Catching up

Hello everyone,
Just thought I'd report in to say I'm still here.
I am in the middle of A levels at the moment, I have done 3 exams so far and have two to go. My last is on the 22nd June, and after that I am free!!!! I have many things coming up that I am really looking forward to, but for today I thought I would just share with you all of my creations from the last few months. :)

One of my brilliant friends turned 18 a month ago, and they love jelly beans, so I made them this cake :)

This is the birthday card I made, using mainly digital scrapbooking elements

I made a few of these cards for my Maths teachers. 

Yesterday was my final official day at school, we had a brilliant day, and as the theme for the day was royalty, I decided to paint my nails with Union Jacks.

So that's all of my crafting from the last month or so. I have some crafting planned soon, I have a couple of amazing trips abroad this summer so need to get my travel journal sorted before I go :)

Bye for now, thanks for looking :)

Hannah

Poor little neglected blog

Hi all,
This is Hannah here, do you remember me? :)

Don't let anyone tell you that A levels are getting easier and people don't put in much effort for them anymore. It may be true in some cases, but definitely not in mine :) I have been working hard recently, with my final A level exams gradually approaching. It's the Easter break now, so lots of time to get some good revision done (well, that's the plan, I shall aim to keep to it :)

Hopefully I shall find a little time to craft over Easter. I have been crafty, but only a tiny little bit, in order to make items for mothers day. So, I'm here today to share them with you.

This is the card I made for Mother's day. I had been given inspiration for this card a long time ago, unfortunately I cannot find it now, but it was on Amber's blog 'Damask Love'. I was quite pleased with how it turned out, and Mum liked it which is the most important thing :)
I also decorated cupcakes for Mother's day this year. We had a cupcake night at my Ranger's, specifically planned with Mother's day in mind, and we had great fun making icing and decorating the cakes, oh, and making a mess too :)

Here are the cupcakes I decorated. I rolled out and formed some flower petals prior to the evening, so they would support themselves and look realistic when placed on the cupcakes. They didn't last :( Unfortunately by the time I had got around to taking photos and giving them to mum, the moisture from the cakes and icing had caused the petals to flop. I really loved making them though, I think I may make some more for Easter :)

So, that's the extent of my creative side over the past 5 weeks that I've been absent from this poor little blog. I do have other news for you though. I now have a job, which is another reason my creative time has been lacking. I have a weekend job at our local garden centre, which is brilliant, I am enjoying it and it is great to be earning my own money for the first time :) I work every other weekend, so it fits perfectly with my school work, and so far I have found time to keep comfortably up with both.
I have other news too, and this is the news I am most pleased and proud of. I resat some of my Math's modules from last year in January, and have been given the results back. I am very proud to tell you that I have now achieved an A* in Mathematics. I was so so chuffed :) My offer from Bath of A*AA now feels so much more achievable, and they do not mind if you have resat to achieve the A*, so now, I need 2 A's and I should, hopefully, very hopefully, get into Bath university :) It's a lovely weight off my shoulders, although obviously I haven't let myself slack now, and am working my socks off to get the other grades. I also sat two maths modules that count towards my further maths A level, achieving 100% in one of them and 95% in the other, which I am very pleased with :)

Ok, so that's my little update, hopefully I shall be back during half term sometime :) Thanks for coming back and looking at my blog again :) Sorry I haven't been able to look around at all of your gorgeous blogs and crafts for a long time.

Bye for now,
Hannah :)

P.S. Thanks again to Katherine (Sutty) for passing on a lovely blog award to me, it means a lot to know you like my work  :)

A Juicy Fruity Summer

Hi,

Well, I thought it was summer .... until today. It hasn't been too bad, it's been grey and drizzling finely for most of the day, but I'd still rather be enjoying sun. Although, this is England, and this is our typical summer!!

Anyway, I'm here today with some fruity crafts.

First up, a card for this weeks LIM challenge which is

FEELING FRUITY

I am really pleased with this card, it is definitely summery and warm. I have made the watermelon slice myself, from layers or fabric, felt and card, and using nestabilities, 2 circles and a scalloped circle. I have then used Gunmetal stickles to create the seeds. I have kept the other half of the circle to create another of these embellishments for scrapbooking :)

Staying on the Watermelon theme, I have also made these, what do you think?

