Hello - My Name is ..........

08:05 Karen 6 Comments

Hello, my name is Karen and I am a card maker. There I have come right out and said it. I have discovered the joy of making cards and I must now call myself a card maker.

Given the opportunity of spending the afternoon with my scrapping buddy Eileen - what do I take along to do? Not a scrap page but a box of scraps to make cards - how did this happen, how can I choose to make cards rather than scrap. Not only did I make cards but I also sorted through some of her stuff she was going to throw away and retrieved bits to use on cards - including the backing from some self adhesive trim which made a very nice lace border - how frugal am I?

I did make 4 cards on Thursday but one needs to be held back for a couple of weeks ;).

The two green ones were made from scraps of paper and card that Eileen donated to Gracia for her card making but never actually reached Gracia's hands!

The third one was made from some very old Doodlebug paper that I had hanging around and some Poundland gems (our Poundland seems to have given up selling craft stuff so I am just using up the gems I have left).

Reasons to be cheerful:

1. It's the weekend and I have the people I love most in the world around me all day.

2. I may do some proper scrapping this weekend because I quite fancy this.

3. The summer hols factor has kicked in and I am soooooo chilled!

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She's At It Again!

16:45 Karen 2 Comments

Yes I'm afraid I am. Making cards for the kids to sell. Today I have made 4 and I must admit that they were totally inspired by Wendy McKee's cards on her blog here.

This is my least favorite - I really don't like the colours.

I have loved her style for a long time and have closely copied her cards but added my own twist as I am only using papers and stash, on the cards, that I am happy to give away.

I am much happier making this type of more 'artsy' card than the ones I have been making, although they take much longer to make I feel I have created something rather than just done some cutting and sticking. I would rather make 4 cards like this than 20 quick cards even though they will sell for the same price!

My favorite card today.

Reasons to be cheerful:

1. I am just about to embark on my daily 2 mile walk with Kiera - I love having her home during the holidays.

2. Vegetable curry for tea - yum.

3. Only 5 more invoices left to type today (there will be many more tomorrow but at least I have got the ones I have here done).

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Here, There & Everywhere

07:33 Karen 4 Comments

School has finished for another 5 1/2 weeks and so the fun begins! School finished with a bang (not literally) on Thursday, when we all went out for a meal and I drove the 200 miles to mum's on Friday. As a result of my very late night my anticipated 8.00 start turned into a 9.30 one and what with the roadworks on part of the motorway, resulting in our not going above 35mph for about 20 miles the journey took over 4 hours. On the way back the motorway was closed at one point and the traffic diverted off without any directions as to how to find it further along! Note to self - even though you have been making the same journey many times each year for the past 17 years still take the satnav and an atlas! My knight in shining armor came to my rescue when I phoned him and he told me how to get back onto the motorway. Oh how I love that man of mine xxx

While we were at mum's Gracia and I made 50 cards for her and Josh to sell for the Russ Foundation, the foundation that is organising the trip to India, he is going at Christmas to build an orphanage.

BUT my absolute favorite cards were these owl ones we made.

I made a digi page using Shimelle's Bazinga kit. The joy of digi scrapping - all I had to take was my laptop and hard drive and I had access to hundreds of photos and kits!

Also another of my mini pages was featured on the home page of UKS - one I made a couple of weeks ago in response to a call for freestyle pages. A huge thanks to my friend Karen C who suggested I draw raindrops onto the page, scary I know but after a couple of large cookies to help brace myself I took the plunge with my trustee white and black journalling pens and loved the result!

A lovely surprise when I got back was my page that I had showed sneaky peeks of, a couple of weeks ago, was on the Papermaze blog!

So what am I going to do with all this time I have on my hands? The list is endless but I had better start with my new promise to myself - that I will iron everything that I take from the drying rack and not put it away to be ironed later. I may then reach the bottom of the ironing pile at the end of the 5 weeks!

