Last Post of 2010!

Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and are getting ready for a night of celebration!! I had a lovely Christmas here are a few photos of it! **Warning long post!!** This is all the presents under the tree waiting to be opened, there were loads!

 Jack had a lovely time with all the paper from them again!

 Yummy Christmas dinner, Terence the Turkey was very tasty!!

 Here's the Christmas cake I made and decorated. I must say it's tastes nice too!

 There was still snow about on Christmas day, yay!

 This little chap had a lovely time on Boxing day opening all his pressies, he love them all! He's still a bit spotty though as he had Chicken Pox just before Christmas so he still wasn't very well.

I got some great present too! I got lots of bits and pieces including this I am determined to tackle crochet in 2011! My mum has already taught me the basics as she was a great at it so with the help of this book too I should be well away!

Then everyone went home after Boxing day so spend a few days not really doing very much, it was nice not to have to do anything and have a good rest!

Yesterday was my brother, Mark's Birthday so I spent the day in Weston-Super-Mare, we had a nice walk along the beach and then had coffee and cake.

 Then in the afternoon we lit the candles on the cake I made him and it would have been rude not to taste a bit!!!

 I thought I would finish my post with a couple of layouts. This one was Sunday's challenge at The Studio to use a sketch.

It was a great sketch to use, I don't use circle all the much on my layouts but I always like using then when I do! I got my paint out too on this to make paint rings under the stars I cut out of PP.

I'm very excited to have be let back on the team at The Studio from February so you can't get rid of me that easily!! I would have really missed it if I didn't have the challenges to do. Things will be changing slightly at The Studio from February, I'm excited to have a new role as I'm team coordinator for the Layout Team which will be good. There will also be a new Card Team and Project Team too!

This layout I completely forgot to show you, I made it with my Festive Frost kit from my shop. I used the doily from the kit as a mask for behind the photo. Everything else apart from the spotty pp is from the kit. (By the way the layout in straight in real life but it was difficult to photo with the border around it!!)

I stitched around the photo in silver thread from the kit too and tied little bow every now and then, I love how it looks.

Well that's all for now I will see you all again in 2011 doesn't that sound scary it doesn't seem like the millennium was that long ago!! I haven't got any plans for tonight just a quiet night in front of the TV!!

I plan to keep on creating in 2011 so I hope you will stick around to see what I create next, I'm quite exciting to see what the new year will bring to my scrapping!

Happy New Year everyone, hope enjoy your evening whatever you get up too! Back soon with more, thanks for getting to the end of this very long post!! xxx

A Very Festive Post

Just thought I would update you with my festive things! I made these place cards for my Quick and Easy Christmas project for The Studio, you see can my instructions for them on the blog here. They will be brightening up our festive dinner table tomorrow!

 Here pages 6 to 12 of my Christmas journal, page 5 is missing as I haven't finished it yet!! I will show you it again when it's done!
Day 6 - The festive lights in the new shopping area in Bath, very nice twinkling snowflakes!

 Day 7 - I spend to afternoon in helping the children at school learn about electricity, not very christmassy!

 Day 8- A wriggly nativity, I went to watch the children's nativity at school. I was asked to make some donkey masks for 4 little boys to wear. That's the photo of them, they did look a bit funny but they looked better on stage! The play was brilliant, they did really well. I used one of my handmade embellishments for my shop on this page

 Day 9 - I had another singing lesson. It was a year ago that my sister and brother-in-law gave me the money to have the lessons so I thought it would be nice to include it. My singing teacher had my singing in Italian!! Not as bad as it's sounds when you get your head around it! Another embellishment form my shop!

 Day 10 - I made some more Christmas cards, this was my card for the challenge at The studio.

 Day11- I baby sat my little nephew, he was a little angel for me, no trouble at all and went fast a asleep after a read him a story. The blue circle, snowflake is another handmade embellishment from my shop!

 Day 12 - Picking our tree we went to a local place where they grow them and you can pick which one you want and they cut it down for you!

 I haven't done much more of my journal as I been busy decoration a wedding guest book and memory box for someone who asked me to make it for them, it had to be finished now as they have just booked a holiday and won't be back before the wedding! I will show you it soon. So I need a big catch up on my journal I know what I putting in it so it's just finding the time to do it, hopefully after Christmas I can catch up with it, I will be going up to New Year with it like last year.

I forgot to show you my sister's Christmas Cards, she decided she just wanted a black stamp on a white card, not very festive but they were quick and easy and they did look effective. I had to make 50 of them in 6 different designs the stamps are by Papermania, would you believe!!

The big tree had a little gold star on the top!

Right better go and ice the Christmas cake!!

I wish you a very Merry Christmas, hope you have a lovely time and I'll be back with more after the big day! xxx

Designer Friday

I've got lots of projects to share with you today that I made for Precocious Paper as it was mine and Amanda's turn for Designer Friday on Tessa's blog.

