All day

well this was Willow's first day of being in school all day. She was in from 9am to 2.50pm and was staying for school lunches.....

And she loved it, she didn't want to go home when I got there to pick her up. But boy did she look tired this evening.

Shame her sister isn't so tired out, its twenty to ten and little Fayfee is up and down like a yo-yo.

Anyway, I've sorted my PfP post for tomorrow - you are going to love this week's theme, and everyone who owns even one promarker can join in, so we're all looking forward to seeing more entries this week. This is also the first week of 2 new guest designers, Sarah and Caroline will be with us for the next 4 weeks, and their work is gorgeous.

Butterflies

Still not got anything to show and tell so I thought I would share some pics I took of the butterflies in the garden earlier in the week...

Busy Busy

Well I am up to my eyeballs in work at the moment - yes I know I don't have a "job" as such but I do lots of things that I class as work. I'm a self-employed Accounting Services Provider and I had a payroll to run for one of my clients, its always a last minute thing lol. I only have a couple of clients as I don't have the time to commit to any more at the moment. I also do all the administration of our charity, and my other "job" is being on the DT for Passion for Promarkers - there's so much going on behind the scenes at the moment, we are all madly putting together various tutorials on a huge variety of things and its so exciting. You need to keep an eye on the weekend workshops and the upcoming challenges over there as its all changing from Tuesday.

Anyone For Anya? #1 Sugar & Spice

This is the first card I have made this week – am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel with this horrible bug that I have and I have sooooooooooo missed making something. I chose the Miss Anya Snow as I have already stamped up a whole sheet of them so it was all set to get colouring.
The first challenge over at Anyone for Anya? is “Sugar & spice and all things nice” and I thought this fit rather nicely as Spice is one of the promarker colours I used to colour her in. I’ve been playing with colour combinations that I wouldn’t normally use and for one actually picked the papers before I started colouring, which always helps lol

 Image: Miss Anya Snow, coloured with promarkers; Blush for her skin; Primrose, Vanilla, Mustard & Raw Sienna for her hair; Coral & Spice for her coat & boots; Meadow & Apple for all the trim; Meadow, Apple, Grass, Spice & Terracotta for her scarf & tights.

Glitter card is DCWV, paper is Basic Grey – Porcelain edged with Martha Stewart Doily Lace punch, mint card is core’dinations, cut with oval scallop nesties in the cuttlebug and also used for the ash branch punchies, flowers are all papermania (I added coral promarker to the smaller flower), the brad is papermania, ribbon is Trimcraft Smirk and the greeting is from my stash.

As always, here’s Miss Anya’s close-up shot…

Blog Candy Alert

One of my teamies at PfP, the lovely Ida is having a triple blog candy to celebrate her blogaversary, she is offering 3 separate candies and its easy peasy to enter - so pop over HERE. to have a go.

Here's some of the goodies you could win...

Drum Roll Please..

I am still feeling like poop, in fact more poop than I was on Monday, this horrible bug has now gone into my sinuses and throat - yuck. I'm so glad all 3 kids are out in a morning now, I can drop them all off and go back to bed for an hour or two.

Anyway, I'm sure you're all more interested to hear who has won the blog candy :)

So as per usual I have used Random.org to pick a number from the 133 qualifying entries and it chose number 26 which was

Kim

thankyou so much to everyone who entered, for all your lovely comments, I hope you all continue to follow my crafty journey and look forward to hearing from you again.

Huge congratulations to Kim, please email me at wiccababe@btopenworld.com with your snail mail address and I'll get this off to you as soon as I can crawl to the post office.

1st Blogaversary Candy - CLOSED

This post will remain at the top of my blog until the closing date - please scroll down for new posts. :)

Today - Tuesday 11th August is my 1st blogaversary - its been such a quick and eventful year. I have met (virtually speaking) a lot of super new crafty friends and have even met a few in real life. I've been accepted onto a DT - Passion for Promarkers and have discovered rubber stamping over the last year. Without this blog I doubt if I'd have done either of those things.

Now and again I share a little of my life and family on my blog too. I really appreciate the empathy, encouragement, understanding and enthusiasm I receive from my bloggy buddies, and so, to celebrate all of this I want to offer some candy.

