WOYWW 1st June '11

Good morning all you lovely Blogland people!! Wow, I'm feeling all bouncy today which is really strange as I'm one of those people who gets horribly affected by the weather outside my window and today it is horrible. Grey and drizzling. Again. So, it must be purely the knowledge that I'm going to be able to see all these wonderful workdesks again today that must be making me so happy!! If you think I'm nuts, sorry. If you'd like to join in the happiness then please check out Julia's Blog to see what makes me so ridiculously happy on a Wednesday morning!

Right, I suppose as you've trekked all the way over to MY little blog that you'd really like to see my desk, right? Ok, here it is this morning....

Ok, so I'll admit that my desk was like this last night too. I sat down to do some sample scrapbook layouts for my new Scrap Club that I'm launching and despite staring at the papers I came up with nothing. Nada. Nix. How is it that when you don't have time to scrap you have Loooooooaaaaads of inspiration but the moment you actually sit down to do some you end up staring and paper and cardstock. And, worst of all, the paper and cardstock actually ends up staring. right. back. Freaky! Anyway, once I've done this WOYWW post and done some admin I shall be heading straight back to this desk to get something done with that lovely Jolly Holiday DSP. I'm thinking maybe something Christmassy.... hmmmm.....

Anyway, maybe you can give me some ideas?  Inspiration? Help!!! If those papers start staring back at me again I'm going to have to do something drastic and I won't be held responsible for my actions then!!

Oh well, I'm looking forward to hearing your suggestions so PLEASE leave me a comment. Thanks for dropping by!

My new Venture!

In my last post I promised you that I would update you on a new venture as time had run out on that post. It really ended up as War & Peace didn't it?! I'm sorry if I was whinging that day.... the whole (lack of) weightloss was really getting me down. I'm so glad that a whole load of you guys were there to pick me up with your comments and spur me on to getting back on track! I'm not completely there but I am working on it and am feeling a lot more positive about it all.

Anyway, I've gone off topic haven't I? Typical me! LOL.... now back to the subject.

Last May I was looking at a friends crafting blog and saw that there was a special offer on Starter Kits for Stampin' Up! which really got me thinking. I had been looking for a way to help the household finances and thought that this would be a good way of contributing while indulging my passion for all things crafty. After having a rather in-depth discussion with Himself we decided that I should go for it..... and so my new business "Stampin' Diva's" was created. Here's my business blog if you want to go have a look!

I'm happy to report that it's going quite well so far, although not really enough to contribute to the family bank account.... yet! However, it's paying a little bit so far and as I've had a fairly slow build up I don't think that's too bad. Himself is happy though as I haven't spent anything out of the family bank account on crafting in quite a while now! So that's at least a million pounds saved from the current account each month (I wish!).

The only downside - if it can be called that - is that I'm so busy making samples, swaps, demo pieces, make & take items etc. that I haven't had an awful lot for my own personal crafting lately. It's not all a bad thing though as I'm still having fun and getting to craft a lot.... just not on personal stuff. I'm hoping to remedy that soon as I have a couple of non-Stampin' Up projects in the pipeline at the moment.

More of that another day though as I've just realised what the time is! I shall have to rush off and get a couple of things done before I retire to bed. Thanks for popping by and leaving a comment. They really lifted my mood last time and I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts again!

January Craft Update

I'm amazed! I have actually managed to get some scrapping and cardmaking done this past month. Wonders will never cease! There are a few things which I didn't get any photo's of; the last CJ that I did, for example. I'm working on another one at the moment, but will probably forget to take a photo again. I usually do, simply because I'm usually in a rush to get it to the Post Office. It's only after I have posted it off that I remember - by which time it's too late! The other thing I don't have any photo's for yet, is my weight loss journal that I'm just finishing off at the moment. Once it's done I shall take some piccies for you to look at.

Until then, you will have to make do with pictures of a few cards and one LO that I did this month. It's not much of an output, but it's more than I've done in quite a long time!

I made these three cards all at the same time. One for my friend's birthday and her hubby's birthday (they're only a few days apart) and then also one for my SIL's hubby who is around the same time. 

Then I also made one for my FIL's birthday which is in early February. He's a massive Beatles fan (as he went to uni in Liverpool when the Beatles were still gigging there) - and as he's turning 64 hubby commissioned me to do a card based on the song "When I'm 64" from the Yellow Submarine album. The inside of the card has the words of the song printed inside. Hubby was pleased with the results!

I somehow managed to find a few days where my Mojo returned for a bit of scrapping too, so I did this scraplifted LO. It was based on a LO that has been in my UKS favourites folder for ages! It worked really well and was lovely to do a LO about my baby girl growing up! Unfortunately I can't remember who did the original - so if you know please give me a shout so I can credit her!!