I made them for a friend as part of her Birthday gift. Her birthday was back in May, in the middle of exams. We had a very late birthday party for her a few days ago, when she was presented with her very late birthday present. She straight away put them on and they hung just below her short hair style, and I must say I felt very pleased with them, they looked great on her :)
I've recently started to have a play with FIMO, after buying a great little book on how to make tempting treats from the modelling clay. It's quite an interesting medium to use, I guess I was expecting it to be a lot more pliable as I am used to working with sugar paste, but it's great fun. :)

And staying on the sugar paste theme (anyone would think I planned it to flow like this!!!), I have been cake decorating again.

It is my another of my friends' Birthday today, and I went on Monday to decorate a birthday cake with her. We hadn't a clue what we were going to do on the cake, so just decided to have a summery feel, and started from there. This is what we ended up with.

The strawberries are created using a heart cutter, which was then moulded into more of a strawberry shape, and the flowers are circles, with little snips in, then moulded and made to look like a flower :) I was quite pleased with it, considering our limited time to plan and create. She really enjoyed watching me create, it was great fun to teach her, and she loved the cake, bless her :)

Ok then, I think that's all for today, so much fruit!!!  I have a layout to share (no fruit this time), so will be back at the weekend :)
Bye for now,

Enjoying free time :)

Hi everyone,
As the title suggests, I have quite enjoyed a bit more free time this past weekend, and as a result I have a few things to show :)

First off, the cake I have been mentioning this past week. It was my Aunt's big birthday last week, so we had a family get together this weekend. She absolutely adores polar bears, so what else was there I could create for the cake!!

I was quite pleased with the polar bears, but it took a lot of squashing them up and screaming before I got them to look like this. I originally wanted them to look more realistic, but that just wasn't going to work, so I thought cute and cuddly had to be the next call, and luckily it worked :) She really loved the cake, and has kept the polar bears :)
I am linking my polar bears up to Passionately Artistic, a linking pool site which is a great source of inspiration and a place to find interesting projects.
Now onto my other crafts of the weekend. I have finally created another digi page. I haven't made one for ages. Here you go.

I have used Sketchy Thursday's sketch 7.21 to create this LO, I loved the block of photos, and it fitted perfectly with these photos of the 5 of us :)

That's it from me, I shall be back in the next few days with this weeks TPV challenge, it's a great one so keep your eyes open.

You still have time to enter this weeks challenge 'Grid pattern or colours of the rainbow'.

I'd love to see you over there, sharing all of your talent, plus who wouldn't want the opportunity to win the gorgeous prize this week.

Look at that mini book kit, just gorgeous. LOVE those sweet little knitted cherries :D

Bye for now,

Happy Mother's Day

To all of the Mothers that are reading this, I hope you've had a great day :)

I'll start with a layout I think this evening (which is a lovely evening here may I add, Mum and Dad are just outside finishing off from their productive day gardening and it's still a lovely temperature outside).
For this LO I have used the Sketchy Thursdays sketch and Emilie's colour challenge #4. I seem to be doing only LO based on sketches at the mo, since Mum's been part of blog land we've both stumbled across loads of lovely challenges. I might have to take a break from sketches soon, as I'm worried that I wont be able to scrap without a sketch soon!!
Anyway, here is my LO.

I'm really pleased with it. I loved the colour combination Emilie gave us but was stuck as to which photos to use with it. I'm glad I settled with these, the colours suit a grungy masculine page. I've taken a lot of inspiration for this page from this blog. I absolutely love her work and realised that the reason I loved her most recent page was the black mat behind each piece of paper, so that's what I've attempted here and I think it's worked well :)
Here's a few close ups.

Here's the sketch and colour scheme I've used.

I hope you like it.

Now, onto Mother's day.

I had great fun making Mum's card earlier this week, I would've posted it earlier but I never know when she's peeking on here. I was really pleased with the card, and she loved it which is always the most important thing.

I stippled around two hearts with Tim Holtz distress inks (I love those inks :D), then tied some bakers twine around the card and added the sentiment and button. The templates/stencils I had used for the hearts looked too good to throw away once I'd finished this card, so I used them on another. I made this card into an Anniversary card as I don't send many valentine cards so thought it'd be more use as an Anniversary card.

