~ Happy Halloween! ~

We had 3 visitors tonite for trick or treats. Those kids look so adorable in their costumes. My boys were moaning they did nothing for Halloween... well, not my fault, their aunt was supposed to organise a Halloween party but she chickened out! Enough said!

Anyway, recently discovered some challenges at Oscraps, a digi forum I've been hanging out lately. So had a play and came up with these:

 A Creative Technique challenge based on Selena's gallery. I chose her Magic Circle LO and lifted her title. 

 A Colour challenge using either Halloween colours or Autumn colours. No guessing which one I chose!

 A Copycat challenge based on a template.

 A Camera Corner challenge asking for a collage of photos. Well, made use of my Project 365 app.

A Web Inspiration challenge based on a given picture. I chose to focus on the autumn aspect instead of the Halloween accessories.

 An O Stash challenge. 10 'ingredients' were given and you had to use 7 to create a LO. I used 9. Incidentally, this LO was also chosen in Gallery Standouts Blog. What an honour!

Can't believe we are at the end of October! Time is sure passing by quickly! TTFN!

~ On Display! ~

It's half term, very much awaited for and it's so nice to just chill out at home in PJs and not be rushing about. Can't say for the next few days as we have visitors.

Anyway, got some time for myself and created a few stuff...

This LO was based on a scraplift by Anna as seen here. As usual, added a bit more touches to it and played with blending modes.

I bought a Rock It kit from Anna Aspnes and was wondering how best to use it. I loved the images in that kit. Then, it struck me to use it as a tribute to singers. First on my list is Freddy Mercury. I happened to be listening to Queen and the page just came together! Image of Freddy Mercury was sourced from the net as well as the quote.

I'm in the process of creating another photobook but this time with photos. Can't say I'm having an easy time as it's a very tedious process and haven't found a way to do it manually. At the moment it's slotting in photos for me which I thoroughly dislike! Will persist and see how it goes... TTFN!

~ 365 Cards: Day 239 ~

Today's challenge is about creating a generic card. Here's my take:

Stamped images from Unity. 

TTFN! 

~ On Display! ~

A few LOs done for challenges in the past weeks...

This was done for a template and using 4-kits challenges over at Design House Digitals.

Another 4-kits challenge.

An art journaling piece. I'm enjoying the digi process of creating it.

TTFN!

~ Busy Weekend ~

So we decided last minute on Friday night to book a trip to Legoland. We searched and found a hotel for Sat night and 4 tickets to the theme park the next day for a bargain price. On Saturday, we headed to Windsor and decided to visit Windsor Castle. I thoroughly enjoyed it. We had a earphone guide to explain what was going on and it was so helpful. Definitely worth a visit if you haven't been there. We also managed to get our tickets upgraded to a year's visit too. Then it was off to Sheraton's hotel near Heathrow airport. Gosh, every 2 minutes, there was a plane coming down. Talk about non-stop noise! Luckily, once in the hotel room, it wasn't so bad. But I do feel for the houses in that area. In fact, while we were at Windsor, it was along the flight path and therefore, we could hear a plane heading towards Heathrow almost every 2 minutes! Even Windsor Castle wasn't spared from that!

Sunday saw us at Legoland. I have to admit, I got very bored and didn't enjoy it one bit! My boys didn't fancy many of the rides either. I think it's because they are now slightly older and some of the rides were more for kids below 8. We did go on some rides namely The Dragon, The Dragon Apprentice, The Viking etc. We did visit Alantis. We queued for a good 40 minutes before being told due to technical difficulties, the ride was canceled but they did give us a ticket for fast access to other rides or to return at a later time. We did return. The ride was sitting in a submarine and seeing sea creatures underwater. I think we were in it for less than a minute before we were out again. Frankly to queue for an hour to see something for a minute... I think I'm better off visiting the Sealife centre. The queue for that particular attraction was rather long most of the time so much so that there was even a booth selling refreshments in case people needed a snack. The highlight of the event was the fireworks which started at 6.30pm. We were lucky to be there for that particular weekend they were having the fireworks. It was spectacular.

Would I go back to Legoland... definitely not! I think my boys have outgrown that particular theme park. TTFN! 

