Pretty Paper Party - (Prompt 3) - Part 1

I am hoping this year to actually get on and finish Shimelle's Pretty Paper Party - I started it last year and so far have manged Prompt One and Prompt Two.  So the most logical place to start was with Prompt 3!!!

Prompt 3 involves putting a kit together either from your own stash or a bought one and using the whole kit to make a big pile of pages.  I have been wanting to do this for sometime now as it so different from the way that I usually work.  In this class Shimelle actually made her pages before even knowing what photographs she was going to use on them.  She also sent a link to a video from another class where she chopped up all the papers into different sized strips and boxes before making any pages.  So I decided to bite the bullet and just go for it and the result is that I have 7 layouts and 1 double page layout made so far, layout no 8 is about to be started and I am sure there will still be enough left for layout no 9!!

So I started with an untouched kit from Sarah's Cards - Cosmo Cricket 'Tea for Two'.  This kit also contained a sheet of Bingo Cards Paper from Simple Stories with a co-ordinating sticker/alpha sheet, some Basic Grey and Crate stickers, a large paper flower, some MME paperclips, a crystal leaf flourish and a couple of Pink Paislee shipping tags .  I added in a sheet of Prima Reflections 'Shalimar' and as well as using the 10 sheets of Bazill cardstock that was in the kit, I added in some Kraft cardstock.

 

 

The first thing was to decide which if any of the patterned papers could be left as whole sheets and which ones had elements that could be cut out for embellishing and those were then put to one side.  Then it was time to get trimmer happy and cut all the rest of the papers into various sized boxes and strips - this took a big leap of faith as at this stage I had no idea what photos I was going to use.

Shimelle's advice was to make a double layout first (if you wanted to do one) whilst you had plenty of large pieces of paper.  So that is exactly what I did and I scraplifted the example given in the class video.

I used some photographs from last summer's trip to Champneys of my friend Carol and I relaxing on the patio outside our room and in the grounds.

I used a Stampin' Up butterfly punch and some adhesive gemstones to make embellishments and some pink Cosmo Cricket pink woodgrain chipboard alphabets for the title.

I will share some more layouts made for this prompt in some other blogposts.

9 on the 9th - some of my favourite non-papercrafts blogs

I'm a day early for Shimelle's 10 on the 10th blog post so only going to do a list of 9 things.

This month I thought I would share links to some other blogs that I like to look at that are not papercrafting blogs.

1.  The 'Love What You Wear' Project

A friend of mine is joining in with this where you pledge not to buy any new clothes for a year, instead you repair, refashion or make from scratch your own clothes.  I would love to join but I am so hopeless with making clothes.  I can do very basic repairs and simple alterations but that is about it - I remember the trauma of taking a whole year at school to make an apron and then another year to make one skirt.  But I am enjoying following what others are doing and I love seeing some of the refashions that people are doing with charity shop finds.  I am hoping that I might be able to get the confidence to make something quite basic for myself.

2.  My Make and Do Mend Year

I found Jen's blog via The 'Love What You Wear' Project.  Jen is going one step further and is trying not to buy anything new for a year - lots of enjoyable posts on green living, upcycling, repurposing, crafting and recipes.

3.  A Year Without Supermarkets

I found Team Pugh via Jen's blog and I now look forward to their daily blog posts on how they are managing with giving up shopping in supermarkets for a year.   As well as updates on how they are coping, they also share recipes and other interesting tit-bits about their lives.

4.  Mum's Monkey

A daily blog post about the adventures and musings of Mum's Monkey, Darrell and Nigel.  A visit to this blog never fails to put a smile on my face for the day.

5.  The Small Things Blog

Lots of lovely hair and make up tutorials, plus articles on clothes, fashion and home decor.  Kate's hair tutorials are all on YouTube and really easy to follow.

6.  The Pink Whisk

This is my favourite cookery blog - Ruth Clemens was the runner up in the first ever Great British Bake Off in 2010.  Her blog is packed full of lots of lovely recipes - each one accompanied by great step by step instructions plus photographs. 

7.  Charity Shop Chic

Lots of lovely ideas on how to refashion clothes to make lovely new outfits

8.  Wacky Laki

Lots of great nail art ideas and some good tutorial and nail care tips

9.  One Good Thing

Lots of recipes, household tips and homemade stuff

So there are some of the other blogs that I like to visit - have you any favourite blogs that you would like to share?

Purple/Lime/Silver - Scrapology January Card Challenge

The January card challenge on the Scrapology blog is a colour wheel challenge and to use the colours Purple/Lime/Silver.

Not a colour scheme that I would usually choose but I must say that having used it I do rather like it.  I used a LOTV stamp which is fast becoming one of my most used stamps.

I coloured the image with Promarkers and lightly glittered her wings with Diamond Stickles.

The sentiments are Personal Impressions and LOTV.  I cut the image out using a deckle edge rectangle Nestability die and the scalloped circle is a Woodware punch.

The silver leaves are a Cheery Lynn die and the flowers were punched with an EK Success punch.  The flat backed gems are from Tripppleo7, I have recently found them via Facebook and I can see myself placing quite a few orders with them, they do a huge range of colours and sizes including pearls.

