calendar challenge June

Wow half way through the year already. I hope you ladies are still enjoying doing this challange, I know Im way behind but I have every intention of getting back to doing this calendar soon as well as photographing what Ive done so far and post how Im getting on. Now June is half way through the year and is brought in with the star sign gemini, which is as we know is the twins. So I think the theme for june should be the number 2!.

Hints to help inspire you.

Twins
half and half
mirror images

Ive just come down from the Isle of Skye :)

I just wanted to share with you, my favourite picture of my bike taken whilst coming home from and absolutely fantastic weekend away with a great bunch of people on our motorbikes. It was taken at eilean donan castle and its just a stunning background.

First of all we camped in the field that was someones garden, we were invited lol.

There was a great party that night. We then moved onto a campsite in skye where even more biker friends arrived and there was another party lol. Admittedly I was very tired when I got home but it was all soooo worth it. Roll on the next weekend away lol

craft challenge 2010 - May

To follow on nicely from April and hopefully the April showers brought May Flowers the theme of May is 'Flowers' So use your flowers big and small in abundance.

Have fun as always

flowery sparkles

T x

Finished at last :)

Well folks, Ive finally finished my very first sewing project. The quilt is of course not full size lol Its actually a wall hanging approx 17 by 12 inches but its all my very own work and Im very very very proud of it. The bears, moon and stars were cut out of felt in individual pieces and all hand sewn. It was a kit I bought at the craft fair in Glasgow in March and definately well worth the money I paid for it. Its by no means perfect but I hope my daughter appreciates it as I made it as a gift for her in celebration of my next grandchild due the beginning of October. I am excited about sharing this with everyone so please enjoy.



till next time

T x

craft challenge 2010 - April

Here we are now at 1st of April I hope now one has made a fool out of you. Though having said that it mightmake for a great page cause the theme for this month is 'April fool' though with this theme I thought Id add a little compulsory element. For this page needs to be bright colours and ribbon.

Enjoy

Foolish sparkles too you this month

T x

craft challenge 2010 - March

Wow is it the first of March already? Again having researched this to try and add a bit of interest I have found out that Xipe Totec (Aztec deity) is associated with Spring so therefore it stands to reason the theme for March is........ 'aztec spring'

Some aztec hints.......

aztec gold
aztec patterns/symbols

I hope you all enjoy this months page.

Aztec gold sparkles

T x

Proud, aunty Rachel

Well folks here is another page for my grandsons album. Its taking a while as he is now almost a year old come April. This photo is the first one of aunty rachel and SJ in the hospital lol

I saw the idea for the folded frame from a card I saw and adapted it for my page.

Enjoy

T x

My 40th birthday party

Well folks here it is the long awaited proof that I did have my 40th birthday party in February even though I turned 40 in December so now I guess I will have to admit to being 40 lol
The first photo is a group photo of everyone who turned up in fancy dress, not a bad turn out I thought. Can you guess who the guy in the front is ment to be? He did have a body warmer on (life preserver, a clue) lol

Thank you Val

Finally at last, late as usual Ive put my blog award in pride of place. Thank you Val



The three things I should/would never do are:

1. I should never put off til tomorrow what I could do today.
2. I would never ask anyone to do something I wouldnt do myself.
3. I would never do onto others that I would not have done onto myself.

Ps this was hard to think of 3 things I should/would never do.

It was also hard to decide who to pass this award onto, so many blogs who already had this award. So the three blogs Id like to give this award to are Foxy's crafts, Gills take nothing for granted In the hope it might inspire Gill to blog again and Claire

T x

I want to share a story today instead of a picture

My grandson was visiting me yesterday and I was getting a bit of a cuddle I pursed my lips to give him a kiss and my daughter said give granma a big kiss. So he opened his mouth as babies do and landed a smacker on my lips. Well, my friend who was there regretted not having a camera cause apparently my face was a picture it just lit up. I nearly cried my grandson just melted my heart completely in that moment. Now if I had caputured that moment the layout would have been "unconditional love" Oh how I wish I had that moment captured on camera. Oh well such is life. The moment is forever engraved in my heart and will stay with me for ever.

I thought Id share, hope you enjoyed my story today.

Sparkles

T x

my january page for my calendar challenge

Here it is folks, allbeit a little late. Well it wouldnt be me if it wasnt late lol

Ive kept it simple. Its 6 x 6 and I look forward to doing the February page now lol

The bird photo was taken in my garden last winter and thought it was the ideal photo for this project. I have placed it on card to make it hardier but Im not so sure it will be such a good idea with 12 pages required. I may just leave this first page as the front cover and have the december page the same as the back cover. Not sure what Im doing yet lol

calendar sparkles

T x

awww look at my santa baby :)

Hi folks, here is what Ive been working on that distracted me from finishing my january challenge, though I am pleased to say that even my jan challenge is finished and will be posted on my blog another day. This page was not the easiest of pages to get started on. I changed my mind soooo many times on what background to use and trying to get the photos into a decent position was hard. I eventually left it and slept on it then when I went back to it it all fell into place. I hope you like it not sure you get the best idea of the colours with this photo but it gives you the jist.

