Just back

Hey - we flew home from holiday this afternoon having spent 12 wonderful days in Marbella, Spain, a truly lovely part of the world, with the perfect climate, and back to the appalling weather we are having in the North West of England! What didn't even notice I was gone?

Piccies will be posted soon.
x

Wedding and wedding anniversary cards

a sneak peek of a wedding card for a special friend ....

and a wedding anniversary card for someone even more special (I hope he's not reading this!) ...

x

Cricut Design Studio Update

Yahoo!!! The CDS update is now available that not only updates the software to include the new cartridges (adds Graphically Speaking and Storybook) but also provides a firmware update for the new Create machines!! I've downloaded the update but not hooked my Create up yet. Will probably do that tomorrow and report back!

To get the update open Design Studio software, click on 'Help' and 'Check for Updates' or click on the link http://www.cricut.com/cds/update.aspx. I usually download and save the file to a location where I can then go and double click it to install. You will need to deinstall your existing version of Design Studio before you do the install (go through the Start button, All Programs, find your Design Studio icon and hit Deinstall Design Studio).

x

Just looking at the BBC website

and this is what they reckon ..

BRITAIN'S OLYMPIC MEDAL TALLY
2008: 32 medals (15 gold, 9 silver, 8 bronze) - as at 1300 BST on 19 August
2004: 30 medals (9 gold, 9 silver, 12 bronze)
2000: 28 medals (11 gold, 10 silver, 7 bronze)
1996: 15 medals (1 gold, 8 silver, 6 bronze)
1920: 42 medals (14 gold, 15 silver, 13 bronze)

We're sure doing well at cycling and sailing!! Just shows what lottery funding can achieve.
x

C'mon

C'mon Team GB - we've just taken another gold medal (another sailing one) taking our tally to 13! Although its a brilliant amount we can't stick at the unlucky number.

Its also just worth saying, what a complete hero is Michael Phelps. He really is superhuman. In fact half man half fish. Well done to him, his name has gone down in history!

ttfn x

Get Me ...

two posts in one day ... my enthusiasm knows no bounds.

Thought I'd post some of the samples I made today for the Bramwells Bugs for All Seasons demos

Think the pink one is my fave ... bit different for a Christmas card but why not?!

x

More of the Same

Well I'm glued to the Olympics now. Its usually so disheartening to see our boys and girls losing out to the competition. But who would Adam and Eve it? As it stands right now we are third in the medals table!!! With another four gold medals and several silver and bronzes so far today we have now (according to Clarie Balding) won as many medals as we won in the whole competition last time around!

Anyway enough of that. Now to more serious things. You may notice I've added a gadget at the side of my blog called 'My Downloads'. You'll be able to click on the links to download project sheets for various card projects including:

Diamond Fold Card

Teabag Fold Christmas Tree

and Criss Cross Card

Chris x

I take it all back

What! After a day like today at the Olympics there's nothing more for it than to eat my words. Four Golds, One Silver and Four Bronzes!! Success beyond all expectations. Go Team GB!



I treated myself to this for my Pandora bracelet today with my birthday money

and got my SIL Vicks this one which I think is really priddy

Off to a party at Bridgies now. Night night god bless.

x

The other type of 'One of Those Days'

We had the other type of one of those days yesterday when DH decided to try to pay some money to his credit card online and having forgotton his inside leg measurement, his shoe size and his mother's great aunt Violet's maiden name, managed to get his credit card locked.

So unable to make the payment and, already late leaving for an important business meeting 5 hours from home, proceeded to a v v quick pitstop visit to the local branch of the bank in question. So he parks up in the pub car park opposite (which was closed) and legged it across the road to the branch to pay the money in.

The local sad *@&!£"^ (expletives deleted) car clamper, who obviously managed to tear himself away from his Take a Break magazine/picking his nose/listening to the air traffic controllers at Manchester Airport on his CB, had obviously spotted DH exiting the car park at speed. This (expletive deleted) must have moved faster than he ever had done is his life before and had DHs car clamped in the blink of an eye. Obviously proud of himself he then waited for DH to return within five minutes and demanded £90 to release him.

Take this as a warning all ye who endeavour to go about their innocent daily business in our home town, Dick Turpin is alive and kicking.

Actually highway blinkin robbery doesn't even begin to cover it.

