Did it!

Thank you to everyone who helped me make it to 15,000 visitors - how excited do you think I am right now?!
VERY!

Anyway, I'll leave the draw open till midnight UK time for the blog candy - anyone posting a message before then goes in the hat, or the box, or the saucepan - whatever comes to hand!


Good luck

Still Monday.......

PHEW!!!!
Aimee's Birthday-cum-friendship-cum-memory book is finally finished.....there is no room for anymore pages, it is a very FAT book!
I'm really pleased with the front cover. After all the panic and stress over what to call it, but by the time I'd put her name on and added the numerals for her age, there was just the perfect amount of space left for a nice big flower - so that was easier than I was anticipating.

I used Basic Grey "Colour Me Silly" papers (Thank you Lorraine at Scrap Revolution for getting a set to me so quickly!) throughout the book so all that colour matching hassle was taken away from the start.
Most of the ribbon came from Bea at Ribbon Oasis - if you've not checked this place out, then you really, really should!

I'm feeling so relieved that it's finished, but actually apart from a few minutes yesterday when I'd got tired and hungry and made silly measuring mistakes and consequently wished I'd never started the thing, I really enjoyed making this. I think I went a bit over the top though hehehe

OK, I'm not going to post all the pics in one go because Blogger would have a hissy fit, so I'll show you over the next few posts/days all the pages in the book.
The inside front cover has a little message for Aimee from us, about why we thought this would be a nice gift, and what the book is all about
I've tried to incorporate photo "corners" on the pages where I can, but some will just have to be stuck in.

The little folder opens up and there's a photo frame inside

This was the really mad bit - I suddenly decided that a maze book would be a fun addition........I'll show you the inside another time!

The little tags in this one have room for a photo on one side and a written message on the other.

The little white square is only to show how a photo would fit in.

Monday Morning 14,915

So, the blog didn't get to 15,000 visits over the weekend, so the blog candy is still up for grabs.
I'll try to remember to add a new post each day, then any messages left on the day visitor no. 15,000 comes to call will go into my little draw for some blog candy.

I'll try to come back later with a more interesting post too!
maybe even pictures.....

It's a Super Self Addressed Kit Challenge/Celebrating 15,000 Blog Candy Draw

It's been an exciting week, on the DCM - a New full time Design Team Member in the shape of the very talented Lynne, a new Guest Designer joining the team from today for the next few dares, and our very first sponsored challenge launched today -WOW!

The wonderful people at Self Addressed Kits have sponsored this week's Daring Cardmakers Challenge. They sent loads of stuff from their recent kits and Lythan kindly sorted and distributed it all to the Design Team members, so that everyone received a good selection of SA's fabby papers, cards and other kit bits.

OK, so some of us are already enthusiastic SA Kit subscribers, but those that haven't yet succombed to these great kits were thrilled to receive their packs and soon realised just why the rest of us love them so! Not only are the kits fantastic value, and filled with really interesting and fun bits but you can choose from 6x6, 8x8 or12x12 sized papers. The whole SA experience is just so friendly with Jenn at the helm, sending inspirational emails with loads of ideas for using the kits, and lots of extra special offers every now and then, there's also a fabby forum with so much info, on-line tutorials and loads of great advice and ideas on things to make - so if you haven't checked them out already, then please pop along and visit soon - you won't be disappointed!

So, we hummed and hahhed about how to make best used of the SA gear we were now maniacally stroking and eventually came up with the idea of using a template - we would use only SA Kit papers for our cards but a template would mean that those poor people ;-) not fortunate enough to have SA stuff at their disposal could still join in using their favourite papers to make their cards. Here is the template that Jane has designed - it's a really great sketch to work with and offers loads of potential so please do have a go. You can see all the cards we came up with on the DCM blog - we were SOOOOO inspired that several of us made at least 2 cards this week!
Here's my first one:

I used papers from the September '06 kit for this one. The raffia, scalloped chipboard square and little metal washer also came from SA kits , the eyelets and brads from my stash.
The monogram was made from faux chipboard
The sentiment panel is made by wrapping the dark red paisley paper round some thin card and adding some brads - it gave a bit of extra dimension to the card.
The text was cut from gold card using my Craft Robo
I went for a rather shabby, deistressed look around all the edges with really roughly added gold and copper Krylon ink.
It seemed to need a little extra something, so I made a little "photo" corner for the top right with another scrap of the lovely checked paper. I'm quite pleased with the result, it'll be for one of the BILs birthdays and even Hubby liked this one! I thought he'd just say "It's a bit poo brown, isn't it?"

