Sketchy goings on!

Hi all

Well as the title suggests there are sketchy goings on today over at the sketchbook365 blog wanna play? Then why not pop on over to the blog and see the sketch from the lovely Wendy McKee and also see what the other members of the Scrap365 DT have come up with ..... there's loads of inspiration to be had and the best bit? You can add your designs too and be in for the chance to win a prize!

Here's my take on the sketch .....

Lots of Happy doodling as I'm in a happy mood, as the title says We're on the move, come Wednesday we will be all packed up (I hope if the packing fairies answer there invitations LOL) and on our way up to the North East .... I'm going home to my neck of the woods after 25 years of being away and I am soooo excited!

In close up I have layers of scrap paper, distressed of course :) and some doodled borders punched with a crop a dile and a doodled rainbow coloured with pencils (I love my colouring pencils and feel they've been somewhat neglected recently!)

The arrow embellishments are doodled

and the signpost is cut out from a photo of the sign at the crossroads at the end of our village ..... I'm hoping the next sketch will work as the second half to this layout so I can add a destination page to create a complete double layout :)

Why not hop on over to the Sketchbook365 blog, be inspired and play along with us, we'd love to see what YOU come up with and rememeber it can be anything inspired by the sketch, paper, digital and hybrid ..... everything is welcome ..... see you there :)

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you're well and happy and I'll *see you* soon until then as ever
Happy Crafting
Love
M x

More catch up!

Hi there
I thought I'd better come back soon with the rest of the catch up that I started, all good intentions and all that:) So here we go .... here's the rest of the cruise pics

We went onto the Caribbean via several places including .....

Iles du Salut, an amazing tropical paradise where they filmed Papillion. Beautiful but weird thinking of all the terrible things that happened there .....

and the punch was lethal!

Mayreau ....

Well just breath taking a whole island just for our ship, they even took the ships bar over and we were served cocktails on our sun loungers!

and then into the Caribbean for a few days where amongst other things ....

We took a trip in a cable car through the top of the rainforest in St Lucia

Awesome!

And we swam with turtles .....

in Barbados

and then lastly the extra unexpeted suprise was the beautiful Azores ...

We fell in love with Ponta del Garda and my wonderful hubby bought me a gorgeous new dress and shoes .....

for valentines day and our last formal night on board ....

complete with a private table, a red rose and a new necklace ..... such a lucky girl! (memory created with craft arist)

Another piece of work to share with you for this post is my mini book....

in issue 2 of the Scrap365 magazine. It's all made with fabric and was lots of fun to create, there are steps in the magazine as well as photos of the other pages ;)

And finally ......

With all this rubbish weather we've been having ..... is it really May? This is where the boys can be found ..... cuddled up on my bed ..... think they have the right idea LOL

So that's it from me for now, I'm gonna be back Friday with the new sketch for the sketchbook365 blog ..... see you then!

I hope you're well and happy and as ever
Happy Crafting
Love
M x

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

Happy Glitzy Christmas!

Hi all
Well it's that time again when I get to share some Glitzy goodness with you all from Glitz Designs and this month I've gone all festive :) 1st up is this layout ....


Santa Baby
A layout of our very cheeky grandaughter on Christmas day. I very rarely get a serious photo from her or her brother, but I love these photos they sum her up exactly. I wanted the layout to look like a present that was being unwrapped and the mix of elements from Beatiful Dreamer and Dance in sunshine with a little vintage blue thrown in for good measure gave me the fun festive look I wanted.
Here's what I used:
Glitz Designs Beautiful Dreamer paper; Floral, Polka, Stripe and Houndstooth
Glitz Designs Beautiful Dreamer embellishments; Giant Rhinestones and Epoxy words
Glitz Designs Dance in Sunshine paper; Polka, Floral, Damask, Stripe and Raindrop
Glitz Designs Dance in Sunshine embellishments; Glitzers, Epoxy words and Trim
Glitz Designs Vintage Blue; Glitzers
Glitz Designs teeny alphas; Mint Grunge
Glitz Designs frosting; red and black


I ripped around the edges of the paper to create a frame and pulled sections back to create the un wrapped present feel and then added Glitzers to some of the patterned paper to create presents for some of my embellishments.


The tree is made up of sevearl layers of different greens from the papers and the Giant Rhinestones make perfect shiny decorations.


And the reindeer and sleigh is an embellishment created with some paper piecing, placed hanging over the page so it looks like rudolph is flying overhead pulling his sleigh with some of the Dance in Sunshine trim:) I think this will make a fun piece of home decor for the festive season!

Next up is this layout...


First Snow
We had a hard winter last year and it was Olivers first winter, after the initial shock of landing in the snow he soon got the swing of it and loved it as much as his brother. The colours in the vintage blue collection were perfect for this layout and here's what I used;
Glitz Designs Vintage Blue paper; Stripe, Polka and Motif
Glitz Designs Vintage Blue embellishments; Titles stickers, Journalling Stickers, Epoxy words and Giant Rhinestones
Glitz Designs Teeny Alphas; Pearl


I kept this layout quite simple to focus on the picture and let the lovely colours of the paper do the work. After ripping strips across the layout, creating a curled photo mat and distressing liberally I added some splodges of acrylic paint with my fingers to create some snowy paw prints across my layout.


The fab stickers from titles and journalling added great accents to my page adding just enough detail and the Giant rhinestones give it an icy, blingy lift.


