Mmm... Cupcakes...

Aren't they just like... totally irresistible?! I think I'm hooked on cupcakes (hrm... who am I kidding?! There's no "think" about it! LOL!)

We had the most amazing cupcakes at the weekend and I just had to scrap them straight away. And what's more fitting than using a few perfect cupcake digital kits that I found at the Lilypad...

[Supplies: Coffee & Cupcakes - Kate Hadfield, Gina Miller, Cuppycakes - Lauren Reid, Boutique Cute Doll, Bohemia - Gina Miller, Grow With Love Letters Edition April - Sara Gleason (all from The Lilypad)]

...and now, of course, I'm dying to have/bake/eat some more cupcakes! Typical! LOL! :)

Well at least we have already planned to bake some tomorrow night so I shouldn't have to wait too long. :) If you have a favourite cupcake recipe - please share. Thank you :)

That Time Again...

...it's that time again for me - to upload and get some photos printed. I kinda put it off as it seems to take a whole day to get it done so it's not exactly my favourite thing to do. But I've got to the stage where I'm uploading my photos to Photobox now, so the biggest job is already done. Yay!

When did YOU last backup your photos by the way? Maybe it's time to do that today? If so, don't do it later. Drop everything and do it NOW! You never know when you harddrive might fail. "Later" might be too late...

[Supplies: Candy Canes - Kate Hadfield, Cookies For Santa - Kate Hadfield, Do It Yourself - Kate Hadfield, Snow Day! - Kate Hadfield, Candy Shop - Sahlin Studio, Britt-ish Designs, Grow With Love Letters Edition March - Sara Gleason (all from The Lilypad)]

Above is a digital layout where I scrapped a funny story about the Christmas tree leaning like the leaning tower of Pisa. It was so funny at first LOL! But Dad quickly got it sorted with the saw and it looked perfect afterwards :)

LOAD 7...

Did you remember to change your clocks? I ended up sleeping extra long this morning, but not because of forgetting the clocks (we'd remembered!) but because I'm not feeling well.

And did you remember Earth Hour? We had all lights off for one hour, replaced by 14 tea lights in various places...soooo cosy!

I felt a sore throat coming on yesterday afternoon. Fast. It got worse and worse by the hour. And by the time I went to bed it had turned into a cold, so I slept really bad. I feel totally yucky today. I never get mild colds, always bad ones, so I'm not a happy girl!

But at least my LOAD layout is a good one for today...

Photos from last summer in Sweden which totally cheer me up and make me smile! :) Not too long until this summer either... :)

Easter Smiles...

Kay Miller has yet again released a super cute kit. :)

It's available from today and it's a pastel coloured Eater kit called "Easter Smiles"... it's available at After Five Designs right now.

Those bunnies, those bunnies!! Sweet eh? I just love all the cuddly bunnies etc at Easter time so I definitely had to make a layout using this kit...

[Supplies: Easter Smiles - Kay Miller (from A5D)]

LOAD 6...

I kept working on my Layout A Day all through finishing my Christmas album but I really wanted to prioritise getting my Christmas album done. Therefore I never took the time to photograph my LOAD layouts when I did them...

But today is a beautifully sunny day! Yay for that! We had two HORRIBLY foggy days last week. Like ---> M.E.G.A fog *all* day long and you couldn't see a thing. Very tiring! So today, with the nice sunshine and 12 degrees, as I type this, I'm a very happy girl!

I'm working on so many scrappy things at the moment I never know where to start in the morning LOL! I think today will be a day when I have to prioritise some digital scrapping for my Creative Team assignments. That AND playing the brand new Angry Birds Rio - yay - it's even better than the original Angry Birds I think :)

Easter Cards...

That's not something we (personally... and generally, I guess, too!) send a lot. I only really make them because it's an excuse to play with some cute egg, chicks or bunny stamps :) So it's only very few for my family that I make.

When I spotted this stamp the other week I just *knew* that had to be the one for my Easter cards this year...

Very cute I think plus perfect to colour with my very much loved Copic markers :) And this is what I came up with...

Christmas Journal - Day 31...

And... it is finished! Yep here's the very last page in my Christmas album for 2010:

Pictures from New Year's Eve. The preparations, the food (don't worry we don't hamburgers for New Year's Eve dinner LOL! The burger at the top is from lunch), the table setting, the fireworks etc. So nice to have lots of little photos to remember the day by.

And with that page my album is complete. Yay!!

I know Ali Edwards runs her December Daily until the 25th of December. I know Shimelle Laine runs her Journal Your Christmas until January 6th. For me neither have felt very right. Instead I have found that from Dec 1st to Dec 31st feels totally right for me so that's what I have done for a few years running now.

Can't wait for December to come again... :)

Christmas Journal - Day 30...

Right, let's get this album finished shall we? :) Today I have got day 30 ready to show you and then there's only one more day to go! Yay! I'm going to finish this project indeed - always a great feeling.

