October's Here!

Phew! How long is it to half term?? OMGosh, I am soooo tired right now - my body clock is telling me it's time to gather food and go to bed for 3 months, and I certainly wouldn't have a problem with that!  The new term only started 4 weeks ago and already I am shattered!

Well what a week I just had.  I got a phone call last Tuesday from Middle School asking me to come over to look at my son's foot.  He'd apparently had an accident playing cricket and they thought he probably needed to see a doc.  So I shot off and sure enough he DID need to see a doc!  As soon as I saw his foot I could tell he'd broken something, but when I got him to the Minor Injuries dept, I was really shocked to see a huge lump under the ball of his foot.  X-Ray revealed the most horrendous thing I've ever witnessed - his big toe had dislocated and was sitting UNDERNEATH his foot!  ARGH! I nearly passed out!  He has also got two broken bones and a fracture in the big toe.  I've never been a cricket fan, and I can't see him wanting to take it up either!  Mind you, he was worried it might impact on his drumming, but thankfully he's managed to keep that up.

Anyway,  here is my latest card offering.  I made this one for one of the team who's birthday it is tomorrow, and I used the Magnolias Down Under challenge for my inspiration.  Their theme this week is Pink, White and Gold - gorgeous colour combo and I loved making this - I hope you like it too!

That's my lot for the moment - see you soon and thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Autumnal Sunday

A very happy autumnal Sunday blogland!  I think it's time to pack my sandals away once and for all and dig out some of my winter woollies! Brrr.... it's definitely turning a bit nippy out there!

My card today is for three challenge themes.   To begin with I was inspired by Bev's sketch on Just Magnolias

and I combined this with TOMIC's Make your own background challenge.  The only printed paper I used on this was the leaves on my flowers.  I also combined it with Anything Goes's Vintage/Shabby Chic theme this week

Moan alert here.... Does anyone else have the problems that I'm having with blogger at the moment?  I see hundreds of gorgeous inspirational cards and projects out there that I would love to leave a comment on, but unfortunately, if the comment box is directly beneath the posting, blogger won't allow me to comment and I have tried pretty much everything to rectify this.  I have found that the only blogs I am able to comment on are those who have a seperate pop up comments form which is such a shame!

Well that is my lot for today.  I have a few domestic chores to attend to then I am going to have another scout around for more inspiration!  Thank you for visiting me, I hope you like what you see :o)  Have a great day. xx

Card Giveaway!

Oh blimey, this last week has just whizzed by and tomorrow I'm back at school!  I'm not unhappy about it though as I have a really exciting year ahead of me which I'm really looking forward to.

My card today fits 3 challenges so I'm submitting it to this week's Sketch Saturday challenge - here is the sketch:

And here is my card:

I'm also submitting it to this week's Magnolia Down Under challenge where the theme is Frame It and this week's Simply Magnolia challenge whereby Anything Goes!

Now then, to mark the end of the summer I have decided to give this card away in a random draw, so if you would like to own this card (it's a pretty big one, I tell you!!) then please leave your name in the comments and I will get my kids to draw someone's name (if there are any!! LOL!) this time next week and I'll send it to whoever they draw - blank if you prefer! ;o)

Thanks for stopping by :o) x

Stop the clock!!!

 

Argh!!!  Time goes way too quickly these days and before you know it, the school hols are almost at an end and it's going to be 'all change' from next week, but I am so looking forward to the challenge.  Having just completed my first year in KS2, I am going to go back to working in KS1 in a Y1 class! WooHoo!  I feel like a big kid!

It's going to be a pretty big academic year for all of us here.  My eldest is about to enter his last year at Middle School (OMG, how did that happen???) and my youngest will be taking his end of KS2 SATS - boo hoo..... my babies are growing up far too fast!

Now then, I have struggled, let me tell you.....!  It has been such a long time since I made a card and I really, really have struggled like mad to get back into the swing of it!  I needed a challenge to kickstart me off again and I found the TOMIC  and Totally Tilda challenges this week just perfect!  The task is to create a card or project with a Back to School (+ Metal for TOMIC) theme so I created this:

Trust me, there is metal on there - if you look closely I have used a metal (although painted!) brad to hold my tags together.  I have made this card for one of my lovely TA friends, and am about to go off and make a couple more for others! 

