Five Friday Favs!

1. Opaque Bright White WOW! Embossing powder.

It is beautiful and makes wonderful things. See below the purple gloss paper has been stamped using an embossing ink pad (Versa mark) and covered in the WOW! embossing powder. Blast with heat. And tah dah! It's beautiful! 

2. West Side Story

Saw this wonderful musical this week and forgot how incredible it was! Never actually seen it onstage and I was not let down, brought back school memories of our performance! Amazing. 

3. WEEKENDS!

There is no need to explain this!

4. Project life easiness

I've really gotten into my project life, it's so satisfying to scrap something straight away and not feel your always catching up. Of course I'm sure this won't last but I'm enjoying it at the moment! And I live the ability to make my own pretty cards to slip in! Like below!

5. NCIS is back on our TVs!

Who could not want to see this face each week!

Enjoy the weekend everyone! 

Shopping in Jan!

So yes I know it's January and we should all be saving money, me included, but I couldn't help myself when I found this brilliant website. Craftie Charlie, are a UK company, who I stumbled across on ebay and then searched to see if they had their own website, and yes they do!

The amount of  they had on there, at very reasonable prices, was brilliant. Also the care taken to package it and quality when it arrived was fantastic. I ordered late Thursday evening, paid £2.95 for delivery, and the 12X12 box arrived Saturday morning with all my goodies, wrapped in pink tissue paper, very pretty! 

I stocked up on some tiny, and when they say tiny they mean TINY, letters. As well as 3 sheets of 12x12 paper that contain six 6x4 journalling cards I hope to use in Project life. As well as a set of wallets for project life. 

So I'm well stocked for the next few months I hope! 

I would completely recommend Craftie Charlie, they had everything I needed, the postage was reasonable and quick, and the quality of their customer services is great. 5 stars! 

They also have a points system, which I have yet to try out but with each purchase you earn points to be spent in the shop, I've got a good few at the moment so I shall hope to treat myself soon! 

I'm always on the look out for new shops to have a poke around, and this was definitely a great find! 

Now to play with it all! 

January Project Life Time...

PROJECT LIFE...yeah it happened, I don't know how it happened but suddenly there is a project life folder in my pile of Christmas presents and I spent Christmas evening with my mum creating some pages! 

Here's the backstory, my mum asked for some project life stuff for Christmas (folder and files)  as she wanted to scrapbook all the old (and I'm taking old) photos she's got. There's stuff going back to 1900, possibly later. So I got her a folder from hobbycraft and two sets of Becky Higgins plastic wallets. Then when I was searching through ebay I saw loads of the little PL cards 3x4 so I thought I'd bid on some, and won a set of 100 for £5.99. 

I wasn't itnerested in project life because it seemed like you didn't have to actually make anything yourself, you just brought the cards slipped them in, slipped the photos in and 5minutes later ta-dah page done. 

How wrong I was. 

However, come Christmas day there are two identical presents under the tree. I was given a beautiful bright pink (LOVE IT!) project life file.

And I'm not gonna lie, it was great fun that evening scrapbooking about my christmas day with my mum, it was something that I really enjoyed. We swapped some plastic wallets and she insisted I took a few of the 3x4 cards with me, and now I'm already on January week 2. 

It isn't as easy as it looks, well it could be, but I love making things complicated right? 

SO each week I'm completing one folder, or at least planning one with sticky notes and folders on my laptop of photos that need printing. A lot of my pages contain photos taken on my phone and printed using my main christmas present my Polariod Gl10 printer, which instantly prints polariod photos from my laptop. Not my iPhone which is a whole other blog! ;) 

Here's a few of my project life layouts so far, and I shall create a page on here to display each week. 

Better photos to follow on that page. Along with a product review of the printer for anyone who wants to print photos asap but on a small scale. ie. me! 

Hope everyone's new year is off to a wonderful start! 

Challenge yourself...

So I never want to look at my scrapbook and think "oh gosh it's all the same!". So every now and then I like to challenge myself, to use a new technique, or style or idea.

This time the challenge was to use plain cardstock and layer up! I rarely use plain cardstock, just because I love the patterned exciting papers. However, so many people do such beautiful layouts with plain cardstock, I wanted to try! I also don't always use that many layers, I over did it on this layout though, and found it really does make a fun layout.

SO I started by picking out all my orange and blue papers, embellishments and scraps I could find.

I started out with that plain background and then got to add some fun patterns and went from there...

Using the faithful doiley to add a bit of texture and yet another layer, I added two more plain colours and a strip of orange and blue flowers. The title was easy as this page was depicting our one campsite for our week holiday.

I used a frame for one photo, cut using a Grand Caliber and dies, with the a rub on saying "happy campers". It's all about the layers on this page but that doesn't stop from adding tiny little details such as the rub ons and the trusty washi tape. Basically it was one big experiment but it's turned out ok.

