Today's Creativity Club blog prompt is all about things that make you smile. SO I couldn't resist sharing this little vid that Mrs Collins and I created today all about a sneak peek of next week's Club download! It's always a scream filming stuff with Em, and shockingly we managed this in one take! It's a bit Jamie Oliver-esque!

Day two of the Creativity Club blog prompts is all about inspiration. 5 docrafts galleries that have caught your eye! Here's mine...

If you're a Creativity Club member (and I can't think of a single reason why you wouldn't want to be!) you've probably spotted that the lovely Emma has set us all a task to get blogging for the 31 days of May. I'm guilty of not blogging often enough so I'm hoping her 31 blog prompts (one every day!) will be the kick up the bum to get back into the swing of things. It's the perfect way of connecting and getting to know other crafters/bloggers and club members so here goes!

Day 1 - 5 reasons why you should craft.

1. It's fun. Seriously in these busy, busy (and stressful) times it's enough that something is fun. Whether you work full time in a high pressure job or juggle kids (also a full time job I'm sure!) it's the perfect antidote.  Of course crafting is a wonderfully broad hobby. You might try card making or scrapbooking (my own personal poisons) or branch into knitting, crochet, sewing or baking. Each of these is a fabulous stress reliever and the beauty of them is unlike playing golf or potholing, you can squeeze them into an already busy schedule (plus they are rather cheaper too!).

2. You can make the most of what you already have. I'm sure all of us have a digital camera (possibly several and probably one on your mobile phone), and as such you most likely have a glut of photos sadly languishing on your hard drive. Scrapbooking takes your pictures from a fun day out....


... and turns them into a wonderful keepsake to be sure the memories are not lost.
This excess of photos is what drove me to scrapbooking. Countless photos of a new Newfie puppy was all it took!

3. Crafting turns a simple gift into something special. Giving a box of 'homegrown' eggs to a friend as a thank you or a stocking filler is all well and good, but it's even more special when you dress it up to show you really care!


4. It's about making something for you. While making a card or gift, you inevitably have to think at least a little bit about the tastes of the recipient. But for pretty much everything else you can just please yourself. Use exactly what you want to use in exactly the ways you choose to use them. Clashing colours, excessive lashings of embellishments, plaint slapped on or extreme minimalism. As long as it's pleasing to your eye then you've succeeded. You can't say that about many things in life.

5. Crafting is cool. Much like a fez, crafting is cool. It's social, versatile and so on-trend at the moment. Seemingly every TV celebrity is gagging to craft. Kirstie Allsopp brought it to the masses in her recent series and in uncertain financial times, make do and mend and 'upcycling' are the hottest buzzwords of the moment.

If you're a fellow Creativity Clubber, (or even if you're not!) leave me a comment with a link to your blog and I'd love to come along and read your reasons for crafting!

Crufts starts today and while my girlies will be staying home (although they did qualify, attend and win stuff back in the day!) and watching on TV (especially Martha... she's such a TV addict!), I can't resist showing off a few canine bits and pieces I'm loving at the mo!


I'm sorely tempted by this cute cushion from John Lewis... I'm loving the patchwork/freehand embroidery look...

And things like this gorgeous Cath Kidston dog collar almost makes me wish my girls were a bit smaller! There's no way this is going to fit a Newfie!


These amazing underwater dog photos by photographer Seth Casteel.... Simply awesome.



And of course there is craft...I'm seemingly surrounded by doggy craft goodies at the mo. With Boofle and Hot Diggity Dog, I've been totally spoilt for choice...

I'm loving the Boofle fabric paper and buttons...


And Diggity is just too cute! Check out this cute bag by Jenny P...


What are your top doggie things at the moment?

I've just installed the new docrafts Digi-Designer discs and to say I'm a little excited would be an understatement!

As well as about a million *disclaimer - not actually a million* papers, embellishments, alphabets and so much more from past and FUTURE Capsule Collections there are also digi stamps of the Papermania Urban Stamps range. But the hottest news for me is the inclusion of the simply AMAZING Papermania Chronology range! Here's a sneaky peek at just a couple of bits of steampunky goodness!

Excited yet? I am!

There's something new coming to the docrafts Digi-Designer.... Keep a look out for it coming to a shopping channel near you very soon!

I'm great at crafting to a deadline. I do it all the time... it's part of my job after all, but when it comes to making cards for real people, I'm always a little nearer the deadline than I care to admit!

So with Mother's Day just around the corner here are 10 cards to get you (and me) inspired to create!

by Mandy Brennan

by Rebecca James

by Jo Austin

by Jenny Pearce

by Rebecca James

by Clare Curd

by Jenny Pearce

by me!

by Jo Austin

by Jenny Pearce

I hope that's got your mojo going! I'll be back later with a sneaky peek at something new coming soon to the docrafts Digital Designer!

