Biscuits Quilts

Well, they are not just Biscuit’s quilt’s, they belong to all the cats but you try telling Biscuit that!

I thought it was time I got out  the sewing machine and made up the kitty quilts I had planned months ago(OK, over a year ago *sigh*). I’m not a machinist! I’m scared of the sewing machine, I admit it. I always think I am going to stitch through my fingers . . .lol   or  worse. My machine is the basic model from Dunelm (cost about £65) its does what it says on the tin so to speak. I only bought it to stitch onto my scrapbook layouts so it doesn’t need to be any fancy.

I was actually quite pleased with myself as over the course of the afternoon I managed to make 6 quilts for the kitty’s and two larger quilts for the Shih Tzu’s bunk bed. 

I snapped these photo’s with my phone so they are a little fuzzy but I couldn’t resist capturing Biscuit's funny behaviour on camera. She was the only kitty in the house (all the others were in the kitty room / cat enclosure for safety – I had the machine out after all!) and boy did she think these quilt’s were all her’s. She watched my every move and no sooner than a quilt hit the floor she was on it. By the time I had finished she was bundled up with them all. Just look her little paw over the white quilt – ‘they are mine, all mine’

I survived a session with the sewing machine and lived to tell the tale!  Who knows, I may have to play with it some more.

It’s A Blog Hop!!

Welcome to our blog hop!  If you have arrived directly here and were not aware of the blog hop, jump back to the start at Suzy’s Blog - Sea Glass & Sand and join in the fun. There are prizes!!

If you have arrived from the lovely Julie’s blog – Notes on Paper  then you are on track!

Suzy has organised this blog hop to mark the launch of her new jazzy blog. I’ve been helping her re-design the look of her blog to better reflect her and her favourite things and to incorporate her fab art journaling work. What do you think to her new look ?  Fab isn’t it, if I say so myself. I’m no expert by any stretch of the imagination but I can find my way around PSE and the geek in me loves to dabble in a little bit of HTML / CSS.

So onto my project for the blog hop. I wanted to share this project with you, it’s something that I have been wanting to do for a while and have thought about loads of different ways / formats for doing it but never really settled on one final idea until I came across a second hand photo album in a local charity shop. The minute I saw it I had one of those ‘light bulb’ moments. I snapped it up at a bargain price of 20p!

It obviously once belonged to a set of 3 (or maybe more) judging by the ‘three’ printed on the cover, but that was not a problem as the cover was going to be completely hidden.

Here are the materials I started off with: the second hand photo album and various papers from Echo Park’s The Apothecary Collection. Yes, they are Halloween papers but my album is not Halloween themed. The colours on these papers just happen to fit my theme perfectly . . . . all will become clear.

Firstly I covered the back and front covers with some of the paper which I inked with Walnut Stain & Spiced Marmalade Distress Inks to give it a more aged feel. I covered the spine with a coordinating piece again inked with the Distress Inks. To add interest to the spine and to give the illusion that my internal pages were ‘tied in’ I used some twine and wrapped it around the album and tied off in a knot.

I added some more layers of patterned paper with some pearls and a decorative pin. The metal trim corners add texture and the paw print stamp in the centre of the heart completes the look. Any idea’s on the theme of the album yet? (If your a regular visitor to my blog I'm sure you will have guessed already . . lol)

And here is the finished altered album. The heart shape with the paw print tells you the title of the album without using words.

Paw Prints On My Heart

So why the Halloween papers ? Well the browns, oranges and blacks just happen to be the perfect colours to coordinate with all of our cats and dogs.  Im using this album to record each and every one of the furry family members who share our home. Everyone has a double page with a photo on the left and a record card on the right where I have recorded a little bit of information such as name, D.O.B. etc and a few details about their individual characters. Here is Murphy’s entry:

 

And just a few of the other furry family members:

BeeGee, Baily, Lincoln and Sookie

Now for those of you who don’t know me I’m sure your wondering how many more furry members can there be in that book ?  Well, at present the book holds 25 entries and yes there are spare pages in there  - just in case!! Our home is somewhat of a kitty and canine haven / sanctuary. We have 16 rescued cats and kittens and 9 dogs (5 chocolate labs, 3 Shih Tzu’s and a very senior Yorkie). I do plan on doing another album to hold the photo’s and memories of those who have crossed The Rainbow Bridge so that they are forever recorded too.

