A few publications!

I often forget to share some of the things I create for different mags. Here’s one of the projects you can find in the current Simply Cards & Papercraft using stamp sets from Altenew and showcasing multi stamping!

Head to the previous issue for a fun set of projects ‘stretching your twine’ -yes, those are cocktail and I did knit the twine!! Was good fun but the wooden sticks kept catching the twine!

 

Heading over to Creativity mag …a poor picture but hopefully you get the idea of the 3D accordion card. This is using the Natures Gallery collection.

   

Then just one from Crafts Beautiful using some Smash Book supplies but using them for card projects. 

 

Lots more to show you another time- but thought these would give you a glimpse to the varied things I have to create!

If you want to see more…go and check out the mags!

Have lots more coming up! See you tomorrow with a fun stamping contrasts post from Make The Day Special! 

xx

Crafts Beautiful Roundup!

Hi!
Just popping on briefly to show you a little peek into the Crafts Beautiful March edition. The card is one of 5 showcasing chevrons and arrows using some Project Life goodies. PL isn’t just for scrapbookers 😉.

These are also in there- plus a little bracelet – some papercrafted jewellery using docrafts new Little Miaow collection. Super easy and if you want to know how to make them- go and get the new Crafts Beautiful. It comes with a great bone folder set- just perfect for making those paper earrings.
Obviously going out in paper earrings might be challenging particularly in this Brit-type of weather. So save soggy appendages, just coat in glossy accents, or a glaze/varnish. You could try dipping them in UTEE too if you wanted them with a thick layer of shine too!
Sorry I’ve been quiet- a ton on plus half term means very little time to do much else!
See you soon- with another magazine roundup!
Xx

Happy 2015!

Happy 2015 everyone!
Crafter’s generosity to others never fails to surprise me. Take this card..this is in this months Craft Beautiful as part of the 5 Ways with… and I picked Clearly Besotted to focus on. I’d already got several of their stamp sets and love the clean crisp stamping you get plus gorgeous designs for pretty much every occasion you can think of!
I mentioned to Stephanie that I was doing this feature and she amazingly sent a ton of stamps to use. This first card is using the Good Times set with matching die If you want to see the whole feature, do check out the current Crafts Beautiful.
Here’s another peek using the Brushed Poppies set

Do pay Clearly Besotted a visit- you’ll love what you find there !

Everyone’s busy making New Year’s resolutions aren’t they. Me? I rarely do. I love the One Word idea coined by quite a few Scrapbookers.
My word for the year will probably be ‘Hope’ or more likely ‘Survival’ 😋.
What would be your one word for the coming year if you had to choose one?

Thanks for bearing with me- normal service will be resumed shortly 😉 and I’ll get time to come and visit your blogs again too!

xx

Mag Roundup & Packing!

Morning! I’m just posting some of the projects I’ve been squirrelled away creating. These ones are in the current issue of Crafts Beautiful. They’ve loaded in a strange order but I’m out and about whilst posting so you’ll have to bear with me!

Despite having only just broken up from school (& my US friends are about to send their kids back!), here’s a trio of ‘Back To School’ ideas guaranteed to help smooth the re-entry back into lunch boxes and new teachers ( or at least make you feel a little better about it 😉) I’ve used a Lawn Fawn stamp set called ‘A Good Apple’

This set of 5 projects continues my series on ‘5 ways with..’ I chose to do some ombré style stamping with stamps from Hero Arts combined with some bright and cool papers from Basic Grey

This last pic gives you a good idea of the colour and shows you how I slip up sometimes. In order to write the copy for the mag, I need to take the measurements and details. On this occasion I was running late and had written down all the details but not how to create them. Without a photo of each project ( which I tend to use for the blog too), I can’t remember exactly what each project looks like, so I had to rip open the package, photograph them whilst sitting in the car and package them up quick before racing to the Post Office!