We're rather proud at docrafts of our Digital Designer software which is a cutting edge (but oh-so-easy to get to grips with) digi-crafting tool for cardmakers and scrapbookers. So far it's featured some of the biggest names in craft including Forever Friends, Tatty Teddy and Papermania and now it could feature YOU!



We're on the lookout for some really cool digital scrap designers that could create cutting edge kits of on trend, hot elements for digi-scrapbooking! Your designs could be being used by thousands of digi-crafters and could even feature on Create and Craft and Ideal World!


If you think you are up for the task, leave me a comment with how I would get in touch with you or tweet me @katygodbeer 

Let me get this ol' chestnut out of the way...  I've been super busy. Hence zero blog updates. Sorry.

Now on with the fun stuff!

Recently I've been working on some printable downloads exclusively for members of the Creativity Club at docrafts.com and while you can't grab them directly from here I can tease you with them!



If you're a member (or would like to be) you can grab them right NOW!

In other news I've started contributing on a foodie blog! I'm quite excited about it and I hope you'll pop over to the Chicken Keeper's Kitchen and take a peek!

 For updates of new posts you can of course follow the blog or follow the twitter feed @keeperskitchen

This page is a perfect example of how you can really make the most of your smallest scraps. The central lined/striped panel looks to be about 7-8" but in reality is only about 4"tall. Simply by slicing it in two and hiding the join with more papers/photos you can get the illusion of a much larger piece of paper.

You might say that I'm a little obsessed with kraft cardstock. Looking back at the last few pages I've created (promise to start sharing them here more often!) and it's glaringly apparent that it's become my cardstock of choice. This page uses some of the plain Papermania kraft as a base... it's perfect for inking spritzing, and of course goes with everything.

I knocked up this page at the last Crafty Moments crop (do come along if you are local!) to satisfy my own crop challenge to the girls. The challenge was to use JUST scraps (bar a base cardstock) to create a layout plus use the ol' chestnut 'just the two of use' for the title.

Some of the other crop-girlies had a go too... Daphne and Carole both made gorgeous pages!

Now I just need to come up with a challenge for next time!

One of the many things I love about my job is getting exclusive access to brand new products before anyone else! (it's a tough life eh?!) Today a brand new addition to the docrafts Digi Designer hit my desk and I didn't waste any time getting it installed!

So far I've only had a quick play and a browse through the adorable elements, but I can't resist showing off my favourite new character!!



I'll inevitably be back with more... If. You want to grab this new collection look out for more news coming soon about it's launch on Ideal World in a couple of weeks!

You might say that I'm not a big fan of the winter... once the clocks go back I don't really see the light of day (and only first thing in the morning!) so it's no wonder that given some cheery and bright papers I couldn't resist breaking out some pictures from my summer break...

Back in July I had a week's stay-cation (hate that word!), bumbling about the New Forest with the dogs and just couldn't resist getting my feet wet for a nice paddle with the girls.


Most of the page is made using the Papermania 52 All Occasion Card Kit. It features some gorgeous plain and printed paper flowers, plus heaps of cute die-cuts and loads of A5 sheets of cheery papers.

Of course this kit is designed primarily to make loads of pretty cards, but being me I had to make a layout too! I grabbed the opportunity to use the smaller sized papers and sliced them up to make a chevron design across the page - just loving that look at the moment!

If you like to see more of the page or grab my full walk-thorough of how I made it pop on over to docrafts.com right now!

This Friday will see the start of a new feature for Creativity Club members at docrafts.com Every week you can join Emma Collins, myself or some of the special guests from Creativity TV (and possibly all of us at once!) in a special live forum chat only for Club Members! If you are a member just pop onto the special Creativity Club forum at 10am to chat about Creativity TV, projects, downloads and more. Ask us your crafty questions, let us know what you want to see from your club or just join in for a good old chin-wag!


Hope to see you there!

I've been a tad busy lately. As well as the biggest batch of DIY in the world ever, the more fun sort of 'work' has kept me well and truly out of mischief!

If you're a member of the docrafts Creativity Club you'll have no doubt seen me (and the lovely Emma Collins) presenting our webisodes of Creativity TV. Despite being paralytic with feat to start with we're actually starting to get into the swing of things and (shhh) enjoying it rather a lot!

This week in Creativity TV our lovely guest Jo Austin demo'd a really clever pop up card that I can only share a wee sneaky peek of!

 And in homage I created a rather special layout with a cunning pop up element...


