Happy New Year!

Hi guys,

Hope 2010 is a fabby year for you all, got to be better than 2009 anyway!

So much scrapping!

It seems like I've been thinking about scrapping constantly for most of this month! Not that I'm complaining, lol.

First there was the quarterly sale at Designer Digitals, I love the all-day chat they have on the Saturday, so many fun challenges.

One of the highlights is the 30-minute masterpiece, where we're given 30 minutes to complete a LO. There are some rules, and a few freebies to help. This time there were more rules than usual, but that just added to the fun! We had to create a balanced page, use 3 rectangles, 2 squares, fully justified text, and 2 fasteners on the page. It also had to include a photo taken in October. Here's mine, using a photo I took of Amy at Dean Castle country park recently, all products from Designer Digitals.

The other fascinating chat was with Katie Pertiet, all about blending. I love blending modes, they're among my favourite tools in digi scrapping. Katie talked us through creating a LO using blending modes, not an easy task in a chatroom with close to 300 people! Here's my LO for the challenge, loved the effect, and will definitely be trying it again sometime. Again all supplies are from DD.

Then last weekend was the Wicked Cybercrop on UKScrappers - a full weekend of challenges and classes. For some reason I didn't feel as involved in this cybercrop as I did in previous ones, I hope it was just because I was so busy. The classes certainly looked gorgeous! I did manage a couple of the challenges, even completing one with paper supplies!

This first LO used a sketch, and supplies from Designer Digitals, Kaisercraft and Sweet Shoppe Designs. The second LO was completed for a challenge which required us to create a LO with no photos! This was done about midnight, so I kept it fairly simple.

Besides all these fun events, of course, I've been creating LOs using Kaisercraft digi products. I can't put up many of those yet (a whole new experience for me, ooh, a bit of mystery!), but I can show you one.

I used the Hideaway collection for the first LO, and was so proud to see it on the Kaisercraft blog! I'm so enjoying creating with these collections. They're so different to other digi stuff I use. I think it's because Kaisercraft are a paper company originally, so they feel much more like a paper collection recreated for digi. This is fun, as it means I get to play with the rhinestones and pearls that first drew me to Kaisercraft in the first place!

So, now that I've completed such a long post (at least it had pretty piccies), I must make a mental note to myself - don't..leave..it..so..long..between..posts! Must try harder lol.

Kaisercraft Digi Creative Team

I'm on it. Woohoo! That is all.

Well, of course, that's not all! I'm super excited! Running round the room excited! It's my first time on a creative team, and what lovely talented ladies are on it with me. I was so excited when I got the e-mail to tell me, and we've all been chatting and creating for about a week now, but I'm such a fretter that I didn't mention it till now.

I always loved Kaisercraft's rhinestones and pearls, can't beat a bit of bling! I do miss that sometimes in my digi scrapping, there are products that mimic bling, but it's not the same.

So when I saw the call for the CT, I thought I'd have a go. I've been digiscrapping almost a year now, and felt ready to take the next challenge!

Here's the LO I created using the free Tag This along with a couple of elements from Designer Digitals.

I've been paper scrapping for 2 1/2 years, but I never felt particularly adventurous with it. I liked my pages, but I didn't tend to try exciting new techniques.

It's different with digi, I love trying out new things! I can't exactly say I've found my style yet, can many people? All I can say is that I'm having fun lol. I tend to veer between pages that look like paper ones, and pages that could only be digi. I'm in love with brushes and masks. I love being able to flip a brush, and so find it frustrating when I go back to my stamps and find a flourish reversed from the way I'd like it for my page.

I love the versatility of digi. The way elements can be resized, recoloured, flipped and blended to match to any page. I love that once I've bought a kit the papers are there to stay. No 'saving the best papers for something special'. No faffing over that first cut into a precious piece of patterned paper. With the undo button that's never a problem.