card no 2
This one features the February '07 kit


I chose the burgundy aperture card and used 3 burgundy & lime papers, plus some of the lime bazzill card and a scrap of the blue ribbon all from the kit.
The monogram is faux chipboard, I inked a small daisy to get the right colour green and used a burgundy one from my stash. Some gold gel ink lines and some gold thread to complete the card for the template - but I didn't really like the thread so removed it afterwards!

Don't forget to check out the rest of the fantastic cards on the blog - They are all amazing and show the wonderful variety of papers and extras that SA Kits deliver each month.
Ooooh, my blog visitor count is reading 14,729, I wonder how long it will be till I hit the 15,000 mark? Today? Tomorrow, when will it be? I'll do a pick from all messages left on my blog the day it hits 15,000 and send a bit of blog candy out to the winner - how does that sound?

Busy not Blogging!

Eldest niece Aimee starts her GCSEs this week so I made this last minute card for her, not the best thing I've ever made but I just didn't have the time to think it thriough. I think it took about half an hour and it probably shows!

I used the latest Self Addressed kit for this one, the papers are fab and the flower shaped cards are soooo cute. There are some gorgeous ribbon slide brads and other bits of crumminess in this kit, but I couldn't bring myself to use them so soon, so insrtead went for Prima flowers and lots of Liquid Pearls. Now all I have to do is get it in the post!

It's a busy time of the year around here. We have loads of family and friends celebrating birthdays next month so I'm trying to get cards and presents sorted for them. Being in the fabby Daring Cardmakers DT has helped loads as wherever possible I use the challenges to get those cards done
Apart from those I've pages for circle journals to do, squares to decorate for a swap and heaven knows what else. I'm certainly not getting anywhere with my mpersonal projects like my photo journal, or managing to get any pages made for Sam's scrapbook. And Oh Crikey, my folks are coming for a couple of days next week - wonder what the chances are of getting at least one page done to give them? Slim, probably.

Like a pillock I came up with a great idea for a 16th birthday gift for aforementioned Niece, Aimee.
She lives on the IOM with her family and has done all her life, but BIL started a new job over here a few months ago and has been a weekly commuter back home since then. Once Aimee's exams are over the family will be leaving the IOM for a new life over here. I think it's going to be a big shock leaving the rather slow, sleepy, sedate Manx way of life for the hurlyburly that most of us deal with every day. Anyways, I came up with the idea that she might like a little album in which she could put photos, record memories and get her friends to add messages as she leaves pretty much everything and everyone she's grown up with to start a new school, in a new house , in a new town, in what is actually a new country etc etc.
Here's what I've done so far:

I'm not getting on too quickly, I need to speed up and stop faffing with every page. I've not even started the covers yet - mainly because I've not thought what to call the thing - so if you've any bright ideas, please let me know. It's not a huge book, the cover will be something like 8x6ins I think, so no room for a great long title!
My best thought so far is "Photographs & Memories" but I'd have liked to get some mention of it being about her first 16 years etc.

I only hope she likes it - but do you ever get the feeling that some people just don't appreciate the amount of effort and time you put into things? Well this family is a bit like that.
Never mind, I'm quite enjoying making it and maybe that's the main thing, eh?

Tagged by Paula

7 Things

so these are the rules...
Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to blog about their seven things and post the rules as well . At the end of your blog, you need to choose 7 people to get tagged and list their names.
Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog!OK, here goes...

1. I've got a bit of a phobia about manhole covers and other "doors" in the ground - I avoid standing/walking on them wherever possible
2. I hate nuts .........
3. but love expensive, Belgian praline chocolates
4. At this moment I've got a sore middle finger which makes typing difficult
5. I can't remember the last time I had a bath
6. But I love my shower and I'll love it more when we get that flippin bathroom sorted!
7. I love cappuccino, don't care if it's trendier to ask for all those weird and wonderful styles of coffee - just give me a good CAPPUCCINO! And on the same subject, PLEASE get it right - cappuccino does not mean coffee made with all milk grrrrr - no, that's just YUK

Okay, so who to tag - well checking around the blogs this morning I see this one is all over the place - so I'll leave it to you - if you've not been tagged already, then consider yourself tagged now!

