Haslington Crop UKS Weekly Challenge

Once a month, I have a day (well, 6 hours) of 'me' time when I go to a local crop in Haslington. I have a fabulous time EVERY time - lots of laughing, lots of coffee, lots of cake, lots of fantastic company and sometimes a bit of scrapping! We decided that we would host a weekly challenge over on UK Scrappers and that week has arrived.

Our challenge consists of making a LO with a group of photos or photos of a group, to include the letter H in the title, to include a star (as our crop only started this year!) and to follow this sketch from Page Maps.


It took me a while to find suitable photos but eventually I remembered these photos of Kyle carefully & patiently standing all his Crazy Bones in lines - it was only when he did this that I realized just how many he had! Yikes!


Now due to having a distinct lack of time, this LO was only completed a few days ago - I got my February Studio Calico kit, sorted out which papers I was going to use and then... nothing! No time = no LO! But then one evening, I just threw everything at the page and hey presto! It was complete!!!

I hope you'll find the time to pop over to UKS and look at the gorgeous LOs my fellow croppers have done & maybe join in too :)

WOYWW 104 - Woohoo!!!

Happy Anniversary Julia!

Congratulations to Julia for keeping this fantastic idea blog idea going - for TWO whole years!!! (Not that I've been participating that long) - check out Julia's extremely tidy desk here!!!

In preparation for this special WOYWW, I had all good intentions to get my workdesk clean & tidy and not just the small scrapping space I usually have - the whole desk, the shelf above it and the units beneath that were slowly becoming hidden by the stash mountain! Hmmph!!! Its that thing called TIME again that always seems to be against me!!!

Anyhow, I think maybe a better title for this week would be...

WHERE IS MY WORKDESK WEDNESDAY???

See what I mean??? Yikes - thats bad - but to be fair, I'm at the sorting out stage so it doesn't always look like that! Honest!!! LOL

I'd also tidied our utility room at the weekend and unearthed the metal garden bench (a miniature bench!) that you can see below - see the dark green - thats it! (not that it looks like a garden bench but trust me, it is) - it's now sitting behind my Expression with my cartridges, notepads & ATG - the best part is that the cutting mat for the Cricut will slide nicely underneath it - so no more having to move stuff from behind the machine to be able to cut!!! Result!!!

I thought I'd try this little storage unit below for all those part-used bits & bobs from various kits - so far so good - I just need to decide where I'm going to put it on my desk now!
Another reason why I decided to have a sort out was my new addition - another Cropper Hopper storage unit (indicated by the arrow) - I already have one for all my cardstock - you can store sooooooo much in there!!! Now I'm left wondering whether to get another one for my Patterned Paper!Anyway, it looks like I'll be spending any free time on Thursday finishing off - I will be taking a photo - to remind me how organized I like my desk which will hopefully mean it'll stay that way!!! Yeah, right... whom I kidding!!!

But I need it to be sorted so I can pack on Friday evening for the monthly crop on Saturday I go to - the one day each month that I can claim 6 hours of pure crafting, chatting & laughing!!!

Crop & Retreat

Its been more than a month since I posted - eek! I've slapped my wrist! The time just flies by sometimes!

Sad to say I haven't done much in the way of crafting during May - my mojo went with my get up & go! I did manage most of the LOs for my Mickey (the kitten) album - 28 in total (yeah, okay maybe I did do some crafting!) and have now finished the other 9. Its been quite emotional, maybe thats why my mojo left me - who knows!

Anyway, I went to my monthly crop at Wrenbury on the first Saturday of June - had a good laugh, there was only 6 of us this time but still had a great time. I took far too many page kits to do but somehow managed a record of 4 LOs in the 6 hours I was there - probably helped by some sketches I had ready and the fact I'd forgotten to take anything to use for titles, so I've just finished those these weekend.
The second weekend of June was a 'mini retreat' with other UKS teamies - out in the beautiful Peak District, no phone signal or internet! My BFF Suzy was poorly so she couldn't come :( - but I had the lovely company of MJ, Sue & Katy. We went on a workshop at Artist Trading Post on the Saturday and spent the majority of the weekend scrapping, eating or chatting! We did manage some sleep, when the noisy neighbours below us (in a converted barn) finally shut up and went to sleep!!!

Now 27 weeks pregnant, only 13 to go! Still being sick in the mornings with the occasional day of nausea throughout but overall, everything is going well. Hormones are playing up with very itchy hands and legs but hey, nothing about this pregnancy has been straightforward so far!!!

We have a girls name sorted out but no boys names yet. We're not telling anyone what we've picked. One more week and I've got to have a glucose tolerance test and we've got another scan, so hopefully baby will be playing fair and let us know if we need to pick a boys name or not!

Where did the time go?

Blimey - shut my eyes for a few minutes and suddenly its February, well actually its almost March! Where did the last few weeks go ? In between feeling sick all day and very, very tired, I have managed to do some crafting - but not as much as I would have liked to! In the last week, I've spent 4 days in hospital with Hyperemesis due to the pregnancy - not the best place to spend my birthday!!!

So what have I managed to do in the last month and a bit???

An Advanced Metal Art Workshop over at Artist Trading Post, taught by the very talented Anneliese Bates. We created 2 mini canvas using the Ten Second Studio materials & tools. Freehand houses for one, stamped images & punches for the other. Colour was added using Ranger Alcohol Inks.



Then using a border mould, we created a bookmark. Once the metal work was finished, we wrapped it round some grungeboard and added some patterned paper on the reverse. Its such a therapeutic craft!

Even managed to create some layouts - 2 for challenges and 2 at a crop! With a mini book completed and a CJ for ScrapaGoGo, that has been as crafty as I've got! Hopefully once the sleepy and sickness stage have passed, I'll be back to my normal craftiness!