Happy New Year from the Crafty Blogger

First things first:
Hope you all had a good one. We celebrated with a few friends, quite a few drinks and a lot of bad singing courtesy of the new(ish) Singstar Abba. If you've seen Mama Mia and thought Pierce Brosnan was bad, he's got nothing on me!


Well I've had an excellent start to the New Year, my first ever blog award. The lovely Sarah has awarded me this !


Sarah makes fantastic cards so I was honoured she picked my blog to forward the award to. Check out her blog and cards here.


Now the rules of the award are that you have to name 5 addictions and 5 fave blogs. So here goes:


My 5 addictions:


1) Making cards and papercraft projects
2) Felt (to go with no. 1)

3) Trying to get better with my camera, and posting my efforts on Flickr

4) Morecambe Bay Potted shrimps

5) Rubbish chick flick movies - the cheesier the better!


Now my five favourite blogs (in no particular order), who I've chosen to pass the award on to:


1) Jo Kill's brilliant card making blog - Jo is the queen of cards for me.

2) Paper-and-String - Fab blog for all felt fans out there.

3) Emma Bagladee - Fab bag designer and blogger

4) Artfartymacs crafty news space - You are never short of inspiration on Claire's blog as I think she produces on average 1 card an hour, compared with my 1 every 8 weeks!

5) Jen's Journey - I don't scrap but I love looking at what Jen comes up with on her blog.



I did intend to blog after Christmas but somehow never got round to it so I will have to combine it in this post.


We had a lovely time a Craftyblogger HQ, and were lucky enough to receive some fab presents. The man in the big red suit was particulary kind to me this year and I got this BEAUTY:
I am now a fully fledged Nigella wannabe as I have my own KitchenAid mixer. It also goes very well with the bright pink apron my friend bought me with 'Kitchen Goddess' embroidered on the front.

And here's a rare shot of me proving that I do actually use the mixer, rather than just photographing and stroking it. (I was making Nigella's Norweigan Cinnamon Buns - highly recommended)

I can't finish my post without mentioning my TV highlight of the Christmas period. I know a lot of you out there love Dr Who, and in particular Mr Tennant (well who wouldn't), but the thing which got me most excited was the new Jonathon Creek Christmas Special.

I love that programme so much. I was like a child on Christmas Eve waiting for it to start. Mr Crafty Blogger and I settled down with a nice bottle of red and some Christmas chocolates to watch it. A perfect night and JC and his new assistant didn't dissapoint.

Not quite a good as the Black Canary Christmas special but still excellent entertainment. As a friend of mine once said, 'it's like Scooby Doo with real people' and who can argue with that! Here's a clip courtesy of the Beeb.

I really hope they make some more.

Finally I have managed to sneak in a bit of crafting, a quick mum to be card.

Image is Pink Petticoat, Basic Grey paper, and of course felt flowers!

Must dash, card to make and domestic goddess type things to do!

Cheers

Ruthie x

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas to everyone who reads this. Hope you all have a good one and Santa brings you lots of lovely things off your list.

All the shopping is done, just got a couple of pressies to wrap and then it's time to chill.

As I said yesterday I was still doing cards. They are all now finished so here are the last pics of this year's Christmas cards:

Mr Crafty Blogger's:

One for my Mum and Dad:

One for my Sister and boyfriend:

And finally a little message from me:

Cheers Everyone, Ruthie x

Still Got Stuff To Do

Well, it's the 23rd of December and I am still making Christmas cards! I did Mr Crafty Blogger's and my sister's this afternoon and I've got to finish my Mum and Dad's. I also did a couple on Sunday for friend's two daughters. It was a bit of a rush job to get them finished before they arrived for a visit and they were barely dry before I put them in the envelope. I still managed to get a quick pic of one of them though:

The die cut teddies and suits are from ebay, papers are from an old DCWV Christmas pad.

My Christmas celebrations officially began on Saturday when I went to 'Christmas With The Lancashire Hotpots' at 53 Degrees in Preston. For those of you who don't know The Lancashire Hotpots are a modern folk band. Or as they put it - '21st century folk, for 21st century folk!'