This Tilda and the rest of the school accessories was actually part of my DT pack when I was a member of the Magnolia International DT and I remember how much I really struggled to use it then, and this time was no exception!  The ruler, pencils, blackboard (which I've not used here!) are a dream to paint up, but I have always found this image really difficult to colour!  I'm sure we all have a Tilda that we find hard to work with!  Anyway, after several attempts, and many different uniforms, I finally decided to go with the green and grey because it's the colour of our school uniform.  The graph paper is ancient - I got this in a pack years ago but decided to drag it out again for this project.

While I have not been papercrafting, I have really noticed how many new products hit the shelves on a daily basis, and it's quite astonishing for me to see how people can still manage to keep up with all the latest products!  Is it just us who are really feeling the pinch right now?  I can't believe that companies are churning out so many new things (dies seem to be the quickest moving!) and people can still afford to buy them in their thousands!  I watched C&C on TV earlier this week and drooled at all the gorgeous new Nesties, but sadly my family need to eat and have a roof over their heads so that has to be priority! Nevertheless, if we are to believe the presenters, they were 'flying off the shelves'!  Even with the split payments I just couldn't justify picking the phone up.  I kept thinking about next term's school trips, music lessons, uniforms, shoes, and Christmas just around the corner, so my sensible side triumphed! Humph!  What wouldn't I give for something lovely and new to play with! :o(

Oh crikey, that sounded a bit miserable, didn't it? LOL!! Not one bit of it - I'm going to trawl through all the stash I have and make a dent in those papers I have stored away and hopefully make the most of the stuff I do have!

Well I'm going to go and start on my next Back to School card - I can't just give one out - now that I've made for one friend, I will have to make at least two more!  Thanks for stopping by my blog and I wish you all a good day! :o) xx

A shabby little number

Oh my, where has this week gone?  It seems like only 5 minutes ago I was waiting for that school bell to ring so that I could start a long, relaxing and self-indulgent week at home.  Well relaxing never came into it - I've spent the week redecorating but it was worth all the swear words - I love my new-look dining room, even if I did have to apply 3 coats of paint to the walls...Grrr......!

However, I have managed to find some time to get my stash out and start playing around again.  It feels a bit weird because I'm not getting a daily fix at the moment.  I need to organise myself a bit better so that I can get more craft time in.  At least it's starting to look and feel a bit like Spring now - that's always a good spirit lifter!

It's absolutely AAAAAAAAAAAGES since I took part in a challenge blog so I decided that I would get myself over to Saturday Sketchers and pick up their gorgeous sketch this week as I knew that would be all the inspiration I needed to get going.

Isn't it fab!  Lots of lovely layers there.  On my travels I also noticed that Magnolias Down Under and Anything Goes challenges had the theme 'Distressing' this week so I'm entering this for their themes this week too.  So here's my card:

99% of the papers are from Donna's gorgeous Bearly Mine collections - mainly the Vintage collection in this instance.

Well that's my lot for today.  Thanks for stopping by and wishing you a very happy weekend. :o) xxx  

Back in Tech Land

Happy Wednesday morning to you, and if you are reading this can I just say how happy I am that you popped in.  My blogs have been extremely quiet for what seems like a lifetime but it's been out of my control.  I don't want to bore you with the details but, fingers crossed, everything should be OK now! 

Anyway, I am a little late posting this here - thank you Isaac for finding us another trojan to deal with!!!!  This is my DT offering for the current Bearly Mine Challenges theme which is Ribbons and Pearls:

It's been an odd couple of months in many ways.  Cash is tight (so what's new??) and stash spending has been non-existent.  In the absence of computer technology I have been playing around with other crafts and concentrating my efforts on home decor rather than papercrafts.  My sewing needles have had an airing, as has my crochet hook (though I think the less said about that one, the better!!!).  My dining room has been desperate for a facelift for about 3 years now - I decorated in there about 6 years ago and loved it up to about 3 years ago but have been putting off the inevitable using lack of inspiration as my sorry excuse.  However, I have finally found inspiration and have begun the process of revamping.  OMG, it's only a small room but it's taking much longer than I expected.  But I can see 'the look' beginning to happen and that's spurring me on.  Still a long way to go though as I am painting furniture too...... or rather, I will be once I get get off my backside and make that move!!!