I’ve been doing another sort of packing.
Helping my older boy get ready to go on camp.
It’s easy to forget he’s not very old- he acts reasonably maturely ( ahem…) most of the time. But at the grand old age of 10, going away for the first time is a big deal.
We’d chatted through and made a list. I was amazed how he turned up telling me that he was all packed.
I had visions of a tangle of screwed up clothes.
‘Oh no, Harriet helped me pack and showed me exactly how to do it’.
I quizzed him a little more.
‘I have rolled up each item so it doesn’t crease’ and promptly gave me a demonstration.
Big sister done good!
There was little that needed adding and apart from a quick check, that was the easiest packing I’ve ever done.
Or not done 😉!
So now we’re packing him off to camp and hoping that returns in roughly the same condition.
I’m expecting a few additions like extra mud, wet clothes and a few minuses like not all his clothes returning.

See you soon, after I’ve done lots of hugging and ‘goodbye-ing’! x

Lawn Fawn & More Beaches

Sometimes life brings around lovely happystances ( good circumstances!!). In my freelance job for various magazines, sometimes I get really unique commissions. One such one was from Crafts Beautiful to do a series called ‘5 Ways With’ based on a particular manufacturers new range. I had to hunt down ranges & in doing so came to be in touch with Kelly Marie Alvarez. She’s the owner of Lawn Fawn and one of the nicest people in the US craft industry. She generously sent out a TON of stuff – some so new, they even had the Velcro from where they’d been stuck onto the CHA14 stand boards! Obviously we are working quite a few months in advance & the May issue is just out. There are 5 beautifully photographed Lawn Fawn cards all on the theme of ‘scenes’.

I’ve used a heap of sets- including these

and these lovely papers and embellishments

If you like the sets- you can visit Make The Day Special to purchase them. I’m not showing you all of them- you’ll have to buy the mag to see the rest..!

Yesterday I was a little stiff ( again!!). We decided to venture on a walk that involved following a typed out trail and a not-to-scale-map.
Should have been easy.
Ahem..
Is anything our family does ever straightforward?!!
We plumped for a little train travel which was supposed to add to the excitement. It did. Mostly.
Apart from the point where you’re visiting the underground part of the railway and the escalators are so high-angled and the kids so wriggly that my heart was in mouth plenty of times.
Once on the walk, it involved crossing two railways. One was secure, the other, you were told ‘just make sure you look and listen well’. Walking straight onto a track knowing that ‘trains cross here every few minutes’ was a little unsettling.
The next instruction was ‘cross through the golf course watching out for balls’!
Was this the ‘Bear Grylls walk’ in the local vicinity or was it just to give the folders target practice?!!
We walked through VERY quickly and came to the forested area. Legs tired quickly and we stopped for lunch after finding the most perfectly placed picnic table and chairs. Whilst eating our lunch we were treated to the surreal sight of police officers waving at us as they sped through the forest on quad bikes!
We got to the beach portion of the walk. The littliest was complaining of tiredness and apart from the broken glass on the beach, sand in their eyes and dodging the crazy dogs we had a great hour beachcombing and playing football thanks to finding a ball on the beach!

