Christmas Projects

Hi everyone - hope you all have had a happy Christmas. Been working on a couple of Bakers Dozen layouts - but as I'm in Scotland have had to take over my Dad's PC - don't tell him how many new fonts I've downloaded :) - not to mention pixresizer and a couple of photoshop brushes.

I just couldn't resist creating a layout with a photo of a work colleague wearing his christmas dinner - I didn't know one spoonful of curry could cause such a large stain!
Used Shimelle Laines Christmas Memories page template, snowflake stickers and Wrap it up Christmas papers from Two Peas in a Bucket.

My second layout is of the Christmas Cards I made this year. Found the idea for Easel Cards on Splitcoast stampers and went a bit overboard - it's a really easy design to make and does allow you to make them as simple or as involved as you like. Used the Wrap it up Christmas papers to make the Christmas Tree embellishments, snowflake stickers as journal spots and penned words Christmas - all by Shimelle Laine at Two Peas in a Bucket.

Tim's Twelve Tags of Christmas

I've been following Tim Holtz's 12 tags of christmas. I love his techniques and his stamps and all the Ranger products. This is the first year I've actually done them all, usually just do a couple or just use the techniques. I don't have all the products he used so improvised on some - even made my own brads - don't have an i-top so covered some large brads with wadding then put the sticky canvas over the top! I didn't win anything from Tim's blog even though I commented every day :(

Jennie at The Artistic Stamper is doing a fantastic blog candy if you've done any of tims tags - post a link here http://theartisticstamper.blogspot.com/2009/12/tagtastic-blog-candy.html

Cupcakes

I've been playing around with my craft robo again recently - he normally gets used around christmas after being neglected for a while :)

I used Shimelle Laines Autumn Apples Embellishment kit and Autumn Apples Polka dot papers to make cupcake wrappers,used the apple embellishment and welded to the basic cupcake wrapper shape to make a border of apples around the edge. Created a print and cut using the pink polka dot paper, then inked the apples, added a bit of sticky ribbon. Then i had to make some muffins to put IN the wrappers to take photos - any excuse to bake muffins :)

If anyones interested in the basic cupcake wrapper leave a comment.

On a roll

I've actually made another layout - a hybrid one this time! Since the announcement last week of being chosen as one of Shimelle's Bakers Dozen I've done more scrapping in a week than I've done in the past few months - now I just need to get cracking on my Christmas Cards :)

I used Shimelles Starburst mini kit from Two Peas in a Bucket, and one of the postcards from The Long and Winding Road. The birds are from another kit on 2Peas, Carin Gardner's Element-ary Aviary Elements. I used the birds as clipping masks on with the blue polka dot and green damask papers from the Starburst paper kit.

Photo was taken from St Mary's Church in Walthamstow in the summer - an open day for the photography club I joined for their Summer School. The roof is not normally open to the public but we were able to climb up to the clock tower and onto the roof. I couldn't believe how far I could see - all the way to the 02 and Canary Wharf.

Announcing Shimelle Digitals Creative Team

The Bakers Dozen!

I'm so excited to announce that the wonderfully talented Shimelle Laine has created a creative design team and I was lucky enough to be chosen! Shimelle's digital design kits are available from Two Peas in a Bucket and can be used either for purely digi layouts or hybrid so you can get double the enjoyment :)

There's thirteen of us(hence the name) from all over the world - all really talented ladies and it's so great to be working with them, it so inspiring to see such a variety of different styles of layouts created from the same kit.

We've all used The long and winding road for our introduction layouts: here's mine below.
For more inspiration please go and visit my very talented team mates:
Alison Anso Atival
Dolly Elisa Helen
Karen C Karen M Kate
Nadine Rani Sheri

Hope you enjoy the blog hopping and thanks for stopping by - now go and treat yourself to a kit!

My Surroundings....

Catching up!

I remember one of my English teachers at School telling me "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" - I was full of good intentions to keep up with Shimelle Laine's "Blogging for Scrapbookers" class but things have gotten away from me again. A bit of excitement for me (a very big excitement to me anyway!)on friday sort of pushed everything else out of the way - more will be revealed on thursday - stay tuned :)


Prompt 4 is about blogging/scrapping something ordinary but maybe with a little twist -so here goes.....
The underground or the tube - whatever you want to call it.
I've been living in or around London for nearly 14 years and still can't get my head around how some people behave. We don't have an underground system like London's in Scotland - ok we have the underground in Glasgow - the clockwork orange but it's basically a very short circular route so I wasn't really prepared for all the different lines here. When I first moved to London I tried to avoid any journeys that involved changing lines - was so scared I'd get lost! After a while I got braver and as long as I could work out my route before hand it wasn't at problem. But what I still can't get my head around is why do people feel the need to squeeeeeze into already packed carriages when there's another tube arriving in 2 minutes - and if that ones packed theres usually another one a minute after that! I'll only squeeze in if I'm running late and can't afford to take the chance in waiting. It may not be the most pleasant mode of transport but it is quick and frequent - not like Kilbarchan buses that only run once an hour after 18:00pm and every 2 hours on a sunday.