Now I'll keep it simple so everyone can enter, here's the small print...

1. You must have a blog
2. You must already be a follower, or become a follower
3. link my candy on your blog - a post or on the sidebar is fine
4. come back and leave a comment here to tell me that you've done that

REMEMBER, IF YOU DON'T FOLLOW THE RULES YOU WON'T BE ENTERED INTO THE DRAW

If I reach 200 followers I will add a wee something

I may add more to the candy depending on the number of entries that I get - so keep checking back as I'll update this post. I have a number of unmounted rubber stamps to add.

So, now that you've read all the blurb and know what to do... here's the goodies...

1. pack of Papermania Classical Handmade Papers 8x8
2. Creative Imaginations Poemstones epoxy stickers
3. Anita's Coloured Stickers - Robin
4. Anita's Outline Stickers - Silver Trees
5. pack of Dovecraft Fantasy papers 2x12
6. pack of Papermania For Him papers 2x12
7. Daisy & Dandelion Message Tags
8. My Little Shoebox Mini Alphabet Stickers - blackberry
9. Simon Says Stamp.com - Elephant Love stamp set
10. Papermania Shimmer Chalks - festive
11. Papermania Little Notelets - Spring Burst
12. Papermania Little Notelets - Scrumptious
13. Anita's wood mounted stamp - Robin
14. pack of Woodware Paper Flowers - bridal
15. Sugar Nellie stamp - Teddy Two by Rachelle Anne Miller
16. Stamping Bella stamp - Tatiana Ketto
17. pack of Doodlebug Mini Brads - bubblegum

**Edited** - seeing as I have now hit 15,000 hits I will add a Maggie stamp from Sugar Nellie which I have premounted onto EZ Mount for you.

**Edited** - I have now reached 200 fabulous followers so I will add a "Demure" stamp from Sugar Nellie

**Edited** - first 50 entries, have added a 4-sided stamp

**Edited** - 100 entries, have added "Nuts" stamp from Sugar Nellie

**Edited** - Wow! 250 followers, thankyou xx, have added some Papirloftet goodies

The blog candy will close at 12 noon GMT on 25th August and will be drawn on Wednesday 26th August 2009

Passion for Promarkers #14 - Lilac, Lavender, Amethyst & Aubergine

Well I'm just in my element this week on Passion for Promarkers, the lovely Sue has chosen 4 shades of purple for her challenge colours, and just in case you're worried, you can use any combination of 2 or more - if you don't have all 4 shades its not a problem. So if you have  any of these Lilac, Lavender, Amethyst or Aubergine you can join in with the fun.

As you'll probably already know from my blog, I love purples, and I think this has to be my favourite challenge yet. And to make it even more fun, my new Miss Anya Dressy stamps arrived last week from the US and they are stunning.

The prize for this week's challenge is a pack of 5 promarkers kindly donated by Letraset themselves, so if you want to boost your promarker collection you really must have a go this week.

I couldn't choose which of the 3 new Miss Anya's to use for this card, so I decided it might be fun to make a step card and use all three...

Images: Miss Anya Dressy from The Greeting Farm, coloured with promarkers; Blush for the skin; Lilac, Lavender, Amethyst & Aubergine for the clothes and shoes; Blonde Hair: Vanilla, Sandstone, Mustard, Saffron. Brunette hair: Raw Sienna, Sandstone, Cocoa & Umber. Black hair: Cool Grey 1-5 & Black

Lilac cardstock is Papermania, Lilac pearlescent card for mats was cut using oval scallop nesties in the cuttlebug, adhesive stones are Kanban and pink lace is from Papirloftet. Greeting is Daisy & Dandelion.

Here's a close-up of the new girls...

Coming down with something

Why is it that kids won't share their sweets with you but they're quite happy to share their germs. I feel like poop, am definitely coming down with something - probably the same bug that Faith has over the weekend so I have every intention of going to my bed with a hot toddy as soon as the kids are tucked up. 

So I'll catch up with you tomorrow at 9am when there'll be the new challenge from Passion for Promarkers

Funny how things change...

