Dolly's Dreamings

It's A Creative World Blog Hop with freebies

 

So it is finally here - THE event of the Spring season. A very special It's A Creative World Blog Hop

You should have arrived from the amazing Sutty's blog (her work is awesome ... simply awesome)

In case you get lost, the full list of links is at the end of this post.

I am so proud to be a part of It's A Creative World. There are so many talented ladies who scrap, craft, sew, bake, crochet, ink, stamp, garden and just plain rock out crafts. And to celebrate Spring we have got together to do a very special blog hop where you can see so many different ideas that we hope will inspire you to be creative yourself.

And there are even some freebies along the way.

My little freebie is a $5 voucher for Pickleberrypop so you can snaffle up something for yourself to help you get creative for Spring. There are so many great Spring kits available and whether you are a digital scrapper or a paper scrapper you will see things you love. If you are a paper scrapper you could spend the voucher on things to print to add to your pages such as cool journalling blocks and word art or images to make cards.

 

So IT'S FREE  and it is money to SPEND. What have you got to loose? Just pop a comment in the box at the end of the post and a free $5 could be yours.

 

I will pick a winner by selecting a random comment on Monday morning. So ALL YOU HAVE TO DO is leave a comment below and you could have a little Spring bonus to spend.

 So now on to my offerings for the blog hop - a couple of spring pages and cards

 Firstly, I fell in love with this range from Prima called The Sun Kissed Collection. I think it shouted SPRING! I was lucky to get to go to a local farm at lambing time and, whilst we didn't see any lambs born that night, we did see lots of cute little lambs just a couple of hours old and the love their gentle mothers showed was such an inspiration.

 

I used lots of small flowers, adding beaded centres and also a cute chipboard butterfly stamped with brilliance shimmer inks and text to coordinate with the page.

 I don't know about you but no matter how many letters and alphas I have I never have the right colour to coordinate with my page. So for this page I inked some chipboard letters and then stamped them with text and then versamark ink before using clear embossing powder - several coats - so that they look like enamel.

and I also used some cute new dies I bought from Memory Box - some lovely swirls and a cute little picket fence die.

 

Never one to miss the chance to use up scraps I made a card with some of the leftovers.

 

I used one of the Prima Notecards as the background and added flowers and butterflies from the Hero Arts/Sizzix Framelits set - which is a joy to use.

and for those of you who are digi scrappers - or those of you who fancy a bit of hybrid and want to use your $5 voucher, here are some digital and hybrid ideas.

 

This card uses  

Day of Grace Full Kit by Trixie Scraps Designs available at Pickleberrypop

 

 and this page uses the same kit

and the spring freshness in Dawn Inskip's Enchanted Garden collection from Scrapbookgraphics is great for your spring pages.

and  this one using a lot of Dawn Inskip products from her on line store here

And finally this springlike page using a whole range of products from Pickleberrypop and was made using Fayettes template for this month's template challenge (You so have to check out their challenges -they rock!. Find them here )

So enjoy your Spring whatever you do and remember to comment below to have a chance at winning a $5 voucher to spend in the store.

 From here you are hopping off to MANDY's Blog 

I can guarentee you are going to love what she has in store for you! 

Happy crafting and, if you get lost, here is the list of all of the blogs from the hop

Start at IACW-

1-Laura-

3-Doda -

4-Gabrielle-

5-Eleanor

6-Erika-

7-Ifa-

8-Katherine-

9-Dolly-

10-Mandy-

11-Leanne-

12- Kerry-

13- Tracey-

Finish _IACW

New toys to play with

I got home to find an order I placed at the weekend waiting for me. It is a lush set of Hero Arts Sizzix stamps and die cuts and I am already in love.

I haven't really played, just stamped a couple of the images, cut them out - so easy - and had a quick colour.

The detail on the stamps is lush and I am loving the dies.

I can feel another addiction coming but I intend to resist.

I don't make enough cards to warrant this, but I can justify this set as I will use them on pages.

I also had another gift which Nij wasn't sure I would want. You may remember he has been doing some work and training with Bourjois Cosmetics (lots of lovely free samples) well he had a sample of a big bottle of Soire du Paris perfume and it's very nice. Yes please ... thenk you.

