I'm On The Move!

New Home - Birdhouse
Originally uploaded by Jerrod Maruyama

Hello everyone :)

I've decided to host my blog over at Typepad from now on as it gives me more flexibility to blog how I want.

I hope I don't lose any of my lovely followers and readers by doing this, so please update your bookmarks to find me here from now on.

I will leave this blog up, so there will always be a way for you to find me :)

Look forward to seeing you over at my new place.

Thank you!

Siobhan
xx

Love this today :)

which I found on this blog here

Happy Thursday :)

Peace Process

It took me a while to get going with this month’s SFTIO theme, PEACE, despite this being one of my favourite kits ever for the product it contains. But, once I started I found it a hugely interesting subject to read about. I usually kick off my thinking by looking up the dictionary definition of the word for the month, and for peace there is a whole wealth of writing about what peace is or isn’t. I made a loads of notes as I was reading and the journaling on this layout is the distillation of my thoughts on what I read.

The next step in my process is to think around the theme and decide on layout concepts, themes and ideas. This month I really looked into myself and thought about ‘what does peace mean to me? I always come up with way more ideas that I have time to scrap and this month was no exception!! I then pick out the ideas I want to develop more fully and at this point I more often than not do the first draft of my journaling. This often gets rewritten or cut down before making it onto a layout as it is a bit ‘stream of consciousness’ stylie lol.

I was faced with a bit of a dilemma at this point as I had some really cool ideas, but no photos I felt would be suitable. I’ve pretty much used every picture of myself over the last six months, hee hee, and the light here is so bad at the moment there was no chance of me doing a self-portrait session and getting any decent images. Aaaaagh, more delay! Then it struck me, whilst doing Shimelle’s ‘Blogging for Scrapbookers’ course last month, she mentioned using Creative Commons images from Flickr to illustrate blog posts if you have nothing suitable yourself. Bingo! Problem solved!

After that dilemma was solved it was obviously a simple matter to cut and stick everything down in an artistic fashion and voila, bob’s your uncle, DT assignments completed. If only it really were that simple, lol!!! For the layout above I used a postcard image from melanie j cook, and for the layout below, I found this beautiful image by Slim Dandy. I wanted to contain the photo and all the embellishments within the circle of my journaling to reinforce the theme of inner peace. Outside the journaling circle I use of the the die-cuts as a mask to give the effect of a dawn, to illustrate the dawning of my consciousness (deep lol!!) At least that's what I was trying to do. You can decide for yourself if you think I managed it!

And finally, pop over to the SFTIO blog for freebies EVERY DAY in December. Can you afford to miss out?

Warms the cockles of my heart

LiveJournal Tags: Holidays In Hand

December already

Wow, December already, who would have believed it, not me!! Totally not prepared for Christmas, but that is not unusual ha ha! Finally got my hands on my Christmas stash today (courtesy of my lovely neighbour Melody who brought it back after going home to the US for Thanksgiving)so I can make a start on my December album. I've downloaded the prompts form Jessica Sprague’s Holidays in Hand, and will try to follow that, but as my album isn't prepared I'm not sure how much detail I will go into every day. I'll just play it by ear I think.

I have never done any Christmas crafting or baking before, this year will be one of many firsts. I've already had a go at baking gingerbread men, and a yule log is on the agenda later this month too, along with mince pies. Yum yum in my tum :) After speaking with my mum I think I have left it a bit late to do a proper Christmas cake - she starts sousing her fruit in October!! Mind you, who says it has to be a Christmas cake, if I start now it might be sufficiently alcoholic by Easter lol!

So, back to crafting. My friend Bernice posted a link on UKS to a Christmas star on the Cosmo Cricket blog and as I had an extra sheet of one of the papers in my December kit from SFTIO I thought I'd give it a go. Here is the final product:

I’m really pleased with it. I sprayed it with red glimmer mist, which you can’t really see in the photo, it’s sparkly in real life :) It’s really easy to do, but looks spectacular, and I got to play with a toy to make it – a hot glue gun which I’ve had for about two years and never plucked up the courage to use. It really made it easy to make the star, but you have to be careful as the glue DOES GET HOT lol!!

 

Here is the full kit picture, and I’ll be back tomorrow with a couple of my layouts

17 Again

Hello blog-hoppers (and random visitors) and welcome to 1990/1991, only a short hop from Christy's lol!!

Yup, that’s me back in the day. I had a hard job getting a photo for this challenge because the age of 17 is officially known as ‘The Year I Ruined My Hair. Forever’.  The photo was actually taken on my 18th birthday, so roughly seven months after the fateful cut and perm. So take a close look at it am imagine it six months shorter…yuck! I refused to have my photo taken as I hated my hair so much.  There must be photos of me out there, surely I couldn’t have avoided the camera completely? Ah well, at least I don’t  have to look at them lol!! And hope they don’t come back to haunt me, eeek…The perm has stayed with me though as my hair has never gone back to being straight and seems to be getting curlier as I get older. Weird.

 

 

There were more questions set for the challenge, so I’ve answered 17 on the layout, and here are all the questions in full, and my answers:

My hair colour is.….natural; strawberry blond

My hair style is.....the worst ever, I totally messed up my hair when I was 17 with a nasty perm. Seriously, it makes me want to cry just thinking about it

My favourite brand of makeup is.….Rimmel

My "fashionable" item is…..purple suede desert boots!!

My favourite outfit is.....not necessarily a favourite, but I usually wear a polo shirt and leggings, with a large baggy cardigan over the top. Trainers, always Nike

My favourite colour is.....none really

I drive a.....Raleigh Lizard 18 gear mountain bike , or occasionally my mum’s Toyota Corolla

On a Saturday I go....to work in Olympus Sports in Sutton High Street

On Saturday night I go.....to Cinderella Rockafellas in Purley, or the Cricketers in Sutton

On a Sunday I go.....nowhere, after Saturday night , if I can help it!

Monday-Friday I go.....to School

My best friends are.....Marie, Nancy, Sarah

My favourite place to go out is......Hard Rock Cafe

My favourite subject at school is.....French

When I grow up I want to be......a politician, or maybe even Prime Minister.  Mrs Thatcher is still at No 10. although she resigned toward the end of the year.

My favourite drink is.....Sol with a slice of lime ;)

My favourite food is.....my mum’s cooking

My favourite shop is......Top Shop/Covent Garden

I want to marry....the love of my life

My favourite actor/actress is....Patrick Swayze

My favourite band is....Guns ‘n’ Roses

My favourite TV programme is....Twin Peaks

The one thing I want to do but can't is.....go to Oxford University

My most used mode of transport is....my bicycle

If I had all the money in the world I would....share it out, I was very egalitarian in those days!!

I wish I could visit....anywhere with guaranteed sunshine.  My holiday choices were not very sophisticated!

My favourite sport is......horse-riding

This autumn I .......started my final year of school

At Halloween I dressed up as ..... NOT!

I recently saw ...(movie) and thought it was ........I can’t remember going to the cinema, I did see Ghost and Pretty Woman I think, loved Ghost, and obviously Pretty Woman just fuelled my belief in the whole knight in shining armour myth

I am reading .....French novels, in French, for my A-levels.

The big newspaper story this year is......the breakthrough was made in the channel tunnel; construction workers drilling through the final slice of rock that separated the UK and French halves of the project.

The most dangerous thing I've ever done....raced a mini cooper while driving my mums car, sorry Mum!!

The furthest away from home I've ever been is......skiing in Austria

and a little extra question I wanted to include as it was important at the age of 17…..number 1 single on my birthday……Killer by Adamski, I still have the 12” vinyl :)

So thanks for stopping at my station on the journey through time, here’s your next stop at Jo’s in 1982. Enjoy your trip!!

PS, if you get derailed on the blog train, the full timetable can be found here at Kate's

PPS - don't forget today is the last day to post a comment on my blog if you want to play in my pay it forward. See this post for full details. Thank You!

PPPS I used Twisted Sketch #25 for my layout

Sweet new technology and December SFTIO kit sneak peek

On it’s way to me :)

I want to get more into the habit of blogging, both my crafty stuff and also to keep a record of the little things that happen on a day to day basis so I need some technology that is easy to use, and can  be kept accessible. I have a very nice 17”Dell laptop that I use at the moment but I think the laptop description is a bit of a misnomer in this case, it’s a monster! Really heavy and it gets so hot on my lap!  I can rarely be bothered to unplug it from it’s home in my craft room and as a result  my DH complains frequently and loudly when I disappear down here to surf, blop, or blog. So, the compromise is I get a shiny new Dell notebook to use upstairs in the living room/kitchen, and DH gets to watch me play on it lol!! At least we will be in the same room more often :) It should be here in a couple of days, yay!!

 

Unbelievably it’s time for the sneaky peek at the December kit from SFTIO. The theme this month is PEACE…Wintery goodness and quiet...celadon, red, pale blue, ivory and charcoal...birds, snowflakes and icy bling...total loveliness.  The papers in this kit are beautiful, I think they are probably my favourites from the six months I have been a DT member.  And the embellishments? Rachel has exceeded expectations once again! Check back here on the first for the full kit reveal, and the first on my layouts on the theme of PEACE. Until then, I leave you with these: