Hi everyone! My Show 'n' tell is late this week because I've been away for a few days - I had planned to Carry On Blogging whilst I was away, but unfortunately technology got the better of me this time ... This is the spot where I show you mine and you can show me yours! It's all about those little treasures we like to keep, maybe worthless to anyone else but priceless to you - my house is full of them. Click on the Show 'n' Tell tab above to check out previous posts. It could be your Granny's thimble, an old photo, the first book you read to your children, a shell you found on a beach ... anything at all really. Take a picture, tell the story and share it with us by clicking on the link button at the bottom of this post. This week I would like to show you my Matryoshka Doll ... This is a bit different from most of my little treasures, because I bought it for myself - most of my precious things found their way to me one way or another, but I act...
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Hi Everyone! What's On Your Workdesk this chilly Wednesday? If you would like to share it with the world (or just have a sneaky peek at everyone else's!) just pop over to Julia's place to check it out and join in. Well, I'm just back from a few days in London, trying to catch up on various online stuff, and for some reason my Blogger Dashboard chose now to go all Polish (at least, I think it may have been Polish) and it took me ages to sort out, because of course I couldn't understand any of the instructions ... sigh Got there in the end though, but then I took my photos for WOYWW and for some reason they won't appear on my pc as they usually do - have I broken the Cloud?! So this picture of loveliness had to be emailed to myself ... big sigh! Technology is great when it's all doing what it should do :o) This rather sepia-toned pile of stuff is going to be a scrapbook page about my Anglo-Indian Great-Grandmother Eva ... Here's the photog...
I'm in London for a few days, helping my son with his flat. It's been a tiring but rewarding time and I'm hurting in places I'd forgotten about! But we have made time for a little retail therapy, of course ... Tom took me to an amazing shop on Walthamstow High Street - full of ribbons, yarns, buttons and beads - he goes there for his crochet supplies and he knew I would love it :o) The shop is very narrow, squeezed into the space between two others (you could easily miss it and in fact we did to start with), but on the inside it goes way, way back, and it's full of goodies like this .. Gorgeous or what?! I had a metre of each, plus the beautiful paisley motif and the two jewel buttons and the whole lot cost me only £11.90! Blimey that's what I call a bargain!
Hi Everyone! Hopefully you've arrived here via Julene's blog , but if not, you should make sure you pop over to the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog and start at the beginning so you don't miss anything! I'm really excited to be joining in with the CKC Blog Members' Blog Hop this month and I can't wait to show you what I've been making with my first ever Counterfeit Kit! Here's a quick peek .. Our inspiration for January was the Hip2bSquare December Kit and the Oh Deer Me December Embellishment Kit - check out the original CKC post for details. I had great fun going through my stash to pull my "Winter Mixture" kit together - see this post for details of all the goodies. Then I added a collection of embellishments which I called "Liquorice Allsorts" - check out this post to see how I made my DIY 'bellies! The projects I want to show you today were inspired by Challenge #2 - use a container somewhere on your proj...
This is the spot where I show you mine and you can show me yours! Each week, I'll post a picture of one of my treasures - those little things which may be worthless to anyone else, but to me they're absolutely priceless! Why not take a picture of one of your little treasures, click on the linky widget at the bottom of this post and tell me all about it - I can't wait to hear your stories :o) Today I want to show you this funky hat ... ... which I love because it was hand made by my Mum. A few years ago she had a little studio, where she painted pictures and made all kinds of handcrafted things to sell. If you look closely, you can see the price tag still attached - I can't bring myself to take it off because it has Mum's handwriting on it.
wooHOOO!!! Guess WHAT??! Here's a clue ... I've just joined the Design Team at the fabulous SJ Crafts and I'm so excited to join this brilliant team that I could burst :o) In case you don't already know it, SJ Crafts is a UK-based online shop stuffed full of all the latest scrapbooking and cardmaking goodies - the kind of thing I can't look at without dribbling! Plus there's a blog for inspiration and a FB page where there's all sorts going on ... see?! very very exciting :o) Ok I have to go off and do a bit of a happy dance now .... see you again soon xxx
Hi there! Case File #106 over at CSI this week is another delicious concoction of fresh colours, sprinkled with sweet ideas for design elements and garnished with a generous bunch of journaling prompts (can you tell that I am back on my diet and therefore obsessed with food?!) Here's the recipe Case File! (you can click on the image to enlarge so you can read the clues) CSI Mastermind Debbi Tehrani has found this interesting Scene for us to delve into this week - from this image, she has pulled five colours for the Scheme, ideas for design elements and inspiration for journaling prompts. To solve the case, you need to make a scrapbook page using the following clues - All five colours in the Scheme At least two pieces of Evidence At least one item of Testimony And here's how I solved this case ... This page is all about one of my New Year's Resolutions - a reminder to myself that it's great to squeeze as much as possible out of life, but it...