Back later with some stuff I've been making. If I can get the downloader on the camera to work....

A Touchy-Feely Friday

I hope everyone will soon be back and blogging after the Easter holidays because it's been way too quiet in Blogwrold the last couple of weeks - I guess the sunny weather we've been having here in the UK has sent everyone scuttling to the garden centres and into a mad planting frenzy! We are STILL digging at the bottom of the garden, clearing the weeds etc and trying to level the slope out a bit by moving loads of the soil to other parts of the garden. It's taking longer and is much harder work than we thought it would be! We got another bit done this week and the grass seed we planted before Easter is growing well now, so we're gradually getting there. I just know that when it's finished it won't accurately reflect the hours we spent and the aches we suffered though!

This week The Daring Cardmakers Challenge is set by Gillian and it's all about that Fabulicious, Funky, Fuzzy stuff called FELT:

"....as you may have noticed felt is really hot in the crafting world at the moment, and it's available in so many ways now, in sheet form in a rainbow of colours, precut shapes, beautiful felt borders, even lovely patterned felt and felt with glitter...
So I reckon it's a great medium to dare you with.
So here's the dare, Make a card and include some felt,
the theme & style are entirely up to you,
Can't wait to see what you come up with."

Once I'd actually managed to find my stash of felt I thought it might be the perfect stuff to use on a 16th birthday card for one of our nieces. Felt and sewing just go naturally togehter, so once I'd cut the numbers I used my sewing machine to add lines, zigzags and embroidery. I love the little daisy stitch my machine does and once I'd started using it I couldn't stop - so the backing paper ended up covered with lines of the daisies too.
I used a punch to cut some of the flower shapes - but I'm not convinced that was such a clever idea as the punch kept getting stuck (ooops) - so I gave up as I didn't want to completely ruin my fave flower punch! So I had a go with some QK and Bosskutz dies using the Sidekick - this was more successful than the punch, phew!
I sewed the flowers onto the numerals before sticking them onto the card. The big white flower looked a bit dull so I added an edging of beads.
All the paper is from the BG Gypsy pad, the lower border is raised on foam pads and decorated with little coloured gems.

This was a fun card to make. It was one of those cards that starts with only the germ of an idea then grows and develops all by itself, I like it - I hope Aimee will too!

Don't forget to check out the DCM blog where you can see how the Design Team got on this week and the fab cards they made, then you can find out more about how the cards were made by following the links to our personal blogs.

Northumberland Tourist Information - no, not really!

Ok, so here at last a little gallery of pics from our Easter in my home county of Northumberland. First up, this is part of the bay at Newbiggin by the Sea, where I was born. I spent my childhood playing on the beach and exploring the rockpools. It's all a bit different from when I lived there - then the bay was all just sand, now there's a huge quay wall that you can no longer see over and lots of concrete terraces on the sea side of it to try and protect the area where the North Sea bombards the prom. They are now starting work on a new breakwater to try and give some protection, they are going to bring loads of new sand up from Norfolk or Suffolk to replenish the beach. So it'll be interesting to go back in a few months to see the changes.

So now I'll share a couple of my most favourtie places in the whole world - ssshhhh don't tell everyone though, the peace and quiet is one of the best things!
We both love castles, abbeys, and other ancient places and visit as many as we can. We are Life Members of English Heritage so we can visit lots of these fantastic places all over the country without panicking at the entry fees! It also means we can visit places just to top up the addiction - like mine to this, my MOST favourite castle in the whole world! Every time we go north I have to just pop in to make sure it's being looked after properly - I will admit also to feeling so protective that I have to stop myself chasing off those who climb on the walls - well, it is against the rules....
Warkworth Castle is just stunning at any time of the year and between us we must have hundreds of photos of it. The first photo is my latest, taken from inside the castle walls on the walkway above the gatehouse

And the second is probably Hubby's favourite view, from down by the river, complete with all the wonderful reflections. We have one of his photos of this view on our dining room wall, and I'm also using one for my pc wallpaper...what d'you mean "am I addicted"?