I hope you’ve enjoyed watching the transformation of an old unwanted photo album . . .  it’s amazing what a bit of pretty paper can do. The album will now sit with pride of place on my mini album display shelf for all to see. Who knows, I may even carry it around in my handbag to show off to people when they ask about my furry babies.

Before you head off on to the next stop on the hop please leave a comment to let me know you stopped by. I will chose at random one lucky reader to receive a prize from me. (entries to the draw will close at midnight on Tuesday 21st May)

Your next stop is Claire’s Blog  – The Crafty Alchemist

Enjoy!!

Time Fly's When Your having Fun . . .

…… and sometimes when your not! Its hard to believe we are already half way through November . . .  2013 will be here before you know it! 

I’ve been VERY busy over the past few weeks hence the lack of blogging. Unfortunately it has not been busy crafting. I’ve been busy with the furry family members, visiting my sister in London and generally catching up on those jobs that got left while I was away enjoying myself on those back to back scrapping retreats last month.

The trip to London to visit my sister was lovely and as I took Amy along with me we did a bit of shopping in the West End, took in some of the sights and Amy had her first ride ever on a London Bus!

We had a great afternoon in Green Park taking some photo’s. The autumn colours of the trees and all the fallen leaves make for a really pretty scene. I had Amy throwing the leaves up in the air so I could take a sequence of shots . . .  thankfully my daughter loves the limelight and the camera. This was the result after a lot of laughs . . .

These photo’s are just crying out to be featured on a scrapbook page and they will, at some point.

Now for a quick update on some furry family news:

Not long after we got home from our trip I received a phone call from a lady looking for a kitten. She had lost her cat to cancer recently and just couldn’t be without one (I know that feeling) and so this was the beginning of something that I never thought would ever happen. I rehomed a kitten. Everyone who knows me was quite shocked that I actually managed to do it!  The lady was lovely and little Eli has gone to a wonderful home so that made it easier but it was still hard for me to do. I let these little furry characters into my heart and although I know I really cant keep them all it is hard for me to let them go. Mo and Ethan are still here although there was a family interested in them at one point but then they got a kitten from somewhere else. If a home comes up quickly for these two little guys then I think I will be able to let them go but the longer they are here the less chance there is that I will be able to part with them. Their little characters are really starting to show through and Ethan in particular is a very affectionate boy liking lots of cuddles. Time will tell.

We’ve also been busy helping out with a foster dog named Marley. He came to us as the alternative was the local pound. He is a wonderful dog and very sociable considering how he has been kept the past year. The good news for Marley is that we have a possible forever home for him. He has met with the family and their dog and everyone got on great. He is going for a doggie sleepover this weekend to see how that works out so fingers crossed he behaves himself and we have a happy ending.

So, anyway, back to the crafting side of things, I did manage to do just a little bit of crafting over the past couple of days. The House Challenge on UKS this month was to create a LO using a blue, orange and cream colour scheme. Here is my entry:

Been There, Done That, Got the T-shirt!

When I saw the colours for the challenge I knew immediately the photo I was going to use. Its an old one of me and Amy from 2006 taken in our hotel room in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. We were all dressed up in our Kenny Chesney t-shirts ready to go to the concert and what a great concert it was!  We had a total blast and sung our hearts out all night long. It was one of those moments you wish you could love over and over again, the atmosphere was amazing.

I have sorted through my ‘in progress’ projects and still have tons to do so here’s hoping I manage to get a bit more crafting time in over the next couple of weeks.

Introducing . . . . .

Eli, Mo and Ethan!

Remember the orphaned kittens I was telling you about in my last post ?  Well, these are the furbabies in question. Eli and Mo are the black kittens and the cute little tabby is Ethan. They have settled in really well and after only 2 weeks you would never believe they were feral, all of them love a cuddle and play. Ethan would be the most shy of the boys and Mo is definitely the most mischievous !  They will be here for a fair while yet so no doubt they will be making a few more appearances on my blog.

3 In A Bed

Recession has hit us here in Templemoyle the same as it has everywhere and it became even more apparent the minute I saw this   . . . . .

The budget is stretched more and more each month but rest assured everyone here does have his/her own bed . . lol    I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw Mia Pinkerton had climbed up on top of mum Coco-Bean and brother Bruno . . .  definitely a photo that will be appearing on a LO soon.