One of those days

We've had one of those days today. Those days when you start out by looking for something in the garage and end up emptying the every shelf and cupboard, sweeping, cleaning and sorting out stuff for the charity shop. DH's car boot is now full of stuff ready to be dropped off at Cancer Research tomorrow and the garage is fabby wabby doodah at least for now. Within a month we won't be able to find a thing.

I have one of those husbands (not that I'm complaining darling) that periodically clears out things that he thinks are useless (mostly my things) from the house and into the garage. So today I found a carrier bag full of kitchen utensils that mostly I'd forgotton I ever had. Fortunately I found a critical part of my Magimix that he'd put in there that I had scoured high and low for in the kitchen yesterday. It looks like one of those things that you have in a messy drawer that no-one has any idea what its for but without it all the spinny blady things in the Magimix won't fit. Anyway mystery solved but its too late now!

So feeling very satisfied with a job well done I went to my little room and made these with my lovely Inkadinkado stamps ....

This one is Santa (98684LL) and Seasons Greetings (97343K)

This one is Christmas Tree (97346O)

This is Snowman (97347LL) and Merry Christmas (97342MM)

I had fun with Jones Tones Shiny Clear glitter and Glossy Accents on most! Seems mad doing Christmas cards in the August sunshine (which we had today!) but a papercrafters work is never done. Ha!

Cheerio til later x

New Inkadinkado Christmas stamps

I love the sketch stamps that Inkadinkado produce. They have such exquisite detail and are fabulous quality with deeply etched images ... and I particularly love their sentiments which are the finest of scripts and stamp perfectly every time. This one is called English Robin and is number
97894O ...

Sorry the image is a little blurred. I got a new lens for my camera for my birthday and I have no clue how to use it yet!

Over and out.

Birthday Girl

What a lucky girl I am. It was my birthday on Wednesday and my luverly hubberly bought me a couple more charms for my Pandora bracelet ... the ball shaped one with the mother of pearl hearts inlaid in it (soooo scrummylicious) and the ridged clip towards the left which I needed to break up the sections. Then my brother and sister in law turned up with another .... the lovely ribbed one on the right with my birthstone (peridot). So I've got six now and I'm completely hooked!

We're having a bit of a do tonight to celebrate our birthday week so there's half a hundred weight of chilli festering on the cooker, two pizzas the size of dustbin lids, and enough garlic bread to feed a delegation of vampire hunters!

I saw a little bit of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics yesterday. What a masterpiece it was, surely the best so far. Wish I had the time to watch the whole thing and regretting now not recording it. We'll probably come back with a pathetic number of medals but it won't stop us from wholeheartedly supporting our boys and girls out there! Come on Great Britain!!!! whoooohooooo!!

Roger and out x

A cuttle more ....

I found this lovely silver card in The Paper Mill Shop and unlike mirri card it doesn't show fingerprints and embosses beautifully. I embellished the embossed snowflakes with some gems and stamped my Merry Christmas message in silver on black, decorating this with silver ribbon and silver gems, then mounted this with foam pads

This is another of the combo sets called Everyday Greetings (371164). I used watercolour pencils on the flowers and stems and chalks on the borders. I also used one of my favourites - Glossy Accents on some of the petals to give a glossy depth to them. Just thinking I might play around with a sentiment for this one. I also used some of the lovely new embossed border sets on this one. More to come. Thanks for visiting!

Going out now on a girly cocktail evening - sounds dangerous!

lol xxx

Happy Birthday Honey

It's Gary's birthday today, so happy birthday honey!!

Animations provided by MySpaceAnimations.com

Shhhhh

I'm posting this hoping that my sister-in-law won't see it until at least after her birthday next week! I found some yummy khaki green card in The Paper Mill Shop when I was there last week. I inked the inside of my Cuttlebug folder (Friends Forever Combo die and folder) with Colorbox Cream White Pigment Ink and ran it through the Cuttlebug. I then used a Sakura white glaze pen to flood fill the embossed image with white ink, added Hero Arts gemstones in varying sizes, stamped my sentiment with a khaki green ink and added a tiny bow. The whole thing was mounted onto a dark green and then applied to a pearlised green tent fold base card. I like the effect of the cream and khaki green colours.

I also made a second variation, slightly different as I didn't use gems on this one and added it to a smaller card. The sentiment is taken from the co-ordinating die, it was inked in khaki green pigment ink and embossed with clear embossing powder.

