Baby It's Cold Outside...

The other day I told you that I was working with a very cute winter collab by Kate Hadfield that was going to be released this Friday. Which is today :) So I'm now free to show you the layout and the kit I was talking about. Firstly, here is what I created...

[Supplies: Bundle Up - Kate Hadfield, SMJ Designs, Postage Frames - Amy Martin, Flossy Mess - Karah Fredricks (all from The Lilypad)]

As the main kit I used the "Bundle Up" collab by Kate Hadfield and SMJ Designs. Really, if you like cute snowmen etc you should check out the kit and the bigger preview picture here.

And, as we all know that Kate's doodles are some of my favourites to scrap with, I just must show you her other collab that was also released today. It's called "Fa La La La La!" and if you want to check it out you can find it here.

Such great colours! I've just downloaded it and plan to sit down and create something with it after the weekend. :)

My Cool News...

I hinted yesterday that I'd got another position on a Creative Team...

I'm really excited to share that I'm now part of the Lliella Designs Creative Team. If you're a follower of my blog, you will already have seen several projects that I have made with Allie's great kits. I'm a huge fan of them so I was jumping up and down when I got the e-mail from her :)

If you're into cute things (like I am!) then you really must check out Lliella Designs. But be warned, you won't be able to resist... so bring your credit card :)

These are her two latest super cute winter kits which I have been working with for my very first official CT layout:

...and here is what I came up with:

[Supplies used: Chilly Milly - Lliella Designs, Chilly Willy - Lliella Designs, Home Together - Lliella Designs, Backyard Crawlies - Lliella Designs, Li'l Miss Cartwheelie - Lliella Designs
(all from SSD)]

Polka Dots...

I love polka dots and anything with a circle/spot pattern. The Swiss Dotted Bazzill is great and I can't get enough of my dotted Cuttlebug embossing folder. So I was very happy to work with some of Shimelle's great polka dot papers this week:

[Supplies used: Autumn Apples Embellishments - Shimelle Laine, Autumn Apples Polka Dot Papers - Shimelle Laine (both from 2Peas), Scrap Pad - Polly Love 4 - Amy Martin (from The Lilypad), Bejewelled - Fee Jardine, Jingle Baby - Kristin Cronin-Barrow, Meghan Mullens
(from SSD)]

I've had a bit of a digital scrapping day today. Earlier this morning I worked with a new collab from Kate Hadfield. It's seriously super cute and wintery. You really must check it out when it's released on Friday :)

I have also had some great news, I'm the new member of another Creative Team too. It's someone who's kits I have scrapped with in the past and enjoyed a lot... I'm seriously excited about this!! More news will come very soon :)

Making Christmas Cards...

I have just finished this week's double layout for Ali Edwards' BPS class (great layout design!) and in a bit I'm going to start working on this year's Christmas card prototype. This is cards for family only and every year I make a prototype first. Then we pick one weekend and me & Ross sit down and make all the cards based on this prototype card (while playing Christmas music of course!) A very cosy tradition and I feel so happy (and lucky!) that we do it together.

And talking about Christmas cards, here's a hybrid card which I made late last week using a super cute kit by Mindy Terasawa:

[Supplies: I Believe - Mindy Terasawa, Jolly Lil Friends - Mindy Terasawa (both from Designer Digitals)]

Before I get started on designing this year's Christmas cards I just wanted to say thanks to Kerry who left a comment and mentioned that Eclipse (the 3rd film in the Twilight saga) is due to premiere on July 9th 2010. I hadn't got as far as starting investigating that yet as I figured it must be about a year away. Really pleased to read that it's so "soon". :)

New Moon...

Thanks for all the birthday wishes! I had a great birthday on Friday and it ended perfectly by going to watch the premiere of New Moon. I've had a few questions on what I thought of the film, so....

In one sentence: I loved it!! When I saw the trailer, earlier in the year, I was a bit "worried" that the wolves didn't look like they were described in the book. As in, they did not look very big. However I was really pleased to see that in the film they did indeed appear much bigger than a normal wolf :)

The story was great. Of course. As we all know who love and have read the books. So there's not so much to comment on that bit. I think it was pretty close to the book story. But there were a few little details/parts where I found myself thinking "hey that's not in the book!"

One thing that I always find myself wondering about though (and the same goes for the Harry Potter films too, maybe even more so) - how much sense would the film make to someone who's not read the books? How many little bits do you not pick up on or get? But then again, I guess most people who would go and watch it are fans of the books anyway :)

Another thing that I keep thinking about though... You know how you read a book and picture the characters in your head and they look a certain way? Robert Pattinson just isn't Edward to me!! Don't get me wrong. He's a great actor and acts a very good Edward... he just looks all wrong to me :( Everyone raves about how great he is as Edwards so I must be the only person in the world who thinks this. LOL! Taylor Lautner on the other hand - great, great Jacob. Both the acting and the looks - perfect fit to my imagination :)

I definitely loved the film and I'll be there getting my copy when it's released on DVD :)

Right I'm off as I'm busy working on my Christmas journal. Putting together all the pages and making the covers from scratch. Quite a task.

Copics With Printer Ink...

I posted the other day about experimenting with using my Copics and images printed using my printer as I had heard conflicting reports on whether the Copics made printer ink bleed or not...

[Supplies: Tinsel Town - Melissa Bennett, Tinsel Town Stamps - Melissa Bennett, Oh Christmas Tree - Lauren Grier, Sweet Holiday Digital Stamps - Julie Billingsley (all from SSD) ...plus Copic markers.]