At my Rangers group, we made marzipan fruits for Mothers day and decorated a glass bowl for them to go in. I ran the Marzipan fruits evening, as even though I haven't tried marzipan fruits before I've worked with marzipan. The evening went really well and I was very pleased with my results.

Even though the hour and a bit we spent making them wasn't enough to make many, those that I did make I was really pleased with. they looked great in their little bowl.

Here is a compilation of photos of the individual fruits. I was pleased with the clementine and apple the most :)

Hope you all have a great evening and thanks for popping by. It's our last week at school this week and then we are off for 2 and a bit weeks for Easter, which will be lovely :)

Bye for now, Hannah :)

Very crafty :)

I've been doing all sorts of crafty things over the past few days. My last mock exam is tomorrow, I've got my Biology practical experiments which should be ok. We need to know very little for the experiment, we just use previous knowledge, so for my past few free days I've been being creative. I've been cake decorating, digi scrapping and making cards, so this shall be quite a big post with something for everyone I hope. Hope you enjoy :)

Digi Scrapping

Dawn Inskip has made a lovely digi template which is available to download on UKscrappers. Here's the page I've made using the template.

I've changed some of the elements on the template and added papers and other items to make it a christmas layout. I really like the page, it's the first time I've really used a template and it was good fun, and a lot quicker with the basic layout displayed for me. I hope you like it too.

Card

It's my Nan's birthday at the weekend and as, for once, I've had time, I've made her a card. Since Mum's had her blog she's been searching many other blogs and I've spotted lots of cards that have been inspiring me. So this card is a mixture of a lot of different cards and inspiration.

I really like this card, I love these colours and I had to use my Stampin Up bird punch again.

Cake decorating

I haven't done any cake decorating since my birthday cake last summer, so as I knew I'd have a bit of time this week, I decided to decorate a birthday cake for Nan. I haven't had time to bake or cover a cake, so we bought a plain ready iced cake from the supermarket that is designed to have a photo transferred onto the top. Nan loves snowdrops and as they're perfect for this time of year I've done some for the cake.

I'm really pleased with how they've turned out, I've never tried snowdrops before and have made these without a specific cutter, adapting a different cutter for one part of the flower and hand cutting the leaves and the rest of the flowers.

I've dusted the flowers to make the inner layers look slightly more realistic.

The cake wasn't iced very well and unfortunately we didn't get any choice in the shop, this was the only one. To cover up the very wobbly and weirdly shaped sides I've created a rope, which I think just finishes it off nicely.

I'm really pleased with it and it's been great to get all of my equipment out again and have a play. Hopefully Nan will love it, it's a surprise, she hasn't a clue I've done a birthday cake. :)

A new Photography Challenge

I've been trying to find a photography blog recently with a weekly challenge, but I haven't found quite the thing I've been looking for.
I've decided to set a challenge up for myself, like I used to do for card making before I moved into scrapbooking. Me and Mum have written a whole long list of one-word prompts, that we've then cut out and are ready to be picked at random.
I'm planning to draw a prompt word ever Friday evening, so I have the weekend to get a good start with the word.
I've designed this challenge predominantly to challenge myself and get myself using the camera more, but if anyone else would like to join in and do the weekly challenge too, you'd be very welcome. It'd be quite nice to see how everyone else interprets the word. If you'd like to join in I shall be posting my first prompt word tomorrow evening, so please come over and see what it is.

Here's the words ready to be selected :)

From me, that's all today, have a good evening and I'll be back tomorrow with my photo prompt


Bye, Hannah :)

I'm 16 :)

Hi everyone. My first post as a 16 year old!! A tired one at that after having roughly 6 hours sleep last night following our school prom!

(This may be quite a long post, I'll just warn you now!!)

I had a party at our house on Wednesday evening which was the first time James had met some of my friends and the first time they've been round to the new house (even though we've lived here 6 months!). James absolutely loved having all of my friends round and ended up nearly losing his voice he was chattering so much!! We all enjoyed the evening in the garden.

