Rather Large Catch-Up Post

I've been busy sorting out  my albums, so everything is now in chronological order.  I now pre-prep my albums, I know what needs to be done and I know the order that it'll be inserted into the album. I begin by putting the right number of page protectors into the album along with a Post-It that tells me which event will be going into that protector and the date. If there was any ephemera to go along with the trip, then that goes in as well. Perhaps some notes about what journalling needs to be included, a rough sketch or a suggestion as to paper that might match. When the photos come back from the printers they go into the page protector. That way I have everything I need to hand. I don't have to scrap in order, as such, I just know what needs to be done.

These layouts start in May and work towards Jubilee weekend in June. There are two that I've not done yet, but I thought I'd better make a start on getting them uploaded.

Adam with his friend Molly, enjoying the swings. I used the most recent Quirky Kit for this one.  Also attempted a small confetti burst after reading this post by May Flaum during Camp Scrap.  Don't think I'm ready for a huge burst yet!

Then the Grandparents came to stay and we went to Audley End.

Adam had just learnt to walk properly the day before, so he did a LOT of walking that day. Plenty of opportunity to practice with a Grandparent holding each hand and a ball to chase.

I put my own kit together when the current QK ran out. I'm trying to shop my own stash at the moment, to save some money, but kits help me to scrap faster and I think this worked. This is a mix of current Basic Grey PB&J and some older stuff that I've been stroking.  Turned the scraps into herringbone, I love that technique, it's great fun to make!

And then we went on holiday to Norfolk for a long weekend.

Sheringham. We started there because we wanted to buy The Sun (augh!) to get the Lego figure of the day! Then we went for a lovely teacake, it was a bit windy and there was no babychanging. So we went off to the beach to find a nice sheltered spot to do him outside. Adam wasn't best pleased by the experience, but we bribed him with his very first bucket and spade. 

Same day we went to Cromer for lunch - a delicious fish and chip takeaway eaten by the seafront. We also tried to find some knickers. Turned out that I'd forgotten to pack any... no go. Spent the rest of the holiday washing out my pants. Ah well.

Thought we might go home via the beach.  That was a bit of a fail.

These two were made with the Quirky Kit. I have added a few bits and bobs. The second one is 8x8. I'm trying to do a few layouts at a different size.  Maybe if I only have one photo of an event, or it's related to a larger 12x12 that already tells the tale.  I don't want to waste my time telling the same story twice.

Felbrigg Hall. I didn't take many photos here and I had to save one to use in the Project 12 for June. Herringbones again!

 

Had quite a bit of shandy on this trip! So much so that it gets its own layout. Mmm...shandy. 

Blickling Hall. We'd been there on the first day, right before it closed, but as we're NT members abd knew we'd be going back, it was lovely to just go in and sit. That's a layout that needs to be made. These two are from the second visit when we were able to enjoy the gardens properly, although we weren't able to do the house. Nice ice creams there!

The second one is a (herringboned!) 8x8.

Adam was too little for the play-stag, but we'd certainly go back and visit in the future. Great place for a final picnic. Before we had time to catch our breath from the holiday it was time to go to Bristol for Jubilee weekend. I saved the red, white, blue and flag ribbon from the Quirky Kit for this layout - Adam and his Great Uncle Adrian. 

Adam wasn't impressed by breakfast... 

On our way back home we stopped off at Butterfly World. Adam was terrified by the butterflies! 

Had fun on this one. I used the Butterfly World flyer, chopped it up and gessoed it. Nice and painty and inky.

Adam at 11 Months

I don't think I've taken photos of this series of layouts, but here's the one for his eleventh month.

 {Trip to Cambridge Botanical Garden with Mummy and Nana}

 

I've decided to do his 12th month as a double and have also realised that his 10th month hasn't been done yet either. As I only bought a limited amount of these papers I thought this one had better me rather minimalist so I don't run out in the middle of the final layout! 

Besides, this was very quick to scrap and get in the album. At some point I'll take photos of the rest.

Thanks, Crate.

Here is the Crate Paper mid season release, Little Bo Peep. Why am I linking to Baby Girl papers?
No. No girls expected!
There's one page I want. Just the one. This one:

See? Down there in the corner? Little girl with Panda. MY PANDA!!!

Now I have to buy a sheet of baby girl paper. :(

Note to Self...

Cut up that paper!  Yes.  That gorgeous Miss Caroline that's been sitting in your MME folder.  It's no good there, you can't see it.  Shove it an album where it can be appreciated.