Hope you like them!
Cheerio for now
x

Cuttlebug newbies

Been having fun playing with the new Cuttlebug embossing folders and made these

I had a lovely day yesterday over at the Paper Mill Shop in Ellesemere Port, where plenty of folks turned out to see the new Cricut Create, Jukebox, Design Studio etc. Its a tough demo to do as there's so much to show on the machine, the new Cricut Colour Ink Pens, the new Solutions Cartridges (I was using Indie Art, Home Accents, Soccer, and Wedding). So it's hard to go into any depth with Design Studio too. Hopefully we covered a bit of everything. Save to say the Jukebox is a very popular puchase as its great for all those who already own the baby Cricut or Expression to hold and store their cartridges and even better for those with Design Studio who now don't have to swap over cartridges by hand.

Off to watch Ewen McGregor on his round the world bike ride now.

ttfn Chris x

OMG - I just found this...

the answer to my dreams .... http://craftystorage.blogspot.com/
Thank you Paula. You've done all the hard work and research, all I have to do is read your blog.

Studio Design

I've spent this evening scouring other people's blogs for ideas about organising my work space. What wonderful rooms some lucky people have! I mean look at this .... this is Donna Downey's studio. How inspiring (no pun intended) it must be to have all of this space and all organised so wonderfully. I'm chuffed to see that Donna uploaded a few piccies of this room in a messy state too.

If anybody reading has piccies of workspace organisation ideas please mail me. Am trying to plan a new space and in need of help!

Roger and out for tonight

x

Snow White and the Six Dwarfs

Just back from a great day showing the Cricut Create, Jukebox and Design Studio over at Craft Land on Mostyn Street Llandudno. What a superb place, huge and with some great bargains. Thanks to Johnny and Ron for their warm hospitality and looking after me even though they hardly have chance to draw breath in that shop.

I was up until after midnight last night putting together these.....

I called it a day around 1am hence I took Snow White and the Six Dwarfs with me as samples today, just Dopey still to do.

These were all cut on the CREATE using the PORTRAIT and FIT TO PAGE FEATURE to get the largest cut possible on a 6x12 mat and they all appear on the HAPPILY EVER AFTER cartridge which features characters from CINDERELLA, SNOW WHITE, MULAN and AURORA (can someone tell me who Aurora is??)

Now then where's Dopey? Oh yes he's just washing up in the kitchen.

TTFN

My gift to myself

I treated myself to this today ....

and some of these to go inside ...

for my Cuttlebug dies and folders. Don't you just love it!

Just in case you were wondering why you can't find much on the 'net about the new Cricut Create, Provocraft have launched it in the UK first. How about that. We got it first!!

Preparing some projects and samples for weekend demos so not much posting tonight.

x

First Jukebox Jive Demo

Just back from a wonderful day over at Embsay Mill, Skipton where we had the brand spankin new Cricut Create, featuring the brand spankin new Don Juan cartridge, and connected to the brand spankin new Jukebox, whilst with the other hand demoing the Design Studio Software on the computer.

For those that haven't already come across the Cricut machine, its a stand-alone (that is you don't need a computer), cartridge-based, personal electronic cutting system.

This new baby gives the functionality that its fantastic big brother, the Expression, gives (Rotate/Portrait, Fit to page, Auto Fill, Flip and Centre Point) but in the compact version of the original machine and with the ability to cut from 1/4" to 11 1/2" in quarter inch increments - that's a massive, mega, mind blowing 46 different sizes!! And when connected to Design Studio Software with three Jukeboxes stacked each atop the other (linking 18 cartridges directly to the machine) you really are in papercrafters, scrapbookers heaven! I mean how much excitement can one girl handle! Oh and thats before we even start talking about the pens - now rather than just cutting shapes you can draw too!! and draw and then cut! Fwwwworrr!

Just going for a bit of a lie down.

And for Judith with whom I spent ages trying to work out how to draw a shadow around a shape - the answer is Design Studio! Don't know why it didn't come to me straight away! Of course with Design Studio you can nest for instance, one shape inside another (or as many as you want), place them exactly where you want them on visual mat, swap the blade for the pen in the machine and hey ho, you're away!