We were glad of the beach however, as it washed off the copious dollops of mud on our shoes. I wasn’t bothered- I told them we could wash the shoes but honestly, I seem to have unexpectedly raised neat freaks who were most concerned about the state of their shoes!!
We got a little lost.
The map was unspecific about which way you were doing the loop and I was unsure which way we were supposed to be heading along the beach. As it was an hours walk along the beach, I knew a wrong decision wasn’t going to go down well. Despite the lack of GPRS, we survived but then got lost in the forest too.
There was a great deal of whining by this point, they’d walked nearly 4 miles and although it’s not really far, it was windy on the beach and I think they were tired.
We relievedly reached the train station, got on the train but had to alight a stop before we were supposed to. We boarded another train to get the next place. The train after that took us somewhere we weren’t planning on going!
The escalators loomed and one of mine said they didn’t like heights.
Great.
The littlie decided to shout very loudly every sign he saw. People looked at him as he shouted ‘hold on tight, stand to the right!’. He repeated the phrase over and over but I was too tired to remonstrate him.
We couldn’t get to the stop we needed, so I had to drag them through town. Littlie was stopping every few minutes and if he could have stopped, sat down and never got up, he would have.
We finally reached the last train – ironically for all this train faffing, we could have driven the whole journey in 40 minutes!!
One started to worry that the car wouldn’t still be there, another decided we may have been broken into and yet another reckoned I couldn’t remember where we left the car.
The car was silent as I drove home- I’d finally managed to wear my kids out.
The next morning- it was quiet. No one rose early and all complained that their legs were stiff.
Not as stiff as mine.
The secret to good parenting?
Take them into dangerous situations where they may be run over, hit by golf balls, take them running along the beach ( avoiding the police, this time razzing it in a Landrover on the beach!!), do 7 individual train journeys, eat in the forest and you’ll end up with 3 tired but compliant kids!!

See you when I’ve been to the cinema ( also known as how to fall asleep in 5 minutes as it’s so dark and nobody is calling your name!) Xx

Magazine Projects Roundup!

Hi! Just popping by to show you some of the things I’ve been up to recently. This project is in the current Crafts Beautiful along with 5 others and here’s a peek of another set

If you want to see the other projects check out Crafts Beautiful.
Here’s a sneak of the latest Scrapbook mag that has some layouts in

this was a feature using Wow! Embossing powder.
If you look towards Simply Cards & Papercrafts there’s a few projects including this one

Then if you are flicking through Creativity you’ll see some projects like these

and if you want to know what they are, you’ll have to look in the mag!
Do check out the latest Get Stamping mag

for the feature on kids cards and lastly if you happen to be watching German TV on the craft shopping part you might spy some of these! ( he he)

and last but certainly not least is this

from Paper Crafts & Scrapbooking
I’ve been a very busy bee. Thought you might like a quick tour!
I’m not writing anything else or you’ll all fall asleep! Be back soon with some projects from my recent demos!

Birthday Greetings and Books!

Hello- to all you lovely blog readers. I don’t always get chance to say THANKYOU! for visiting and leaving comments- I really appreciate you popping by.
This card was in last months Crafts Beautiful- and is a great example of a hybrid sentiment. Sometimes you want to say something particular on a card and can’t quite find the right sentiment- well, combine a couple. These are sentiments from CAS-ual Fridays stamps ( & the circle lines too) with a partial sentiment from Hero Arts.
I love the mixed fonts. So easy to do.

Another project I was working on this week was this

The cushion was a congratulations pressie for my eldest on her exam results. That cushion was fun to make and mostly done in an evening. Ably helped by the wonder that is fusible interfacing. I roughly followed a pattern from Tula Pink I just used up fabric I had in. A really economical present and made me happy to be using up some of my fabric.

This week we’ve been lost in books and I’ve lost a book. We reconnected with the local library. The one nearest our home had been shut and only recently what we had thought was a school library was, in fact, a public library. They were rather pleased to see us. I guess as the library system is under threat, any new users help the stats. Well we temporarily removed 28 books from the library which the librarian seemed extraordinarily delighted by. I re-signed up 5 kids which she smiled a lot about too.
They’ve been reading.
And reading.
Even Will has tried to get in on the action.
Except instead of getting lost in a book, I’ve lost one of the books.
I’m hoping their new found pleasure in the family won’t dissipate as soon as I own up to the fact and offer to pay. I wouldn’t mind if I’d actually gotten round to reading it. Alas, it was next in the queue.
It was lovely to read a whole book in one week. That’s been a long time in coming.
I was surprised by the reviews though, talk about over egging a book. What I thought was an ok story had rave reviews from another.
Ah well. Onto the next book.
Any book recommendations for me? I always like a really good book!

