Starting Over

My new blog is Storm Scraps and I will be posting sketches there every month, so please come and visit me and join me on my new journey. At some stage I will be collecting all my old sketches from this blog and compiling them into an e-book so we won't lose them :-)

love Heather x

(Oh and PS... that's totally my body there, hahahahahaha)

 ...always be a little kinder than necessary...

Scrappy Sketch 03-14

Well hello. Did you think I'd fallen off my perch? I kind of did in a sketchy kind of way. Sorry :-(

I'm back I think. Creative juices are flowing through my bones and fingers again, wakening up the stiff old mojo.

So we start the new season with a page for a boy. Hope you like it.

love Heather x ..always be a little kinder than necessary..

Mid Week Sketch 02-14

This year I am going to be doing a lot of different sketches, not just pages. Lots of pages, but not exclusively so. I will be doing different sized pages, and cards, and mini albums, and Project Life sketches too. Variety is the spice of life after all... And we all do a variety of things, so why not sketch that?

This week, I have some PL cards for those of us who do that fabulous form of memory keeping. For those who don't, these sketches could be translated to greeting cards with no problem. You just need some scrappy bits to make a nice little selection of cards to add to your collection - use whatever you have lurking about to create whatever will fit your favourite schemes.

I hope you find these useful in some way. And just for a special treat, I have also been busy making a few of them into a PDF file for you to print. Yes, a freebie! I know... what fun. But don't get too excited, I am no expert in these matters, and it's fairly simple. Who knows, I might get better at it with a bit of practise :-) 

Now what was that I was saying about not being an expert... having trouble even doing a PDF file for you, but now I find it wasn't my fault, the whole PDF thingamebob wasn't even on my laptop since my husband had to re-jigger it a couple of months ago. No wonder I couldn't do it, LOL! But now I can, because he's just re-installed it for me. I really am not technically minded... give me paper, paint or fabric though, and I can do good.

Click here to download the cards, then print and cut out and away you go!

love Heather x ..always be a little kinder than necessary..

Something For The Weekend

First of all, Happy New Year! The beginning of something good I hope, for all of us. New beginnings, chances to start over, do better, try again; new promises to ourselves, new hopes and dreams and aspirations; shrugging off the old and looking forward with fresh eyes. It always feels good to me - it's never just another week, it really does feel new, as if we can let go of what has passed and start again, fresh and clean.

Secondly, my apologies for disappearing at the end of last year. I just got behind and then couldn't make myself do it. Dreadful lack of discipline, I know... I am a flawed individual, for all my wishes to be otherwise. Something goes wrong and I scuttle for my blankie. (OK, I don't have a blankie -don't ask me where it went either, but I was 5 and I still remember it very clearly, nearly 5 decades later, LOL!) {I am not a drama queen, my memory just has very long pockets.} Anyway... I'm sorry I didn't come back and say I wasn't here. I meant to.

Let's start again. It's a new year. I wish you many happy days of scrapping this year, and no days of wishing you had a blankie. :-)

I have a fabby little sketch for you, a little something for the weekend perhaps. I hope to do it myself this weekend.

If you want to see what else I am up to, please check out my blog, StormScraps, which was even more neglected than this one, but which is also having a restart.

love Heather x ..always be a little kinder than necessary..

Mid Week Sketch 41-13

OK, so it's not exactly mid week... even here in la-la land, where I am surrounded by boxes, paper and bubble wrap, disarrayed furniture and a distinct lack of the little things that make a house a home. Moving day in just 3 sleeps, and we are going to lose our internet in the next few hours probably, so that it can be switched over to the new house. So I thought I might give you this week's sketch early, as there is no telling in this marvellous world of technology, just how long it will take them to reconnect us.

The electricity, easy peasy, they do it when you ask them to. But phone, oh no, days... up to ten days! We are only moving within our suburb, not to the middle of nowhere. Um... can you tell I'm impressed, lol?

I can cope with most things - I am a woman of a certain age after all, and have learned during this "interesting" life, that stuff happens and we can live through quite a lot, actually, and remain intact. But please, I need my connection to the world at my fingertips. What great Pins will I miss? What fabulous blog posts? What happenings on my social network?

OK, I'm being dramatic. I have my smart phone... I am not entirely bereft, lol. I just find it interesting that it could take so long for the landline stuff. And really, I don't get to whine about much. Have to have my little rant now and then.

So... to the sketch. I had this idea for squares and it just grew from there. Hope you like it.

Normal communications should be resumed in time for week 42. Until then, think of me and the turmoil/fun of moving house and setting up my fabby new scrap room. :-)

{{And by the way, I don't know why the sketches are going blue at the moment. I'll look into that soon, and change them.}}

love Heather x ..always be a little kinder than necessary..

Mid Week Sketch 40-13

I don't know what it's like where you are, but it's hot here. I have succumbed to putting the air con on while I work. I prefer fresh air, but it's either air con and work, or fresh air and snooze, LOL.

This week's sketch uses a background die cut shape and a tag to make a pretty page. I know you have both those things lurking in your stash somewhere! Or the means to make them. Pull out what you have and get busy, and you will have a page done in no time.

**Share a page made with a Scrappy Sketch from October for your chance to win a flower pack handmade by me. I have a prize draw on offer, just a random gift really, for one lucky scrapper. All you have to do is leave me a comment under one of the sketches from October and make a page using any one of those sketches to be in with a chance. I look forward to seeing what you do.

love Heather x ..always be a little kinder than necessary..