So, I guess I love my digi scrapping. And you know the strangest thing? i always swore I'd never try it. I'd seen too many pages with oversize text floating, or fake-looking ribbons. I just couldn't see the point of using pretend ribbon when I had 10 jars of real ones.

That all changed when I took the Stories in Hand class at Jessica Sprague's site. The whole class was fantastic (and p.s. there's a new free class starting tomorrow if anyone's looking for another challenge), and the last task asked us to create a LO using a template. She provided a video tutorial to talk us through it. I was honestly hooked from that moment!

I love how many friends I've made over the last year, and indeed through scrapping in general. It truly is a wonderful, friendly and welcoming community!

What accompanies your scrapping?

I've always been easily bored, so I like scrapping as a means of multi-tasking my evenings. I can scrap AND watch the telly, I can scrap AND listen to music, I can scrap AND play on the web...oh ok, that last one doesn't really work. As I've said before, I'm also easily distracted.

If I had to choose, I'd listen to music every time. I could have the radio on 24/7, and did for several months after Amy was born. It was great during those night time feeds, to hear the radio presenter and know I wasn't the only person awake at some ungodly hour.

We still leave the radio on in Amy's room overnight, and I know I always liked to go to sleep with it on too. Though I'm starting to wonder if she's overdosed on it as she goes around singing 'B..B..C..Radio 2'.

At the moment, I'm also liking some albums while I scrap, my favourites just now are

1. Abbey Road by the Beatles

2. Gorillaz by Gorillaz,

3.Echoes, silence, patience and grace by the Foo Fighters,

4. Parachutes by Coldplay

5. The best of The Eagles.

So, what does everyone like to do while they scrap? Silence or music, telly or not?

Hot tamale, hot tamale, hot tamale hot hot...

So I spend a lot of time on t'internet. I've already mentioned Facebook a couple of times, I chat on a few forums, and I like using Flickr for my photos.

However, there is one site I go to for pure fun, Weebl's stuff. I first discovered it while I was a PhD student, so of course had plenty of time on my hands. We all become obsessed with it, and it's good to see it's still around, with new, funny videos/tunes.

I'll just include a few of my favourites here. There are loads on the site, though I'll warn you that they may not all be child-friendly. The ones I've listed are, Amy loves them.

Badgers, badgers, badgers - the original and still one of the best, also has a footy variation, and a version using the plush soft toys they now sell from the site. I got one for my sister recently - it's so soft!

Magical Trevor - another of the ones I remember from that time, a cute little tune about a magician.

Tamale - one of my new favourites after we found it a few weeks ago.

You may be singing the tunes for days, or curse me for sending you there, either way it is just a fun site I like to pop onto occasionally.

In praise of mantelpieces

We're thinking of moving house soon, so of course I've been noticing all the things I love about our current home. It's certainly a quirky house, with alcoves, and sloping ceilings etc.

One of my favourite pieces is the large chunky mantelpiece. It's so useful as a surface, and I love to take photos of it through the year.

Today it's got a thank-you card for Amy from one of her friends for going to their birthday party. There's also a printed out digi LO, some Transformers (a story in themselves), as well as a couple of photos of us. Just beside the train is a Drumstick lipbalm, which does taste a bit like the lolly, but is actually really sticky.

I really think a mantelpiece would be on my list of must-haves for our next house, I love how it can be dressed up for any occasion.

Christmas

birthdays

everyday - see those Transformers again?

I know I missed yesterday's prompt, was busy having fun at my crop. I do have an idea for it, but will save it for a day when the prompt doesn't grab me, I liked today's:)

The world is wonderful

Hiya,

Well, hmm, I said in Monday's post that my intention was to keep up with the prompts everyday.

Then yesterday I just had this thought that I've been spending way too much time on the computer. I can waste hours just flicking between forums, Facebook and blogs. There may not even be anything happening on any of them, but the whole internet is just so tempting, so alluring, so addictive! And I know I'm not alone in this addiction, all you fellow addicts know who you are:).

