Hand Crafted Memories

Come on ladies just because we are out of the world cup our fun doesn't have to end does it? Craftwork Cards are still running their Friday sketch challenge for another couple of weeks. (I know it's Wednesday, we're a bit late this week.) This is the sketch, all you need to do is make a card and send it to them, check out here for full details.    Here is the card I made based on the sketch.  I just love these Anglomania papers, I've ordered my third set! Everything (except the ribbon) is available at Craftwork Cards .

I am so happy, I've just returned from a miserable two days in London. I have been stuck in a training room delivering the training with no air conditioning, no offer of a drink or anything. It was awful. Then the hotel didn't have any air conditioning either. Don't get me wrong I love this weather and I don't have ac at home, but I can open all my doors and windows to let the air circulate. Not possible in a hotel or training room in London when the window only opens an inch and the door is into a sweltering corridor. I stink! Thank goodness the delegates were all really lovely. I had to keep giving them breaks to keep them awake! I arrived back to find out that I was a winner of one of the Daring Cardmakers personal prizes. I won Vanessa's prize of some of the Nikki Sivils papers and believe me I can't tell you how delighted I am. It just cancelled out all my negative feelings. This was the card I entered for the overall challenge and I left a comment on

What is a girl to do when she has to take a break from the sun and the world cup is on television? Oh yes I'm interested whether England win or not but I really don't want to sit and watch it. Its a bitter sweet game, of course I'd love England to win but I've drawn Germany in the sweep stake.  Thank goodness for blogs, I recently took part in the Creativity Boot Camp and because we all enjoyed it so much Madeline is continuing the theme with a Sunday Creative Challenge . Today is the first challenge and the word prompt is Open . I'm choosing to continue with photography as my medium, I have this photo of my patio doors open . This is the view I have when I walk from my living room into the kitchen and it doesn't matter what time of year it always make me smile. The summer is my favourite because it just invites you to continue through the house out into the garden. On  the left you can see my Jasmine, it is just now bursting into flower and the smell just fill

It's gearing up to be another scorcher today, so I got up and made a card for this weeks Penny Black Saturday Challenge . This week the theme is paper patch. I posted a card a while ago that I made using paper patching. This is another great way to use up 'those scraps', you know the ones that take over the house! My previous card was here , It's a formula I like to use when the scraps are taking over, so this was a very welcome challenge.

What a glorious day its been, the sort of day where you don't want to do ANYTHING. Unfortunately as I have another couple of days working in London next week I had to do housework and stuff.  I'm happy to say every bit of washing and ironing is done, downstairs is tidy and dusted, the grass is cut. I just have to finish upstairs. I've allowed myself a break to have a little nap in the sun and to take part in this weeks Allsorts challenge. This week they want to see embossing on the card. Well would you believe it this week I took delivery of a couple of Tim Holtz embossing folders. Here is my take on the challenge and I Looove these folders, they are perfect for men's cards. I wish there was a camera that could take pictures and capture smells. My garden is so fragrant at the moment I keep going out to have a sniff. I have a mock orange in the garden which is very strong. Right outside my patio door is this jasmine, it smells divine especially in the early evening. I l

I love using sketches for both my cards and scrap pages. Regular readers here will know how excited I am when any of the card challenge blogs that I follow use a sketch for the challenge. I also love Pencil Lines for my Scrap Book pages because they give us a new sketch every Sunday. I know I've been missing for a little while from the Pencil Lines challenges but I will be back soon. At the recent Scrapping Angels retreat in our goody bag was a sketch and some lovely goodies from the Scenic Route Loveland collection . This was my take on the sketch. I want to use a photo of me on it but at the moment don't have a decent portrait B&W picture so I've just used this one until I get one, I'll then add a title and journaling. I just wanted to show you how I interpreted the sketch. From this I got this   I have no image in my head of how it will turn out when I start, it kind of evolves. As long as I start with coordinating papers it usually works. By the way the hands

Nikki Sivils is a fairly new name to scrapbooking supplies in the UK, I was lucky enough to use some of her Flaming Butterflies papers in a great class at the recent Scrapping Angels retreat. The class was led by Anna Bowkis , the papers are not something that I would have picked or used but I am a definite convert now, they are gorgeous. The Design Team over at Daring Cardmakers have used some of these papers for this weeks challenge if you want to see more.