Anyway, I hope everyone out there is having a fabulously crafty time! I'm going to go finish off my weight loss journal so that I can update you all on that a bit later!

Back to reality

Well, the Cybercrop is over. I've scrapped my little heart out. My team the Lions won... and now its back to reality. What an anti-climax!! To top it all the weather is horrible outside and even with the heating on I'm frozen. So, if you don't mind, I think I shall indulge myself in a little nostalgia with a look at all the layouts I managed to complete this weekend..... just to cheer me up a bit!

Blog Prompt #3: 5 Favourite things!

So today Shimelle has us thinking about lists. Mostly lists of our favourite things, places or people. Favourite aspects of life, our kids, food, landscapes, tv programmes, clothes, colours, scrapbook pages, books, movies, CD's, concerts, plays, colours of nailpolish, pizza toppings...  Well as you can see the list of all the lists could be endless!  So thinking about my list of favourites, I started thinking about all the bits of life that are good right now. So 5 things that I love about life at the moment: 

1. I love our new house! OK, so its cost us a fair bit more than we had expected. We've had to do stuff that we didn't think needed doing. Like replacing the entire fuseboard because the vendors had tampered with it and it was unsafe as a result. Like having to replace the oven - which had looked perfectly ok, but wasn't. So the ensuite needs completely replacing because the previous people bodged it and the garden drainage needs sorting because a tiny bit of rain turns it into a quagmire. BUT! And here's the big BUT, I love it. The house feels more like home in the few weeks since we moved in, than our previous house did - even after all the work we did to it. We've all settled in well and most of the boxes are actually unpacked!




2. I'm loving how both the girls are playing so nicely on their own now! Both herself and the little one are enjoying taking themselves into their own corner and playing. No interference from me! Herself is currently dressed in a Stephanie costume (from LazyTown) and playing with her little sisters toys. The little one on the other hand has crawled between the bookshelves and sofa and is happily unpacking and re-packing her older sister's bag of Baby Annabel accessories. Both girls are happy playing with each others toys, and peace has ensued. Long may it last!

3. I'm enjoying my little scrapping space! So himself finished building my new scrapping space inside the spare wardrobe, all the rails and flatpack have been assembled and the stash has been unpacked and sorted... and then re-sorted again! Now that its all accessible I am really enjoying my crafting again. I'm trying to make time every evening to sit and do a little bit of scrapbooking and also some altering. In fact, I'm in the process of completing a project that I bought the pieces for 2 years ago! I shall post piccies once I've given it to the recipient.


4. I love that the Christmas preparations are underway! I love the festive period every year. The days getting shorter, the air is getting that cold bite, the councils are putting up the christmas lights, we're drawing up pressie lists and making our purchases (slightly later this year!), menu's are being created, christmas cards crafted (or bought!), christmas cakes baked,  the decorations will soon be taken out of the loft and then christmas trees start appearing in every window on the street and soon we'll be sitting down to eat a meal and open presents with family and friends. I love it all... including the mulled wine!!


5. I'm loving the thought of setting up my own business! BUT, the reality of it is quite scary actually! There's so much to think about! Wholesalers, ebay, website, premises, funding, business plans, bank accounts... and then the elusive name for the whole lot! Definitely having problems with that one! Each time I think I've got a name that's suitable I discover that someone else has beaten me to it. Suggestions on a postcard please! 


Phew, that's enough for now I think! Thanks for reading!

Mojo Convention

I recently asked a question on UKScrappers: "Is there a mojo convention somewhere? Cause mine seems to have disappeared to sunnier climes to meet up with other mojo's!" My scrapping mojo has gone. Well, actually, its not just applicable to scrapping... unfortunately my mojo also influenced my ability to type stuff on my blog too! So, my most sincere apologies to all those people who have been looking at this page eagerly for an update, only to find the longest silence in the history of blogs.

There is, happily, a very good reason for this sudden lack of mojo.... I'm pregnant! Yup, #2 is on the way and is expected on or around the 3rd September. Which when I first intended to tell you seemed ages away; but now is far too close for my liking! Unfortunately for me, lack of mojo goes hand-in-hand with being pregnant... as I found out with #1. I was doing a Fine Arts course when I fell pregnant with herself, but found it impossible to complete as I kept just staring dumbly at the paints and canvas. Now this time, my scrapping has completely stopped, my writing has stopped and all creative thought has completely failed to materialise. Its only in the last week or so that I've picked up my knitting again and made a very feeble attempt at scrapping - which has yet to be completed. Someone on UKScrappers mentioned that they had checked on here and found it quiet, so I figured I needed to somehow get typing again. Well, at least for long enough to update here!

