October

These photos were taken in Florida on the Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween evening we went to. (great Fun).

Paper is Crate Paper Katlin collection, stickers are 7 Gypsies.

September

These photos were taken at the Quenn Elizabeth Country Park near Portsmouth. It's a huge area with loads of walks and things to do.

Paper is Autumn Leaves and die cuts are BG Mellow.

August

The girls love to pick strawberries and when you have a pick your own farm on your doorstep almost it makes it much easier to do. Pickwells can even be walked to. How convenient is that !!

Paper and die cuts are K & Co Sweet Berry.

July

These photos are again at Mottisfont Abbey.

Papers are Autumn Leaves.

June

These photos were taken at Mottisfont Abbey in Romsey. Mottisfont Abbey is one of the National Trust's places.

Paper is K & Co.

May

These bluebells grow in the woods attached to one of the local country parks, Westwood in Netley (that used to be a tip some years ago.) They make a lovely walk at this time of year.

April

This is another Paris photo and again was taken in the garden at Notre Dame. For early April this tree was loaded with cherry blossom.

March

This is one of the photos taken in Paris. These tiny irises were growing in the garden at Notre Dame.

Paper is Autumn Leaves, prima flowers and iris buttons.

February

Strictly speaking the snow in these pictures was the snow that we had in April this year but I figures that snow was more Feb (or Jan but that one had been done) so went with that. The girls had the time of their life playing in it until it went slushy and then disappeared.

Calendar time - January

I have been working on a calendar for my Mum for Christmas. It uses photos from the local area and of the girls mainly (there are a couple of Paris photos too).

Here is January. The photo is of the chapel in Royal Victoria Country Park in Netley. It's all that is left of what was once a huge military hospital built in 1856-1863 http://www3.hants.gov.uk/hampshire-countryside/rvcp/history-rvcp.htm

BTW - I decided to put these on as seperate posts to save all the scrolling down I would need to do to get them all on in one post lol.

At last

I have finally found time to add some of the things I have been doing recently. I have lots more but am so busy till with Christmas coming up faster than I care to think about really that I never seem to get her. These 2 cards were out of a play yesterday after finishing the first of my calendars I am making as Christmas pressies.

Darn it the damned things won't load for me so I'll be back when they will. Grrr!

Success it has now decided to work for me. Yay!!!

Well this card is made using an acetate base. I have used white card as the base for my stamped image toppers and chalked it with 2 tones of orange blending chalk. The stamped images are all Magnolia stamps built to create a scene. FIrst time for me using acetate and although I didn't find it trouble free I will be having another go at some point.

This card has lots of layers using papers and vellums in the same design as the acetate on the card above. Only thing I'd change is that I used gold mirri card (as originally it was going on the acetate card). I'd switch that to silver if I could to keep the theme going better.

Challenge LOs

This was LO 2.

Papers are We R Memory Keepers from the precious metals range and also Heidi Grace (which I cut *eek*), Punchboard - Heidi Grace, Star brads and mini Prima flowers linked together with my Jelly Roll Glaze pen. Alphas are mixed Thickers and some K & Co from Alphas to go ? box.

This was LO 1. It's a photo I have scrapped before but I like this photo and went with it again.

Papers, die cuts are K & Co Neopolitan Citrus from a scrap pad to go. Daisy D's stickers for the title and some of the words, Prima flowers

Wot No Hands

I've been a bad blogger again. Been busy though lol.

Here is my DD1 on her first day at senior school. No tie because they hadn't been given them at that point. School changed all their ties as they have introduced Communitites this year (houses to most of us) and as such presented every child in school with a free tie.

Papers, stickers and shapes are BG from the Two Scoops range. Lush !! Alphabet stickers are a mix of Chatterbox and Thickers from American Crafts.

The title just came as an obvious one due to her sleeves being too long on her blazer. Well she'll soon grow. !! This was a sketch at the CD for Sept.

