Embellish your World

Grrrrr ...the glamorous life of a local authority Accountant!

So busy at work I can barely breathe so big apologies for not updating. This blog post isn;t much better than not posting at all really, just wanted to log on and explain my absence. WIsh I could update my blog from my phone then I might keep on top of it a bit better.

Quick news round then

• Have sadly lost 2 hens and a baby chick this month all to lethargy like symptoms for a day then nothing despite failed attempts at tlc :(
• I have read all three of the 50 Shades of Grey books in 8 days (after many hours on a pc for work these have been my relaxation to avoid too much computer time), rather saucy content but a good read that was hard to put down at times!
• I have been behind the scenes organising for the forthcoming ATDML cybercrop, planning the timetable and designing my classes
• I walked 15k for charity weekend before last as part of a local Night Hike and managed a respectable time of 2hr 28mins
• My garden has been loved in preparation of a grande Jubilee BBQ next Monday, red, white & Blue themed of course!
• My weight remains stable at the moment with work being so crazy I have only managed to food optimise 4/5 days a week and the others days have been pretty rubbish, but I am hoping to shed some this week with a new found love of salad. Have also reduced Boxercise to just once a week now hubby's cricket season is in full swing clashing with my Sunday class but I am trying to compensate with more walking.

So that's me for a bit. Hopefully back blogging more often soon. I will leave you with a layout from ATDML May gallery which is up on the site now. Go check out a real eclectic mix of projects being shared this month as well were all working with different products. I got Graphic 45!

Photos still not here :(

Well my "for-ages" (not forever and not ages, but for-ages) photo upload and order has yet to arrive so I haven't been able to progress very far with the next part of Cover to Cover. Luckily I had a couple of images already printed out to play with at today's crop and managed a layout with my DT kit for June. I also pretty much completed one of my cybercrop classes for the June 2012 ATDML cybercrop which is coming next month.

They also have a giveaway on at the moment to win a Simple Stories 6x6 pad, click here and leave a comment to be entered, ends on Monday 14th May.

 

Snap Happy!

So I have decided I might be a bit snap happy! I have taken so many photos this year already and sorting through them is taking a little longer than I anticipated, but I am glad to be doing it. I have managed to reduce January's files down to just 43 and most of those are my 365 photos which I need to print out as mini prints to create a double layout. I have started my photo order online with these. February proved a little harder to cull with only a third of the almost 1000 images being cast to recycle bin on my desktop. I have scrapped only a couple of layouts from Feb's images so severall of these will appear in my online shopping basket for printing too. March, not so much tidying was needed though I will be printing off more of the wedding photos to create a project for the bride and groom, and I have a couple more holiday snaps to pop on to layouts but have made quite a dent in these already. Down to just 304 images for March but I am happy with that reduction. April it turned out I hadn't quite downloaded all my digital images to my laptop so the original 294 images shot well in to the 300's before being reduced to 285.  Again I need to print off some smaller images of the egg hunt so a minibook and a few layouts too. Off to complete my online uploading for the printing part of yesterday's Cover to Cover prompt and then to read through todays' prompt and see how everyone else is getting on!

 

Starting to sort through my 2012 photos

Following signing up to Cover to Cover I am tonight starting to declutter my 2012 photos. I don't envisage this taking me too long as I never take many photos in Jan/Feb (poor weather/lighting) and I have mostly sorted through the large number of holiday snaps taken in March (which weren't significant as I spent 3 days of it sick!) but I took plenty at the wedding and have a retreat folder for April to review. Imagine my surprise when I started to look and this was the number to review...

• Jan - 48 files
• Feb - 997 files (forgot 2 concerts, a family party and egg hunting!)
• Mar - 337 files (more egg hunting, a wedding, a holiday and think I still have some to upload here!)
• April - 294 files

Hmmm, I may be some time! lol!
 * wanders off to sort photos*......*wanders back some time later to edit blog update*

So I reduced January to 43 files, but hadn't taken many other than those for my 365 photo challenge. February needed more of a trim and I managed to delete just over a third of the almost 1000 files! March reduced to only 301 as I had already sorted a fair amount here, though I had missed a few on my phone and memory card. Think April may have to wait until tomorrow... 