Another thing keeping me busy is that recently I've been donning my designery hat and creating a few exclusive printables, again for the Creativity Club.... this week I'm rather excited to share some fun and I hope really useful December number printables that would be perfect if you are planning on 'journalling your Christmas' and/or doing a 'December Daily'.


To grab these and to see the project above (plus one using the numbers) then pop over to docrafts right now! You do need to be a member of the club.... so if you'd like to join just click here.

It's crop night tonight and I can't wait!!! It'll make a lovely change to put the emulsion and gloss aside for some more crafty supplies! If you're local to me (Dorset/Bournemouth/Poole) we have spaces for some more crafty peeps... pop over to our facebook group for all the details! We'd love to see you there!

I'm ashamed to say that at the moment it's a rare occurrence for me to actually get any crafting done at home. I'm so very lucky to be able to have crafting as a part of my day-job but somehow it's not the same as crafting just for the hell of it. Just for me. But somehow, even though the creative juices are willing my schedule seems to be conspiring against me and after moaning chatting about it with my lovely friend Emma, she's decided to do something about it!

So tonight sees the inaugural meeting of the Crafty Moments club. Based at the Barrington Centre in Ferndown, Dorset you can join us for a few hours of crafty fun from 6.30pm to 10.30pm (not sure I'll be there till the end, I like to be in bed by then!!) for just £3.50 to cover the room hire.

It's a total crafty free for all... no rules, no restrictions on what sort of craft you do. Just some crafty girls having a chat and doing their thing. Perfect!

So if you fancy a crafty night out, please leave me a comment or just rock on up this evening!

Disclaimer - It's possible that my lack of scrapping isn't the ONLY reason that Emma has started the club... I mean... she only has two children under three and busy job too... so I guess she might have the same problem. But I like to think it's mostly for me. Self involved? Moi? :)

A few weeks back docrafts launched a fab new digi-crafting tool called the docrafts Digi-Designer on Ideal World -  it's been a huge success so far! I'm very lucky to have been given access to all the discs created thus far and I'm championing the cause for some easy peasy digi-scrapping using the clever software. (It works much like photoshop, but without all the bits and pieces you never use!)

A couple of nights ago Becks and Sheila revealed the newest triple disc offering - the Papermania Christmas Past collection. I truly can't understate how much is on these discs!!! There are 10 full Christmas collections to choose from!



I spent a little bit of time having a play and am really loving the gorgeous non-Christmass papers that are included in many of the collections as well as the very-clever colourise tool that lets you change the colour of the papers etc to perfectly suit your pictures.

So here's my first page with the new discs... it features a picture of one of this years chicks (Katrina) who seems to spend her whole life trying to be bad!



Hope you like!

If you're a keeper of poultry AND a fan of mythology based fantasy tv or films you'll so get this....

So I'm out in the garden this morning sprinkling some bio-dri around the perimeter of the duck pond and water bowl and suddenly it occurs to me I'm one of the Winchesters.

Erm..... so if you're neither of the above you'll be forgiven for being a little confused and forgiven for thinking I've TOTALLY lost the plot. (And it's a fair assumption!)

So.... Bio-dri is a very clever powder disinfectant that both dries (hence the name) and sanitises. It also smells divine but I have definitely NEVER sniffed it while applying it. Honest. It's used to sprinkle around anywhere there might be a bit of moisture to keep the ducky/chook area nice and fresh and clean so the duck pond is the perfect place to sprinkle a nice ring of powder. (if by some amazing coincidence you ARE a chicken/duck keeper and want some of this lovely smelling (erm.... effective!) powder, I get mine from Flyte So Fancy...)

And all this takes us onto the Winchesters... (the irony that they too are hanging out by a pond isn't lost on me!)



The Winchesters (Sam and Dean from left to right... which is a bit like how Ant is always on the left of Dec so you can remember which of them is which) are travelling demon/vampire/werewolf battling brothers from the TV show Supernatural. One of the things they seem to do at least every other episode is try and keep indeterminate demons from entering a specific area (y'know... like a house). So the method of choice for this (apart from scrawling giant, intimidating pentagrams on the ceiling and floor) is to sprinkle a generous and unbroken perimeter of salt.

And so this morning while I was sprinkling a nice ring of white gritty powder in a circle around the duck pond it suddenly that I was JUST LIKE an american demon hunting traveller. But a girl. And without the 90s rock music. Or the car.



I guess we should all be reassured that there is absolutely no chance of any demon entering the ducks pond. Daphne is certainly relieved...

It was a tough choice as to which of the Honeybrook Farm photo-shoot pics to scrapbook first (it's lovely to have some new models to pose for me!) but little cutie Myla won the day, and not just because she's just had a very special birthday! It doesn't hurt that she's such a photogenic little person!

