We have been featured in.........

Cardmaking and Papercraft Magazine, issue 61 which went on sale December 23rd.

The story of how I got started with crafting has been featured in this issue.

I was introduced to crafting by my friend Marina who had made a Scrapbook of her daughters life for her 18th Birthday.

I was amazed at the fantastic way she had put the pages together and couldnt wait to give it a try myself.

It wasnt long before my first album was finished and now Ive just finished my 14th album just before xmas.

Anyway you can read all about myself and my daughter in this issue.

Thanks for stopping by my blog,

Merry Christmas Everyone

I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.
I hope you all have a lovely day.

From myself and my family, Merry Christmas !

A Sad Time, but Happy Memories

It has been a sad weekend, I learned of the death of an old friend Richard, who leaves a little daughter age 5.
We had some laughs including the time when a few of us went to Richard Bransons house in Oxford. We laughed at him all weekend as he kept falling asleep everytime he sat down. the picture shows him asleep in Richard Bransons tree house on Richard Bransons front lawn.
He was a lovely person and taught me alot, and i am sorry that he has passed and I hope he rests in peace.

Flower Soft and Santa Baby !

From when i was 6 months old my parents had the local post office, and we lived there until i was 25 years old.
This was a busy time of year and even as a small chld i used to love to be in the postmans room. I used to help stamp the letters and sort them, put them into bundles and sometimes even go with the postman to deliver them.

I also used to get up to alot of mischief too......

The post box wasnt the type that stands on the path but it was set into the wall just along from the post office door. There was also a door on the inside of the post office (behind the counter) for my dad to be able to get the letters out . The box was in a type of brick chimney in the wall and it was level with the counter behind where the staff used to serve customers. I was often lifted up to sit on the counter when they were busy, I used to climb into the chimney when they werent looking and open the door to the letter box. I used to put my legs and feet inside the box and peer out through the slot where people posted the letters.
I loved the feel of the cold wind in my eyes, it made them water, but i could see everything that was going on out in the street.

When people used to put the letters in the box i used to shout "Thank you " they used to walk away giving the box very funny looks. I also used to wave to them by putting my hand out through the slot........very naughty I know but it used to make me giggle. Some people used to walk away scratching their heads wondering why the box was talking......

Anyway to get back on track........When i saw the flower soft cards with the post box on them i knew they would make a lovely card for my mum for christmas. The post office was her dads before her and her grandfathers before her father, so it was in the family a long time. Ahh.......many happy chilhood memories spent in the shops with the staff who were great with me.

The second card "Santa baby" is for my friend, her son Connor is the baby.....when he was only a couple of months old and it was his first christmas we took him and bought this little santa suit and he looked so so so cute.....Hes 15 now so he most likely wont appriciate it but the little photos have made a great card. I even put him on the inside sitting on a little skateboard with a teddy and a pressy.

I hope you like the cards and Im sorry for drifting back to my childhood stories hehehe.

Thanks for stopping by.

I won lots of goddies !

I was very lucky to win all these goodies in the layout competition at Scrapbook Garden.

The layout needed to be Halloween themed and I used a layout from my Disneyland album.

Ths months competition is really simple. All you have to do is go along to their online shop and for every £5 you spend you get an entry into the drawer.
The prize is a Bind it all machine......SO WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR ......HURRY UP AND GET SPENDING !!!!!

ABAA - Window Challange

This is my entry for the ABAA Window challenge.

As a child I always looked forward to the annual visit at this time of year to see Fenwicks Windows. Fenwicks is a deptartment store in Newcastle town centre, and for years people have visited just to see the amazing window displays that tell a story as you move from one window to the next.
As I got older I took my own children to see them.
I always thought they were great. However now they are sadly not at the top of my list for festive windows, Im afraid that award has to go to my favourite place Disneyland.
The colours are magnificent, the models out of this world and to make it even better every few moments little bells tinkle and it snows down from the roof tops in Main Street. Truly Magical............

I wanted to make my window with the Disney windows in mind.
I used a window frame from Artchix , I then rubbed it with Rub and Buff using colours, Amethyst, Pearl Blue and Gold Leaf.

