Merry Christmas everyone!

My goodness I can't believe its this time of year again!!!

Although I am off on my hols I wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas! Thank you for reading my blog and although I have set up my new brand I will still be keeping this blog, but I have some new plans of where this blog is heading. So please stay tuned.

Designed by and copyrighted to Leanne Carpentier

Enjoy your Christmas holidays and Happy New Year!
x

Travels

Hey guys!
Not to brag or anything but I'm so excited to go on my jolly hols this year, that's because the boyfriend and myself are going on a massive adventure to New Zealand and Australia! I know I can hardly believe it myself, but its true and what's more is we're going for a whole month!! 


We booked this back in January this year and I cannot believe how fast these last few months have flown by. It's crazy. We decided that we wanted to visit the South Island of New Zealand for 2 weeks and we are going to be exploring it in a camper van. Yes, we are backpacking it...sort of. It's been so stressful trying to plan this as there is so much we want to do and see and I know that we just aren't going to get to do everything we want to but we sure are going to try and cram it all it. All I can think about is that I'm going to be exhausted by the time I actually get to Sydney!
Yep that's right, we are off to Sydney for the remaining 2 weeks. This part of our holiday is going to be pretty special as we are spending Christmas, New year and my Birthday here. My boyfriends sister is currently living out in Sydney and has been for the last year, so the family are all going out and we are all meeting up for Christmas eve. This is going to be so lovely as I will also get to meet extended family of the Boyfriends.


Anyways I shall sign off there for a while as like I said earlier, I don't want to brag! (haha!) Enjoy your Christmas shopping and make sure you check out all the essentials like wrapping paper, Gift Bags and Crackers in the high street shops. Some of those designs could be mine! ;)


Have fun!

Exciting News

Well this is exciting! I have set up my own Brand. It's still very much in its early days, but everyone has to start somewhere. My new venture is called 'The Blue Martin Studio'. It is a design portfolio for textiles and stationery and hopefully I will be adding new collections each season.


I needed to do this for myself, I wanted to build a portfolio of my own and have a web presence, although I am still in my full time job as a creative designer for a design company, I wanted to branch out and start something up for myself. It's going very slow at the moment as it is early days. I am trying to put as much spare time as I have into it which means evenings and weekends!!! (no social life for me anymore!...but it will be worth it!)


If you would like to support and see what my new, exciting and very scary next step is all about, then please check out my website here.


I'd be really interested to know your thoughts so please feel free to leave comments either below or on my website. Thanks guys!!

Christmas is coming - BHS

One thing that I love about BHS this year is the styling of their photographs on their website for the festive season. They're lovely. Below are a few things that I spotted in BHS.

Of course the essentials first...

1.6 Platinum Luxury Christmas Crackers* 2.12 Kids Family Christmas Crackers 3.Floral Christmas Wrapping paper 4.Scottie Dog Cut Out Christmas Cards 5.Festive Tag Christmas Cards 6.Large Standing Penguin 7.Small Natural Penguin 8.Lit Ceramic Toy Shop

9.Winter Warmer Gift set 10.Mickey Mouse Ears Money Box 11.Lion Pixel Bricks 12.Floral Design A5 Notebook 13.Make Your Own Gloves

14.Novelty Reindeer Beanie 15.SuperMan Mug 16.Wind up Grannies

Items marked with a '*' were designed by myself for Swantex and are copyrighted to Swan Mill Paper co. and BHS.

Please note that this post is not endorsed or sponsored by BHS, It is purely my own suggestions and thoughts.

Christmas Is Coming - HobbyCraft

I popped into Hobbycraft this week too and found some lovely little things to make for christmas! Have a look on their website or pop in store if you are looking for something a little different or a nice little crafty project for someone as they have a lot to offer. 

1.Chalkboard Tags 2.Fun Kraft Gift Wrap* 3.Wooden Christmas Stamps 4.Kids Gift Wrap* 5.Happy Christmas Tissue Paper* 6.Large Felt Penguin Bag 7.Giant Santa Sack 8.Nordic Deer Fabric Reel 9.Traditional Kraft Gift Wrap*

10.Kirstie Allsopp Fabric Notebook Kit 11.Santa/Reindeer Cracker Kits* 12.Dempsey Designs Japanese Dolls 13.Wheres Wally Jigsaw 14.Get Crafty MYO fabric bunting 15.Kirstie Allsopp Needle Felting Kit

Items marked with a '*' were designed by myself for Swantex and are copyrighted to Swan Mill Paper co. and HobbyCraft.

Please note that this post is not endorsed or sponsored by HobbyCraft, It is purely my own suggestions and thoughts.

Christmas Is Coming - Matalan

Christmas time is approaching fast, so I wanted to post a few things that I've been finding in the stores. We've had a great new Matalan store built for us here in Cardiff and it's lovely! So this is where I'm going to start...

