Christmas Market...

Last night we went to the Christmas Markets in Manchester. We'd planned to go yesterday for quite some time, but mid day yesterday it looked like it might have to be cancelled. The snow had caused a lot of accidents and the motorway we were to take was closed completely. In the end we decided to brave some smaller roads despite the snow and it turned out ok.

The Christmas Market... or Markets in Manchester are spread over several squares and streets. Despite the waking between these, we were totally frozen! I'm so pleased I thought to bring gloves for us but my legs felt frozen to the bone LOL!

We had a great time walking around and it was generally very cosy. Didn't buy anything but we of course had our obligatory krakauer - yum! We were starving so it tasted extra amazing! :) Oh and there might have been a cherry strudel with custard being had too...

Mmmm... New addiction?...

Hrm... I think I might have a new addiction...!! I have resisted Glimmer Mists ever since they were released (a long time ago now!). Last week I was ready to give up and finally order some. But after some great discussion on a forum I was adviced to go for the Cosmic Shimmer Mist Sprays instead as they are supposed to be more shimmery (and more shimmer = always good!!)

Being eager, I couldn't wait to try them so I did some phoning around at the weekend and found a craftshop about an hour away that had some. We decided to make a nice day out of it and went there yesterday. Unfortunately they only had 6 shades and not really any of the ones I most wanted (greens, reds and gold/silver shades - Christmas ones... maybe even for my Christmas Journal). But I got myself some blue & purple ones and sprayed some onto white cardstock last night in the dark LOL!

The result? I went ---> *OMG, OMG, OMG!!!* and went straight online to order some more. So greens, reds and a few others - please, please arrive sooooooon! :)

PS. For any of you already using these, do you know how many shades are available please?

Christmas Journal 2010 Start...

I'm totally rushed off my feet here with two crafting projects (amongst other smaller ones) this week. I keep working on, and swapping between, the Christmas cards and also getting my Christmas Journal ready for December 1st.

I've decided to go with the Parisian Anthology album. It's an album which I ordered way back... like in September I think. I ordered it from the US and it took a while to arrive (not sure if it went via Australia or something LOL!) Anyway, when it arrived it was damaged. However Pink Paislee has really great customer service and sorted it out very quickly for me. :)

So this week I have been gathering some of my Christmas stash and started cutting papers for the page protectors...





Please excuse the reflections in the page protectors.

I went for a combination of different papers and manufacturers. I kinda like it best that way. Lots of mixing going on. :)

I haven't taken photos of every single page but these give a good idea of what the album looks like right now.


I decided to go for a side a day. So rather that one page protector (front and back) being for one day, I will have one day on the front and another on the back. Since some pages are larger and others are smaller I think it will work best that way. Though if I do have a small page protector for a day when I end up taking a lot of photos (and wanting to use several in my album) I can always add in an extra page protector and extend that day/page :)




I've decided not to add my numbers (dates) in advance. It's hard to know which days (apart from obvious ones like Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve etc) I will want to journal a lot and add lots of photos. So by adding the dates as I work on my pages I can leave my album flexible and be able to move my page protectors around as needed :)

How is your Christmas album coming along...?

Wishing you a great weekend :)

Copic Heaven...

That's where I am right now :)

For my birthday at the weekend I got some money from my parents to buy Copic markers. I had lots of fun putting my order together on Monday afternoon and they arrived this morning. Here are my new beautiful shades:

The colours are showing up a bit bad (kinda pale/grey with a yellow tone) in this photo due to bad light today... but hey, I think you can make out the Copic numbers at least.

It might look like a bit of a random shop, but it's colours that go with other ones which I already have, so it's all very planned. Ooooh I was a happy girl adding these to my Copic shade list. :) Pretty!!

And you know what? I have just finished colouring all the Christmas images! Yay! It took me a little over a week to do them all but I'm finally done :)

Above is the result! I'm going to be using an oval scalloped Nestabilities die to cut the image out and then take it from there...

Dear Santa...

... this is so funny. Well, it was at the time at least. I'm on Lliella Designs CT over at SSD and got this super cute digital kit called Dear Santa to work with. I download it but before I got time to unzip it and check it out properly, I'm heading over to the Lilypad to check out new kits there... I see this cute Christmas kit by Kaye Winiecki and think... "hang on, this looks familiar somehow!?" Then I think nothing more of it...

