Nearly Happy New Year

Christmas is nearly over, unfortunately for me it has passed in a haze of the flu. I have coughed, spluttered, sneezed and slept through most of it. Needless to say I have not been very merry or crafty. Santa did see fit to ignore my grumpiness and I received lots of crafting goodies. As yet I have been unable to use as I have had to move back in with my lovely Mum & Dad because my boiler has decided to stop working again so we have no heating or hot water! Great way to start the new year.

Oh well, being poorly has given me a chance to read lots of blogs & come up with a great idea for my friends birthday. I can write about it on here as she is a very busy lady & I know that she doesn't get a spare five minutes. My friend is an amazing lady & I am very lucky to have her as a friend, so for this years birthday I am going to make her a bag. I have pouring through my Mum's books looking for ideas but as always it looks like the internet is going to be successful. I found a blog http://www.creativequiltgirl.com/2009/11/new-bag-is-done/ that directed me to a free bag pattern
http://artsycraftybabe.typepad.com/tutorials/phoebe_bag.pdf

I think that this is a great bag pattern & will leave me lots of scope to decorate the bag.  So I have a new crafty project for the new year. Just need to start feeling better so I can go out shopping for fabric.

No Christmas Cards!!!

I am on a roll, I have completed, yes fully completed five scrapbook pages this week! Admittedly the homemade christmas cards have not been made this year, but the only people who would probably notice that is my Mum and Ella. So for the first time in six years I will be sending out shop bought cards, shock horror. Since Ella's first Christmas I have either used her handprint, footprint or a photo of her on our cards. She is a little upset, especially as it was her idea as to what she dress up in this year, but I just wasn't going to get them done in time. Never mind, there is always next year.

So here is what I have managed to find time for, my first completed double page layout. Again I have used a sketch from the Let's Scrap forum.

Challenge79

I have just submitted my first entry to a Let's Scrap Challenge. The challenge is to use an old book or newspaper on a layout. It would be easy to go back to what I learnt at the crop the other month & make some pretty flowers but as I mentioned before, we had no newspapers. So even though I went & bought one, I went down a different route. We had a magazine come through the door with some double page adverts in it. They are all bright adverts for Christmas, so I thought that they would be great to use.

But how to use them? Well I tore them up & made a background paper with them.

Different is the word that comes to mind, but it was fun to do, like being a little kid doing paper mache.

I have also completed another page using another Let's Scrap Sketch, this one is much more toned down. For a change it was my husband taking the photos & I think that this one is my favourite of Ella taken this year.

You can find all the lovely ladies at
http://letsscrap.ning.com/

A Girls gotta scrap.

This weekend we had a shuffle round, we are planning to have a fire installed in our front room, so we have moved a piece of furniture out so that we have room. I have now gained some new storage in my craft room, as a girl can never have too much storage.

Can't wait to fill it with some crafty goodies :)

Also this weekend I got some scrapping time, my lovely husband took my daughter to the zoo to see Santa.  So I got to scrap a sketch from the Let's Scrap forum http://letsscrap.ning.com/ 

My first sketch & I am pretty pleased with myself. I used Ella's coat & wellies as the colour scheme. I was hoping to use it to do my first Let's Scrap challenge, but the challenge requires newspaper & all of ours had been recycled, so I am off to the shops after school pickup to purchase a newspaper.

Snow is still my favourite

Even though I have been snowed in for a couple of days, I'm feeling rather cheerful. My husband has managed to get home which is great. He is much braver than me, he has dug our car out & gone food shopping. The cupboards will hopefully be a bit fuller when he gets back.

Ella & I have been busy together, last year in the sales I bought a ceramic bauble kit, you paint the baubles. This was a great success & I now have three lovely baubles that Ella painted on our tree. In fact she liked it so much I have ordered some more, they will come out in the week before Christmas when she breaks up from school. We also ventured outside, I took Ella sledging which was great fun, I took loads of photos which means I will be able to do lots of wintry scrapbook pages. We also used my lovely new oven & baked some christmas biscuits.

The snow has also given me an oppportunity to do some reading of other blogs & also some internet searching & I think that I have come up trumps. I have found a lovely lady who has just released a scrapbooking app, have a look at http://www.sketches2scrapbook.com/ I am finding this very handy as I love my iphone. I have also found a scrapbooking forum called Let's Scrap, you can find it at http://letsscrap.ning.com/ again it is another great source of scrapbooking ideas. A bonus, the ladies on the forum seem very friendly.

Snow is my favourite & my best

Snow is my favourite & my best, is the title of a book by Lauren Child. I am guessing anybody who has a child aged six or under would of heard of Charlie & Lola the main characters in this book.My daughter loves these books, they don't get read as much as they used too, but with the snow, out came this book.

I am agreeing with the title, snow is my favourite & my best for several reasons -
1. It has made my little girl very happy
2. No school, which means no school run (has made me very happy)
3. Sledging is great fun
4. No table top sale, which has saved me the shame of not selling any cards
5. We finished decorating our three christmas trees
6. I have taken plenty of photos to scrap
7. It has given me plenty of inspiration

Don't get me wrong it does also bring it's problems, my better half is stuck in the US unable to get back & the crop that I was so looking forward too has been cancelled, but on the whole it is all good :)

Snow

It has snowed! So I am looking out of my window at a very white garden. The snow is helping my craft block. Yes I have craft block, I am meant to be doing a table top sale on Friday, where I am going to attempt to sale my cards.

I am meant to be making cards & gift tags but I am having trouble, I haven't made cards for over a year & have been focusing more on scrapbooking. If I am totally honest I would much rather being doing some scrapping.