... and the winner is

Thank you all for you great comments! The winner of the blog hop was announced yesterday and details can be found on the Scrap365 blog. Karen - CONGRATULATIONS!

Head on over there too for details on the great subscription deal Traplet are currently offering - you don't want to miss this. Only £3 for the first 3 issues for all UK subscribers.

I am afraid though I have to post and dash as I am knee deep in paint at the moment. Oh how I wish I could say it is artist paint and that I am working on a canvas, but alas I am still painting walls, ceilings, skirtings and doorframes. It is like my worst nightmare come true. I am on my last 3 walls, thank goodness.

Once done I will share. Get this, the colour of my walls was inspired by scrapbook paper (the lovely Bliss collection by Crate). I wanted the exact taupe colour of one of the papers, so matched my swatches to it. I think I might frame some of the other papers in the collection too. I am not sure exactly how yet, maybe some sort of collage, but I love the colours of that collection and seeing as whatever I frame will now be a perfect match to my wall ... well why not. Instant art.

That reminds me .... long ago I made a huge scrapbook page for my wall. I am talking probably about 4 or so years ago. Here is a photo - it is old now, but you can get the jist.

With little Hailey, to give you an idea of size.

It is framed and hanging in my lounge. Now to make something new for my new dining room.

Scrap 365 - It's official

Hello ladies (and gents)

If you have joined me from Sian's blog for the Scrap365 blog hop, I bid you a very warm welcome. You will no doubt know all about the new and exciting news. If you are a regular reader of my blog (and I use the term rather loosely as my posts are all but regular, but you know what I mean) ... or just stumbled on here by chance, then let me tell you what is up!

Some very super exciting news! Traplet, the UK publishers and team behind the ever popular Craft Stamper magazine has been working very hard for the last few months to launch a brand new fantastic scrapbooking magazine. The magazine will be called Scrap365, and choc full of inspiring projects from a very diverse and talented bunch of designers (as you will no doubt have seen from the hop already). The first issue will be available on the 18th of November (so mark your calendars) and after that scheduled for every third Friday of the month.

Are you as excited as I am?

This is of course great news for us UK peeps, but if you live abroad you will be happy to know that you will also be able to get this magazine in digital format (and of course on subscription in many countries), so you do not have to live on our little island to share in the fun.

For those of you who are interested in who I am, I will share a little more detail about myself.

Some of you will know me from Craft Stamper magazine, I have been a regular contributor for three years now. I have in the past also contributed to several other UK cardmaking, scrapbooking and craft magazines and have also taught a few scrapping and cardmaking classes. I have to admit to not having scrapped as much as I would have liked to in the last few years, and I am very excited to be part of this team and to really get scrapping much more again.

My style is generally quite graphic, and I like a more ordered approach. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE the arty, painty, ink splodgy layouts and art journals I see on blogs and in magazines, but when I try that it just ends up as a mess, so I tend to stick with the graphic. Actually, I wanted to be a graphic designer, but in the end I studied Interior Design and then worked as an office designer for many years. Now I stay at home with my two daughters (who you will no doubt see a lot of) and I pretend to my husband that I am very busy all day long as I much prefer playing with my crafty things and being here for my girls to real 9-5 office work.

Here is a recent layout of my oldest daughter Simone, totally enthralled by the tubs of blocks in the Lego shop.

I will also share a few older layouts with you that have not been on my blog (apologies to those who may have seen them before) as I unfortunately cannot share layouts published in Craft Stamper magazine. Hopefully this will give you an indication of my style.

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And now, without further ado, on to the next fabulous designer in the hop. The very talented and all round great crafter Emy Buxton

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If you missed the start of the hop and would like to go back, click here to go back to the Scrap 365 blog.

And last but not least, if you leave a comment here AND on every other blog in the hop as well as on the Scrap365 blog, you can win a year's subscription to Craft Stamper magaine and more than £20 worth of rubber stamps.

Happy hopping!

I have some exciting news

... but I cannot share it just yet.

Swing back here tonight at 6 o'Clock, British Summer time to see what it is. ;)

Not much crafting going on around here

We are still decorating. This is a long story and I shall not bore you with details. In a nutshell: We started pulling off the wallpaper in our dining room in March. Then my husband broke his foot really badly, was home in a cast for 6 weeks and all work stopped. When we did finally resume we decided to have the wall plastered, so we had to wait for that to cure, then we went on holiday .... blah blah blah.

