I'm not a technical girl..........

Hi everyone,

Just a short post apologising again for my lack of blogging. I could give you a list of excuses as long as the list of Stampin' Up stamps sets I own, but will only say, "I've been ill and busy". The part of Stampin' Up I like the most is sharing it face to face with my ladies and doing the SU parties. I am not very good at all this computer stuff!! Bear with me, when I am less busy, I will try and post cards again.

Thanks to all my ladies who support me every month...........at least you know that I'm busy!!

Happy Stampin'

Carole
xx

Catherine's 21st Celebration

A couple of months ago my lovely friend Angela invited me to her beautiful daughter's 21st birthday party at "Le Manoir Aux Quat' Saisons". We had such a wonderful day there and the most fabulous lunch. I think the main highlight for Catherine was Raymond Blanc coming in to thank her for choosing his restaurant for the celebration, by walking over to her and kissing her on the cheek.

I couldn't resist doing a little memory album of the day, it's taken me some time but I am pleased with how it has turned out. I have left spaces for her to journal her feelings and the names of everyone there.


Here are the photos of the pages in the album:




















We all love Catherine very much and we really hope she like this little gift she has had to wait sometime for.


All supplies for this album were from Stampin' Up, embellished with die cuts from my Cricut and sizzix.

She would have been 70 today

I am feeling a little sad today, if my mother had still been with us, we would have been celebrating her 70th birthday today. I don't have many great photos of her, but decided to do a very simple page of her, when I believe she was 18. Scrapbooking doesn't have to take too long and can be embellished very simply......this is a very simple page, due perhaps to my feeling today.

Passion for Promarkers challenge

I didn't want to keep you waiting too long for something sensible to appear on my blog, so here is a card I made for a challenge that my lovely friend Maria organised this month for the Passion for Promarkers challenge.

I love these two colours together Cool Aqua and Pastel Pink and although I am very much a novice to this type of colouring in, I am pleased with the end result. I also enjoyed the sketch part of this challenge, I must do more of them!

For my card, along with the correct colours of Promarkers, I used Petals & Paisleys DP, Pretty in Pink and Tempting Turquoise CS, Gingham ribbon, sentiment and oval punches all from Stampin' Up and my large circle Nestabilities. The main image is a favourite of mine from Elzybells.

Why don't you check out the challenge site and enter too?

Full nest syndrome!

Apologies for not posting for a while. I was having a good think over breakfast this morning about the excuse I was going to give and thought of excuses I would have loved to give like; my paperwork is up-to-date, just like all my household chores or I've been out enjoying all the wonderful sunshine perhaps even holidaying taking lots of lovely pics to scrap...........but of course none of these are true and the only reason I could really come up with was "Full Nest Syndrome". I didn't really suffer with the reverse of this, of course because my girls were not really that far away, but now they are back...........with all their STUFF (and many of you know, I am sure, it's STUFF that depresses me!)

So I've been busy with my girls and their friends, life was so quiet here, everything ticked along nicely and now I'm back to all those "mother" type duties, I just don't switch off, I am like the mother hen, clucking around her chickens...........shame really as my chickens would now be more than happy for me to "cluck off"! lol :)

I have been crafting though, I caught Sarah emailing a friend the other day and was typing about me she wrote "can't believe it, I go to bed and she's card making and when I get up she's doing it, she's addicted", well at least she has realised!

I find all this typing fine on my blog, what I find difficult (and time consuming) is clearing space to take the photo, taking the photo, importing it (them, actually! - I always take a few to choose from) and of course labelling it all and the computer programming incorporating other blogs and people I want to credit.

Oh well, at least you are updated for now and you are all aware that if you are passing or fancy a coffee, you are more than welcome to drop in to see my creations, that's got to be far better than me photographing them!

But especially for all my lovely loyal customers who have told me they check my blog and have been disapointed with my lack of posts heres a little something for you:














This is the other reason for not blogging, I've been searching for this carwash, my lovely friend Chris sent this pic to me and I've been looking for it ever since! If any of you know where it is please spill the beans, my car is awfully dirty!

Something very nice and proper coming up later today.


Happy crafting.


Love
Carole
xx

Last post for today!

