Makeover

This week's Speshal Dare is up and the prompt is "Makeover". I bought a set of A5 notebooks from Tesco a little while ago, that came with their own magazine file. I'd planned to leave them as they were because the colours were pretty funky anyway, but when I saw the prompt for this week, I decided that the little notebooks would be the subject of my makeover, and they are now a place for me to write down all my scrapping ideas ~ quotes, sketches, titles etc. 4 books might be a bit excessive mind you; I can't see me filling them all up EVER lol! I used Junkitz Salsa pp to cover the magazine file; Junkitz Salsa rub ons on the books, including flowers going across all 4 spines; Fancy Pants chipboard, painted with twinkling H2O's; BG rub ons; Primas and gems.

Check out the blog to see what everybody else got up to. :)

I spent yesterday afternoon playing around with some empty blister packaging from some of my old Doodlebug stuff. I'm turning them into hanging photo frames, with piccies of the kids in. Only I got started and realised I was one packet short; I know I definitely had 3 at some point but one's gone walkabouts (in the bin no doubt lol). Anyway, I went begging and the lovely Dawn is sending me one, so I can finish off my trio. I'll put pics up of the two I've done so far once the light is better. It was so gloomy yesterday that I couldn't get any decent pics. :(

Danielle's eyes are now much better btw, but she has a cold instead. I swear I should buy shares in Kleenex and Calpol.

Long time, no blog

Where did the last week go? Can I have it back please? I've been working on my DC classes, my Speshal Dare for tomorrow and also making easter hats for Charlie and Danielle. Oh, and I've been doing aerobics too (don't laugh, especially you Maria!). I'm so unfit it's untrue. After the first time, I ached so much that I couldn't even sit down properly for two days afterwards lol. But I'm sticking with it because we're going on holiday in June and I don't want Greenpeace trying to get me back into the water when I'm sprawled out on the beach.

Danielle's a bit under the weather; she's got conjunctivitis and is sitting beside me right now trying to rub her eye right out of its socket. Try explaining to a 4 year old (who knows it all) that rubbing it will make it worse.

Tomorrow is the last day of term and then the kiddy winks will be at home for 2 whole weeks. It'll be nice not to have to get up early every morning, and I'm hoping for some nice-ish weather so we're not stuck indoors. I would check the weather forecast and see, but they're always wrong anyway lol.

The Design Collective classes are finally about to start, next Tuesday! It's finally here, we're all so excited and itching to get things rolling; the interest so far has been amazing. I can't wait to see what people think once they get their first class. So, that's something good to look forward to next Tuesday. Something not so good is that Danielle's got an appt for her pre-school booster injections that morning. She heard somebody at preschool mention the injections (her daughter was born a day after Danielle and has her appt 5 mins after us) and she says she doesn't know what injections are but she doesn't want one. I'm dreading it. I always feel so wicked and I always come out with a lump in my thoat and a tear in my eye, daft cow that I am.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz, are you still awake?

Another week, another dare....

Friday's seem to come round so quickly these days. :) I spent the whole of this week completely stumped by this week's Speshal Dare theme. Yesterday, it finally all fell into place and I knew exactly what I was going to scrap, took the photos straight away and scrapped the page. Easy peasy. This week's theme is "The contents of......". Interpret that whichever way you choose, however weird and wonderful.

This is a page dedicated to Danielle's Dora the Explorer backpack. It's unbelievable what the little minx can fit in this bag - she's a modern day Mary Poppinz. I had to take the photos while she was out, because she would have had a fit if she'd seen me tipping her toot, oops I mean prized possessionz out all over the floor.

Lots of KI Memories tags for the background (I've had these babies for ages and never used them so thought I'd get rid of them all on one go)

Doodlebug paper frills

Scrapworks hugz

Bazzill blossom

MM Shimmer & Tiny Type alphas

Dymo tape

Papermania photo turns

Hambly journaling spot rub on

And, I know I say it every week, but you really have to check out what the other ladies have been up to this week - the diversity of talent never ceases to amaze me.

Have a good weekend.

Easter goodies

I got a huuuge DT parcel from Carole at Ribbonmad this week and some of the contents were perfecto for a couple of little Easter projects I'd been planning.

The first is this little metal bucket full of Easter eggs. It started life as a metal planter (one of a set of 3 from a pound shop). I covered the pot with some of the lush Cactus Pink papers - they're double sided so I only used a single sheet - and I made a frill from another sheet of the patterned paper. I added some matching Cactus Pink ribbon to the centre of the frill and around the bottom of the pot to hide the edges of my papers.

