So Cute!

Somehow I managed to plan this layout without having a picture in mind to go with it. I'd cut the frame for my "Beautiful" layout and then just dumped the negative part down on the bit of red cardstock. The next day I saw it lying there and just had to turn it into a layout.

I inked the cardstock using a Maya Road mask, stitched the paper onto the cardstock, made the butterfly, laid out all the crochet, flower, bird and leaf parts... then realised that I hadn't really thought it all through!

Finally went with this picture solely because I'm wearing a green t-shirt and I'm outside, so I sort of match both colour and theme! Even managed a suitable title. Quite happy with the way this turned out.

Maze Book of Me

Hot on the heels of me thinking that my mini book skills aren't up to scratch I decided to make a Maze Book! Glutton for mini embellishment punishment, obviously. I do love the folding, cutting and sticking that goes into a Maze Book though, so I enjoyed putting this together.

This one I've made to try and get some of my baby / childhood pictures scrapped before my Baby arrives and I end up just scrapping him instead.

I've had to take the photos with a cushion on my lap as I'm stuck to the sofa today with my oversized hippo feet up on a stool. They aren't happy tootsies today. :(



I've used 4 Heures 37 papers for the covers and Echo Park for the insides. I've not written on the tags yet, there are a couple of pictures that I want to ask my parents about first, then I can do some more journalling. There's plenty of slots of I want to add more as things occur to me.

I used to be cute! What happened?! I'm playing with my toy helicopter, although I always called it a "helicopterdopter". I think that butterfly may need some work, it's a bit plain.

Stamping and ProMarkering fun. I don't do much of that, but yesterday I realised that I do have some bird stamps and thought I should include them in the Kit.



A Basic Grey June Bug bird stamp.

Coming home from Nanny & Grandpa's on my birthday and seeing my new bike for the first time. My father took this reaction shot, but I don't have any pictures of the bike.


Another butterfly that needs a bit of bling - and me in a leotard! Horrors!

Hurdles. In the photo it's vaguely possible to see the frightening second year teacher, Mrs Hoyle, and the lovely Headmaster, Mr Davies.

In the swimming pool on the last day of a holiday in Spain. I swallowed too much pool water and spent the entire flight home being sick. It wasn't the greatest experience.

There. Fuzzy, but photographed. I think I could do with a nap now.

Cake Baking & 1976

Kept at it with the Quirky Kit for a couple more layouts!


I wanted to know why Mummy's fruit cake was always so much better than mine when we use the same recipe. So I watched while she made one. Better quality ingredients and more moisture is the key!

Got out the good old Circle Circus again for this one. This is me in 1976 and I'm wondering now how I can possibly be about to have one of these when I still feel like I am one!

Scrap Map Saturday ~ Lolly

The theme this week at Creative Craft World is "All Things Girlie", which I'm not, so I went with a cute picture of me as a child. Lolly is my childhood nickname.


I don't own an awful lot of pink or feminine scrapping stuff, but I do have some American Crafts Dear Lizzy. This is the kind that comes with the album kits that they sell in T K Maxx, the thinner variety that is single sided and tears as soon as you look at it. Have to say, I'm not a fan, but the albums are great and most of the American Crafts embellishments are perfectly fine. Besides, £7 for a 12x12 album, embellies and some paper? I'm not complaining about that! ;)

The circles on the sketch have been transformed into lots of large flowers and I've layered up some Primas and AC flowers on top of them. Jazzed up the flowers with Artemio stamps and, dare I say, the large blue brad is by Laurence Llewellyn Bowen?! In my defence, he was another cheapy from T K Maxx and the brads aren't bad, although the paper sucked!

I did manage to semi-distress some of the AC papers without it tearing and I stitched down one of the corners that refused to stay stuck. Punched some Martha Stewart butterflies out of Sassafrass Lass (woo! I mixed Companies again!!) and made my own journalling spot from some more S. Lass.

This week I used Distress Ink in Tattered Rose.

Well, that's it. March is all but over and my GDT spot at Creative Craft World has ended. I've had a great time this month and look forward to doing future sketches ~ depending on Baby, of course!