Because I loved working with the 9 pocket page protectors sooooo much, I decided to use one for the last page in my album too :)

Lots of playing and babysitting my nieces on this day. So much fun! And I even managed to find a space for that very cute reindeer sticker on this page too :)

I'm still doing well on my LOAD (Layout A Day) challenge - yay! But more on that another time. I'm on a roll so let's get this Christmas album finished first...

Christmas Journal - Day 29...

The page for the 29th is the back of the small (7x5) page protector from yesterday...

I love this photo. It's a shame it didn't turn out half as beautiful as in reality. I guess it's always the way when you take weather related photos... rainbows, sunrises etc very rarely turn out quite as pretty and vibrant on photos as in reality.

This was taken early in the morning in Sweden. I came upstairs for breakfast and Mum said "have you seen the sun?". It was so pretty with all the snow and ice outside so I ran to get my camera to capture it before it was too late. :)

Christmas Journal - Day 28...

I'm on Day 28 in my Christmas album now. Which means the 28th of December. Only 3 pages to go to. It will be completed with the page for December 31st. Feels a bit funny doing Christmas pages in March some might think? Well I love Christmas so I could scrap it any time of the year. I'm just pleased to get my album finished. :)

Day 28 and kinda midway between two big events ---> Christmas and New Year. Which, for our family, means nothing special planned and just spending time with each other. The photo from this day is of Mum & Dad and my little niece (who we were looking after for a few hours - she's too cute!). I used one of the smaller page protectors from the album (7x5) for this day as I knew it wasn't a "major day" in my album an therefore I was happy with a slightly smaller page.

LOAD 5...

I'm enjoying this layout a day challenge a lot more than I ever thought I would. :)

After what I learned about colours that I like and don't like the previous day I'm back to my "happy colours" again. And you know what? I like this layout so much better! :) So it really proves the theory as technically the pages are quite similar indeed.

That green dotted background just makes me smile. Green never fails to make me happy! :)

I have also re-confirmed (as I pretty much already had this figured out before I started the challenge) that I love using (subtle) patterned paper for my page backgrounds and actually pretty rarely use cardstock... Which I guess it's the opposite from what is the case for many scrappers.

Christmas Journal - Day 27...

We're getting close now! Not many days left of this album. I always let my album run from the 1st to the 31st of December - to document the whole month. It just seems to work best for me. :)

Right, this is the back of the flap page protector from the day before and we're now onto the 27th of December...

The photo of this page looks a bit crooked - sorry about that. As a family we don't tend to watch very much TV at all over the Christmas Days, in fact it's hardly on at all. Instead we spend the time together and in the evenings we tend to bring boardgames out. Normally forming teams competing against each other. So this photo is capturing such a moment.

On this occasion we're playing a great Swedish quiz game called M.I.G. Kinda similar to Trivial Pursuit only you do not have a board, just question cards and dice. We love it! :)

LOAD 4...

Part of me challenging myself to do LOAD (Layout A Day) was to find out even more what I like and not like, when it comes to scrapping styles and scrapping supplies. And it's a very interesting journey... :)

This layout made me open my eyes to something. Even though, comparing it to my other LOAD layouts, it looks pretty similar to "my normal style" I was not very happy when I had finished it. Time to analyse! W-h-y...?!

It obviously wasn't the style itself or the type of supplies. That left ---> the colour(s)! And after thinking for a while I realised why! It's because the layout is made using mainly primary (green, blue, red and yellow) colours. And I realised that I'm not really a primary colour person at all! I love what I would call "bright pastels": lime green, aqua, hot pink etc.

I mean, I don't mind blue (primary) mixed with lime green & white. Or red (primary) mixed with turquiose & kraft. Or green (primary) mised with pinks & whites. (As a side note: I actually LOVE any green fullstop!) But: blue, red, yellow and green together as the main colours on ONE layout...? Not so me!

Conclusion: I feel like I have learnt something really useful from this layout. I should stay away from complete collections using primary colours and maybe only buy the odd sheet (preferably not featuring all 4 primary colours on one sheet) if I really like it...

(Apologies for the terrible photo of this layout. Because the photo in the layout is covered by a transparency it looks terrible. No flash but still LOADS of glare and reflection from the transparency making the photo look awful LOL!)

LOAD 3...

LOAD is going great :) I'm loving it! :)

So yes a few days it's been a little hard to fit it in, a few days I have felt a little stressed about getting it done. But no matter what, I have sat myself down and gotten that layout scrapped. And it's felt great :) Paper scrapping definitely makes me very happy :)

Need to do some digital Creative Team work today but then I'm definitely sitting down to get today's LOAD layout done. :)

I've still not decided whether to do LOAD for 3 or 4 weeks. Right now it feels like I could easily do 4 weeks. But I won't make my final decision quite yet. A lot can change and some days it really is tricky to fit it all in.

Oh and I should have an update on my Project Life soon too... yay!

Christmas Journal - Day 26...

Not many days left to go now in my Christmas album :)

After having a few days in my album using the 9-pocket pages, I swapped to one of the fun flap-pages. So two photos for today. One with the flap closed (how it would apprear in the album) and one with it open.

