JYC 2011 3rd Dec

Here are this years Christmas cards. I quite enjoy writing them, even if I only get a few words down for each person. I went through the whole rigmarole of writing them and addressing them last year but I never got around to posting them, so this year I am determined to get them done and out early. The actual cards I made last  year but only got round to designing envelopes for them in October. I have some small black ones from 2009 to send to work, which also need envelopes doing but work cards don't take as long to sort and deliver as the ones for friends and family. 

JYC 2011 2nd Dec

Weather for the South West  -Slightly colder than before but generally cloudy, no rain. Temp at time of writing - 7 dgC

Which doesn't sound too bad, except we have the window wide open in the room next door trying to get rid of the smell of paint and white spirit. My lovely Winnie the Pooh mural is no more than a slightly darker shadow, but the wooden area is now a lovely clean white all the way over. 

Back to the weather again today and we had another pregnancy fail. I parked my car too far to the left and so struggled to get between it and neighbours car to scrape the ice off the window. For the last few days it was just condensation but this morning, it was definately icy. So sent OH out with instructions to buy de-icer as well as paint. 

However I did enjoy once again using the heated seats in the car, which work much quicker than having the fan on. 

Picture above is this years mitten and hat combination. Last year I went for a tasteful cream woollen hat. Which OH tumble dried and shrank. Also I had understated black mitten gloves for driving. Which unravelled at the thumb. This year I have gone for childish and fun. Much better. 

Love Elliefantasy (& Bumpy)

JYC 2011 Dec 1st - Manifesto

Its the 1st of December again! But I find myself in remarkably different circumstances than I was expecting. Not that I wasn't expecting to be "expecting" but I wasn't expecting to be so far along. Or so big.

Some other changes from this year to last year include a new car for baby and having to change my craft room 2 or 3 years earlier than expected. Whilst most will be doing Xmas shopping or putting up their decs, my poor OH will be painting and building me a new craft room so that I can move into the smaller room and let Bumpy have my nice big one. (I will be putting up the tree and whatever other decs I can manage as I am banned from going upstairs on Saturday unless bringing cups of tea. Which is fair. Overall I am happy with the changes but I feel like I have really underestimated just how exhausting and imposing pregnancy can be on all aspects of life. All the energy that I normally have to put into being excited about Xmas is  just not there and if I don't get a shift on, neither will some presents.


For those who are interested, after last years success for blogging but lacking of album, I took a totally new approach some time in June this year. My 2010 album was sat on the desk with no end in sight because it was far far too small. At that time I seemed to take notice of American Crafts albums and WRMK divided page protectors, mainly through some of my fav bloggers, Shimelle of course, and Laura over at Lazy Dynamics certainly spring to mind as being very taken with these albums. So I have come up with a nice, small but on-going idea which I shall show later in the month. But it means that all I have to do for moment is worry about blogging. Which I can do from my PC or my phone so it doesn't matter if I'm away from home. Or if I miss a few days.

Lastly a look at the Welcome Message mail today. I have the following to add.

I will believe in .... Santa (cos I always do!)

I will be grateful for ...... some time to rest

I will always remember.....Being pregnant for the first time and the differences it brings.

Love Elliefantasy (& Bumpy)

Mid Octoberly Post of an Updating nature

So, epic, epic fail with LSN again. I can't seem to remember to do it, but I have no problems with doing JYC? Maybe this is something that I need to learn?? I have a pile of purple, paper, album and embellishments still sat on my desk in a very accusatory nature which I need to find a space for out of my sight.
I have actually not been doing too badly with the whole crafty stuff, especially as Bumpy is limiting my craft time by making me very very sleepy after work days and making my posterior sore after sitting for too long at the weekends. I have a pillow and a cushion but after a while its just not enough. So what have I been doing? (warning, epic post with pics to follow)

Well, whilst the world is starting to gear up for Christmas, I have been gearing up for weddings. Well one wedding in particular where I will be making the stationery. I haven't done this since my own wedding, but its proving a fairly un-daunting task so far. Mainly because we are scraplifting a design from somewhere else, using the very popular english rose/Cath Kidson theme. I am not a fan of this style myself, and making a design using a style that you don't like is a bit of a challenge, but hey, its not my wedding and therefore not my problem. So we now have a design, some rather nifty blanks from Craft Creations and all I need to do is find vast quantities of cream and pale blue card.

So what am I doing about the big "C" word that we mentioned earlier. Surely as a crafter, I should be sat slaving over a pile of barely started cards. Well I've actually finished some that I made a couple of years ago, that needed special envelopes. I've designed them, printed and folded them and they are ready if I need them. I've also done the same for another set of teeny cards I made. But my actual, sort of cheaty plan for the year is to make a digital image from our 20 week scan photo (that we get next week) and get photobox to print my cards for me. Only OH isn't that impressed with the idea of Bump with a santa hat on. I haven't pressed the issue, as I need to see if I can do it first. If it doesn't work then I've got a load in backup so my time is relatively free.

