100th Post

I can't believe it's my 100th post already, it's quite a milestone! For this special post I have lots of bits and pieces to show you. First up my layout for Sunday Challenge at The Studio, this week Amanda created a lovely sketch to use you can see it here.
And here's the layout I made from it of, our family picnic in October.

The challenge did have a little twist to make a handmade embellishment, which wasn't exactly hard for me!
I made a rolled flower with brown crepe paper. The flower and leaves are also included in my Autumn Leaves kit from The Make and Create shop.

I also said I would show you how I made my front and back covers of my Christmas journal so here goes. First of all I cut out a piece of card the size of my journal from an old pizza box and painted it white. Then I punched some stars out of some scrap white card and placed them on the cover randomly and paint around the edge of them in red paint.

I then moved the stars and put them in beween the painted stars and misted over it.

Then removed the stars so it looked like this...

I thought the whit looked a bit bright so I gave it another light coating of mist over the top so it looks like this all finished! Quite pleased with how it turned out!

The other thing I need to show you is a layout I made with the 'Snow Bright' kit from my shop. This layout didn't go to plan as I used the star sequin waste as a mask and it all turned out a bit pink!! I should of masked off the rest of the paper, I was tempted to throw it away but I'm not one to give up on anything! I challenged myself to rescue it so I masked out the bit where the sequin waste was and misted over the pink to tone it down a bit!

I them embellished it up, I think I managed to rescue it in the end!

Yesterday was my Dad's Birthday so we had a big family lunch and I made him a cake of course! Rowan just had to get in on the blowing out candles action!!

This is the card I made him from my bag of scraps.

That's all for now I have more to show though as I finally cut into my lovely Echo Park, Little Boy papers,  I love them and already have more layouts planned, perfect for little nephew layouts so will be back with the one I've done soon!

Thanks for looking xx 

End of Christmas Journal 2010!

Finally here's the last part of my Christmas Journal, it's taken longer than I hoped but I wouldn't give up on it as I enjoy it and it's great to look back on. Hope your not too bored with seeing it, I like to think all the pages are different anyway! 

Day 24- Christmas eve - cake A day of prep for Christmas day and I decorated the cake. I actually decorated two cakes this year, ours this one and I also made a smaller one my sister and brother-in-law too!

 Day25- Christmas Day- A family filled day full of lots of presents and yummy food! I really like these Thickers, I've been after some bright red ones for a little so when I saw these in a sale I had to have them along with some other obviously!!

 Day 26 - Boxing day- another family filled day filled with more presents and more yummy food!!!

 Day 27 - Gifts, I like doing a page of some of my favourite presents from this Christmas.

 Day 28 - a chill out day, everyone when home so a quiet day not doing much! I watched a film and you've got to do a bit of Christmas puzzle, with the choccies on hand!

 Day 29- I hit the sales (only went in a couple of shops!) I did get a bargain cashmere cardigan for half price though!

Day 30- My brother, Mark's Birthday. Spent the day with him had a lovely walk along the beach in Weston and coffee and cake. I made him a cake too!

Day 31- New years eve- I night in front of Graham Norton and Jules Holland!! Great fireworks too! More great new sale Thickers!!

End page - A nice quick sum up of December, until next year!

All that's left in to show you the front cover I made my own covers out of a pizza box and  used mist and paint. I might show you how I did this again as I took stage by stage photos.

Over all I'm really pleased with my journal, made completely from scratch. There are always some pages that you like more than others but I can deal with that! I loved used all the different papers and all the different size pages too. I think next year it's time for a change of size I think I've done everything I can with the 6x4 layout!! It is quite nice that last years is the same size as this years but I think I've used all my ideas for this size now! Maybe time to go a bit bigger!

Anyway that's it all over for another year, hope your still awake after all that!!

Thanks for looking! xx

Healthy

Sunday challenge at The Studio was: 'With the new year upon us, a lot of people have been focusing on their resolutions for 2011. With that in mind, we'd like to hear about a LONG TERM goal of yours. Do you have a big ambition? Let's create a layout reflecting on these goals as a reminder of what we one day hope to achieve.'

Here's the layout I created:

 There are quite a few things I want to do in my life at some point but the most important one to me, after many (too many to mention) tough years of being ill is that I really just want to be happy and healthy.

I got my paint out again for this one! All the papers are October Afternoon from different collections. You can check out what all the others design team's goals are here.

Over the weekend I managed to finish my Christmas journal so I'll be back with that soon.
Hope you all had a good weekend. Thanks for looking. xx

Sweet

It's Designer Friday today on Tessa's blog for Precocious Paper and it was Amanda's and my turn create something! Tessa spent me these lovely sweet spots in pink and black. I decided to go with a boy/girl layout as the colours work well with them. I took this photo of my nephew, Rowan cuddling his Nanny (my mum!) I turned the photo black and white so the colours didn't clash with the sweet spots, I don't really scrap that many black and white photos so it was something different for me! I used some Black Magic cardstock and sanded a rectangle down so the light pink showed through. It's a shame you can't see it that well in these photos. I have a pack of this cardstock that I really should use more often, it was quite hard work sanding it down through!!

 I added a few borders, ribbons and a journaling strip to the bottom of the photo and added a title. Then added some pink cross stitches and gems dotted around it and there you have it!

I still have some sweet spots left but they have cupcakes on them so you know what type of layout I'll use those on don't you?!!

I added a new kit to my shop today it's called Snow Bright, great for all those snowy photos that we've all got hanging around. Tomorrow's the last day left to apply to be February's Guest designer so please get those entries in, I would love to see them and you could get a free kit to play with, there's a sneak peek of it on the blog!

