Giveaway!!

Thought I'd let you know that there is a giveaway on the Creativity Life blog at the moment. The prize is a set of goodies just like the ones we got to use this month. The colours are bright, bold and gorgeous! You can see them used in my sneak peeks below and here is the picture of the prize. All you have to do is become a follower of the blog. Good Luck!!

sunshine and sneaks

Well it has been a gorgeous few days and the sun continued to shine today. I know its only the middle of March and I know there was snow less than two weeks ago but it's hard not to get that summer feeling! Where's the sun screen ... where's the ice cream :)

I have a few sneak peeks for the next round of scrapbook apprentice and actually have five pics for you this time as we had to do an extra item this month! Hopefully you'll get to see them in full if I make it through the current round ... voting is very close so far! 

Blog Birthday

I just realised that it was a year last Saturday since I started my blog!! So, dear blog ... happy birthday:)  Haven't been up to much crafty stuff this week for some reason but I am heading to Laineys crop tomorrow and hopefully will get something done there. I need to do quite a few cards with Mothers Day and lots of birthdays coming up, and I still need to finish all my CraftEire projects. 

The lo above is about my littlest sis who just loves dogs. And yep, she is a good bit younger than me ... there's twenty years between us!

It's a beautiful day ...

... the sun is shining, it's not freezing (in fact it's actually a bit warm!) and I have an article in Scrapbook Magazine that just came out today!! I'm so excited as this is the first time I have ever had a article in a magazine. The article is called 'Introducing' and features four of my los :) So I'm feeling a little giddy today :) :) :) :)

I think I have posted some of those los here before except maybe this one. I really love this page even though it's a pretty simple design. I like the big photo and the clear buttons and of course the BG archaic papers which are some of my all time favs! Have a great day :)

Round 4 ... and a double surprise

Firstly I just want to thank everyone who voted for me for round three of the Scrapbook Apprentice :) Voting has now begun for round four and you can click here to take a look at all the entries. I hope you like what I did ... though I think I preferred my other layout, it was a bit more Boho -ey! We got a bit of a surprise this morning when we checked in to see who got eliminated as there was a double elimination! So only eight candidates left!!

I'm surrounded by oodles of ribbon at the moment as I work on my projects for round five. I'm pretty happy with what I've done so far (unusually!) but still need to decide on what I'm going to do for my 'additional item' ...hmmmmm. I have lots of ideas but need to decide soon.

My lo below is one I did last year about the first time I heard 'You're ruining my life' from Oisin. I do hear 'you're wrecking my life' on quite a regular basis now though! 

CraftEire ... and other stuff!!

Oh, I had such a fabulous time at CraftEire!! I got to meet so many lovely ladies ... some new faces, some not so new! The hotel was gorgeous and we had a beautiful dinner there on the Friday night. On Saturday, (after some more top nosh for breakfast :) I did four classes and also got to spend plenty of time in the crop room chatting, shopping .... and a bit of crafting too. (I even got to sit at the same table as Jane Dean! ) My first class was at 9am with Eva, but it was well worth the early start. We made a vase of K&Co flowers with a mini lo on one of the stems ... it was just beautiful! I also did both of Elisa's classes ... a very cool wall hanging with mini los in four frames, and a lovely lo with some bright and funky Cherry Arte papers. My last class was with Jane Dean where we made a lo with a very cool popup house. Of course, I didn't finish anything (I'm the slowest scrapper ever!) but I will post photos when I get things finished. I probably wont get to finish them until I'm finished my SA stuff for this month (just got a big package of gorgeous stuff at the end of last week ... lots of ribbons :) but I definitely will finish them coz I love them all:)

I got the new issue of Creativity life today in Inspiring Ideas. Our other los (the ones that didn't appear on the Creativity Life blog) are in there.

I'll leave you with a few cards I made in the crop room at the weekend. I just adore these Japanese doll stamps from hero arts and was inspired to use them after seeing a gorgeous card on Jackies blog. (Jackie did some fabulous make and takes in the crop room at the weekend too!) 

Feeling sneaky!

Oisin and I went to see Bolt (again!) today. It is just sooo funny. Go see it if you need to be cheered up, or would just like a good laugh:) 

I'm so excited about going to CraftEire this Friday. It should be a great couple of days and I can't wait to see everyone and scrap to my hearts content! 

I also have a few sneaks for round four of Scrapbook Apprentice. For this challenge the theme was stitching and the Boho Chic style. 

Love-ly day

Hope you had a nice Valentines day! We decided to go out on Friday night for a meal and a movie thinking it wouldn't be as busy as Saturday night. We had a gorgeous dinner but the movies we wanted to see were both booked out ... maybe everyone else had the same idea as us?? So we decided to rent a few movies, go home, light the fire and cosy up ... just me, Dec, Ben & Jerry :) Then on Saturday evening I had another gorgeous dinner, cooked by my wonderful hubby ... and he even did all the washing up! What more could a girl ask for :)

I only managed to do one card (Valentines) and one lo this week. But I really love how this lo turned out ... it could be that gorgeous map patterned paper from StudioCalico! I also decided to add a little bit of stitching ... now that I've got the bug! 

Snow and stitches

I can't believe it has been a week since my last post. The weeks just seem to be passing by so quickly. The snow has been crazy ... I can't remember so much snow since I was a kid. Last Thursday I decided to go to the Dundrum shopping Centre and thought I'd be fine as the snow seemed light, but when I came out afterwards ... it was like a blizzard. There was deep slush and snow on the roads and everyone was driving at about two miles an hour and I thought I'd never make it to the other end of the M50!

Anyway, I finally finished my los and cards for round 4 of scrapbook apprentice (I'll post a few sneaks next week). They seemed to take me ages this time and even though the papers were pretty, they were totally not my style. What I did love though was that I got to try stitching. I absolutely love the look of stitching on a page but never do it myself as I struggle with a sewing machine (can't use the foot pedal ... though I'm sure if I thought about it hard enough I could find a way around that!) and even though I have one of the mini machines, they are not very versatile and don't reach very far into the page. But I did do lots of hand stitching and used nice new stitching templates from PaperMania and have to say, its definitely something I'll be doing on los in the future.

The lo below is a Christmassy one I did a couple of weeks ago with some lovely BG Wassail. Thought I'd post this one as all the snow makes it feel like it should be Christmas :)

Round three and silver linings...

Firstly, a big thank you to everyone who voted for me in round two of Scrapbook Apprentice. Voting has now begun for round three  and if you would like to have a little looky, just click here! For this round we were not allowed to use any patterned paper which was certainly a challenge, but I think I was pretty happy with how things turned out. 

Thought I'd post a layout I did last week at a crop at the lovely Elisa's house. I'm really looking forward to doing her classes at CraftEire which is in less than 3 weeks!!!!! Yipee!!!

I've had this photo of Oisin for ages but never seemed to have just the right paper, but this kit from StudioCalico was perfect (with the addition of some very cute PaperMania small brown letter stickers). I don't know if you can see it too well in the photo but I outlined the edge of my cloud with some stickles to give it a silver lining!! :)