We are now finally in the full swing of decorating, but the house is a tip ... really, it's a tip. According to my husband any decorating also requires the heating system to be upgraded, floorboards to be fixed, pipes to solder, all light fittings and switches to be changed, new door handles ... you name it. (He even bought special plastic paint so that we could spray the alarm box white again as it wasn't looking fresh enough for him). I have spoken about decorating before when we were doing my craft room and if you remember I mentioned how my hubby also does everything by the book, thus involving lots of prep work, primers, sanding etc. A very lengthy and time consuming business. In short, this is why my already lack of crafting time has been turned into almost non existant crafting time.

This is what I am doing.

My dining room and entrance has been stripped bare and painted (I am still painting the entrance, dining is now done - thank goodness). We are getting a new wooden floor (woohoo - I have nagged for that for years), new door handles, new lights, freshly plastered and painted walls ... just all nice and new. I would be more excited if it wasn't for all of the hard work.

Then I was asked by a friend if I would make her some cards for a few special birthdays. I need to watch more Oprah and work on my boundaries as I just cannot say no, and my response was "of course I can" even though I knew it would be push to fit in with my schedule at the moment.

To be honest I don't like making commissioned cards as I don't always think that what I like is what other people like and I don't want to disappoint them (the old people pleaser in me coming out). She looked through some of my previous cards and chose two designs that she liked, so these cards are very similar to ones I have done before, but I will still share them with you.

I love this design, it is the same as a card I made for my friend Kelly for her 40th, but this time I used the dress instead of a cake. Love how this turned out.

I coloured the dress (a Hero Arts stamp) with my markers and made the little wire hanger.

Then there was this one, I had a pretty specific brief with this regarding colours, text etc., so did what I thought my friend would like.

And lastly one for her mum. This is not my style at all, but as I was making it for an elderly lady I kept it a bit more traditional. Hopefully she liked it.

Frame it

I love picture frames - you can stick anything in a frame and it looks good, right. So I was in Tesco the other day and saw these little 3D frames. You know the ones, where the glass is set forward a little to accommodate dimensional objects. I ended up buying one, I was going to use it for a project and didn't in the end, so I went about scouting to find something to put in it. Found this old card I had made and put it in the frame for Simone (oldest daughter's) bedroom.

I love how a simple frame can just make anything look good - she loves it.

Hailey was very upset that she didn't get anything, so we went and bought a frame for her too and I told her she could make something for her bedroom too. She rummaged through my papers and chipboard collection and made a cute simple little picture.

Literally a piece of patterned paper with chipboard letters and that is it. So easy, but it looks pretty cute for a 9 year old's craftwork don't you think. Patterned paper is so cool.

Holidays are now all but forgotten

Hey ... hello!

I hope you are all well and have had a good summer holiday. It does seem like a distant memory now doesn't it. We went away to France again and did a lot of this ...

WEll, when in France you need to indulge in the local cuisine now don't you, and OMG is that Cote d'Or Almond chocolate delicious!

Then of course we had to do a bit of this

... to work off all those chocolate calories of course.

When that was done we could again just do some of this ...

... sitting on a bench in Evian overlooking Lake Geneva and knowing that we don't have to do anything at all but chill. Gosh how I love holiday!

We did get up close and personal with the animals in the Alps ...

These horses simply raoming free on the plateau half way up the mountain alongside cows, cows and more cows. Stunning, as long as you looked where you were stepping. What goes in the mouth has to come out the other end and all that!

And then, before we know it, the kids are back at school, the leaves are falling off the trees and I am sitting here boring you all with holiday photos.

Back to normal everyday life before you can say cow pat.

Okay, so the new Craft Stamper is out with a fabric special this month. I have yet to get my copy, but have seen that my denim stamped project is on the front.

I loved making that card, especially the little label. That 7 gypsies Numero stamp set is so cool don't you think. I love the "expensive" barcode stamp.

The actual jean fabric is stamped too, using a home made stamp none the less. Grab the mag to see how.

Keep well and speak soon. :)