads for papers, image stamps, bag and box templates and sentiments for card making and other papercrafting projects. I have been printing out, colouring in and punching out lots of lovely images, just need to sit down and make them into cards !! I have just got the new Lola Rose image stamps too, and have printed off some christmassy ones and birthday ones for me to sit and colour in tonight whilst watching Michael Palin embark on another journey;)

I got the stamped images back from the Bella stamping swap I was in on UKS, and again I had a ball with the watercolours! I just need to make those cards up now too LOL

Trying to catch up.....

...but failing miserably LOL. So I am behind on my Learn something new everyday class - I knew I would be! I have been getting the photos, and writing down what I have learned everyday, just haven't been creating the pages. This afternoon I started the catch up...

I found this photo of Mark on his camera, whilst I was uploading a picture I had taken with it, as my camera's batteries had died. It was with other photos he took, but hadn't uploaded to the computer. If he had got to them first, I am sure this one would have been deleted, but it is such a striking photo of him, I was compelled to keep it. I have no idea when and where or even why he took it ROFL! So that was the lesson for that day...

This page shows my little craft desk, after a wonderful few hours spent learning how much fun you can have whilst playing with paper!! My creativity has taken a big beating over the past year or so, so much so that I have forgotten how much joy I used to take from cardmaking, and making gifts for people. Now Tom is at school full time, I find I have a couple of hours to kill in an afternoon, and I have begun to rediscover what it was I love about papercrafts. That'll go out the window next week when I start work, but for now I am just enjoying the journey, and the complete lack of pressure to create :)

I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, honest..

Well not yet anyway!

Having Mark home has been a big culture shock, after 4 months being on my own with the kids, him being around is alot to readjust to - especially when he has OCD tendencies, and insists on tidying stuff away and throwing stuff out... I have no idea where alot of stuff is right now... Its a good job he is back to work this week, so at least I get a bit of time now that the kids are back at school, and that Tom is now at full time school - even if it is spent hunting for things Mark has "put away"...

But I have been creating stuff. Mark and I sat down to go through the 541 photos we took in New Zealand, to put some into normal photo albums, and then I got to play with the rest. We spent a day at Auckland Zoo, and Mark wasn't keen about putting photos of animals into a normal album, so I had lots of great animal photos to make a mini album with!

I used an idea that I saw Shimelle do on the Fiskars website - the book is made from 4 x 12 inch pieces of cardstock, held together at the top by a book ring. I used the Scrummy Stash cafe Scenic Route Metropolitan kit, and added a piece of white bazzill to make up the page numbers. I added rikrak to each page, and a journalling stamp from Autumn Leaves. The stamps on the front cover of the book came from New Zealand, a lovely map and a circular stamps which has New Zealand printed over and over in it. The title is American crafts cardstock stickers. The album is super quick to make up, as I didn't have to crop the photos at all - just use the 4x6 photos I already had.

Speaking of Shimelle, I have also signed up for her "Learn something new everday" online class. I saw it last year, but was wary of joining an online class, but after doing her "Journal your Christmas" last year, I had no hesitation in signing up this year. I made my own album/book for this class, using chipboard covered in white copier paper splodged with acrylic paints and ink. I am using another Scrummy Stash Cafe kit - the sassafrass lass Scrumptious kit - to do this project, mainly for the little owls on one of the papers, as I managed to encorporate it into my front cover! I inked Scenic Route chipboard letters and added Stickles for a bit of bling.

This was my first page. The 2nd of September is a very sombre affair around here, as it is the anniversary of 2 seperate Nimrod crashes - one 12 years ago, and one in 2006. Obviously the 2006 crash is still very prominent in our thoughts, as Mark lost 12 colleagues that day. I thought a photo of a poppy that grew in my garden was appropriate for this page - seeing as it is a flower that symbolises remembrance. I can't believe that a year has passed already.

This is the second page - Mark and his tidying frenzy over the weekend lead to me doing a tip run yesterday. And this is the "after" picture !! And now I have a happy husband again....