ATDML Alphabetical Challenge - Letter E

Another challenge is up on Created by ATDML with yours truly and we have moved on to the letter E. There are a set of prompts over on their blog which I illustrated with the layout below which not only met these criteria but also rose on this months #Calvinball2019 challenge.

I really love this grey/white striped background paper which I bought lots of as I think it adds just a little something more than using cardstock which inevitably ends up being my background for 90% of the pages I create. I kept the colours soft and beach line for this page bringing in the sandy colours and blue for the sea. Great to be using up my wooden pieces for the Calvinball challenge - most of which I have had for over 5 years, so at the moment when point stacking is permitted, I get 3 points for using these wooden stars!! 

I'm not competitive at all me(!!)  but wish I could stay home, read all morning and scrap all afternoon whilst the challenge is on - this going to work for a living might pay for all my craft supplies (among other life essentials lol!) but it reduces my crafty hours drastically!!

Calvinball 2019

So I stumbled across a scrapbooking challenge running throughout the month of March based on the Calvin & Hobbes Cartoon. The rules change every day and require you to incorporate certain items on your scrapbook pages for which you score points.  You also get points for sharing on social media platforms, commenting on fellow designers pages and more. It seemed a little complex to start with but I think I am getting the hang of it now and even made myself a spreadsheet to keep track of all the points you can earn!

Of course the main aim is to get you scrapbooking more and prompt using up your supplies which is all good fun. If you want to search for what people are creating for these challenges use the #calvinball2019

My first two pages are below where I made my own floral paper using stamps, then fussy cut them out and added enamel dots and buttons to the centres. I painted my black stripes on both pages (which was inspired by a page I saw but forgot to pin on Pinterest so I can't now give credit to the amazing designer - if you know please tell me!!) and also added flicks of black paint.

Both titles were cut from a pattern paper (Crate paper I think) and lots more stamping of leaves and flowers directly on to the backgrounds.

As I am taking part in this challenge, plus have two crafty days this month away with friends AND a retreat next month to design and prep for expect lots of crafty blog posts this month!

BookClub 8/52 - The Rumour

Next read from me is a Sunday Times best selling Thriller with a twist which several people on my Goodreads up have read and it kept coming up as a recommendation as well so here  are some of the reviews. I will let you know what I think

"In this chilling tale of paranoia, suspicion and accusation, Lesley Kara keeps you guessing until the final page." (Paula Hawkins, No.1 bestselling author of THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN and INTO THE WATER)

"A great debut with a slyly clever premise and a rollercoaster ride to the very last sentence." (Fiona Barton, bestselling author of THE WIDOW and THE CHILD)

12th Birthday party at Zorb Football

Well I think he had a good time at his joint party with one of his rugby friends. I spent most of the time laughing every time they tried to kick a football in these giant zorb balls!!

I have a great scrapbook page idea to make with my photos too featuring lots of circles!

ATDML Alphabetical Challenge D

We are on to our fourth challenge already in the Created by ATDML Alphabetical challenge and the letter D.

Plenty of options to inspire your next page.... and even I will be joining this one as we go along as I haven't had time just yet to illustrate it.

February ScrapMates pages

Bargain hunting in the January Hobbycraft sale afforded us a crop kit with lots of variety this month and we sold out of kits and even had the lovely Teresa visiting with us all the way from Wales.



We used the Hexagon Thickers alignment tool as a template for this second page where I still need to add my title but I could not find my alphabet stamps for love nor money in my craft room. Perhaps time for a tidy up again!!  I do get great pleasure out of using something designed for one purpose for another entirely and my Thickers alignment tools come in very hand as templates and don't take up much toom. Link here if you want to see what these are - available on Amazon, Hobbycraft and other online craft stores.

February ATDML Virtual Crop Day

Triangle madness from me this month where I created two pages and a card from Kaisercraft Golden Grove papers - nice and fresh and sunny to lift a chilly wintery day!

Plenty of texture on this page with lots of fringing, and whilst it took a while to create this page I am really pleased with the effect. As long as this page took the second page was much, much quicker, a simple combination of triangles, a mounted photo and title used this very heavily patterned paper range to create a simple more graphic look.

And there was enough left over for a quick card too.