The buttons and the flower brad were in my Ribbonmad dolly bag. The tag is a BG chipboard, painted pink, then covered in glitter glaze.




The second project was a little Easter basket (this is almost as old as Casey, and was from a poundshop) which I prettied up by tying lots of ribbons to the handle. Here I've used just a fraction of the ribbons in a lovely pink dolly bag.

Today has been super-productive because I also managed to get this week's speshal dare done. I'd been struggling with the theme and suddenly had a flash of inspiration. Phew!!

13

This morning I set a challenge on the DC forum to use 13 elements on a page and as I never set challenges without playing along, here is my page. My 13 elements are:

1. Cardstock

2. Photos

3. Patterned paper (Scenic Route Cape Town)

4. Photo corner (Heidi Swapp)

5. Photo turn (7 Gypsies)

6. Tab (Heidi Swapp)

7. Title (Heidi Swapp rub ons)

8. Journaling

9. Ink

10. Chipboard stars (Heidi Swapp)

11. Brads

12. Ribbon (American Crafts)

13. Faux stitching (goes all the way round the edge in real life but my scanner doesn't want anybody to see it!!)

30 minutes

That's how long AJ gave us to scrap a page on the DC forum. And here is my attempt; it only took me 30 mins too (oh and another 30 on top lol), but 60 mins is still really quick for me. The colours are a bit weird on here - it's a little brighter irl. I wanted to use the patterned paper (Scenic Route Laurel) as my background but it was very loud, so I toned it down by adding an oversized photo mat of orange Bazzill. The title is a chipboard embellie by Scenic Route too, as is the circle; I cut a slice out of the circle so that it would sit level with the title. ;) Eyelet brads are by Pebbles. I've had these for yonks, and have hardly used them but now I loves them and need more.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mums out there. :) I got some perfume from the kids and haven't lifted a finger all day haha. I love it. Just to clarify because that reads a bit weird. The fact I've done nothing all day isn't related to the perfume I got - it didn't render me paralysed at first sniff or anything.

The ice cream van stopped outside a little while ago, so we've all had 99's. We've got to be flaming bonkers because it's absolutely freezing today and we have the heating on. But, it had to be done because I love ice cream from the van.

I've also been messing around with something in Photoshop, and am going to have my first crack at hybrid scrapping. It's very basic and I don't think I'll ever be a CS2 whizz, but at least I can say I've tried. I just won't mention how long it took me to suss out how to get the patterned paper across into my blank canvas. Let's just say it was more than 20 mins. Aaaaaargggghhh!!

Speshal Dare #45

An interview with......

Charlie - as the journaling states, Charlie's answer to everything right now is Boohbahs. Aaaaaaargh!

Both the lined paper and green spotty paper are by Scenic Route. All the chipboard (numbers, stars and scalloped border) are by Fancy Pants. I painted them black and then covered in MM pearl glaze; they look like metal, which is not the effect I was hoping for lol but it looks quite cool. A happy accident. :) I added some doodling with my white pen, and filled the holes in the scalloped border with white brads. The title is made from American Craft felt thickers.

Be sure to check the speshals blog to have a lookie at all the other girlies work.

Mother's Day card

Thanks to a pre-class challenge set by Debbie over on the Design Collective forum my mum will be getting a handmade Mother's Day card this weekend. I used my yummy Scenic Route Laurel papers and chipboard circle, a couple of HS blossoms, bit of stitching, the obligatory scalloping, HS alphas covered in glitter glaze for a bit of sparkle. And voila - one pants card! Just kidding; I think it turned out ok. My mum will love it anyway, she has no taste whatsoever. And, luckily for me, she doesn't read my blog or else I'd be getting a clip round the earhole.

Concentrate

Charlie always, always sticks his tongue out when he concentrates. We were in the garden yesterday because it was another beautiful day (almost paddling pool weather here in Essex) and almost every photo I took of Charlie starred his tongue. So, of course the photos were begging to be scrapped and he is so going to thank me when he's older lol. I ditched my favourite white backgrounds in favour of this Doodlebug bright blue. I got a couple of sheets as part of a kit when I first started out, and forgot I had them - the colour is so not me and I never in my life expected to be actually using it. Turns out it was a perfect match for Charlie's top, so it had to be done. Btw, it doesn't say STIG on Charlie's top, which is what John thought, although after a hard day's play Charlie usually does look like Stig of the Dump! The 'I' isn't an 'I' but a bit of twill on the zipper. It actually says St G (as in St George by Duffer - love their stuff for boys, so funky in a world of boring boys clothes). Anyway, I digress.