As I feel I don't make enough cards to justify more of the Hero Arts sets I figured today I would share a card I made at the weekend.

It was for the daughter of a friend of mine who has just secured a great job. She is a huge animal lover and so it was, in every way, a very appropriate card.

 

Today I am thankful for

• the fact there are so many wonderful crafty things out there - new ideas all the time.

and this is my one minute devotional calendar page today

It had been six years since I’d lost my left leg to cancer, and I had finally found a sport I could compete in: ski racing. I’d been skiing for years, but this was my first race. I was nervous. An official wearing a radio headset was counting down: “Five … four … three … two … one … go, racer!”

I pushed through the starting wand and accelerated out of the gate. On the first turn, I almost lost my balance as my ski scraped across the ice. I continued to flail through the course until the third turn, when my ski slid out from under me and I crashed. I looked down to see if my ski was still attached to my boot. It was, so I was allowed to get back up.

Three turns later, I fell again. I got back up. Then I fell again. In total, I fell five times before I finally crossed the finish line. At this rate, I was sure I’d never make the Paralympics, the quadrennial competition for athletes with physical disabilities. Then I remembered something my coach had said: “It’s not the falling that matters for you right now as much as the getting back up.”

That’s just the path my ski racing career has followed—a lot of falling, a lot of praying, a lot of getting back up. Five years later, when I did make the Paralympics, I managed to fall a lot less, but I never forgot the lesson I learned from that first race: Persistence, not perfection, is what counts.

Finally - another couple of those amazing photos (nearly done with those now!)

Airport in the Maldives is located on an artificial island in the middle of the Indian Ocean

Lighthouse guard in Mare , France must be one of the most courageous people on the planet! Not everyone will have a smoke in such weather, and in such a place!

Photo of storm in Montana , USA , 2010

 

Skyscraper-Crescent Crescent Moon Tower ( Dubai )

Heavy fog in Sydney , which enveloped the whole city

Not a 10 - more of a 3

Some days are 10s. You bounce along - well not literally but metaphorically speaking - and life is good. You feel a picture of health ... well apart from the arthritic knees, the duff ankle and the short and long sightedness ... and life is good. Other day .... mmmm, not so much. Some days are just plain poorly days and much as you try to pretend they are not, it sort of catches up on you and you end up just having to give in.
Thankfully they are not the norm. Thankfully they are few and far between. Thankfully it is a very minor blip compared to the awful stuff some people have to cope with. And actually, they serve to remind you not of your own fragility, but rather of how lucky you are that the poorly days stand out as odd rather than the good days being the unusual ones.

Plus, along the way there is ually a very very kind hubby who, as luck would have it, was working in a chemist today, and so was able to shop for what you needed. See, every cloud has a silver lining.

 
I will get better which is more than I can say for our fridge.

It was just two weeks ago I posted that we were a little disappointed that having steeled ourselves that we would need a new fridge and picking one out, the fridge was mended after all. Mmmm .... seems not actually. It is back to not working againa nd the next stage would be to replace a fairly major part and we'd be looking at over £200 and still having a fridge that, to be honest, we didn't entirely trust. I am bored with throwing chicken away now and so last night, terrifying as it might be, we ordered a new fridge that arrives tomorrow. Bang goes any dreams of saving for an iPad!

However, we did manage to find it at Boots, £150 cheaper than the next cheapest, which was also a sale price at £200 less than usual, so a saving of £350 plus extra Virgin miles for shopping through their gateway plus air miles for using the Virgin card plus Boots advantage points - heck, it is almost like they are paying us to have the thing!

I guess it may - fingers crossed - be the picture of the day tomorrow.

I have a page to share today which was made for the weekly challenge on UKS.

It is very much a hybrid page as I made the butterflies digitally then printed and coloured, I made the word art digitally and printed.

 

The word art was fun to do and I had forgotten how much I like making those little title blocks up

The challenge included using butterflies and I do love butterflies. Not only are they pretty but they are also so symbollic.