Now I shall reveal more of the butterflies I showed you in my last post. I decided to decorate my own birthday cake as I haven't done any cake decorating for at least a year, due to moving and then not having space to do it, and wanted to get back into it. I found a gorgeous cake in a book and adapted it to the size of my cake. I really enjoyed making it and am very proud of the result (well what was the result before it was eaten!). Here it is:

(This photo looks a lot more yellow than I thought it was, the cake was a much lighter cream than it looks in the image)

Then Thursday, my birthday and prom day. I received some amazing gifts, I am a very lucky person. I had asked for a point and shoot camera as I had accidentally broken the family one a few months ago, and I was lucky to receive one for my birthday from my Nan and Grandad. I spent the whole morning reading the manual and practising so I could take it to the prom. I received many other gorgeous presents, including jewellery, money, tops and chocs.

I had my hair done for the prom at my normal hairdressers and loved it. We were supposed to be going to the prom in a limo but, as my luck goes, it broke down, so we ended up going in a range rover. As you can imagine I was devastated, I've wanted to go in a limo for years, but at least we got there. I'm afraid to say that the whole prom didn't go smoothly. Me and a few mates missed all of the food as we didn't feel hungry and then they'd run out by the time we did, so I was rather hungry by the time I got home having not eaten since lunch! We also paid money to have professional photos done, to then end up having 2 photos taken as the queue was massive and people kept pushing in!!

However moaning over, it was lovely to be able to be outside and enjoying the warm failing light of the evening. I managed to get some nice photos and it was really interesting to see which styles of dresses people had gone for and the boys in suits looked so different. I'm not a dancing person, I avoid the dance floor like the plague, but as soon as my favourite two songs (Queen 'Don't stop me now' and 'We will rock you') came on I couldn't resist! It was lovely to be able to dress up and I loved my dress, it was so comfortable. Comfortable isn't a word I'd use to describe my shoes though, by the end of the evening my heel ached like anything and the majority of the girls had taken their heels off. At least I now possess a pair of heels and can walk in them. A few photos to show you, taken by mum before I left.

I took this photo at the prom with my new camera, it isn't the best but it really shows the happy lively atmosphere of the dance floor. I would've liked a lay-in this morning but because James hardly saw me yesterday I got up to see him this morning. I'll sleep well tonight, that's for sure!!

I've been out this morning with mum as she needed to take photos for a course she's doing, so I practised with my new point and shoot to get used to the scene settings and buttons.Here's a photo I took which I was very pleased with.

A quick bit of scrapbooking for you. We purchased photoshop a few weeks ago and I have joined one of Jessica Sprague's online digital scrapbooking courses which starts on Monday. For a bit of initial practise I have created a page using the tutorial and downloads she provides you. Here it is, a page about me and mum. I can't wait to start the course now.

Thanks for looking, I hope I haven't bored you.

Bye for now,

Hannah xx :)

It's too hot!!!

Sorry everyone, 'I'll update you all tomorrow' never happened!! The days are just sliding into one and the time is passing so quickly at the minute. Here we go though, another post.

I know everyone will moan at me for complaining about the weather, but it's just too hot. I love it when it's warm and hot and when I can get my summer clothes out, but not when it's so hot that you cannot be bothered to do anything like today has been.

However, I have got some stuff done today, not scrapbooking but nonetheless creative. Here's a sneak peek.
More pictures will come later on in the week.

My birthday and school prom are only 3 days away!! Yippee. I'm trying not to get excited as I'm very good at expecting something to be so good and then it being a let down, but I'm getting more excited as the days go by. I finished off my prom outfit a few days ago, I now have all of my accessories and feel ready to go out and enjoy it. Here's all of my accessories.

They are very big heels for me, the biggest I've had before are about half the height and double the base size, so I've been wearing them around home to get used to them. I'm doing OK at the minute, haven't fallen over yet.

Most of my friends have finished their exams now, a couple have one tomorrow but that's it, so we'll be able to meet up more often now. I went out earlier this week to do a photo shoot of some of my great friends who were willing to put up with me and the camera. I ended up with some results I was very proud of, and have been enjoying playing around with them in Photoshop a bit.

Not much more to add I don't think. I shall be back to post again this week as it looks set to be exciting and busy! :D

Bye for now.

Hannah xx :)