So last night, I had a quick check of FB before taking my daughter to settle her into bed, then I went to my bed too. At 8pm. I read for a bit, but was asleep by 10. It was fabulous!! This morning I even managed to make it till 9 before I was drawn into switching on the laptop.

That does mean though that I missed out yesterday's prompt, it's an interesting one, but I think I'll leave it for another day when I can devote more time to it.

Today's prompt is to list a few of our favourite things, or things that inspire us. I have had a wonderful day, so I'll include a few of the things that made it great.

First, Starbucks have their Christmas coffees out again. I had a yummy Toffee Nut Latte this morning, and the guy even gave me a voucher so I'll get my next one free:D.

Second, I LOVE H&M clothes, especially their children's section. Amy's grown so much in the last while, so we had a clothes shopping trip. I honestly think I could just about buy up their entire stock, but I limited myself to 4 pairs of trousers, a sparkly dress and a Hello Kitty pinafore. Wish I found clothes shopping for me that enjoyable.

Third, bumping into old friends. I saw a girl today I hadn't seen for a few years. It's cool, we lived across the close from each other when we were babies, then didn't see each other till we met again at Uni. And just last week she'd come up as a friend suggestion on Facebook, so as I can't think of a random photo for 'bumping into old friends', I'll promote FB instead.

Fourth, I have to promote one of my favourite blogs Cake Wrecks. It can be hilariously funny, with photos of professional cakes gone wrong. Have a look at the fan favourites down the side.

Fifth, I'm so looking forward to Christmas, for some reason I'm just really excited about it this year. Today I couldn't resist buying Amy this little set from Early Learning Centre. It was reduced, which was even better!

So that's my list for today, could be different tomorrow, who knows?

Blogging for scrapbookers

I'm taking this new course at Shimelle.com. It's odd how I found out about it, I noticed on Facebook that several of my friends from different scrapping forums were becoming friends with each other. So I decided to join in too, as I do tend to find it hard to bother updating here, then get overwhelmed thinking about how much I'll need to add.

It's cool already catching up with friends from so many different forums. I'm hoping it'll get me more comfortable with updating my blog.

My intention is to keep up with the prompts every day. However, I also know that I am very easily distracted. Because I primarily do digiscrapping now, it's easy to drift between PSE and the internet - especially that blasted Facebook, which just sucks up time lol.

Today our prompt was to state our intentions for the course. We could also take a photo of our scrapping space if we wanted, and even do a page, but I was working on a page for something else so ran out of time.

I have found another fun place to hang out recently, logyourmemory.com. It's run by my friend Kristin, and is a new forum. It's based around her memory logbook, which is a place to note memories and info until you get a chance to scrap them. The grand opening fun weekend was just there, and had a lot of cool chats and freebies. Pop over if you get a chance.

As for my recent scrapping, I've done a LO for the last two weeks of the Designer Digitals challenge, as well as a general one.

The third week of the challenge asked us to create a heritage page. I've not tried one before, but my mum gave me a bundle of photos of me as a baby/ toddler after Amy was born, so I used a couple of my favourites from those. I had a lot of fun putting the page together.

The last week challenged us to show off our brushwork. I love using brushes, and love this photo of Amy and her friend, so that was my starting point.

Amy and I spent a morning recently at our local woods collecting a bag of fallen leaves to use for craft projects. Amy loved picking them up, and was very pleased to spot Scrat (from Ice Age). Though I guess it could have been a squirrel.

Phew, longer post than usual, hope someone makes it to the end! Hiya to any fellow classmates:).

Loving the Designer Digital challenges

This month they've got 4 challenges, one per week. The challenge the first week was to use products from at least 3 DD designers. That was easy, I tend to use a mix anyway, and the styles work well together. This was my page, I couldn't sleep one night, and got back up to play on PSE, and loved the result. I used supplies by Katie Pertiet, Anna Aspnes, Pattie Knox and Mindy Terasawa.