I only hope this will be the last post for today and not for a month!

Here is a quick sneak peek at the cards you might make if you join me for a class this month....

Email me for details of my next class in your area, alternatively if you would like me to hold a class at your place let me know and we can sort it.

Happy stampin'.

Carole

x

Recipes, by request.....

Hello to all my scrapbooking friends.........


On Saturday I promised you all that I'd post my recipes for your favourite "naughty" treats! So here goes:


Orange and Sultana loaf

8oz SR flour

1/2 tsp bicarb of soda

1oz lard

1oz marg

4oz caster sugar

grated rind and juice of 1/2 orange

6oz sultanas

1. Mix flour and bicarb, rub in fat (I only used butter!)


2. Mix in sugar, orange rind and sultanas


3. Make the juice of the 1/2 orange up to 1/4 pt with milk


4. Add to the dry ingredients and mix well


5. Place the mixture in a greased loaf tin (2lb - I use)


6. Bake in a moderate oven, 160 c or gas mark 3 for about 1 1/2 hours.

I wish I had doubled the recipe and frozen the other for next months crop!

Nutty Flapjacks

4oz butter
1 tbl spoon golden syrup
4oz sugar
2oz oats
2oz SR flour
3oz crushed cornflakes

1. Melt the butter and syrup, very gently (I microwave it)


2. Mix the dry ingredients, pour on the butter mixture and mix well


3. Spread evenly in a greased swiss roll tin and press down firmly


4. Bake in a moderately hot oven 190 c or Gas 5 for 20 mins


5. Cut into fingers whilst still warm and leave to cool in tin.

I always double this recipe, you need at least one and a half times it for a swiss roll tin in my opinion!

Happy baking.

Carole

x

Stampin' Up party at Babs

Hello to everyone I met last night, please feel free to read through my blog and take look back at a few card samples I have posted.

Here is a picture of the card we made between us, great team work, I thought.

Hope you all enjoy your new Stampin' Up stash when it arrives.

Happy crafting.

Carole

x

I'm back...........

Hi everyone,



It is ages since I blogged, I do apologise to my regular readers.



Let me get you all up-to-date.........



I think it was about 3 weeks ago when I was invited to attend a talk on "de-cluttering" and with only a month to go (at that time) before my girls returned home from university, I knew I had a serious amount of work to do!! As crafters, sometimes we tend to let our little hobby spread around the home and I had realised that whilst my little darlings were away from home, I had just put this there and that on top etc filling their bedrooms with stuff!! lol!!



I feel that by attending the talk, I gained energy to tackle the job and tackle it I have.........well started! lol



During the talk the speaker made me realise how much time we do actually have and how much more time we could have, to do the things we want, if we just did quickly and immediatley the jobs we need to get out of the way first. She also spoke of ways in which we waste our time, or more like it really, how we pass our time doing something which takes longer than we thought! This in mind, I realised that I did spend a lot of time "surfing the net" so I felt I should have a break for a month to see if I could just spend that time de-cluttering our home.



The result up to now is, that I am feeling a lot better about my girls coming home and that there will be space for their stuff (or most of it, they don't know it yet but they will be de-cluttering too!) Also I do feel less tired since a lot of stuff has gone and am looking forward to the time when I am up-to-date with it all.



If you are interested in finding out more about de-cluttering, email me and if we can get enough ladies together I might ask the speaker to spend a few hours with us.



I will post again later with requests from some of "my ladies".



Take care, happy de-cluttering and crafting.



Carole

xx

It's all work and no play around here.......lol!

Hi Ladies,

Sometimes I do feel lucky doing what I do. I have spent a few days playing and skiving and I can call it all work!

I will just update you a little of what I've been up to. I am working on a lovely album project for my lovely friends daughter, she was 21 recently and I promised to make her an album as a gift. We had a fabulous day celebrating at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons and the photos are so fabulous and she looked so lovely I find I spend more time dreaming of the wonderful day we all had rather than getting on!! lol. I will post some pages once I get permission from my friend!

My eldest daughter is just about to finish university, so on Wednesday evening a couple of my girlfriends and I managed to persuade her to take us for dinner at college. We had a lovely evening the weather being perfect for strolls around Oxford afterwards.