There used to be a time when I'd wish the week away and couldn't wait for the weekends. Nowadays I can't wait until this time on Sunday night because I know I'll get a rest tomorrow morning when the kids are all at school and playgroup.

Its been a hard weekend, I think Faith has some kind of bug as she was running a fever on Saturday that I managed to get down with Calpol and she has been really clingy and whingy - which I'm sure all you mums know is soooooooooooooooo exhausting. 

Apart from that I've not much to report today, the weathers pretty dreich in the North East of Scotland today, and I just want my bed :)

Like this one better

Faux-stitching is more in my comfort zone, and I decided to go with more contrast for this card. Rach has designed a fabulous sketch for this week's Whiff of Joy challenge - and co-incidentally the wee parcel of stamps I ordered from WoJ arrived yesterday morning so it was the perfect opportunity to ink up this wee cutie straight away.

Just for a change I decided to make a boys birthday card.

Image: Leon Celebrating Lion from Whiff of Joy, coloured with promarkers; vanilla, saffron and sandstone for his body, raw sienna for his nose, pastel blue, china blue, meadow green and apple for his balloons and hat

card stock is all core'dinations, the faux stitching is done with white sakura gel pen, the ribbon is from my stash, the patterened paper is Basic Grey Two Scoops and I coloured the Hero Arts pearls with china blue promarker. And finally the greeting is Daisy & Dandelion

Here's Leon's close-up...

A miracle happened in this house last night.... Willow asked if she could go to bed!! school must be tiring her out - woohoo

A card at last

It feels like ages since I posted a card, its only actually been a couple of days, but there's been so much going on with the kids back to school and Graham going away offshore.

I thought it was about time I entered a few challenges so the first one I picked was the Sugar Bowl. There is a fabulous sketch by our very own local quine Judy and the wee twist is to make your own flowers.

So without further ado, here's my attempt - am not particularly thrilled with it, it worked much better in my head and the hand stitching (again influenced by Judy and her fab article in Craft Stamper magazine this month) isn't very obvious in the photo or even in real life - I obviously need to try a paler paper or a darker, thicker thread.

Image: Honey with gifts from Sugar Nellie, coloured with promarkers; blush and dusky pink for skin, burnt umber and umber for hair, sandstone and cinnamon for trousers, coat and hat, blossom and rose pink for shoes, trim, hat and scarf, sandstone, cinnamon and cocoa for the puppy, cocoa and carmine for pressies

The oval was cut using oval nesties in the cuttlebug, the mat was cut from core'dinations card with scallop oval nesties, the vertical panel of core'dinations card was embossed with the snowflakes embossing folder and sanded.

The stripy and snowflake papers are from the Daisy & Dandelion Xmas pad, as is the greeting. I painstakingly used my pokey tool to make holes all the way round the snowflake paper, then hand stitched it with silver metallic thread - and am gutted its so not obvious.

The home-made flowers were punched using the EK Success retro flower punch from the D & D stripy paper, I embossed them to make them more 3D and added card candy from craftwork cards for the centres.

Peace Perfect Peace

Oh I could get to really enjoy this..... this is the first morning that I have managed to get rid of all 3 kids lol.

Graham had to get a taxi for his silly o'clock check-in at the heliport, and I got up half an hour earlier than usual - the plan was to be able to sit and have a couple of cups of tea before my peace was shattered. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans - 5 minutes later, there were 2 wee faces following me around. So we had plenty of time to get everyone clean, fed, dressed and ready to go. So I took Scott and Willow to school - the good thing about the horrible rainy weather is that they don't need to line up and wait for the bell, they can just go straight in. So after they were away I had to drive Faith round to her playgroup, then....... FREEDOM!!

I popped round to Pamela's for a cuppy tea and a yap, then home to the most peaceful house ever. I don't think i have ever been in the house on my own before without at least one child following me around and it is bliss! I got to check my emails in peace, sort out my Farmville and Restaurant City on FB, then it was through to the crafty space to finish a card I started the other day. Back through to the pc to print off the details and sketches for this weeks challenges and back through to the craft space to make a start.

This is fantastic!!