So, that's me so far in 2011.  If you fancy winning yourself some goodies, get over to the Bearly Mine challenge blog and play along - there's some fab stash up for grabs and my teamies have come up with some amazing inspirational samples to whet your appetite.

Thanks for stopping by - catch you soon! :o) xx

Oh Joy!

Happy Sunday all - OMGoodness, isn't it freeeeeeeeeeezing!!!!  Now I do love a bit of snow, but sadly, that's all we got - a bit!!  But the cold is something else altogether....Brrrr......  It doesn't seem fair to have all this cold with so little snow to show for it! LOL!!

Over at Keep it Simple this week our theme is Joy.  Now the idea is to keep it SIMPLE, and that's what I did with my original project.  I made a hangy thing using K&Co Die Cut shapes - dead simple and done and dusted in about 10 minutes tops.  However, when I left it to dry what I didn't realise is that there was a bit of glue one the Deer and when I lifted it, a big chunk of paper came away with it leaving a nasty looking gash on the bottom die cut. Boooo!!!  For the sake of the challenge I played around with my photo editing suite and managed to sort of disguise it, but I wasn't completely happy with it so I quickly customised this card I'd made by adding the tag with 'Joy' on it! Yay!!

The papers I used are from the Bearly Mine Christmas Fun collection and they are so gorgeous to use!  There are so many beautiful papers in these kits that there needs to be more than one Christmas a year!!

Well that's my lot for the time being - my fingers are like little blocks of ice and I'm making far too many typo's because I can't feel them - plus I can hear hubby's car engine running which is my signal that he's ready to drive me off to Tesco so we can all eat this week!!!

Have a fab (and hopefully, warm!) Sunday and thanks for popping by! :o) xx

Birthday Sale

If you've seen Donna's papers and really fancy grabbing yourself a bargain, this is a fantastic week to get over to Bearly Mine Designs!  To celebrate her birthday this month, Donna is offering 15% off all digi sets and CD's from today, right through to 19th November!  Check out some of these sets

These are just a small selection - there's tons more over at Bearly Mine Designs!  Enjoy!

Christmas came early!

Good morning bloggers.  Argh!  Someone needs to have a word with the TV Network Controllers - who in the right mind would pitch Bon Jovi against Robert Plant?? Huh?  What a dilemma I had to face last night when BBC2 had a Robert Plant evening, and at the same time ITV had Bon Jovi "For one night only"!!!  This was one of those extremely rare times that I wished I'd had the foresight to upgrade to Sky+! LOL!  Naturally the Golden God himself won, but I did flick across to get a Bon Jovi 'fix' from time to time - and Hey, Thank God for iPlayer!!! LOL!

Well, it really did feel like Christmas had come early for me this week when I arrived home from work on Friday to find my mailbox full of absolutely STUNNING digi papers from Donna and Amy!  OMGosh!  What a treat!   I have used one of the glorious soon-to-be-released Christmas Dreams papers on my Delicious Doodles DT card over on my other blog, and another one right here

I also made this card for the Keep it Simple theme this week which is Shape Up!  I used one of the many Simply Dots papers (OMG, the colours of these are just soooooooo delish!!!!) - my favourite shade of blue! Oooooh!!

Well now, that's my lot for today.  Please go and check out my uber-talented teamies gorgeous creations! 

Thanks for stopping by and have a great Sunday!  See you soon. :o) xxx

WooHoo!!!!

I did it!!  I made it onto the Bearly Mine DT and I am SOOOO excited about it!  I am dying to show off some of the amazing papers that I have received over the last couple of days but there are so many of them that I have spent my time wisely sorting them out to make them easier for me to access!!  So watch this space because I will be back VERY soon with my first offering, with many more to follow over the coming days!

I would like to say a huge Thank You to Donna for having faith in me, and I cannot wait to get to know the fabulously talented bunch of ladies who will also be creating fabulous projects!  Take a look at my sidebar to see who they are and please go say Hi to them and marvel at their wonderful creations!

Ooooh..... Spooky!!!