The paper is Scenic Route Cape Town, and I added some chipboard pieces, painted black then doodled with a white pen. While I had the black paint out, I drybrushed round the edges of my papers, card & photos. The title is made from felt (yummy) - the AC felt thickers - does anybody else find them a pain to get off the backing sheet without losing the glue? The words (explore, play etc) are HS index tab inserts and I pinched the idea from yesterday's DW 2007 entry. Some staples, a Hambly journaling rub on and a few eyelet brads & job's done!

We've had a fantastic response to the DC launch and have some fun things planned to get you warmed up for the classes. If you registered and haven't got an email for any reason - go check the blog for details of what to do.

We're up and running

Today's the day....finally!! The Design Collective is up and running. We're in the process of emailing everybody, so if you've registered and not yet heard anything, it's not long now! If you haven't registered, there's still plenty of time - click on the blinkie on the right and check us out.

Not long now

The Design Collective are open for registrations tomorrow. Check the blog for the latest info, lots more biographies and best of all a little sneaky peek at the delights we have in store for you. I'm so excited. :D

It's been another beautiful day here and the kids have been outside most of the day again. Danielle had a great time digging up worms and then burying them again, while Charlie was happy riding up and down in his Scooby Doo car.

Wake up, it's a beautiful morning

I love the springtime, when we wake up to the the sun streaming through the window. It always lifts my mood after the long, dark, cold winter. Not that the winter's been particularly cold, but it's been gloomy. It was a glorious day yesterday too, so John got out the back garden to cut the grass. It was that long, we could have lost Max in there and never found him again lol. The kids were out there 'helping' too, and were asleep much earlier than usual last night, thanks to some fresh air. Today, John's going to tackle the front garden. Wish him luck haha.

Yesterday afternoon we took a trip down memory lane. We watched some old dvd's of the kids; 2 years in a row we had a dvd done at the local shopping centre. The kids had to sit in a huge sleigh in front of a blue background while the man filmed them, it was then superimposed onto a prerecorded piece of footage, the end effect looking like they were riding in the snow to meet Father Christmas. Sounds a little corny but it's cute to look back on. We have one of Casey too, taken in 1997, but it's a video and we no longer have a video recorder downstairs.

One was Christmas 2004, when Casey was 9, Danielle was just 2 and Charlie was about 9 mths. Casey didn't really want to be there, but she obliged because Charlie wouldn't have sat there without her. They all look so young and their faces are all so chubby, even Casey's. The kids were given ropes to hold, to look as though they were giddying up the reindeers and Charlie spent the whole duration of the film putting the rope round his neck.

The next was Christmas 2005 but by that time Casey couldn't be persuaded to sit there, so it was just Charlie and Danielle. Funnily enough, Charlie still spent the whole time putting the rope round his neck lol.

It got me thinking that, as much as I love scrapping and writing things down to record memories, there is nothing better than seeing actual footage of your kids. It shows so much more of their personality to see the way they talk/move & their body language. I've neglected the camcorder a bit recently, in favour of taking photos to scrap but I'm going to make more effort to do both.

I'll leave you with this photo of Charlie. It's from a couple of weeks ago, but I only just remembered to put it on the pc. Spot anything wrong? Well, apart from the fact that he's wearing Danielle's boots, they're also on the wrong feet lo. Why do kids always do that? Each time they put shoes on, there's a 50% chance they'll get them on the right feet. So how comes, they never get it right?

I thought you might like to see the top half too. He was getting himself ready to go out btw, so he did this all himself. For some reason, he thought that boxers and trousers weren't necessary though.

Speshal Dare #44

Exploring texture

I had a lot of fun with this one and it pushed me outside my comfort zone. Only a little, but it's a start lol.

Paper is Fancy Pants Key Lime Pie & Creative Imaginations. Some wallpaper (which I borrowed from B&Q) and drybrushed with blue MM paint. Canvas tag with butterflies is a clothes label from Debenhams. Heidi Swapp ghost heart and chipboard letters ~ both dotted with blobs of Tulip fabric paint.

As always, make sure to check the Speshal Dares blog to see the wonderful and varied things the girls have come up with this week.

Have a good weekend. :) Remember that registrations start on Monday for the Design Collective classes. ;)

Lunar Bim *continued*

As I blogged about a little while back, Charlie is absolutely Lunar Jim mad. We borrowed a Lunar Jim dvd from the library yesterday and without a word of a lie, it's been on all day. I know all the words to all the episodes off by heart and I have the theme tune ringing in my ears even now. I wish you could all hear Charlie singing along - it's so stinking cute. "Lunar Bim, Let's get unar". I think my boy's going to be a singer because he also does a mean version of Mr Boombastic (a la Barnyard stylee). Oh, and not forgetting High School Musical - he can do a fabulous pub singer style rendition of Start of Something New.

