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.

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.

The People's Palace, Glasgow

This is my last layout / project using the Counterfeit Kit. Sitting at my table and scrapping is just getting harder and I still want to prep some more baby pages if I can. The Kit isn't really suitable for baby stuff, so this is it.

Certainly going to be playing again in the future though, this has been fun!



I cut all the flowers out from a couple of sheets of For the Record and I did it in bed yesterday with my feet up! (See? I'm not even scrapping at my table anymore!) The background paper is MME: Meadowlark, Dawn. I coloured some of it in a bit, doesn't really show in the photo. Flowers look better in real life too, they're mostly layered up on foam pads.

Right. It's nap time again!

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.

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!

Scrap Map Saturday ~ Paris

The theme this week at Creative Craft World is one landscape photo.

Oh, good grief! This happened last week! I need a photo in a size that I haven't got and can't get. Well, I was all ready to chop down a 6x4 picture to make it more landscapey, when I realised that I always panic without thinking things through.

In the 1990s I had a camera that took landscape photos alongside normal photos (and another size that I can't recall). I wanted that camera. I loved that camera. My Dad said it was a silly camera and eventually I'd not be able to get the film for it or the novelty would wear off. He was right, of course! But before I gave up on my expensive toy I did take some landscape shots. I've not scrapped any of them before as I only have one copy of them and no idea what happened to the negatives.

So, here's my first layout using a truly landscape photo:


I pushed the landscapeyness even further by making it a 6x12 layout.

Almost chose a landscape shot of Grand Canyon, but I'm still loving my shiny new Rouge de Garance Gustave papers and as they feature architectural elements of the Eiffel Tower and this photo has the Eiffel Tower in it - small, but it's there - I had to go for this.

Then I went a little Eiffel Tower crazy! Used a Prima mask to add a little Distress Ink (Vintage Photo) tower to the left side, although it doesn't show up well in real life, let alone this photo and also a little piece of the Parisian ephemera that comes with the K&Co Maison paper pad.

It's very unlike me to mix Paper Companies on on layout. I do try, but I have a habit of keeping them together, so mixing K&Co with Rouge de Garance is quite startling!

Scrap Map Saturday ~ Springtime

This week at Creative Craft World the Scrap Map Saturday theme is "spring / seasons".

Thought at first it might be a problem as I didn't seem to have many pictures from Spring (or autumn, or winter...), certainly not eight of them! I don't have photo printing capabilities at home, I always send them out to be printed, so my photos are always sized at whatever options I'm allowed on Photobox.

Then it occurred to me that, obviously, sketches are jumping off points, they're for kick starting your mojo and sending it off to scrap. My mojo came up with this:

{Forde Abbey in Dorset, Easter 2009}

I cut one photo into six pieces, displaced them a little and filled the gaps with daisies and my journalling. Also made my own background with Distress Inks (mustard seed, peeled paint & faded jeans) and a Maya Road butterfly sheer sheet.

Once I'd done that I didn't want to cover up my background any more than I had to, so I added a teeny title.

Then I had to go away and play with the Sheer Sheet as I'd not used it before and it's FUN!

Creative Craft World Challenge

Here's my entry for the latest Challenge at Creative Craft World. This time it was a sketch challenge, gotta love a sketch!

{The View from from Welches Dam RSPB Reserve}

I've been doing a lot in 8.5x11 recently, but forgot to scale the sketch to the paper after I decided to flip the sketch! It was after I stuck the title down that I realised what I'd done wasn't what I'd planned to do, still, I like it.

My process was different this time. After spending ages colour coding my buttons, brads, cardstock and blooms they're now all easy to get at, easy to pull out the pots that match the photos... it's lovely!

I'm not going to sort my papers by colour. I'm still too much of a Paper Snob to let certain Companies mix with other Companies! But I do know what I own and what the colours are, so I pulled out all my pieces of red and green for this in the hope that I could mix them up. It didn't go as well as I'd hoped, the main papers are still both from the same collection (Cosmo Cricket - Garden Variety), but there is a Basic Grey rub on in there, and a punch from a matching paper and a Fancy Pants overlay that's been sitting around for ages.