But its never long enough is it? the peace was shattered at 11.45am when I collect Faith, then pick up Willow at 12. Thankfully Willow is only in half days for another week and from the 31st August she is in from 9am to 2.50pm every day. So apart from Faith my peace will be extended - and it gives me one-to-one time with Faith, might manage to crack the potty training with a bit of luck :)

I've just read this over and you would think all I want to do is get rid of my kids - that's really not the case lol Anyone who knows me, also knows I'm so not the maternal type, but I think its really important for our family that I'm a stay at home mum for as long as we can manage financially. I'm really lucky that Graham gets a decent enough salary to all me to do this. But as any mum will know, you do start to go a little round the twist when you're only surrounded by children 24/.7 - us SAHM's need a bit of me-time. Oh God, now I sound like I'm trying to justify my existence, and I'm not lol And I'm not looking for sympathy either - I do genuinely enjoy my life - but oh how I enjoy my own space too :)

My Baby Girl's All Grown Up

Well that was harder than I thought, I honestly thought it wasn't going to be that emotional for me - seeing Willow off to her very first day at school, after all, I've been through it all before with Scott 5 years ago. But I was wrong, my stomach has been in a complete uproar all day and by the time we got to school I felt physically sick. Graham wasn't faring any better either - but I expected this to be harder for him as Willow's his oldest. (in case you're confused, Scott is my child from my previous marriage).

Willow has been high as a kite all day, so I think it would have been easier to nail jelly to wall than dressing her lol. And boy does she look grown up in her school uniform, and she kept raving about how lovely her uniform was, how fab her shoes are and how she loves being all grown up.

So off we went in the car, and joined all the other mums and dads in the playground, managed to find Scott so we could get some pics of all 3 of them together. And before we knew what was happening the kids were all lined up ready to go in, their teacher Mrs Willox lead them all in and that was it - all over!! I must admit to being a little teary eyed - but have talked myself into believing its because Faith was upset because she couldn't go with Willow lol

Willow, at the front of the queue, all lined up and ready to go..

And off she went...

Newsflash

for all you promarker fans - there is the most fabulous news on Passion for Promarkers - you need to know this now!!

Here's a clue...

Passion for Promarkers #13 - Pumpkin & Prussian

Hiya, are you all set for Halloween yet? well over at Passion for Promarkers we are :)

This week's colours are Pumpkin and Prussian with a Halloween theme, chosen by Sarah. I have to admit I wasn't too thrilled to begin with - I don't normally make Halloween cards or decorations, but boy this was actually lots of fun.

So this week you could win a £10 voucher to spend at 

Remember, to be in the prize draw you MUST use the challenge colour promarkers (this week its Pumpkin & Prussian) predominantly on your creation AND you must also stick to any other criteria stated (this week its a Halloween theme)

I don't have a huge selection of Halloween stamps or images, and rather than go out and buy some I decided to trawl the internet for free images - I've found the best way to do this is to enter something like "print and colour Halloween" into google. So the image I have used is from Hello Kids.

First I made the wee trick or treat sweetie bag, but I thought that was too easy so I made a matching card...

Image: from Hello Kids, coloured with promarkers; Pumpkin for the pumpkin - I shaded it with Mandarin and did the lighter lines on it by using the blender pen. Prussian for the witch's hat, dress and cape and also for the monsters tongue (again I used the blender pen to add texture) Lime for the witch's tights, sleeves, patches and the monster, Grass for the witch's eyes, hair and parts of the monster. Warm grey 3 and 4 for the cut out parts of the pumpkin. And finally magenta for the lollipops.

Pumpkin paper is Rusty Pickle, Adams Family - Grandmama. Black Magic core'dinations card was used for matting the image on the gift bag (cut using circle scallop nesties in the cuttlebug) and also for the spiders web on the card - I did this using the spiders web cuttlebug embossing folder and sanded the raised areas. Orange core'dinations card was used to mat the spiders web.

The lettering was cut using the cuttlekids Fairy alphabet dies, purple ribbon is dovecraft, the fabulous wee greeting buttons I won the other day from Whimsie Doodles. 

And last but not least I made the wee spider charm by drawing a spider freehand with black promarker onto shrink plastic and then heating to shrink it. Then I attached it with metallic thread.

