Britannia Release & Blog Hop Winners!

So today is the day, Britannia is officially released and available to buy here - yay!

Here are some sneaky peeks of the 5 collections on the CD...

             English Country Garden                     Heritage

                    I Love London                            Jubilee

                                            Sporting Pride

The CD is available as an actual CD and an instant download (cheaper and no waiting! lol) and contains over 1500 elements - tons of papers, embellishments, all perfectly co-ordinated and digi stamps in both colour and black and white, get yours here!

This weekend myself and my lovely DT had a blog hop to celebrate the launch - so a big thank you to everyone that played along, my lovely DT for all their hard work and fantastic inspiring projects and to our sponsors Derwent and Letraset for donating prizes. The winners are... *drumroll*

1. Deborah B

2. CraftyCaron

3. daisylou

Please contact me here with your details and I will get your prizes out to you.

Thanks for popping by!

Sarah x

Welcome to the Sarah Hurley DT Blog Hop!

This weekend (Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th April) we are holding a Design Team Blog Hop to celebrate the release of my newest CD!

Each of the DT members has projects and sneak peeks on their blogs along with a letter of the alphabet, if you hop through the blogs in order (we'd love you to follow us all and leave us a comment on our projects and peeks!) and collect the letters they spell out the name of the new CD (the CD is available to buy now here!) - then all you need to do is pop back here and leave a comment on this post with the name.

You will need to start with Jaine's blog and hop through from there.

Along the way you’ll be able to capture a sneak peek at the new CD as well as gather some fabulous inspiration from the team.  There will be new posts on each day so pop back both days to make sure you don't miss anything!

Next week I will be picking three winners from the correct answers at random to win some fabulous prizes from our sponsors...

 

The Prizes are as follows:

1st Place - a download of the new CD, and your choice of either a set of 24 Derwent Watercolour pencils or a set of 12 Pastel Promarkers and a 15% discount voucher for my shop (www.sarahhurley.com) 

2nd Place - a download of the new CD, a set of 5 'Summer' Promarkers and a 10% discount voucher from my shop

3rd Place - a download of the new CD and a 10% discount voucher from my shop

(There is also a little competition among all of the DT so they would appreciate your comments to help them win a prize ;o) )

The competition will close at midnight GMT on Sunday 15th April and any entries after that will be discounted. Winners will be picked at random.

Here is what I made with the new CD, using my favourite Digi stamp (he's just so cute!) and papers from the 'I Love London' collection (the 'Hello Handsome' stamp is from Hero Arts)

I look forward to seeing all your comments and I wish you all the best of luck!

Sarah x

A Date for your Diary - Blog Hop!

We hope you will join us this weekend for our Design Team Blog Hop to celebrate the release of my new CD!

We are going to have lots of fun projects for you, sneaky peeks and some fab prizes from me and some lovely sponsors - don't miss it!!

I hope you all had lovely Easter breaks, I sadly didn't get my day off that I'd hoped for, the deadlines were just stacked up and I had to keep going, - roll on the next Bank Holiday, I definitely need a day off! I'm not complaining though, its an exciting time and I'm really really grateful for the fab opportunities coming my way, I'd just like some sleep to come my way too, lol.

Now I really must dash, time for a quick dinner with B (I'm starting to forget what he looks like!) and then on with some more illustration work.

Bye for now...

Sarah x

Family History Project Update with Ancestry.co.uk

 

Today a little update on my family history project! As I mentioned in my last post, my aunt sent me a bunch of stuff including names, dates of birth, copy marriage certificates, photos and little snippets of stories that she could remember. I put as many facts as I could into my tree at Ancestry.co.uk and I suddenly had a ton of hints to go through - I still havent finished investigating them all!

One of the things she sent me was the details of a great great aunt living in America (this is my Grandads mums sister) from what I know so far, she married a GI during the war, moved to America and had a family, I didn't even know she existed and I have no idea if she knows I exist! Today I have sent off a letter to her - now I have my fingers crossed that she replies!

I now need another long phone call with my aunt to fill in some more gaps and I plan on visiting another aunt and uncle (my Grandads brother and his wife) very soon - wish me luck!

It's so exciting piecing together this history, once I have it all a bit more in order I'm going to start scrapbooking it, I'll be sharing those projects and some peeks of my Smashbook style of journaling it so far very soon.

Thank you for dropping by today!
Sarah x

Watercolour Rose Card with Derwent Inktense

Todays card is not my normal style, but B wanted a Birthday card for his Aunt so I made one that I knew she would like, and I really enjoyed making something I maybe wouldn't have normally...

 

The stamp is an old one by PSX, I've had it for around 10 years but I still love it :o) I stamped it with Staz on Ink onto watercolour paper and coloured the image with Derwent Inktense pencils before distressing the edges and inking the background with Tim Holtz Distress inks in Tea Dye and Walnut stain. I then masked off the image with another one I had stamped on scrap paper and lightly flicked with water before blotting to create the aged effect. Here is a close up...

Today I have been working on some design revisions and some new illustration work in between phone calls and emails! This evening I have some more illustration to do and some writing. I'm really hoping to get back into my studio in the next day or so, its far too long since I crafted and I have the urge to scrapbook!

Thanks for dropping by today!
Sarah x

Steampunk CD - In the News!!

More excitement - my Steampunk CD has featured in a couple of craft magazines this month which will be in the shops tomorrow!

Firstly in Lets Make Cards, which has had a fab redesign...

And in Crafts Beautiful who have a whole special feature on Steampunk this month and also featured two Scrapbook layouts using the CD made by the lovely Nat from my Design Team!

 

It's always exciting to have my work featured - I hope you'll pick up copies of them both and have a closer look! You can order the Steampunk CD from my shop here.

