ArtyFartyAnnie

I love this month's challenge over at the 123 Challenge Blog . Here it is - This is a brilliant concept for a challenge - they give you three elements (colour, word, technique) and you have to include all three in your scrapbook page - simples! :o) So here's my page ... This picture of us was taken in the garden on our second wedding anniversary in August this year. We love our little home and I wanted this page to celebrate our happy place :o) As you can see, all three elements in the challenge have been used - the colour yellow, mixed alphas and the word heart in the title. Here are some close-ups ... I used a white marker and outlined with black for the title - I love the chicken wire stamp which I treated myself to at the Big Stamp and Scrapbooking show at Ally Pally a few weeks back and have been using non-stop ever since! The black foam washer was lying on the ground outside the house one day so I put it in my pocket just in case ... Lots of fun l...

Great excitement - it's nearly time for the Frosty Festivities blog event over at Jennifer Grace Creates wooHOO!!! :o) A weekend full of fun, inspiration and prizes - I always enjoy Jennifer's blog events, but I'm especially excited this time because ArtyFartyAnnie is going to be part of the Blog Hop kicking off the weekend at 6pm on Friday 8th November. I am planning a special project to share with you and a fun prize to go with it which I hope you will like :o) So, put the date in your diary and make sure you don't miss all the fun! Check out the Frosty Festivities 2013 Announcement today - Jennifer has started the ball rolling already with a giveaway which you can enter right now! Good luck and see you soon :o)xxx

Case File#95 over at CSI   this week was perfect for a vintage picture of my sister and me playing horses on a wintery day out many years ago ... Here's the Case File (click on the image to enlarge it so you can see all the Clues) CSI Mastermind Debbi Tehrani has found another inspiring Scene for us to investigate this week. From this image, Debbi takes five colours for the Scheme, as well as ideas for design elements and journaling prompts.The idea is to solve the Case by following all of these Clues to make a scrapbook page - All 5 colours in the Scheme At least 2 items of Evidence At least 1 piece of Testimony Here is how I solved the Case (again you can click on the image to enlarge it) ... The design was scraplifted from a beautiful layout by one of my scrapping heroines Heather Jacob for Scrap365 -- thanks Heather, hope you don't mind! :o) The Scheme: all the colours are there The Evidence: paint; distressing; wood; tie something; metal; tearing. ...

... and the trees all around us are shedding their leaves, creating a gorgeous carpet of reds and golds over the garden. This was the inspiration for my tag for Tag Tuesday , where this week the theme is "Autumn" ... The beautiful leaves were cut from a LunaGirl collage sheet, then I folded, inked and layered them to look like a natural drift of Autumn leaves. Whilst I am waxing lyrical about carpets of Autumnal colour and playing with tags in my workroom, my poor DH is tackling the neverending chore of sweeping up the leaves before they block the drain AGAIN ... I definitely get the better end of the deal :o)xxx

Here's a gorgeous page created by my friend  Petrina Eve from the King's Head Crafters for this month's challenge over at the  123 Challenge Blog Each month, they come up with an inspiring combination of three elements (colour, word, technique) to get your mojo going - all you have to do is include all three elements in a scrapbook page. Here are the three ingredients for this month ... ... and here is Trina's beautiful page ... I love the composition, the masked background and wonderful details like those hand cut birds and the journaling all around the page (very jealous of Trina's handwriting too!). Here are some close-ups ... Why not have a go at this brilliant challenge yourself? You have until 31st October to link up your page. Cheerio for now Annie :o)xxx

woooHOOOOOOoooooooooOOOOOOO!!! This month's art journaling challenge hosted by Joy Anderson over at Soul Scrappers REALLY got my spooky mojo going - Joy said we should let our inner goblins out ... I decided to let my inner goblin play with my gorgeously ghoulish October kit from FrogDog and start a whole new journal - here's a little peek at one of the monsters hiding inside ... Once I got going, it was really hard to stop. This is the inside front page ... The background was created using stamps and Distress Ink in Mowed Lawn, Scattered Straw, Dusty Concorde and Black Soot. The scratchy writing was done with a Viva Paper Pen with a fine nib. I love the haunting photograph of the lady - one of thousands of amazing free images from Graphics Fairy  ... ... I need a good name for her - any ideas? When you turn the page, you see that the scary monster lurking there isn't so scary after all ... ... but in fact one of a list of ingredie...

