52 Cards: Thank you cards

After a break over Christmas I finally managed to get some crafting done today and boy did it feel good! As a crafty New Years resolution I am having a go at the 52 card challenge this year in an attempt to actually use my stash and to get better at card making. The first prompt of the year asked use to use new stash we received as Christmas presents, the perfect prompt for me as I could use the papers Ian brought me for Christmas. I needed to make some thank you cards so on a wet and miserable morning I sat down and made these using papers from Glitz Designs. 

I brought the tags back in the summer when mum & I went to an antiques fair, trust us to find a stall selling something crafty lol! The doilies are from Dovecraft and the alphas are October Afternoon. 

Crafty Christmas Presents

And in a blink of an eye Christmas has been and gone. Did you all have a lovely Christmas? 

Mine was the usual family affair, over to my folks for Christmas morning opening our stocking (well Christmas gift bag) presents and presents from other family members and friends and for Christmas dinner before heading to the inlaws in the afternoon for presents and tea. Then on Boxing Day it was Christmas Day take two where we exchange presents with mum & dad and my brother and sister in law and have a general family day laughing at poor mum trying to work out dad's quiz for opening her presents. This years quiz was Christmas number 1's, on the label was a year and she needed to name the Christmas number 1 for that year, cue mum sitting there perplexed while my brother and I looked them up on his phone and tried to give her clues. 

After opening our presents we now have chocolates, wine & toiletries coming out of our ears! I was lucky enough to receive some crafty presents from Ian though. Presents I chose and added to online carts and left him to pay for lol! For my stocking presents (we buy each other our main presents after Christmas in the sales) he brought me some lovely goodies from Angel Crafts

Two more 6x6 paper pads from Alison Kreft Recorded collection & Glitz Love you Madly collection which were both reduced. I love the Alison Kreft collection and had my eye on it for a while but I had not seen the Glitz collection before but the muted pink, aqua and grey colours are lovely. Of course I had to have some more Washi tape too! The ribbons were a freebie. 

I have been looking for a new paper trimmer for a while as ever since I changed the rubber track on my Woodware trimmer it has not been cutting straight. At first I thought it was just me being a bit dim but after chatting to the girls at Meadow Barn in March I realised it wasn't lol! So for my main present Ian said he would buy me a new trimmer and after lots of YouTube watching I decided to try a Fiskars one. I placed a thread on UKS asking if anyone stocked it and The Mad Scrapper responded and even better it had 20% off. Naturally more things fell into my basket as it was sale and my parcel arrived today

As you know I'm a sucker for stars and I thought the Martha Stewart punch would be great for birthday cards, something I really want to try and make more of. I also received the Picked Raspberry (not pickled as I keep calling it) and Peacock feathers distress ink pads which are both lovely vibrant, bold colours. 

Just to leave you with a cute snap of Boo from Boxing Day 

Happy New Year xx

'Twas the weekend before Christmas

And it flew by! Here we are in the final two days before Christmas and boy am I on countdown mode! I had a busy weekend dashing over to deliver the girls pressies in Kings Cliffe and then working. I had a nice surprise waiting for me when I got to Kelly's though, this

A Christmas hamper! I had brought some raffle tickets for the school Christmas fair and I won a prize for the first time ever! I'm very chuffed as it's full of wine, biscuits, chocolates, a cake, jam, etc. Apparently people were not as generous as previous years as they have been fuller but I'm not complaining lol! 

Finally to leave you with a funny sign spotted on the market! 

Merry Christmas everyone!!!!! Xx

At least I made one card for Christmas!

Can you believe it's only 10 days until Christmas! I hope everyone's preparations are going to plan, I've got a handful of presents left to wrap and then I'm ready! As I think I've said in a previous post I had intended to make my Christmas cards but the idea I had in mind did not go to plan. But all was not lost as I did manage to make at least one card, a birthday card for my sister inlaw Jojo. 

Lately I've been buying 6x6 paper pads with the intention of using them to make cards as the patterns are smaller and wouldn't over power a card too much. The spotty paper is from the Mayberry collection from American Crafts, not a collection I would have used for scrapping but when I saw the paper pad on sale I thought it great for cards. The Polaroid frame is also cut with some Mayberry paper using my MFT frame die. The cupcake and ribbon flower were readymade embellishments I'd had in my stash for ages so I was pleased to finally use them. I stamped a Stampin Up greeting to an Elle's Studio banner and that's the card! Not a Christmas card but a Christmas birthday card! 