I added some passport size Disney photos that I took myself, and their logo. Mounted the whole thing on Purple Sparkle Card, and then added some Flower soft snow.

Its nowhere near the real thing and I would love to be back there now , bet its cold but magical, but it reminds me of my visit all the same.

Thanks for looking.

Awfully Big Art Adventure - Dark Angel

Oh dear, Im sorry its taken me so long to complete this weeks challenge, Ive been extremely busy.
Well she's not the average Angel thats for sure, but she is my entry for this weeks challenge at ABBA

I was inspired by Linda B who made a beautiful peacock doll. Linda kindly sent me the instructions and my intention was to make my angel along similar lines, however once i started with the gold embossing powder etc i couldnt stop and before i knew it i was adding the purples.

Well I know shes maybe not what was expected but i love her.
I dont know if you can see but she has amethyst ear-rings. The tiny stones and german scrap i got from Scrapz I really enjoyed making the body, it was messy but fun. I started out with glue and tissue, then added glue and bondable film and embossing powders and mettalic paints and more embossing powders, until i was happy.

Thanks for looking at my Dark Angel

Another Award

What an honor Faye has given me when she passed on this award to my blog. Here is the text that goes with the honor, the wording of which is not mine.

"This blog invests and believes the PROXIMITY -nearness in space, time and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers, who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award."

There are so many blogs that I look forward to viewing and there are so many blogs that already have been awarded this honor. I am choosing the following eight for this time:

Susan

Cookie

Lay Hoon

Sharon

Hilda

Jean

Patty

Dawne

A great deal of inspirational work comes from all of these great blogs. Thank you

A Real Person…A Real Award

A Real Person…A Real Award
Thanks so much to Nancy at Never enough atcs who nominated me for the “Marie Antoinette…A Real Person…A Real Award” award.

I would like to nominate the following to recieve it, in no particular order
Linda Vincent
Rosie
Karen
Linda B
Denise
Roni

To all of you , you are an inspiration, always.

ABAA Week 10 - An altered tin

The challenge for week 10 at The Awfully Big Art Adventure was to alter a tin.

The tin I chose was a small green one that was from Marks & Spencers ( it had fab little mints in it- yummy).
I always go for purple with it being my favourite colour so the dark green was a challenge too. However I have been collecting all manner of peacock, stamps, feathers etc so that gave me an idea.

The dark green tin lent itself very well to the shades on the feather and it wasnt hard after that to add on the other bits and pieces.
Of course it wouldnt be the same not to include PARIS in there somewhere, hence the title, ( and I couldnt resist the purple bling on the letters).
I wasnt going to do the inside, but got carried away adding some eiffel towers, a metal charm heart which has "Love" on it, a stamped butterfly with stickles glitter on its wings, a fan and again I used stickles glitter to enhance that, some quotes "Bonjour!" "May all your dreams come true" and "it doesnt hurt to dream".

My friend Gill who has her spare bedroom decorated out in the theme of the Moulin Rouge, and who adores anything peacock related will be after this .......I will have to hide it as ive fallen in love with it myself..........on the other hand, I could make another !

Thank you to Rosie and Linda for another great challenge, and once again, this isnt something I may have tried but now that I have, I will certainly be making more.

ROLL ON WEEK 11.

tick , tock, DAFT CLOCK !

Well this is my altered CD for the challenge over at the papergirls blog. The winner for this challenge was Karen and you can visit her here Congratulations to Karen and I now have an actual clock that works which is velcro'd to my crafting station door........now I have no excuse for not knowing the time.

Thank you for stopping by.

ps. And just in case you are wondering......the sign on my crafting cupboard door says " My next husband will be Normal ". ( Just realised you can only see half of it in the picture)

Be quick and take a look !

Why not nip over to Bootiful Stampz blog and read up on Sallys fantastic daily giveaway....hurry up dont miss out.

Arch Mad !

I have been promising myself to join in with the Gothic Arch challenges for a while now and finally got around to doing so.

