what'cha think?

Hey everyone, it's been a while since I contributed to Blog Land. Things here have been crazy busy, after my small operation it took for ever to get rid of all the after effects, pain, tiredness and feeling completely doped up all day!! I'm fine now though, it's wonderful to now walk faster than the very elderly ladies that over took me a couple of weeks ago!?!
I did manage to get some serious scrapbook time behind me whilst in recovery mode and completed 2 ( yes I did say 2) albums of our 25th wedding anniversary cruise of last year.
Lots of stuff is going on at home too which has occupied most of my time, seriously, I would much rather be crafting than dealing with most of it.

Anyways,...onto the good stuff. I'm taking the plunge and venturing into the strange wild world of CDrom production. I know the card isn't anything too fancy, (it took all of 2 mins to put together) but take a look at the image, do you think she is as cute as we do? I had a whole load of digi stamps that I produced and with a massive amount of help from my baby son have started work on a cdrom full of them, complete with backing papers, sentiments and lots more.
So, we created the cute image and both the background papers. Now, this is just a little glimpse of what we have but I'd really like your feed back. What'cha think?

ooh lala

When my Beginners French class ended last week, I wanted to say a special thank you to our great teacher, Muriel. I knew months ago what kind I wanted to make and ofcourse, it had to have a French theme! I love pop up cards but had never made one before, so with a little help from Google I did it. Hope you like it.

The card itself, is a double sided A4 from Kanban which I scored and folded in half, making an A5 size card. Using a sheet of Papermania  Signature Chatsworth Vintage A5 pad, I wrapped it over the spine when the pop up part was complete, that way it covers all the holes! This paper is gorgeous and has a linen feel.

I adore this Martha Stewart lace punch, simple black card stock transformed!
The sentiment (Merci) is hand written inside a stamped label and then cut around and set with foam pads.

Check out on your search engine for tips on pop up cards, it's basically done by just making a couple of slits from the spine of the card inward to the length of where you want your object to pop up! By folding them inwards it creates a sort of step/stand for you to adhere your image to. Just make sure that before you cut or glue anything, fold it all flat and make sure all parts are concealed when the card is closed.
                                                

maybe you can see better in this picture?





The Eiffle tower is cut from Cricut Destinations cartridge. When doing a scene like this it's important to remember perspective, so the tower is cut at about the same height as the tree and the lampost which are in the middle ground. The railing and bike are in the foregound and are also large in comparison but it helps with the illusion of distance and depth of field - wow, doesn't that sound scientific!!!

The bike, railing, lampost and tree are all from the Cricut Heritage cartridge.











 I used some Glossy Accents to highlight and a little Stickles in green on the railings to give a more metallic impression. I was rather pleased with how it turned out, I almost didn't want to give it to her!!!

BYU Womens conference

You may remember a while ago I went to the states for a womens conferance. I had the most wonderful time and had the best girlie time ever.

 First I flew to L.A. to spend a couple of nights with my good friends then us girls, ( 5in total as we gave this cute lady a lift all the way to her son's house in Spanish Fork) drove to Provo, Utah. We all shared a room and laughed our socks off almost continuously. Two of the girls I'd known for over 20yrs, (mum Paula & daughter Mary) but I met their good friend Kitty just the day before we set off on our road trip. We hit it off straight away and bonded in our own little craft world, she has a black Cricut Expression which she won, I adored it!

The womens conferance is a 2 day event aimed, as you might guess, totally at women and our lives, issues and needs. There were literally dozens of sessions to choose from each morning and afternoon, each based on a scripture but applied in a realistic way to our time. Over 15,000 women attended. The Thursday night we were treated to a fab concert of great artists including Hillary Weeks (a beautiful voice and hillarious), Alex Boye (he is a storm),.......

In most of the sessions you could choose to complete a service project at the back of the session room. Here we decorated papier mache boxes, 500 were completed in just one day. They will be distributed around hospitals in the area to parents of still born babies as keepsakes. The hospitals put a photo and plaster cast hand/foot print in the box.

