Dressing up

DD had a great day yesterday just dressing up. She spent hours trying on different outfits before settling on this one.









I told her that she was a beautiful fairy but she just looked at me in disgust... "Mummy, I'm a magical baby flying unicorn, of course!"



Oops - guess that was another stupid idea from me. I should have realised that when you wear a Fairy costume then obviously you're a Unicorn!

What it would be to be an imaginative 5 year old again....

Playing catch up

So many swaps and commitments, so little time! That'll teach me to take on so much, especially when the weather gets nice.....

I've been busy making Interactive ATC's for a swap on AN, monthly ATC trades, CJ's and need to get going with an Altered Monogram swap and ATC Skinny Fat Book for UKS!

Today's pic is a Lo I completed on Sunday evening of DD at her first gymnastics demo :)

Still busy.......

Things are still really busy around here but thought it was about time I added some pics of my garden - whilst it's still tidy after all the work LOL!



The pots of Lillies on the corners of the main decking are now opening. The scent is amazing, especially in the early morning and late evening when we're sat on the bench.


The clematis are all flowering for the second time and the sweet pea's that Sian grew from seed are providing me with a vase of flowers every day :)

The garden is now more-or-less the way we want it so we should be able to take it easy out there next summer........ apart from replacing the lawn as the grass is really patchy!

Busy, busy, busy..........

I couldn't have chosen a hotter weekend for gardening......... The skip is filled, the garden tidied, the furniture painted, the shed painted, the decking painted and the new plants have been potted - now I just need to take time out to enjoy it :) I've taken some pic tonight so will post them later in the week.

The last couple of nights have been spent compleing CJ entries - an ATC CJ for AliBlack with the theme of 'Beauty' and an entry for Bailey in the Lost CJ. Both CJ's are are looking really good.

My entry into Bailey's is the final one before it goes home :) There have been a few hold-ups further down the line so I need to hold on to it until everything else catches up. Being the last entry in this CJ I had the only characters that were left - Sun and Jin :) I was actually really pleased that I was left with these as I've been waiting ages to use a photo I downloaded of Sun's eye. (the picture of the finished entry hasn't come up to well as the base was black card with a silvery shimmer to it). The 'eye' photo is behind a microscope slide, edged with copper tape and I've also used a couple of prima's and some of the gorgeous Heidi Swapp form the Cosco set. The rest of the CJ is very simple, clean entries so I've tried to keep to the same :)

The ATC CJ is still in the early posting stages (posting 3 or 4 at the moment) and we're all having such a good time with it. The theme was 'Beauty' and I knew stright away that I wanted to base my entry on Geisha's as they fascinate me. I can't really comprehend how someone can spend their whole life 'serving' the needs of another person(s)! The whole of a Geisha's existence is spent thinking about others.

Maybe this is something we all need to do a bit more of....

Lack of playtime :(

Not much crafty playtime expected from me this weekend :( We currently have a 3 tonne skip sat on our driveway waiting to be filled......

After 3 spending years with an almost permanently wet and soggy lawn, and builders that didn't want to know (what a surprise!) we've finally had enough. The last 6 or so weeks have been spend digging 3 ft deep trenches around the lawn then filling them with a couple of tonnes limestone chipping to try to create some drainage. The limestone chippings didn't give the garden the finished look I wanted so we then topped it all with another tonne of slate. Now you see the need for the skip!

DD has decided that she wants her birthday party at home this year so we've now got just over a month to get the garden totally finished - including re-staining the furniture, shed and decking - at least we now have a deadline to work to :)

Anyway, today's pic is from a couple of weeks ago - hopefully I'll get some time to do a bit of this over the weekend.....

ATC

Today's pic is an ATC I did for the July swap on the Alter Native forum - hope you've already received it Claudia!

I used a collage theme with lots of bits and pieces of foil, old stamps, buttons etc. The optical apparatus stamp is by Tim Holtz.

A bit weird but I loved the finished piece - didn't really want to give this one away LOL!

Summer Sunset

The sunset tonight was beautiful. I just couldn't resist getting my camera out and snapping for a couple of minutes.....

It's hard to believe that this is a close up of the clouds - it looks more like molten lava!

Rain, rain and more rain.....

Sian was doing a gymnastics demo today (3rd demo in 3 weeks!) and it rained :(

The poor girls were all soaking wet but still performed their little hearts out. They were doing a routine to Jump by Girls Aloud and did so well in such bad conditions.

No chance to take any more photo's so here are a few from last week.

Today's playthings.....

At today's crop I finally managed to finish my altered doorhanger for a swap on UKS.

The theme was 'Mama's Kitchen' which I found really difficult! It's not really my sort on theme at all.... The doorhanger was painted with brown acrylic paint and then again with cream acrylic paint. The edges were then sanded to reveal some of the base coat. I altered some dominoes using alcohol inks and used these for the title, added some themed stickers, beads, piece of cork, fibres and a rusty old key.

Even though I struggled with the theme it eventually came together.

In need of some rain.....

Although rain has been promised for days we've still not had any. The garden is so dry, I'm surprised the poor plants are still alive.

Anyway, today's pic is a scrapbook LO I did a few months ago. I love the simplicity of it and it was great to get away from the usual pink/lilac/girly colours LOL! The photo was taken about this time last year - I just love the expression on Sian's face.

We're off to a crop tomorrow (Warrington) - it's great as Sian can come too. We've got a small group of junior scrappers and the work they produce is amazing - they're the real future of British scrapping!

I said I'd never do this.....

I know I said I'd never have a blog..... guess I lied LOL!

This is just a place for me to ramble, mutter and show my craft stuff - scrapbooking and altered art.

It is not going to be an 'online-diary' type of blog , my life is too boring for that! Maybe there'll be some pics of my gorgeous daughter, actually I'm sure there will be plenty.....

Hopefully this blog will encourage me to take more photo's, especially of all my finished craft stuff as I often forget! It's a good central place to keep everything together.

Here's the first couple of pics - altered domino necklaces made from a kit from www.3djean.me.uk - she sells such great stuff, check out her site for great bargains and ideas.