Hello July!

Well, the second week of the school holidays flew by in a flurry of activity. It is amazing what some wet weather can do to dampen enthusiasm for leaving the house. The first week of holidays was wet from about Wednesday through to Sunday. Not much to do but stay at home and keep warm and dry! The second week however was different! Sunny skies and activities to entertain.

We saw World War Z with Georgie and her boys. Oh my, I was starting to regret that movie choice about 20 minutes into the film! Tense, very very tense! But now that I have had time to recover, I could actually see it again! In fact Niamh did go back and see it again with another friend, this time in 3D! Apparently even though she knew it was coming it was worse in 3D!! So very glad we didn't do 3D the first time around! Erin and I are now reading the book the movie was based on.

In a more calm moment we saw Monsters University. It was ok, not as good as the first, still had some laughs, but maybe too sedate after the zombies!! The company was excellent however as was the sushi lunch afterwards!

Rounding out the week we went off to the city and met up with my Mum, had some lunch, did some looking and then came home via the dentist for Niamh's next braces check up. Not long now and they will be off! She even wants to do family photos once they are off!! There is an opportunity not to miss.

During the week I also started Inked over at Studio Calico. So far I have been digging through my stamps and deciding that I just don't have enough of the "right" stamps! I have remedied this by ordering some more! Oh and I just found out that I was one of the June winners over at White With One! Yay me! Guess what I will be purchasing with that win??!!Hmm stamps perhaps??!!

So, back to Inked, besides realising that I need more stamps, I have been playing, a lot! Pulling out inks, stickles, glossy accents, glitter glues and even my old Tombow pens. I have really enjoyed playing too. So here are the results of my playing, some cards and project life type 3x4 cards.

These cards have used the following techniques: Stamping with markers, dressing up stamped images with glossy accents, glitter etc, manipulating a stamp. That last one is my favourite, that card is the sun one. It started out as a straight line banner stamp that I "manipulated" into a circle and stamped once with yellow, then offset and stamped again with orange. The message inside is also a straight line stamp. Pretty cool hey?!

These cards also have stamping with markers, glitter/glossy accents and also stamping on patterned paper.

I am looking forward to the next installment of techniques, and for my new stamps (including the class ones) to arrive!!

I have also completed a layout in this past week. A just because page, playing with the new masks that I had made the week before and using up older paper lines. A very boy page!

 Well, that is it for now. Hopefully with kids back at school and some time to myself I can get on and do some more crafting this week!

Katie x