It was a brilliant gig, and they did all their old favourites such are 'He's Turned EMO', and ' Chippy Tea', and my favourite from their new album, a track called 'The Girl From Bargain Booze'.

One of the friends we went with filmed Chippy Tea (warning it does contain the use of the F word, just the once, don't press play if easily offended)

A cracking night was had by all!

Also on my last post I promised pics of my other Christmas tree, so here it is.

And here is one of my funky little owls.

Thanks for looking. I should be back tomorrow with the pics of all my final cards.

Cheers

Ruthie x

Tree's Up

Well I have finally caught the traditional Christmas cold and I am in the middle of a very sore-nosed snot fest. At least I've managed to do all my Christmas shopping, but I still have cards to make and write and I think my crafty-mojo has disappeared into one of many snotty tissues!

Anyway at weekend I did manage to put up the Christmas trees. As we moved house earlier this year I thought I would treat us to a bigger tree, and here it is :

I don't really like the wall behind it, but hopefully the new year will bring about a spot of decorating!

Another shot, this time a close-up of one of my favourite decs:

The little tree we had at the old Crafty Blogger HQ has also been put up but I've not got any pics yet. Will post some soon, along with some shots of the fab jewelled owl decs I bought for it.

Cheers

Ruthie x

Jug of Tea - R.I.P

Anyone who has popped over to my Flickr photostream will have seen that I rather like taking photos in Morecambe. I was minding my own business this morning (well afternoon really, it was a bit of late one last night) mooching round Flickr when I stumbled across the news that Morecambe's most photographed landmark, the Jug of Tea cafe is no more.

The Jug of Tea Flickr group has been renamed accordingly, and now contains photographic evidence of what remains - a pile of bricks! Tributes are flying in and all 23 group members (me included) are officially in mourning.

A tribute has also been posted on the fantastic I Like blog.

I will miss the old place, not to mention the fact that I have forked out good money for a room at the Midland which HAD a cracking view of the JOT. I was looking forward to celebrating my wedding anniversary looking out over Morecambe bay and the Jug of Tea. I might ring them to see if I can get some money off.

Here's a couple of shots I took of the old place: And finally, my last ever shot of the Jug of Tea.

It has been good to many photographers and passing tourists over the years and will be sadly missed. I think at one point it served jugs of tea as well!

Cheers,

Ruthie (off to drown her sorrows in a Jug of Tea!)

An Unconventional Christmas Wreath

As I said yesterday I have another Christmas crafty project to blog and here it is, my slightly unconventional Christmas Wreath:

It was inspired by THIS fantastic creation.

I used new bottlecaps as I find used ones don't flatten as easily (about 80p a bag from Wilko's home brewing dept) and the papers are all Basic Grey. The circles are cut using the large red sizzix circles die and stuck to the caps using transparent bathroom sealant (ie cheap silicone glue). I attached the caps to a cardboard base using more bathroom sealant.

Thanks for looking,

Ruthie x

Christmas is Coming....

... a bit too fast if you ask me!

I've hardly made any cards and still have loads of stuff to sort, but never mind.

I have however done some Christmas crafting. One of the girls at work had bought a little pre-decorated tree for her desk but she thought it was a little bare and needed a few extra bits adding so I offered to make her a fairy to go on the top. I remembered that a few weeks ago the fantastic Maddy posted a tutorial/challenge on the Crafts By Carolyn forum to make peg fairies and I decided one of these would make the perfect tree topper. So here she is, Julie the Peg Fairy: (She is named after her new owner).

I took her into the office this morning and she went down a storm.

I've also got another crafty christmas project to finish which will hopefully be on here by the weekend.

On the subject of Christmas crafting, my sister has recently taken up cake decorating and sugarcraft. She has decorated the most fantastic cake for us at Crafty Blogger HQ and I thought I would share a couple of pics:

It's not all Christmas crafting at Crafty Blogger HQ, a couple of birthday cards have also gone out recently.

The Christmas tree goes up this weekend too, so Christmas really is nearly here, better get cracking!

Cheers,

Ruthie x