End of lecture!

NSD 2012 & Hitchhiking

I've recently signed up to Shimelle's Hitchhikers Guide class at Two Peas in a Bucket. This meant that I started looking at the Two Peas forum a lot more last week than I have been in the past. I'd kind of dismissed it as an American Shop rather than a Global Forum and had stopped visiting. However, I find the forum there and the work posted to be a lot more inspirational than UKS. Expect I'll be hanging out there a lot more in the future. Last weekend was National Scrapbooking Day in America, but they kindly threw it open to the rest of the world! I even managed to get some layouts finished. Both of these are from Shimelle's Starting Points, and tie-in with the Hitchhiking class and one of them also counts as an NSD challenge at Two Peas. 

This layout is also for the challenge - negative space. Now that it's done, I realise that I should've lifted the top layer on pop dots to make it more obvious that the stars aren't punched and laid on top, but are holes with the paper underneath showing through. Ah well. I've learnt that lesson and can use it in the future. Of course, this is now making me lust after the Martha Stewart punch anywheres, do I need two classic butterflies that do different things? I think that maybe I do... Anyway. The layout is Adam, whinging! 

This one is just a Starting Point.  It records Adam's first train ride and the fact that he fell asleep during it (and during the return trip).  I used the planes as a travel theme.  I don't have train embellies, but the planes are cut from a Glitz paper in the current Quirky Kit and a recent Glitter Girl video was about travel papers being used for other things, so I think this works.  Otherwise I'd be hanging onto the paper forever waiting for a plane theme to crop up!

Hatfield House

Over the Easter Weekend we met Grandma and Grandad at Hatfield House.  Halfwayish between us, to save any of us doing the whole drive.  I saved up my Tesco vouchers for this, so we had enough for all of us to get in and for three of us to go round the House.

I've tried to continue with my idea of getting multiple photos onto one layout and have used fake polaroids as well.

Squeezed in some ephmera as well.  The title was cut from the paperbag that my postcards came in and the pictures at the bottom are on a bookmark from one of the shops. Wow! That was a gorgeous shop, it had STASH!! I bought six washi tapes, a set of stamps and a coolbag for Adam.

To cram more photos on I backed each polaroid on another and created flaps. I've written the journalling under the flaps.I called the gorgeous shop the Oak Barn when, in fact, it's called the Oakroom.

I've managed to cover most of the day on one page, which just leaves me with a shot of Grandad walking off with Adam on their exploring adventure and a couple of shots of Adam being blown away by the lady on the the saxaphone. Both of those moments I felt deserving of their own layouts.

We Are Going On An Egg Hunt

We spent part of Easter Sunday at Anglesey Abbey taking part in an Easter Egg Hunt.  Adam wasn't really impressed to be dragged outside on a cold and damp day, but we were determined to have fun, despite the misgivings of Mister McGrumpyPants.

{Click for Full Size}

In order for to win the Easter Egg you had to fill in the gaps on a map with pictures. John and I did our best for Adam, I drew daffodills, loads of windows and John drew a fantastic goat. At the end of the Hunt the lady from Cadbury didn't even look at our beautiful drawings and handed us the egg anyway. 

Oh well, chocolate is chocolate.

I'm trying to get more photos of an event scrapped at one time. I'm pretty hopeless at multiphoto layouts, so I've started getting different shapes and sizes printed. This one features tiny photos and fake polaroids, which I made with the new setting on Picasa.  I even crammed in some ephemera from the day, rather than hoarding it.  Pretty happy with this as a start.

Too Many Buttons

I plan to shrink my button collection from this saucepan (I had a button-related incident in the kitchen) and three Bertolli pasta sauce jars, into the IKEA spice jars on the left.

Wish me luck!

Retreat - Road Trip

Oh yes, I'm STILL scrapping Road Trip 2008! I keep finding parts of the trip that I've not covered and need to be in the album(s).

Jerome was one of those places that we never intended to visit, but we needed a post office and this was where we ended up. We hadn't researched the place before we went, so we didn't know it was "America's Most Vertical City" and the "Largest Ghost Town in America"! One of the places we put on our (rather long) list of places to be revisited.



Leaving the Wigwam Motel after a night listening to the trains chuffing loudly by.

The tears were actually accidental. I tore the paper a few times when distressing the edges, so I used that layering technique to fix it and I'm quite pleased with it.

The last picnic before heading back to Las Vegas and the flight home.