Take care T x

Craft challenge 2010 - February

Here it is folks the second month in our 2011 calendar and the first time posting on the 1st of the month.

The theme for February is obvious as Valentines day falls on 14th February but after some research Ive found that Valentines day actually comes from Roman times so rather than the usual 'love' theme Id give it a bit of a twist.

The theme for February is 'roman love' I will leave it up to you to decide what roman love is........ here are some handy hints

why not try some white and gold colouring in this page

romans were quite opulent so why not use lots of bling in this page

I hope you enjoy this months challenge

Roman sparkles

T x

Another Scrapbook page, woo hoo

Hi Folks, here we are again. Ive done another scrapbook page. The is the first picture of Arran as an Uncle with his sister.

I have tried to experiment a little with different looks and techniques Ive not done before. I had recently bought a stitch template and I used the star. I hope it looks ok. Ive not thought of a title yet but like many of my pages it will just suddenly come to me. the blue tag is for the journalling. The important thing is that I have done the page. I made myself a few promises lately and one of them is to do more crafting among other things. I am also hoping to do more reading. I enjoy reading and I dont allow myself enough time to read at night as I used to so the plan is to try to go to be early especially to read. It is very relaxing. My mum is going to teach me how to knit that should be fun. I have knitted before when my kids were babies and she helped me to knit stuff for my kids. But the difference was that she was always there to correct my mistakes lol I will of course take photos and let you see how I get on. When I finally find the time to do that too lol

Until next time take care

T x

My first ride out of 2010

Sorry its been a while since ive blogged, Ive just been soooo busy doing lots of stuff. In fact so much stuff I dont know where to begin lol Well, ok I do, I will begin with my ride out on Saturday 23rd Jan. Here are photos Id like to share with you of my first ride out on my motorbike in 2010. As you can see it was a bit of a wet day but it wasnt too bad. It was a lovely ride up to Callander though a little cold on the way home. The completely blue bike is my suzuki bandit, as you can see Im posing on it. The other bike is a suzuki GSXR and belongs to my friend I was with. I hope you enjoy having a laugh at my silly antics posing with my helmet on (I was having a seriously bad hair day lol) Oh and by the way I do have protective gear on under my rain coat, that was on to keep me dry should it rain. Take care all till next time. T x

A crafty sunday afternoon

Here we are again. Ive been crafting with a friend who wishes to remain anonymous due to the fact my friend is male and is afraid he is now turning gay. It took us all afternoon and it was such a good laugh. My friend is an engineer and so likes to have straight lines and likes to have shapes placed in a geometric fashion. So it was fun trying to show him it can still look good squint lol, though we did place most shapes with clean lines but placed the ribbon squint :) The photo is mine, and the page will be placed in last years a year in the life of me book. This is a photo of the celtic roundhouse I went to with some biker friends of mine in November and had a fantastic time.

Thanks for taking a peek take care, sparkles

T x

My latest creation of 2010

Here is my latest creating. I started this page with the papers first. I happened to be sitting at my desk doing my uni work and I looked up to see th lime green paper and I thought that would look great against a red background so I hunted out a red 12x12 and it kinda took off from there. The basic design Ive used many a time on cards and thought it might look nice on a larger scale with a few more embellishments. And I think I was right. My only regret was that I had intended on using that photo in my mini journal of December. But it is a good page so it will be a challenge to come up with something completely different for my journal page for the day that photo was taken. Well folks thats all from me for now. Its my january calendar page to start next. Hmmmmmmmm thinking cap is now on. Have to decide on an over all design first I think that might make it easier to. Catch ya all soon.

Warm winter sparkles to you all

T x

Im so proud of my son

I was thinking that rather than just concentrate on what Ive been up to I thought you would be interested to see what my son has been up to. Here is a birds house he made in wood work. I think its fantastic but then I would he is my son lol He normally does painting of very small figures and when I get a chance I will photograph a few of them and let you all see. So it would seem that creativity runs in the family. My eldest daughter is very heavily into crafting and she is very good at it too. My other daughter is not so much into crafting but Im sure she has creativity talent somewhere, she just hasn't discovered it yet. Or perhaps she just doesnt want to admit to it yet. I will of course keep you posted. So This post is dedicated to my son. :)

Sparkles to you all

T x

First craft project of 2010

After lots of moving this slideshow about and discovering how to put it in a post I would now like to share with you my first craft project of 2010. My aunt sent me some news paper cartoon clips of how its fabulous to be a forty something now that Ive turned 40 lol What a great sense of humour my Aunt Dot has., just as well I have too lol

I though that as they were worth keeping I would use my BIA from start to finish and actually bind this book and finish it off with some ribbon. I have a few more bits of ribbon to add but it was very late last night and thought Id just photograph what Id done so far and go to bed to sleep. For those of you who are aware of my uni work Im trying to get finished. Im almost there but last night I just needed to stop doing uni work and do something pleasant as I was getting myself well stressed out. This was the perfect distraction to finish off my project I started a couple of days ago.

