CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration - Special investigator

Whoosh! That was the sound of January whizzing by, I cannot believe it's almost the end of the month already, January normally crawls by painfully slowly, but not this year.

I've got my last 2 layouts from my month as a Special Investigator  (guest designer) on the CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration design team.

This one is my absolute favourite and I love the photo of me, my eyes are open and I'm not mid yawn or pulling some other ridiculous face, honestly, it's like I have some sort of allergy to cameras as soon as one gets pointed in my direction my face starts doing all kinds of strange expressions.

I created a shaped layout and used all of the 5 colours for the scene, blue is also one of my favourite colours, so it came together quite easily. For my evidence I used quite a lot of the embellishments listed in the challenge - Stripes, silver metal, 3 of something, rhinestones, glitter, scallops, stick pins hearts and ribbon.

All of the journaling is on a 6x4 Project Life card in the scalloped envelopes, it's all about 2014 and plans etc for 2015 (and is very lengthy, so I'll spare you the details).

Here are the details of the challenge and although it closes for entries tomorrow it's still worth playing along because it's great mojo booster and stash user-upper (yes, this is a new scrapbooking terminology invented by little old moi)

This next one was my final layout for January, 

here are the challenge details, I love the colours, I'll use this colour palette again...

This one is running until the 2nd of February so there's still time to have a go.

Again I used all 5 colours. From the list of evidence I used a border punch, circles, label shapes and I sprinkled on some sequins, (carefully picked off the ones that didn't agree with my OCD tendencies) and glued the remainder down.

For the journaling I chose to list our top 5 Harry Potter Lego sets:

1, Dumbledore's Office.

2, The Burrow,

3, Hagrid's Hut,

4, Hogwarts,

5, The Hogwarts Express

(We also love all of our other Lego too).

I've loved being one of the team on CSI this month, it's been great fun, I've loved every challenge and I'd like to say a BIG THANK YOU to Debbi Tehrani and the very talented team of investigators for inviting me along. I'm going to carry on playing along throughout 2015 as I do love the challenges and it really is a great way to use up stash, the orangey red & brown papers on the layout above have been in my stash for 5 years, feels great to finally use them.

CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration. Challenge 152 The Tale of the Teapot

Well hello there.

I was lucky enough to be chosen as a special investigator for CSI: Colour Stories Inspiration for the whole of January, and I'm really enjoying playing along, if I'm honest it's worked out really well as I've always enjoyed their case files and one of my goals for this year was to try and complete every case file, so for January I can confidently say I will complete each challenge and I'm off to a great start.

When I saw the scene, evidence & testimony for this challenge I did a little happy dance because I had just the photo and story that I needed to create this layout all about a teapot...

For challenge 152 the five colours you needed to use were Lime Green, Teale, White, Lemony Yellow and Tangerine Orange - normally I'd struggle with these colours but, these were all the colours in the teapot - oh how I love a bit of serendipity. I inked all of the papers with Pumice Stone Distress Ink then layered them up a bit.

For the evidence I used polka dots, ribbons, jewels, scallops, triangles (on the patterned papers) and stars.

One of the topics for the testimony (aka journaling) was "document a gift" - serendipity again, so, here is...

 "The tale of the Teapot" 

"Mum spotted this Beatrix Potter teapot at a craft fair we were at, she spent ages looking at it and admiring it and then she walked away! So, I got Hermione to keep her busy whilst I bought it for her, she was quite upset when she saw it had gone and had no idea that I had it hidden in my bag for her Christmas present"

I'm happy to say that Mum was thrilled with her teapot (which she now stores her teabags in - as you do) and she is now looking for a matching milk jug and sugar bowl.

All of the details of this case file are below, why not play along?

You can find a more detailed explanation of  Case 152 over here on CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration.

Thanks for stopping by and see you soon.

Claire xx

New Year, New Start & Lots of Crafty Goodness

Well hello there, how are you? A very happy new year to you all.

Wow, it's dusty in here, hand on a tic ***grabs hoover, quickly dusts & removes cobwebs from blog*** That's better. Sorry for my absence towards the end of 2014 but the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome was making life pretty awkward & I was banned from typing for a while back there, but I'm a lot better now, my hands are still a bit twingy so I can cope with that.

I have rather a lot of plans of for 2015 and seeing as I totally did what set out to do in 2014 I know I can achieve what I want to in 2015, I'm so looking forward to sharing my journey with you.

This year got off to a cracking start back in December when I received an email from the ever so lovely Debbi Tehrani at CSI: Colour, Stories, Inspiration asking me if I'd be a Special Investigator for January 2015, well, of course I said yes, I love the CSI challenges and had already decided to do as many as I can in 2015 to help reduce the mountain of patterned papers and embellishments that I own.

So the  first challenge went live last night and here is what I created....

I used the sketch provided for this challenge and tweaked it slightly, for the scene I used all 5 colours required. For the Evidence I used a cream frame with a stamped image of a cupcake inside, I used 2 banner die cuts for the date, I doodled stitching around the border and used patterned paper with triangles printed on it.

For my journaling I used the inspiration word "Grumpy" and hand wrote it too. The journaling reads: "Oh dear, why does Grampa look so grumpy in this photo? Was it because we didn't put all 65 candles on his birthday cake? Who knows"

Here are all the details for the case file if you'd like to play along, this challenge is open until 31/1/15 so you've got plenty of time to play along, If you've never tried a CSI challenge I can highly recommend it.

I've got plenty of other things to share with you in the near future and promise I will be blogging more regularly throughout 2015.

Just before I go we're having our Winter Sale over in our Crafty Alchemy.com shop and the Crafty Alchemy Etsy shop, with 25% off selected items. In the Etsy shop all, yes, ALL, of our Elements and Embellishment kits are 25% off. Just thought you'd like to know.

So once again Happy 2015 to you all.

Take care & see you soon.

C xx