BOO! It's been a long time!!!

Well as they say miracles do happen and todays miracle is that I'm actually here blogging! I know I've even shocked myself :)
So where have I been? What happened? Well I'm going to try and explain as quickly and shortly (is that correct English?) as possible!

I know I am so lucky to be able to do what I love as a living, to be able to craft all day is brilliant so please don't think I'm complaining but towards the end of last year I started to feel a little snowed under with so many projects on the go and deadlines to meet so I made some big decisions and started to step down from some of my responsibilities at the same time I needed to have a break from cyber space and well everything really!

Some of you may know that I went away with hubby on a 7 week cruise at the beginning of the year, working, but lucky me! I did intend to blog while away but with intermittent internet and basically switching off from everything my best laid plans got way laid and to be honest I think I feel all the better for the break. So please forgive me and I hope you will still follow my little corner of blogdom. I will not make any promises to be here on a set date or indeed at regular times but I wil try my best to share bits of my crafty life with you when I can.

So with all the apologising and explaining out of the way shall I share some pics? I guess the best place to start will be the beginning of the year and THAT cruise! I set sail for the Amazon on the 3rd of January loaded with crafty supplies galore! I taught a scrapbook class every sea day and we built a scrapbook album that covered every port of call - 22 pages in all! Hard work but I had the best time and met some great people who let me show them how to ink, ditress and generaly get messy :) As I don't want to bombard you with all my pics I'm gonna pic my faves to share with you!

Before we crossed the equator we went to Amsterdam, Lisbon, Funchal and Mindelo ....

The Equator crossng was soooo hot I can't even tell you! Amongst lots of places in the Amazon ...

We went to the Equator line in Macapa .....

It rained, well it was rainy season in the rain foret region! But we got to kiss in both hemispheres!

We met fabulous locals ....

These kids in Almeirim were brilliant practising their English

We discovered a hidden gem of a full scale beach resort ...

The background of this digi layout created wih Craft artist is the actual beach we went to....

And Chris reckoned he'd swallowed an actual ant after swimming in the river!

We sailed to the meeting of the waters in Manaus.....

where the black and yellow rivers meet, an amazing experience!

I hugged a Sloth ....

in the most inspirational village of Boca de Valeria

and we went fishing for piranah....

in Santarem!

From the Amazon we sailed on to the Caribbean but I'll save those pics for next time :) It was truly an amazing experience!

As well as all my trip pics to share I have some work pics too but I'll also do them gradually :) so first up is this.....

My stuff it book which is my version of the popular smash book, oh I really enjoyed making this and will definitely make more AND use them for all my bits and bobs! If you want to see more pics and read how I did it you'll need to get issue 1 of Scrap365 magazine, which I am pleased to say is going from strength to strength and is so full of inspiration of all crafty kinds it's ridiculous

And Finally for those of you that used to stop by, as well as any new passers by, what about Stan and Ollie? Well they are doing just fine

Ollie is as cheeky as ever

and Stan is just my lovely hansome boy!

So that's it for now, time for me to stop whittering, you see once I start it's hard to shut me up LOL, It's good to be back and I do hope you'll stop by soon, I will be here ..... honest :)
Until then as ever.... I hope you're well and Happy Cafting
Love
M x