Retreat - Christmas Layouts

The Retreat this year was brilliant. I only went from Saturday morning until Wednesday morning, couldn't stay away from Adam and John for any longer than that. I managed to get 26 layouts scrapped and it turns out the worst part of that is getting all their photos taken, edited and uploaded. So I've decided to do a bit at a time, in themes and not bother with all of them. There were a handful that I really didn't like. Mainly ones from about 9pm onwards!

All my Christmas layouts this year match. I'm using Christmas Wishes by Bella Blvd. This layout is being used for the March Monthly Challenge on UKS.


Adam unwrapping his very first Christmas pressie. This is also March Week One Challenge on UKS.

Retreating

The glorious hanging of our "Belles on Tour" banner that we created yesterday. We'll have to get T-shirts next!

Right. Time to get out of bed and get scrapping.

Test Mobile Post

Seeing if I've re-enabled mobile posting.

Vegas Baby!

My Teamie Sue gave me this piece of paper as part of our 12 Days swap. I've been looking at it and stroking it for ages, last week I decided to do something with it. Rather happy with how far one piece of paper can go.

Shimelle's Starting Points

Before Christmas I decided I would make a whole bunch of Xmas layouts all made from the same paper collection so that they'd all tie together and look good in my album. I chose Christmas Wishes by Bella Blvd.

Then I thought I'd get a head start on the layouts by using some of Shimelle's Starting Points. Unfortunately, by the time Christmas was over I realised that I hadn't taken many photos - well, heaps and heaps of Adam, but hardly any of anything else (like me and the rest of the family). The ones I did take really didn't match the papers AND the Starting Points weren't inspiring me.

Well, I didn't want to waste the papers or The Points, so here's what I came up with.

From this Starting Point. I GA'd all the chipboard pieces to make them shinier and more Christmassy.

From this Starting Point. I shouldn't have used the strip of penguins, they were awfully hard to work with and I don't know why I inked the edges in green. What was I thinking?!

From this Starting Point. This one is beginning to grow on me. The envelope is from my Valentine this year! Recycle recycle! I joined up a series of Adam-Unwrapping-Huge-Present and tucked them into the envelope. GA'd all the chipboard again - needs to be shinier.

I've printed off some black and white / sepia Christmas photos to make the scrapping of them a lot easier.

Wells-next-the-Sea

Did a spot more scrapping. Matching set, or should that be Companion Pieces? Yeah, that sounds artier! Used some new MME that I bought rashly in a sale. Been buying way too much stash in rash sales and then hoarding it because I have to time to stroke it, let alone scrap with it.

Anyway, I managed to get three layouts in a row done. I think it's easier to scrap a lot at a time once that first one is done, gets quicker.

Adam fell asleep at the harbour and missed his first possible glimpse of the sea. He also missed the crabbing and the fishermen bringing home the catch.

This is the first view of beach that Adam had. Not a bad stretch of beacf for your first time. As it was October it was cold and quiet, rather than baking hot with swarms of screaming kids... oh, perhaps he'd have preferred the excitement. I suppose I'd better get used to that sort of beach holiday in the future.

Finally awake and enjoying the view!

I've recently been inspired by the work of Marcy Penner. Lots of spritzing, blobbing, white space, using up those pesky asterisks, random buttons - beautiful.

iPhone Photos

This month I've managed to make four layouts. There just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day anymore. In fact, as I'm trying to type this, I have a baby climbing my legs and tugging on my screen...

Anyway, I took some photos with my iPhone, just to make things a bit easier and to actually get something uploaded. How am I supposed to look back at my blog in the future if there's nothing for me to look at?!

I've used the most recent Quirky Kit for all of these.


My Mother babysat Adam and me when John went to America last year. We went to the Cambridge Folk Museum and I decided that I was going to have some cake, no matter what. The chosen piece was lemon drizzle, which Mummy tried and decided was too sweet...


She also passed judgement on the people, the establishment... and gave me an excellent title "This is Cupcake Country". I don't understand people who don't like cupcakes, my Mother is bizarre! :) She did like the cups and saucers, though, a very eclectic collection, which just had to be photographed.

Now going back over a year to November 2010. I have scrapped this event before, but I wanted another take on it for the new 2010 album I've started to put together. D-rings from now on, none of that awful post-bound malarkey.

Anyway, Maria and I on the London Eye and at Gabriel's Wharf. Photos expertly taken by Susi!

This kit is brilliant and these pictures are awful, not doing it justice one little bit. :( I expect I'll never get round to taking a shot of the fourth layout. I need more Time!