Layering! Hurrah! Thanks to Wendy and Christine I will never let an unlayered embellishment near a layout again. :) Besides, it helps me to overcome my Snobbishness and mix up those Companies. This one fetaures stash my Dad bought from a boot sale, BG Cupcake, BG Boxer, Crate Cottage, Prima, American Crafts and a flower that came from goodness only knows where!



This one is my favourite. It's a shame that the Boot Sale Stash only had one piece of each item, so that's the ruffley green ribbon all gone and the red button with the doodly edge all used up. Still, must stop stroking and start using.

Albuquerque

One of the latest Kaisercraft lines is Up, Up & Away. Well, rather obvious that I'd have to have some of it, plenty of uses for balloony papers. I bought the clear stamps as well, they feature three balloons and a nice journalling ticket. Plenty of practical uses and hardly an indulgence!

Used Merly Impressions for the first time as they specialise in Kaisercraft and WOW! Awesome service. So quick, emails to let you know they've dispatched, such a simple thing and yet many companies don't do that. The package was parcelled perfectly as well, attention to detail! Not to mention her sending three of the Kaisercraft magazines as well. Such fun to browse through and get inspiration from.

This was my first time using Kaisercraft paper as well, but I can safely say that I'll be back to Kaisercraft AND Merly Impressions in the future.

One of the tips in the magazine was to desaturate photos so that they match the earthier tones of this collection. So I did. Here's a layout with an ex-bright photo that has been desaturated. It looks so much better like this.

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!

Meadow Brown 2

My butterfly layout won Challenge 4 at Creative Craft World!

I knew there was a reason for taking pictures of things even if I should have been thinking about rocks! :)

Meadow Brown

Couldn't come up with any decent title for this, so I didn't bother. There's no rules, right?! Besides, I did mention in the journalling that it's a Meadow Brown!

I took the picture at Summer School last year when I was supposed to be looking at rocks. But it landed right by me and I just had to take its picture.

Made for Creative Craft World - Challenge 4, to use primas, which all of these flowers are.

Twisted Sketches #45

The lastest Twist is Laugh and this is what made us laugh at the Retreat - The Settle.  Whenever you wanted something it was probably on the Settle... I guess you had to be there!  So I've scrapped a picture of Susi on the last day, sat upon the Settle.

Twisted Sketches #44

Wow! I was finally able to take a decent picture of a layout because the sun came out and I could take it outside! Well, that's exciting for me anyway. This layout turned into a bit of a Cosmo Cricket Love Fest as I used parts from four different collections.


The Twist this week is "Orange" and there are bits of orange scattered over this layout.

I finally stopped stroking the ribbon I bought at Liberty's and used them both on this. I love the butterflies so much, although they are a bit of nuisance to stick down, wings everywhere and their antennae come off far too easily



This is actually layout number two. I thought that scrapping Halloween would be the easiest way to use orange, but it just didn't come together, so I ditched the glaringly obvious orange in favour of this more subtle approach.

Pensford

More catching up. My parents and I took a trip to Pensford - I think it was last year! - these are the layouts for that trip:

Mmm... tuna light lunch.


The tour bus - we had free cereal bars afterwards as Pensford is owned by Jordans, the cereal bar people.


Brilliant tree-art, metal caterpillars and butterflies.

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...

Oversights!

Couple of layouts that I forgot to photograph. They're both road trip pictures. The first one is a statue of a burro (donkey) in Santa Fe and the other is me in the Tucson Botanical Garden.

A scraplift from Scrap, Paper, Scissors.


The paper for this is Rusty Pickle. It was one of the papers that came with the UKS Mystery Kit and I just had to colour it in, which wouldn't be allowed in the UKS contest. So I just went ahead and coloured this one in. Now the CyberCrop is over I can post the layout - I just forgot all about it for a while there!