Then on Thursday I had a wonderful evening at a breast cancer fund raising event at Harwell village school. There I met lots of lovely ladies and had the opportunity to chat about papercrafting classes in and around Harwell. - Hello to all you ladies whom are checking my blog! - I will email you shortly to see if we can sort out some dates for some workshops etc.

Then it was all work again yesterday, I was rushed off my feet at Stampin' Up training! lol. My lovely upline Michelle, looked after us really well, we made 3 fab projects, see the photo of what I came home with! Thanks for a lovely day Michelle.

Another Copic creation

This is another card coloured using Copics. I have used one of my favourite stamps in the whole catalogue! I can imagine dipping my toes in that water and having time to think and contemplate things like; what I'm going to be doing next!

Happy crafting.

Carole x

My introduction to Copics

Just thought I'd post a card I started to make on Sunday at a Copic marker class. I went with a friend and we learned lots about Copics and now I'm probably hooked! lol! I will still be using my SU inks and my new lovely SU markers as they co-ordinate perfectly with the SU card stock and designer papers, but if i've a lot of space to colour in, Copics are definitely going to be giving me an alternative finish as a non-artist.

I'm pretty pleased with the way the card turned out, its a great start on the Copics and using my favorite SU papers, I think finishes it off nicely.

SU products used:

Whisper white cs, patterns designer series papers in Bashful Blue, Bashful Blue ink for daubing the edges.

Happy crafting.

Carole

xx

Mini album for Saturday

A little sneaky look at what is in store for my ladies this Saturday. You can album make as usual but I will have all the bits and pieces available for you to make a mini album just like this one if you fancy having a go.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Carole

xx

Still got lots to learn about blogging......

Good morning, well my lovely friend Maria came over yesterday to help me a little with all this "blogging business", we had a great day and I learnt lots, so thank you Maria.

I have set up this blog for fun, a challenge, so I could easily enter crafting challenges and for my lovely customers. I have now completed my first challenge and hope you enjoy the result.

For my first challenge I decided to join in on a new challenge group Stamp with Us.

enjoy.

Carole

x

Supplies used:

Chocolate chip cs

Close to Cocao cs

Pretty in Pink cs

coordinating stampin' write markers and ribbon

Soft Summer stamp set

tissue paper and pva glue

More time to craft..

Just a short post today, and another page from my Tenerife album, I take my youngest daughter back to Bath tomorrow and then I should have more time to craft and post!

The photo on this page is of my really lovely partner, David. He doesn't mind how much I craft, anything so long as I am occupied and not bothering him, so he can get along earning the money I spend! lol ;)

OK this is my 3rd page.......

When I scrapbook my pages, I really do like my facing pages to match, so this one is made using the same colours as my last page and the stamp used is from Season of Joy.

Pretty successful, I'll try that again - on my own now!!

Page two of my Tenerife album, this time using Ruby Red and Garden Green cardstock, along with Cheers to You stamp set. Throughout the album I have used the Uni-ball Signo Gel Pen.

So I shall continue.....with photo's hopefully

I can't believe it, I was a Creative Memories consultant for 4 years and I never ever managed to create more than the odd page here and there. I've been with Stampin' Up for a few months and I've already completed an album!

David and I went to Tenerife in November and I will share with you a few of the pages from my album.

Thanks to Jenny Moors, I now have a blog - so thanks Jenny.

I have been making almost daily excuses why I shouldn't have one - like:

what should I call it?
will my cards be good enough?
will I have time to post?
etc....etc...etc....

These questions would be going round my head as I blog hopped.

On Wednesday evening I went to the Newbury Stampin' Up training evening and met lots of lovely ladies, many of whom have their own blogs. We did lots of swaps, I was so nervous about mine that I didn't even put my name on it! That was partly nerves and partly because I have never swapped before and didn't really know what to do!

Anyway, I was so pleased with the swaps that I received I wanted to thank the ladies, whom I had the details of and the result of that thanking and swapping is my very own blog!

I will update and put some photos of some of my cards and scrapbook pages when I learn how to do that bit!

Enjoy and have a great day.

Carole
x