 

Today I am thankful for

• giving in and being gentle with myself
• General good health ... too easy to take for granted.
• Nigel getting to do something he enjoyed today

 

My one minute devotional calendar page today was lovely and reminded me very very much of a trip we made to Big Pit in wales 25 years ago. It was the darkest blackest thing ever and I still can't beleive I managed it. My claustrophobia is worse now and I don't think I could do it now ... but I am glad I did it and could experience total blackness.

TOUR A COAL MINE! The billboard fairly shouted as we drove along Canada’s east coast. “Can we, Mom? Can we?” The two youngest kids, ages nine and ten at the time, were game to do anything that held even a hint of adventure.

“Oh, I suppose we could,” I replied without really thinking about it.

The grizzled old coal miner who acted as our guide handed each tourist a waterproof cape and helped us adjust the lights on our miners’ helmets. As we rattled down underground in the steel cage of an elevator, the guide proceeded to fill us in on the gory details of every disaster that had ever occurred in this particular mine. The elevator cage jolted to a stop at the bottom of the shaft. “Okay, everybody, turn the lights out on your helmets, so you can experience how dark a coal mine really is!”

The darkness was impenetrable. “Gee, Mom, I can’t even tell if my eyes are open or not!” our son exclaimed. Nor could I. We stood for a moment, experiencing the absolute absence of all light: pitch blackness. Scary, real scary. And cold, clammy cold.

“Okay, you can turn your lights on now and come this way.” The beam of light from my miner’s helmet caught the fluorescent heels of the running shoes worn by the tall tourist ahead of me. By bending my head just so, I could follow in his steps, while he, in turn, focused on the guide. Playing “follow the leader” spared me from succumbing to my absolute worst fear—being left alone in the twists and turns of that pitch-dark mine shaft.

The tour over, we squeezed back into the elevator cage. I held my breath as it creaked and groaned its way to the surface.

“That was neat, huh, Mom?” exclaimed our son. “What did you like best?”

“The fellow’s shoes who walked ahead of me,” I replied.

Father God, thank You for those whose lives are so focused on You that I can safely follow in their steps. And thank You for offering to be the guiding light to us all.

Home Decor budget style

Today I have a home decor idea to share and some pretty general ramblings.

I did a fair bit of work yesterday so that I truly could have a day off - and a lovely day it has been too.

I have scrapped, I have read, I have watched TV and I have switched off and relaxed.

My photo of the day is the new bird feeder as Nij finished re-siting it where we hope it will stay.

I really hoped that we would see birds straight away but i knew that was unlikely and it would take them a while to get used to it.

So imagine our joy when we saw my favourite little bird of all, the robin, on the feeder. We had bought special robin suet cakes with mealworms (lovely!!!) and he obviously knew they were just for him and he has spent a lot of the afternoon on his little robin cake. So much so we doubt he can still fly!

We have also seen several tits - we think coaltits or great tits, but we think we have also seen greenfinches on there as well. I have spent a fair bit of the day just sitting and watching. And smiling.

I have a project to share today that I haven't shared before but was made a while ago. It is a clock for the library downstairs.

The clock was one I have had for ages and I think it was a Creating memories clock - just a big square piece of wood with the clock mechanism.

First I painted the edges and then I covered it with some beautiful paper. The paper is K and Co from the Blue Awning range  (my favourite range of papers ever)  It is just so subtle with browns and creams and blues - the perfect colours for the library. It is flocked and so has a lovely texture to it.

I cut several butterflies from an off cut of a wallpaper sample that we almost used int he room. The room is brown and cream with this bright peacock blue as an accent colour and it made the perfect thing to cut the butterflies from. I cut several and overlayed them to give real dimension.

I also made several paper roses from the same papers. I stamped some with text and added different inks to change the tones.

The letters were cut on the robo. I couldn't use chipboard as there wasn't quite enough clearance for the hands. They were cut from another paper sample we didn't use.

 

 

I love projects that are cheap to make and just take  little time to do.

Today I am thankful for

• a truly restful day and a good recharge of my batteries.

Playing catch up

I'm not sure if everyone is like me. When you have a long span of time ahead of you and a lot of tasks that you know you need to get done, are you like me and don't do any of them?

I accomplish so much more in term time. I am energised and ready to go all of the time. On holiday I seem to just vegitate, it takes me ages to do things that I do really quickly when I have no time.
This holiday - and I had almost 3 weeks stretching ahead of me - I was planning on finishing my counselling course. Of course, I didn't even start it until today. Typical.