Fully Loaded

Here is my entry for a fully loaded challenge on CD. The oh so talented Anita creates fab fully loaded LOs and in the absence of any forum challenges set us a challenge herself to create a fully loaded LO.

This was my 3rd go and although it isn't as fully loaded as the other 2 it was my favourite so I entered this one.

Papers, 3D stick outs, stickers and tags are Chatterbox, Flowers Prima with various brads, s/a pearls and BG buttons. Pearls help frame the photos.

Challenge time

This has to be one of my favourite recent pieces. Shell and I set up some new challenges for the girls on the 3Cs forum. We each in turn have to find a sketch then make a card, an atc and a LO using that sketch. We can make various stipulations for each item as we chose.

Well the first one to set the challenge was Carmen. This is my LO from the sketch. I stuck pretty close to the sketch and really like what i created. (Always a bonus lol)

Paper is K & Co - Mira collection, We had to hand make flowers, so I cut mine out of more Mira paper and added some glitter stickers from the same collection. The embossed word stickers are .... yep, you guessed it, Mira too. Buttons are BG, ric rac from Papermania and alpha stickers are Chatterbox.

Here is my take on the sketch for the card This one had to have a stamped image on in place of the photo.

The ATC had to have at least one of the Dottie or George downloads - (available to buy from Charmed Cards and Crafts - and reated by the very talented Lou Brigden.)

If you haven't already done so, check out her blog she is amazingly talented.

Other items

I have been hard at work on other projects too. It's been a long time since I blogged. (Sarah will agree here lol.) First I had trouble getting things on there, then I was caught up in what I was doing and then DH was on 2 weeks holiday. You try getting pc time in those 2 weeks. It would have helped if I had my photos in the shared folder so I could access them from my laptop but I hadn't. Lately though DD2 has been grabbing the pc during the day and then DH claims it when home from work so no chance.

Tonight I've been kind to DH and let him watch his film in return for me having the pc. So now all I have to do is find some of the things I have created and add them on here. Off for a rummage.

Other items

More baby album

Here are a sample of the LOs I have created for the photos to be just placed in. I tried to follow the standards as in the standard baby albums I had when my girls were born. (Wish I'd had something like this now)

I won't bore you with all the pages as there are 19 pages, so 38 LOs. Lol. You get the idea though from these. There are all sorts of ways for recording journalling - squares, tags in pockets and mini envelopes, even around the photo mat and a concertina booklet. It took a long time to do. (Thank heavens for the summer holidays.) The girls reckon she'll be in tears when she sees it. Hopefully they will be tears of joy. I'll tell you when we give it to her. Lol.

Should say that papers are a real variety in the album. Lots are the Dovecraft collection, also the HOTP baby collection but there are also some grown up papers (for family shots) like K & Co and Doodlebug. Embellishments include, ribbons, flowers, gem stones, threads, stickers and buttons mainly.

Baby album

Here is the front cover of an 8" x 8" album I made for DD1's head of year teacher (last year) DD2 might well have her as a teacher for part of this year, and I worked with her for part of last year. She is expecting twins and so thegirls and I thought we'd make her a book ready to take some photos.

Papers are Crate Paper - Baby Bee collection with some of the co-ordinating tags and rub ons. Additional embellishments are some craftime buttons and Doodlebug alpha rub ons. Ribbons were from Charmed Cards and Crafts.

The back cover is also Crate Paper - Baby Bee collection (photo at the bottom)

This is the inside front cover. Just love those elephants. She doesn't know what sex the babies are and doesn't want to so I have had to go fairly neutral with the pages, I know these have pink on them but I couldn't resist. Papers are Dovecraft.

The inner back cover is the same collection.

Ooh dear

Well it's been a while since my last post. I'm a bad blogger but I have been busy. School ended 2 weeks ago already for us. (Only 4 more weeks holiday lol). DH has been hogging the pc everytime I wanted to upload things and during the day I have been busy crafting to get things together to show here and elsewhere. Those are my excuses and next I will try adding some bits to share with you. (well when it lets me that is !!!!)