See you once I’ve stopped trying to find the missing pages!
Xx

Circus Card & Trekking!

Hey! Thought I’d post a card that’s part of a set in Crafts Beautiful July issue. I suspect I’m gradually retreating into a ‘quirky’ box as they’ve entitled my cards as quirky for the second time. I like that!
I reckon I’m creating a new crafting style QAS: quirky and simple! I don’t think this is particularly kooky but maybe I’m blinded to it?!

I love the twine holding the tent down. I rarely ever use ribbon anymore. Do you think ribbon will have its day again?

I’m back home after a few days away. It was really only 2.5 days but it was so packed that it felt much much longer! On my way down to Bournemouth I stopped off at my friend Carole’s who has a lovely blog if you click the link. She is quite an inventress ( the female form of inventor!!) & is brilliant at teaching you how to use the Silhouette Cameo. If you live in the Oxford area and want to know how to get the best of your Cameo then Carole does one to one tuition ( or more if there’s a few of you).

I stopped off after a really sluggish journey. I just got there in time for a 3 course meal- yep. Gorgeous.
A full roast dinner with homemade soup for starters and a scummy crumble for afters. I felt really treated.
I did literally roll off the chair but it was so lovely being cooked for. We then got down to discussing all things crafty. Carole is a self confessed early to bed girl & was shocked when she realised it was 12:15 as she thought it was only about 10:30.
If you ever needed a spare something craft wise- what that girly hasn’t isn’t worth having! Shame I’m not nearer 😉

The next morning we went for a walk. I was wearing my long jeans so popped my heels on. We went for a walk- beautiful surroundings and weather. We popped to the park.
I immediately was inspired by their formal gardens. ‘Wow. Abingdon in bloom’ I gushed. Wanna see the display?!

The south has much to teach us about horticulture ( ha ha!). Maybe it’s into micro planting!!
We went through the town centre and stopped off at a little art gallery. I never get time to stop and be inspired. I was truly inspired here-even the shop front was stunning.

The poppy picture was completely arresting. The artist was a girl called Rozanne Bell
If I had the money…she produces multi layered art with resin. Just beautiful.

By the time we’d finished my feet were killing me- after good food, good company and cultured activities I hardly knew myself! Carole (& her hubby) was the perfect hostess ( not him- he wasn’t a hostess!!) and I loved staying there.
The mad fun was about to begin!
More on that one later..
Suffice to say I was a little stressed because I’d managed to break my in-car charger for my phone. I knew the Sat Nav caned the battery and wasn’t sure whether I’d get down to Bournemouth before it died.
I did.
It lasted.
But really.. I mean- if something is stuck under something else then you should just be able to yank it and free it shouldn’t you?
Or should you bend down gently and remove the obstacle before lifting it out?
I did the former.
Common sense is the latter.
The in car charger objected to my ‘yanking’ and retaliated my removing itself from its wires.
Not clever.
I just need a handy welder to fix it. Possibly a plastic moulderer to finish it too.
Good job I don’t need a Sat Nav to get to school.
See you when I’ve welded and moulded my charger back to life!! x

Spring Fling & World Book Day

Hi! Thought I’d post something a little different. This is the current Crafts Beautiful issue & I’ve a set of 3 projects in there. This is the card- just love the 5th & Frolic papers – I’ve been using them such a lot lately. I just might be in danger of actually using an entire pad up; a first for me!! With all the spring colours it makes me hope that spring is coming soon although as I’m sat here typing this post in a big furry coat, I suspect I’ve a little time to go yet.

I’ve had great fun designing with DoCrafts latest additions- their Kinetic Dies. These make moveable cards so easy. I’ll have a card to show you next post.
I should say Hi! to the Paper Crafts Connection readers visiting the blog. It’s lovely having you & hope you pop back really soon!