I can't believe that a week ago I was at the Scrapping Angels retreat at Wyboston Lakes . I was there as a day delegate and although it was a long day I loved it, I really liked all of the projects I made and I'll post them here over the next few days. One of the classes was to make a mini album out of an old book, this was a long class but we used the gorgeous papers from Prima. Lots of bling and flowers were added after we had stitched the pages together. This class was taught by Tracie Hudson , I have no idea where she gets her inspiration from but she definitely passed it on to me by the bucket load. I was lucky enough to get a book with a turquoise colour which suited the project perfectly, when I opened it up there were pictures inside the front and back covers so I adapted it a little bit to keep the pictures in. Here is the book we made, I can't begin to tell you how beautiful it is in real life.

Look at me two posts in one day. The weather is gorgeous and I've been out in the garden making it all pretty. I had to come in for a drink and a bit of a cool down so what better way to cool down and ignore the football than to make a card? Daring Cardmakers have a great challenge this week, a sketch (yippeee!) and the design team got to use the lovely Nikki Sivils scrapbooker papers, who is sponsoring this weeks challenge.  I was lucky enough to attend a class run by one of their design team Anna Bowkis , where we used the flaming butterflies papers. Here i s a link to the page we made, just gorgeous. I haven't put a picture on mine yet. This weeks challenge is also sponsored by Sarah's Cards, who run the most fabulous kit club. I subscribe to the scrapbook kit but they do an excellent card kit as well.The Nikki Sivils papers can be bought there as well. So without further ado here is my card.   Don't you just love those rows of dogs. These papers are all from th

Over on the Winter Wonderland Challenge Blog this week the theme is a Festive Tree . I remembered making a card with an origami Christmas tree ages ago, but couldn't remember how it was folded. So t'internet sorted me out. What did we ever do without it? Again a brilliant card to use up 'those' scraps and I also threw a bit of doodling at it. I have to say I love this card, I'll probably make a few more. I've added three photos because it is so impressive and simple.

The Allsorts Challenge this week is a sketch challenge, my favourite. The sketch is an old favourite layout of the fabulous Julie Hickey , she often uses this layout. Its a good fail safe if you get a bit stuck because no matter what papers you use it just works. It is also a great way of using up those annoying scraps of paper that you won't throw away because one day you may use them. I know, you know what I mean. We needed a birthday card for work, three of us share the same birthday and this year one of the girls is 30, no not me. I wanted it to be bright but girly, so picked some pink papers. Throw in a bit of doodling and some butterflies and in the words of Gordon Ramsey, done!

Well now its all over. Creativity Boot Camp is no more, we received our last prompt today and fittingly it is smile . We all leave our camp enlightened, encouraged and inspired. I have liked the challenge of coming up with an idea unique to the word prompt, although by the time I get round to posting it somebody else had thought of it as well. On a couple of occasions I got there first. Is it really all over? Not on your Nelly, Madeline is going to continue with a weekly prompt, hooray Madeline! It will be a bit easier with a week to think up something, it all kicks off next Sunday. See the link in the toolbar on the right? I digress today's prompt was smile . I think it is well documented here that I work with lovely people, mostly men, average age about 30. Yes I agree lucky me! There are only 8 women in the company (inc me). I'm 50 this year but they don't make me feel older, in fact I am usually in the middle of some shenanigans somewhere and yes I'm like the comp

Today is Craftwork Cards sketch challenge number 2. It is also a day that England are playing, so go ahead and make a card using this sketch and Craftwork Cards products, send it to info@craftworkcards.com and take advantage of today's competition fun . I can't think of anything better to do while the footie is on. This is the sketch Here is the card I made using their Blossom collection, it is absolutely gorgeous. I know I say this every time I use their products and its not just because I am one of the design team. I cannot lie the quality is second to none, the colours are great and you feel like you are getting the best value for your money. Don't just take my word for it, try it yourself. I also wanted to show that the Blossom range is not just for girls, look at this. Can I now be forgiven by my crafting buddies who visit for my cards or scrap pages? I know they've been a bit thin on the ground recently. For my fellow boot campers I'll post later.

