MIA..........................again.

Hello and good morning blog readers everywhere. It is sooooooooooo good to be back in the land of the living and here on my lovely blog. I have been suffering from a horrid virus and took to my bed last Friday and have virtually slept the week away there. But hurrah, today I awoke with a renewed gusto and am here to tell you I AM BACK.

So what have I missed? Well, an awful lot of Shimelle's posts on ''Beyond Blogging for Scrapbookers'' for one and I have alot to catch up on from the look of things. I need to analyse my blog Statistics by getting a Google analytics account and I need to run a poll apparently. There have been a few I have spied when I was lying in my sickbed and reading my emails etc on my iphone. Looks like fun but what to ask I hear you say? I will have to put my thinking cap on and come up with a good plan.

One thing I have been doing today though is rejigging the old blog design. Something new for the old lady I felt after the other header was starting to look abit worn. So scarily I went with the picture of me looking not too shabby I feel. I like Shabby blogs designs and have used a number of their designs over the years. Is it really that long, yes it is! I found a lovely header I liked and there is an excellent, easy to follow tutorial on how to make it your own using a fab tool online called Fotoflexer which can be found here. It's very much simpler than using Photoshop and I managed to achieve what I wanted in a matter of minutes. I chose a font which was slightly curly to match my blog title and then loaded it up to the blog. No need for an html code or anything complicated like that and hey presto, a shiny new blog header. So what do you think? Does it match my blog style, is the writing clear enough which was my main worry, is the picture ok, do you like the design on the header, what background could I go for I wonder? All ideas gratefully received. Maybe that could be my poll, there you go answers please in my comments.

In other news, I have lots of crafty things to share, one involving butterflies, glitter and bling, Scrapamia is less than a month away now, I have found some more fabulous shopping sites and also I was given a shiny gold star yesterday by the inimitable Nancy Doren..............and this is why.............

i must be learning cos i do the same things. i am always fiddling with bling to cut it into pieces to use and cutting the backs o9ut of pretty paper to keep pieces for the LO or other projects. i am so excited to be on the same wavelength as u oh master, student is sooooo happy,
Jo xxx
ps can i get a gold star (paper punched, blinged and misted perhaps ;-)........?)

Which just goes to show you readers that we do make sure we read ur lovely comments and sometimes give you a lovely prize :-)).

Welcome home, welcome, come on in and close the door,

.........................you've been gone too long, come on in, your home once more,................

Yes too long have I strayed from blogland in hiding and despair, quite literally. I had lost my blog mojo and wondered if it would ever return, but thankfully here it is back with a vengeance and ready to do posting from now on in. So have u missed me? Loaded question I know but hey worth the asking just so you can laugh and say Nah been too busy, or Have you really been away I hadnt really noticed.
Well anyway here I am and I thought I'd do a resumee of what the last month has held, well maybe not the whole month but some of it.

• I have completed my LSNED minibook and I am really pleased with how it turned out. I didnt really take any photos to go into it but concentrated on the pages and the journalling. Some days I wrote loads and others not so much. It was lovely to see everyone elses LOs though and there are some beautieis around on the blogosphere.

• I have signed up for the new Shimelle class, True Stories. It is a completely NEW class and lasts for 3 weeks. There will be more of a concentration on journalling and it only costs £10.00 or $15.00 if ur in the US/Oz etc. I love Shimelle's classes as you know and to do a brand spanking new one is a bonus. I went on the forum last night to put up my welcome page and it's like a Shimelle stalkers society reunion with so many of us having done her classes before, defo a positive vibe about this class.

• I had triple or quadruple excited about Scrap-a-mia 2011. Remember I went off for a weekend in May to Hampshire for scrapbooking with a variety of fab teachers including Kirsty Wiseman, Cleo Jarvis and someone called Shimelle Laine? Well the girls from Creative Moments have done it again and are organising not only the weekend in Hampshire again but ALSO a weekend in London in April with the fabulous Donna Downey, I love her classes and blog she's fab. Anyway on their facebook page they are running a daily clues to guess the teachers and so far we have Dina Wakely, bestill my beating heart.

• I am working hard on my Cathy Zielske class for Me the abridged version but way behind cos I spent loads of time doing Shimelle's class. I am doing alot of the writing and will do the scrapbooking at a later date.

• I am starting a free class on the 18th October which is very personal to me. It's called Art, healing and health. As many of you know I dont have the best mental health and recently my physical health has been taking a battering as well. Suffice to say I have felt well and truly dejected and depressed in recent weeks and saw this class and thought it may aid in improving my positive thinking. The course involves Art journalling, making an empathy monster and much more. It's being run by Tam an artist based in Brighton and I am really excited about doing something outside my comfort zone.