Hi there, The theme over at Tag Tuesday this week is Capital Cities and for me it just had to be London :o) Here's my tag ... The base was made with scraps of patterned paper which I distressed and inked. I stamped the images a couple of times so that they could be layered up to create more depth. Then I added a scrap of ribbon, wrapped a length of twine around the whole thing and finished with some fabric flowers and a heart-shaped Union Jack button. It was at this point that I suddenly realised that I had put the phone box behind Big Ben instead of the other way around - so it looks like a GIANT phone box. tsk. Pop over to Tag Tuesday to see what cities everyone else has chosen to immortalise in tag form - it's always amazing and inspiring to see all the different takes on a theme. Thanks for popping in and I hope to see you again soon :o)xxx
Hi Everyone! It's late in the day, but it's still just about Wednesday - What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday?! If you have absolutely no idea what I'm on about, you need to check out Julia's Stamping Ground - have a little peek at other people's workdesks and show the world what's happening on yours ... Here's my workdesk, as it looked at around 9 o'clock this morning ... I was trying to pull out ingredients for several different projects at the same time - resulting in what looks like complete chaos ... and in fact IS complete chaos! On the left is my Counterfeit Challenge Kit , then some bits I've gathered up to make a tag for Tag Tuesday , a whole pile of photos which I may or may not be scrapping ... On the right you can see the dregs of my black coffee and some apple (the usual chocolate has been replaced by good intentions due to New Year's Resolutions, but I'm sure it will wear off) - and a few more toilet rolls ...
Hi everyone! It's time for another Show 'n'Tell - where I show you mine and you can show me yours - and you will never guess what I am going to show you this week ... ... this tatty little box was given to my mother a couple of months before I was born, which makes it about 53 years old. Would you like to know what is inside? Any guesses???
There are feathers all over the place at the moment and I think they're a really fun addition to all kinds of projects, so I thought I'd have a go at making some myself ... ... I got the idea from Mardi who made a gorgeous feather with washi tape and twine to embellish the beautiful page she made for the January 1-2-3 Challenge . I thought this was a brilliant idea, so I had a go with these wonderful brightly coloured Scotch Expressions Tapes, which I won on the Scrap365 Blog ... ... I also used some cocktail sticks and a pair of scissors, but that's all! Simples! Here's what I did ...
Here's the first January challenge over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog ... Challenge #1: Subway Art Use the subway art technique (using different colors/fonts in a block of writing like a title or journaling) I've been dying to have a play with the "Winter Mixture" kit which I put together for the January Counterfeit Kit Challenge, inspired by the Hip2bSquare December Kit and using lots of stuff from my stash ( see my previous post for details ). So I took it along to KHC yesterday and spent a whole day in cuttin and stickin heaven, scrapping this sweet school photograph of John's little granddaughter Macy ... I started with a brilliant sketch by Michelle Hernandez for the latest issue of Scrap365 - so much fun to work with - thanks Michelle! :o) As you can see, I piled on the layers and used up quite a few of the goodies from my main kit, including a selection of alphas which I used to create the "Subway Art" style title ....
It may not be the time of year for a trip to the seaside here in the UK, but as soon as I saw Case File #105 over at CSI this week, that's where it took me ... Here's the Case File (click on the image to enlarge it so you can read the clues) ... It's the second week of the month, so we also have a fab sketch by Emma Stafrace at Page Drafts CSI Mastermind Debbi Tehrani has found this intriguing Scene for us to investigate - from this image, she takes the five colours for the Scheme, ideas for journaling prompts, and inspiration for design elements. CSI = Color, Stories, Inspiration In order to solve the case, you need to follow all these clues to create a scrapbook page ... Use all 5 colours in the Scheme Use at least two items listed as Evidence Use at least one item listed as Testimony Use the sketch Here's how I did it ... I had a great time making this page about my boys splashing about on the beach at Looe in Cornwall, many years ago, bu...
Hi Everyone! I'm not talking about the post-Christmas feasting belly which is currently sitting comfortably in my lap and making me wish I could wear my onesie to work - NO! - I'm talking about home-made embellishments to go in my January Counterfeit Kit . The challenge this month is to create a kit from your own stash, inspired by the Hip 2 b Square December Kit and the Oh, Deer Me December Embellishment Kit check my previous post for all the details. My main kit is called Winter Mixture (used to be a very popular old-fashioned sweetie here in the UK), and I wanted to create an "add-on" kit to go with it, filled with embellishments ("bellies") inspired by challenge kit. Mine is sort of a combination of the Oh, Deer Me kit .... ... and the Hip2bSquare add-on kit ... ... I didn't have any of these items exactly, but I wanted to see if I could create the same style and sense of fun using some of my stash and a bit of ingenuity, so her...
