Erm ... Happy New Year :)

I know. Bad blogger I am. I have sinfully neglected my blog since way back when (eeek before Christmas!). Truth is I have sort of put myself into hibernation (I always get the post Christmas blues but this year was really bad). My Mum gave me a bit of a stern talking to so I am trying my best to get myself back up and running again and 'out there'. I have very shamefully been neglecting my friends too so I have a heck of a lot of apologising and catching up to do very quickly. I started today by forcing myself out of bed before 9am in order to get to the local crop at Hobby Horse Crafts. I haven't been for a few months and I was quite apprehensive about walking into the hall on my own again. There were a lot of new faces (always good to see) and lots of older ones (well not OLD but you get my meaning!) so it was really lovely to catch up with lots of people again. Unfortunately I think the next couple of crops will also be out for me which is a shame as I really enjoyed myself.

I have done a heck of a lot of scrapbooking in the last few months ... I did the layout a day for January, which was HARD work and I have a pile of about 80 pages piled up at the end of the desk waiting to be put into albums.

I am giving myself the task of getting stuff photographed and added to slide show albums which I will add to my side bar, perhaps featuring some of my faves in blog posts now and again. Also on my to do list for my blog is to update the list of manufacturers websites and add in any blog addresses I can find too, as well as putting back in a list of my fave sites to visit for scrapbooking/cardmaking inspiration (I seem to have lost this somewhere along the way!).

Scrapbooking newswise, things have been a bit up and down. The Collectively Yours UK Inspiration blog closed its doors at Christmas and this month has been the last month for The Design Collective. I thoroughly enjoyed my time working with the teams on both, loving the challenges and comraderie and I shall really miss working alongside them all.

Last week I had my very first 'real life' teaching assignment at the Luxurious Angels retreat in Lockerbie. I was asked by both Angela and Roz to teach; I was given Arctic Frog for one class (which I *gasp* created a double layout with) and Tinkering Ink for another class which was a very *ish* single page. I love *ish* pages, I am not very good with clean lines (or straight lines for that matter) so a bit of free hand cutting, paper tearing and distressing were right up my street! I also had fun creating a selection of mini projects. I totally and utterly enjoyed every single moment of my weekend away and my confidence was immensely boosted by the lovely and positive comments about my classes. The ladies were so friendly, welcoming, generous spirits and great fun to spend time with.

Over the weekend the very generous ladies attending the retreat raised over £850 for the Macmillan charity, with another £200 being raised for Ellie Wiseman's fund by auctioning Roz's services (ooooer!) to a couple of lucky ladies. I was unluckily outbid as I could desperately have done with Roz coming down to clear and tidy my stash room (one of the services she was auctioning herself for). Roz, having seen the state of my room, was more than pleased at the outcome :D

What else? I have joined a new inspiration blog. Color Combos Galore has come into being from a challenge run by Janet on 2 peas for quite a while now. Janet has worked hard at creating an independent blog to present the colour swatches and the work of the DT. It's a really great focus when faced with a mountain of stash and as big a mountain of photos waiting to be scrapped. I love that a given colour swatch focuses my attention to a certain set of papers and photos (which really cuts down on the amount of hmming and aahing time spent before starting a page) yet gives me total freedom on theme, style, content, journaling and product. I love to see how varied the pages the DT create from the same set of colours are each week.

The colour swatches are uploaded on the blog each Monday. Janet has extended an open invitation so if you would like to be a guest designer, just follow the instructions on the blog. And we would love to see how you interpret the colours so please add links to your creations on the comments section.

Just for a bit of eye candy, here is a selection of cards I have created over the last few months for The Design Collective weekly extra ... the last three months have been a card sketch with some yummy examples from the DT.