Paris

Home from our Second Honeymoon / Pre-Baby Holiday. We didn't do an awful lot, but that was the whole point of going to Paris. We'd done so much of it already that there was no pressure to see everything. Just as well because I ached, especially after the first day when I didn't really think about my reduced lung capacity and we walked from the Hotel to the Musee D'Orsay. Normally that would have been an easy walk, but not now with The Bump and my expanding feet. :(


The view from the hotel room on the first night. Looking out at Chatelet / Theatre de la Ville. In the other direction we could even see the Eiffel Tower and a searchlight on top of it. On the following nights it was too foggy


The Bump in the Hotel room.


John on the Balcony, suffering the heights and the cold. He came in as soon as the picture was taken!


We had a shopping day and ended up at the Galleries Lafayette. All rather posh, but we did buy Frankie a snail glove puppet from the Toy Department and had lunch in the cafe. Pretty good view from cafe - one way over the Opera Garnier and the other way looked right at the Eiffel Tower.


There was skating outside the Hotel de Ville. Took photos, but obviously stayed off the ice!

Only ate two crepes, which was very restrained and one night I even had a salad while John had steak frites. Being so central with the hotel was great, so many brasseries close by, the boulangerie was handy for getting breakfast and the supermarche was only a few minutes away.

Now I need to leave a glowing review on TripAdvisor for the hotel. :)

Quick Layout

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Did this in an hour or so this afternoon. Will write about it when not on iPhone!!!

OK. This is my Mother last August eating my tomato ice cream. We were at Wimpole Hall during the tomato festival and they were selling this intriguingly flavoured ice cream. I was all ready to start licking when I realised that freshly made ice cream will have raw egg in. At that point I was just a few weeks pregnant and all the warnings were loud in my mind. So I had to do without and Mummy had to eat it for me. This was the first time I'd had to reject something because of the Baby.

Thanks to my Teamie, Sarah, for the paper!

Circa 1945

I've been stroking this paper for a while, but it was time to take the craft knife to it.

Two photos stuck together so that we're sat side by side on the train with the Giraffe in the middle! At the last minute I remembered to stick the ticket onto the layout. I'm very good at keeping stuff and thinking "when I scrap this event I'll use this ephemera" and then forgetting all about it. I have loads of bits in folders, but all the good pictures have been scrapped. :(

Still, this time, I remembered!

I'm about three weeks pregnant at this point and paranoid about everything, but the sickness has yet to attack. I look happy rather than queasy!

In Bath on December 27th. All the shops we wanted to see were still closed after Christmas, so we ended up just having a nice lunch in Cafe Rene. At least, it used to be called Cafe Rene and isn't anymore. Can't think of its proper name!

Both are very loosely based on layouts in the first PageMaps book.

Delayed WC

And by that I mean "weekly challenge" and not "water closet". This is from last week and I forgot to upload it.


Melman in Scotland last year.

The challenge was:
To alter an old piece of patterned paper - I turned an old piece into a border strip with a punch and some ink.
To use a piece of chipboard - the flower. ALthough now I look at it again, the thickers are chipboard too!
To use a piece of ribbon - giraffe print.
Draw your own sketch or use a website to pick one - I chose this one from the Pink Paislee Blog.

Scrap Map Saturday

My entry for the latest Scrap Map Saturday on the Creative Craft World Blog.


I'm finally cutting into the beautiful Meadowlark Dawn, which I bought for making monochrome layouts and have only been stroking. Also managed to use the KI Memories lace cardstock that I didn't want to chop up for my wedding album, so have now used in full. The trim is from an old Quirky Kit and after getting so many cheap Thickers I'm making myself use them up, rather than overstuff my alphas folder and never use them.

Lighting continues to be bad, so I've propped it up on John's easel near a door.

Santa

Made this for our inter-team mojo jar challenge. I wasn't doing them whilst I was mojoless, but now it's back and I'm playing again! My challenge was to make my own embellies, so I've made some buttons from matching papers and Glossy Accents.

These were my third attempt. The first ones were destroyed when I put my diary down on them whilst they were drying and the second batch were ruined when I put my ribbon jar lid down on them. I really am hopeless at remembering I have GA drying.

My DH rescued this third batch by hiding them from me!

Oh, and this LO is also for Susi, who says I scrap my Dad more than I scrap my Husband... which is probably true because Daddy poses when a camera is pointed at him and John doesn't!

Cheers!

This is my latest layout for the Creative Craft World Saturday Sketch Map.

I've turned the sketch on its side and used hearts rather than stars. I tried the stars, but I can't draw a decent star, so I used a template for the heart.

The theme was "celebration" and we are celebrating Hannah's Wedding.

The Great Project 12 Catch-Up

My mojo has come back and I've finished off the Project 12s from last year. I have also done November, but appear to have forgotten to photograph it!

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So little happened in September that I chose to use only pcitures of Hannah's wedding. That was the month that I lost my mojo and suffered from morning sickness the whole time. :(

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October covers a haircut, a trip to Norwich to see Marina and the Diamonds, a lucky book find at Oxfam and our fabulous Angry Bird pumpkin. I used the wonderful flocked Halloween papers by My Mind's Eye.

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December covers my brthday and Christmas, including a trip to Bath on the 27th. I've used leftovers from a BoBunny Christmas Album kit.

Bees and Day Trips

I used a PageMap sketch from the first book for this. Suddenly occurred to me whilst trying to use up older stash that I really should scrap the picture of bees with the Garden Variety papers that feature bees. Yep, obvious.


Also a good way to use up all those left over Zs that I had lying around.

Our Team has just finished a 12 Days of Christmas swap and I wanted to use the goodies that I received (thank you, Sarah!) right away, rather than filing them away in my paper box.

I'd never seen glossy cardstock before and it would have been way too easy to just keep stroking this, but I've been brave and cut into it. Same goes for the paper, the little flowers, butterflies and leaves were just begging to be cut out from one side of it - so I did.

Being a bin-diving paper hoarder, however, I did have to punch out extra scallops, butterflies and flowers from the left overs, so I do have some odds and ends to use up. I also gutted the cardstock as I couldn't bear to leave such a large chunk of it covered up.

Also managed to use a bunch of brads, which I seem to collect and never use, and a Maya Road chipboard strip that I've had for ages and never used. Probably because I got them in a kit in the days before I discovered inking and glimmer misting.

Houghton Mill and Peckover House. Day Trips that I went on with the Parentals last July when John was on a jolly (I mean, working...) in the States.

A couple of layering close-ups:

Jan Week 2 - City Walls

My take on the UKS weekly challenge for this week:


John climbing about on the York city walls last August.

My Mojo Came Back!!!

Over the past few days I've been doing layouts just for the hell of sticking bits of paper to other bits of paper. Never mind contest entries or UKS weekly challenges, just cos I want to. It's been months since I've felt this inspired and, quite frankly, I'd better enjoy it while I can, April 12th isn't all that far away. Eeek!!


Holbrook, AZ. The Cozy Cone... I mean the Wigwam Motel, lit up by neon at night. I used a sketch from the Page Maps Book for this one.

My father watching the birds at the Welches Dam RSPB reserve back in July last year.

Scrap Map Saturday

My entry for Scrap Map Saturday over at Creative Craft World. My father at the top of Glastonbury Tor.



My mojo is slowly returning to me, so I've decided to try and use up some of my bits and pieces rather than cutting straight into new purchases. I wanted to double mount this picture, but didn't have enough pieces of a large size, so the background is actually lots of small strips layered up and then cut down to size.

I've even started to use my Thickers, rather than just looking at them!

Useful tins

I'd been wanting to get a circle punch that fitted nicely inside my scallop, but today I discovered that this useful tin was just the right size to create a couple of layered circles.

Takes up less room then a pair of punches. Ok, so I have to cut the circles myself, but never mind!

Good old Lush solid perfume!

My Scrap Space

After being so impressed by Poppit and what she makes in her boiler cupboard that I thought I'd do an update on my teeny Ikea desk. I posted something similar last year, but I've crowded some more stuff in since then! I still store all my papers in this box, though.

I work in an alcove next to the fireplace and I have stuck a removable hook to the wall so I can hang up my templates. When I get a little untidy (like now), things do tend to pile up next to me until they fall over!

Goodness knows where I'm supposed to fit a baby into this house. Oh well, I'm sure we can find a corner for him when he arrives...

Christmas Pressie!

My Doctor Who Christmas Adventure Set. I asked Santa for Eleven and now I have him... complete with Pond!

Bow ties are cool.