Now I must get back to those deadlines, it's super busy here at Hurley HQ but sunshine and Earl Grey are keeping me going! I'm pleased to say my face is now back to normal - yay! and the antibiotics have stopped making me feel sick, I just have one more day of them left thank goodness.

I hope you have a lovely weekend, thanks for stopping by.

Sarah x

My Fuji Instax Interview!

Hot on the heels of last weeks excitement at being featured on the Ancestry blog, this week I'm featured on Fuji's 'Choosefilm' website!

I was interviewed about my uses for my Instax camera and how I use it in my Scrapbooking and Crafting, to read the full feature please click here!

This week continues to be crazy busy and I'm working to meet so many deadlines, they are all super fun projects though which is a good thing!

The swelling of my face has gone down a little bit now and is much less painful - yay! Thank you all for your lovely messages, they did cheer me up when I was feeling a bit blue about looking like Popeye and being in pain. The antibiotics are making me really nauseous though so I'm managing little more than cups of earl grey and the odd slice of toast - tonight though B is trying to tempt me with one of my favourite things, Paella! It looks so scrummy I think I might just have to try my best :o)

Time for me to get back to work! thanks so much for visiting today

Sarah x

Monthly (ish) Round Up!

I know its not quite the end of March yet but I haven't done a 'My Month in Pictures' post for a while so here we go, lots of instagrams...

    

 

 

I had indulged with a few treats, a cheeky glass of wine and some choccy while working late and cupcakes with a good friend to celebrate. I started working on my family History project with Ancestry.co.uk - one of my most exciting projects yet! I became obsessed with Hero Arts stamps and Art Journaled a LOT! Fuzzybutt was cute - thats old news really, she always is! :o) I worked a LOT! and discovered this old pic of me working when I was just a tiddler - thats probably why I'm such a workaholic now, I started young! I'm still writing and researching and designs for my new products are underway even before the current ones have finished production - its a crazy manically busy time and there is more excitement on the horizon that I can't wait to share!

Today I have been to the doctors yet again (thats twice in less than a week!) this time because I woke up with my face swollen hugely on one side (it was even affecting my eye!) it went down a bit over the course of the day but the doctor says I have an infection above my gum, under my cheekbone - I'm now on a super strong course of antibiotics for a week to get rid of it, hopefully in the next day or two I'll get my real face back!

Now I'm back to the drawing board as I have lots of big deadlines due this week - eeeeeek!

Thanks for popping by

Sarah x

Lots of Birthday Cards!

This month seems to be full of Birthdays, family and friends, so I've been making cards constantly! This weekend is B's sons birthday, you may remember last year my Pirate card was rejected as being too young for a 30-something year old man (ha!) I still say he would have liked it... ;o) Anyway, this year I made a more grown up card using Echo Park's Times & Seasons range...

B's mum also asked me to make her one to send to him, so I used the same range of papers to make this one for her...

It's always difficult making mens cards, but this range was perfect for them! The stamps I used for the greetings are all from Hero Arts.

This week has been such a crazy busy week, I have 6 HUGE projects I'm working on all to be finished by the end of March, thats exactly one week, just one week, 7 short days... not that I'm panicking, honest... I'm sure you can guess what I'll be doing this weekend, work work work! :o)

Thanks so much for popping by, I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Sarah x

Family History with Ancestry.co.uk Update!

There has been a fair bit of progress with my family history project, I haven't started my scrapbooking of it yet so I won't share too much as I want to show everything properly, but I had a long telephone conversation with my aunt who lives in Cornwall (my Grandads sister) and she told me what she could remember and promised to send me some picturess and bits she had in the post. The package came at the weekend and she had made notes of her parents and their relations as far back as she could remember, her parents wedding certificate and some pictures and little facts she could remember so I have lots to add to my tree on Ancestry and to my scrapbooking project! There was also a CD of pictures from old slides she had - the originals must have been a bit scratched so I have some picture restoration and cleaning to do - but its so fun to see them all!

I have a few more relatives who I plan to quiz soon, including one my aunt has put me in touch with in America - that sounds like a fun story to share with you all soon!

This week I also featured over on the Ancestry blog - yay! You can see the full feature here on their UK blog. I've already had some people contact me after seeing it to share their family history story with me, its so fun to see what people have found, how they have documented it etc... I am going to try and share some of them soon once I've spoken to them a bit more and got their permission to feature them here.

Now I must head back to my studio, I thought I had finished all my magazine submissions this week on Monday (I even took the luxury of finishing a bit early yesterday as it was B's birthday!) but today I had two urgent jobs come in so I have 12 cards to make by Friday - eeeeek! That on top of all the design and other illustration, research and writing work I have on and I'm a very busy girl - no rest for the wicked! ;o)

Thanks for dropping by today.
Sarah x

Bye Bye Basically Bare!

Last week was my final post on the Basically Bare blog, I have been with Basically Bare since they started out so I took the time to review some of my favourite projects I've made for them, including this scrapbook page...

You can see my final post and all of the projects over on their blog here.

Today has been super productive, lots of design work and some book research as well as lots of product planning. So much is happening at the moment that I have piles of lists to make sure nothing gets forgotten and no deadlines are missed. The only trouble is, I have so many lists, I need a list of my lists to keep track of them all! ;o)

Thanks for visiting today.
Sarah x

Mothers Day

Don't forget this Sunday is Mothers Day (in the UK) in case you haven't got round to making your card yet, I'm giving away a free digi stamp today! :o)

 

Click here to download your free Digi Stamp

Here is the card I made with it for my Mother-in Law, the paper is from my Easter Tea Party Digi Kit, which you can find here in my shop. I coloured the stamp with Flexmarkers - the subtle colours were perfect for this!

Have a lovely weekend!
Sarah x