...until later when I go to unzip the Lliella Designs kit and realise that the reason that the kit by Kaye at the Lilypad looks familiar is in fact because this is a collab between them and it's the same kit! So being on the Lilypad CT too, I'm doing Creative Team work for TWO different designers with the SAME kit! Funny! I don't think that's happened before (apart from collabs WITHIN the same store of course!)

Anyway enough of my talk... gotta show you the kit:

So that's available both at the Lilypad and at Sweet Shoppe Designs if you're after it. I spotted the Kraft cardstock in the kit straight away and couldn't resist using that as my background.

[Supplies used: Dear Santa - Lliella Designs, Kaye Winiecki (from The Lilypad or SSD), Grow With Love Marriage Edition - Sara Gleason, Crystal Livesay (from The Lilypad)]

Still looking for some glue advice for glitter if you have any good suggestions please...

Mega Excited...

Got VIP tickets to the cinema this afternoon. I'm soooo excited...!!

Yumminess...

Not sure if "yumminess" is a word?! But if not, it is now that I have got my hands on some Martha Stewart glitters :) Loooove them!

Pretty eh? I looove glitter! Though normally I stick to my VERY much loved Stickles. I really can't get enough of Stickles. :) I use this because it's less messy. But I couldn't resist these pretty glitters. And I have got some glitter trays coming so hopefully that will help (?) with the mess...

I still need to get some good glue. I've heard good things about Art Institute glue. So if you're a huge glitter fan, please share with me:

1. Your fave glue for glitter?
2. Your fave fine glitter?
3. If your fave is not by Martha Stewart (which mine above is)... what are you using and do you know how the MS ones compare to this?

I'd really appreciate if you can take some time and share your glitter experiences :) Thanks!

Right I'm off to admire my glitter & look forward to my birthday & cinema visit tomorrow...

Christmas Crafting...

...that's what's going on here this week. I even brought out some Christmas CDs to get me in the right mood. :)

All week I have been working on getting all the images for our Christmas cards coloured with Copics. At the moment I'm about halfway there I would say. (And then of course it's making the cards themselves too after that.) Though I'm not sure I'll get any more colouring done this week now...

Apart from that I have also been doing a lot of Creative Team work... all Christmas themed. Which is perfectly fine with me :)

Today Kay Miller has released a collab kit called Spirit Of The Season. I had some fun playing with this kit yesterday and came up with this layout...

[Supplies: Spirit of The Season - Kay Miller, Jady Day Studio (After 5 Designs)

Right I'm off to take some tablets and have a little lie down. Feeling rather yucky today and woke up with a headache etc which won't go...

Christmas Colouring...

I mentioned last week that I was working on this year's Christmas card prototype for close family. Well the prototype is now complete. For the focal point of the card I'm going for a stamped image coloured with Copic markers. I bought a few cute Christmas stamps earlier this year and I picked one of those to use. So today I'm playing with this image:
...and my Copic markers:

No way I'm going to get all the images coloured today, or even tomorrow. I think it will take several days more likely, but you've got to start sometime...

Have you started your Christmas cards yet...?

Christmas Is Coming...

Anyone getting excited about Christmas yet? I know I am!!! I totally love Christmas *smile*. My favourite time of the year! Yes it can admittedly be a bit stressful at times, lots of things to do/prepare, presents to buy and wrap etc. But that doesn't mean that you can't enjoy all the nice bits and focus on them. I totally love all the cosiness of Christmas... seeing family, the trees, all the cosy lights etc. :)

I bought some Christmas compilation CDs last year so I'm looking forward to bringing them out soon. Due to hating shopping when the shops are mega busy, we have already bought about... 80% or so of the gifts - which feels great.

Better get started preparing my Christmas Journal soon too. I'm just trying to make a final decision between two albums that I have, before I can start cutting pages to size etc.

A Celebration Blog Hop...

Shimelle's Creative Team is one year old and we're all celebrating with a blog hop today :)

And the theme of the blog hop is...? Of course ---> Celebration!

My instant thought was cupcakes (what else!) and I had some photos from August which suited some of Shimelle's kits just perfectly. Here's my celebration layout for the blog hop...