Sketchy Scrappers: The Eye

Today is my day off. Ian is working a nightshift all week so I needed to find something quiet to do, out of his way while he slept. Hmmm that would be scrapping then! This months sketch over at Sketchy Scrappers was set by the lovely Gemma who set this sketch 

I decided rather than use one landscape & one portrait photo to have a delve and use a portrait photo with a 4x4 Instagram photo instead. I've been having my photos printed via the Fotobox app on my phone. It's easy to upload, select your size, quantity and they arrive in a couple of days, so if you have an iPhone I'd recommend them :-) Anyway back to business, this is my layout 

The photos are obviously of the London Eye. The papers are from my scraps and I just had to use a scrap of Echo Park paper with the fairground rides on as it fitted perfectly. I also pulled out my Stampin Up cloud embossing folder as I also felt this fitted with the photos perfectly. I adapted the bunting idea to a doily instead, and cut some Elle's Studio pennants and placed them to the right. 

Marmite scrapping?

This week is my last week off work before the Christmas rush, a week of relaxing and doing as much Christmasy stuff I can so I haven't got to fight the crowds nearer the time. This means I've got a bit more time to do some crafting, I've attempted to make some Christmas cards but plan A didn't work so we're onto plan B lol! I have also managed to do my first weekly challenge on UKS for AGES!!

 This weeks challenge has a Marmite twist to it, you either love it or hate it (personally I love it). The three elements of the challenge are photo: ones you love due to memories, etc or ones you hate as the quality is poor, etc; colour: colours or papers which are your favourite which you go to time again or ones you hate which have been languishing in your stash for some time; and finally technique: your favourite technique which you use time again of one which never goes to plan or is not your style. With these elements in mind I came up with this layout 

Photo: The photo was taken when I went to London in May and went to Liberty for the first time. This is obviously a memory I want to document however the photo all blurry and not sharp as the camera settings had a mind of their own. HATE

Colour: I recently went halves with my friend Gemma on some goodies from TK Maxx including half an Amy Tangerine Yes Please 12x12 paper pad, so all the papers are from that. Being an Amy Tangerine fan this is LOVE. 

Technique: I have a love/hate relationship with stamping. I love all the stamps out there and how people use them, however when it comes to stamping I'm pretty pants! My images are rarely clear, with bits missing from them! So I decided to have a go on this layout, stamping out a medallion from a Stampin Up set using a pink distress ink. I have the same relationship with distressed edges, the look good when other Scrappers distress but when I do it it just looks messy, so again I had a go and I have to say I'm still not convinced lol! HATE. 

Don't look back!

Happy Halloween folks! Already some goodies meant for trick or treaters have jumped into my mouth, I have no idea how that happened! As not to scare too many people today I had the day off work  and shut myself away at my desk and did some scrapping before going to have my wig touched up this afternoon! This month I set myself & Gemma the challenge to use this sketch & to include some ribbon on the layout. 

After looking through my photos I decided to make a different type of layout  to my normal layouts. Usually I scrap photos from holidays, walks, of family, events, etc. But I came across a photo I took of myself shortly after getting my iPhone when I was trying to be arty playing with the camera and decided to make an inspirational type layout especially as Ian & I have reached a time where we are making plans for the future & putting the past behind us. 

I'd been hoarding the Dear Lizzy arrow paper since it came in February's Quirky Kit as I knew I wanted to use it as a background and now seemed the perfect time. The other papers are another piece of Dear Lizzy & Echo Park. I have had some Seam Binding in my ribbon box for ages but didn't know how to use it so I experimented with some mist and altered it to fit with my colour scheme. I'm impressed with how it came out and will definetly try it again maybe with more than one colour. 

I thought a white doily would be too harsh on the layout so I used a kraft diecut doily I've had in my stash for ages instead. For the title I used Poolside Thickers & October Afternoon mini market stickers. To finish I searched online for a quote to fit my "moving on" theme.