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.

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 Cyber Crop - Stickers

I love stickers. I have lots of them. When I was little I used to collect them, especially fruit stickers, they were fun. Somehow, though, I just don't seem to use them enough on my layouts, so this was the perfect challenge. In fact, I decided to abandon patterned paper altogether and just use stickers - with a bit of background misting that looks much better in real life, it's very shiny and glimmery!

Some of the stickers are backed onto card and then cut out to make them easier to work with and to layer. I've managed to include:

October Afternoon - Thrift Shop
October Afternoon - 5 and Dime
October Afternoon - Ducks in a Row
Cosmo Cricket - Circa 1934
Cosmo Cricket - Early Bird
Cosmo Cricket - Earth Love
Echo Park - For the Record
Jillibean Soup - Monster Stew
Making Memories alphas

The journalling says that Adam is seven days old and we're heading out on our first trip in the pram - to the voting booths!

Explore : Prompt 5 ~ Friday Project

I chose to make a layout with the map circle embellishments I made. Although I do scrap myself, I tend to do it with other people in the shot, so I made sure that I used a photo of just myself - a self portrait, in fact! Unless you think I'm not alone because "Frankie the Bump" is also in the picture.

Retreat Beer Mat Mini Book

I honestly don't know why I bother with Mini Books. I can never seem to make them look as they do in my head. Perhaps it's because I haven't the knack to use tiny embellishments well or creatively. Anything under an 8x8 seems to go a bit squiffy.

But I have all these beer mats to use and I do enjoy covering them, even if filling them up is a little beyond me. So, I used the Counterfeit Kit to make it, hoping that the manufacturer mixing might help me. I don't think it did and I'm pretty sure I could do better than this, but I'm not sure I really know where I'm going wrong.

Perhaps I could do with a gadget that punches holes in chipboard so I don't have to poke holes with a compass! Occasionally I think about getting eyelet setters, Big Bites and things like that, but so far I've avoided the serious tools.

Ugh. I'm moaning. I blame the bad night of no sleep thanks to the baby kicking!


Maria in the Deli, Susi setting us up for the Caught in Crystal class and a page of journalling.

Everyone off to the Craft Shop for some serious stash shopping, outside the house getting ready for our Group photo session.

Maria, Sue and my Bump - with very fetching pink PJ bottoms!

One of the handmade flowers from a Quirky Kit that I've been stroking for ages. I put it in my Counterfeit in an attempt to use it up, and I have. :) There's still another one left for stroking!

Twisted Sketches #54

This week, the Twist is "Bold". I chose to interpret that as Bold colours, and here it is:


I took the photo at the Camera Obscura, Edinburgh, in their World of Illusions. They have a Tunnel of Stars and if you play with your camera exposure settings you can get some fun results.





I could have spent hours in there just playing with the settings and the lights!

Twisted Sketches #49

This week the Twist is "colour", here's my take:


This is Tiddles. He was one of the cats that lived next-door-but-one when I was little. His real name was Linus, but I wanted to call him Tiddles.

One day my parents told me that Tiddles had moved house and gone to live at an old people's home... of course, that's not what had happened to Tiddles. :(

Twisted Sketches #42

The Twist this week is Flight. I guess this is technically "landing", but we were just flying. I'm in the basket with my mother and I think this is the early 90s, but I'm not too sure about the date. We're at the Lorraine Balloon Fiesta in Metz, France which is held every two years.

As I've just discovered the joys of Distress Inking and embossing I'm doing it on every layout that crosses my desk. I just need some more inks now as distressing with one does look a little odd.

Twisted Sketches #37

The Twist this week is Wood - so here's a layout featuring some wood!

I took this picture last year on a walk through Stockhill woods. I'm still having a problem finding somewhere well lit to take photos, so I'm trying this... shining a light on the layout and taking it form a distance! That does involve showing up some of the highly attractive background that is my scrapping area, but heyho!

I'm using my new flower punch on everything I do at the moment, I love it.

Bunny Hunting Day of Green

The Green Day at the Colour Challenge. John goes hunting for rabbits at Forde Abbey in Dorest over Easter weekend. Thanks to his dilligence we won a creme egg!

Weekly Challenge & SLYMI

I managed to squeeze eight layouts out the May Kit before all the papers were used up. So, for once, I actually did the weekly challenge as a paper layout and followed it up with Scrap Like You Mean It #22.



SLYMI was a minimalist sketch, so I was able to use up the final largish piece of paper. I do love 'white space' layouts.

Subscribing

After a lot of umm-ing and ah-ing I decided to sub to a scrapping kit. Then I spent a while looking for something that I knew I'd enjoy - it actually didn't take long to decide to go with Sarah's Cards. First kit arrived last week and I've now used it all up! Well, all the papers - I still have loads of embellies to play with!

Here's a few layouts that I've done with it:





Both of those are Forde Abbey in Dorset.

Bijoux Belles Inchies Swap

Our UKS team decided to have an inchies swap - I wanted to use mine on a layout, but had no idea how to go about it. My Other Half said I should have them growing off a tree, so I went for doodled vines. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't, but here it is:

Many Patterned Papers!

Been on a run of creating paper layouts recently. I bought myself a bunch of Jillibean Soup papers because they looked scrummy and were calling out to me.



This was my first attempt at it and it does look better in real life. The pictures have darkened a bit too much. My folks feeding birds at Portishead earlier in the year. My Dad was throwing bread at my Mother so the seagulls flocked around her!



Hall's Croft in Stratford, one of the Shakespeare houses.