The project I should really be starting soon though is the baby book. I've cut out a lot of 6x6 squares of apricot, pale yellow/green/blue card and put the apricot through the bind it all. I now love my bind-it-all (the key for this was reading the instructions properly and then then having a play. I've also got a 3/4 finished book done for nephews 1st xmas, all punched, just waiting for more pics)
The original plan was to have 1 book but I don't think that I'll get wires big enough. So I'm going to do 4 books, each a different colour card, 1 for the pregnancy, 1 for the labour story, 1 for general info (family tree, what happened on d.o.b, general worldy info) and the last for the 1st year story. I haven't yet printed any photos of the pregnancy, and tbh haven't taken many at all, even bumpy photos. There didn't seem to be much point when there was no bump but as I've now "popped" I might start to take a few. OH and I have planned a "baby-moon" so my aim is to get the photos taken and printed to work on the first part of the book then, colour to be decided when we know the sex of the baby.

So that's me for a bit. I'll try to take a few pics and do a post later in the week for my JYC pre and post planning, the result of a rather good idea.

Love Elliefantasy xx

LSNED 2011 - 2nd - 6th September

2nd September

Morning sickness doesn't go, just because you want it too. 

3rd September

Sometimes you find just what you are looking for when you least expect to find it

Don't put things off until later, you might find what you worry about isn't the case.

The first of these lessons refers to the fact that we found our ideal pushchair in our local babyshop with £100 deducted from the price. We had gone in mainly to look at a specific bedding set but when they didn't have it, we decided to have a look around at the pushchairs. Having decided we couldn't see what we wanted, we were on our way out when we saw "our" pushchair, right by the door. It was the last in the shop and they weren't going to stock any more. Total bargain. 

4th September

I am not used to being hormonal

I need to pace myself better.

These come from what felt like a wasted Sunday. Having lots of plans to tidy and sort, I ended up falling asleep on the sofa all afternoon. And then feeling overly grumpy that I hadn't had as productive a day as Saturday. 

5th September

Going to bed at 9pm if I am tired is a perk not a worry.

6th September

I can see things in the light that they were meant, and I must learn to keep this up. 

LSNED 2011 - 1st September

Welcome to this years Learn Something New Every Day attempt. Last year I crashed and burned about the middle of the month. This year, I hope to be more successful. I have a pile of stash, a proper album and my trusty blog to catch the daily thoughts. 

LSNED this year is exciting for me as I'm 12 weeks pregnant. Originally I thought of doing an in-depth book about what I need to learn about being a mother. But the first thing I have actually had to learn is that pregnancy has made me really tired and has lessened my attention span quite drastically. So that idea has gone out of the window. Instead I will just reflect on the day and note down my lessons in a nice list fashion, possibly adding more detail if required, or the list is short enough.

Then, when I feel up to it, I will put the posts into my album. I'm using up an 8x8 album that my mum got me a year or so ago in the sale at her local craft shop. Its a purple, Papermania postbound album. Before I get to the middle of the month, I will need to hunt out 10 more page protectors, but I have a bit of time. I've dug out loads of purple and silver cardstock, ribbons and embellishments in a serious stash busting excercise. Hopefully it will look lovely and stylish. Or like a big purple fiasco. Either way is good!

So here is today's list of things I have learnt.

1. My first real pregnancy craving is dijon mustard. For breakfast I had a cheese and mustard sandwich. Nom-tastic!
2. My early morning queasy-ness hasn't quite gone.
3. Even though I'm really happy now I'm pregnant, it doesn't stop me from waking up in a grump for no apparant reason.
4. It is very difficult to reply to random emotionally effusive e-mails and texts about the baby from people who I am not very close to. Not yet worked out what to say.

Hoping that your September 1st has been lovely and you have learnt something really cool. 

Love Elliefantasy xxx

Creating titles

A few posts ago I had a bit of a rant about how much trouble I had in creating titles for pages. A little while after that I managed to get a set of Papermania alphabet stamps which were identical to some letter stickers that I had and particularly liked. I have also made a visit to Boots and had ordered a load of prints of my nephew as he is my main scrapping focus at the moment, the place where I seem to find the most inspiration. One of the sets I liked was 3 pictures, taken at very different ages, but all in variations of Arsenal outfits. Immediately a title "Growing up as a Gunner" sprung to mind and I've taken the opportunity to create a really bold title. The page isn't finished yet but I've done the work on the title.

I started by stamping in black and then inking the edges with a gold ink stamp. But it just didn't look striking enough. So I then decided to ink the pages, but I knew I wanted the letters in white, as they are on the strip. So I Glossy-accented the lettering and left it overnight to dry. The lettering really lends itself well to Glossy Accents as the nib is just as big as the gap. How fortunate is that!

So here you can see all of the parts of the title. (I apologise now for the photo's but I have a short focus lens and I was going for arty farty shots with short depth of field!) The next evening I got out my Aged Mahogany Distress ink pad and blenders. I inked over the whole title, wiping off the lettering immediately with a babywipe. And the lettering came out crisp and white. I was really impressed with how it looked and just how easy it was to do.

Once dry, I re-inked the edges with the gold and it gave a really good, aged look but still with the basic Arsenal colours. For the Gunners part, I've stamped my large, plain Dimension fourth letters in gold and cut them out. I have the photos matted onto white with gold edging and then onto navy blue card, but that is as far as its got. I can't decide whether to mount the titles onto the navy blue as well before they all end up on a nice bold dark red piece of 12x12.  But as far as lettering goes, I'm quite happy with this DIY look.

For those who don't use them, I can't recommend baby wipes enough. You can get the really cheap ones that you wouldn't necessarily use on a baby, but they clean stamps up immediately, as well as glue and ink on my messy sheet. They pick up glitter better than anything else I've found, and even me when I get a bit sticky! 

Love Elliefantasy xx