So consequently I have worked really hard today to try and finish things off.

I didn't manage any scrapping but do have another new page that I made last week for the 2011 album. One of the things that had not made it to the album was Paris. It was such a significant time for us, re-visiting the city of our honeymoon and renewing our vows on our 25th wedding anniversary. I had made an album just of Paris, but of course it needed to feature in the album of the year. So here is the one page that made it to the main album of 2011.

 
I couldn't find backing paper I liked so I made my own from a digital kit and printed it.

The leaves and letters are also digitally made and printed. They were printed on card and then mounted on thick chipboard which was a pain then to hand-cut but does look effective.

The two tags pull out and detail the events and show some more photos.

And of course, lots of stitching LOL

 I have taken my photo of the day - Nij picked his Mom up from Coventry today (been with oldest brother over New Year) so we popped into Pizza Hut when they got back. (might as well make the most of it - no naughty pizzas after Wednesday LOL )

I received an e mail from my friend Heather in the US today with a fabulous link to a great Bengal cat called Kaiser who can do some pretty neat tricks (and a beautful Bengal he is too)

 

MY Bengals can open doors as well as shut them LOL but I don't think they could manage too many of the other tricks. Well not on command anyway. Leaving the treat until told was very impressive (mine would NEVER master that one) and the weaving between the legs was brilliant. Walking on the owners feet cracked me up. I hope you enjoyed it too.

 Today I am thankful for

• finally cracking on with the course and hopefully completing it
• Great friends who send me such cool links
• You Tube - such a great resource for everything

Snowfall album

I have been enjoying scrapping frenzy and have lots of new things to share, but today I want to share a mini book I have just finished. It is actually quiote a large mini book but I am just so pleased with it I can't wait to share it.

I have to thank Jane for my wonderful Secret Santa present which included many of the papers I have used. I had some from the range but she sent me some lush papers, lace, chipboard etc from the Bo Bunny set which made this album possible.

We rarely get snow down here - it's always sunny you know and at least 20 degrees LOL. Seriously, snow is a rarity but last year, like the rest of the UK, we were in the grip of a really cold snowy spell with two significant falls on 2nd and 20th December. It was stunning and I took so many photos and just wanted to record them all together.

 

I based it on the album design by Laura at Following the Paper Trail (seriously, that woman is my idol, everything she makes is so inspiring and I just want to follow all of her classes and guides. She is amazing) I haven't included every page - and yes I hear those sighs of relief - but you get the general idea.

 

 The nice thing about the album is there are so many pockets and spaces

 

 

Today I am thankful for

• solving a technical computer PSE issue I was stuck with
• a lovely day scrapping

Best Christmas present ever

I am sure that we will both be very lucky this Christmas with lots of lovely gifts but actually, today, we had the best Christmas present of all. We had good news about Kira.

Regular readers – and I know there are a lot of you – will remember that back in June we had health worries about Kira. She had developed small flecks in her eyes, which can be fine or can be sinister, and they had grown rather rapidly over a year or so. We had taken her to our own vet who said he was unsure about quite whether or not they were just pigment changes or were something more sinister. He referred us to a wonderful ophthalmologist specialist in Christchurch to have her checked out. Emma, the vet in Christchurch, is so lovely. She really spends time with the animals before rushing in to an exam, building a bond so they cope better with what is actually quite an invasive examination. Kira had so many tests in June – we were there over an hour – and some of them were very unpleasant for her, but she took them all with relative good humour. Emma had told us we needed to watch how the flecks developed as there was a possibility they could be a malignancy as they had grown quite rapidly and in one place looked a little raised. The problem is you cannot do a biopsy on the eye. The treatment, if it was looking strongly like it was a malignancy, would be to remove the eye (a painful; op[ with a painful; recovery period) They can then test it and may find the eye has been removed needlessly. Couple that with the fact I have a real phobia about eyes and blindness and it was a terrible worry.  

Emma’s advice was to return in six months and see how things had developed – or not.

We took photos and I also went back through my archives (I knew the fact they were the most photographed cats in the world would pay off one day) so we could chart the changes.