Thanks for your comments they mean a lot.
Back soon xx

Perfect

I just thought I pop in and show you my layout for Sunday challenge at The Studio. This week the challenge was to scrap about what you like to do in your 'me time' so for me it had to be to put my favourite tunes on, sing along at the top of my voice and scrap, you can't get better, prefect! 

 I had fun with paint and sequin waste for this one I got some star sequin waste and painted it and used it like a stamp, the best bit is the paint washes off and you can use it again, just like a stamp! I'm really pleased with how it turned out, might have to use that again!

I must give Tessa a mention, you must go and check out all the new items Tessa has added to her shop, Precocious Paper. There are lots of new items and they are all lovely! There's some great valentines flowers and lovely sweet spots, that I was lucky enough to be sent to create with. She is now doing sampler kits too so if you haven't had any of Tessa's flowers before that would be a great place to start!
I'll be back on Friday with the layout I've made with Tessa's Sweet spots.

Thanks to those of you that have applied to be February's Guest Designer for my shop The Make and Create shop, please keep them coming in and tell your friends to too! I would love to see more entries, you have until the end of the week to enter.

Hope you're having a good week. Thanks for stopping by. xxx

CJ - Pages 13-23

Here's an update on my Christmas Journal. I'm quite pleased I've managed to get quite a lot of pages done so I don't have that much more to do now! 

The missing page - Day 5- Bath Christmas Market.

 Day 13 - 115 Cards - the amount of Christmas cards I made and sold this year! Handmade embellishment from my shop.

 Day 14 - Our new decoration for our tree this year was this lovely painted bauble.

 Day 15 - I hung up the first 2 rows of Christmas Cards that we had been given. Embellishment from my shop.

 Day 16- Our Christmas tree I gold embossed a chipboard tree for this page which worked quite well!

 Day 17 - Our decorations the same ones that come out every year but it wouldn't be the same without them!

 Day 18 - Snow day, we had about 3 inches of snow over night, we had friend over for the day. This page is on one of my snowflake transparencies.

 Day 19 - Visiting, went to see my Nan and put up her decorations and then went to my auntie's for lunch.

 Day 20 - Singing carols around our village triangle, very christmassy with all the snow around I did wear about 5 layers of clothes though!

 Day 21 - How much? Went out for a meal with my Mum and Dad. Dad ended up having one of the most expensive meals he's ever had, it wasn't even that nice so complained and got the desserts for free. We won't be going there again!

 Day 22 - Spotty, spent the day looking after my nephew Rowan who had Chicken Pox! He was is quite good spirit though so he had a PJ day and we had lots of cuddles! This is his cheesy camera face!!

 Day 23 - Baking spent most of the day baking, we ran out of mince pies already! And I had my hair cut!

So that's where I'm up to at the moment I'll be back soon with the last installment!

I've got a busy couple of days, going to help in school this afternoon and then going to the Panto with the whole school tomorrow so wish me luck!!! xxx

Cupcake Mad

My package of new stash finally arrived after me waiting impatiently for it! I didn't waste any time when it arrived and started cutting into it straight away! I was really pleased with what I got in the sale it seemed a lot of the money! I got some of the new Little Boy range from Echo Park, a few of their Every one loves Christmas range too to finish off my Christmas journal, some October Afternoon (of course!) Modern Homemaker, some cardstock some small OA letter stickers (they are so useful!) and a sheet of their journal stickers and two packets of Thickers, not bad eh?!

 So I made my layout for Sunday's challenge at The Studio with it. This weeks challenge was to scrap your Passions, I wasn't sure what to do as I have quite a few but in the end I went which my love of anything to do with cupcakes!! I collected up some of my cupcake decorated items I have and could a photo of them.

 I went with the layered look for this one.

 I even stamped cupcakes on the spotty paper! Don't you just love those lovely pink glittery Thickers?!

I also made this get well card I wanted it to be bright and cheery so I used bright colours quite simple but I quite like it!

In other news I'm running a Guest Designer call for February for my shop, The Make and Create Shop, you can see all the details on the blog. All you have to do is sent me your favourite layout a link to your blog and a bit about yourself and you could get February's kit free to play with! It's open to anybody anywhere so I would love to see your entries!

I've been trying quite hard to get my Christmas Journal finished it's getting there so I'll be back soon with more from that.
Hope you all had a good weekend. Thanks for looking! xx

A couple of projects

I hope you're all enjoying the start of the new year and are ready for all the exciting things that might happen to you this year!

I have a couple of projects to show you that I didn't get around to showing you before Christmas.

I made this present for my Mum and Dad for Christmas morning. I made the shortbread myself and then decorated them with melted chocolate and chocolate stars! I put them in a big clear card bag I had, I'm luckily enough to own lots of this big bags as they were kindly given to me a while ago and they are so useful!

 I then made this quick and easy tag for the top and stapled it on. Mum and Dad loved then and I must say they tasted pretty yummy too! It was very busy before Christmas but I'm glad I took a bit of time to make this for them as it's a bit more special than something you buy in the shops!

 The other thing I had to do was decorate a wedding guest book and a memory box. A family friend asked me to make them for a wedding she's going to. This is the cover of this guest book...

 And this is the inside. If you haven;t guested already the wedding colour scheme was red and white!!

 I kept it all quite simple to match their wedding invitation. And this is the top of the box. I embossed some hearts and covered them with red chalk to make the embossed bit stand out.

 I also added more hearts to the corners of the base of the box.

I haven't been doing much lately as I haven't been feeling very well but I did put in a nice order of scrapping stuff with some Christmas money so I'm really looking forward to that as I haven't had much new stuff for a bit, I will have to cut into that when it gets here!

Thanks for popping by, hope you've having a nice day. xx