Thanks to Trish, Geraldine and the staff at Embsay who looked after me wonderfully and who make the best egg and cress butties! And to my new friend who wanted to come home with me after trying to jump into my car in the car park.....

Obviously the provider for the butties!

Tara for now.

Two pocket card

I've had a few requests to publish a picture of the Two Pocket Card which appears in my You Tube video. Here's one that I did for the Girlz Aloud demo programme. Very simple! Found this on the internet some time ago and unfortunately can't credit the creator as I don't remember where I found it. My You Tube video can be seen here

NNSD x

Boy I need to get organised

I spent hours last night on my knees in my room trying to sort out my stash ... its the 'can't get a quart into a pint pot' problem. Basically I've either got too much stuff or the room needs to get bigger. It's rained enough recently perhaps if I sprinkle some Miracle Grow on the roof it might grow a bit overnight.

I did clear out some stuff for my niece Hannah but its still busting out all over. Its great when its all put away but as soon as I start to work and I get a few things out I run out of desk space and get frustrated

Just in case you were wondering ... this is tidy

Anyway ... I'm on to it ... I have a plan ... all will be revealed at a later date.

Now a warning ... get the buckets ready ... I'm about to heap praises upon my DH... who bought me this wee wonderful for my Pandora bracelet this week, for no good reason other than he wuvvs me a lot ...

this lovely little dickiebird is only my third charm, and joins Spot my ickle doggie

and my swirly clip that I treated myself to

I don't do proper jewellery but I love this stuff. So thanks honey you are the best hubby I ever had.

Oooh while I remember here's a close up of those gorgeous buttons Jane put on our aprons (see yesterday's piccies). I'm sure she said she bought these in Paris. Probably cost a gazillion euros.

How lucky am I these just arrived from Bramwells, brand new in from the US are the new embossing folders and combo dies/folders for the Cuttlebug and some of the Solutions Cartridges for the Cricut.

All will be being used in the new demonstration programmes coming up over the next few months. My demos are listed above, in additional I have a Papermill Event at Cheshire Oaks in July and Hobbycraft demos in September. All dates will be added shortly.


And for those that haven't seen it yet ... the Cricut Create and Jukebox. ... come and see this baby in action soon.

Sweet dreams x

Better late than never

Here's a few of the piccies taken at Scrap-a-Ganza in June ... first is my pal Jane (known to some as Lisa T) ... showing off her new Donna Downey camera bag, hand delivered by the lady herself (how chuffed does she look?!)

Another of Jane "the fastest crafter in the West", in the aforementioned (earlier blog) apron - well you can see a bit of it ... much admired at Scrap-a-Ganza ... and our matching aprons all Janes' handiwork.

Finally, there's got to be one of a card hasn't there... here's one of my recent projects for Hobbycraft. Using the Cricut Happily Ever After cartridge, this Cinderella three part accordian style card has a horse mounted on acetate so it stands proud of the other and is linked to the carriage with cord. Hope you like it!

Night night, god bless x

Unfinished but still scrummy

Here's more of that fabbie Karen Burniston kit. It was such a lovely project to do and I love the pop-up flowers you get when you pull on the tab at the front.

as you can see it's unfinished at the moment but it will be finished soon ... it's going to be pressie for someone with a big birthday this year ... shhhhh keep it quiet

Anyway just a quick post before I go to bed. Night John-Boy, night Mary-Ellen.

WOW! Wimbledon

I'm worn out having just finished watching Nadal win Wimbledon. What a match. I only watched the last set and I felt like I hit every ball with each of them. It was the best final for a long time and I'm only sorry now I didn't watch all of it although I think I might be physically exhausted if I had!

Oooh and if you were watching the BBC coverage did you see the players reciting the Rudyard Kipling poem "If"? My English stiff upper lip quivered and trembled, my eyes filled with tears and my mascara ran down my face. It was so moving. If I remember rightly its the nations favourite poem and no wonder. Its always been one of my favourites, I learnt it by heart a while ago but hearing the players saying it really got me. Am I a big girls blouse, wussy, softy or what?

You judge here's the link

Here's more of that gorgeous Karen Burniston mini book that I gave you a sneak peek of ...





Now where is my make-up remover ....

(Oh and for those wondering why Gary needs make up remover in the piccies - this is his New Years Eve fancy dress version of Alice Cooper)

Card Samples made for Stitches Show Feb 08