• If you havent signed up there will be a bloghop over in Oz next Sunday led by the miraculous Amy who whilst being a mum to 2 gorgeous children and wife to the Engineer is literally living in a housing bombsite while their home is completely gutted. If you havent seen waht this can involve pop over. Any male readers there ar epower tools invovled too!!!!!

• Finally for this post me and a fellow blogger have a special party to invite you all to, it will be happening on the 8th November and we will be open to anyone who has a blog a blog to join us. We are putting the finishing touches to the invites and party food at present and their will be some forfeits involved but they are nice ones. So do come back and see what will be happening.

Finally, finally, thank you to everyone who has become a follower over the last few weeks despite there being nothing going one, it was lovely to see some brand new faces when I read my blog again. So will be back soon to tell you more about our party.

Minibooks, Lyme Regis and Alpacas

So I am trying hard not to get big headed about the link to Dotcomgift shop but yey me!!!!! So suitably pleased I had an evening of crafting and have finished another project from Scrapamia.
Here are the final pictures to date of the minibook of Barcelona. This is the front cover with my lovely bright ribbon tie..................



This is the final pages at the moment.

Anyway, now Jane Dean's class. This was completely different. We were presented with a flar pizza box and a bag of goodies. What we had to make were a load of boxes to fit within the box and then decorate it like an altered scrapbook page. The idea is from trays used originally for typesetters. So here is my completed project...............
One of the things we could choose was 2 shells and that set my mind thinking about my fave place and how I could celebrate it in scrapbooking properly. Firstly we had to make the boxes. There were 16 boxes in Janes design but 4 could become 2 long ones so I opted for those. The boxes are 3 x 3 inches and 6 x 3 inches with an inch wide lip, I think that's right. It took alot of time to make the boxes hence not completing the class. My friend Gayle had her Bigshot with her some Tim Holtz dies so we got some swirls which I havent put on as yet, a bird and cage, and the heart and wings. The flowers I made into a heart shape last night and the key is hanging over the quay..............pun on words cool huh?
So onto the Alpacas, I loooooooooooooooove alpacas and was meant to go several years ago on a charity trek to Peru but unfortunately I broke my ankle and couldnt go. So any chance I get I there with these cute fellows. Anyway this weekend is the Bath and West show and my mum and dad took me. First stop after pigs and sheep was the Alpacas.
Here are 4 babies, there were lots more but I spent too much time cooing over them I ran out of time to take pictures!!!!! They are so gentle natured and speak in low voice saying Mmmhhhh as if they've eaten something yummy. When u reply they respond, ah cuteness. My dad bought me a teddy of Aplaca wool, it is the softest thing I have ever felt. It is also white so is on a high shelf away from my own alpaca maned pussy Willow who is shedding fur like nobodies business and has fleas............oooh!

Here are some cute sheep too.

I also got some vintage cupcake cases for mum's birthday and some orchid design edible decorations to go on top. The party is coming together and mum is I think excited. Anyway must go so I can read some of ur blogs before I go back to save my car from the parking inspector.

Scrapamia part 2

The internet is not playing ball at home so here I am sitting in Starbucks in Wells using their BT Openzone free service. It's fab, I can even plug into their electric!!!!!
Anyway, I have been waiting for Shimelle to forwarf the rest of the minibook instructions bu she hasn't so I have only completed that project up to a point. So instead I'm gonna show some pics of the projects I did and the teacher's versions if I have it.

So here we are............the beautiful Shimell and I. I make her look so tiny dont I? Anyway she was teaching a minibook. It was a small 4 x 6 and we only decorated one side of the pages. The idea is to add 4 x 6 photos to that side. Shimelle had done hers about NY when she went with the Boy last year.




This is my first page. I decided to do Gaudi inspired minnibook from my trip to Barcelona 2 years ago. The pack we had contained papers and card to make our pages which we distressed with inks. Shimelle had also given us punched shaped and some stickers from Sassafras and Cosmo Cricket which we utilised to make our own embellishments and toppers. This topper is a sticker and a jagged cirle, a little bracket and a butterfly on top of blue lace ribbon. The little heart and wings are a pucnhed embellishment too.

In the afternoon we also had Ifa Zainon and we did a very simple but effective LO.
We were all really hot and brained fried by this time so to have a nice LO to play with was g8. We were given a piece of plain white cardstock and shown what Ifa had done. Then it was up to us to decorate the card and paint our frames accroding to our personal taste. I decided to use 3 old pictures of myself, my mum and grandma. I distressed the edges of the card with ink and then used a flourish stamp and red ink to decorate the corners and add a design to the central part of the paper. Then I painted my frames red and once they were dry distressed them with dark ink to mark them appear aged. The papers we used were old book pages, some graph paper for our title and a lovely flocked brown paper.