Check the Design Collective blog we have a new anouncement, just to let everybody know that we haven't forgotten them and we'll be getting in touch when registrations start in LESS THAN A WEEK!!! We are starting to add biog's for each of the designers so that you can find out a little bit more about us all before the classes start.

Last, but not least a parcel arrived yesterday from Craft Obsessions full of scrummy Pizzazzill and lots of my scrapping staple - my white cardstock. I'm going to be stalking their store because they're also due to be getting the Autumn Leaves French Twist goodies in soon too.

Busy, busy, busy

I've been making a start on my first classes for The Design Collective, because the first mailing is now less than a month away. I don't want to sound like I'm boasting, (anybody who knows me well will know I'm the least confident scrapper around) but I adore the pages I've done so far and for once, the ideas in my head have translated to paper perfectly - we all know that doesn't always happen right?

Check out the Design Collective blog too as we're in the process of adding a small gallery of each designer's work, just to give you a taster so that you can see if their styles are for you or not. We, the designers have a wide variety of scrapping styles, and we're also aiming to teach ideas/techniques that can be adapted to suit your own style so it's not totally dependent on you liking somebody's particular style.

I treated myself to another corner rounder yesterday - well I NEEDED it because I only have two already hehe. I already have a tiny one (I'm not sure of the make) and the large EK Success one (purple). I love the EK one because you can remove the base to make your own scalloped paper, but the scallops are very large, so I bought a medium one too (the green one). So, now I can have scallops coming out of my earholes. It'll be one of those fads that will date the LO's in my album I'm sure. If I look back to about a year ago or more, my LO's are covered in doodly lines & drawn on stitching. Over the last few months, I've really gotten into hand sewing - love the chunky look it gives and now my scalloped edges. Actually, thinking about it my scalloped edges go back further than I thought too - this is a LO I did for Creative Scrapbooking magazine back in July last year. Can you believe that I made these by drawing round a coin and handcutting? It was tedious, I can tell you lol. And, look I was still doing my hand drawn stitching too!!

Oh, and even this one from May last year. I still *heart* this page even though it's quite, erm, bright although I'm not sure about the yellow. I handdrew the scallops and I was going for the uneven effect (yeh right, I hear you say) but it bugs me slightly to think that people might not realise it's meant to look like a 5 year old drew them lol.

I had a good look back through all my old albums yesterday and it's funny to see how my style has evolved. For the first 6 months AT LEAST I had no style at all and my pages were just a mish mash of as many diecuts and dodgy alphabet stickers I could get on the page. I'd like to think I've improved, if only slightly haha. One thing that struck me was that I still have no clearly defined style. There are certain styles I avoid, but there is not one that I stick to. Some of my pages are ultra simple, others slightly more cluttered but that's part of the fun I think because I can chop and change to suit my mood.

If you're still awake, give yourself a pat on the back because you deserve it. Have a great Sunday.

Dare #43

Unconventional Love.

That was our theme for this week and we were all free to interpret that in any way we wanted. As soon as I saw the prompt, I knew exactly what photo I wanted to use. We went to a small farm last summer and Danielle was all over the animals - cuddling them, trying to kiss them (ack!). She showed absolutely no fear. And I have to say that the poor sheep who was the subject of Danielle's affection put on quite a brave face and didn't flinch when she plonked herself down next to it lol.

Journaling reads: Danielle, you adore animals of any kind. On this visit to Marsh Farm you went straight into the paddock and sat down right next to an unsuspecting sheep then put your arm round it. Love at first sight! 1.9.06

Pp & ribbon ~ Fancy Pants Key Lime Pie
Bling & green photo corner ~ Heidi Swapp
Pink chipboard photo corner ~ CBX
Chipboard heart strip ~ Li'l Davis
Title ~ AC Foam Thickers
Journaling block ~ Hambly rub on
Green paint around edges of photo

As always, don't forget to check out all the other girls work on the Speshal blog - especially Elaine's as she has an extra special announcement to make. Congratulations Elaine & Kate!!

We received a letter to say that Casey has been offered a place in her secondary school of choice in September. We had no real worries about her getting in as there is usually no problem with catchment kids but it's nice to have official word of that. The school is also a sports college so that will suit Casey down to the ground.

Have a great weekend, whatever you're up to.