One little detail I love is the bottom corner that I ripped away to give a puppy chewed effect :)

And that's it for this post and also sadly for my time with the Glitz DT. I have had to do a lot of soul searching with my decision to step down from this amazing team but life has got busier and busier and unfortunately some things have got to give :(

I have been honoured and proud to be able to work along side such amazing designers over the last 2 and half years and of course it has been a complete pleasure to work with the gorgeous Glitz girls and their wonderful product. I may not be here every month but in my heart I will always be a Glitz girl and will continue to love all the gorgeous product they bring us.
Thanks to everyone for having me along for the ride and hopefully I will see you all in cyber space soon.
Much love
MJM x

A Black & wite Froggy Christmas

Hi all
Time to deliver a project of the day over at the Lily pad again. Some super simple but stylish black and white Christmas cards


As ever a more detailed post can be found on the Banana Frog blog.

Well it’s time for this froglet to hop off the lily pad I’m afraid. After much soul searching and juggling of time I have decided with great sadness after 2 ad 1/2 years it is time for me to step down from the Banana Frog DT and have said my fond farewells over at the Lilypad today.

Thanks for stopping by and hopping over to the Lily pad, I hope you're well and happy and until soon Happy Crafting
Love
M x

Scrap 365!!!

Hey all just had to share this thing of beauty with you all ...


It's the cover of the new mag, I snagged a copy at the NEC as I know a lot of you did and those that have subbed will have them landing on the doormat (if they haven't already ;)) before general release on the 18th and I may be biased but I think it is FAB!!!

It speaks to scrappers of today with a real mix of layouts, mini books, off the page projects, digi scrapping and all sorts of other gloriousness to fill a crafty brain. The design team are AWESOME and I love the eclectic mix of styles from clean and simple to out and out grunge with pretty in between ... what a talented bunch of scrappers I am lucky to work alongside.

The comments from all you lovelies out there have been great and I know that Katy Fox is one happy editor knowing that you all love it as much as we do and I know for a fact issue 2 will be just as good ... I've seen the projects already ;)

So if you want to get your creative mitts on a copy hop on over to the Scrap365 blog and check out the post from 2nd November to see all the different ways you can do it!

I hope you're all well and happy out there and until soon Happy, Happy Crafting
Love
M x

My Glitzy nieces

Hi all it's that time again to share some gorgeous Glitzyness with you from Glitz Designs. This last week I have had my 2 nieces staying with me and of course I had to keep snapping away! The photos I have chosen to scrap really sum up their personalities and the Glitz embellishments let me write some meaningful aunty messages to them.
First up is Lilly ....


Completely be you always.
Lilly is such a unique, beautiful girl and I want her to always be exactly who she is, the hello kitty hat won out over a piece of Goth jewellery for instance on a shopping trip, I love the fact that she is an individual and proud of it. For the layout I used;
Glitz Designs patterned paper: Dance in Sunshine; Birds, damask, polka and raindrops
Glitz Deigns Dance in Sunshine; Trim, Epoxy Words, Paper Layers, Whatnots, Journalling stickers and Glitzers
Glitz Deigns Vintage Blue Peek a boos and Glitzers


By combining lots of strips of papers down the page I was able to use lots of the lovely paper, I love the green and lilac combo in this line with the pep of the yellow. I distressed the 2 circular whatnots to add an extra mat for the photo and added a glitzer for some extra bling. I love how the lines can cross over with their patterns and colours.


By lifting the photo on foam pads I was able to slot in the journaling block behind it, and a bird cut from a paper layer sits on top.


I love the new epoxy stickers, you can make up all sorts of sentiments with them in colours that all co-ordinate.


And lastly by adding the peek a boo from vintage blue onto some of the yellow paper I could make it take on a green hue to co-ordinate with my layout and this was my way to add my little message to Lilly

My next layout features Megan


KISYCMV
No I haven't spelt it wrong, this is Megans version of the kissing rhyme! She had us in stitches and it's just so Megan, there's no one like her! The 2 photos are the 2 sides of this complex, funny little girl.
Beautiful dreamer was the perfect line to tell the story and here is what I used;
Glitz Designs patterned paper: Beautiful Dreamer; Damask, Floral, Stripe, Polka and Toille.
Glitz Designs Beautiful Dreamer; Trim, Giant Rhinestones, Epoxy words and paper layers.
Glitz Designs Dance in Sunshine; Whatnots
Glitz Designs Vintage Blue clear stamps
Glitz Designs Teeny Alphas; Bubble gum pink


The spiral is cut from a paper layer and I only adhered it at the end so it has some movement. Strips of paper across the layout build up the background and again allowed me to use lots of the yummy colours.


I love the Pink and green in this line and used the bold pink stripe as mats for my photos to pop them off the page. The what not bunting from dance in sunshine is a perfect accent for my main photo and little word details added with the epoxy words work beautifully to tie everything together.


I created a journalling block from some of the ledger paper, punching it along the side. Adding some trim and a rhinestone added that extra bit of girlyness and the final touch is my little message to Megan in the form of the stamped heart from the Vintage Blue clear stamp collection .... I love Glitz stamps!

That's all from me for now, Thanks for popping by and letting me share my Glitzy projects with you.
I hope you're all well and happy and until soon Happy Crafting
Love
M x