Long overdue!

Hello folks its been an awful long time since I posted anything or indeed did any blogging! 

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and you all have something fabulous planned for the new year celebrations? I think I'll be having a quiet night in this year. With the flood this is the first time in 10 years I haven't had to work so I should be out partying as I won't have an early start but maybe age is catching me up!!!

I thought I'd better get a move on and post this as I made it weeks ago and if I didn't post it now I'd have to hang on to it till next Christmas!!

It was made using a LOTV topper so no colouring other than a little extra shading here and there and the papers are from a LOTV block I bought last year too. I do love a bit of kraft with blue!

I haven't done any of my DT work for weeks but do check out the current challenges at

DIVA'S BY DESIGN

MOVING ALONG WITH THE TIMES

HECK OF A CHALLENGE

I hope to get things (crafting and blogging) back to normal soon. I'm off on a little holiday at the beginning of January, then I have a weekend in Devon for my eldest sons PhD Graduation but after that I'm all yours!!

Thank you to everyone for all your good wishes re the flood and Christmas

Love 'n' Hugs and a Happy New Year

Laurie xx

I'd like to enter this into a couple of challenges

Songbird - Merry Christmas Everybody
Totally Papercrafts - Non Traditional Colours
Cute Card Thursday - Anything Goes
Ready Teddy Go - Contemporary Christmas

Candy Winner

Hello Peeps, sorry I'm a bit late with this post, the big clean up continues!! We have met with 2 out of the 3 insurance companies, last one tomorrow then lots of red tape to get through to decide which one will (if any) pay for what!!

Any way enough of my misery I'm here to announce the winner of my scoreboard candy, I let Mr Random do the honours and this is what he came up with

That's you Wendy F  

I'm going to post it off first thing in the morning as I'm dashing off to Leicester to my Mums after the insurance man has been. I can get your address from Diva's. Congratulations and I look forward to seeing what you make with it.

I'll put some more candy up after Christmas, hopefully the drama will have settled down by then!!

Love 'n' Hugs Laurie xx

Storm Damage

Hello my lovely friends I will be missing for a while and I just wanted to explain why as I will miss you and my creative outlet very much.

We live by the coast and last Thursday we were hit quite severely by a storm and a tidal surge (along with the highest tides of the year and the wind just happening to blow in the wrong direction at the wrong time).
We own a couple of businesses on the promenade and sadly we suffered some substantial damage.
Our Fish and Chip Shop/Restaurant was submerged under water but I'm pleased to say the recovery mission is well under way and with the help of a team of professional cleaners this should all be up and running again hopefully after Christmas.
Here is a photograph of the restaurant after the tide went back out. You can see the footprints in the slime/silt left behind and when I say its EVERYWHERE that is an understatement!!

Next door to this we have a surf shop, selling Billabong, O'Neill, Rip Curl and other brands, this was hit much more severely, with the force of the water breaking all the windows and ripping the doors off. The damage and destruction in here was much worse and at the time of writing we are still waiting on the loss adjuster to arrive re the insurance. Thousands of pounds worth of stock has been ruined, we just spent 3 days itemizing it all, it was heartbreaking!
Here is a photo, again after the tide had receded.

As if this wasn't enough, the shop was looted that night! I really don't know how some people sleep at night!!

So as you can see I might be busy in the coming weeks and card making and blogging might not be top of my agenda!! I have made a few cards that I'll hopefully get around to posting and if I don't get to visit you I'd just like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy new year, I for one won't be sorry when this year is over!!

Love 'n' Hugs Laurie xx

Colourful Christmas @ HOAC

Happy Sunday Peeps, hope you all have a relaxing day planned. December 1st already! How many of you are in a panic over Christmas and how many are all done? I'm probably somewhere between the 2 (well hopefully I am as this is scheduled from early November!!)

Time for a new challenge today at

HECK OF A CHALLENGE

and this month Kevin chose the theme

Colourful Christmas

I really needed a push to make Christmas cards so this was good for me, and to make it even quicker I decided to use a topper that I didn't have to colour from the Hobby House.

 The papers are a bit of a mixture, a couple of them were a gift from Zoe @ Stampin Up! (link in my sidebar) and I think the pink one is Echo Park. Lots of pretty snowflake dies and flowers. I did just add a bit of colour to the image with my pencils to get a bit more depth.

Head over to the main challenge blog for lots of colourful inspiration from my lovely teammies and all the details of the challenge and the prize on offer from the Mandy's can be found HERE and

their fabulous online store

http://www.everycraftsapound.co.uk/

or if you're in the area call in to the bricks and mortar shop

The Craft and Hobby Store, Heckmondwike

That's all from me today, enjoy your weekend

Love 'n' Hugs Laurie xx

I'd like to enter this into the following challenges:
The Hobby House - Christmas Topper 
Crafts 4 Eternity - Non Traditional Christmas
Stampin For The Weekend  - Feeling Festive
Totally Papercraft - Ho Ho Holidays
Creative Knockouts - Tic Tac Toe (across the bottom)
Charisma Cards - Christmas
Simon Says Stamp - Anything Goes
Creative Craft - Non Trad Christmas Colours
Songbird Challenge - Die Another Day
Love To Create - 3 Favourite Embellishments
(Flowers, Pearls, So Wrapped Doo Hickey Die)
The Ribbon Girl - Ho Ho Ho Christmas Challenge