ArtyFartyAnnie

Hi everyone, We just had the most amazing and inspiring time at GoGo Getaway at Theobolds Park in beautiful Hertfordshire. The whole weekend was filled with fun, friendship and food! We got to play with pretty things all day and learn new techniques and different ways to use our stash - and there was the Hey Little Magpie shop, just in case we neeeeeeeded more lovely stuff!! :D Trina and I had been looking forward to this for so long, and it lived up to all our expectations. Here we are waiting for kick-off ... I'll show some of the class layouts in a separate post, but here's the very last page I made, showing a group photo which was taken outside in the sunshine on Sunday morning. The Go Go Girls printed off a copy for each of us and provided a kit with everything we needed to make a beautiful page to remember the weekend by ...

HI everyone, Quickly, quickly, just got time to post my last pre-retreat challenge page before my scrappy mate Trina arrives and we're off to Herts for GoGo Getaway woooHOOOOOO!!! I was inspired by this fabulous mood board for March by Terri-Ann Morris ... The photo is of my MIL, DH and me on our wedding day in August 2011 (yes, still scrapping the photos!) ... The colour scheme came from the mood board, but I added a sprinkle of gold for good measure. For the challenge I also included a bird, frames, roses and butterflies. Again, this was a mix of new stuff from Quirky Kits and some quite old stash. I love those acetate butterflies which come on a sheet to cut out. Got them from Every Crafts A Pound (link on my side bar) - guess how much they were?! Right, I need to double-check my list - we're off in twenty minutes :D Thanks for checking out my blog today, see you again soon! Annie xxx

Hi Everyone, Three sleeps to go until my scrappy mate Trina and I head off for Go Go Getaway  on Friday. Regular bloggy friends will know I've been warming up with lots of pre-retreat challenges and I've really enjoyed getting back into scrapping again. Here's my latest effort, inspired by Nancy's beautiful mood board this time and showing a sweet picture of my niece Bex taken about fifteen years ago when we went out for lunch one day ... From the mood board, I pulled the delicious colour scheme of raspberry, sugar mouse pink, black, white and a dash of gold. Also sweethearts, sprinkles, iced doughnuts, circles, watercolour and drippage. There are a few DIY elements on my page - the bunting, the striped arrow, the cork heart sticker and the picture wheel and my fave is the iced doughnut, which was made using circle punches and decorated with Liquid Pearl "sprinkles". I did a bit of doodling and created some fun embellishments by fussy-cutting images...

Hi Everyone, Still getting ready for Go Go Getaway (only five sleeps to go!) - today I managed to find photos for all the classes I'll be doing AND a few spares. Also made a list of everything else I need to take with me, promised myself not to try and take my entire craft room this time. I made another challenge page as well. This one was inspired by Lorraine's mood board ... The photo shows my two boys over thirty years ago, when they were around three and four years old, also my old friends Beverley, Carol and Christine. Carol had invited us to visit her farm for the day and they loved it - except for the pigs, which smelled so bad that Richard cried and refused to breathe until I took him outside again!! Again, I've used a mix of new bits from my latest Quirky Kit , as well as older stuff from my stash - some of it really quie ancient - but not as old as this photo :o) This fab sketch from Laura Whitaker was a great starting point, although of course I add...

Hi everyone, WELL!! I have scrapped more in the past ten days than I have in the past ten months and I'm loving it!! This is another warm-up challenge for GoGoGetaway (which is less than a week away now wooohooooooo!!!!). It was a sketch challenge and again I'm not sure if I'm allowed to share the sketch or not, so I'd better not just in case. But I CAN share my page ... So, we had a sketchby Sarah to follow, but we had free reign on everything else. I decided to take my inspiration from this lovely pic of my DH with little grandson Finley when he was brand new, just over two years ago now. I wanted to page to be warm and cuddly, but with a masculine feel, so I used wood, fabric and a little touch of metal, and lots of stars to echo the title. The wood patterned paper framing the page is from a recent Quirky Kit, but other than that I used some really old supplies, and I made good use of some of my dies ... The word STAR and two of the larger stars are...