The summer and arrow cut out are from the cricut, it wasn't a die I had brought but instead one that just appeared on my craftroom program. I'm guessing they give out seasonal freebies that you can use for a trial period as I've had this summer cut out, plus others through out the year come and go. It's a really good program I recommend for cricut users, it has it's benefits such as reducing paper waste, allowing you to see other dies, and merging lettering together.

Anyway I'm up to 11 pages in the Isle of Man scrapbook, the aim is to finish it by Christmas...watch this space! This idea of challenging myself did help with inspiration, this page turned out quite well I think, and I had fun making it. I think, as crafters and in life in general, we should step out of our comfort zone and go for something totally different.

Doing this challenge has pushed me towards attempting others challenges, such as the hundreds of challenges published by other crafters and blogs as monthly competitions. Maybe I will have  a search for one soon!

For now, it's back to to the Isle of Man scrapbook and pushing out a few more layouts.

The map theme continues...

Hello!

Oh my goodness is being a full time teacher, time consuming! I'm exhausted and in need of a holiday already, Mr Gove you have no idea! I swear!

Anyway enough moaning and onto the crafting, it's been forever, but when I'm not posting I am still crafting my arse off so to speak!

It was my boyfriends birthday this week, and he is obsessed with maps. I mean seriously our living room has boxes and boxes of maps he is organizing at this very moment! So due to this there is a running theme of maps through my crafting and his birthday presents, or Christmas presents.

This year it came in the guise of a card:

The card is a plain brown square card, which I covered with a square of old map (one the boyfriend did not want anymore!!!) and then surrounded it with a washi tape, map print boarder. The lettering is outlined with metallic blue pro-marker.

He loved the card and it has pride of place in the middle along with a range of motorsport and other map themed cards! When we find something they love we tend to stick with it!

Here is my mums card for him, it's stand mum, huge, too big for the envelope but really well made and looks fab! Show off!

The 2013 Scrapbook!

So since 2011 I've been creating a scrapbook for each year, I've only just finished 2012 and my Ireland scrapbook (which I will show a few layouts from later!). So now it's time to start the 2013 scrapbook, and I am super excited!

Why?

1. Because the scrapbook I got for it is from ebay (£6.99 in a bidding war!) and it is my favourite one so far. It's created by Creative Imaginations and is leather bound with vintage map print on it, it's also 8x8 to continue the theme of 8x8 albums though I do miss 12x12. SO here it is 2013 scrapbook album.

When it comes to planning for the yearly scrapbooks there isn't much I do! I create one simple contents list for myself, eg. all the events/places/things I've done and then that becomes my holy grail!

So here is the first layout:

A cute title page, where I just went a little bit "Whatever" and had fun. There's no technical skills here, instead I used up little bits and pieces. My favourite idea was using the tiny strips of prints you get when you order photos as borders because it showed the whole year (or select events up to now!) on the title page, giving a good snapshot.

I also used some of my favourite lettering stickers that I buy from The Range, for  £1 but I'm sure you can find anywhere they are really great for bright, eye catching layouts, in my opinion.

The paper is by K&co, stupid 112, as is the owl sticker which matches the once 12x12 paper! I used a set of stamps from Carol's Crafts which I brought a while back (I know they go to a lot of UK craft shows and have a shop in Bristol) for the 2013.

Super simple layout but it's the start!

Here we go...

"I don't know about you but I'm feeling 22, you don't know about me, but I bet you want to..." 

So here goes, my first blog! I hope to base it around one of my favourite hobbies, scrapbooking, but I know like everyone else it will end up with a lot of little sneaky extras such as; baking, card making, craft reviews, book reviews, and general creativeness that I adore. 

A bit about me then. I'm 22, a high school teacher, from England. I have a degree in geography, so can colour in but can't draw to save my life.

I got into scrapbooking in my second year of university, though my mum is a huge crafter and I'm extremely jealous of her card making talents, not to mention all the other creative things she does. She got me into it and accompanies me to many a craft show. I decided to document all the wonderful things in my new relationship, and it ended up being a scrapbook. I have created one each year, and then one for the holidays I go on. 

I started off with one cute little 8x8 scrapbook,  a pack of plain 8x8 paper and a pack of flower paper(The brand name escapes my memory), all from WHSmith's. I look back at the 2011 scrapbook and still love it, granted if a scarpbooking goddess saw it she'd laugh but it means something to me. I guess I've definitely stepped up from two packs of paper, I have boxes of embellishments and huge piles of paper now that have to be placed under the bed, in our one bedroom flat. One day the dream is the have a spare bedroom we can convert into a craft room, cause right now my hobbies and my partners take up a lot of space! 

So there's a little about me. 

Why am I doing this blog? Because I want to share the crafting fun I have...obviously and hopefully share ideas and got a few as well!  From what I see in the crafting world, it's all about inspiring and sharing ideas.