Case File #94 over at CSI is full of fun elements and bold contrasts which I really enjoyed working with - here it is ... Yet again, CSI Mastermind Debbi Tehrani has found an intriguing Scene for us to investigate. From this inspiration image she has taken five colours, as well as ideas for design elements and journaling prompts. In order to solve the case, you need to make a scrapbook page using - all five colours in the Scheme at least two items from the Evidence list at least one from the Testimony list I thought I'd go for a sort of chalkboard background as it's all the rage ... I love this picture of Tom, Georgie, Bex and Joe taken over 20 years ago, because you can already see the beginnings of the people they have grown into.You can click on the image to read my journaling and check that I have followed all the clues -  The Scheme: all the colours are there The Evidence: woodgrain alphas; black background The Testimony: I recorded a ...

Hi Everyone! Still catching trying to catch my tail this week, not enough hours in the day as always AND we have the excitement of a new Smart TV to play with ... trouble is, I think it's smarter than me :o) Anyway, another fab set of colours and clues to follow over at CSI this week - it's the second week of the month so we have another brilliant sketch from Emma Stafrace at Page Drafts.   Here's the Case File (click on the image to enlarge it so you can see all the clues properly) CSI Mastermind Debbi Tehrani has found another fascinating Scene for us to delve into this week. From this inspiration image, Debbi pulls the colours, ideas for design elements and journaling prompts and gives us a set of clues to follow. In order to solve the case, you should make a scrapbook page using All five colours in the Scheme At least two items of Evidence At least one piece of Testimony The Sketch Every week you will also find a new set of CSI Coordinates desig...

Well, last weekend started with Major Disaster ... ... but ended up FABulous! My DH arrived home from work last Friday to find a scene of utter devastation - the ceiling over the stairwell in our little cottage had thrown itself down the stairs in a fit of pique and you wouldn't belIEVE how far plaster dust can travel and the nooks and crannies it can find its way into ... It took us both a good couple of hours to put everything back to rights. Here's the hole it left behind ... As John pointed out - half the work is already done :o) Whilst clearing up, I was dusting off some of my little treasures and I remembered a time some years ago when my life was in a state of continual chaos and a very dear friend gave me a little Buddha. She told me to just create one small calm space, focus on that and let everything else fall into place. I still feel that sense of calm and wellbeing when I look at my little Buddha collection on the mantelpiece ... Anyway, the week...

Hi everyone! I'm joining in very late this week, but determined not to miss out on WOYWW and I reckon as long as it's still Wednesday (just)it still counts! Just in case you come from Mars or something and have  no idea what I'm on about - WOYWW stands for What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday. It's fun, it's addictive and you can read all about it over at Julia's blog Stamping Ground ... go on - you know you want to :o) After a very unexpected weekend one way and another (a story for another post) I have a lot of catching up to do. Here's my desk as it was early this morning - Wednesday is my day off, so I had Great Hopes. What you can see here is the beginnings of a couple of tags for Tag Tuesday , where the theme this week is "Tattered and Torn". Last week was "Beads Buttons and Bows" and I didn't get that one done in time due to various palavers, so I decided to make two tags to catch up ... Ok enough waffle alread...

Hi everyone, I've missed weeks and weeks of WOYWW because this summer has just been crazy - what with holidays and parties, being laid low with back pain for a time and trying to fit in every single inspiring challenge I come across - I need elaaaaaaaastic days! For those who don't know what on earth WOYWW means - it's "What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday", when you get to share your creative space with the world and have a snout around to see what other people have/get up to! It's the brainchild of Julia over at Stamping Ground   - check it out and join in the fun, but be warned; it's addictive! Here is the current scene of devastation on my workdesk this morning ... I'm really enjoying experimenting with mixed media at the moment. The art journal page you can see there is the result of playing with the September FrogDog Mixed Media Kit - a little present to myself every month all the way from America, very exciting! You can also see a m...

Extra excitement over at CSI this week, because it's the second time we've joined up with Scrap365  with a special Case File designed by the wonderful Debbi Tehrani ... Here it is (click on the image to enlarge it so you can see the details) As always, Debbi has found a beautiful image for us to investigate and from this she has drawn inspiration for the colour scheme, design elements and journaling. I love this palette, with the rich red against the soft neutrals, and it just happened to fit very nicely with the Graphic45 Mother Goose paper pad which I treated myself to at the Ally Pally Big Stamp and Scrapbooking Show last week! The inspiration words - "read, together, magic" - got me thinking about how much I used to enjoy reading bedtime stories to my boys when they were little. We always used to have stories and songs before they went to sleep - sometimes from a book and sometimes made up as we went along. The strange thing is that there was ne...