Hello Fellow Deskers and Bloggy Friends, I'm scheduling this to post itself tomorrow whilst I'm at work - hopefully the lovely Zsuzsa from Inky Dinky Doodle will link me up over at Julia's Stamping Ground and I'll pop over later to catch up with everyone. All welcome - why not join in, show us What's On Your Workdesk this Wednesday and have a good old snoop around some fascinating creative spaces all over the world. Here's my, not-so-fascinating workdesk as it was this afternoon ... ... I've been in a bit of a scrapping frenzy this last week or so, having a go at multiple challenges in the run-up to Go Go Getaway in a couple of weeks woooHOOO!! Been looking forward to it for SO long, but realised that I've been so obsessed with mixed media and miniatures recently that my scrapping muscles needed a serious work-out. So all other arty-farty pursuits have been shoved to one side in favour of scrapping over the last couple of weeks. Above you can s...

Hey everyone, Here's ANOTHER one of my warm-up pages for GoGo Getaway in a couple of weeks. This time the challenge was to be inspired by these five elements devised by Terri - Multiple photos Patterned papers Flair Luggage Tag Enamel dots Sorry about the rubbish photo, the light is really dreary here in my part of the UK today and the picture's come out really dull. I found a fabulous sketch by Susan Stringfellow for this one - It really helps to have a sketch to kick me off in the right direction - usually I go off-piste quite a bit, but this time I followed it fairly closely and it all came together really easily.  Part of the challenge was to use at least three patterned papers - this was HUGE fun!! I used TEN in the end, can you believe it??!!? 

Hi Everyone, Here's another page inspired by one of the GoGoGetaway challenges. There have been monthly challenges on the FB page, and there are also eight more which we can do before or during the GoGo weekend. Some are element-based, some mood boards, some sketches and some colour themes. For this one, we had a fabulous sketch to follow, but I'm not sure if it's ok to share it before the event .... hmmmm ... best not just in case. Anyway here's my take on it, with a school photo of two of my gorgeous step-grandchildren - how cute are they? :o) It's been great to have a good old rummage through my drawers (!?!) and use up lots of stash old and new to put kits together for these challenges. Hey Lizzy Hill if you read this - I think that red ticket may be from a parcel you sent me some time ago which I've been hoarding ever since!!  I've tried to make good use of my stamps and dies and punches as well. Those scribbles are from a Tim Holtz set ...

Hi Everyone, This week I have been mostly getting ready for the GoGoGetaway weekend which is only a couple of weeks away now wooHOOO!! Very excited :o) The GoGo ladies have set us several challenges to do either before or during the event, so I thought this was a great chance to do some limbering up as I haven't been doing much scrapping recently. I decided to make up a kit for each of the challenges, and had a lovely time rummaging through my mountains of stash and totally trashing my room ... AGAIN!! It was my birthday this week, so I thought it would be fun to scrap this picture of Yours Truly as a new baby, in the arms of my Mum. Clearly it was laundry day, as you can see the nappies blowing in the breeze behind us ... ... mind you, with all those terry nappies to wash, there were probably a lot of laundry days. No automatic washing machine or tumble dryer either. My poor Mum was probably exhausted when this picture was taken - but I do love how it's captured th...

Hi everyone, On the 24th of March I'll be heading off to Herts with my scrappy mate Trina for the GoGoGetaway event we've been looking forward to for months - I can't believe it's nearly here and I'm just a teeeeeeny bit excited!! :o) The pre-retreat challenges have been very inspiring, and a great way to get limbered up for the retreat, especially as I haven't been flexing my scrapping muscles so much lately. This was the challenge for February ... I used seven out of the nine listed here to create my page. Can you spot them????  This layout started off as a scraplift of a page by "Harbourgal" which I spotted on the Studio Calico blog - but of course I went totally off-piste as you do! This is a photo of my good friend Maggie and me, on a day out in Cornwall in 2011. Of course I had to make a coordinating pocket page to include the boys ... That bottom right pocket is actually empty, but I took the photo against white paper....