Next on the favourites list is my favourite beach, and we head off to the beautiful Druridge Bay. It's BIG, and edged by a wide, lumpy bumpy area of dunes which as kids we absolutely loved to play in. It's like a wild secret land just waiting to be explored - a perfect, unspoiled playground for the imagination.
As if the dunes aren't enough, the beach is an enormous swathe of sand, and when the tide is out it's just immense. I love it, it fills me with awe, and in the Easter Sunday morning sunlight it was magical.
Just a shame it's impossible to really get a feel for the place in a photograph










The area around Hadrian's Wall is beautiful, even just watching from the car window is breathtaking - II've never felt the need to be like those mad people who go and walk along the thing, though I'm sure they have a lovely time! I'm quite happy to see it from the road, or a nice easily accessible spot - and then to visit one of the Roman sites you find along there like Corbridge, Chesters Fort or Housesteads. This trip the weather was nice so we decided to do the trek to Housesteads - obviously a lot of other people had decided it was a good day to do a bit of cross-country walking too as the place was packed. I think I prefer Chesters really, but even with the Easter crowds, at Housesteads you really do get a feel for how remote it was up there, and isolated those Romans must have felt! Check out some aerial photos here










This was our lunch spot with a view! Pretty eh? It's just along the road from Housesteads travelling west, and not far past Steel Rigg. Now I think it 's Cawfields Lough, but I'm not absolutely sure on that, but on a warm, sunny day it was a perfect place for a picnic. I t was really peaceful too - well except for the Rescue helicopter that flew over very low at one point!

On Monday we had another picnic by the lake at Kielder - not quite so warm, but hey, we had a flask of hot coffee and one of my aunt's homemade meat pies still warm as it had been wrapped up straight from the oven.
Kielder was one of my Mum's favourite places, it does have something for everyone and you can be as active or as peaceful as you want, there's room for everyone.

Now we go to back to my favourites list for one of my more bizarre favourite places!
This is Winter's Gibbet and for some unknown reason seeing it is one of my earliest memories.
My family loved picnics and we'd all head off in the cars for picnics in the beautiful Northumberland countryside - my earliest memories are of family picnics with my parents, brother, Grandparents, my Aunt, Uncle and later, my cousins. I must have loved picnics right from being tiny because if I was promised a picnic, then a picnic we HAD to have - on occasion this meant a picnic in the car in the snow - well, you can't break a promise to a child can you? I have vague memories of my poor dad lighting the little primus stove outside in the freezing cold to make a cup of tea to warm us up! I think the Gibbet must have featured on one of those trips - probably when I was about 2 or 3, and it must have had some sort weird fascination for me right from then. We stopped off there again druing one of our drives and I took this pic - I'm quite pleased with this photo I like the moody sky and the eerie into-the-sun silhouette feel of it - a bit of an accident really as it was only because I couldn't be bothered to climb the fence to put the sun in a better position!

And with that one I'll stop before I bore you death. I may already have sent you to sleep.
I'm busy with some crafty stuff at the moment, so will share the photos of those soon. For now you'll just have to put up with holiday snaps! If you'd like to explore my homeland more, check out this site, which has some great photos from all around the county, and the BBC site for the area around the River Tyne
Bye for now

5 Circles, 3 Squares and just 1 Flower....

.......was the recipe for last Tuesday's DCM Little Extra, which I finally got round to doing yesterday - OK so it's a bit later than usual but I've been away and Saffa's Dare - which had to be my priority when I got back, was really HARD!

o anyway, here's my "Thank You" card for my lovely Aunt and Uncle for making our Easter in Northumberland so wonderful (photos coming soo, I promise....)

I finally got to open my lovely new Crate "Twirl" papers for the first time - though in the end I only used one of the patterned sides - I wanted to get more of the gorgeous pattens into this one but this way just looked so much better.
5 circles: 3 buttons from my stash, a aper circle and a round brad
3 squares: lots of inking with various of my favourite Cat's Eye chalk inks
1 flower: cut into three sections and layered under the tag

The ribbon is Maya Road, I think. I used wire to attach it under the buttons and then to attach the whole button/ribbon thing to the squares.
I'm really chuffed with this one, hope you like it too :-)

Crossing Continents

Our lovely Saffa's background is a real mixed bag of countries and cultures so to reflect this she set us a fiendish dare this week entitled

Crossing Continents

"I come from a very multicultural background and love being able to see them all from within and this is what has inspired this weeks challenge....take a deep breath...
I would like you lovely ladies to make a card that celebrates and reflects a festival from another culture to your own...."