Reasons to be cheerful:

1. I have a knight in shining armor who always leaps to my defense and rushes to my rescue.

2. A safe, albeit long, journey to mum's and back.

3. Time spent in the car with Gracia, both of us chatting, singing along to my iPod and 'car dancing' in traffic jams.

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Two Nellies and a Phant!

18:48 Karen 1 Comments

Be warned - this is a long and rambling post to make up for lost time!

What a busy time of year July is! Costumes to make for the school play, lots and lots of events to take my Rainbows to and life in general. So my excuses for not blogging are many but it isn't for want of trying. Blogging is always on my list of things to do but doesn't make it to the top as often as I would like!

So what have I been up to for the past couple of weeks, other than the things listed above?

It was our crop on the 10th and we had the very lovely and talented Laura Buckingham come along to teach a page. She used the beautiful and bright Delovely range and what a stunner she designed. I knew as soon as I saw the preview of the papers she had used that I would use photos of Gracia and Josh in Covent Garden with the Elephants.

The colours in the photos were perfect for the papers and the subject perfect for the page!

The title came about because when Gracia was very small she used to call elephants - nellie phants! For those of you who are not familiar with British slang a 'nellie' is a silly person so the title 'Two Nellies and a Phant' was perfect.

Also at the crop I made some cards - yes me making cards.

Now that you have picked yourself up off the floor I will tell you the reason. I work with 3 different teachers at school and wanted to give them an end of term present. After giving it some thought I decided to make wallets with 6 cards in for each of them. It was a way of using up some of my supplies and also an economic present for each of them - to tell the truth I didn't have to spend anything!

To force myself to make cards at the crop the only photos I took were the elephant ones I needed for Laura's class. After saying, several times, that I never make cards I remembered that I had made 35 in May, with Gracia, for Josh's charity sale so perhaps I do make cards after all!

My absolutely favorite card so far is a hybrid, pop up card using this kit.

I can also show this page that I made for MaryAnne on UKS as part of a year long, mini book challange they are running.

So other than making 18 cards and 3 wallets I have not done any proper scrapping for a week but I may do a bit of digi tonight whilst I watch the t.v.

Reasons to be cheerful:

1. Spending all day yesterday with my Rainbows and what looked like a couple of thousand other Rainbows, Brownies and Guides at Tendring showground yesterday was far more enjoyable than I had anticipated, despite the 2 hours I queued for them to have a donkey ride!

2. Friends coming over for a quick cup of tea and staying longer than anticipated and also the surprise present they brought.

3. A day spent singing very loudly along to my iPod, in my own little happy world.

I hope you have an absolutely wonderful week.

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A Quickie

22:46 Karen 2 Comments

Just a very quick post because it is way past my bedtime!

A couple of sneak peeks of projects I have made for blogs and websites but cannot show the full pages yet until they go live.

This one using the gorgeous Bo Bunny Persuasion range

and this one using various scraps of papers.

Reasons to be cheerful:

1. A very peaceful and stress free day at work.

2. An evening spent with David, in quite companionship, watching a film.

3. The prospect of potential problems being sorted out without too much fuss!

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I'm in Love!

09:04 Karen 5 Comments

I've spent the last couple of days in Sheffield with Gracia, Josh and Josh's mum, admiring the City,

As always it is impossible to get a decent, unposed photo of these two! Can you see the wheel in the background that is like a smaller version of the Millennium Wheel in London?

the uni and going to a talk on Bio Medical Sciences (quite frankly all beyond me but Gracia understood it perfectly) I can honestly say that I totally love Sheffield.

It is a beautiful city and the uni is a part of the town and not a campus stuck out in the middle of nowhere. The university utilises existing buildings

This church is now a lecture theatre.

and also builds new state of the art ones.

This is the new Information Commons which has more than 1,300 study spaces

and over 500 pc's. It is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and even has shower facilities!

The people are so friendly (it has the lowest crime rate of any city in the UK) and the shopping is plentiful. There are 4 trees to every human which makes it the greenest city in Europe. What more could a student ask - well only the AAB results required to get in on the chosen course!

After our tour of the campus we decided to wander down to the Botanical Gardens