Christmas presents, biscuits and an Oxford update

Hi all,

I'll start off today by sharing with you the gifts I made for my girl friends. I decided to create a She Art girl for each, on an 8x10" canvas, with the girl based on them. I created an outfit that resembled an outfit I know they have or the style of outfit that I associate with them, and a saying that sums up their best quality. So here goes. I shall show you the canvases on here, and then shall post close ups of each on my Flickr page.

I hope you like them, and I hope my friends like them. Some have already opened them, but not all :)

I decided that whilst I had a little time and wanted a bit of a break, I would do some Christmas baking. So the other day I found a great recipe and set about baking some Christmas Spice Biscuits. I must say that actually they are really nice, even if I say so myself.
It was great fun to spend some time just baking, listening to carols and Christmas songs on the radio and smelling the gorgeous Christmas spices and the biscuits cooking. I had to take a photo of them ready to scrapbook, and took quite a few during the baking process, as I never seem to take many photos at Christmas, so am taking a lot this year as I have a Christmas pad that I am desperate to use :) I also really wanted to fetch out our 50mm lens and crank the aperture to f1.7, I love this shallow depth of field and don't seem to use it enough.
Here are a few of the biscuits :)

The recipe is here

So onto my Oxford news. Well I'm afraid to say that it isn't good news. I had my reply letter today and I have not been given an offer to Oxford. I say it's not good news, obviously I'd have been very proud to have received an offer and it would have been nice, but I'm not upset or bothered by the news, so it's not bad news. I am incredibly proud to have got as far down the Oxford application route as I have, and the interview experience was so brilliant. You may remember me writing shortly after visiting Bath university earlier in the year how much I absolutely loved it. Well it hasn't changed, and Bath and Oxford are both up there joint top of my university list. I haven't yet heard back from Bath, so my hopes now rest on there, and would be equally overjoyed getting to Bath as the course is amazing. Thank you very much for all of your support and encouragement throughout the university application process, I haven't given up hope yet and shall keep you updates with the further twist and turns of my application. :)

Ok, think that's it from me now.
If I do not get back on here before Christmas, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, I hope you all have a great time.
Bye for now,
Hannah :)

No place like home

Hi everyone,

How are you all? I am now back at school, I went back last Monday. It doesn’t feel like I am properly back at school yet though as I have only just got my maths lessons timetabled (don’t get me started on this, I’m not happy, we’ve missed a whole week of maths lessons just because the school can’t sort out timetables!!). I’ve had so many days of frees and hardly any work to do, and to be completely honest I’ve got bored of them now, I want to be doing work. At least no homework has meant I’ve had a little time to craft, and enjoy seeing relatives this past weekend.

Anyway, I’m here today to share my project for this week’s TPV challenge. Here it is.

 Today's challenge is:

House/Home week!

Incorporate the word, an embellishment, or the overall theme on your paper project. 

Or, make a home decor project!

So I created a canvas based on our house. I have wanted to make this for ages. After taking the She Art course and seeing everyone’s beautiful house canvases, I’ve wanted to try one.  I have used a lot of paper on this project, as after all, it is the PAPER variety, and we want to see you creating projects that use mainly paper . The entire background is made by layering torn bits of patterned papers, then a bit of tissue paper, paint and mist has also been added.  I have tried to keep this canvas very patterned, bright and with a doodle feel. The house was created by layering basic shapes cut from patterned papers, then doodling and stamping lightly over the top. I hope you like it. Here are a few close ups.

This challenge is sponsored by Paper Lovelies.

They are giving the random winner this lovely prize

The prize includes: 
My Mind's Eye  "Lucky Me" 130 piece paper/accessories pack

15 sheets of 12x12 cardstock paper

115 mix & match accessory pieces, including die cuts, titles, chipboard elements, journaling cards, transparencies.

I do hope you decide to play along with this challenge, and if you do, head over here to link up your project, and be in with a chance of winning that great prize :)

Thanks for visiting here today,

Bye for now,

I can’t wait to go to Ally Pally on Saturday and shop. I hope I’ll see some of you there, read here for details :)

Hannah :)

Found my own style

Today I thought I'd share with you 2 of the 3 She Art girls I created at the weekend. I am very pleased with them all, I feel I have really developed my own style now and it is recognisable in the last few I've created.