Learning to Crochet

So I have started to learn to crochet thanks to my lovely friend Antonia who has the patience of a saint in teaching me! First job was to wind the wool into a ball which then made it easier to crochet with. I was the taught a chain stitch and a treble crochet stitch and whilst I am VERY slow and hold the hook like a lunatic I am sure it will get more familiar eventually!!

Watch this space for my super colourful scarf coming soon!!

Book Club 7/52 - Steel Brothers Saga

So technically this is books 7, 8 and 9 but as they were very quick reads ( i read all 3 of them in 8 days) I am just counting them as one. These books are of an adult nature and perfect if you just want to forget work stress and lose yourself in a simple but quite capitulating story line of Talon and his discovery into his dark and twisted past which he has tried to block out. Not the most comfortable of subject matter as the covers (quite 50 shades) would suggest but contains a child abduction and description of torture scenes so may not be for everyone.

The series continues with the other Steel Brothers stories which I might pick up later in the year.

Book Club 6/52 - Eleanor Oliphant

Another recommendation and as always I am behind the trend as I am aware many of my friends have already devoured this novel. I am about a third of the way though so far and find it so very well written and am chuckling away to myself one moment and holding my hand on my chest the next.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is the 2017 debut novel of Gail Honeyman, and the winner of the 2017 Costa Debut Novel Award. What a debut!

Here's the book blurb

Eleanor Oliphant has learned how to survive - but not how to live

She leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything.


One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself.

ATDML Alphabetical Challenge C

Another alphabet challenge over on Created by ATDML today and we are on to letter C. Hop over to the blog to see your options and join in the challenge.

Book Club 5/52 - change of book - The Cows

I have had to abandon reading the Robin Williams book as I didn't find it well written, just seemed more like as assortment of other peoples work pulled into one book and I just wasn't in to it.  So rather than be miserable for a week I moved on to this gem.

By Dawn O'Porter, the first book I have read by her this was utterly fabulous and I would urge all my friends and blog readers to try this.  Here is the book blurb...

Tara, Cam and Stella are very different women. Yet in a society that sets the agenda, there’s something about being a woman that ties invisible bonds between us.

When one extraordinary event rockets Tara to online infamy, their three worlds collide in ways they could never imagine – and they discover that one woman’s catastrophe might just be another’s inspiration.

Through friendship and conflict, difference and likeness, they’ll learn to find their own voices.

Because sometimes it’s OK not to follow the herd.

Filming 1 second every day

A couple of years ago my daughter Ellie filmed one second every day which ended up with a short 6 minute ish synopsis of her year and it was fabulous!  I meant to do it the year after but life was too manic with a new job and a commute on the cards to contend with at the start of the year and I didn't want to set myself up to fail.

But having chatted through with Ellie over the Christmas holidays just gone she was suggesting she had missed doing in for 2018 and would perhaps do another in 2019. I looked in the Android App store and found the App "1 second everyday" and downloaded it and committed to joining her (as I had some technology that would simplify the editing for me and could even set reminders on should I need to!)

I am too impatient to wait a whole year however to see how it looks so whilst I will do that at the end of 2019 - I want to do a month in review as well - so here is my January 2019 in just over 30 seconds....Enjoy! (and yes Sundays = rugby!)

FTLOPP February Sketch Challenge

I was thrilled to be contacted by one of the FTLOPP team over on Facebook and asked if I would guest design for them for one of the 2019 sketch challenges. I have always loved a sketch as a starting point for a layout - almost always going off at a tangent soon enough but they do help start those creative juices flowing.

I also love to see how one sketch gets interpreted so differently when approached by different people so as the illustrated of this one I am especially intrigued to see where people take it - especially the stitching part!!

So here is the sketch designed by the lovely Laura Rumble

And here is my interpretation using a January sale pack of Maggie Holmes vinyl stickers on my page hence the small amount of camera glare as they are shiny (but being vinyl they are flat enough to use on a page as you would paper or card so why not when at a bargain price!)

If you do join in do share your page over on FTLOPP - if you aren't a member yet and love a scrapbook challenge and a like-minded community ask to join.

