2013 - A few of my favourite things

As it's nearly the end of 2013 I thought I would have a little look back at my favourite things of this year....

My favourite scrapbook page

This was inspired by a tutorial video from Creative Jumpstart 2013. I am very excited that Creative Jumpstart 2014 will be starting tomorrow. I love the comic book look of this page

A Breakfast fit for a superhero

 My favourite new craft

I have had fun starting to discover felting this year (and I only managed to stab myself in the finger twice! ). Father Christmas even bought me a lovely new needle felting brush mat, so I won't have to felt into a sponge and peel it off afterwards anymore. I think Father Christmas may have had advice from my Mum.

A celebration postcard

My favourite photo

I took this photo while we were on holiday in Paris and I managed to get all three kids looking at the camera and smiling - hurray! How did we achieve this? My other half was standing behind me and licking my head to make them laugh!

Can you see a resemblance...

My favourite song

My favourite song this year is "Little talks" by "Of Monsters and Men". I love all the different instruments used in this and I think it is definitely a "jangly" song ( This word has been used to describe other music I like).

My favourite kids craft

This was the most fun. Paper plates + paint+ salad spinner = spin paintings!

Spin painting

My favourite book

A perfect blend of modern policing with a large dose of fantasy.

Rivers of London

 My favourite quilt

A pirate quilt for a pirate themed nursery, with my own pattern for the paper pieced boats.

A pirate quilt

 My favourite film

Star Trek:Into Darkness - A fantastic sci-fi film with the added bonus of Mr Benedict Cumberbatch!

And a New Year's Resolution to finish the year... I will try to finish all the online craft workshops I am halfway through!

Wednesday Love : Spring love

I am working on revamping my blog and one of the first things I am going to do is to start a new series - "Wednesday Love". It will be a little bit of midweek happiness and this week I am starting with Spring Love.

Hurray, Spring has finally arrived! My favourite ornamental cherry is covered with little green leaved and tiny red buds, which promises the beautiful pink blossom yet to come.

The magnolia has finally started to bloom - about a month late. And look behind the flowers - blue sky!!

Buzzy things have started to appear...

The first time the grass has been cut this year, transforming the garden into looking so tidy (which I think helps the house to look tidier too!)

Do you have some Wednesday Love you could post on your blog?

2011 - a crafting year in review

I was having a little look around on blogs and I saw a great review of the year on the Attic 24 blog and so I thought I'd have a go as well. It's been a very interesting exercise.

I can see that...

- January and September aren't great months for crafting, usually as I am trying to get the house back on track after school holidays.

- I'm happy that my August photos aren't about crafting but about getting out and about, building sandcastles, watching balloons and finding gorillas.

- I really enjoyed my scrapbooking from June onwards as the things I had learnt in online classes with Donna Downey, Julie Fei-fan Balzer, Christy Tomlinson and Emily Falconbridge all started to come together on my pages.

- It looks like I did little crafting in November or December, but actually I was crafting non stop making things for a craft fair and to sell to raise funds at church. My conclusion is that I can't manufacture items for sale like that at the moment as I don't have enough time.

- My kids are very photogenic!

You may notice a little robin just above - there's more on him to come soon.

Wishing you all a very happy crafty 2012 xx

Painting with light

I'm always looking for ways to try a little creative experiment and sitting up late outside the tent with my husband and six-year old daughter seemed like the perfect opportunity to have a go at some torch pictures. These were inspired by posts I'd seen over on the Shutter Sisters blog here and here.

After a couple of tries and fiddling with the shutter speed on the camera we started to get some clear images.

Here's my go at "love" although it's a bit blurry.

Who me?

I've been taking part in Cheryl Johnson's portrait class and picking up loads of great tips and techniques for better photos. Our last module was really fun with lots of ideas for characterful portraits. Here was my favourite shot of the ginger one. She was a very willing model, particularly when I got out the face paints. I'm looking forward to scrapbooking this picture - oh, the stories I could tell!

On a side note you may spot my name in the current issue of the Scrapbook Magazine in the Four Ways challenge. I got to play with a "Quirky Kit" from Crafty Templates. It was a fabulous kit and I was really pleased with my page. Unfortunately I was so excited about it I forgot to photograph a sneaky peek before I put it in the post - oops! I guess you'll just have to buy the magazine to see it!

Looking through a lens

I've been continuing with my attempts to improve my photography and I've been following the Picture Inspiration challenges each week. This week's theme was "Exploration" and so I added a picture I took in our garden a little while ago which I found exploring in the undergrowth.( Have you ever wondered why when plants get overgrown they become undergrowth - how does that work? ) This flower made such a perfect heart.