Favourite things

I'm still running a day behind but at least i'm still going!

Things I love are:
1. Lush : I love their bath ballistics and bubblebars.

2.Lensbaby Lenses: Take a look at the Lensbaby group on Flickr or the official Lensbaby website. I love the effects you can get and have bought myself a set of optics to play with.

3.ArtsyCraftsy weekends: run by Leandra from Paperartsy and Linda from LB Crafts. They always come with the most amazing projects.

4.Tim Holtz - so inspiring

5.Craft time with my friends - we try to get together at least once every month. Sometimes we don't get much creating done but it's great to get together!

A Perfect Day (Almost)

I'm hoping to keep my blog a bit more uptodate with the help of Shimelles latest class - Blogging for Scrapbookers.

Thinking of a memorable day recently - in July my sister and two nieces came to visit me it London. I usually book us theatre tickets but thought this time we'd do something different - so I booked us tickets for Eurostar to Paris for a day trip. I was a bit worried that it would be a struggle to get the girls out of bed so early but they both surprised me! We made it to St. Pancras in good time, bought some breakfast from M&S and got on the train. The journey was so much quicker than I expected.

We decided to take the metro to the Louvre but the map looked so confusing, but we then spotted a help point - they were so helpful, provided us a map and marked out the route to take and where to change. I'd recommend using the metro - just ask for instructions its not as scary as it looks.

Heather and Lorna wanted to see the Mona Lisa, so we followed the signs and crowed into the room - I've seen it before but still surprises me that it's smaller than I expected. After we'd managed to squeeze closer to get a better look the girls had had enough of culture and wanted to go outside and sit by the fountain in the courtyard - I could easily have spent most of the day wandering around the gallery but this trip wasn't just about me.

It was such a warm day it was really good to sit by the fountain and we all stuck our feet in to cool down a bit. After we'd relaxed for a while we decided to walk down by the Seine, we ended up walking all the way to the Eiffel Tower - the girls did moan a bit - don't normally like to walk very far :) (To be honest shouldn't really have got annoyed as it was a really long walk on a very hot day)

The queues were just soooo long to go up the tower so we decided to have icecream instead - and then it started to rain - very heavily for about 5 minutes!
By this time we were all footsore so decided to take a sightseeing cruise down the Seine - this was wonderful, relaxing and very enjoyable.


It was then time to head back to the station when the cruise ended, we walked up to metro and stopped to watch some street dancers for a while - a surprise ending to the day.

squirrely

squirrely
Originally uploaded by inky_yvonne

Bought myself a Lensbaby Muse with double glass optic and creative aperture kit. Only got it yesterday so went out to the park to play with it today. Take a look at my flickr slideshow on the sidebar - click on a photo and it will take you to my Flickr gallery page.

Painting with Light 2

Signed up for Cheryl Johnson's Painting with Light the sequel photography course and have been having fun with the the challenges each module brings! I would recommend any of Cheryl's course - take a look on her website http://www.feelgoodphotos.co.uk/

A few of my photos here:

More Projects

A few more photos of the projects I made on Easter sunday:

A Crafty Easter Sunday!

Many thanks to Bibi for hosting our craft day on Easter sunday! Had a lovely day - from 11:00 am to 10:00pm we crafted to our hearts content. I made little easter treats - acetate sour cream cartons stamped with paint dabbers and filled with mini eggs.


It was Bibi's birthday on the 10th and I'd planned to make a cupcake tower but the stand didn't arrive so just made cupcakes - they did turn out well though :)

We managed to do a few projects, a clock kit from Cleo's undomesticated scrapbook kits, Bibi bought us all a chipboard monogram, Sam bought us a mirror and I bought little tin pails(didn't get round to doing anything with that yet)and I altered a wooden birdhouse I bought from Paperchase.

February - already!

Happy 2009, I know i'm a bit late :) Had found it really difficult to get back into the swing of things after having time off for Christmas but back to normal now. This weekend was UKScrappers Cybercrop - a Murder Mystery themed one this time, I was a CSI! Didn't manage to meet the deadline for most of the classes but did manage to earn 100 points for the Mystery kit I'm really pleased with the way it turned out.

The other 3 LOs I completed were based on 3 classes from the CC.