'She expressed herself through art'

I planned this girl a while back. I had kept the paint palette from the first few girls I'd created, with the view to using it as a background. I added a bit more paint to the already colourful palette, then added texture paste, bubble wrap prints, almost all of the technique's I've learnt from Christy. The pictures don't really do the texture of this piece any justice, because it was a paint palette their are lumps, bumps, bristle marks, all sorts of texture all over it. I really wanted to try this artist girl, and I am so pleased with the way she came out. I am pleased with the apron, the brushes sticking out of her pocket, and I wouldn't mind a pair of those spotty trousers myself !! :)

'She was the heart of the family'

This is another girl I have had planned out in my head for a while. I'm pleased with the finished product, I like her clothing and hair, plus, as with the first, I have loved the way people on the flickr group have been mixing lettering for the words, so have tried it on both and loved it. She is on a sheet of chipboard measuring 6x10", as have many of my previous girls. I am planning to bind them all into a book once I've decorated them, plus do the odd one on canvas to go around the house (like the 3rd one from this weekend which I shall show you soon :) )

I hope you like them both.
Bye for now,

A nation together

So who watched it then, the royal wedding? 
I was amazed at the amount of people who were in London yesterday, and the amount that must have been sat at home watching it.
I watched it, we ended up getting together as a family, my Uncle, Aunt, Nan, Grandad and us 4, all crowded around the tele watching it. Well, I say us 4, James watched part of it then went off to watch/do something else. Wasn't it incredible!! I wasn't expecting to watch it all and feel the way I did about it, but it felt such a special and momentous occasion, the thought that we have just watched a completely normal young woman marry into the royal family. My favourite part, although I never actually saw it, I have just seen little clips and photos, I loved the drive back down the mall in the Aston Martin. The reason I loved it, they looked like a completely normal and everyday couple, that's the sort of thing anyone would do, and it was so great to see :)
It was a very strong reminder yesterday that really, anything is possible. Kate will have grown up, very much like me and many others including some of you, playing dressing up, putting on a tiara, pretending to be a princess, watching Disney films (well, that isn't very me as I'm not a big Disney fan). It just goes to show that we don't know our future, we don't know who we'll stumble into, and which of our dreams may very well come true. They both looked so happy, so joyous, and what a wedding, she can't have ever expected a wedding like that, not in her wildest dreams when she was younger. So, congratulations to them both, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge :)

So, onto some crafting. On Thursday night, I added a girl to the bright background I made about a week ago. I am very pleased with her, here she is

 As the backgroun was very bright I felt it called for a very summery girl, wearing a summer outfit. So I gave her a vest top and demin shorts.

I attempted sunglasses and I am very pleased with them. I used a canvas another member of the class had done for inspiration for the hair, then created some sunglasses to sit up in her hair. I love the words I have written on the canvas, something I really believe in, they read 'True beauty comes from within'.

So, I hope you like her. :D

Bye for now,

Friday's child ...

..is loving and giving.

These are the words I have written on my latest canvas. I am really pleased with it, it's the first one that I've created that I've been pleased with immediately.

Maybe the fact that I love the background makes the difference.

I love the little flowers that I made her hold

I decided not to add many rub-ons or details on to her dress as I really loved it when I'd finished and I didn't want to risk ruining it. Plus, as she is meant to be a young girl, I decided to keep her simple, free and delicate.

I did add a little detail to the bottom of her dress and gave her some small cotton socks with ruffled edges which to me just shout young girls (I always used to wear them :) ) I used tissue paper to make a ruffled trim to her dress.

I love this sun, it is a direct copy of the amazing sun that I saw Christy do and I just love it :)

If any of you have been struggling to decide whether to take one of Christy's classes, then don't hesitate, and if you haven't looked at her classes, then head over to her blog here and take a look. She is a fantastic teacher, and the HD videos that she makes are brilliant. As she is working away, she chats and makes you feel completely welcome and at ease. I am constantly saying cute now, and many times I find myself talking back to her on the videos and have to stop myself!! I don't think she is running the She Art class again for a little while, but she has a different one coming up called 'She Has 3 Hearts', so go and have a look if you are tempted. I have love love loved this class, and still have a few more videos to watch :)

I hope you all had a good Easter and have enjoyed the bank holiday weekend. We have another next week, yipee, thanks Will and Kate, you planned it well :) We had a good Easter, we had an Easter egg hunt in our back garden, take a look at Mum's blog here for some pics :)

Ok, bye for now

Second She Art

I'm back, with a second she art girl which I made earlier this week. At first I didn't like it, I felt I'd made it too grungy and covered up her dress too much, but it's been one of those craft projects that has grown on me and I now like it :)

I decided to use Emilie's colour challenge with this She Art girl, so I used the two shades of blue and the white in the background, then used the white and the brown for the dress. :)

Here are a few close ups

The photos don't really show it well, but this background is sooo textured, I can't help but keep running my hands over it!! I have created the texture by using some daler-rowney texture paste that I've bought from hobbycraft. It was fairly expensive but you don't use much on each canvas so it will stretch far and it was one of the best things I've bought for these so far, it's made so much of a difference to the backgrounds :)

I'm really pleased with her hair, I felt the colour and pen looked awful at first but with the addition of the hairband and flower I like it now.