Wooooo..... it's been a loooooong time since I visited here.  Despite my best intentions, I haven't had a lot of chance to play with my Maggies for a while.  I've been playing around with other stuff that you can see on my other blog .  Then this week I spotted that Donna of Bearly Mine Designs has put out a DT call for her gorgeous papers and I decided to take my chances and use some of her fabulous freebie papers!  They are gorgeous and work so well with my Digital Scrapbook kit too! 

So, over at Keep it Simple this week our theme is Oooh, Spooky! and, despite how this may look, my project this week was extremely simple!!  I got the fabulous Trendy Tote template from My Time Made Easy and I created mine for Halloween.  However, I now have Christmas sorted too because EVERYONE is getting one of these filled with some useful goodies!  It is so inspiring!!  They can be filled with yummies, soaps, tools, craft stuff..... So easy and very, very quick to assemble and customise too, I think this was probably my best buy of the year!

I'm also submitting this project to the Magnolia's Down Under challenge which, this week, is Halloween inspired.

Well that's my lot for here today.  Busy day ahead - we've just had a new suite delivered so I want to rearrange my living room a bit before I do the Tesco run!  Hope you have a great week and thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Ahoy there!!!

Happy Friday from a VERY frustrated me!!! I have spent way too much time today trying to get my pooter sorted out because I couldn't get internet connection. After many, many, many attempts I finally made a phone call to Sky who advised me to unplug my router, leave it 30 seconds and plug in again! Voila! Grrr.....Not impressed!!!!! Why didn't I do that in the first place?

So, here is my latest Magnolia offering - it's my first ever side-step card and I made it for the village show tomorrow but based on Magnolia Down Under's theme for this week which is to use Tilda AND Edwin on your project! So here they are together. Painted with distress inks and stickles, I think I was a little heavy-handed with the ink this week but it was fun! Thanks for the challenge girls! And as luck would have it, I also put a boat on my card and Tuesday Tagger's theme this week wants just that so I am going to add it to their player's list as well! Again ladies, Thanks for the challenge!!! :o)

Also, over on Just Magnolia challenges this week they want you to use a sentiment on your card and I figured my card just about qualifies there also, so I'm going to submit it to their challenge this week as well!

And thanks to you for stopping by - hope to be back soon! :o) xx

Monogram Tag

Happy Sunday folks! You know when you get an idea in your head but it doesn't always translate properly onto paper? Hmmmm.... well, that's a little bit how my tag went for this week. Our theme over at Tag, You're It! this week is Monogram, and I had this brainwave to make a letter into an entire picture/tag. So rifling through my Magnolia's for inspiration I suddenly hit upon the idea to use this Edwin stamp from a couple of years ago and make the letter 'O' into a lifebelt! LOL!! Not sure if it actually looks how it was meant to look but I thought it was quite sweet anyway, so here is my tag for this week!

And I've just had another brainwave - watch this space..........

Thanks for stopping by! :o) xx

Just..... a card!

Happy Sunday bloggers! Life is just toooooo busy right now! Loads of stuff going on and no time to stop for breath! It's been another rollercoaster week, lots of laughs and one or two tears but it's starting to feel a bit like the home stretch now and although there's still lots to do at school, you get the feeling that we're winding down a little. Phew!

Two weeks ago my eldest came home from school with a huge tear in the knee of his trousers! Argh!! Couldn't he just not fall over for 5 more weeks??!!! So with a grinding of teeth and a few choice words spat through clenched lips, I had to go and buy him a brand new pair. Then on Tuesday I spotted that his toes were looking really red and quite blistery! I was really bothered by this and figured that it must be the cheapo shoes I tried to get away with buying him from Tesco. Anyway, I couldn't let my boy go round with feet like that, even for only 3 more weeks - no way. So on Wednesday afternoon I went out and bought him a brand new pair of Clarks - OMG, he was 5.5 and the shoes he'd been wearing from Tesco were only 4.5!!!!! No wonder his feet were sore! So that was it - I put my foot down and said ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE! Then he came home on Thursday - OMG, I could have cried for him. He's had ANOTHER fall in the playground but he must have landed really hard because all down his right hand side is cut and bruised and his arm has had a huge slice of skin completely sheared off, his shoulder was swollen and badly grazed and, yes, you guessed it, his knee took another bashing, along with his brand new trousers!!! However, this time they ARE going to be repaired and I'm going to get him one of those baby walkers to stop him from having any more trips before the end of term!!