 

We went back today. I guess most cats don’t like car trips but Kira is the one we dread taking anywhere more than the others as she travels badly. She will not sit in a carrier as she had a bad experience in a poorly made carrier which cut her fact, so she sits on my knee and screams the whole way. THAT we can cope with, but she also gets herself into such a state she mouth breathes (which is something, apparently, that cats don’t do and which is NOT a good thing) It freaks me put and I worry she will just die in my arms as her heart (and she has a heart defect anyway … goodness this cat is a mess!) pounds away and she hyper ventilates. Actually on the way back today she added a new twist to her terrifying travel repertoire and for the last 10 minutes foamed at the mouth and I mean A LOT!

Anyway, we managed to get her there and she heralded our arrival from the car park with her special brand of piercing cries (yes … another vets’ surgery that has already realised you hear us coming long before we enter)

Emma was again brilliant with her, taking time to reassure her and us, before the examination.

The good news was that Emma was happy that though flecks in both eyes had grown they were smooth, there was no sign of loose pigment, her pupils were equal and equally reactive and her pressures were good.

I had been terribly worried about what we would do if the prognosis was bad. We’d discussed it and were both erring on the side of leaving her be not having the op if we had to make the decision, but we are so very very relieved that, for the moment, no decision is needed.

It really is the best present ever. Poor Kira has already been through so much with all of her allergies and biopsies and stuff and actually, even though the examination wasn’t nice, she was very good about it all. She is a special little girl and we love her to bits

I have made my JYC page – about Kira – but haven’t photographed it yet.

I have photographed Sam’s calendar I have made for her though.

 

 

Today I am thankful for

• Kira not having the bad news we feared
• Wonderful vets who are so caring and so expert

 

Calendar Part 2

I know I won't get a chance to post for real this evening so I am setting this in advance and have more of the calendar pages to share from yesterday's post.

The more I look at it now it is done, the happier I am and I do think I may make a couple as gifts - obviously witht heir own photos LOL

 

Now that I have made this one I do fancy making one with numbers that flip over and months that flip over so I can make it into a perpetual calendar -although I guess you would get fed up of the same pictures each year so maybe an annual one is the way to go.

 

and finally - and I can hear the sighs of relief - here is the final page (which just had to be in there because I don't expect I will ever get to sit on santa's knee again.

and this is absolutely my sort of humour - and when couple with a cute kitty ... what's not to like!

Simple Desk Calendar

Today I want to share a simple desk calendar I made. Well it looks simple. And I guess the next one would be simple to make - if there ever was a next one!

It took ages, because I had to figure out all the templates and then make all the calendar templates too. That is what took so long.

Making the pages was the easy bit.

The stand was simply very thick card - more like chipboard. It was folded to make a M or W, depending on which way you view it.

I had to make joins, but you don't see them when it is finished.

The whole thing is then bound together - you could use book rings but I used the Bind It All.

The pages are all photos from 2011 from the right month witht he exception of November (it was just too good a picture to miss) and december as they were both taken in December 2010.

 

 

 

That's probably enough photo overload for today - I will post some more another day, but you get the idea. And yes, it would have been far quicker to have had one printed at Photobox .... but not as satisfying as I am a tenacious little madam when I want to be LOL

Today I am thankful for

• a finished project

Free Gratitude Thanksgiving word art

It's been a bit of a scrapping frenzy here today. Possibly because I didn't scrap at all yesterday.

I had the bright idea of making calendars for gifts. I wasn't sure how it would pan out so I thought I would start with one for my office as a trial.

It took forever to make the templates. I kept telling myself once they were done it would be easy.

Well it was easier, but not easy. I have made half of mine and guess what - I am planning buying alternate gifts for everyone else as I am NOT making a whole heap of these unless they are all the same LOL.

Anyway - to go with them I needed some word art and so thought, as it had a thanksgiving theme, I would share it here as I haven't shared a freebie in a while.

There are two versions in the download. A transparent and one with a background. They are both high res png files and so should print well. I used mine on a transparency.

 

 

Download HERE

 I haven't got my calendar to share yet - hopefully it may be done at some point this week.

Today I am thankful for

• time to create
• new things to play with