The second reason for my lack of updating is that my PC has been packed away. We have converted the study/scraproom back into a usable bedroom and all the study stuff; including PC, books, scrapping stuff etc has all been put into storage. This is because we have put our house on the market. There is a long, involved explanation/background to this decision - but the upshot is that himself has transferred with his company to Glasgow and we are moving back up to Scotland. Himself has already started work and we are currently living with my parents while our house sells. We are hoping for an offer any day now as we have had a fair amount of interest and viewings. I'm trying to resist looking at houses here in Kilsyth until our house has been sold. I just know that if I start viewing houses I'm going to fall in love with one and not be able to do anything about it until our own house has sold. However, patience is not one of my virtues so I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to resist! I shall have to tell you the whole story of our move up here at a later date, but as its incredibly long it will have to wait.

Other than that, I'm afraid all the rest I have to report would be mundane, boring, everyday stuff. Our focus so far this year has pretty much been to get ourselves out of Bradford and up to Glasgow, so everything else seems to have paled into insignificance.

I hope your life is a little less hectic than mine is at the moment!

Most recent LO

Just want to show you the Layout I have just completed. I'm dead chuffed with this one since its been such a long time since I last managed to complete one. I have been feeling like my inspiration had completely fled the country, but after a visit to the Falkirk Wheel it came back with a vengeance and this is the result.

The title of the LO takes the form of a conversation saying:

"What did we do today?"
"We went on a wheely big boat wif a yittuw Ewin toiyut"

Erin just loved the small child-sized toilet in the boat that she wanted to go back there for days afterwards just so she could go to the loo!! So I felt I really needed to document the occasion. Although I will do another LO about the Falkirk Wheel itself at a later stage. I'll update more about our 3 week stay in Glasgow later.

Hard at work

Well, as much as normal anyway.  Finished a few LO's this past two weeks or so, but haven't really had the time to take photo's and upload them.  I did manage to take one photo so I'll post it here for you... It's my first LO about himself, which took him by suprise I think.  I felt the title was particularly apt!

I have also added a slideshow to the blog, after much muttering.  Struggled to do it as TypePad kept giving me error messages. Then once I figured what was wrong there I found out that it was too big for the sidebar and was being chopped in half. So, after several attempts at making it smaller I finally got it down to the right size!  E voila! One slideshow with LO's on! Now that I know what I'm doing with it I might add another with family pics on.  What do you think??

That means my dear SIL and her DH (and other technically minded members of the family) and my parents can see the latest and greatest shots of the darling cherub. Even if she is being a monster at the moment cause of teething.

Anyhooo, the little monster is trashing the room behind me as we speak, so I'd better go rescue the cat again who is currently cowering under the furniture!

Creative Overdrive

Think I ought to share some of my recent Layouts with you. It seems that the last few months haven't been particularly creative, but now the creativity has kicked in again.  Only did 2 layouts in February (one of which was a lift of a beautiful LO in the Scrapbook Inspirations Magazine) but have already done one in March and have another planned.  Hoping to do loads this month for a scraplift challenge on UKScrappers. The challenge for me is to do 20-odd LO's in a month. It's not quite as difficult as it sounds tho' as these LO's are to be based on or 'copied' from a set list of layouts that other people have done.  Consequently the first scraplift LO only took me 3 hours to do (rather than the week and a bit it normally takes). Want to have a peek??

The first LO was the lift of the magazine layout and all credit goes to SuzyB who made her original so wonderfully inspiring!  She is also a member of UKScrappers but I didn't know that until after I'd started work on my version.  Thanks to SuzyB for giving me permission to copy her beautiful work.  The second LO is all mine and the third LO is from the UKS scraplift challenge.  The original LO was done by UKScrapper Debly.

The other thing that has been particularly inspiring this past week was a little crafting evening that I hosted at home on Wednesday. Nothing big or fancy, just myself and 3 other ladies who are all into crafting in one way or another.  We all sat around the dining table and did our thing while having a good chatter and some nibbles.. although I might have over catered on the nibbles as himself and myself have been eating them for days afterwards to finish them off!  Still, it was great fun and a good time was had by all.  I think this might become a regular thing rotating at the four houses.  So I'm seriously looking forward to the next one!


Anyway, I shall have to go wake up herself yet again... otherwise we won't get any sleep tonight.  I'd better warn the cat before I do so as Erin has taken to chasing it around the house shouting "Tat" at the top of her lungs. The Tat in question is actually settling down fairly well, but still legs it everytime she sees the toddling monster coming towards her.

Long time no see

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted! Much has happened, but on the other hand nothing particularly notable has happened either! Confused? Me too!