Cover to Cover

Well I definately fill the brief for this latest Shimelle Class I have signed up for. I have piles of layouts and several albums in need of sorting. As Shimelle puts it I need to put the "book" back in to Scrapbooking.

I am album #3 for my eldest who turns 16 this year and on albums #2 for both my boys, although that should probably be 4 and 3 each respectivly if I got around to filing my completed pages away. I also need a family album or too I think. With tales of our homes, and things we do together, holidays etc. I sure need to take more photos around the home that is for sure, may even help me put that in to some order too, who knows... so watch this space as I hopefully make the most of the course whilst juggling a very busy time at work, preparation for my forthcoming 15k night hike and of course the family, home and our every increasing pet hoard! I did sadly lose one of my hens today though having separated her from the others yesterday when I noticed she was very letharigic and off her food. Despite my best efforts she passed away over night and I have no idea why sadly. The others all look well but from gaining the new chicks on Friday and increasing our chicken total to 14 we are down to 13 now, 5 chicks (2 weeks old nearly) and 8 fully grown girls. Still plenty to keep me busy and a regular supply of eggs though.  Off to sleep now, it's late and I've work tomorrow, so see you all soon x

Happy Bank Holiday Weekend

Seriously how has May snuck up on us already? I have so much to do!! And so much going on these next few weeks too. Last Saturday saw my Swimathon where my money raised is over £500 now! I am so thrilled to be able to contribute this much towards Marie Curie Nursing Care, especially having lost many loved ones to the cruelness of cancer.  Yesterday I taught a layout class at Ecelectic Keepsakes in Marks Tey, Colchester.

We used the lovely Prima Songbird Journalling cards and the Mosaic stamp paper from the same collection, along with some spray ink, flowers and a paint and foam stamped title.  It was a lovely relaxing class, albeit with several worried faces at the inky/painty stages for fear of ruining layouts, but once overcome I was thrilled as always with the array of layouts that the class ladies produces based on my example.

Next Saturday sees me teaching again. locally this time at my own crop where we are creating a soft a romantic page with flowers and pearl beads, washi tape, twine and some inking and stamping again! Sneak peak to follow. Only 2 spaces left at the crop so do contact me if you are in the Enfield (London/Middlesex) area next weekend.

Enjoy the rest of your Bank Holiday weekend everyone, I am off to clean out our newest family members now before entertaining some friends visiting from the North, then perhaps the cinema for the new Zac Efron film later today or tomorrow. Depends if I can drag myself away from our babies!

 

Teaching this weekend

Just over 48 hours til I head up the Motorway to Marks Tey, Colchester to teach for the lovely ladies at Eclectic Keepsakes. This month we will be using paints, and spritzing, punches, frames, stamping and more (and yes, all on the same page!). I am using the scrumptious Prima Songbird for my class and look forward to seeing those of you who are attending this Saturday. Then it is just a week later and I will be teaching locally at my Enfield Crop where we will be creating a page full of floral delight, can't wait!

Yesterday I successfully completed my

Yesterday I successfully completed my 2.5k, 100 length swim of my local pool as part of the UK Swimathon weekend. I ache plenty today, but I have raised almost £500 on and off line for Marie Curie Nurses. Still happy to take any donations or support and my online fundraising link is below.

http://my.artezglobal.com/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=366297&langPref=en-CA

Next challenge is in just 19 days time when I participate in the second local Night Hike for 15k. Then a month later I have the 5k Race for Life, all before I end the year of being 40! Now if I could only get to my target weight this side of summer....

More Shimelle weekend inspired layouts

As previously blogged I took part in the online scrapping weekend that Shimelle put on last weekend. Whilst I did some layouts during the ATDML retreat I played along with several of the others this weekend (in between some serious spring cleaning I might add!) and have a couple to share.