This was such a lovely service project, we made 5 between 3 of us. It was an experience I'll always treasure and hope to do again someday. Of course, I had to make a Thankyou card in advance and a birthday card for Mary. Here they are.

I used corrugated craft card, Kanban card and a downloadable image & sentiment that was then coloured with Promarkers. I blinged it up a little with some pearls and organza ribbon.

Again, Kanban card, Kanban topper, organza ribbon and acrylic stamped sentiments. I hand wrote..." sorry I missed your birthday - I was too busy shopping!"
I thought it was cute even though it was a real quickie card, hope you like it.
see you all soon x

Great Britain quilt

Now, I've heard it said you shouldn't rush a good thing and so I didn't. This little baby took me over a year to complete, but in my defence, I had a lot of "put it down till later" time.
Work demands and illness meant my project was put aside for weeks, sometimes months at a time.

This was my first patchwork quilt but I never like to do things the easy way. As I couldn't find a pattern for a Union Jack I had to make my own.

It was quite tricky to get all the "on point" work - (the corners or mitres) to line up but I was pleased with my efforts.

I made a big mistake in planning this quilt. I wanted a really comfy quilt and thought bigger was best so I chose the thickest batting (the wadding that goes in the middle of you quilt sandwiche) that I could buy. The problem was that it made it too thick to go through my sewing machine meaning I had to do all the quilting by hand, apart from the very edges.    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

This is how the quilting looks underneath - don't look too closely though, ok!

Acrylics

Wow, it's been an eventful time of late, not to mention having been on two holidays. I know that sounds extravigant, but really it wasn't - one was a mini break in Scotland and the other a well needed girlie week at Womens' Conferance. Consequently, my craft room is collecting a layer of dust, ( just to match the rest of the house), but to make up I'm going to show you 3 more paintings. There, I feel better already :)

This one is called "Walk to school" and features pupils of the Jolorabi school in Mombasa, Kenya.

sorry but the photos don't do the paintings justice. But it will give you the general idea.

This one is entitled, "Mzee" which is Kiswahili for old man or Grandfather.


All my paintings are acrylic on canvas

Have a great weekend x

Women don't fish...

Well, I haven't posted a sunday inspirational for a few weeks with being away in the states and then get the head cold from hell. I'll be busy this Sunday night too so here's a Wednesday night giggle instead. Have a great rest of the week.

Never Argue with a Woman

One morning, the husband returns the boat to their lakeside

cottage after several hours of fishing and decides to take a nap.

Although not familiar with the lake, the wife decides to take the boat out.

She motors out a short distance, anchors, puts her feet up,

and begins to read her book.

The peace and solitude are magnificent.

Along comes a Fish and Game Warden in his boat..

He pulls up alongside the woman and says, 'Good morning, Ma'am. What are you doing?'

'Reading a book,' she replies, (thinking, 'Isn't that obvious?')

'You're in a Restricted Fishing Area,' he informs her.

'I'm sorry, officer, but I'm not fishing. I'm reading.'

'Yes, but I see you have all the equipment.

For all I know you could start at any moment.

I'll have to take you in and write you up.'

'If you do that, I'll have to charge you with sexual assault,' says the woman.

'But I haven't even touched you,' says the Game Warden.

'That's true, but you have all the equipment.

For all I know you could start at any moment.'

'Have a nice day ma'am,' and he left.

 

MORAL:

Never argue with a woman who reads.

It's likely she can also think.

Sneak preview

Ok, you know I told you that I was gonna be designing for http://www.thepapertrailco.co.uk/. Well, I thought I'd let you in on a very sneaky preview of some of the digistamp designs I'm working on. Right now they are just my art work but pretty soon we will have them as a complete range with backing papers and sentiments to match. Keep checking at The Paper Trail co. as we are releasing new stuff regularly. Hope you like these images, and do let me know if there is a range you'd like to see us do.