After making my yuletide arch on Saturday i got a bit carried away and ended up making 2 dozen Christmas cards with arches on.....
Oh well at least it used up those Christmas bits and pieces that I had stashed away.

Silhouette for Gothic Arches

This is my entry for the Gothic Arches challenge this week.
Thanks for visiting.

Fantastic giveaway at Kristens......

Why dont you nip over and check out Kristens Blog.
Kristen has some amazing blog candy to give away, all you need to do is pop over and leave a comment.
Hurry up , dont miss out , its a great prize !

They asked for an inch- Week 9 (ABAA)

What a great challenge set by Rosie and Linda this week on the Awfully Big Art Adventure.

This weeks challenge was to make a set of inchies. Never having done them before I was worried as to how I was going to work with these minatures.
However its taken me less than 50 mins to complete.

I decided to do a set of 16, I used the letters from my name, my favourite number 16, a heart, a key, a photo of me when i was a baby, an image of a woman, some quotes , some stars to wish on, and a pair of legs.

All the card was black and cream, and I used cerise ink to colour the grungeboard letters, numbers, shapes and stamping.

I intend to maybe put them in a frame and make a picture for my bedroom wall, the colours are perfect and Im pleased with my end result.

Thank you again Ladies, another excellent challenge.

BIRTHDAYS !

Got lots of birthdays coming up before Christmas, and ive just noticed that the box I keep my cards in is quite empty, its been a busy year.
I found some lovely paper with these really lovely images on and ive made this card for a friend and im pleased with it that much ive decided to make a few more to have on hand.
I added some pink ribbon to pick out the pink in her dress, and some corner pieces made out of black card which were cut with the cuttlebug just to finish it off.

I used some similar images to this a while back to make some atcs which I traded so I may do some more atcs too.
Thanks for stopping by.

Definitely Dottie

Well Dottie has finally branched out ! After a hilarious photo shoot on Sunday , whilst she was baking and making lunch, she decided that she would like her own blog to show off her photos.......Our atc Queen Dottie was given to the Artist Trading Club by Louise her creator from Dotties World No sooner said than done, you can find The Atc Queen Dotties blog here and I will help her to post her photographs very soon.
Why not pop in and leave her some encouragement, Thank you .

Another Box File this time A5

After having such a great time with the box file challenge and the grungeboard I decided to have another go.
When tidying out a cupboard I came across 2 A5 box files, a bright pink one ( which I still need to find inspiration for ) and this black one.
I knew straight away which image to use for this. Still keeping my PARIS theme from the last box, this one has all silver grungeboard on it which picks up the black and white photograph nicely.I havent decorated the inside this time but im using it to keep my grungeboard in.I was given the Gaslight stamps (which are metal not rubber) from a very good friend whose family had a farm shop some years ago, at the top of their drive stood 2 gaslights. Her dad had the stamps made so that he could make his own letterheaded paper. The farm shop is now gone and her family passed away. But the gaslight stamps are being put to good use, Thanks Yvonne.

Now I only need to think of something for the pink one and I have a set.
Thanks for stopping by.

Awfully Big Art Adventure Week 7

This is my entry for The Awfully Big Art Adventure Week 6 .
This week it was to transform a wooden block of similar size to an atc.
Thank you to my cousin Tom who came to the rescue with a wooden block, and also to Linda who kindly popped one in the post as I thought I was going to have trouble obtaining one.
I really enjoyed making these, I covered them with Gesso, and then a couple of coats of Crackle paint. Once dried I rubbed them with gold wax and distress inks.
The gold wax smelled lovely. One my first one I added images of English Poets , with quotes and a verse, and stamped pencils on the top.
The second one had a large angelic image on the front and a shrine on the back and again small quotes and gems etc, and a couple of metal charms.
I put red felt on the bases so that i could stand them on any surface and they wouldnt damage anything. They are on my mantlepiece in my sitting room and I love them. I think I would like to make more to use as Christmas decorations.
Im sure I will make them for friends too. Thank you to Rosie and Linda for the Inspiration once again.