What a gorgeous day its been. I have been stuck in an office all day, so when this posting is finished I will definitely be sitting out in my garden to enjoy what's left of it. Today's Creativity Boot Camp prompt is smooth . This one took some thinking about. I thought up quite a few things but the practiicalities ruled them out. This idea popped into my head while I was driving home. I love the smell of newly ironed clothes, especially when they have dried outside. What do we use to make them lovely and smooth , yes the iron. Just to make it a little bit more interesting I did a bit of arty, farty stuff and made it black and white with just a spot of colour . Don't forget to pop over to the Craftwork Cards blog tomorrow to see this weeks sketch challenge.

I can't believe that there are only a few days left of the Creativity Boot Camp . I'm also really pleased with how the girls at work have got behind it as well, each day they ask me what the random word prompt is and then they throw ideas out to help. It's been fun. Today's word was hush . The first thing that came to mind was a sleeping baby, but I have already used a baby. I thought about taking a photo of the office where our developers work, its like a library in there. Then suddenly it came to mind, I remember when I was small if my Mum wanted us to be quiet she would purse her lips and put her finger over them. We had a vote and decided Hannah had the best lips. After she had put some lipstick on and stuck her nail back on, this is what we got. I didn't have the SLR camera with me so I had to use my new 'go everywhere' camera, I'm quite pleased with it though. For the card makers amongst you here is another of the handbag cards which I made for a C

Oh boy what a day I've had today! The auditors have been in and as the only trainer in the company I was it! Why do we put pressure on ourselves? I am my own worst enemy for this. Happily we were OK. Then I went for lunch and passed a message on for somebody, which unfortunately made me the mouth piece for some unwelcome news. This disturbed me a bit because the recipient is very dear to me. All I could think about was coming home to this (can you see my reflection in the first one?)  Very unusual for me because I very rarely drink, but today this full bodied glass of wine was calling me. Fortunately everything is all OK with the world again. This led me nicely to our Creativity Boot Camp prompt for today, yes you're ahead of me full bodied . I did think of Guinness first, but I deffo wouldn't drink it, so I killed two birds with one stone took the pictures and I am now sipping the wine. Hic! Have you made your card for the Craftwork Cards Wags sketch challenge? You

I am so disappointed with today's photo. Our daily prompt was drizzle with the miserable day we had weather wise yesterday it would have been easy to get a photo of drizzle. Today, not so much! Grrr. I thought I would take a picture of the golden syrup being drizzled into the Rocky Road I was making this evening. Great, I took about 24 pictures, not easy trying to drizzle with one hand and take the picture with another. The best of the bunch was this one. I'm afraid I can't take anymore photos the cake is done, so with slight embarrassment I'm posting it. I don't want to miss any of the days challenges this far into the boot camp. I'll just have to claim an 'off' day. For my crafty friends, I have made some more dahlia's for friends (whether they want them or not!). I think I've got it now.

Looking back over my blog for the last week it looks like I've given up with the old crafting. I definitely haven't, I have just been concentrating on the Boot Camp . I've made a few scrapbook pages but I'm waiting for the photographs to put onto them. Yesterday I made two lovely pages and a book, the pages need photos. I was going to photograph the book today but light has been a bit 'iffy' due to the weather. Its such a gorgeous book I want to do it justice. I've got a card for you today, its another mans card in my favourite colour combo. I've also continued to try and improve my Dahlia's , this time it was a pink one for my friend at work. I think I'm getting better. I want to give them a go in card stock , can you imagine them on a gift? Gorgeous. Don't forget the fun over at Craftwork Cards , did you get your order in yesterday for the chance to win the whole order? Don't forget your entry for the sketch challenge, you have until Fr