Hi everyone, What's On Your Workdesk this Wintery Wednesday? Here's your chance to share it with the world and have a peek at what everyone else gets up to in their crafty spaces - check out Julia's Stamping Ground for all the details and join in, it's brilliant fun! So here's my workdesk as it stands this morning, poised for action once I finish pootering and get a couple of chores out of the way ... This is my January Counterfeit Kit, all boxed up and ready to go. I've been meaning to get around to the CKC for a couple of years now, it's such a brilliant idea, so in the spirit of trying new things in 2014, I decided to jump right in - see my previous post for details if you're interested. To the right of the pizza box, you'll see a fun little gadget which my BHS (Big Hairy Son) gave me for Christmas - it's a battery-powered eraser, which sounds peculiar, but you can get some lovely effects with it and I want to try it out in my art...
Hi Everyone! Another one of the new things I want to try this year is the Counterfeit Kit Challenge. What a brilliant idea this is - the basic concept is that you put together a kit from your own stash, using Kit Clubs as inspiration - genius! Once you've put your kit together, you can link up to the CKC blog and then start stash-busting! Tutorials and challenges are posted throughout the month to get you going and there's even a blog-hop which you can join in with - fabulous! Here's the kit we are counterfeiting for January - Hip 2 Be Square December 2013 Kit ... I've been peeking from the sidelines at CKC for a couple of years, thinking how much fun it looked but not quite getting around to it, but now I figure the best way to get started is to jump right in ... :o) The first thing which struck me about this kit was the gorgeous mixture of sherbet colours with pops of black and white - a really fresh colour combo which reminded me of an old-fashioned swe...
Hi everyone! I'd like to tell you about a brand new weekly link-up right here on Arty Farty Annie - where I'll show you mine and you can show me yours! There are lots of new things I want to try in 2014 - this is just one of them and it would be amazing if some of you would join me :o) My home is full of little knick-knacks and memorabilia - mostly not worth much to anyone else but priceless to me, because they each have a story to tell. What I want to do is to record and share those stories here and I'd love it if you would do the same. Every Monday morning, I'll post a Show 'n' Tell about one of my little treasures, with some photos and a few lines about its history and what it means to me. It could be anything at all - a small ornament, a book, a thimble, a stone I picked up on the beach - you get the picture? I'll put a widget at the bottom of the post so you can link up to a post on your own blog - I'd love to hear your stories too. So, wi...
Over at Tag Tuesday this week the theme is "Winter Landscape" and I thought this rather strange but beautiful image from Graphics Fairy would be perfect ... I don't know anything about this litle girl, but she is set against a snowy winter scene and seems to be holding a bag of money in one hand and a horseshoe in the other - my guess is that she is bringing good luck and prosperity for the new year. For more details and to see all the gorgeous creations from the rest of the Tuesday Tag Team - pop over to Tag Tuesday and check it out for yourself! Here's hoping that 2014 brings you everything you wish for :o)xxx
Hi Everyone, CSI is kicking off the New Year with a Case File full of fresh, bright colours and fun elements - what a breath of fresh air! Here it is (click on the image to enlarge it so you can read the clues) ... CSI mastermind Debbi Tehrani has found another intriguing Scene for us to investigate - from this image she has taken the five colours for the Scheme and inspiration for design elements, techniques and journaling. Here's a little peek at how I solved this case ... All you have to do is follow these clues to make a scrapbook page ... Use all five colours in the Scheme (plus neutrals and an accent colour if you like) Include at least two items from the Evidence as techniques, design elements or embellishments Use at least one item from the Testimony to inspire your journaling This time, I also used this wonderful sketch by Angela Star at Scrap Friends for the January Sketch Challenge - it was so much fun to work with, I think I will do anoth...
Hi everyone! I hope you all had a happy and relaxing few days over the Christmas week, whatever you were doing and wherever you were doing it, and I wish you all a happy, healthy and creative New Year. What will it bring us, I wonder? Anyway, back to the point - What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday? If you would like to share your workspace with the world and have a little peek at what everyone else is up to, just pop over to Julia's Stamping Ground and join in the fun - but be warned; you may get hooked! Nothing much going on on my workdesk this dark and drizzly Wednesday, as my workroom is still full of Big Hairy Son who has been spending a few days with us for Christmas. It's been lovely, and said BHS has been helping me to revamp my blog - what do you think of the new look? I have managed to squeeeeeeeze in some cuttin and stickin at my temporary workspace on the end of the dining table and my BHS has been joining in! He decided he'd like to learn to crochet a...
Hi Everyone - Happy New Year! If you're a regular visitor to my blog, you'll already know that I'm a huge fan of the 1-2-3 Challenge Blog - I just love the whole concept of it. The idea is that you are given a colour, a word and a technique and all you have to do is to include all three in a scrapbook page. Here is the board for January ... Colour = Orange Word = Live Technique = Feathers I'm extra excited about this one, because ..... drum roll please ...... it's my first one as a brand new member of the 1-2-3 Challenge Design Team - wooHOO!!! Here's the page I made ... ... this is a school photograph of my cute little great-niece Leila - I love the look of the black-and-white photo against the brights colours and the chalkboard-effect background. Here are some close-ups ...