New at By LORi Designs ...

Lori is starting to sell her Puddle Jumper stamps as digital stamps from her By LORi Designs shop. These little people are slightly more grown up than the other Puddle Jumpers and will be known as PJs and can be found here

The pumpkin in the little truck made me lean towards orange and I used these papers by Crystal Wilkerson together with a lovely orange polka dot button and button twine from the Ribbon Girl

I have to go now - Haggis, having spent the majority of the weekend doing this

... has now decided he wants to play

It's A New Year ...

My favourite type of weather greeted me when I opened my curtains this morning - more snow! So of course we had to pull our welly boots on and go for a little mooch along the street. First though I went into the garden with my ruler to measure - 4 inches, that's a lot for where we live. Halfway down the street I realised that our garden is quite sheltered and in reality we had about 6 inches of snow. Even better :) Haggis found it more difficult though as he only has short legs and 6 inches of thick snow is quite an obstacle when you are only about a foot tall :lol:

Today I have posted a mini tutorial over at Sweet Shoppe Designs to create this card, check it out in the forums here

Cards and stuff ...

We had a fantastic Christmas and actually we're still having a great time as I'm off school for another week, it's my birthday tomorrow and then we have New Year's Eve to celebrate. Santa Claus was very kind to me this year and brought me oodles of lovely gifts and suprises and my fingers have been itching to start creating again so I made some thank you cards and a couple of birthday cards. It was refreshing to create a non Christmas, non winter card and begin to use some different colours.

Whilst I was hunting for the image for that card on my computer I found a few Christmas things that I hadn't shared. This card is still sitting on my desk because I really liked it and couldn't bring myself to give it to someone else!

I made a couple of these to give away as small gifts - Snowman Poop!

This was the party invitation I made for Haggis's birthday party last week, that sweet little doggie is a stamped image from Little Claire Designs.

Christmas Eve ...

All is calm here and we're ready for Santa to arrive :) I have my last two Christmas cards to share tonight. I used a Hanglar stamp to make a special sparkly card for Mam and Dad, a bit last minute but at least they got one this year :)

I have searched for weeks looking for my holly leaves punch and found it this morning! Just in time to use on at least one card :)

My last card of the season is a cute little reindeer with a sparkly nose and goggly eyes. I used the leftover punched holly leaf and red gemstones from my other card to embellish him.

Haggis is waiting for Santa Claus and spent the majority of the day snoozing on the back of the settee, wrapped up in a blanket watching the snow through the window. Merry Christmas x

Winter Mini Book ...

I loved those photographs that I took of Haggis playing in the snow and from when we went for a walk in the beautiful snowy countryside so decided to make them into a mini album. It's more of a tag book than an album as I've added bits and pieces into it and printed my photographs back to back to create phototags.

My album base is a set of 3 wooden houses from Craftshapes which I covered in a selection of papers from Zoe Pearn's Winter Wonderland kit

I added some of the elements from the kit - journalling block, tree and snowman - that I trimmed and covered the backs of to make tags and I completely covered them in ultrafine white glitter.

I added some KaiserScrapbook rubons that I had left over from another project to the journalling blocks before covering them in the glitter and they work brilliantly and look just like those chipboard elements you can buy to go with some makes of paper. I used my Cropodile to punch holes in all the tags as well as some wooden snowflakes that I painted silver and they got the glitter treatment too.

I turned my photographs into tags by printing them wallet sized (nine to a page), trimming them and glueing them together back to back before punching a hole and adding them into the book. I joined it all together with some ball chain that I pinched from some of my Maya Road chipboard albums and then I added lots more glitter to the edges of all my wooden shapes just in case there wasn't enough and also went a bit mad with my new purchases of the Zva Creative pearl and sparkly swirl and snowflake stickers :lol:

Happy Birthday Haggis!!

Today my baby is one year old. Happy Birthday Haggis :)

He is having a birthday party tomorrow when Jack and Gemma come to visit and today he got a new ball to play with

Snow ...

We have snow! Real, cold, proper white stuff. You'll have to bear with me whilst I get all excited as normally it snows in February, it's really wet and slushy and it's gone before it's started. But this is fantastic stuff. It meant I had to cancel my plans to visit my friend Donna last night as I there was no way I could get my car out of the street but we are having fun playing in it :)

Haggis is having a ball, he loves the snow and this is the first time he's been in snow to really play. Last year just after he came to live with us we had some snow but he was so small that he could walk across the top of it and his paws didn't sink in. I still can't believe he was that small :) Anyway, here he is for our family and friends to see.

First the photograph from when he was a baby - so tiny!

This year however it's completely different - hopefully this little video will work in here!

Haggis ...

This is the card that I made Dad for Fathers day, when I posted it then I said how it looked so much like my Haggis.