First up is a layout I made with Tessa's lovely rolled satin flowers. They went brilliantly with this wedding photo I wanted to scrap. I used Cosmo's Delovely papers which matched them well.

 I added some gems and pearls to the centre of the flowers and did a bit of hand stitching and cut a few flowers from the papers.

 Next up I decorated this photo frame with some of Tessa's fabric yoyo's, I love these flowers they are one of my favourites! It just a cheap Papermania Frame which you can get for a couple of pounds, they are great for decorated in whatever way you want! I sprayed a bit of pink mist in two of the corners and made some more leaves to go with the ones that came with the flowers. I just cut out some leaves shapes from green paper and stitched down the middle of them and I then added some ribbon loops to bring out the pink of the flowers.

 I love the end result, it would make a great gift for someone but this one won't be going anywhere as I love it too much!

 I also made this wreath, I got the plain wreath in a supermarket for £1!! I added some of Tessa's lovely Christmas flowers, some gingham bows and some felt snowflakes to brighten it up a bit.

That's all for now, I will be back with the next installment of my Christmas journal soon, I've been really busy lately so I haven't spent much time on it lately!

We have a lovely lot of snow here that we woke up to this morning, I would say there's at least 3 inches, everywhere looks so pretty and there not much traffic on the road which is nice! Hope you've got lot's where you are and are enjoying it!!

Thanks for looking xx

First Few pages

I know I've been a bad blogger and I haven't updated you with my Christmas journal pages so I thought I better put that right and show you some pages! I just seem to be so busy lately trying to get things done before Christmas and having Christmas card orders. Anyway I have been trying to keep my journal up to date and I haven't done too bad so far, I have got a busy week this week though! Here are pages 0-4 as I didn't want to overload you all at once! First page I like to do and introduction page.

Day 1: Advent this is my Advent calendar for this year, every year my mum gets my some small choccies as my advent calendar so I decorate the box and number the chocolates!!! 

I just noticed that a small star is on the photo in this photo, don't know how that got there!

I'm only using the front of the page this year and left the backs of the previous pages blank.

 Day 2: Had to be about the weather the icy weather we have had and we had a fresh bit of snow that morning.

 Day 3: Poinsettias, every year we have to get my Nan one as she loves them but we don't really like them that much!! 

 Day 4: was our annual mince pie make we made about 50 to put in the freezer ready for the festive season! This year we brought a new Christmas tree shape cutter for the tops as well as the normal star we use!

 This page was on one of my transparencies.

 I'm loving my little tags for the number of each page, they look great. I'm using all different Thicker numbers, the ones that you get in a pack and rarely use!

That all the pages for now but I will back with more soon! I hope you like how my journals looking, I'm quite pleased with it but there are always some pages you don't like as much as the rest!

This weeks challenge at The Studio was to make a Christmas thank you card, here's the one I made using the lovely October Afternoon!

 Better go and get on with some of these jobs I've got to do!

Hope you had a good weekend.

Thanks for looking as always! xx

Start of my Christmas Journal 2010!

 I'm back with as promised the start of my Christmas journal! I'll show you the prep and foundation pages I did for it today, I haven't finished the covers for it yet and I haven't photographed the first few pages yet but I will do soon! I still need to catch up a bit with it too!
These are the journaling cards I made for my Christmas journal, I just used scraps of Christmas papers I had left over from last years journal and some white card.

Here are the fountain pages of my journal, I have done it in 6x8'', all the pages are different with different shapes, sizes and some are plain card stock, some are patterned paper...

...and some are transparencies that I made them myself with a bit of acetate, stamps and ink! I'm quite pleased with how them turned out!

Each page has a small tag on the bottom half of the page, this is where the numbers will go, they are in a different position from the last and next page so you should be able to see the edge of the ones that are to come. I haven't added the number yet as I wanted to be able to move some of the pages if I wanted to, to make it fit better with my photo etc.

I also added, along with other items, these handmade embellishments to my shop, they are great to use in your Christmas journals, I'll definitely be using them in mine!

So that's all of my journal prep so far, the finished pages will follow!

The challenge for this Sunday at The Studio was to make a layout without a title, not something I usually do but it is good when you can't think of a title for a photo like I could with this one!

The photo is of my brother and sister-in-law just before they had my nephew, I king of used the heart for my title and made a bit more of my journaling to fill the space the title should of filled! Not a very good photo of it, it's hard to take photos of layout when there's snow on the ground isn't it?! The snow is mostly gone here now though which is a same, it's just left a lot of ice! Here's a close up!

At The Studio for the month of December, as well as the normal challenges some of the DT and some guest designers are doing 'Quick and Easy Christmas Projects' so make sure you check them out as theres and great ideas. There will be one from me a bit closer to Christmas too!

Hope you've all enjoyed your weekend. Catch you later! 

Thanks for looking! xx