I have had great fun making these I added some baubles made from peels offs and gilding flakes now I just have to get them hung up somewhere.
I have got a couple of wooden stockings half finished, will I get time to get them done for this year I wonder. I have got behind with the other preparations due to all the white stuff that has fallen and Chris nor being able to get home at all yesterday.
TFL
I have just returned from Pickleberry Papercrafts where there was a make and take with Jennie from The Artistic Stamper show how to make a lovely Christmas Decoration with everyone donating £1.50 to Demelza House Children’s Hospice. We all made an angel using paint, utee, stamps and Perfect Pearls. This is the one I did
A real change for me, not green and blue this time.
This is the technique I learned at the last workshop. I love the effect it gives and have used it for most of my special cards this year.
I have had the stamp for a couple of years and used it with either Stazon of embossing ink and powders before but this is by far the best way I have found yet, just finished off with some Stickles to make it sparkle.
The same technique but I used a cotton bud to add some colour on the leaves and flowers.
The first of the Advent boxes is done. It was funny, every time I did a bit I thought there was just a little more to do. I did the next bit then decided on something else. Still I am pleased with the result though not the photograph, I seem to have some odd shadows on the stocking.
Next task is to start on the second one, it will be a different colour though.
…at Pickleberry Papercrafts with Jennie from The Artistic Stamper.
All we knew was the title of the day – Christmas Curio Box, along with the fact that we would be using Ranger products and Jennies own stamps along with other things as needed.
We Gessoed (is that a real word!), painted, added texture paint, sprayed, tinted and glitzed the box then worked on the inside bits. Stamping, alcohol inks, distress inks, UTEE, sticking and gluing and this is the end result of mine
I had to finish it off this morning and the tree was the most time consuming . I also should have used the flash on the closed photo, it would have shown the colour better.
I am off back to the attic after a spot of lunch to make a start on the advent boxes for the boys. They will take a while so don’t expect to see them any time too soon!
I went to another of Jenny's workshops at Pickleberry yesterday. We had great fun playing with UTEE and made a book. I was determined not to do blue and green again and had sort of decided on reds and oranges.
This is the front 
resist the little kingfisher.
…and the back with its lock face and key. I am not sure what I will do with the book, it has 4 pages inside with cut edges using Tim’s dies. I have inked them to match the cover. Maybe I will decorate the rest of the pages with stamps and die cuts.
A mini album for the three Mums of the little ones that we went to share the day with a couple of weeks ago. They are all similar and very simple but a nice memory of the day for them.
I love the Cinch, it is so much easier to use than the Bind It All.
Every tine we go away I make a mini book to stuff receipts, tickets, little guides and other bits and bobs into. This time I have mad a minor change and added a couple of pages where I can jot notes as well. The pics are slightly out of focus sadly but I think you can see what I have done.
From the front! The colours are based on how I see the rocks and desert, I will probably be proved wrong.
This shows the third page which has foil flakes along the edge, in the same colours.
finally another of the list pages and a pocket for the bits.
I have been very bad at bringing the camera down from the craft room and uploading the stuff I have done so this is a bit of a catch up on the last few weeks. Hopefully I can get back into the habit of posting daily after our holiday at the end of September.
First a couple from our family BBQ a couple of weeks ago. The boys love Hula Hoops, potato based snacks that will just fit on their fingers. I just had to take these 
They had great fun playing Piggie in the middle with Dean. 
The next few are from our holiday and are all going into a home made album, 8 x 8, for Deans birthday. He really liked looking at the big album I made and we thought he would like one for himself. I have only put some of them here.
That’s it for now – all caught up.
Oh and I got my texture plates for the Big Shot today, had a play and made a few ‘bellies’ for Christmas cards. Even got one made. Think I am going to have fun with them.
I have decided to make some more house decorations this year and this is the first. It will be a tree (you can probably work that out for yourself) and I am still trying to decide on the embellishments I want to put on it. I think it will be Utee on chipboard as I have some seasonal shapes that I can use. As usual it is a blue base, most of our newer bits are blue and certainly the ones I have made are. this time i have spritzed with green and silver. It looks a bit messy at the moment but it will take shape – I hope.
I will get to scrap these, might even make a mini album of the wonderful day we have had. Here is a taster
Jackie & Alan with their respective offspring.
Dean playing ‘piggy in the middle’ with the 2 boys.
2 1/2 years old loving an ipod!
a friendly visitor
Father & Son
Steph & Connor
I have been managing to find some time each day to scrap the holiday photos and I have just 4 LOs to go and it will be finished. I am not posting them all here, there are rather a lot and some of them I have kept really simple so I can get more than a couple of photos on each page. i don’t know about you but I always find 4 or more pics can be cluttered and, when I put that many on one page I keep the embellishments and things down to a bare minimum. Anyway here are some from the last weeks efforts.
Our fist night was spent moored to the bank with this in view, the other side of the river were 2 water pumps that look like windmills. A great start to the week as it was really peaceful.