And this is the little chap in the garden last week. He's had an operation the week before and had to wear one of those silly looking lampshade collars which he hated but now he's all mended and loving being able to have his ears stick up in the air :) We love him very much and you can't stop cross with him for long when he gets himself in trouble - which he does on a minute by minute basis :lol:
I just wanted to post this for the family and friends who come to visit my blog

For my Mam and Dad ...

... who are on holiday in sunny Spain. Just a couple of photographs of your baby to keep you going until you come home. He's missing you lots and can't wait to come and collect you from the airport in 11 days

For everyone else who was hoping to see a card or two - all crafting is on hold until my puppy duty is over!!

Does the tooth fairy come to dogs?

My baby lost his first tooth today - well actually he lost two but we could only find one of them - so he's needed extra cuddles and snuggles and I just had to take his photograph when I found him all snuggled up on my bed.

Talking of babies I downloaded Kay Miller's latest kit during the week and I got to play with it today to make my card for the Double Dutch challenge. It's such a cute kit, just perfect for baby boy and baby girl stuff.

Stuff to share...

Oh it's been such a long time since my last blog post but we've been busy enjoying some sunny days, enjoying time spent playing with Haggis, enjoying seeing some friends, making cards and trying to fit all of that in amongst going to work and the usual housey things.

Haggis has been having as ball playing in our garden. We'd been keeping him on our large patio area and only taking him out in the garden on his lead because we live beside a very busy road and were scared he might squeeze under the fence. But Chris came and blocked up any gaps he could see and Dad did a great job of blocking off the back of the deck so he can't get stuck underneath so he can play freely now :)

His favourite 'game' is to climb up onto the top of the rockery and dig under the bushes so he comes out looking very muddy!

I have had some time to make cards and I really enjoyed making these cupcake cards for my cousin and my great aunt who both had birthdays this week and for the current Caardvarks challenge and then, because they looked so yummy I had to make some real cupcakes too :)

CPS #111

Today I made a card for the CPS sketch challenge blog.

(Sweet As by Fee Jardine at Sweet Shoppe Designs, Buttons - Autumn Leaves, Ribbon - Beresfords)


Yesterday was a public holiday for us in the UK and we took Haggis for his first visit to the seaside - most of the county seemed to be there too so we didn't stop long (we went home for fish and chips :) )

Haggis update ...

Just a little puppy update for our friends :)

Can you believe that just a few weeks this teeny tiny bundle of fluff could climb inside my slipper! And now he's a big boy, weighs 4.6 kg and he thinks he's some kind of greyhound :lol:

We're still working on the whole photograph thing!

Catching Up ...

Oh wow, the last couple of weeks have been really busy and mostly filled with Haggis. He's able to go out and about now so we've been showing him our little corner of the world and we've also enrolled him in Puppy School. Our first session was last week and we haven't been expelled yet - there's time yet mind you!!

The beginning of last week was taken up with a horrible visit to the Dentists for me and a day off work to recover from my ordeal :( We've also been decorating. My brother and his fiance have finally moved out of our house into their own which meant I could move out of the spare room and back into my own larger bedroom which they've had for the last year which in turn means that the spare room can be turned back into my craft room!! Hip Hip Hooray I can't wait to have all of my supplies in one room instead of being spread out in storage around the rest of the house and even the shed and greenhouse out in the garden! I've been to IKEA today for new storage stuff and shelves and tomorrow we're putting my work benches back in and moving my furniture in and then hopefully I can set about organising everything.

I have spent some time over the last few weeks making cards and playing with paper so I have stack of photographs to share :) But first here is my baby

I finally got around to using the hostess stamps from my Stampin' up collection and my promarkers - I love both and will definitley be buying more markers


I love this new digital kit by Melissa Bennett at Sweet Shoppe Designs, it's an Easter kit but I loved the colours and thought it would be good for a wedding card that we needed and then of course I couldn't resist the little bunny :)

I also used it to make some little Easter goodies for the kids in my class. I bought the test tubes from ebay before Christmas but never actually got round to using them but when I saw these teeny tiny little chocolate eggs at the supermarket I thought they would look so cute in the test tubes

I've had a few visits from the postman too, including these gorgeous stamps from Papertrey Ink and the heart punches that fit exactly which makes life very easy and some from Hero Arts too, the happy birthday greeting stamp is just the right length for my size of cards and I can see it being used loads!

I went to Hobbycraft through the week too and stocked up on some new dies for my bigshot as well as a stack of bling and brads because a girl just can't have enough of either and I love to have them in lots of colours. And just because I was in the mood for emptying my piggy bank I invested in a couple more sets of the nestabilities dies including these fab labels. I can see these becoming my next 'must have the whole collection' addiction :lol: