Ready For Action...

Pics seem to be back at Blogger so as promised here's one of my pages. This page took all of 15 mins and that's how I love my pages most. You get the instant gratification of playing with paper (and those drop-dead gorgeous chipboard Sassafras frames!) without agonising for hours over placement of bits and pieces. The papers on this one are Cosmo Cricket - Mr Campy. I got them in a kit and there are several sheets I'm sure I wouldn't have bought separately... Loads of camping phrases that I'd never use and in any case what the hell is a smore??? But once you've hacked off the bits that are never going to suit a page (and binned them - I refuse to have bits in my stash I won't lov using) you get plenty to make lots of cute pages. Lots of nice woodgrain and fun clouds etc.

These are my pics of the day - one for my 365 - my favourite beaded Chameleon ornament...

And one for Martha's - yes... my dog can happily rest her head on the table...

Wishing you a....

Happpy New Year!!

Flash ah ah.....

There's a new challenge over at the Forever Friends challenge blog and the challenge this time is to use a Christmas song... here's my offering..

At the moment I'm bearly seing the light of day, it's dark when I leave for work and dark when I get home so my photography is severely limited at the moment. So the only alternative is long exposures with a tripod or getting busy with some flash - this is one of my favourite Christmas ornaments - who can resist a bit of glitz at Christmas? I finally use the Liveview on my 40D for the first time and it really does make nailing focus a cinch for close-up shots. I was decidedly sceptical, but I'm a convert!

For a while now I've been wanting to get some off camera lighting and rather than invest in studio (continuous or flash) lighting I've taken the plunge with a set of wireless flash triggers for my speedlite. It means you can get a bit more creative with the angle and amount of flash. This shot (which is by no means perfect!! was lit with the speedlite on the right hand side of the shot and it straight away adds a bit of drama and interest.

Once I'd got the Speedlite off the camera you loose the thru-the-lens metering so you have to control the flash manually - a whole now world to learn which is quite exciting!

This is a page from the weekend (November SC) and features one my recent favourite pics of Martha - I took it when I was aiming to get some Christmas card pictures (hats and antlers!!) but Martha much preferred posing without!

An efficient Christmas..

One evening... 40 handmade cards... job done! Who says making Christmas cards has to be hard work??

Keeping you in the dark...

Most scrapbookers admit to taking their camera pretty much everywhere they go, but I wonder if many people take it out in the pitch black to grab a couple of candid shots? Well I have! On a nightime walk with Lola grabbed my camera and flash and while she merrily snuffled through the leaves I snapped away! She didn't seem to mind the flash either!

I've used the wonderful November Studio Calico kit including this cool die-cut from K&Co. I love the autumnal shades and it's been the perfect way to scrap my autumn photos.

There's also a new challenge using the cute little Forever Friends bears - this weeks it's all about an unconventional Christmas - never let it be said that I like conventional colour schemes so this one was great fun for me. To be extra non-traditional I've used flowers on a Christmas card (and not your standard Poinsettia!)

Getting sketchy...

There's a sketch challenge over at the this challenge blog - and her's my take on it... sketches are great for cards (as well as scrapbook pages of course!) as you can mess with it to your hearts content to get something totally original. At first glance the sketch was a bit linear for me to use 'as is', but if you bring in your own style it soon becomes your own. I simply can't have anything floating on it's own so by skewing a few elements i've made it more pleasing to my eye!

So the moral of the story is.... (if you haven't dropped off yet!) don't dismiss something out of hand just because it isn't 'you'... there's always a way round it!

Paper clouds make me happy...

While i'm not what you'd call a fan of the real thing (unless they are those gorgeous fluffy white ones with a cerulean blue sky), the paper variety makes me so much happier. Lots of brands have some lovely cloudy offerings at the moment, this scrummy paper is October Afternoon - Weathervane and of course the stickers are Sassafras.

Another thing that always makes me happy is BasicGrey (Offbeat rules!) so i'm sure I can be excused for combining it with a Forever Friends bear! This is for a challenge that you can check out here...

Friendly...

I'm very, very glad to report that i'm typing this entry on my laptop!! Hurrah for ebay and a replacement power adaptor! Twenty odd quid later and i'm back online!

I've made another cute little card using a friendly Forever Friends stamp... for a little blog that you can find here... I've used some really cute papers from the Papermania Secret Garden collection - i just love those little clouds!

Friends Forever...

If you are a fan of the cute and cuddly I'm sure you can't have missed the new range of Forever Friends products. Who could resist a cute little bear? So to celebrate a few FFF's (Forever Friends Fans) have created a fun challenge blog to share their ideas for these fun stamps. The first challenge went live today and I'm going to be playing along!

The first challenge was love - here's my card. I've given mine a bit of the BasicGrey treatment, using papers from the Eva collection - perfect for this theme!

Here's another created using BasicGrey Urban Prairie -  I hope you'll agree that it really sets the little guy off!!