My Week in Instagrams

1. A trip to the Wetlands, Newport  2. Painting my nails  3. Weekly shop arrives  4. Late night CSI  

5. A trip to St Fagans  6. A day spent baking  7. A evening out

Creative week

With the kids home there's not much time to be creative but this week I've managed to find quite a few quiet minutes to do a couple of projects.

First up is some ATC's I made at the beginning of the week.  There was no real plan behind them just went with the flow. The left one has a  washi tape background and 2 stamped butterflies and the right one

Next up is a layout using some ribbon and thread from the first Crafty Creatives box.  It's really simple at the moment, need to go back through my paperwork to find out when Seren's first Ballet exam happened as I really can't remember, must be about 4 years ago!

Finally, yesterday i agreed to bake with the kids, and 3 kids mean 3 different requests.  Therefore the order of the day was: make biscuit dough and leave to rest in the fridge for at least an hour, make small cakes and leave to cool!  Once cooled, Jon used half to make cake pops, and then Seren iced her biscuits and Tom iced his cakes. A long but rewarding day in the kitchen. Here's the finished cakes before they were eaten!

Have you managed to be creative this week?

A catch up and a new idea

Box 1

I can't believe it's been so long since I last posted on the blog. The end of June and the beginning of July was hectic in one of my jobs and a lot of my spare time was taken up with that, then the school holidays started and we went to Tenby for a weeks holiday. We've been back for just over a week and things are just beginning to settle down into the holiday routine.

Box 2

The new idea is called crafty creatives it's kinda like a scrapboking monthly kit club but you get items from lots of different types of crafting. Here are pix of the first 2 boxes and as you can see there are lots of different things, from material and patterned paper to beads and pendants. I can't wait it to get going and incorporate all these items into my scrapbooking and other crafts.
Have you signed to crafty creatives as well? What have you made with your box?

Album Re-organisation

Yesterday was the first day of Shimelle's new class Cover to Cover, an online course designed to help you with album organisation.  I need a lot of help with this as I have postbound 4 albums with layout's in them, S has 2 albums and we also have some Creating Memories albums from when I first got started with scrapbooking.  At the moment I have 1 postbound one for Seren, then there was supposed to be one for Jon and one for Tom but the boys have been put in one together and I have 2 with random layouts in them.  

 

After reading yesterday's prompt and seeing this post from Leanne today I have decided to re-organize my albums chronologically.  Here's a pic of all my layouts on the bed, ready to organize.  Wish me luck!

Feel free to let me know how you organize your albums, I could do with your help.  Thank You.

10 Projects to finish!

If you've been following my Journal Your Christmas posts you'd have noticed on New Years Day Seren and I spent hours sorting through my craft supplies.  She nabbed loads for herself and I cleared some much needed space in the craft corner of my bedroom.  During this process we found loads of  half finished proects so as it's 10 Things day today I decided to do my top 10 of all the projects I found half finished!  Here they are:

1. Project life - a new project I'm hoping to start when they finally arrive on Amazon.co.uk

2. Move More Eat Well - started this last year, this post was the only one I did!  Signed up for the Big Picture class this year so hopefully that will motivate me to think more about it!

3. 6x4 Photo Love - still got Mat to December to do!

4. Mini book about our house using the following Kit:

5. A travel journal documenting our holiday in Devon Cliffs in 2009 (oops!)

6. Sort out some pix for this year in review page

7. A family mini book using the following kit:

8. Scrap your Day - managed to do 2 months in 2009 so want to add three more in 2011.  I'm thinking this is going to be a long project.

9. Find a pic of the husband and I for this True Love layout.

10. A cute pink paper bag album, don't know what to fill it with yet, any ideas?

Thanks for spending some time reading today.  If you want to see more 10 things then goto Shimelle.com.

Latest Reviews

Between the busyness of working lots of  jobs and looking after the family and the house I have managed to fit in 4 reviews in the last month.  Must start making layouts of all these reviews!  The fist one was at the end of November and it was Katy Perry!  I was really impressed by the great set and immaculate vocals!  The next one was Erasure in St David's Hall, it was great to have a night out with my husband and just relax and enjoy the music.  I have never been a huge Erasure fan but I was really impressed with Andy Bell, he had a great voice and really gave a wonderful performance.  Here's some pix from the night:

Finally, this weekend I reviewed Will Young (at St David's Hall again) on Saturday night and All then Fun of the Fair with David Essex on Monday night.  Will Young was amazing, he had so much energy on stage it was a really enjoyable show.  Here are some pics from the night:

Now i'm off to get started on Journal Your Christmas, finally decided to sign up this year, so looking forward to it!

Crafting Time with the Kids

After being knocked down by a nasty throat infection last week I thought anther week would go by without getting to do any crafting with the kids. Thankfully my husband is very creative and very helpful so on Sunday he cut out 3 letters from my chipboard so they could make these.


Then on Monday morning I emptied a lots of scrapbooking of-cuts, gave them a small bit of Mod Podge and off they went. Here they are, in full craft mode









Just something small but it kept them quiet in the kitchen for ages. Here are their final creations:









I love them and so do they! All are now proudly hanging on bedroom walls.

My Favourite Blogs

In accordance with it being the 10th of the month I though I would show you my favourite (MUST READ i.e. I never miss a post) blogs, so in no particular order, here they are:

• Karen Russell
• Ali Edwards
• Kelly Rae Roberts
• Cathy Zielske
• Shimelle
• Heidi Swapp
• Nancy Doren
• Elise Blaha
• Elizabeth Kartchner
• Jessica Sprague - Love 1 buck Wednesday, be quick to catch it today!