Mid Week Sketch 39-13

We have secured a house, yay! Very busy packing because we move next week, but at least we have somewhere to go. It was getting very close to the wire there... nothing like the thought of storage and living in a tent to make you realise how much stuff you have :-o

Anyway, I have had time in the busy round of life to make you a nice masculine sketch. We all have boys in our lives, close or not so close, that we want to scrap, and it's nice to get some pages designed just for them. Hope you like this one.

love Heather x ..always be a little kinder than necessary..

Mid Week Sketch 38-13

Yes, we are in week 38 already. This is the 38th Wednesday this year... leaving exactly 14 Wednesdays left in this whole year. Don't even talk to me about it, LOL, I am boggle-eyed about the whole idea that it's that close to another year!

I only have a large layout for you this week. Blame house hunting, sorting, packing, filling in hundreds of forms, getting nowhere with rental applications, etc. Meh.

Still, it's a nice sketch, don't you think? Lots of room for personalisation :-) I can see all sorts of yummy papers and misting and other fun things with this layout.

love Heather x ..always be a little kinder than necessary..

Mid Week Sketch 37-13

I've had this ready to post all day but I have been waylaid about 50 times on the way to do it. I suppose I should be grateful my life isn't boring, lol!

This one came to me while I was folding washing the other day. You never know when inspiration will strike or what will cause the spark - gotta love that about life.

And for the young set, a smaller version.

Either of these would look good turned to the side as well, with the tags below the photos. Two looks for the price of one!

love Heather x ..always be a little kinder than necessary..

Mid Week Sketch 36-13

I have a masculine sketch for you this week. It was Father's Day last weekend, so maybe you have a photo of your father or grandfather, or your kids' father, your son or brother as a father, or another Dad you know who deserves a mention in your scrapbooks. There's a lot of Dads out there really, and they are a big part of our stories and memories.

I look forward to seeing how you interpret and put this sketch together. And just as an added bonus, I have a small RAK on offer for two lucky people who complete this page before the end of September, randomly chosen. All you have to do is make your page and share it here via the inlinkz thingy on the side, then leave me a comment and you're in the draw :-) I will take a photo of the RAK and get it up... only just thought of it so I haven't done it yet, lol!

And this week, not a card, but another 6in page for our younger friends to have a go at.

love Heather x ..always be a little kinder than necessary..

Mid Week Sketch 35-13

Hello everyone, it's Spring in Brisbane, there is the fresh scent of warm days and clover in the air, and jasmine if you are lucky. So delicious.

I am having lunch with a friend today, so I am just posting this quickly so that I can go play girly stuff :-) A Springlike sketch this week, light and fresh and cheerful, hope you like it.

And another card, because I enjoyed doing the card sketch last week.

love Heather x ..always be a little kinder than necessary..

Mid Week Sketch 34-13

Still stash busting - this time with some paper strips and random flowers. What do you have lurking that you could play with today? Mix and match some old scraps with some newer ones, go with a particular theme or colour, add some textured papers, update some boring bits with a bit of stamping, ink, distress or crinkle. It doesn't matter what you do, just that you are getting through some of that stash. Add a little ric-rac or braid, some hidden journaling on a tag and you have a page!

And this week, just for a change of pace, I have a card sketch for you as well, instead of the usual 6x6 page for the young set. Hope you like it.

Everything has settled down here by the way - yahoo :-)

love Heather x ..always be a little kinder than necessary..

Mid Week Sketch 33-13

I'm reading a book at the moment called, "Just One Damned Thing After Another" by Jodi Taylor - it's an ebook downloaded to my phone, a harmless little fiction about time travel that I am very much enjoying. It's a good mix of humour and drama and it's well written. Unfortunately, the title is quite apt for my life this year... There has been nothing major go wrong, but lots and lots of potential disasters, and minor incidents. Do you get years like that, where one particular year seems more dramatic, or less fun all around than the previous one?

This year, my mother has had eye surgery and some heart troubles. My father has had a minor stroke. My husband had some sort of episode that baffled the doctors in emergency when he was rushed there from the roadside, which he eventually recovered from leaving no clues as to what had actually happened. My son fell in a heap, self harmed, has had girlfriend dramas, had his car smashed into by another vehicle when he was stationary, causing him some injury (and the car is dead), lost his expensive new phone, his computer died, and he left home angry more than once... My daughter is going through her final year of school (drama enough), her best friend died in unusual circumstances, she's been bullied, and has been sick on and off, has suffered significant bouts of anxiety and depression, and missed too much school. The house we are renting has been sold and we have to move. We've only been here a year and a half, because that happened to the last house too.

See what I mean? The title for that book is my life at the moment, LOL! Me? Oh, I'm fine... and the cats are fine too, thanks for asking ;-)

The point of all that information is to begin to explain why the sketch is on Thursday this week instead of Wednesday. Spent the day in the emergency department again yesterday with my daughter, who has concussion and is still in a lot of pain, sick and shaky after a week. I can't help waiting to see what will go pear-shaped next...

But while I am waiting, here is this week's sketch. A nice bunch of circles and little pretties, with hopefully no dramas for you at all.

And a smaller version for my little friends, with just as many pretty things to play with on the page.

Oh and PS, there have been some good things happen all year as well, plenty of happy moments and things to make us smile, thankfully. It still feels unbalanced, but we aren't sinking yet :-)

love Heather x ..always be a little kinder than necessary..