Hmmmm, over 40 comments on one blog post, anyone would think I was giving stuff away or something…. LOL There’s still time to be entered into the draw to win my BYOC products for next month:

And if you are in a giveaway entering mood, you might like to check out this gorgeous polkadot inspired blog: On The Dot Creations for LOADS of polkadot themed giveaways. The blog is a shoppers dream, if you’re in need of a spot (”spot!” geddit?!) of enabling then be prepared to start parting with some cash when you see the cute hand-made spotty dotty stuff on show there. Yum!

Annnnnd if you fancy your chances are winning even more stuff, the DAM blog is running several contests to win (a) LOADS of GCs from various designers (check out the daily posts) and (b) $100 in cold hard paypal cash (you need to pick up a copy of August’s magazine to play along). Full details of the $100 contest are HERE.

Continuing my series of fun-things-to-waste-time-playing-about-with-on-the-web (catchy name hey?!) I saw THIS manga avatar creator on Kelly’s blog and made a mini-manga-me.

Fun! I especially like how I look about 20 years younger than I actually am. Go and have a go, you know you want to…

I have another couple of BIG bargains for Tadpole Tuesday today, both Funky Junky Spring Fling albums are only $1 each for today and today only:

See you on Friday!

I sat down tonight with the plan of organising the explosion of zip files and folders that is my scrapping HD. But then I unzipped a kit, gasped with joy, abandoned that plan and decided to scrap instead, just for the fun for it. Life’s too short to be organised when there’s scrapping to be done! The kit was Bottom of the Toybox by Jenna, Jacque and our guest at TLP this month Karah Fredricks and this is the layout:

Full credits are HERE

Oooh this is fun! It’s a little online quiz to determine your decorating style (you pick the images for various questions and prompts). Apparently my style is “Family Modern” (which sounds an awful lot cooler than my house actually is, ‘Building Site Chaos’ is probably more apt at the moment):

Then just to really get you thinking (spending?) the site gives you some room schemes to match your style. Complete with shopping lists. Dangerous. Vereee dangerous… These are some of the room schemes it came up with for me - look at all the white walls! I’m taking this as a sign that my plan to redecorate our home office with white walls is a good one

And speaking of white…

….Scruffy & Snowy alpha is new in the store today, 20% off until Monday as usual

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And finally, wanna win some goodies?!

Simply leave a comment here on my blog or join my mailing list anytime before midnight EST on 27th August and I’ll enter you into a draw to win my September BYOC goodies. Simple!!

I’ve been a-scrapping! Continuing my scrap-with-every-collab challenge, this is mainly using the Sock Monkey kit I made with Hollie, along with a few pieces that crept in from the cupcake mini-collab with Angela:

Full credits are HERE

I’m so glad I finally scrapped this photo, this must be the 5th or 6th attempt at it! I’m just happy I managed to do it before his next birthday….

I’ve been meaning to make a striped alpha for ages now (I’m rather fond of stripes) and then when I was playing around with some ideas for another project I accidentally ripped the cardboard I was working with and hey presto - inspiration struck (I LOVE it when that happens!) The result is this week’s Tadpole Tuesday offering: Scruffy & Stripey alpha:

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Oh! I can’t believe I forgot to mention this until now but you should check out the Digital Artist Magazine blog every day this month. There are contests and freebies and challenges and all round fun and games to be had:

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Finally, I’d just like to introduce you to our new little friend who has been visiting our garden for the past few days. Some designers coughcoughamymartincoughcough get bears roaming around outside their homes, we get this little chap (not quite as impressive as a bear but still pretty darn cute):

He has been named “Mister Hedgehog” by DD and “Tarkoi” by Matthew (apparently this is how a two year old says “hedgehog”) - the kids have been running round the garden shouting, “Tarkoi! Tarkoi!” so the neighbours probably think we’ve all gone stark raving mad Good times!

WARNING: This is going to be an image heavy post, I have THREE collaboration kits to tell you about today! I know, it’s like waiting for a bus, nothing for ages and then four come along in a week…..

First up is Live Life Loud - A Charity Collaboration kit for Mitchell House, available for sale at Pickleberry Pop. All proceeds of this kit are going to the parents of 18 year old Mitchell House who is in ICU after an horrific accident. You can read more of his story HERE. Over 30 designers teamed up to work on this kit, check out the store listing for further previews and a list of all the designers involved. Many thanks to Tara for inviting me to contribute to the kit, my thoughts are with you and the whole House family at this time.

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Ok, next up is a tasty little mini-kit I put together with the lovely Angela Powers. Let Them Eat CupCakes is the WST Book fair Special this week. If you spend $3.99 or more in the store you can pick up this kit for only $2 (normal price is £5.49) until the end of Sunday. I hope I’ve got that right…..LOL  Here it is:

and here’s what our teams made with it:

Yum, yum yum!

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Remember the little sneak peaks I showed you earlier in the week? Here comes the monkey part I must have been living under a rock or something because I had never heard of sock monkeys until Hollie suggested them as a theme for our collab, now I keep seeing them everywhere. Sock Monkey Madness (a collaboration with the fab Hollie Haradon aka Holliewood Studios) is new to TLP today and 20% off until the end of Sunday:

And if you are anything like me and fancy making yourself…. oops….umm….. I mean making your *kids* one of these sock monkeys, there are some wonderfully straight forward instructions HERE on the CraftBits site. I have been eyeing up hubby’s socks all week, I think he’s starting to wonder what the sudden fascination with his feet is all about……lol

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And finally, Michelle from Scrapability nominated this blog for an Arte e Pico award (thank you Michelle!). Arte y Pico is a Spanish language blog (HERE is a (sometimes unintentionally entertaining!) English translation) that celebrates design and creativity in the blogging world. Even without the translation it’s an interesting read, the crochet dinosaurs are my favourite!

Here are the rules:

Choose 5 blogs that you consider deserving of this award based on creativity, design, interesting material, and overall contribution to the blogger community, regardless of the language.

Post the name of the author and a link to his or her blog so everyone can view it.

Each award-winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award.

The award-winner and the presenter should post the link of the “Arte y Pico” blog so everyone will know the origin of this award.

Please post these rules!

And here are my five picks:

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Phew. Congratulations if you have made it this far! Hope you have a great weekend!