I love they for all different reasons, brilliant and ispiring photography, scrapbook inspiration, honest and meaningful posts about their lives.  Thanks to all of them for sharing so much, so honestly.

To see more 10 Things click here.

Are there any blogs I am missing?  Leave a comment and let me know your must reads!  Thanks.

How to make a comic style birthday card

It was my husbands birthday last week, Happy Birthday A! As I was looking around for something different for his birthday card I found some great comic style wrapping paper for his presents from the kids. Then the idea hit me. I could use the wrapping paper to make a matching card as well.

Inspired I grabbed what was left of the paper and covered a A5 white card with it. I then picked 3 of the little square images that I liked and stuck them onto some spare white to give them som stability




I then put foam squares onto the back of these pieces ready to mount them onto the card. (as shown below).


And finally I used the gift tag as a birthday greeting. Awesome!

Here's the finished card:



It's a really quick personalised birthday card that he loved.

Quote Inspiration from Pinterest (10 Things)

I have been loving Pinterest for a while and am currently using it as my bookmark area for things that I want to use as inspiration.  I have the obvious ones, Scrapbooking, Cards and Craft Inspiration boards for future crafty items, as well as My Style (for fashion/jewellery/hairstyles), Food Inspiration, and For the Home boards for the more general items.  For today's 10 Things post I  have decided to link to my favourite 10 quotes that I have pinned on my Inspirational Quotes board.

Source: prettygirll.tumblr.com via Rachel on Pinterest

Source: embers.typepad.com via Rachel on Pinterest

Source: rhonnadesigns.blogspot.com via Rachel on Pinterest

Source: a-ladys-findings.tumblr.com via Rachel on Pinterest

Source: jenniferjohner.typepad.com via Rachel on Pinterest

These first 5 are what I try and live by.  I have to be happy for myself and no-one else.  Life can be hard, and throw lots of different things at you but I choose to appreciate what I have and try not to look at other people's lives and wish mine was different.  I love my husband and love my kids, and now I love my job too. So I just have to remember that and enjoy every day!

Source: lifebehindthepurpledoor.com via Rachel on Pinterest

Source: homegrownhospitality.typepad.com via Rachel on Pinterest

Source: etsy.com via Rachel on Pinterest

These next three are about getting things done. I'm a procrastinator and I always tend to put things off until the last minute and use these to remind me to get on with things.

Source: etsy.com via Rachel on Pinterest

Source: etsy.com via Rachel on Pinterest

These last 2 are are spiritual quotes that remind me about my faith.

I'm linking up with Shimelle's 10 things today, click here to see A's 10 things and there's even  more 10 Things here.

Do you use pinterest?  If so leave me a comment about what you use it for or let me know what you use for inspiration instead.

Not much crafting but having fun at the Sessions!

I've had 3 shift's at the Active Living Centre in Bettws over the last few weeks so my weekends have been very busy and that knocks onto my crafting time.  The only thing I have done since Wednesday is a quick digital LO following the Scrapbooking with a Digital Template course at Big Picture Classes.  I seem to have fallen out of love with digital scrapbooking for the moment, I'm sure I'll enjoy it again but doing this LO didn't light my fire!

On Friday night we went to the Sessions and Open Mic Night at the Riverfront.  It's a Boutique Market held in the foyer of the theater with some lovely stalls.  My favorite was By Charlie's Hand, she does the most amazing papercuts on a huge variety of subjects.  At the moment I can't decide between this butterfly heart one and this lace heart one.  It will probably be the butterfly but am taking a couple of weeks to decide.  There was also a book stall that A loved, he managed to pick up a couple of rare books so he was a happy bunny. Other lovely stalls included Ginger Pig Designs, Jewellery by Rachel Mary (love the Lego collections, great gift ideas!), Emma Passey Design and Rachel Kinchen's Vintage Shop (could have spent a fortune on Vintage buttons).

Sessions is on the second Friday of every month, so looking forward to June's already.

More Card Commissions

Over the last few weeks I have received quite a few commissions for cards and these two have to be my favorite.  The first one is a wedding card which I made from Sj's Little Musings range.  The set I set was "I do" "I do too" from digi stamp shop a bargain at £1.50.  I love this card, so simple and elegant, can't wait to use the rest of the stamps in the range.

The other commission was for a Christening Card and feeling so inspired from my wedding card I slightly copied the same technique on this card by printing the message directly onto the card.

I loved these cards so much I made more than one so they will be available to buy from FCC soon.

My Creative Evening

I've really enjoyed tonight, just finishing off my Tattered florals card with a Happy Birthday message and copying this tag from Tim on a card:

Can't show you yet... it's for a birthday this week.  Hope you're having a great weekeng, let me know in the comments section.

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus is pawb, gobeithio eich bod wedi eu ddathlu gyda hwyl a sbri.  

Happy St David's Day Everyone, hope you have had fun celebrating today.

For more information this a great book about the life of St David - The Story of Saint David

I've had a great day with A off work we could both go the school Eisteddfod and watch the 3 of them perform with their different classes.  Everyone really enjoyed themselves but S and J were a bit disappointed when their house came last again this year!

And finally 1 more pic from ArtsyCrafts to show tonight, me with the man himself.  He was so lovely and real, just like he is in his videos.  So patient - everyone wanted a photo with him or for him to sign something - and he greeted everyone with a smile and happy face to what they needed.  Here's my pic.