Using Up Kits

Just a couple of layouts using up some more of the leftover kits from our Retreat classes.

{Fancy Pants - Love Birds}

John on our Balcony in Paris. He might look happy, but it's a long way up and it's very cold out there. As soon as the picture was taken he hurried back in. Fair enough, we were using our balcony as a fridge!

{Nikki Sivils - Sweet Cherry Pie}

Duncan and I in the back garden playing in our lawnmower boxes.

Retreat Classes

Thought I should at least get one entry up tonight about Retreat #2 before my muscles decide I can't sit here any longer! So, I'm starting with the classes that we took with Sandie Vincent last Saturday. I've not played about in PSP trying to sort them all out, quite frankly, my arse cannot be arsed!

{Nikki Sivills - Sweet Cherry Pie}

I used pictures of Baby Me for the first class, desaturated so that they (hopefully) match the paper a little better.

{Fancy Pants - Love Birds}

Again with the Baby Me pictures!

I then became overwhelmed and exhausted. Making a little person is quite tiring and upsets your insides. Anyway, I didn't do the final class when everyone else did. I was guided through it later that evening when I was feeling a lot better. This is the result:

{Echo Park - Little Girl}

I had another Baby Me picture all ready for this one as well, but in my absence from class, Jen printed out these fab pictures of the Bijoux Belles cupcakes that Sarah had made for us. Quite a few of the others used this picture too and it matches the papers a lot better than my original choice would've, so yay!

The classes were great fun. I learnt some new skills and all the paper ranges were ones I'd never come across before and probably would never have considered buying. Being outside the comfort zone was a new experience as I'd not taken scrapping classes before.

Scrap Map Saturday ~ Fun?

My first layout as a Guest Design Team member for Creative Craft World - and I choose to scrap a picture of me in a bikini!!

The theme this week is 'circles'.


Oh yes, don't I look miserable! I never really grasped why going to beach is a fun thing to do. Sand gets everywhere. Of course, now I go to the beach, turn my back to sea and study the geology of the cliffs. Much more fun than beachballs. Although, I suppose I'll have to take my baby to the beach at some point. Maybe I'll suddenly discover the fun?

This is the very last of my Cosmo Cricket Snorkel paper, had so little that I punched the smaller circles from the larger ones and teamed it up with Cosmo Cricket Garden Variety to make it go further.

I Distress Inked the background with Broken China and Faded Jeans, then Glimmer Misted over the top. Still a bit of a newbie when it comes to Misting, but I'm pretty happy with how this came out. Doodled on the circles (yes, I cheated and used a Template!) and the journalling lines.

Scrap Map Saturday ~ Kiss

My entry for the Saturday Scrap Map challenge on the Creative Craft World blog, this week with the theme of Love.

I've used some of my new stash from the gorgeous Jan/Feb Quirky Kit and a photo of Mummy and I on a ferry! I love that jumper I'm wearing. :)

Massive Weekly Challenge Catch-Up!

I did get all these done on time, but my lack of mojo and general enthusiasm has meant me not taking the pictures in time and getting them loaded onto UKS. So here are a bunch of layouts for weekly challenges taken yesterday in rather dodgy light!


Baby Blue / 3 of Something / Bunting / Celebration
Last Christmas with both sets of Parentals.


Ice cream colours / Change / Stripes / Journalling
Me as a child. I was able to use up a lot of bits of Crate Paper - Blue Hill that I've had lying around for ages.


Guilty Pleasure / Chocolate Brown / Circle
John and I indulging in morning tea at Little Bettys in York. I saved one of the doily things that go under tea cups to catch the drips - gotta love emphemera. Also managed to use one of the beautiful Lakeland doilies that I've been stroking for a while.

Different Fonts / Inspired by Nature /Make an Embellishment
Used some of the skeleton leaves that Daddy found for me at a boot sale. :)


Panorama / Stamping / Altered Lettering
This one is actually current! Grand Canyon from North Rim. Stamped journalling boxes and painted thickers.

Twisted Sketches #55

A bit late in putting this one up, and I haven't done Twist #56 yet and #57 will be up today! Still, the twist was to use Flags, so I made some banners out of ribbon and came up with this:


The photos are all old shots of me, various quality, especially that one in the middle of my 7th Birthday!