It's become a tradition of Boxing Day (since many, many years back) that my Aunt & Uncle invite us all over. Everyone on my Mum's side of the family (my Aunt being her sister). Every year we wonder how she will fit us all in, every year we seem to be more and more people, yet she manages it every time!

I'm so glad that we have this tradition because it's really the only time of the year that we're all together at one time (though of course sometimes some are missing for some reason or another). This year we really were a full house! It usually turns into a great afternoon/evening! :)

Scor-Buddy: A Review...

After having the chance to play around with a Scor-Buddy for a while, I thought I would post a review of it here for you all :)

I have had an older version of a Scor-Pal (the larger model) for a long time now. And I have used it to score EVERY single card I have made since I got it. But the Scor-Buddy, being a smaller model of the Scor-Pal, as always tempted me...

Unlike the Scor-Pal, the Scor-Buddy actually comes with a great little pouch to store it in...

The pouch easily fits both the Scor-Buddy and the Scor-Mat (this is sold separately - more on this later) which is great :) So you have everything ready in one little bag...

The Scor-Buddy also comes with a scoring tool. This has it's own little section at the top, where it clips in, so you never have to hunt around for your scoring tool (assuming you put it back there when you're finished LOL!) - this is a GREAT little feature :)

...you just press the blue button in the middle of the scoring tool holder and the tool pops out!

As I mentioned above, you can also buy a mat for the Scor-Buddy (the Scor-Mat). This is a great little addition to the Scor-Buddy. It's like one of those self-healing cutting mats. It's got lots of grid lines & measurements and even some diagonal angles marked on the mat.

The back side (please excuse the glare in the photo below, it was a really dark day and I had to use my flash for some of the photos) is totally different. It's like a shiny firm plastic and according to the packaging it's a "work surface perfect for stamping and other craft activities". I have not had the chance to use this side yet but I could imagine that inks etc would wipe off this very well.

The Scor-Mat fits perfectly in the Scor-Buddy :)

Now I really wish I had a Scor-Mat for my Scor-Pal (=the 12x12 version) too...! Oh well... maybe one day...

The Scor-Buddy itself is full of scoring grooves which makes it possible to score nearly anything (paper/cardstock wise). It even has a few marks (marked with an arrow, star etc) for the very common card sizes. If you're making a more unusual size, just mark where you have the middle and use one of the scoring lines to score.

The work surface of the actual scoring board is 7X7 inches. But since the right and bottom edges are open you can leave your cardstock hanging over the edge. This makes it technically possible to score something bigger than 7X7. You just have to work out where you want your score line, score as far as you can and then flip the paper over :)

Conclusion: This is a great little tool! For me, having a (VERY!) small desk it's great that I don't need a big 12x12 spot to use it in. Similarly if you don't have a dedicated desk or room for crafting and you need to store your supplies somewhere different from where you work this won't take up much space :)

I can also see this as being a great thing to have if you travel with some of your supplies (or maybe go to a crop?). Or just in general maybe want to grab a few things to have on your knee in the sofa in front of the TV or something :)

It's definitely a great investment if you are a cardmaker and I can very much recommend it :)

LOAD 2...

Okay I promised some more updates on the LOAD (LayOut A Day) challenge that I set for myself at the weekend. It's going well. The only day that was really though so far was Tuesday. I've been suffering with back pain for about 3 weeks now. It's been getting slowly better but Tuesday was not so great. And sitting at a desk is bad = scrapping is not good.

Apart from that I also had a bad "eye attack" in the night again (I suffer from a condition where my eyelid sticks to the eye surface - cornea - and rips that while I sleep. More painful than I can describe in words). This left me very sore, teary eyed and light sensitive in the daytime and... well let's just say that scrapping was not what I wanted to do. But I battled through and got my layout done. Admittedly the one I like least so far of my LOAD layouts, but at least I did it. And it's all about KEEPING GOING and experimenting!

Above is my 2nd LOAD layout. Normally I'm not one that turns to yellow when I scrap. Or even buy yellow supplies very often for that matter. But Sassafras papers are something I can very rarely resist! :)

Christmas Journal - Day 25...

So I've decided to mix my last few pages of my Christmas journal with my LOAD challenge layouts here on the blog. Today it's all about Christmas though :)

...so that's the 25th of December. Again great to use this page protector for the 25th as I had lots of photos I wanted to use. The 25th of December in Sweden (celebrating Christmas on the 24th!) is like... I guess what Boxing Day (26th) is like for people celebrating Christmas on the 25th. Kinda like the day after the big event. But we were having lots of people over for lunch so it was full speed ahead all morning!

I have already finished my LOAD (LayOut A Day) layout for today. Yay I'm on a roll - 5 done and not a day missed so far! I'm off to get some digital Creative Team work done now. My to do list for today is like 4 days (=impossible!) worth - aaah! LOL! Anyway, please come back tomorrow for an update on LOAD :)