Miss Sookie Schnookums

Here she is the latest addition to our furry family an 8 week old Shih Tzu baby  – Miss Sookie Schnookums . She has made herself very much at home loving to snuggle and play with the cats as well as the dogs! 





This morning Sookie and Miley Moonbeam had a game of pingpong kitty/puppy style . . .   it went on for ages but my battery died so I only got a clip . . . they are so cute playing together!

Something tells me this blog and my scrapbook layouts could be featuring quite a lot of Miss Sookie over the next few days and weeks!

Its My Prerogative!

OK, its only been a week since my blog make-over but . . . . .  I’m changing it again!  Just because I can. Its my prerogative.

I  loved the template that I downloaded from Nymphont  but after using it for a week I realised it looked very pretty but actually wasn’t very good on the eyes when it came to reading the posts. I am suffering from a deterioration in eye sight (I really should have another eye test done) and was struggling to see the type clearly against the pastel background and not being an expert in HTML coding I decided to ditch the template altogether and start over. So here I am with another new look - clean, crisp and clear.

I need to design a blog header to match my new look but other than that I think Im happy with this style. Well, for now anyway!

I’ve Had A Make-Over

Well  not me personally!  To be more specific . . . my blog has had a make over. What do you think to the new look ?

I’ve had a few different templates downloaded for a while with the view of changing things a bit but kept putting it off because last time I did a blog make over it was chaos!  I am not in the least bit techy minded and all this HTML code business really fries my brain. Thankfully, the wonderful world wide web allows me access to the minds of those in the know who happily share and guide us so that we too can have pretty looking blogs. So after a bit of faffing on my part and a few copy and paste errors . . . lol   I finally have my new look.

~ Dee ~

Melted Chocolate . . .

Melted Chocolate, a photo by DeeMorrison0611 on Flickr.

While we are all enjoying this beautifully warm sunny weather the labs are not so keen. This was taken this morning at 10am and this is how they will stay until this evening when the temperature drops only moving around the yard to follow the shadow spots.

The Places I Love Mini Album

I am a very proud member of The Rik Rak Ravers, my team on UK Scrappers. We support each other, inspire each other and most of all make each other laugh. 

Within the team we have had swaps and challenges which are great fun and keep the team building an on-going process. So far we’ve had a ‘chinese whisper’ layout challenge, a recipe tag swap, an embellishment swap and a handmade flower swap so when it came up for discussion as to what we should do next I jumped in with the idea of a handmade Mini Album swap (everyone knows I love a mini! x) but unfortunately not all the teamies were as inspired by this as I was as some of them are not really ‘into’ the whole mini album thing and said they struggled to know where to start with making one.  A suggestion was then made that I should make a mini album for them all to copy and we would all keep our own albums . . . .  hence this class was born.

This is the first time I have ever done a class for other people to follow but I really enjoyed doing it. One of my teamies asked for a YouTube tutorial . . . lol   there was no way that was going to happen – I am not a performer and would get totally tongue tied.  I included lots of pictures though as I think visual instructions are easier to follow.

I used an old pizza box to make the cover for this album  (yes the kind we all have our lovely scrapbooking stash delivered in!) – I told you I love to recycle.

So here’s my finished album – the link to the pdf file for the instructions is at the bottom of this post if you fancy having a go.

THE PLACES I LOVE

Just a few of the inside pages featuring my favourite places

You can download the pdf file for the instructions on how I made this by clicking the link below. If you do make one please link back to this post, I would love to see it.

Thanks for stopping by!
xx

Packing Up and Moving Out!

Well only temporarily anyway!  My craft room is packed up into totes and boxes ready for the off first thing Thursday for my back to back scrapping weekends. My first stop is Leeds where I am attending the Scrapstars retreat, my first ever ‘official’ retreat (as opposed to the DIY ones I do with my teamies). To say I am super excited about it doesnt even come close!

On Sunday when the retreat finishes Eugene is flying over to join me and we are going to enjoy five days of exploring the Lake District and Scotland whilst I am en route to Loch House for my second scrappy retreat, this time with some of my teamies from UKScrappers.   While he will fly home on the Friday I will be heading to Moffat for a weekend of scrapping, chatting and great food!  All in all a fabulous 11 days awaits me and I am so looking forward to it.

I’ll have lots of photographs and LO’s to share when I get back as I need to catch up on my 52 Walks and Scrap 2012 projects.

’See’ you all in a fortnight!