I thought you might like to see a few close-ups of the image and the fab greeting buttons from Whimsie Doodles....

So, pop on over to Passion for Promarkers and see what the other DT members have done to show you.

Nearly ready

Touch Wood, I think we're all sorted.

Scott's school bag is all packed - just need to throw an apple in it in the morning. His uniform is all hung up ready to put on, even remembered to write his name in everything, from his pencil case to his shirt.

Bought all the last minute things at Asda, new jackets, white socks, shorts and t-shirt for Willow. I also got this cute little cat watch for Willow as she's been showing an interest in learning to tell the time.

Have just scalped Scott - we forgot to take him to the barber today, so I had to take the clippers to him myself and the biggest attachment we could find was a #3, so its pretty short lol He's in the bath now.

Am aiming to get them in bed for the back of 8. Then I'm going to have a bash at making a Clootie Dumpling - am sure the local quines will know what that is - but I bet the rest of you don't, I'll maybe tell you tomorrow lol

Ugh

that's the 2nd bedroom stripped now - Graham and I have been hard at it all day (no mucky comments thank you lol)

Its a horrible job, but it hasn't really taken us too long. The walls are an awful state - none of the plasterboard was taped, none of the corners were finished and there must have been about 20 layers of paper - yuk.

Anyway, its done now, so now we just have to give the plasterer a shout.

I have been busy crafting, but I can't show you any of it yet. I've made a couple of things for the next Passion for Promarkers challenge which starts at 9am on Tuesday - so you don't have long to wait. 

Tomorrow we are off on a play date. Scott, as some of you already know is on the autistic spectrum, and although he is more than capable of attending mainstream school he does struggle with his social skills among other things. So I've got together with one of the other mums and arranged to go to Dizzy Rascals soft play centre on Monday morning. Lesley (the other mum) has another son the same age as Willow, and he'll be starting the same school but a different class on Wednesday so we thought it would be nice for them to get to know each other too. And of course there's no show without Punch, and Faith will be tagging along too. She loves Dizzy Rascals, she just takes off and the only time you see her is when she dashes up for a swig of juice then dashes off again. And the best thing about Dizzy Rascals is.... it completely tires them out and we get them off to bed early - touch wood!!

So it works in quite well if they go to bed early as Scott is back to school on Tuesday and Faith also has her first day at playgroup. Willow doesn't start school til Wednesday afternoon.

The school uniforms are all washed and ironed, school shoes are all bought and ready. New school bags, pencil cases and water bottles, and gym shoes are all packed. Which has just reminded me - I still need to get shorts for gym for Scott and Willow - oops.

Oh and my wee bit of excitement today was I discovered I had won some digi stamps over at Whimsie Doodles - a set of Halloween greetings, just perfect for the new PfP challenge on Tuesday

Ok that's all my waffle for today, catch up with you tomorrow.

Tidy-Up again

It was tidy-up time again in my craft-space - things were spreading across our bedroom again so I have spent the whole afternoon gutting the place. Have been a bit ruthless and have cleared out a whole box of stuff for my mum, plus a pile of craft magazines that would probably kill someone if they fell over.

But of course the up-side of all this clearing and tidying is that I can actually find stuff again, and I have room to work. 

No doubt it won't take very long for me to have the place looking like a sh*thole again though lol

Happy Birthday Matthew

Matthew is my BFF, Pamela's eldest son and he is 16 today!!

I'm pretty sure you all know how hard it is to make a card for a teenage boy, and knowing Matthew, I thought the best way to go was to keep it simple.

Images: skull boyz by Sugar Nellie - I have used a pastel blue promarker to accentuate the shading and doodled the greeting with sakura micron pen

I used WordArt on MS Publisher to make an oversized "16" template, then cut it from Black Magic Core'dinations card. Then embossed in the cuttlebug with the happy birthday folder, and sanded to show the blue colour core.

The card base is grey SU cardstock

Wordle

I've come across this website before and its fab for scrapbooking, but I noticed  Ida had posted about it  so I thought I'd have a go too at entering my blog address and see what it came out with. Its quite pretty really