1. Tartan and Stag Christmas Cards 2. No Peeking Rosettes Tags 3. Characters Gift Bag 4. Heart and Star cards 5. Chalkboard Gift Bag 6. Teddy Bear Gift Bag 7. Chalkboard Style Gift Wrap 8. Luxury Gift Tags* 9. North Pole Gift Bag*

10. Kids Novelty Christmas Crackers 11. Craft Tins 12. Alphabet Letter Mug 13. Santa Hand Painted Cookie Jar 14. Lilybell Bakery Jam Jar Kit 15. Wooden Stamps Tin 16. Lilybell Bakery Kitchen Timer 17. Kids Novelty LED Church Candle 18. Christmas Pudding Hand Painted Tea Pot

Items marked with a '*' were designed by myself for Swantex and are copyrighted to Swan Mill Paper co. and Matalan.

Please note that this post is not endorsed or sponsored by Matalan, It is purely my own suggestions and thoughts.

Sandy's 60th

Last weekend it was my Boyfriends Dad's 60th Birthday. They wanted to get him something special and decided that a European Football Match game and night away was just the thing. He loves his football, and doesn't get much of a chance to go to an actual game. So I was asked to design a 'Golden Ticket' for this match, giving him the option of the top teams he's always wanted to see. I thought it was a very nice idea letting him choose which one he most wanted to see, with no expense spared. It's not everyday you get a present like that is it? Then again, It's not everyday you turn 60!!

Happy 60th Birthday Sandy!!

much love xxx

Happy Easter

Leading up to Easter I was having a look for some nice Easter Cards, I've compiled a few of my favourite discoveries below..

I love the floral Bunny Ears, and the Tree card is brilliant. This would look nice as a centre piece for the dinner table.

Happy Easter Everyone!

Baby Shower Games - Free Downloads

I have included one of the Baby Shower Games I designed. These are free to Download if you wish to use them, just right click on the image and 'save image as' to your desktop. Please do not claim them to be your own and please do not edit them. Enjoy!

And if your wanting Pink for a girl, please see below.

Baby Showers

At the start of March a valued friend of mine gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Riley. About 3 weeks before the birth, Myself and another good friend met up with mum to be, Stacey and decided that we would host a baby shower 2 weeks later. This seemed like a very short time frame to organise a baby shower, and stressed me out a little but we managed it and in all honesty I actually quite enjoyed sorting it out.

I decided that I would surprise Stacey and design a few games for the party so that it was unique to her. So I came up with some ideas such as Guess the Celebrity Baby, Pin the dummy on the baby and a Nursery rhyme guessing game and they seemed to go down really well.
We ended up buying a lot of the decorations as we just didn't have time to create those as well but in the future I would like to do this providing I have the time to do so.

This is what the room looked like...

The spread, We were only catering for a small party, so this was just enough.

We also scattered Handmade Tissue Pom Poms and Balloons around the flat.

I really enjoyed organising a party, I think I should do this more often. Good Luck to Stacey, Andrew and baby Riley! xox

Im Back!

I must admit, that I have been pretty poor with my blog over the past few months. I have had a lot going on and now I feel that I'm back on track with things and can pick up where I left off.


Everybody has these times where life just takes over and there really isn't anything you can do about it apart from just get on with it. I'm pleased to say that my nan has made a good recovery from her accident in late October last year, and since then she has had another birthday and mother's day thrown in too. So she knows just how special she is to us. xx

Sometimes Life is unfair...But you just got to get on with it!

I feel embarrassed that I have left my blog without posts for so long! Since October a lot has happened and I've found it a struggle to get any time to do anything for myself and to be honest my blog didn't even come into my mind until a couple of days ago! I forgot about it!!!

I have had a rocky few months which I could not do anything to help, I had some personal things to deal with on top of my nan being taken into hospital, then my post got stolen which were valuable items, then on top of sorting that out I was supposed to visit family in Scotland, so off I trot and then when I come back my uncle is admitted to hospital. So 2 members of my very small family of 5 weren't with us, and we weren't even sure if they would be home for Christmas. I was sat by nans bedside every evening until they kicked me out. You see my nan is probably the closest person to me! She's not just my nan, shes a best friend of mine. She has lived with me since 1994, until I moved out in 2012. She had a nasty fall, which scared us all a LOT!! and being 93 years old I wasn't sure how well she'd cope with it. It turns out that she is doing well now and will hopefully be home soon but this year my priorities have changed and family is my main one, which is why I'm not on my blog that much right now. I hope you can bare with me for a while until I can get myself back on track. I'm not entirely sure why I have written this but sometimes I think others views can put your own into perspective. It's not that bad after all!

I do hope that you are having a lovely Christmas, hopefully spent with the ones you love most in life! Have a very happy new year, and speak to you soon! :)

xx

Something I did a little earlier on in the year! Copyrighted to Leanne Carpentier. Please not copy!