Red Panda Love

Inspired by Shimelle's sketch I finally got around to scrapping these photos from a trip to Chester Zoo almost six months ago. I really love red pandas, they are one of my "must see" animals whenever I go to the zoo (along with otters, tapirs, monkeys...). This sketch was perfect for a multi photo layout and the digi template Shimelle is giving away made it really easy to do.

Well, it was easy apart from the stitching, that took ages. I had been planning to just zip round the edges with my machine but it has finally decided to give up the ghost. I have taken it to pieces and attempted to doctor it with some super duper super glue and am currently giving it 48 hours to set before I try it out. In the end I resorted to a Papermania stitch template which has been lurking amongst my tools (unused) for ages. I love the end result, especially as the thread is sparkly, but boy did it take a long time (and more patience than I thought I had!)

Check out the Scrap Like You Mean It section on UKS for loads more inspiration from Shimelle.

I am having a happy day today. My shift at work finished yesterday so I am at the start of four days off. My guy finishes work at 1 today and is coming round to see me. I just got a box of yumminess delivered from Sarah's Cards (AC Blue Skies if you're interested).

Wishing everyone a happy day too :)

Pants?

I seem to have a thing for pants at the moment...

I just had to have these cool pants from Topshop. The little monsters glow in the dark which makes me smile. I especially love the little guy with the tooth, I think he may be the inspiration for some halloween embroidery.

Also my guy brought me this book home from the museum shop the other day, he knows me so well :)

Beautiful Things for Free

I love, love , love this site. I can't remeber how I arrived at it while blog hopping but if it was your blog that pointed me in the right direction then thank you so much (xoxo)

"Feed Your Soul is a free art project. Each month artists are invited to participate and to contribute a print which is totally free and available for download"

I am in love with this print by Naoko Stoop

Which one do you love?

Finally....

a real, bona fide scrapbook layout at last. No idea where my mojo had slinked off to but seems it has decided to make a reappearance. Hurrah!

I now have 4 days off work and plan to make the most of them. Expect more layouts real soon and the mini books I have been working on thanks to the Summer Minibook event on UKS.

How sweet is my guy?

After a recent camping trip to the Lake District with my lovely boyfriend I made him a mini book with some of the photos we had taken. He was really please with it, which made me happy cos its the fiorst time I've given him anything like that. Well anyway, when he came round to see me on wednesday afternoon I was in a creating kind of a mood. I couldn't think what to do about this as it seemed rude to start crafting when he had come over just to spend time with me. I explained this to him and he said "you make something and I'll make something too". He told me that he wanted me to have a book full of photos of our holiday too. So first of all he set about wading through my stash of patterned papers to pick out his favourites. I have to say he has really good taste, he picked out lots of my favourite ones.

Choosing the papers took him about 2 hours which gave me plenty of crafting time. The only problem was he said that looking at all the patterns made him feel travel sick!

This Wednesday he is planning to choose the photos...

Fat book swap

I am in a fat book swap on uks at the moment and have just completed one page (out of 8). I have another almost complete, it just needs a little something more. A couple more are waiting for their backgrounds to dry before I can carry on with them. There are a couple which are ideas I am trying to work out how to realise and a couple for which I am still waiting and hoping for inspiration to strike.

This one was on the theme of "purple" and is a piece of aluminium foil embossed with the shape of a grungeboard swirl. I attatched it to some mount board then painted it with acrylic paint and some perfect pearls before sanding it to reveal the silver swirl. Sadly the photo does not show the pearlecent finish very well, in real life it has a lovely shimmer.

Back in the creative groove...

Or nearly there anyway!

I've had so little time to be creative over the past few weeks that what little I have done has been for swaps and things with definite deadlines.

I am hosting an eco themed circle journal which has just started but of course being my usual disorganised self, I forgot to take photos before I posted my journal off. I guess that means it will be a nice suprise when I get it back though as I'll have forgotton what it looks like in 10 months time. I am in the middle of a repurposing themed layout for the next book in the circle right now.

Another CJ I am in, I just did an entry on the theme "Words of Wisdom". I am really enjoying playing with my stamps at the moment and although this page is pretty simple I had fun with it.

Recently I sent off a set of stamped twinchies for a swap. I really enjoy the size of these so I think I'll be on the lookout for another swap.