Friday 27 July 2012

New day, New things

So many things are happening over here it feels like we're not touching ground! Today is my last day of work at the company I've been with for the last year and a half and I start a new job on Wednesday as a Social Worker for 3 children's home's. While I'm very sad to leave ,I'm also looking forward to a new chapter and challenge!

Also our house is on the market !!! (EEEEKKKK) we have someone coming to look at it today who seems very eager to hold thumbs and pray with us that everything works out! On a side note to that, we're taking a big leap by doing this as we still haven't received confirmation of our building plans , the date they gave the last time was August 6 so we're hoping it all happens then (especially if we sell our house!)

Thirdly (fourthly? ) Welcome to all my new readers and followers:) While there are only a few of you I am still VERY greatful you decided to follow along with our misadventures :)

Finally and along that line I'm linking up today with the 'under 300 followers' blog hop.


           

if you are like me and are new or still trying to establish yourself join in :) and if you're stopping in from over there hi! *waving*


Tuesday 24 July 2012

DIY Design

You may recall my introduction to GIMP a while back. I started off trying my hand at some Party Printables and have been trying to expand my knowledge slowly but surely. One of the projects I thought I'd try was some of the cute baby stats subway art floating around .



Some special friends of ours were recently blessed with a gorgeous little boy, so I had the perfect guinea pig to test out my (VERY BASIC) design skills on :)


I blurred out some of the information for privacy :)
I'm really happy how it came out. GIMP allows you to work in Layers just like Photoshop which means changing font sizes/colours on the different words is a piece of cake. 
Not bad for a half an hour and some free software ;)







mop it up mondays
                                                 

Thursday 19 July 2012

have you heard about wordle?

I recently discovered Wordles... I had seen them before but not known how to make them until recently. maybe I'm the last person around that hasn't heard about them but those those who ,like me, have been living in ignorance here is what they are:

you can take any piece of writing and turn it into a fun word "cloud ". here are a few of the ones I made:)



our wedding song


my Pinterest Challenge blog post 

Shakespeare :)

I think these would make really unique and personal gifts, and best of all creating them is free!
go and check out www.wordle.net and make your own

                                       

Monday 16 July 2012

lets get social:)

the main point of today's post is to join in the Let's get social link party and share all the different ways you can hold of me but before we get into to that I want to say I hit 4000 page views today :) it took me 6 months to hit 1000 and in the last month (which isn't even over yet!) I've already had 928 ! which is pretty cool for this very small time blogger :) thanks to all who stopped by!

OK now back to our regularly scheduled programming :)


Poofy Cheeks

I have a number of ways for you to connect with me :)
the first (and most obvious seeing as you are reading this) is on the Blog. You can sign up to follow using Google friend connect, linky followers, by RSS feed, networked blogs or have the posts directly sent to your email . Thats a lot of ways to stay in touch !!


you can also Find me on Facebook. This is the easiest way to get a hold of me and if you 'like' the blog page you'll get notifications when a new post is up in your news feed :)


Last but not least , fast becoming my newest obsession , Pinterest :)
you can follow my boards here
(or http://pinterest.com/emmarramblings/ if the link doesn't work )


looking forward to connecting with you :) I haven't yet given in to twitter or Google+ purely because I feel like there are more than enough ways to stay connected already and I have trouble keeping up with what I already have:) I'd love to hear what you think the best way to keep in touch is :)


Friday 13 July 2012

Pinterest challenge

in a attempt to redeems myself for my lack of blogging i have two projects to share with you today :) I am a recent Pinterest member (follow me here) and am jumping in to join the bandwagon for the Summer Pinterest challenge :)


some awesome bloggers (Sherry, Katie,Kate and Michelle) are hosting this quarterly challenge.

Basically the challenge is to take an idea you saw on Pinterest and make it in real life :) i had two projects i wanted to try: the first one is this (the picture shows up really small). Basically its redoing a pair of basic flipflops


I cut the straps off and used scraps left over from recovering our couch to make new ones


You need two straps for each shoe


Cut the ends into points to help with pushing it through the hole


tie a knot to stop it from coming through again 

I tried it on at this point (in my stockinged feet) to check the strap lengths


repeat with the second shoe and volia you have a jazzed up pair of shoes :)


the second project I was dying to try was this:


you will need a canvas , a printout ( by a laser printer of the picture you want to transfer), gel medium and a paint/foam brush.

I could only find a huge bottle of the gel medium so I was really hoping that the project would work :)


I trimmed my picture to make sure the borders around it were even


basically you spread a fairly thick layer of the gel medium on the canvas and lay your picture print down on top of the canvas. the picture will come out reversed so if you have words on the picture remember to take this into account.


smooth out the picture with a credit card


leave it to dry (I would recommend leave it overnight), I only left it for about two hours which wasn't quite long enough. take a spray bottle and wet the paper and start rubbing it until you can see the picture appear


don't wet too much or rub to hard or you will remove the print from the canvas too (which is why I think leaving it to dry longer would be better, so it won't come off)


it makes quite a mess


the end result was quite rustic but pretty. the big white spots are where I rubbed to hard...


the one thing I did notice this morning ,after leaving it to dry overnight , the paper leaves almost a film over the picture so its important to make sure you get it all off, it makes the picture dull if you don't. I would also emphasis using a photo quality print which is more saturated with ink on it to transfer (hopefully that makes sense)
paint another layer of the gel medium over the picture when you done to seal it :)




so that's my attempt at the Pinterest challenge :) 
hope you enjoyed and take up the challenge to stop pinning and start doing !
mop it up mondays

Tuesday 3 July 2012

Craft Fail ( or I should have measured before starting)


A while ago I shared how we moved some furniture around in our bedroom. When we did that the frame that was hanging next to W's side of the bed vertically didn't fit any more and I started planning what I was going to do with it to make it horizontal... that was almost 4 months ago !!!
the frame was on that big blank wall above the lamp


I knew I wanted to use some of the Alphabet art I spoke about here and even downloaded the letters I would need and combined them in photo scape . but for some reason I had never printed them and every night would think I need to get on that... (like Sherry at Young house love always says)

so on Friday I did... without measuring the frame I guessed how big it should be and printed out the picture I wanted to frame (that was my first mistake)


the back of the frame I wanted to use is very strange as you can see below. To put anything inside the frame you have to shimmy it in until all four corners are in and its flat.


Due to the fact I didn't measure when I started putting it all together the picture was too big and ended up getting a scrunched up .


not a very pretty picture!!

so today (when I again remembered ) I MEASURED the frame before trying again and I'm much more pleased with the result!


aah much better! now I just have to put it on the wall!!!









mop it up mondays