Hi all.

Had a busy week this week. After a few teething problems with my two lovely bairnes we ended up having a lovely peaceful week. All were fed, watered, occupied and happy.  Talking of happy, wasn't our Olympic Ceremony absolutely great, loved the fact the Queen played along and Rowen Atkinson was funny, one of my friends once had a blind date with an exact look a like of him, in fact if I hadn't know this guy had told her he looked like him I would definately have asked for his autograph - we are talking about er, well, a good few years ago when I lived in Swindon. She actually didn't go on the date, I was there as back up so we didn't acknowledge him and went off to Route 66 instead!!

Anyway, I had a really good crafting session on Friday with Annette and Maria, thanks to you both, it really was a good day and I now have a lot of new ideas to try out from what I learnt.  Everyone I spoke to said how good the class was.  I have put picturs of my work on my main Gblog but I might pop them on here for a quick look, actually I will have to because at the moment I havn't got anything new to show.  I fancy designing a few new projects to sell, my website really needs some new stock put on there, which won't sell,  but at least I will have stock from it for my next craft table.!?! I have been buying a few little nic nacs for me to decorate and I might think about making some bags again.  I really need to find a good fabric shop somewhere?  Maybe I will get some Tarten in Inverness next week?

Hi, just a quickie, I nipped downstairs for a few minutes and have ended up blog hopping for hours so thought I should at least update my own!  I don't have any images to show off though because all my work I have been doing lately is SplodgeAway DT work.  I do see now why Annette and Maria can come up with lovely card after lovely card, the more you craft the more ideas you get and you get in a flow, Not saying that I am coming up with lovely card after lovely card, just that I am more inclined to play around with my designs when I get in a good few crafting session in a short space of time.  I have to stop myself going off on a tangent and concentrate on the one I am on first.  Been discovering some great talent tonightt especially ATC people they seem to really craft for themselves on ATC's and their work on the ATC is a lot different to their cards a lot of the time.  I am becoming a bit of an ATC girl myself but my cards are already different now because of the SplodgeAway Mat, I am not saying that because I am on the DT either, I just love the rich deep colour you can get by going over an edge until the colour is nearly off your sponge and then just bring it onto the card - you couldn't get that look if you printed it!  Especially with the Butterscotch Adirondack I just looove it. I always start with that colour now because all other colours blend really nicely over the top of it.  Anyway I have a Breyer class on Friday with Annette and Maria I can't wait, but wished I had got some practice in, you know what its like you can do something just fine but want to improve your techniques, but then you go to the class and it all goes wrong so you look like a total beginner! Still we are there to learn!  I missed the deadline for "The Stamper" magazine competition I had decorated a whole wooden box but was struggling to make a centre piece, someone did say it was good enough as it was but its not worth entering if you don't think you might be in at least the top 500?? Still might be able to enter next year its just that in this one you had to use my favorite stamps!!! Bit gutted! This pic is an old DT project and used two of my all time favorite stamps!

oi

Create and Craft

Tonight at 10pm you get the chance to see a repeat of.....

MY CARD ON TELEVISION!!!  

Oh and I think you might get to see a repeat of Maria Simms lovely card demonstration and a few glances of Tom - Mr SplodgeAway himself.

Upcycling

We all upcycle books, boxes, tags, bags etc, but what about upcycled Poetry! I have a sample which I put on my SplodgeAway/samshomecookeddesigns blog this morning. "The Gruffalo" or as I put it

"The Big Messy House"

All is quiet in the Big Messy House

No kids hanging around

Not even a mouse

I looked at the craft room

and it looked good

so I will do what I want

and not what I should!!

And when the kids come home

and my crafting is done

and there is peace and calm

from everyone,

we will enjoy some time and

play cat and mouse

and we won't really care about the

Big Messy House!!!

Blogging Busy!!

I have been blogging busy tonight, I just came on here for a quick look.  First of all I checked out our SplodgeAway blog to see what was going on, there is a lovely card on there from Sue, great blending. Then I checked on the rest of the team to see what they were up to in their blogs, of course Maria Simms had yet another piece of art on there, when do you get time to make all these projects Maria?  Anyway she had entered a competition called Twinchie challenge Blog where you have to do a peice of art on a 2" by 2" piece of card, so of course I had to enter that, I have been itching to enter a challange for ages, was going to enter one for the Stamper Magazine but I had to ditch it and not sure if I have time to re-start anyway, so this was my first entry,well my first two entries, and my lovely daughter Hannah did one too. I will show you that when I get I get pic taken. I think I mucked it up on the linking though?  Then I discovered that the lovely Punkleface had paid me a massive compliment after she looked at a website with lovely artwork and pottery on and she said that it made her think of me, I am honoured that you think I have an eye for a good piece of art like you.  Then I was about to do another link but my computer has gone off line so many times while I have been writing this that I have forgotton what it was!!!!? So I will show you the entries I put in on the 2inch by 2inch challenge (was that what I was doing anyway?) Oh I don't know I have had one bottle of lager!  Anyway I hope you like them.  By the way, I hope all goes well tomorrow Tom, Sue I will see you tomorrow unless you went too???  ByseBy