Here are a few close ups which hopefully show the white stitching better

2019 Reading Challenge - Book Club 5/52

This week see's book 5 for January so far and I am pleased to say a couple of friends are joining in with this reading challenge, either via their Instagram accounts or the Goodreads App.

My choice for this week was something completely different after the intense crime thriller of last week (which I loved and strongly recommend Joy Ellis books if you have not yet read any). 

I haven't read too far in to the book but I'm not particularly impressed so far. Doesn't really flow and is a little repetitive so I am hoping it improve...

RED January - How did I do?

Well not quite the 100% achievement I was aiming for scuppered by a nasty migraine which knocked me out for several days early on, then a few other foot niggles prevented quite as many determined efforts as I had wished but broadly speaking I did OK I guess, and held myself publicly accountable via my Instagram account.

So managed 25 days out of the 31 for a minimum 30 min walk each day which is certainly better than if I'd not signed up to this challenge.

Also my red laces look kinda cool in my grey trainers!

Tax return done - not a happy bunny

Sad me - whoever said tax doesn't have to be taxing was wrong!! And I am an Accountant by profession I might add!. 

I just spent the next part of an hour online with HMRC challenging why my online tax return did not then equate to the sum I owed them...finally figured it out and all to do with prior year adjustments on the current years tax code that were not picked up by them last year???
How is this my fault?

Sadly I had to hand over the larger sum of money and not even a limited edition Lemon Drizzle Kit Kat could numb the pain.

Off to bang my head against a brick wall :(

Mind The Scrap Cybercrop

I do love a Mind the Scrap Cyber crop which the very lovely Emma runs every 3 or 4 months. This weekends one was Harry Potter themed, but that just acted as a starting point for the links to the challenges which could all be interpreted even if you had never see the films. 

Here are a few of the pages I created over the weekend from the 19 challenge prompts. 

This first one is probably one of my favourites from the weekend made using Vicki Boutin Art Crayons, a circle dotty mask and some stamps.

Close up of the inky bits

I've gotten a little obsessed with triangles on my pages lately too - this next one is one of three I made over the weekend featuring triangles - one of which is for next month's ATDML virtual crop day so I will share that then.

And one more so I don't bore you all to tears, this one was a scraplift of one Emma shared which I used to kickstart me when I sat down yesterday to play along.

2019 Reading Challenge - Book Club 4/52 - Their Lost Daughters

DI Rowan Jackman and DS Marie Evansof the Fenland police are stretched to the limit as they try to bring the perpetrators of a number of shocking crimes to justice.

Missing girls, found bodies and evidence of an illegal drinking club run by a shadowy group of men and then the  team come across a sinister former hospital called Windrush which seems to house many dark secrets.


Full of twists and turns, this is a crime thriller that will keep you turning the pages until the shocking ending.

I have read a couple of previous books by this author known for her crime thrillers and found them quite compelling and this one so far does not disappoint. Another book where I almost missed by stop on the train as I was too engrossed! Cannot even begin to fathom where the twist is coming from on this one where I am just under half way through!

ATDML January Gallery

One of my first layouts in 2019 as one of the ATDML design team, a position I have now held for over 9 years I am proud to say. This one was a relatively simple design with just three rectangles of pattern paper behind my matted 5x5 photo. Then I added several clocks of a variety of sizes from the Simple Stories paper, layering some with foam pads and  then added the fabulous Bramblefox "20Ninteen" perspective for my title. The red hearts are also from Bramblefox and the other small red elements from my stash. 

Once I had added all these elements I realised the layout needed something else so I drew around the rectangle of paper in black pen, added the black drawn border, trimmed the white card background a little and mounted on black. Still then not quite what I had in mind I added the gold flecks of ink and the gold stars and enamel dots to a couple of the clocks to liven up the page a little. Finally I was happy and given it was a layout about NYE it needed some sparkle.

2019 Reading Challenge - Book Club 3/52 Talk to Me

Book 3 this week was recommended by a friend as a lighthearted romance with a slight paranormal twist. I would describe that paranormal twist as mild if at all really (I fully expected vampires but alas there were none in sight!!) but this was indeed a lighthearted romance, albeit it had me close to tears twice which I think speaks volumes about the strength of story telling on behalf of the author.