PS... photos to come later...running out of space in my Macbook!

~ 365 Cards: Day 232 ! ~

Today's challenge is based on a colour scheme:

Here's the card:

Card was digitally created (it was printed out from digital images and assembled together). One of those weeks whereby I was so pressed for time!

TTFN!

~ On Display! ~

Had a glorious lie-in today. After picking up my boy from orchestra practice, we headed to the Chinese restaurant for tim sum, one of my fav meals! Then we had to stock up on rice and noodle at the Wing Yip.  The evening saw us watching Johnny English at the cinema. Man, he's a scream. He had me laughing from the beginning to the end. My boys had been begging us to bring them to see that movie. Definitely worth a watch! They are now waiting for a DVD release. 

Managed to squeeze in some time to create. Been getting a few digi kits and wanted to try them out:

This photo was snapped while my boys were posing for the Ikea catalogue! Using Anna Aspnes' ArtPlay Palette Autumnal 1&2 as well as Oscrap's Bold kit. 

This LO was created for the The Pumpkin Challenge at Oscraps. They are having a Halloween weekend at the moment. They combined with The Lily Pad and have come out with a Halloween collaborative kit. They are also having a blog hop whereby you can download some freebies along the way. The kits are lovely but I've got wayyy too many Halloween kits at the moment. They even have a special category on its own in iPhoto. This LO made use of mostly Anna Aspnes' ArtPlay Palette Wicked & Spirited. The photos were taken at Paris Disneyland in Oct 2008.

Got an art class tomorrow to conduct! Need to prepare my materials. TTFN!

~ On Display! ~

Had a really busy day today but managed to squeeze time to do a bit of art journaling. It's getting quite addictive. 

Ok, this is rather weird but hey, it's art journaling and I can chuck whatever I want onto my page!

Anyway, my reason is to show that Autumn signifies death... i.e. dropping of leaves, getting less daylight hours etc. Not my favourite season. Hence the skeletal image. Then I found this quote and somewhat added more meat onto the skeletal frame! My logic... TTFN!

~ On Display ~

I'm having fun with art journaling at the moment. And it's addictive. Here's another page I created using a new kit I bought from Maya de Groot.

I made use of elements from other designers, stuff that I couldn't put on LOs, they are perfect for art journaling! Designers include Jodie Lee, Audrey Neal, Katie Pertiet & Lynn Grieveson.

TTFN!

~ Art Journaling Anyone? ~

Well, while surfing around digiland, I came across a lot of art journaling pages, all digitally done. It was too good not to give it a try and I did! I managed to download a free Art Journaling kit by Maya de Groot (Oscraps) and give it my first try!

A mixture of Maya de Groot and Anna Aspnes kit in this page. I must say, it's quite fun doing it as it's art in its free form! You can basically chuck anything onto it!

Decided to do another based on Halloween: 

This page consisted of kits from Anna Aspnes (ArtPlay Spirited, Wicked & Monster Treats) and papers from Maya de Groot's BackPacker Set 4.

These pages are done in 5x7", just in case I wanted to print them out and store them. It's easy to find 5x7 albums in the supermarkets. I think I'm bitten by the art journaling bug. The best part... no inky fingers! TTFN!

~ 365 Cards: Day 225 ~

Today's challenge is 'Stencil It'. Basically use a punch and turn it into a stencil to use on the card. Here's mine: 

Used a butterfly punch and applied distressed inkpad on the negative part. Patterned paper by Basic Grey's Kioshi collection. 

TTFN!

~ On Display! ~

Had a busy weekend, all devoted to my boys' music activities. On Sunday, we attended one of their concerts. The wee one went off to a theme park with his Cubs group. Now need to download the photos taken at the concert to have a play!

Created this particular LO based on a scraplift challenge at Oscraps. My favourite designer Anna Aspnes set up her store there and well, I kinda followed her. She used to be at Designer Digitals. I absolutely adore her kits. Here's my LO although it looks nothing like the scraplifted LO (I did lift the circles though!)

Food takes a very special place in my heart especially chilli crabs! Ahhh, miss it dreadfully! Although there are more ways of cooking them now, I still prefer the traditional taste!