A couple of years ago I struggled through Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy" an enormous brick of a book! I think it took me about 3 months but I did finish it eventually, all 1500 pages. Among the bits I remember was the description of the Hindu Spring Festival "Holi" - when among other things everyone goes out in the street throwing coloured water and coloured powders over each other.

"The central ritual of Holi is the throwing and applying of coloured water and powders on friends and family, which gives the holiday its common name "Festival of Colours." This ritual is said to be based on the story of Krishna and Radha as well as on Krishna's playful splashing of the maids with water, but most of all it celebrates the coming of spring with all its beautiful colors and vibrant life."
More about Holi here
It sounds a mad, crazy festival so I've made a card to celebrate Spring, and Holi:
Going away for a few days does nothing to help when the dares are as tricky as this one, I thought I'd have my idea all ready to make up by the time I got home, but I was really stumped until I remembered the Vikram Seth book yesterday!
My card has lots of colours, plus a few Indian inspired sequins and beady bling. The background is glossy card painted with random splodges of Twinkling H2Os, with a bit of glitter over the top. I used sequins and beads to sew it onto the black square. The letters are pizza box "chipboard" (not as good as cereal packets, but I've run out of that!) decorated with gold inks, UTEE, glitter and coloured embossing powder. The tag was made with scraps from the painted and the black card with some doodling around the edges. I added a few bright fibres to mimic the throwing of the coloured powders. It still looked a bit bare so I stuck some more sequins on in random fashion.

A ever there are more cards to see on the DCM blog, and all the information and the stories behind our efforts are on our personal blogs. This was a tough challenge, and one that really made us think HARD - and do some research - so this one was a real learning experience too, thanks Saffa!

Art Attack

Ooops! Sorry - been away for Easter and my rellies' dial-up connection was just too slow! So here's my very late info for the Art Attack dare. Will catch up with everyone asap....

"I dare you to make a card inspired by a work of art."

This week it's Rhi's turn to challenge the Daring Cardmakers - and challenge us she most certainly has with this Art Attack Dare.

Actually it didn't take long to decide to hav a go at making a card inspired by the work of Piet Mondrian. I'm not really sure why, but I've always been drawn to the clean lines and colours of his blue/red/yellow paintings like the one on the left. So this was my starting point for this week's effort.
I can't paint, or draw a straight line for toffee so I started off by making my own design using PSP on the pc - this was pretty easy and actually it was fun too, just drawing rectangles on a blank page - even I am techie enough to manage that! I printed it off on glossy card, then randomly coloured some of the boxes with felt pens in the obligatory primary colours.

Next step was to give it the cardmaker treatment! It took ages, because for each of the coloured rectangles I cut another matching shape and decorated it before assembling all the pieces onto the base card.

So I UTEEd and glittered, used ribbons, fibres, eyelets and brads, wire and beads, and little bits of bling, some buttons, punchies, liquid pearls and of course some Prima flowers..........













and finally it was finished! It was fun - maybe one day I'll even have another go at something like this

There are lots mor Art Inspired cards to see on our DCM Blog, then if you go to the personal blogs for each of us you'll find the stories behind our choices and how we went about making our various cards. It's interesting stuff so don't miss out! Then when you've had a look at our Arty Clarty (sorry, I think that might be a Geordie-ism creeping in there) catds, it would be fab if you would join in with the dare and have an Art Attack of your own.

Right, I'm off now for a walk along the prom.

All Present and Correct.

Well, the photograph was eventually found, lurking in the "shared" docs rather than in "Kathy's" docs - so I wasn't going totally mad when I searched through all my folders and failed to find it.
This is the card I've made, The photo behind the vellum is of the Church the couple married in 50 years ago, although they now live in Australia they are returning to Northumberland for a service of blessing on their anniversary - how lovely is that?
The photo is reaally poor quality so I printed it directly onto the hammered card and the vellum hides most of the bad bits!
The original photo of the couple has them quite far apart, so Lovely Hubby cleverly moved them closer together so I could make my idea work - isn't PSP a wonderful thing? Especially if you've got someone who can work it!