This week's challenge is to use 3 photos. This was harder, I knew what photos I wanted to use, but it took many incarnations before I, again, had an idea at night. I just had to get back up and turn it into a LO. Here I used supplies by Mindy Terasawa and Katie Pertiet.

Apart from that I've been enjoying the template challenges, here's my LOs for the past 2 challenges.

I'm still loving the digi scrapping, so much easier to get on with when I have 5 minutes peace:).

Though I see there's a cybercrop coming up soon on UKScrappers, so that might jolt my paper scrapping mojo again:).

Beautiful Evidence and first day of nursery

It's been a busy time, Amy has just started nursery and is loving it! She goes 3 times a week, which is plenty for now.

I used all Designer Digitals supplies for this LO.

I'm also doing another course on Jessica Sprague's site. It's called Beautiful Evidence, and at the end of the course we'll have an album all about ourselves, and our life right now. I'm loving it, especially as we get a template each day, so as long as we have the photos ready the page come together easily! We also got a fabulous kit to use.

I'm starting to fall behind, now that we've got to the family pages, just because I'm too indecisive, and there are so many photos to choose from, but I'll get it finished - honest!

Yay, my jigsaw came home

Yay, I got my jigsaw! Last post I showed all the pieces I'd done for everyone's jigsaw. Here's mine, the theme was butterflies, and each person in my group did a piece. I'm so pleased with it, especially how much dimension there is to it!

Maureen, you asked in the comments last time how it started, well we each started with a blank chipboard jigsaw. This swap was on UKScrappers, which has a great selection of swaps. It was run by Frances, who was a fantastic host, keeping us all straight about which piece to decorate with each theme so the jigsaws would work at the end. I don't envy her that task! We're hoping to do a 6x6" swap in a couple of months to complete the set.

8x8 jiggy swap

After the 12x12 jigsaw swap I took part in on UKS earlier this year, I was eager to join in with the 8x8 swap. I've just finished my pieces, and can't wait to receive back my complete jigsaw. I feel that I used more techniques on this jigsaw, and played a lot more with ink/ paint.

The themes were

1. Musicals. I found this really difficult, as I'm not a big musicals fan, but I like how it turned out. I found some show programme images on the web and used them to create a background, then added a couple of painted acetate notes and a flower which I stamped with a text stamp.

2. Christmas. This was the first piece I completed, I painted the piece, then embossed silver snowflakes. I then stamped christmas trees, cut them out and added them, mounted on foam pads. I completed the piece with a metal embellie and a small piece of ribbon.

3. Vintage Love. I enjoyed doing this piece. I used patterned paper for the background, and added a strip of lace across the middle. I stamped the roses, and wrapped some mulberry paper round them, then used that paper also to make a couple of hearts.

4. Butterflies. This was my theme. I created a digi background using supplies from Designer Digitals, then stamped 2 butterflies on acetate. I painted one with Staz-on ink (using a cut n' dry nib) and gold acrylic paint, and added Stickles to the other.

5. Celtic. I loved the sound of this theme, but for some reason I had great trouble creating the piece that was in my head. I'm pleased with the final outcome though. I printed a celtic seal, then added leaf beads to artist wire to create a look of a slightly hidden celtic stone.

6. Fashion through the ages. I stamped on the background of this piece with Paperartsy stamps, then added cut out stamps of shoes. I then added the quote, and created a hanger from artist wire. I stamped a bag, cut it out and made the strap from beads, which I then hung on the hanger.

7. Faeries. It took me a while to decide what to do with this piece as it's not a theme I have any supplies for. I drew on a wing, then coloured it with Stickles, paint, ink and liquid pearls. I had a lot of fun mixing those all together to see the effects. I then added a stamped fairyland ticket.