It was himself's birthday on the 19th. I keep telling him he's doing ok for a 110 year old! LOL... that doesn't impress him much.  He got loads of money which he put towards buying himself a lovely Canon 300D DSLR camera. He still has enough left over to buy himself a few accessories to go with it too.  I guess it means tho' that I will inherit his little compact that he got as a birthday present a few years back... although I'm looking enviously at the DSLR.  Perhaps I can convince him to let me borrow it?  Maybe if I get myself on a course? Hmmmm... I don't think he's going to let me touch it for a while never mind letting me take it out of his sight to a course where I might try to do wierd stuff to it!  Saying that, the poor man has yet to find the time to properly read the instruction manual. Believe me, it's a bit more complicated than our point-and-shoot compact!  Mind you, there is an upside to it being HIS camera.... it means that now I might be able to get IN the photo rather than being the one taking the photo.  Maybe I can actually start on the scrapping item known as a BOM? (A Book of Me for all you confused non-scrapping people out there)  Up to now my problem has always been that I'm the one behind the camera rather than infront of it.  Finding photo's of me for a BOM has been a problem so far!  Hopefully not anymore!

Must say thanks to all the friends and family who contributed to the camera, I'm sure we'll all enjoy the benefits even if some of us aren't allowed to use it!

On another topic entirely, there is a little discussion going on on the UKS forum at the moment about whether or not people would sell framed Layouts.  It's got me thinking... do you think people would pay to have their treasured photo's nicely scrapped and then framed to hang on the wall? Would they pay for a whole album to be done?  Would you? How much would you pay to have your memories preserved? Let me know your thoughts as this sounds like an ideal way to spend my time and maybe get a bit of pin money in.  Not sure it would be profitable enough to do as a 'career' tho'.

I'm off now methinks. I have to wake herself up or else we'll get no sleep tonight! I promise I won't leave it so long next time between postings.  I have a new LO that I want to show you anyway, but need to get a better photo of it. Perhaps himself will let me use his flashy new camera to take it?? Or perhaps not!

Confessions of a 30 year old!

So the lovely Shimelle.. scrapping goddess as she is, has graciously given us a freebie class! Normally you have to pay, but this one was free.  It's called "I have to confess" and was just about doing silly confessions, things that people might not necessarily expect I suppose.  So, earlier this week I printed out my photo's and got my cardstock, inks, stamps and some scraps of patterned paper out to do some serious confessing.  I really enjoyed this little class and although I used the same stamps (Scribbled Flowers from Banana Frog) my pages came out completely differently. I also got to experimenting with UTEE on inked chipboard brackets which was loads of fun and the result was very pleasing too!  So here's my Confessions:

I'm beginning to like Pink

I have to get out

I don't 'do' handbags

I'm arty but...

I could happily do Jam and Jerusalem

I really enjoyed doing this project, so a big "Thanks" to Shimelle!

Productive Day

I had a good day yesterday. Got Erin and I out the door fairly early and went with a friend and her two girls to a soft play centre. Erin had a whale of a time bringing Mummy the balls from the ball pool and climbing up the soft squishy stairs and then sliding down the curly slide.  I had a good chat with my friend and a lovely cup of hot chocolate, and best of all we sat inside in the warm while the world outside got blown to pieces by the terrible windy weather!

When I got home Erin was ready for her nap and went off to sleep very quickly. I decided to use the time to do some scrapping!  I used a class by Shimelle (for the UKScrappers Cyber Crop) as the basis for the layout so it went fairly quickly and by the time himself came home from work it was all done except for a few finishing touches.  The best part is that I finally got to use some of the yummy Basic Grey Fruitcake papers that I bought with my Christmas money, and it looks fabby!  Have a peek....

On a different note.... I'm just wondering how many people actually read this blog. Do you read it regularly or just occassionally?  Please let me know... post a comment!  The reason I ask is because my free trial here on TypePad is coming to an end and I'm wondering if its worth paying the money to continue posting. 

Beach Babe

Just wanted to share my latest Layout with you. The photo's are from our first family holiday in September, I have been looking for a way to scrap these for a while as I didn't want to wreck the photo's!  I am pleased with the result! Here's the LO...

Thanks for looking!

Christmas Creativity

Now that all the Christmas rush is over I thought I'd let you have a look at the pressie I made for my Mum.  It was an exploding box.  I can hear all you non-Scrapbooking people saying "a what box?".  Well, its a box that opens out to reveal sections that you can put photo's on. I made one that accomodated 12 photo's and put in one photo for each month of her first year.  I wasn't planning on making an exploding box - although I did think it was a great idea when I saw it on UKScrappers - however, when I got some lovely scrapbooking papers, fibres and stickers from my favourite online shop I couldn't help myself. The papers were just so yummy and I had some cardstock in my stash that suited the papers.... so I found myself cutting and sticking.  Soon I had the completed box and decided it would make a good present for my Mum.  Needless to say, she was thrilled. Pictures are below.... enjoy!