I decided the other day to sit down and make just a few backgrounds as one of the things I don't like about the background of this girl is that the details have disappeared. At first, like I always do with everything, I tried to use too much on the backgrounds and went over the top, so I decided that doing a few canvas background at the same time would stop me doing this as I'd share the techniques between the two so they don't get overcrowded. I am really pleased I did it like this as I loveeee the two backgrounds I managed to make. Here they are

I shall show you some close ups of these background when I have done girls on them :)

On another note, I decided today, in the nice weather, I'd get mum to take a photo of me to set as my profile picture as the one I have at the minute is a few years old. It needed updating and you can't really get much more up to date than this, here is me, the photo taken this morning, and that is exactly what I look like as I sit and type this to you right now :)

I hope you're enjoying the lovely weather, well I say lovely, but being part of a family that's interested in the environment and my dad is an accountant for farmers, we are wishing for rain so that the crops don't fail!! I'm in my SHORTS today, that really isn't right for April !!!

P.S. for those of you who may have noticed, I've changed my watermark, and yes, it is now a dandelion, I really am obsessed with them, they look so beautiful at the minute, I keep seeing them everywhere at the minute and am resisting the urge to get the camera out. YOU HAVE ENOUGH PHOTOS OF THEM HANNAH!!!!

Anyway, bye for now. 

She Art Girls

Hi everyone,

I couldn't resist, I saw so many of these gorgeous She Art girls from people taking Christy Tomlinson's workshop that I couldn't resist when I saw her advertising the second workshop. So I joined up, it started on Monday and boy am I glad it's the holidays as it's meant I didn't have to resist the big urge to have a go. As soon as you start watching her videos your creative juices start flowing, so here is my first canvas.



I am really pleased with her. The background is very busy but I think it needs to be as she doesn't take up a very large proportion of the canvas so it needs to be an interesting background.

I hope you like it. Doing this first practise girl has made me realise which extra things I need, so I have my shopping list written!! :D

Bye for now :)

Monkey Madness !!

Hi everyone,

I have followed Helen's amazing craft blog for a while (click here to visit it), she creates some brilliant little gifts which have inspired me for gifts this christmas (dare I mention it!!) Helen also has another blog, her monkey blog, which I just love. I stumbled across it and thought the monkeys were so gorgeous, at first I thought Helen had knitted them, but when I found the post mentioning buying them from ebay I couldn't resist.

So here they are, our monkeys which we managed to win for a brilliant price. I've told James he can have the small monkey, which he has named Boris, but am still to come up with a name for mine, so any ideas would be welcome.

It's coming to the end of our half term now, I've been a bit naughty and not really got much work done, but plan to over the next few days. I did have an aim to start and complete a piece of artwork for my bedroom wall over this half term, I've started, but I'm not sure it'll get finished!! I'm not even half way through it yet! This is how it looks currently, it's a collage of things I care about and are special to me, plus bits that just look pretty!!

(Sorry about the colours in the photos, I've taken them this evening so the lightbulbs have made it look orangey!!)

I hope you like it, I'll blog any more progress I make.

In the meantime, any name suggestions for my monkey are welcome, and I hope you are well.

Hannah :)

A few things to show

I hope everyone is keeping well, I'm busy doing revision ready for my first exam on Tuesday.

I have decided that I will keep a diary throughout my exams and for the rest of the year. Those of you that have read some of my past posts may remember that I am dreadful at keeping diaries, I have begun many but never stuck to them. This time I am determined, I want to be able to look back at my GCSE's in years to come as they are so important. Plus I wish to document my blissful summer holidays with no revision or work and then the beginning of sixth form. I asked mum to buy me a pretty notebook today whilst out as I want to be able to do a variation of entry sizes and may even want to include photos, so decided a notebook would be better than a specific diary. This is what she came home with.

I LOVE it!! Paperchase is such an amazing shop. It's so pretty, mum knows my taste so well. Mum and I love stationery, mainly because you can get so many good scrapbooking ideas from it. I think our love for stationery has been something we've always had, mum is well known in the family to make lists of everything in notebooks, and as a child I would buy a notebook and pencil as a souvenir of every place I've been! Mum only discovered the wonderful world of Paperchase today, but she already loves it. Another thing I asked mum to buy for me was an autograph book, ready for my last few proper weeks at school. This is the book she brought for me. It is a day trippers photo journal, which I'm sure is pretty self explanatory. Mum liked the book and brought it with the view that I could either use it as an autograph book or keep it for what it is for. The pages inside are brilliant, with a mixture of plain pages, watermarked images and then these fabulous plastic pocket pages.

Throughout the book there are a few of these pages, with a few different pocket designs, some small, some big. They're great, perfect for holiday and trip memorabilia. I'm going to save it, it's too good to use as an autograph book! I am going on a plane on holiday for the first time this summer to Ireland, and I can see this book as being perfect for the trip.

Just another thing I wanted to show you. I decorated this canvas a few years ago for my old bedroom. It looked great in my room, a perfect colour match and the design matched my duvet cover. Now we've moved, it no longer goes with the room, however, never mind, as it means I have chance to make a new one now. I'm looking forward to the freedom from homework so much in the forthcoming summer holidays that I've already begun my list of things to do, and decorating a new canvas is on it!

I'm off now to play a board game with James, and then I shall have to do my first diary entry in my new book! Take care and enjoy your weekend.

Hannah :D