We are in the throes of organising 3 sets of fancy dress. I’m afraid I’m not a real fan. Not of dressing up per se, but not really wowed by having to help the kiddos dress up for World Book Day.

Now I love books.
We should absolutely support any efforts to encourage reading.
But I’ve never really understood world book day. ( is it really world wide?).
So, to increase book awareness etc. all kids need to turn up to school wearing a costume from a book.
Any book.
What do you do with kids who don’t relish the change in character.
As my no.4 used to say. I don’t want to be ‘superman’, I’m Jamie!

There are several forces at work here.
One is peer pressure ( nothing new).
Second is reducing the cost of 3 ‘cost’umes ( pun intended).
No.3 is vacillating.
She finally worked out a super idea. One that we could manage.
She came home despondent.
Someone else is dressing as that character.
‘Well, it’s not an exclusivity competition’ I encouraged.
They’d suggested to her that it wasn’t a good idea that they matched.She went along with that.
No.4 asked if he could go as Ron Weasley. Fine, I thought.
“Mum, could you dye my hair orange or spray it?”.
Ermm no.
Now he wants to be Harry Potter. He wants a grey jumper. We don’t have one of those. He’s planning on making some Harry Potter glasses.
This could be interesting using green funky foam!
No.5 is blissfully unbothered. He’ll decide on the day from a plethora of outfits that fit him and is still free from the clutches of needing his classmates approval.
In all of this do you think any of them have consulted a book, or even read one.
No.
Well, not if you don’t count ‘Biff and Chip’ the Reception reading scheme.

I have a revolutionary idea.
Next year, on world book day,
They could take in a BOOK.
And read it.
And maybe read two.
Shocked?
Do you think it might catch on?!!

See you when I’ve made a pirate eyepatch and combed out an old black wig that I used when I went as Trinity ( The Matrix) to a fancy dress party. But that’s a story for another time. Xx

Crafts Beautiful & Wahooooo!

Hey! Thought you might like a look at one of the projects in the February Issue of Crafts Beautiful out now. The rest of the baby  projects are in there along with a Glamorous gardening set using some gorgeous Authentique papers.  This little box is a variation on a 2,4,6,8 box and using some sponging with a freehand drawn cloud used as a template. The stamp set is a SU! one.

The Wahooooo! bit is that the Paper crafters Library have invited me and 3 other girls to be their first Design Team for a couple of months. I got the email inviting me yesterday on my Birthday- a pretty fab extra present! The site is a wealth of tutorials and inspiration and our job is to add a few more projects and tutorials that will hopefully inspire other crafters.

The other members of the team are..

Kristin Wilson

Michelle Weksler

Ezlie Perez

Go and check their lovely blogs out. I love that we’re all different with our own styles. Apart from being really excited and pretty honoured that Andrea, Sophia and the Paper Crafters Team have allowed me onto the team, I’ve been stunned by the amount of visitors, comments and messages from people. Crafters are really wonderful people!! My blog has nearly gone into meltdown! Thanks so much for visiting my blog and signing up to receive updates. I only hope that I can produce projects that inspire you!

I’ve been busy trying to clear away all the Christmas decorations, and start to reorganise myself. I’m not doing a particularly successful job when after putting everything away- actually labelling the boxes properly this year, shoving them into the loft on a stepladder that I oh-so-nearly-fell-off, screwing the door hatch back on (yes, I know!!), that I went downstairs and discovered the stable complete with knitted nativity figures still on the piano. It’s so big, I wonder how I missed it. The question now is how long will it take before I become too fed up, embarrassed, or oblivious to the fact it’s still there!! Ah well, I guess I’ve left the most important deccies out!

I have to sign off quickly- I’m in the  middle of a really challenging assignment. I like being stretched but my brain is resisting it. Kinda wished I’d got a few more brain cells for my Birthday!!

See you when I can tear myself away from the Bleak House DVD’s I got for Christmas xx