This is a card I made for a Tilda Challenge over at Docrafts last week and haven't even had time to blog it yet!

Tomorrow is going to be the stress day from hell so if there is a God, I'm desperately hoping I've earned enough brownie points to have him smile on me for a couple of hours! If I make it to lunchtime I'm going to be laughing for the rest of term!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week. :o) xx

A couple of Good Luck cards

Happy Sunday peeps! I have had the very good fortune to work with two wonderful student teachers this year, both of whom are going to go on and become fantastic teachers and although I'm going to miss them both so much next year, I wanted to wish them both loads of luck when they leave us next week....sob..sob...!! So I made a couple of Good Luck cards for them and decided to use blog challenges to help me! This week over at Anything Goes they have set the theme of Buttons and Bows in Monochrome. Now, something I need to get off my chest.... I hate buttons! I passionately hate using buttons on my projects!!! I look at other people's cards and LO's and think "Oooh, that looks gorgeous" but when I try to use them......pants! grrr!

I came to make the brown tones card and I practically held my breath when I stuck the button on - I thought "There.... it's on - walk away...!" LOL!!! But when I came to do the blue tones card, I just couldn't bring myself to stick another button on - sorry - I faced my fears once, but I couldn't do it a second time! LOL!!!

So there y'go - two Good Luck cards for two lovely ladies - now, which one do I give to who???? LOL!

Have a great Sunday - hope the sun is shining where you are! :o) xx

Anything Goes & Just Magnolia

Hi folks and Happy Sunday! Very short post from me today.

Over at Anything Goes this week you're asked to make something Pink & Cream and include pearls and lace, and Just Magnolia have this fab sketch by Mina, so I've combined the two challenges and produced this:

Hope you like! Thank you so much for stopping by and I wish you a very happy week ahead!

:o) xx

MDUC Flowers

Late again!! I had intended to get this photographed earlier in the week but life just keeps ticking by and stuff isn't getting done! I cannot believe it's Friday already and the half term break is almost over :o( I've still so much to catch up with but today is going to be a chill day - it's too glorious outside to be racing around doing work, and hey, I am meant to be on holiday! :o)

So here's my offering for this week's Magnolia Down Under theme which is flowers - can you spot any on this! LOL!!!! The castle is a template which I dug out because that's our topic theme when we go back to school and I was playing with it to see if it was child-friendly enough, and I think it definitely is!

That's my lot for now - thanks for stopping by and to all of you who leave me lovely comments, I cannot thank you enough, I really appreciate them!

A Brand New Challenge Blog!

Hey, there's a new blog on the block - Anything Goes! Brilliant!! And their first theme is to make something with wings and use the colours Blue, Yellow and Brown! So here is my offering:

It may not look it because my photography is pants, but the spotty bg paper is meant to be the yellow part of this deal - I couldn't go for the really bright 'in-yer-face' stuff because it just doesn't work for me, I'm not a vivid colours person so I hope this is OK for the challenge!

I cannot believe that it's Wednesday already - the whole of yesterday was spent shopping for b'day pressies for my youngest - oops! That reminds me - I need to book a cinema trip..... must dash! Thanks for stopping by and have a great day! :o) xx

Just Magnolia - Hot n' Spicy!

Happy Saturday folks - OMGoodness, what a contrast to last weekend! It's bucketing down here and it feels more like February outside! Nevertheless, it's bank holiday weekend and we have a whole week off school which is something to sing about. I have a lot of plans for this week so while it will be nice to be at home, I am going to be very busy. I have an old dutch dresser which is currently sitting in my shed because I just went off it, but I have bought some gorgeous off-white gloss paint and I'm going to give it a makeover. I've also got myself a raised vegetable bed so I intend to do a bit of planting this week too - I'm very excited about that, I can tell you!

Anyway, at Just Magnolias this week, the theme is Hot & Spicy so I used some hot and spicy colours on this Pirate Tilda card. I've had the papers for such a long time and haven't done anything with them yet, so when my Pirate stamps arrived on Thursday I got very excited indeed and dragged the papers out. Here's my offering, hope you like!

Well that's my lot for the moment - off for a trawl around blogland now. Thanks for popping in and have a great weekend! :o) xx