My completed challenge #4 (to scrap with grey/yellow and one other colour) I chose teal blue and used the scrummy MME follow your heart papers. Noticed that this challenge in particular was very popular given the number of layouts being shared at Shimelle.com, made nice and easy by the scrummy grey/yellow combo of papers that the scrapbooking industry have given us these last couple of years. I know I was rather fond on the Queen Bee range from Pink Paislee a year or so back which used this colour combo very well.

Moving on I also started to create a layout inspired by Challenge 1 and the lovely page by Jaime Warren, but I then went off on a tangent and any resemblance to the original page now seems rather lost! I did however scrap a "not so great" photo on this page which was Challenge #15 so I could claim to be killing two birds with one stone on this one! The photo was taken in 2005 by my husband of my then youngest and I on the beach. Sadly we have a buggy, a lunch box and several people in the background too, and so not the greatest photo but one of the few I have of his first trip to the seaside so it was worthy of telling the tale.  Another page using more MME!

Challenge #11 was to scrap a page using two patterned papers that took up 1/3 and 2/3 of the page each. I used Simple Stories Fabulous papers for this challenge and whilst the layout looks as if I didn't use the 1/3 of one paper and 2/3 of another it actually does. The paper representing 1/3 of the pattern at the top is from a sheet with several stripes of papers from the collection on it, so in using a 4" strip you end up seeing floral, strips and the ledger paper. I joined the two with a strip of washi tape and used the ledger paper for my journalling.

Final challenge that I have undertaken was the last of Shimelles from the weekend (#16) which was to create a page using scraps from your weekend. As mentioned before I taught a Simple Stories class last weekend which I wasn't overally happy with, not sure why, I just wasn't and so I wanted to create a second page from the kit to give those taking the class more for their buck. Turns out the second layout was more popular than my original (which people still did!) but the use of a repeated punched shape and left over papers made for a quick and easy page that pleased several delegates. So here is my original class layout (minus the journalling I have still to add)

...and here is the page using a sheet of cardstock and left overs scraps of paper and stickers from the kit.

Sorry photo is a bit blurred - I will try and replace with a better one but here is a close up.

I think that little ole postage stamp punch worked it's socks off last weekend with several people borrowing it to recreate the simple page.  So there it is, plenty scrapbooking shared and I still have more pages to share from last weekend so expect another image filled post soon!

Scrapping along with Shimelle.com

Last weekend the very lovely Shimelle had one of her on-line crops which sadly coincided with the ATDML retreat that I was away teaching at. I did however manange to log in a couple of times over the weekend on my smartphone to see what challenged were offered that I could use to inspire a layout or two. 

First challenge was to scraplift a page by Jamie Warren which I set aside for another day. The 2nd challenge was to create a page using >3 paper collections. I created this page which used Prima Almanac, Prima Songbird and Echo Park Note to Self (and also a journalling card by MME).

Next challenge, Challenge #3 was mixing styles, and thanks to the ATDML shop having the October Afternoon spray ink in store I was eager to have a go at mixing Shimelle's splatter ink technique on a page (so much so that I went back and splattered some on the challenge 2 layout above as well). This layout was created in the middle of the night at the retreat last weekend when I stayed up til gone 5am playing with ink and paint and stickles to create my Game on layout (which was also for an Olympic challenge at the retreat).

I am still working on Challenge 4 which was to scrap with Grey/Yellow and one other colour (hopefully will get this done before the challenge deadline closes!)  Over the weekend I created several other pages which I will share over the coming days along with the paper collections used.

Today I created a layout for the Challenge #10 - Something Bold based on a page by Jill Sprout. Layout using papers from the Echo Park Note to Self collection and some 7Gypsies stickers.

I also rose to challenge # 14 (four sections with Jen Gallacher) and created this page with left overs from one of the retreat classes and some more Echo Park paper, this time from the This and That boy range.

I create a page from the leftovers of my second retreat class last weekend (which I will upload later along with the class page itself) which fulfills challenge #16 to use your scraps and who knows, I may even get another page in before the day is through. Thanks for looking and be sure to pop over to SHimelle.com and see the whole range of challenges for yourself, all nicely linked in this post.