Thank you Scrapology for a lovely challenge and if you fancy taking part, there is still time as it doesn't close until 15th January.

Happy Birthday Dear Dad!!!!!

It is my wonderful Dad's birthday today and this is the card that I have made for him using one of my new Penny Black stamps.

I managed to ink the stamp leaving the number plate blank as that reads UK2012 and I handwrote with a black fine writer UR GR8.  The papers and cardstock are all from Stampin' Up and the leftovers in a class kit.  The sentiment is from Cuddly Buddly and the stars were punched with a Woodware punch.

I coloured the image with Promarkers.

I will be seeing him this evening - I do hope he likes his card.

My month in numbers - January (with a little bit of December thrown in too!!)

I missed contributing last month to Julie Kirk's My Month in Numbers as we didn't get back from our Christmas cruise till the 5th January and I came back with the lurgiest lurgy I have ever had which stuck with me for 30 days.  I am over the worst of it now, though I still feel pretty rotten by evening time most days, but I am now back in blogland and virtually the land of the living.

The most important number to share as always is how many days left to the Marillion convention in The Netherlands next month - so exciting that there are now only 30 days left!!!

Well despite going down with the lurgy at the end of our cruise we still had the most amazing holiday and the most relaxing Christmas ever.  As I can't separate out the numbers for the cruise I am going to do a joint Dec/Jan blog post about them.

Our cruise took us from Portsmouth, down to Tangiers, round the Canaries, up to Madeira and then home via Lisbon - a round trip of 3869 nautical miles. After 4 at sea days Christmas Eve was spent in a hot and sunny Tangiers, we did a trip to the artist community at Asilah and Mr P did very well with his wheelchair driving (we have a points system where he loses points for bad driving like hitting people's ankles, bumping me into things and bad kerb negotiation).  Despite there being no dropped pavements anywhere and the highest kerbs to the pavements I have ever seen, he managed to lose 0 points!!!!!  I think he was showing off to all the naysayers who had said that we wouldn't manage with the wheelchair.

That evening we had the most wonderful carol service on board and then midnight mass, followed by a very relaxing Christmas Day at sea.  Christmas Day evening was a formal night and a chance to have some nice photographs taken.  We posed nicely for the first 2 photographs and then the photographer asked us to look lovingly at each other - oh dear, big mistake!!!!!  After about 5 minutes of us collapsing into a fit of giggles and 10 failed photographs, he managed to get this one of us.

 Boxing Day we arrived at our first Canaries stop - Arrecife, Lanzarote and we visited a different island for the next 5 days.  My favourite island was Tenerife - it was my turn to select which shore tour to do and I chose to go to Loro Parque.  The dolphin and orca shows were spectacular and I loved the penguins too.

Our final island stop was the beautiful island of Madeira on New Year's Eve - we went on a lovely full day tour to Porto Moniz and we then enjoyed an evening of entertainment in the countdown to the end of the year.  We had a big deck party on the rear deck whilst waiting for the famous Funchal fireworks - we were not disappointed by them!!

Earlier that evening 8 ships and smaller boats took part in a Last Sunset of 2012 ship's horn symphony.  It lasted for 8 minutes and one of the bizarrest things I have ever heard - we sat out on our balcony for it and it was deafening!!

Well it was the best ever New Year's Eve celebrations that I have ever had - the champagne flowed freely - I lost count after glass no 6 and it was such fun to dance the night away whilst Boudicca slowly moved away from Madeira and out to open sea.

We then headed back for home via Lisbon, so another 4 more days at sea. 

Some more numbers from our cruise -

The ship was full with 900 passengers (its maximum capacity) and 355 crew members.  According to the galley records 2,060 kg beef, 2,504 kg poultry, 2,316 kg pork, 590 kg lamb and 3,192 kg fish were consumed during the 16 days plus 9.34 tonnes of vegetables and 3,635 kg of potatoes.  Interesting that there are no figures for the number of bottles of wine and champagne drunk for that period!!

Right I am off to check out what numbers everyone else has posted - if you fancy joining in you can find out how right here

Clean and Simple - Frogs and Christmas!!

The theme for week 2 of the 52 cards challenge is Clean and Simple.

I don't find these cards easy to make and have found the easiest thing to do is to stamp directly onto the card and make it a one layer card.

I'm on a mission this year to use stamps that I haven't got inky yet or have rarely used.  I got this sweet frog from Penny Black end of last year so it was my first choice for this card.  The sentiment is also from Penny Black and I coloured the images with Promarkers.

I then made two cards for the Christmas challenge using another Penny Black stamp from T for Transparent set 'Christmas Friends'.

I added a little bit of Icicle Stickles for a bit of sparkle.

New Christmas Stamp

Continuing with the new theme for the 52 cards challenge I used a new stamp to make some Christmas cards.

I got this lovely stamp from Woodware last November but never got a chance to use it until now.

I coloured the images with Promarkers and then double mounted.  The sentiment is Penny Black.  I can see me using this stamp a lot this year!!