Book Blurb says:
Getting what you want isn’t always what you need.

Austin is rebuilding his life after a car accident shattered his leg and his self-confidence. He wants nothing more than to gain his independence. Figuring out why he now hears voices would be an added bonus.

Laura can’t fathom losing yet another loved one. The death of her brother and business partner still has her reeling, although it seems he might not have completely given up the ghost.  When Laura plays the reluctant heroine to Austin’s caffeine emergency, they form a bond neither of them was looking for. 

Worth the read if you want a l

ATDML Alphabetical Challenge B

Time for the second Alphabetical Challenge over on the ATDML Blog today with the letter B which I illustrated with my January DT kit featuring (rather helpfully) Bo Bunny Winter Wishes papers so there was my first B ticked off.

I also focused on the colour Blue and there are Banners under the photo which is Black (&White).  How will you rise to the challenge to scrap using the letter B prompts?

2019 Reading Challenge - Book Club 2/52 - Sweet Little Lies

Week 2 of my 52 week book reading challenge and this one had been on my Kindle for a while and I hadn't got around to reading it last year with other books grabbing my attention more. How I wish now I had read it earlier - what a gem of a book.

SWEET LITTLE LIES follows a policewoman in London whose personal life collides with her work in a dark and dangerous way. Cat Kinsella is called to the scene of a crime: the body of a young woman has been found not far from the pub that her estranged father still runs. This book had me turning pages and frequently experiencing the "just one more chapter then I'll sleep" - sign of a good book. I hoped the book would turn one way, and then it turned another - really, really good read.

RED Week 1

Successfully completed week 1 of the Run Every Day (RED) challenge albeit with walking and not running but I am pleased with the progress I have been making and whilst my foot injury is making itself VERY known after each walk it's worth it for the feel good factor afterwards. On to week 2 we go :)

New 2019 Reading Challenge - Book Club 1/52

After a successful Book Club challenge last year (started by a friend of mine to read 52 books over the course of the year) I thought I would strive to achieve this again in 2019.

So I have started the year with a nice easy romance by Nicole Snow who I read a couple of books by in 2018. I am just over half way through this and am enjoying it so far. 



Whilst it is a romance book, with a couple of naughty scenes in it, the story line is strong enough that it isn't a "roll your eyes to the back of your head and sigh REALLY" romance book - at least I don't think so. I mean you do kind of know what is going to evolve between the main characters, that bit isn't rocket science, but still worth a read (and free on Kindle Unlimited too).

Here is the book blurb from a fellow reader which I think sums it up better than described on Goodreads.

Olivia (Liv) witnesses a hit right in front of her at her sisters house and runs for her life. Her father places her in the care of Enguard security (more specifically Riker). Riker has a 12 year old daughter Emily who he'd protect with his last breath, family is everything to him. So Liv is placed in his care as his "fiancée". Trying to integrate a woman into his household while protecting her is a major challenge.

ATDML new Alphabetical Challenge for 2019

A new series of scrapbooking challenges is starting over at Created by ATDML blog today where twice a month a letter from the alphabet will be used to prompt a layout. Go take a look and see what they have in store for the letter A which I illustrated in the layout below using predominantly Prima papers and elements from their Flirty Fleur Collection  I used ACETATE to apply watered down distress ink for the painty background , AQUA blue as my main colour  and then a Thickers ALPHABET for my title. 

This layout also fit the bill for one of the For The Love of Pretty Paper (FTLOPP) Winter Olympic challenges they are running over on Facebook. This challenge was  to include a technique that takes time and the inky background plus fussy cutting on this one certainly counted.  I do love a scrapbooking challenge and making one page which rises to more than one challenge makes me a happy girl! I have a few more pages to do to complete the latest FTLOPP series but managed four more today on my last day off before returning to work tomorrow. So that's me signing off for the night. God Bless x

RED January 2019 - Goal for the month

I have signed up with MIND to RED January  which standard for Run Every Day. I can't run at the moment due to an injury but I will be walking every day, where I hope to do at least 30 active minutes a day, only resting a day if my foot injury really plays up.

Made a good start today with a leisurely hour long stroll with hubby and the boys over the local park which certainly blew away a few cobwebs and was a great start to the year and this challenge.