I am in the Christmas mood!

Since late September I have been working on Christmas project.  Some project for Making Memories (yah me!!) which will be up on their blog on 7th December.  To get inspiration I spent a lot of time looking around Pinterest..... It is just amazing!  My guilty pleasure - and I just do a happy dance inside when I see all the fab projects and photos.  Makes me want to try everything and stop and photograph everything.

Somewhere I saw a little tree - I could not find a tutorial for it, but just sat and played with some paper till I worked it out.  I've added a collage of 9 photos showing what I did - photos are dark but you get the idea.

1. Cut a circle, I used my MS circle cutter.
2. Add some glue to the back of the circle
3. Glue the circle into a half circle.
4. Ink the edges.
5. Manipulate the paper so it's easy to fold (breaking the tension on the paper)
6. With half circle in front of you with straight edge on the right, fold it over itself from left to right.
7. Use a foam dot or glue to hold this in place when your happy, and then pull the top part into place.
8. Add second foam dot to hold top part in place.

9. I love dimension, so you can see that I have this in 3D, but it looks great flat too!

So there ya all go!  Go forth and make trees!!!!

Special Cake for a special Girl!

Tomorrow my beautiful darling daughter Caoimhe will be 15!  I know all mums say that their daughters are beautiful, but I think my Caoimhe is just amazing.  She is a lovely big sister, a real friend and I am proud to call her my daughter.

At 15, money is her "God" at the moment, so all she wants for her present is Money, but she has already gotten me to buy her some Urban Decay makeup, and new jammies and slippers from her little sisters.  She has plans to hit Dundrum Shopping Center with her friend Megan and shop shop shop!  She wants to have a good look in Hollister and might just spend most of her money there.  She wants another new phone, despite her phone being only 6 months old!!!

We are not planning any big parties anymore for her, as she really did nearly everything that could be done in the past.  So she was just having friends over and a sleep over, but I arranged for a cake for her.  Caoimhe is makeup mad!  She loves it - wants it all and has a list as long as her arm of all the items she must have.  In the future I think she might be interested in a career or side line in makeup!  My next door neighbour Karyn Sheridan and her boyfriend Neil Hassett are the most amazing Designer Bakers and they are called What's up Cupcake?  I had a quick chat to Karyn about the cake and this is what she came up with.  We cannot wait to taste the cake but I if it tastes half as good as it looks, it will be demolished in a day!

So if you have any occasions that require cakes, cupcakes or even cake pops, give Karyn or Neil a call and say Michelle sent you or visit them on Facebook!

This is another one of Karyns cakes - Just stunning!!!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Whats-up-Cupcake/152920341425605

Crafty Bloggers DT

In the hopes that I can find some inspiration, I have joined a Crafty Bloggers Design Team.  This group started out on FB and now has about 450 members on Facebook.

There were some glitches and I missed the first challenge, but I've finally gotten my act together and made a card for the second challenge.

Come and have a look at what we are doing.....

The prompt was Purple, Green and Pink.....  I only used scraps from my scrap bag for this card, and the stamp is PTI, along with the flower die.

Not feeling it!

I have to admit that I am not in the crafty zone at the moment.  The craft room is tidy, the stash is sitting there, the mojo has gone on a hike!!  I feel like I have lost my right arm, the body is willing but the mojo is weak!!!

I may have just asked too much of it recently - I got asked by one of the bigger scrapbook manufacturers to work with some of their products and after I had finished the bunting and the star for Handmade Hannah, I then jumped into the papers and embellishment pack from this company.  I was so inspired, really had fun and pushed my creativity to it's limit and was really happy with what I made.  Once it was uploaded and done and dusted, I slumped into this mood and the last few things I made have ho hum and not worth photographing and uploading.

So it's nothing from me today - some stuff on my DH's computer that I need to move to mine, and a few new things that I made might make it to the blog once I have looked at them again.

So I may give it some time, take a few challenges and see what happens.

The two small's at the Pumpkin Festival in Virginia Co Cavan at the weekend.

Something old.....

This project has been sitting in my craft room for ages.  In fact, I really had forgotten about it, and only went looking for a specific photo for camera club and found these photos.