Once again, I've used Jo's papers. Thanks Jo! These are all K&Co. paper snob in me wants to know what they're called and I think they may be Mira, but I'm not sure.

The Studio - Jan 1st Challenge

This is my entry to The Studio's January 1st challenge.

I've not entered one of their challenges before, but I'm going to try and get more scrapping done this year and will therefore need all the challenges and mojo boosting blogs I can get hold of!

This challenge was to create a layout with plenty of white space, three photos and to scrap your fears. The journalling might not show up terribly well, but the basic gist is that I had such a happy childhood that I cam afraid I may never get to be a mother and therefore, have a second happy childhood. All the pictures are of me as a child and they're taken from scans of slides - hence the poor quality of the photos.

Evil Stare!

The final picture in the series of me eating peas, drinking Ribena and looking evil. Made this one for Shimelle's Colour Challenge - to use coloured pens. Very glad I forked out for a bunch in my last Hobbycrafts shop.

Maya Road Bird Book

Thought that I wouldn't just make layouts from this months Sarah's Cards kit, so I used some of it to make this Bird Book. I've not photographed all of it as the pictures I used are old slide scans of me as a Little Person and they're already pretty fuzzy!






I didn't bother with loads of journalling, mainly because I don't need it, but also because I just couldn't make it fit. Besides, I can't even remember where I am in most of these pictures!




I'm also using this Bird Book for one of Shimelle's Colour Challenges - to use acrylic paint. The covers, edges and lots of the chipboard elements have been acrylic'd.

Baby Book

Went to Pocklington in Yorkshire yesterday to collect a table. Quite a long way to go for some furniture, so we looked for something else to do whilst we were there. I found a craft shop, so was able to buy some shiny new papers! Yay! :)

Today I decided to just go for it and start using my new stash rather than hoarding it for months and months and finally forgetting I have it! OK, so I just used one sheet to make this mini-book, but that's a start.



Me in my sunshiney sunhat and eating my feet!


Baby Me - just as it says on the page, and me in my first car.

Yep, me on the loo and sticking out my tongue - nothing really changes!!!

The back. I've used one of my teammates funky buttons. :)

Real Layouts!!!

I did these a couple of weeks ago, and then took the pictures last week, finally remembered to add them to my Blog!

This one is another of the Road Trip pictures. The ice box that we carted round with us for the fortnight and it kept our cheese cold.

Me! Still a face I pull when I'm sulking...

Boots!

This is something I've been planning on doing for a while. Creating a layout using just Freebies that I've collected from Scrap Girls over the months. Then I realised that I didn't have an alpha - so the title is the latest one by Linda Walton.


Yep - another picture of me as a little person! I wandered round a lot with just these boots on. They actually belonged to my large Paddington Bear! I loved those boots.

Mummy & Me!

Made this for a weekly challenge:

Create a LO either in black and white or a using a rainbow of colour
Create a LO that celebrates womanhood - My mother and me!
Use at least one distressing technique - distressed papers
Use 5 of something on your LO - five black flowers

I don't have many rainbow papers, so I went the black and white route. That led me to go down the digi route. Not to mention the fact that I'm trying to study a lot more at the moment, that also makes digi-ing a lot easier than getting all my scraps out over my textbooks.

Bon Scrapatit - You Don't Know Jack
A Work in Progress - Autumn Dream and Sweet Dreams
Font - Grenoble Heavy

Angie!

The neighbours had three cats that they never seemed to love. They were always at our house for food and warmth - the cats, not the neighbours. This was Angie, although I called her Kitty.

Plum Heaven by Nicole Young

Baby Laura - again!

After being washed in a washing-up bowl at the camp site this is me being dried by Mummy!

A Work in Progress - Primary Grunge
Font - a handmade one called Laura's Scribble

Another trip over to France in a jumper knitted by Nanny!

A Work in Progress - Breakfast at Tiffany's
Font - Roadway

Glastonbury Abbey?

I'm pretty convinced that this was taken at Glastonbury Abbey, it certainly looks Abbey-like!

A Work in Progress - Fired Earth