SplodgeAway DT Reject.     Don't get me wrong the DT Team didn't reject this card, I did, It was originally supposed to be for something other than the SplodeAway Blog, which I have just realised I probably can't tell you so lets just leave it at that?  Anway this did start off as a very nice card but Tom our Mr SplodgeAway himself is a bit good with a camera and spots the tiniest of flaws on any peice of work immediately.  i.e. within a second of looking at it he said " I can't use that, it has white stuff all over it, it won't photograph well"!  White stuff? I havn't used any white stuff?  Well what had happend is that I had used my Pearl Mist Cosmic Shimmer over parts of the card and then put some Glossy Accents on parts of the card and the two together turned into white stuff!  If you click on the airoplane under the flower you will see the bit I didn't manage to hide.    Of course then I did more paper adding and more splodging to cover it up until it just became too much as you can see!!, shame it had started out as a nice project.  Anyway be warned.  On the bright side if you want a really good snow effect on your Christmas cards just use Cosmic Shimmer  (pearl mist) and Glossy Accents together!  Below is a little Gift Tag I made whilst playing around with my new Splodge-A-Mask I love this spotty mask it is gorgeous if you just sneak a bit into a project by double stenciling I havn't even got to embossing it yet, that will be lovely I know, I am still just inking it at the moment. I have also used it on one of our splodgeaway blog projects - aha, should I be telling you that?

A little gift Tag I made

This Gift Tag was made using my New Splodge-A-Mask Dot

Well this is going to be short and sweet, actually nothing I write is short and sweet, once I get gabbing thats it! Its not my fault I hardy ever get to see or talk to adults so there is a lot of gabbing held inside there that is bursting to come out!!! Anyway back to the short and sweet thing!  I have just spent half an hour writing and tweeking spellings etc on this blog, some of the ramblings mentioned how everytime I tried to update this, my favorite blog, I got distracted by facebook and twitter which are quite busy at the moment, anyway I did the write up then went to add just two average photos of cards I had been asked to make or made for friends, for those of you who are like me and like a bit off visual blogging, but the photos were on my phone and the blog won't take them straight off there, so I downloaded them onto my computer and decided 640 photos on my phone was just getting a bit much, so I transferred most of them to the Computer and deleted a lot of them off my phone and then an HOUR later when it was all done I went to add the two photos, but by then I had lost them somewhere in my mass of photos with their complicated filing sytem!  Ah well I thought, I will just add any old photo for now and people won't know I had made the cards a few weeks ago - but guess what!!! my blog had not saved the write up!!!!!! Oh just give me some crafting to do!  Anyway now I don't even know if I can get a photo on here or which one to put on, but if you are NOT reading this I lost the whole thing again anyway!  Sam

Create & Craft TV Launch & My Craft Stall

This is so exicitng, have just looked at Carley's blog (Carley from Create & Craft) and she was talking about meeting Tom and said that she has been working on her SplodgeAway Mat and likes it. See link below for comment. She said she will be seeing Tom on Thursday 5th July because he is on TV at 12pm and she is on just after him with Leoni. I like Leoni!! Of Course Maria Simms will be there too with Tom.
carley's creations: splodge away

Anyway check out her blog, she is a lovely lady and I like her Demoes. All of Tom's DT team are soooooo excited about thursday, can't wait to watch Tom and Maria on Create & Craft, we will be taking a few lap tops into the shop to watch it together, of course I will also record it at home because everyone will be talking. Good luck for Thursday Tom, say Hi to Carley and Leoni for me, oh and the Glitter Girls they will be on too.

RIGHT, while I am here does anyone want to know about my week? I had a dentist appointment - so I thought - wrong week. I had two sports days, cancelled at the last minute due to rain, as usual. Was trying to keep up with my DT work, (my favourite part of the week - but I failed) whilst trying to prepare for a craft table for which I had no goodies - except a few xmas tree owls from the last one I did.

- so I spent about £50 on goodies i.e. chalk boards, cups, blank note pads to upcycle, inks for the printer, coffee to keep me awake during the long nights, and McDonalds for the kids because I was too tired to cook because I was crafting half the night!!!! Still my Dad and Brother Robert looked after my Son, my Daughter came to help me on the stall, very sweet of her, SHE SPENT in total about £20 on goodies and sweets FROM OTHER CRAFT STALLS I spent about £10 on lunch for us both, and of course I had to pay for the table. We sat there for six hours and made A MASSIVE PROFIT OF £6.50 - well I say profitttttt?????????? It didn't even cover the cost of lunch!

And half of that money was for Sue from Suzie craft because I had some of her goodies and some splodgeAway Mats on my stall. NEVER AGAIN! Does anyone want to buy a Nanny card, A Lollipop Lady card or a Teacher/Teaching Assistant thank you card with matching tag? Or going cheap is a bunch of desk top mini chalk board stands WITH mini chalk board, and mini decorated cup to hold chalk in?
The funny thing was two teachers looked and them and really liked them, I said "don't hold your breath because I know NO-ONE has bought you one"! Thank goodness the girl on the stall next to me was lovely and we had a natter and swapped ideas. I suppose once I have caught up on my sleep I MIGHT consider doing another one in the future!?!?