This is of me as a baby and shows a closer view of the stamped corner.

This is my mum, most of you will recognise this picture from the invites for her 70th.

Finally this is my grandma probably circa 1934.

These amazing delights are Jane Dean's designs which we made 16 boxes for!!!!!! On the Sunday we were taught by Kirsty Wiseman and Jane, and Claire from the Scrapamia team. I will blog about these LOs and the boxes next time. Have a g8 BH weekend if I cant come back before then!

Scrapamia part 1 (of several)!..........

This weekend I went on my much anticipated Scrapbooking retreat which I had been given as my Xmas/Birthday pressie last year. Not only was it an excuse to scrapbook with friends and fab teachers but also to catch up with my old friends in Southampton. Before moving to Somerset in 2008 I had lived in Southampton for 15 years so I really wanted to see my two girlfriends and their families. I stayed with Kathy and co on Thursday and Teresa and co Friday and Saturday. Plenty of time to catch up, get invited to a Royal Marine's Passing Out Parade and read How to speak Dragonese to Jonny!!!!!!
Anyway the retreat was held at New Place, photo above, which is a De Vere Hotel near Bishop's Waltham. It was a beautiful place but VERY hot. The air conditioning was not enough for lots of exciteable scrapbookers!!!!!!
Anyway there were 6 teachers, 3 per day, and on the first day we had Cleo Jarvis, Shimelle and Ifa Zainon, all of whom are well-known to Scrapbooking magazine readers and bloggers alike. I know Cleo personally as she, until recently, ran Bellaboo and she lives in Bristol.
So having booked in and been given a fab goodie bag we all sat down for the first class of the day which was Cleo's.


Here she is in her fab apron, all the teachers had made them while we had chipboard pieces to alter. She is holding the completed item we were making, which was very Cleo. We began with a plain square canvas and a bag with papers and embellishments. Firstly we had to crumple up a piece of vintage sheet music and then rip it up into small pieces. Next job was to make papier mache, by putting loads of glue onto our canvas and jigsawing and overlapping our pieces of music paper. We then left it to dry, which in the heat took very little time. While we were waiting we needed to cut out several frames from our paper and some other elements. The papers were by Webster's pages range called Your life. Beautiful. One has fromaes of varying colours and sizes and the other is quotes, frames, birdcages. Very vintage and cute.
By this time our fingers were numb from intricate cutting and the canvas was dry. We then dry brushed a small amount of white acrylic paint over the canvas and then inked it using distress inks using sequin waste and stamps, if u had them.




In the picture above you can see some of the distressing, I used Broken china. Then we added our photos onto the frames with 3D foam and began forming our wall hanging.


All that's left to do is add some flowers from my pack and the ribbon which is pinned on using drawing pins on either side. All in all I really loved this class as it uses different techniques and makes a mess!!!!
After lunch we then had our class with Shimelle. This was a minibook class. I will post this in my second post. Catch you later

It's getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes...........

Personally I dont recommend this as my body is not in the full prime it used to be in. Is that a muffled laugh I hear? Ok it never has been prime muscle but I would not put you all through the terror of seeing me in my bikini...............althoug we did have a discussion about crocheted bikini's at the weekend as my friend had got one in her crochet book and ther was a story told about crocheted thongs and waterslides. I'll leave the rest to the imagination.
Firstly congrats on Saturdays bloghop, I would say ti was resounding success. So many amazing minibooks and Los, well done everyone and thanx again Mel for organising..........gratutitous applause. Secondly I had a Fab time scrapbooking this weekend at Scrapamia in Southampton. Saw Shimelle and did a minibook class. She is working on a top secret new project for us online class lovers which will be revealed in the not too distant future. Keep ur eyes and ears open. She was in fine form and I had my piccie taken with so u can see proof I saw her. The weekend was fun but tiring mainly cos it was so hot and we had no windows to open. But the event was well organised and I tried lots of new ideas. I will do some posting over the next few days to show u what I did.
Thirdly the next step in my job application is completed as I had to go to Occupational Health today for my check-up. The doctor was happy for me to start ASAP so just the CRB and the references etc to get back now. Things are looking up.
So I will see u all later this week for Scrapamia reveals. Thanx for all the lovely comments about my book and part 2 will be coming.....................;-)

Flower power.

Today has been spent wasteing the morning at the doctor's............1 and a half hours I sat waiting for my appointment, she was having laugh. I had taken my book with me but even that started to become monotonous after 45 minutes of waiting. Anyway at least I only needed some cream which will hopefully work.
Anyway I have getting myself organised for Scrapamia and finished my flower place setting. I am really pleased with it................