I made this card using supplies and digital stamps from Sweet Shoppe Designs and started off with 4 digital stamps (ie. just the black outlines). I printed this onto the usual cardstock that I use with my Copics (Georgia Pacific) and I used my Canon printer (I always use genuine Canon ink).

Ooops...looks like I should have done more of a close-up on what Copic colours I used - sorry about that :( Hope you can still make them out.

Anyway, I took great care in not necessarily colouring over or on top of the lines, so I guess you could say that I was pretty careful, but... for me, Copics and my printer worked just fine! I'm so excited about this as it means a who new world is open to you with all the digital stamp designs too :)

Of course I can't guarantee that this will work for everyone and different cardstock and/or printer/ink might not give the same results. The little experience I have had with "compatible printer ink" (which I really won't touch since then!) makes me think that this could possibly have a worse result too... but as I said, I really don't know.

If you want to try for yourself I would just recommend being very careful at first (you don't want to ruin your expensive markers!!) and go very carefully up to the printed lines. Colour a little and then wait and see what happens before you colour the whole image and potentially could suddenly find yourself with your marker tip stained with printer ink (horror!!).

...I also used a Spica At You glitter pen to go over some parts of my coloured/shaded images. You can never have too much glitter :)

I hope this little experiment and the info was useful to some of you. :)

Birthday Copics...

It's my birthday today and I have been totally spoilt so far. Some great books, a super beautiful eyeshadow set by Urban Decay (I just looove their colours and it's one of my two favourite make-up brands!), a computer game which is so "me" that I just know I will love it, the cutest Christmas teddybear, the official movie guide book to New Moon etc etc.

And for those Copic crazy people out there (I SO know the feeling!) I got some new Copics from my parents:

Yum, yum! Apologies for the photos being quite grainy, the light is terrible here today because of the not-so-nice weather.

Tonight we're off out for a nice meal and then we have tickets for the premiere of New Moon - can't wait.

PS. If you're waiting for the report on the Copics/printer ink experiment, please check back tomorrow :)

Going To Play With My Copics...

A little update before I'm going to play with my Copics. I've got some new digital stamps from Sweet Shoppe Designs which I want to try out. I've heard different opinions on whether printer ink bleeds with Copics or not so it will be an interesting experiment :)

[Supplies: Winter Cheer - Lliella Designs, Christmas Cheer - Lliella Designs (both from SSD)]

Thanks for yesterday's comments :)

Cindy - you said my reaction to the vaccine scares you. Really, I wouldn't let it. I'd been told that arm pain was a really common side effect so nothing unusual. It feels lots better again today. Apart from that I have not felt any major side effects. Just a bit "run down" on and off, like I'm coming down with something. Small hints of a sore throat and headache at times and on and off my energy is more like 70-90 % rather than 100%. But that's all. I'd much rather cope with that while my body is dealing with the vaccine rather than full blown flu.

Right, I'm off to play with my Copics... :)

Tuesday Blogging...

I've been busy working on some digital layouts and hybrid cards this week. Fun! Also handy since my left arm is a little out of action. I had the H1N1 swine flu vaccine on Saturday morning. Didn't feel a thing until in the evening when my arm started to get sore (I'd been warned this was a common side effect).

By the next day I had a tennis-ball-sized round red mark on my arm which was really hot and my arm was really sore (like a mega sore giant bruise - only there was no bruise visible). It got more and more sore over 48 hours and I have struggled to sleep because of it. This morning, finally, I think it's turning for the better. The mark is still there, red and very hot, but I think the pain is slowly starting to fade. Yay! I have felt a little less energetic and slight hints of headache at times but otherwise fine :)

Anyway, over to some of the digital scrapping I did, and a layout done for Sweet Shoppe Designs:

[Supplies: Journaling Pack - Darcy Baldwin, Jingle Baby - Kristin Cronin-Barrow, Meghan Mullens, Ruled Alpha - Lauren Reid, Layered Up In You: Stripes - Lauren Grier, Inspired By Rebecca - Lauren Reid, Jingle Masks - ScrapKitchen, Winter Wonderland - Zoe Pearn
(all from SSD)]

Marlene - left a comment on this post for my 3rd journal for Karla Dudley's class and wondered if she'd missed photos of the previous two journals I made? You did indeed. You can find all three journals here:

* Journal 1
* Journal 2
* Journal 3

Hope that helps :)

A Lilypad Layout...

I hope you're all having a great weekend :)

I got some super cute photos of my little niece when mum & dad took her to a place where you could look at/stroke farm animals. They also had this wooden horse toy which became very popular :)

[Supplies: Hoopla Alphas - Amy Martin, In Stitches - Cori Gammon , Autumn TidBits - Jenna Desai, Stuck Together Little Minis - Karah Fredricks, Pick Of the Patch - Kate Hadfield , Ride 'Em Cowboy - Kate Hadfield, Art House Papers - Lauren Reid, Snip-Its - Valerie Wibbens
(all from The Lilypad)]

...I thought the photos went perfect with some of the farm/cowboy themed doodles that Kate Hadfield released as part of Lilypad's BYOC for November.

Ooops nearly forgot:

Gemma - you asked me what version of Photoshop I was running and how that went with Windows 7. First of all I have to say that I love Windows 7 and everything is running smoothly. I used Windows XP for a very long time. I felt no need to swap to Vista. But then I got my new laptop about a month ago and that had Vista on it. Swapping from XP to Vista was quite different LOL! But going from Vista to 7 is no problem at all. Most things feel pretty familiar straight away :) As for Photoshop, I use PSE 7 and it works just fine :)