So many of the houses by the water are thatched in the traditional way. Dream homes!
I love swans, even though they can be quite aggressive, they always look so graceful.
Chris spotted this when we went for a walk and it wasn’t till we got home that I could identify it as a tiger moth caterpillar. I have a picture of the end result (the moth) which is going on a tag to add to the LO.
There are about 7 pages of mills in the album. This is the first and shows 5 different ones some working and some not. They are mainly used to pump water from the land.
The remaining ones will hopefully be completed over the next couple of days and the album will be complete. Strangely for me I know what I will be doing once it is finished. I need to make a start on the dreaded Christmas cards. I know it is early but we are away at the end of September and I have 150 to make this year so need to get started and not leave them all to the last minute.
OK so I finally remembered to bring the camera down and sort the photos.Now I would normally do it in my craft room but the PC up there is giving me so much grief that it is all I can do just to get titles cut and the odd thing printed. So here goes with the next batch.
Jackie spent quit a bit of time on the roof of the boat, not when we ere going through bridges of course. I think she found it a bit of an escape from Gary for a while. Not sure you can see but she has her camera in one hand and her phone in the other!
Just a small selection of the sailing boats we saw. They looked wonderful in the sunshine and had near perfect wind conditions.
A couple more, the top one is a very traditional boat that once was used to ferry cargo about.
I use a Tim Holtz mask and spritzed the background with perfect pearls, reinker and water in a mini mister.
I used a sketch from an old magazine for this.
We saw this a couple of times, looks a bit strange in the UK and the name of the river boat (see title) makes it even odder!
I still have loads to do but they are coming along slowly but surely.
I have spent a cool couple of hours in the attic and 2 more LOs are completed. By cool I mean the temperature, it has been really nice so far but was just getting a bit hot up there so I have left it for a while.
I feel an explanation is due first. I normally do our holiday albums in chronological order but this time I decided to do something different, partly due to the fact that I have pictures from more than one camera and partly because I can’t place some of them in time. OK I could check the date stamp but that is not an option now as I have altered them all a bit (sharpened, lightened etc) so I have them in sections. First come people, I haven’t finished all those yet but here are those I have done.
I love the way the camera does that, these were taken within minutes of each other, same place, same lighting. Oh well. A bit of a basic LO apart from the tag which is a Distress Ink tag with the quote ‘ These are the moments I want to remember forever’ and shows everyone taking a turn at the wheel.
We stopped for lunch at the Green Man between Norwich and Wroxham, the restaurant is full of musical instruments of all types including a Euphonium!
Gary loved catching things with his net, he managed (with help) to get some fish and a shell fish, possibly and Ormer.
I love this picture of the little man, he was really good about keeping the hat on in the full sun, it was a very hot day.
This is where I started using sketches, this one from Scrapbooks etc, well my take on it anyway.
Another take on a sketch from the same source, using a Tim Holtz mask. The quote is an old one, ‘if friends were flowers I would pick you’ printed on acetate.
Last one for today is a collection of photos that include Jackie. No title yet, I am working on that and it will go top left. Quite like this one if I say it myself.
is just too hot again. I managed to get a couple of LOs done first thing, before it got too bad but that was it. I am using sketches and they are really working for me. I should have the camera back in the next day or 2 then I can get some pics taken. Mind you I have told the family that they can’t see any of them till I have finished but they don’t come here so I should be safe.
I am off to have a shower to get a bit less sticky for a while.
Well it’s a bit thin on the ground. One reason is that my craft space is in the attic, a converted roof space. Though it has 2 opening windows it gets fiercely hot when the sun shines, of course it is wonderful in the cooler weather. The other reason is that there is always so much more to do, the garden needs much more attention and there are evenings spent in the garden just relaxing.
Still I am scrapping again. I have 160 photos to get into the holiday album for the Norfolk Broads. I so need some inspiration though, I really feel stale, so I am on the look out for some interesting LOs that will take several pictures in a fresh way. After all there are limits to what the photos contain. People, buildings, boats. birds and general wildlife. I must have about 20 or so just of sailing boats. I am also looking to find some embellishments that I can print off. I think that will be todays task.
OH I got so inky yesterday, and more today finishing off my project. But back to yesterday.
Another workshop at Pickleberry Papercrafts with the lovely Jennie. This one was grunge paper and we spent the day creating this
We started by preparing the frame with paint and stamps and some thick medium that I can’t remember the name of. We stamped a wet stamp into that which gave the texture, then painted and sprayed. then we started on the flowers. Roses first in different sizes and finished then we moved onto die cuts and metal. I brought mine home in pieces and finished it today. I had decided I wanted something other than a flower in the centre and found a large key in my stash which I inked and distress stickled. I also made one more flower (bottom right) using a stamp I have and distress inks. It has also been approved for hanging on the wall. YAY.
Next workshop is at the end of July and is a jewellery day. Looking forward to that.