On the mundane side, sorted out my ever-increasing baskets of laundry! Did two loads of washing and ironed my mountain high of clothes! It had to be done. So now I can indulge in creating for the next few days! At least I don't feel guilty! Sorted out my car insurance too. Amazing what you can find online. My current insurance company wanted me to pay about £900.... they gotta be kidding. Anyway, a quick search using gocompare.com (who can forget that singing chap!!!) lead me to find a more reasonable amount of £300! So I'm a happy bunny! Car tax check! Car Insurance check! Next MOT in November! Yuks! TTFN!

~ Is It Or Is It Not! ~

My boys on the cover of Ikea catalogue. 

How cool is that! Well, I'm the only one owning that particular catalogue! We were there last week and as we walked into the store, a lady invited my boys to be photographed so they could be on the catalogue. They recently renovated the entrance and did a lot of improvement to the Wednesbury store. I guess they were celebrating the changes to the store. There was even a balloon chap about who made a sword balloon for my boys! Anyway, while she was shooting them, I quickly took a snapshot of them as well. 

While surfing the App store, I found this app called My Sketch (free app) which changes photo to sketches. There were a variety of sketches to choose from. Quite like this particular one!

On the creative front, my favourite designer came up with a musical kit! OMG! Exactly what I been longing for! So I got to work as soon as I downloaded it...

Anna Aspnes: ArtPlay Palette Concerto kit. 

Been waiting for the perfect kit to scrap these photos. 

TTFN!

~ Ohhh, It's Here! ~

My Summer Vacation Album!

I had to go to the PO to collect it. Typical! It has to come when I'm at work so I had to wait a good 24hrs before being able to collect it from the PO. Why 24hrs, b'cos it's mentioned on the slip! I did once try to go on the same day but at a later time and was gently pointed to the 24 hrs mentioned on the slip!!! Oh well!

Anyway, I'm so pleased with it! It looks great to see your creations in print! Here are some sample pages:

 The cover of the album

 First page. I decided to do a black border all round as opposed to having the LO fill the whole page. 

Other pages. With the black border, it divided the pages better. I did try with the LO filling the whole page but thought it looked rather messy.

I'm now hooked on these Photobooks. I've got another Groupon offer for another which I've yet to decide what to fill it with! TTFN!

~ On Display ~

A couple of LOs done for challenges...

 Using 4 kits from Design House Digital (DHD) to create this LO. (Name of school in the journaling has been wipe out)

A colour challenge at DHD using a free kit from Agnes Biro and kits from other designers. Found this cute photo of my youngest while looking at my photo album. The title 'Barmy' is a typical Brit slang. 

TTFN!

~ 365 Cards: Day 218 ~

Today's challenge is to create a 'Beautiful Bouquet' i.e. to resemble a bouquet on a card. Here's mine: 

Can I say I'm glad to have used those Prima flowers, you know the ones when they first came out.... I still got tons of them lying around!

TTFN!

~ On Display ~

Phew! All assignments done! Such a relief when you finally email off the last of the assignments that is due!

In between all those assignments, I've created a couple of LOs for challenges...

This LO was based on 4 Play challenge at Design House Digitial whereby every Monday, you can buy 3 kits for $1each and also get 1 kit free and you use those kits to create a LO. Have to say, it's so hard to scrap based on the kits given but a challenge is a challenge!

Another LO using 4 different kits to create. Again, so not my style but I've done it. I stuck to those four kits!

This month's objective is to clear out my scrap room as I need to turn it into a bedroom for my youngest son. Not giving up completely but it will now share a space in the lounge cum guest room cum study room! Anyone wants a 3 seater leather sofa, still in good condition? Need to get rid of that! TTFN!

~ Christmas Cards All Year 'Round ~

Here are some Christmas cards that I've done for the Christmas Card All Year 'Round site. This month's challenge is to have at least one of what are considered Halloween colours (orange, green, purple, black). Also included isa punch or die cut somewhere on the card eg. regular punches, Spellbinders dies, border punches, something that was purchased pre-done, etc! 

Here are my cards: 

Made use of Basic Grey papers and Unity stamps. 

TTFN!