I created this page for the docrafts scrapbooking project of the week, and like all the best pages it's fun to create (with a nice bit of paint slappage) as well as pretty speedy to create!

There will almost certainly be more layouts to come featuring Mrs Collins' lovely girls - who could resist?

I'm on holiday this week (I think quite well deserved even if I do say so myself!) and among the blissfully relaxing walks with the furry girls and some quality time with the feathery girls and boys, I've ticked off a few holiday must haves. paddling on the beach, being a tourist on my own doorstep in the New Forest and the inevitable catching up on a few little jobs (the fish tank has never looked so sparkly!).

I'm lucky to live in a beautiful part of the world and that means half the world seems to come on holiday here, so the only chance to visit the touristy places (you know... the ones just round the corner that you never get round to visiting!) is a cheeky mid-week off season day! Last time I went to Marwell but this time around the animals were a little less exotic!

So yesterday I joined Erica Martyn and Emma Collins and their respective kiddies for a fun afternoon at Honeybrook Farm near Wimborne.

Of course there were the usual suspects....

Ducks...





Chickens...



Pigs...





etc...



But among the not so wild animals were some other cute little people, namely Harry, Nevie and Myla!



























It was wonderful to be able to take a few photographs of such wonderful models! - Hope you like!

Life is busy. Like super-super busy. And it didn’t even really help having a week off work last week! Although I did manage a little trip to the zoo. I’ve not been to Marwell in an age and it’s still as great as I remember. Of course I took some camera gear and took 1 or 2 pics.






First up are some pages using the new May releases. The first features some of my favourite things! The pics are of some Mandarin ducks that live wild at one of my favourite places in the New Forest and they are merrily nestling in acres of PM Kraft cardstock. I seriously can't tell you how much I love this stuff. I'm not sure how I survived before it!

 Next is a page with Mistress Martha and using the Me To You - Especially For You collection. Tatty Teddy is so adorable and for pages about kiddies (or my bear cub) it's just the right about of cute!

Lastly for today is a page explaining another thing that's been keeping me busy!

4 cute little ducklings hatched the week before Easter and they are already nearly as big as their parents! If you are a member of the Creativity Club you'll also have already seen my newest chicks featuring on a page. I can't share that here (It's exclusive don't you know!) but when I get a spare min, I'll share some more pics!

I’ve just been reminded (yet again) that Newfie’s aren’t normal dogs. Now, you might think that’s an obvious statement but it’s only when people indicate something is dog friendly that it becomes glaringly obvious that these big hairy beasts are nothing but ‘regular’.

I’m always on the look out for ‘dog friendly’ (see, there’s that phrase again) ideas for the home so when my FAVOURITE blog of all – Design Sponge tweeted a link to a ‘dog friendly’ home I couldn’t resist nipping over for a peek. The article is here in all its glory BTW.
So herein lies a couple of differences…

1. Easy clean tile/wood floors. Sounds like a great idea in principle, but this is a recipe for disaster for giant dogs with hairy paws. I’ve experienced a dog with Cruciate tears and don’t care to experience another thankyou!

2. Teeny weeny, wobbly glass bottles with leaves painstakingly arranged on a chest of drawers. Looks great but Newfies are TALL and their flappy tails reach even higher… I’m pretty sure these would last 30 seconds in my house.

3. White fabric sofas/fabric covers on dining chairs/white bed linen might look gorgeous but with dogs that resemble woolly mammoths plus gallons of dribble these would be grimy and grey in about 5 seconds flat.

4. Vintage skittles artfully arranged next to a fireplace - I predict these would be standing up for 30 seconds and outside as a new exciting chew toy in 30 mins.

5. Floor length white curtains - See point 3!

6. The Coffee Table. I don’t know anyone with a Newfie that owns a coffee table. First off it’s the perfect height for dribbling, ANYTHING on it would be flung aside with a huge head or flapping tail in seconds plus putting a cup/glass anywhere near a Newf is asking for trouble. A big hairy snout and giant tongue would be inside faster than you could ever imagine a Newf could move. Plus Newfs like to play rough. Leaping about and wrestling is an activity best saved for the middle of the living room (and ideally just when your family is sitting down to watch Glee. (I’m not bitter.) So the space is left empty.

7. Candles. No. Big hairy, wafting tail + naked flames = the towering inferno.

8. Sheepskin throws/cow hide rugs. I can’t be sure, never having owned one of these, but I’m pretty sure slobber and sheepskin isn’t a nice mix. I think the cow hide might just get eaten.

But apart from that.... it looks perfectly ‘dog’ if not Newf ‘friendly’. :)