I added a string of gold and clear beads and a tiny bouquet of yellow roses interspersed with crystal flowers with gold centres. Some gold heart brads and some gold ribbon to finish

The Midweek Challenge from the Daring Cardmakers sends us whooshing backwards for a retro themed card, this time a Very Vintage feel is required. I've used one of my own family photos for this one - I think it's a very early photo of my Great Great Grandmother, it certainly bears a resemblance to later ones of her. Now obviously I didn't use the actual photo - this is printed from a scan, and I messed about with lots of Ranger Distress inks to make it look in an even worse state than the original!

I inked a cream hammered card, then completed the background with torn and inked pieces from some old paper - I love the effect you get using old paper for a background.
She looks so tightly corsetted that I added a row of cross stiches down the side to echo that, and I inked up a scrap of lace that was lying on the desk to put behind the photo. The red ricrac is gorgeous - it's a sort of velvety stuff I bought recently from Ribbon Oasis. The button was also lying around - I'd painted it for another project but didn't use it in the end. It needed something else so I added the little dark red rose and leaf. The message was printed on cream card on the pc - then I tore it out and inked away the pristine look of the piece of card that remained. A touch of Krylon gold ink here and there lifts the otherwise dull shades a bit - actually the ink came out in a bit of a rush at one point so I had to go with it and add a few more dodgy blobs - but I think I got away with it.

Typical!

OK, so I have a commission for a Golden Wedding card which I need to get done by Thursday. The customer sent me some photos (not great ones, either) in the hope that I could incorporate them into the card.
I have a plan, and have already printed up the base card with one of the photos on it. However the second photo is a more recent one of the couple the card is for, but it's unusable as it is, so a couple of weeks ago I asked the Household Photo Wizard (that's Hubby btw) if he could make the pic look as I wanted it to. He did all that magic photo tweaking stuff and saved it for me. So, somewhere in the depths of the files on the pc is this photo, all ready just to resize and print out ready to use. Today is the assigned day for this job.
Can I find it?
Can I heck as like.
I spent ages this morning searching for it, then sent plaintive email to hubby asking for clues. Of course, his memory is worse than mine and he can't remember either. So now I'm in trouble as he's going to have to waste some precious "home" time locating said image.

However, I've managed to finish a few Easter cards - we don't send many so this should be fine - all variations on the same theme, but I think they are cute. I used some gingham paper from pda, scraps of bazzill card with my new favourite toy - a 1.5cm square punch, and the tiny little bunny bunch I got in my Christmas stocking a couple of years back aaaawwww sweet!
These are the lovely "Pretty in Pastel" decorated squares I got in the swap a few of us did at Scrapstars recently - they are only 6cms square and sooo pretty - they are destined for my little maze book - I'm going to make little tag for the facing page to say who made each of them.
The lovely Joanne wanted to make squares for the swap, but didn't really want to receive any in rturn, so I made her this card to say "thank you". You might recognise the monogram from an earlier post. The beautiul Japanese paper was sent to me by the very kind and helpful Pearl in Singapore - we did a little swap a few weeks back and this gorgeous paper was in there.

There has been a HUGE cyber crop going on at Scrapstars. Last weekend it was all photography and digital scrapbooking tips and tricks, and the weekend just gone was the more "regular" type of crop with loads of LOs, cards and all sorts of other useful stuff. They ar a very talented bunch of people who seem to like nothing better than to share their ideas and expertise. The only one I've managed to actually do (so far anyway) is the class Joanne gave using the Craft Robo for cutting loads of bits and pieces for a Spring themed LO.
It was the kick I needed to do an LO for my photo journal, I've not been vry good at all - so far I've only managed to do my January pages and here we are in April already!
Still, I knew I had the perfect photo for the Spring theme, but I had to change Joanne's gorgeous yellows and greens for pinks and blues to match the photo. I also had to change the title font as my Robo really objected to cutting Joanne's beautiful cursive font in tiny size, boohoo
Anyway, I'm quite pleased with this little LO, and I got to use that new square punch again, didn't I!