8. News Headlines. I decided to go with the moon landing for this one as I am an astronomer at heart. I painted the jigsaw piece with a mix of black and blue acrylic paint, stirred together with silver stickles. I then added a chipboard moon, painted with liquid pearls, and a teeny American flag on it. I found a picture of the moon lander, and the front page of a newspaper from that date. I printed this image out, added some distress ink to yellow it, and folded it with some blank paper so it would look more like a full newspaper.

9. Mythical creatures. I chose the phoenix as the creature for this piece. I printed out an image, and blinged it up with sparkly pens and stickles. I added some stickles dots on the background too to look like stars. I then printed out the phrase, and burned the edges with a match.

Quiet time for scrapping

This last month I've barely scrapped, just don't seem to have had the time. I'm sure I read an article in one of the mags last year which said our creativity goes in cycles, so I'm clearly in a gathering phase just now. Hope the creating side comes back soon:). I am just back from my holidays, so do have 250 new photos to scrap!

I did manage the first day's challenge in Jessica Sprague's challenge a day at the start of June, to list 5 favourite things about summer. It includes my new favourite technique - extractions, which I learned using a fabby technique from Cassie on Designer Digitals.

I did do a couple of interesting LOs at the start of last month when Anna Aspnes set challenges on Designer Digitals, they are totally different to anything I'd usually do, but I loved being out of my comfort zone.

The first one gave us a template, with the title 'Absolutely Zero Desire', and I had great fun thinking of my top 10 to be included.

The next week she gave us an overlay, including the title 'I have a secret desire 2' which came just at the right time for me to know exactly what to write about.

To counteract that, I did my first paper LO in a while, and as I'm not doing so much of it, I decided to go all out and include lots of product. I love the bright colours in it.

Loving the challenges on Jessica Sprague

This LO was done for the 3kits 3ways challenge on DD. I used J Edwards Bluebells and Daffodils kit; A Aspnes Esther brushes; K Pertiet Photo wraps as the 3 kits, as well as some other bits and bobs from DD.

Jessicasprague.com had a week of challenges this week - 7 LOs in 7 days. I wasn't able to do all of them, but I got 3 done. Even better, there's one for each day in June too!

This first challenge gave us a template by LivE. I used the Pandamonium kit by M Terasawa for the little bee etc.

The second challenge got us to use a blending technique. I used the heart shape from the standard Photoshop shapes, then added a brush and changed the blending mode to overlay. I like this photo, taken as my photo of the day in January. 

This last one is just a fun one. We were to think of a song that means a lot to us. I love Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves, it's just such a sunny, happy song. I made the little mini-me last year as one of the challenges during a UKS cybercrop, so I used a photo of it on my LO now that I know how to extract things!

If you've never done a digi scrapping class, then I totally recommend Jessica's classes. There's a video tutorial for each one, and tons of supplies. It's the easiest way to learn, I've learnt sooooo much!

More LOs

I love you because...
I almost think there's too many challenges available for scrappers, I love them, but sometimes I can get caught up in thinking I have to try them all! Today was Saturday Scraplift day on Designer Digitals, and I gave it a go. I'm not used to scraplifting, but I liked the original LO. It was fun to use baby photos of Amy as I've just been using recent ones so far for my digi pages. Also, I LOVE the Pandemondium kit by Mindy Terasawa, and use it all the time!

I'm also loving all the various styles of page I see in the gallery. This week's colour challenge on DD was set by Anna Aspnes who has a really cool arty style. We got this background paper, and the swirly clipping mask. It's totally not my usual style, but I enjoyed having a play. I downloaded the dragon clip art and covered it with paper from K Pertiet's clipper paper pack. 

Apart from this we've just had the first posting of the eco-friendly cj on UKS. My theme is reuse: what have you repurposed around the home. I'm thinking there could be some really interesting themes with this one.  I've asked that everyone use some packaging on their LO. On mine I cut some flowers and title out of a Mintrels packet and a cookie wrapper using my Sizzix dies. The title on the front was cut from magazines and a colouring pad of Amy's (the U).