Kate Crane Art Journal Calendar - March

Well so far so good.  I have faithfully filled out my calendar every night. Im keeping it on my bedside table and am enjoying summing up my day in one little sentence.

To keep me ahead of the game I made by March pages at the crop the other week.   Its so theraputic just messing around with paint. Thanks to Sally for painting me the rather fab daffodil gracing my pages. Between the crop.and now I added some more "bottle top" circles and I scribbled Fine black pen round the white circley swirls.  Im happy with it now and all ready  to turn over my page from February and hope that March heralds the start of Spring.

Im booked in to Kates art journalling workshop in Middlesbrough in March so Im keeping my fingers crossed that my car actually emerges from the garage of doom before then as between One thing and another its been off the road since the end of November so that I can actually go. Its beginning  to feel like Im never getting it back although rumour has it it should be ready for collection later today!

Mini Canvas Board Swap

Well miracles will never cease! For once Ive finished a swap way before the deadline.

When Karen put this swap up on UKS I knew it would be fun.  the base for this is a 7 x 5 canvas board from The Works and we had a free choice of decorating as we wished then sending to Karen who would randomly swap these and send us One back.

Here is mine in my favourite turquoise colour scheme.  I Just love the Stampotique mermaid and her Octupet, stamped.images courtesy of Karen, but I need to get me one of these fab, freaky mermaids.  the words say embrace imperfection, very Apt  think.  This is now winging its way to Karen and I cant wait to see what I get back

Lucky Snapping - Lets Reflect February

I was looking forward to logging on to the Lucky Snapping in 2013 blog on Monday morning to see what Anne had in store for us on the second part of her Lets Reflect challenge.

Impossible was the topic for February and I was immediately stumped. This will take a lot of thinking was my first thought but suddenly today, something went ping in my head when I thought of the great weekend I had just spent with my scrapping buddies.

Its my best pal and UKS teamie Heather's 50th birthday this week and although I knew she didnt want a fuss for her birthday I knew she would just love to spend time scrapping with friends. The planning took a few months and at first it looked like a fairly impossible task. It was a feat of organisation which at times, looked like being near on impossible for a combination of reasons, including me having no car for the last couple of months, Jules breaking her leg and Lesley being involved in a horrendous crash with her gorgeous Grand-daughter which wrote her car off., but in the end we all got there, coming from all parts of the country with Dee coming from Donegal, Donna from Langbank, Me from East Kilbride, Julieann from Wellingborough and Jill from Leicester on a combination of planes, trains and automobiles!! and to meet up with the local girlies, Lesley and Julie who were putting us all up and co-ordinating the collections from airport and metro, and local teamie Wendy and Pam and Pauline also from the crop. In the end we did it and the look of shock, delight and every other emotion on her face when we all jumped out of cars in front of the hall on Friday night was just priceless and made all the months of planning and all the little white lies we had to tell worth it- some of us are never going to make it to heaven Im sure.

We had a great time cropping all weekend, being joined on the Saturday by our UKS teamie Wendy and also Pauline and Pam. We cropped all day, stopping only for a chinese takeaway in the evening and rounded off the weekend with another cropping session on Sunday followed by ten of us hitting the local carvery for Sunday dinner before we all had to disperse again. It was just great and Im sure Heather has now forgiven me for all the "porky pies" I had to tell to keep the secret.

Just goes to show that sometimes you can make the impossible happen.

I will leave you with a pic of some of us from the weekend - 8 out of 10 from our UKS team the Rik Rak Ravers.  Somehow or other whenever we arrange a meet up 8 is the maximum we get together but maybe just maybe the impossible will happen and we will get the full 10.

Inspiration Notebook

Heres a wee inspiration notebook I altered using one of the A5 Pukka Project books with moveable dividers.

The lovely Sian lent me her Kate Crane art journal DVDs 3 and 4 and I was mesmerised by them, I have passed them on now and am awaitig a borrow of DVDs one and two. 

The background for the cover of my notebook was copied more or less from One of Kates pages and I added some hearts cut from vintage text paper and.the wee words are.from a Tim Holtz chit chat Word pad.  Now I have a handy notebook to gather sketches,ayout ideas, things I want to have a go at etc. all in One place and portable enough to keep in my crop bag.  Im hoping it makes me more productive but we will need to wait and see lol.

Im off tonght down to Newcastle to my friend Heathers for a weekend of crafting, laughing, eating and drinking and boy after the week or so I have had Im so looking forward to it

Affirmation Postcard Swap

Better late than never! At the cows tail as usual me . I joined an affirmation postcard swap on UK Scrappers hosted by the lovely Stan!

We were to make three 6 x 4 postcards with a positive affirmation on.   As per the thread got out of hand with hilarious "alternative" affirmations being suggested.  So two groups were formed, one for each Type.  Ive joined both groups.  After a stressful weekend with DD in hospital I  eventually got these finishing and they will be winging their way to Sian tomorrow.  Im not very pleased with the way they turned out, more practise at the arty stuff is needed.

The positive ones read "My soul is beautiful" and the alternatives say "you dont Just have issues, you need a subscription!"

Now then a mini canvas board for another swap is next on the agenda.

Lucky Snapping, The View Challenge February

My, my for once I think I can say February has come around really quickly. Im not a fan of winter or January in particular but now that we are into February I feel its still light coming out of work at 5pm which gives me hope for the Spring to come.

I took this picture on 5 February on the way home from work. Although the poem Jen is using for this challenge says January brings the snow for once we had none in January but on 5 February we had a virtual whiteout in the morning. I didnt have a chance to get out of work to take my picture though so swung past the heritage park on my way home. Somewhat irritatingly all traces of snow had vanished so it didnt look like I was getting my snowy picture. However when I pulled into the car park and looked up at the sky it was turning beautiful shades of red and orange. So here is my February picture and considering I only had my phone with me to take it on I am mildly pleased with it.

Hoping that by next month there will be some dare I say "sunshine" in my picture. Well a girl can always dream