So I hope you all enjoy

Snowy sparkles (well, we might as well make the most of this snow)

T x

Monthly craft challenge 2010

Well folks, I thought that as I enjoyed doing the 52 Q&A last year I would attempt to organise my own challenge. Last years challenge was weekly and I have to confess, with my busy life I found it difficult to keep up so this year I came up with the idea of doing a monthly challenge of a calendar for 2011. Each month you will design a page for the following years corresponding month. Normally the challenge will be set on the 1st of every month, however this months is a little late in getting posted due to the fact Ive only just thought of it.

Each page can be what ever shape and size you decide your calendar should be and can be bound however you choose. It can be either digital or papercraft (hope this is the correct term of phrase) in design. In fact its your calendar you choose the over all design. All I ask is that you include certain elements to each page each month.

Just to get us started off, a simple element of Snow should be included in January's page, given the amount of snow that is about this month I thought it was fitting. I do hope you enjoy this challenge and that you are able to complete your calendars Happy Crafting.

I will put a list of people who are joining in this challenge with a link to their blog if they have one just as soon as I figure out how to do it again lol But for the time being the list at the bottom of this post have agreed to do this challenge so far at least, please dont hesitate to contact me if you would like to join in so I can add your name.

Oh,......... Ive just thought, just to sweeten the pot a little I will have a competition to win a prize of stash (not decided what yet but I know crafters any stash will do lol) I will bring in a impartial judge to decide the winner(s) in January next year (December is too busy a month) Ooooh Im kinda excited now, my first big challenge set. Oh I do hope people join in and have as much fun participating as I did on someone elses challenge last year.

Me aka Artistic Crafter (DC)
Gina aka Mrs TSV (DC)
DoodlesDumpkins (DC)
Sue aka sue-bubbles (DC)
Maria aka maria(bubbles) (DC)
SusieJ
Green Haze (DC)

My first crafting project of 2010

Yeah I know Im suppose to be doing uni work but my head was spinning so I needed to take a break I will go back to it later. As part of my birthday my aunt sent me a couple of funny cartoon strips from an american paper she has cut out and saved especially for me as Im now 40 lol They are Its fabulous to be a forty something woman because.......... funnys. I thought so it is easier to keep them and not let them get damaged Id put them onto card pages and bling them up a bit and so make a mini comic book of sorts. Ive done 3 pages so far 3 more to go :) Im not sure if you can actually read the cartoons if you enlarge the image, if not you will just have to trust me that they are funny lol

Take care

T x

A new chapter 2010

Its 6 days into the new year already. Ive done quite a few things but not all have photos. The photos on this post are from a walk I took along the canal near to my home. The top image is of me and MacDuff walking along the canal path.

This photo is me walking actually on the forth and clyde canal, it was frozen solid.

This image was taken on the walk home from my daughters flat, where we stopped off for a little while. It was nice to see my daughter and grandson. I really dont stop in at her flat often enough. This is something I will try to rectify this year. The structure you can see just in the background behind those trees is Falkirk Wheel which joins the forth and clyde canal with the union canal.

What a lovely sunset, again this image was taken on the walk home. Though I have to say the camera has not really done it justice but it does give an idea of how lovely it was. So what else have I done I here you ask. Well, I have made plans to go and see James Toselands (moto GP rider) band crash in Glasgow in April. Ive made more plans to go on a camping trip to Skye in May and Ive been out to the pictures to see the film nine which is not as great as I thought it would be but it was good. Best of all though I actually made a bigger effort to not go out looking like a sack of tatties lol I had my hair all done and my make up on (Im not used to wearing make up as I rarely wear it) This is all part of my new year plans to have a better life. Im going out tonight to meet my biker friends in the pub, I will of course make another conscious effort and then back to the pictures to see sherlock holmes. Ive got to get back into the swing of using my unlimited card I have to get into the cineworld as many times as I like for a small monthly fee. Its great once you only have to go about twice in a month and that is the card paid for but if you go more that is then free so to speak :)

Enough ramblings for today I think I will come back soon and post again, another of my promises to do things I want to do :) This will be fun to look back on and see what Ive been up to and how Ive changed.

Take care T x