The frame was bought at a car boot sale for €1.00 and it was in a state.  There was a horrible picture inside and the frame was bashed up.  So I covered the black frame in some Acrylic Paint (Adirondac Dabber - Pool) and distressed it when it was dry.

I treated each little square as a scrapbook mini page - Hope you like it, I originally planned to give it away, but I really like it and may make something else for the person in mind.

Ta for now - off to a parents council meeting, with 3 girls, I feel you need to give back.

I love this photo!

I really love to teach people to scrapbook and craft.  Over the last year I've been given some lovely opportunities and it's become so much fun!  There is such a sense of achievement when at the start of the night they have a bag of stash, and at the end they have a LO that they will have in their albums for years.

We came home from holidays on Wednesday and on the Thursday I taught this class.  The papers were My Minds Eye, Lost and Found 2, Breeze collection and  I have been using each collection since they came out and have a range of items made with these papers.  This new collection is as amazing as the last ones, and perfect for a home decor item that I have planned in my head.

Anyway, I had taken a lovely photo of my DD Lea recently, and it was begging to be scrapped so this is the LO that I made.

These papers are very fussy, stunning, but hard to add much to without going overboard, so I went easy on it and tried to keep the LO clean and simple(ish!).  From this angle you can't see much, but the LO is full of dimension, each layer is on foam dots and edges inked for effect.  I have a mild obsession is little flags at moment and these little cut offs from the end of the patterned paper are put to good use as these little edge embellishments for the side of the journalling block.  Yet again I have left the journalling block blank as I find it hard to write the right words, and feel that if I write on it now, I will change my mind in a few weeks and feel foolish about what is now written and cannot be changed.

The bonus to the class I taught, was that there was sufficient leftovers to make a card, and this is what I came up with.   The little toothpick flags are everywhere at the moment and this was the perfect opportunity to have a go too!

I have a lot of things that I have not shown here on the blog that I will keep adding over the next few days and am working on a' hush hush' DT project that made me smile so big when I got the news, so as of this moment I have just finished it, and waiting for daylight to photograph it before I can email it to the  DT co-ordinator.  Fun fun fun, but hopefully it will be good enough and I might be asked again!!!!

Back at long last.....

We are home and all back to normal after our holidays.  The bags have been unpacked and all put away, the washing done (ironing is a work in progress!!) and happy to be home and all safe and sound. (More on the holiday soon!)   My DD Caoimhe is getting ready for her school trip to Germany for 5 days tomorrow and has to be in the airport for 4.30am!  OMG what an un-godly hour to have to get up!

ITh day after I came home, the postie delivered a lovely box from Handmade Hannah!  Her stunning Christmas kit, and OMG I was still in getting sorted mode, but my head was spinning with what to do with it.  Initially I was going to do a minibook as they are so much fun, and how good would it to have one ready to go for this Christmas, but as I did'nt get much scrappy time till Sunday night (silly jet lag had me falling asleep on the couch every evening!), I got to see what Hannah and Katherine did with their kits, and as they both made minibooks I deceided to try and do something else!

So after minibooks, my next favourite thing is Bunting!  OMG I just love it so much and I did'nt have one that I had made for Christmas yet, so I decided to give it a go!

For my Be Merry Project, I used the kraft card as a base, cut the lovely My Minds Eye 6x6 paper pad, and went to town on the embellishments.  The title was cut on my cricut and the only thing not in the kit was the glitter that I used on the title, but when it was finished I hated it, so in desparation I phoned around to see if anyone had any Red glitter card and having no patience to wait, I then played a little and came up with the clever idea to paint the title (after already sticking it down!! Dhhh!) with my Twinkling H2O's!  Viola!  The title pops, the bunting looks better and I can relax!

Lots of use of my border punches, sewing machine, some glossy accents on the Y flag on the little lights.  I used lot's of dimension on this project using foam pads and layers of accents.  It looks lovely in my front room on the fire place and also in the kitchen.

So hopefully its better late than never!  Sorry for taking so long to post girls, but jet lag just sapped my energy!  Love this project and it may stay where it is till Christmas and I think it's fab!

Loads more left in the kit and I may have an inkling of an idea for the rest of the kit!

Ta M