So here she is in her full regalia. I made the leaves today from green felt and handstitched veins onto them in green and brown thread. I also stuck some cute butterflies on to the gaps. The pot is an old cardboard coffee cup painted and decprated with ribbon.

Here's my name spelled out in K and Co glittery chipboard and stuck onto wire..........

......................a close up of the leaves and butterflies.
I now have to pack my kitbag and print out my photos oh and sort out my blogpost for Saturday's bloghop but it will be visible from tommorrow as I dont trust the blogger to post correctly as it never has dome before. So u can all have a sneaky peak at my minibook but will have to wait until Saturday to bloghop to enveryone else.

Sneaky peek....................

As I explained earlier today I am taking part in Mel's bloghop on Saturday however I will be away at Scrapamia for that weekend. I have got to make a flower badge, necklace, etc for the crop and the minibook for Saturday.
Here is what I have completed so far.......................


Ok so it's upside down and I cant figure out what to do to alter it so sorry about craning ur necks!!!!!!!!

Here is the start of my flower. We were all sent chipboard pieces to alter as we have to be in specific groups for all the classes. I have covered my chipboard with some lining fabric to begin and have cut some paper patterns to make a felt layered flower. I chose 3 different shades of pink as I love it.
So I whip stitched the edges so they dont fray in embroidery floss and put a small stitch in the centre to fasten the petals together. I cut a smaller petal in pale pink and gently inked the edges in Distress Ink worn lipstick shade. I then stitched a small flower and some fuschia sequins in the centre to make the flower sparkle. I also stitched a running stich through the centre of a piece of pale pink tulle and stitched that on top of the original petals and then added the smaller central piece to the top and stiched it all together.

I am really pleased with it so far. But it's not a badge or a necklace, it'll be something different. I will show u when I finish.
I am off this evening to the library for a talk by a lady who has written a book about clearing ur clutter..............let u know how it goes and how it helps me to get rid of my clutter!

.................so I said.......''..........

................so today is signing on at the Job centre day. Much excitement ensued as I have found a job but as it takes forever to do a CRB check, at the moment it takes 2 months, I can't work at my new job until then. So I still have to sign on until such time as the CRB comes back. Anyway, I had to change some details on my form. How many civil servants does it take do u think to change one thing? Six, yes 6!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! All it needs is them to add 'RGN' and my registration number but it can't be done straightforwardly. Oh no I now have to go back for another appointment to change just 2 simple little things the lady had already found out today! Mad isnt it?
Anyway, it is lovely today so I wandered around Wells and as u may have noticed a new little picture has come up in my right hand piccy list for Scrap-a-mia. This is a weekend away my mum and dad bought me for my bday/xmas pressy last year and it is next month. I am in the flower group I imagine cos I'm such a shy, retiring little thing....................NOT!!! Anyway, we have all been sent a chipboard flower to decorate and I thought I'd treat myself to a pinny which I am going to applique with flowers and maybe a cupcake as Shimelle is one of the teachers. Yey for Shim. She's fab in real life and does g8 classes. Last time she brought loads of yummy homemade cupcakes.
Tonight I am also going back to my youth as a new Brownie leader with 1st Easton brownie pack. I am excited and nervous. I got out my badges yesterday from my jewellery box ready and have washed my shirt. It's navy blue with the emblem on it. I loved being a brownie leader in Southampton and hope this will as much fun. It is the 100 year anniversary of Brownies this year and there will be big celebrations in the city as we are hosts!!!!!
As a treat to my hair yesterday I bought this..........

................it's by Rachel on her new Folksy site. Anyone who has ever read her blog knows she is a knitting major. She knits really fast and all her projects look gorgeous. So I have treated my hair to something pretty for the summer. Can't wait to show u how I look when it arrives.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

Hi all. Blogging for scrapbookers had ended although we're still waiting for the last workbook and many of us are continuing the blogtrains, plus there are a number of future bloghops organised so keep watching.

Anyway today I received an early Xmas pressie. I am going here



for this event next year. What an amazing present huh? To top it all someone we all know and love is taking part.............


of course it's Shimelle, wonderwoman scrapper and teacher.




So if you fancy a trip to Hampshire in May and wanna join the fun go to this link and sign up. See you there.

Now inspired by Lizzie, I have been trawling the web for some bookbinding info and have found some fab videos on youtube. It's really cool what you can see and learn at the touch of a button.
But the simplest video I found was here which is the main blogsite for a traditional bookbinding company in London. They have loads of beautiful paper, thread, leather etc for making books by hand and they also run beginners classes in Wiltshire. I'm going to try and make a nice simple book using what I have here to hand...........doesn't look too hard.

So wish me luck, I'm off to watch Ugly Betty after somemore blog hopping.