[Supplies: Count To Four Page Template - Shimelle Laine, Long And Winding Road Add-On Kit - Shimelle Laine (both from 2Peas), Fall Canvas - Amber Clegg (from the Lilypad)]

If you feel like shopping...? You can find Shimelle's kits here.

And as a "blog hop" would suggest, it's now time to "hop" over to another blog: please visit Sheri!

Working On The Christmas Card Idea...

Do you make your Christmas cards? Or buy them all? Or maybe don't send any at all? I go somewhere in the middle. Meaning close family get homemade cards and everyone else gets bought cards. To make all cards would add too much work and stress at a time of the year that is already extra busy so that is kinda my happy middle solution.

So I'm working on this year's "Christmas Card prototype" this week... I'm thinking the traditional greens and reds and something Copiced (did I just invent that word?)... I mean a stamped image coloured with Copics as the main focus. We'll see how it turns out in the end...

Leaving you with a photo of a card I made which I guess would have been more appropriate last week LOL!

[Supplies: Scary Nights - Kay Miller (from A5D)]

And, Strangely Enough, More Dogs?

Since I'm not really a dog person I'm going to add my other dog card here today and then consider the dog phase over for a while. LOL! Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the super cute kits by Kate, I just have no dog photos and therefore it's a bit difficult to do a layout. Unless I made a photo-less one of course. Anyway, this is the kit I worked with as my "main kit" this time...

Fun kit eh? Have you checked out that dog halfway into the bin? LOL! Anyway, it was card time again for me and this is the card I came up with this time...

[Supplies used: Doggie Days - Kate Hadfield, Happy Planet - Kate Hadfield, Fall Canvas - Amber Clegg, Once In A While - Lauren Grier, Retro Journaling Cards - Sahlin Studio (all from The Lilypad)]

Right I'm off to think about this year's Christmas card (which I keep putting off! So who knows if I put it off again today...) and play with some Kay Miller kits.

Dogs?...

Are you into dogs? This is one of Kate Hadfield's latest kits, released earlier this week...

Aren't they cute? Lots of different dog doodles. I think they are really cute. But do you know my problem? I'm not a dog person. I'm a cat person. And not only that, but I couldn't find a single photo in my collection that featured a dog. A little problem... So doing a layout for my Creative Team work was kinda out of the question.

Time to think and come up with something else. Then I thought, just because I'm not a dog person doesn't mean that others aren't. And since I know people who love dogs I came up with the idea of going down the card route instead. So a birthday card became my choice of project and this is the finished item:

[Supplies: My Kinda Dog - Kate Hadfield, Doggie Days - Kate Hadfield, Once In A While - Lauren Grier, Retro Journaling Cards - Sahlin Studio (all from the Lilypad), Grungy Edges 5 - Penny Springmann (from SSD)]

Making Hybrid Cards...

Just before I forget I want to respond to a question that Sheila left on this thread. You were wondering where I got the album from as you couldn't find it anywhere. I'm afraid I can't help with a place to order it from (as where I bought it from, it's now sold out). However I can tell you that the album is made by Making Memories... so hopefully that helps you while searching for it. Good luck! :)

Today I wanted to show you this super cute wintery kit which I have been working with both yesterday and today. It's by Kay Miller, called Frosty Friends, and it's available at After 5 Designs.

I thought it was a perfect kit to have some hybrid fun with and decided to go for a wintery card...

[Supplies: Frosty Friends - Kay Miller (available from A5D)]

Scrapping Summer...

I just got a huge (well huge-ish... like 146 - I think it was - photos delivered from Photobox)... so sometime today I aim to sit down with a large empty space around me and try to sort these into order according to date.

I'm still working on the journaling class by Shimelle. But I think my enthusiasm isn't really there... or it's the fact that my todo list every day is huge and I feel a bit stressed about the class and can't really take the time it needs. I don't know.

Either way I'm running 1-2 days behind all the time it seems and I'm not really enjoying that. In a way I'm thinking that the best for me right now might be to give up. But I really don't like giving up so I'm not sure I can make that decision. Know what I mean? Been in a similar situation? What did you do? I know that if I give up I won't really find time to come back to it and do it another time, and that's another reason I don't really want to give up. But it would be one less thing on my todo list...