Last week's them was "Moody". This graffiti has been sprayed onto the shutters of our local fashion store. I've been meaning to photograph it for ages but it can only be seen when the shop is closed so it's been tricky to catch. The shop was being opened just as I arrived and the lady kindly left this shutter until last for me.

One of the areas I wanted more teaching on was portrait photography and so I've signed up for Cheryl Johnson's "Beautiful People" class. I used to go to Cheryl's scrapbooking classes many moons ago when I went to scrapbook weekends and I remembered how much I enjoyed her teaching style. I've heard lots of good thing about her photography classes and so I signed up for this - despite promising myself I wouldn't sign up for more classes for a while - oh well.

We had to start the class taking a self portrait. Here I am...

Looking up, looking down

Over at Picture Inspiration we've been looking up and looking up and looking down as subjects for our photos. A couple of weeks ago Tracey suggested we chose a subject, took photos looking up and down and put them together to make a diptych. I wasn't particularly excited about that initial challenge but then I looked at the class gallery. There are some fantastic pairs of photos on there and it really made me think. This is such a great technique for when I'm trying to capture a subject but can't decide which angle is best. Maybe the answer is take two different angles and stick them together.

My photo is of some elderflowers in our garden and I really like the looking up picture with the sun flare.

Picture Inspiration

Here's an update on some photos from the Picture Inspiration class I'm taking part in at Big Picture. We are given weekly assignments and here's the results from the past three weeks.

The way this class works is great as I can mange one photo a week quite easily and it challenges me to take different photos. The photos I'm taking are proving to be a real inspiration for my other crafting whether it's scrapbooking or painting or just sparking off my new ideas entirely.

The photo above was for the assignment about taking a landscape photo with detail in the distance. Thanks to Picnik it has a lovely straight horizon, rather than one suitable for water skiing (as my Dad's jokes about sloping sea pictures)

The photo below was for the assignment about finding a mystery (in nature). I really love all the textures inside this poppy. You can see the black dots on the petals too as these are the "ladybird poppies" we grow in our garden.

This week's assignment was to shoot from the ground up. I got muddy too taking this picture of my daughter making mud pies!

A photo challenge

Last weekend we had a wonderful time at a beautiful wedding. The wedding was in a stunning medieval church but as the vicar pointed out it wasn't the best environment for photos. Shimelle ran an online event for International Scrapbooking day last weekend and one of her challenges was to edit a photo. I'm going to be working an a wedding mini book for the bride and groom and so it's a great opportunity to start on my photo adjustments.

Here's the new version, adjusted on Picnik. I particularly like their rotate tool which makes it so easy to correct all my wonky horizons (which my other half likes to point out!)

My Day in Photos

See more days here

Happy Easter

Happy Easter! We've had a beautiful sunny day here and another great opportunity for taking pictures! We joined friends and family at church this morning and had great fun with an Easter egg hunt this afternoon.

I guess there's just one question left - is there such a thing as too much chocolate?

London reflections

I've spent the past couple of days in London having a crafty adventure (more on that later) but it was the perfect opportunity to catch up on this weeks Picture Inspiration assignment. We had to take a photo of a reflected image. This is a new technique for me and it's a great challenge to get an original shot. I saw this phone box reflected in a window that had horizontal blinds. I've played with the image on Picnik to get a more graphic image and then flipped it over so that the writing on the box was the right way round.

A quilt motif

A couple of weeks ago our photography prompt on Picture Inspiration was to take a photo with the title "Motif". It took me ages to think of anything and I was about to give up when I saw the light shining through my patchwork blind. I thought my motif could be squares and so I took this photo.

I haven't taken a good picture of this quilt before and it looks particularly good when the light shines through as it resembles stained glass. This patchwork took my mum and I a year and a half of Sunday afternoons about 12 years ago. The pattern comes from Kaffe Fassett's book "Patchwork" (It's the pattern on the front cover). I went to a talk by the man himself a few years ago and asked him to sign the book for my mum. I told him how long we'd taken to make the blind and he said he wasn't surprised as it was a complicated pattern and that's why they had made it into a small blind rather than a larger piece! Our blind is twice the size of his one!

Stacking up

This week's homework on Picture Inspiration was to take a picture with the theme of stacking. I've been dreaming of all the beautiful china cups I could stack if I had some, but then I had a wander in the garden on this beautiful spring day and looked at the drawing the girls have been doing with the chalks on the patio. This is a regular sunshiney activity in our house and I've never really been able to capture it well in a photo, so I tried collecting up the chalks and stacking them up. I'm really pleased with how this photo turned out (after a little play on Picnik).

Rhythm of the sea

This week's challenge from Picture Inspiration is all about rhythm. I took this picture last night to capture the repeating arches of the pier, but when I got there the sound of the sea added to the rhythm. It was a very peaceful break in a busy day.