Everyday Occasions cardmaking kit

I bought this kit because I wanted some quick and easy cards to make with people who had never made any cards before and as it comes with everything you need, stamps, ink pads, clear block, buttons, twine, arrow paper clips and dimensionals it is perfect.   The only extra needed was some glue or double sided tape.  I wasn't expecting a great deal from it as I would consider myself to be an experienced card maker but was pleasantly surprised and I really enjoyed putting the cards together.  You get a leaflet showing you how to do it which I followed on some and on others, went my own way.

and a couple of close ups

I still have to do all the inserts and decorate the envelopes yet but that won't take too long.   At the end of the day, I'm left with 2 ink pads, 7 useful stamps and a clear block.  A winner all round in my book:D

Playing catch up...

I seem to be a bit behind in putting things on my blog but here are one or two things I have been making.

Some boxes holding wax tarts

mini cards and envelopes in a box...

and finally for now, some more mini albums/notebooks.

In case you are wondering why I am making all these things - well I'm doing a charity craft fair :)

WHSmith bargains

I popped in to Smith's yesterday to pick up a magazine but got sidetracked by the Sharpie pens - 24 for for £6.99 if you bought anything from the back to school range.  I saw these post it notes too, reduced to £1.24 which I thought might be useful for pocket scrapbooking.

Scavenger hunt

We went away in Hattie last weekend and I managed to get a couple of photos to tick off my scavenger hunt list. I don't seem to be ticking things off very quickly at all but there's still plenty of time I guess.

My first photo is of a lamp post which I managed to take at Poole harbour.  We were driving along the water's edge and I was watching all the kites and my husband yelled, there's a lamp post so I grabbed my phone and took the picture.  I was lucky to actually capture anything because our vehicle was moving and we turned right up the hill immediately after we'd seen the post.

My second picture is of a stand full of postcards taken in the cafe at Knoll Beach, Studland.

So that's No. 5 and No. 17 ticked off my list.

If you want to join in the scavenger hunt, check out this link.

Let's go fly a kite

I can't believe a week has gone by and I've not made any posts on here!  It's not that I haven't been busy making things because I have - perhaps too busy making and not enough uploading.  Hey Ho, such is life.  Anyway I'll start this week with a layout I made over the weekend.

The weekly challenge last week was set by Jen of Wear Crafts and it was a very unusual one - this is what we had to do:-

One of my new croppers was struggling with starting points for her layouts and then looking for ways to improve her work... which made me think hard about my scrapping process... so I realised, I adopt a kind of 'Good, Better, Best' approach.

I start off with 'Good' - basic shapes from paper arranged in a pleasing manner with co-ordinating colours, photo placed and title/journaling located.

Then, I do 'Better' - take quick photo of placement and remove all the bits to ink edges, add glitter, embossing or whatever to the basic shapes, refer to the photo and glue everything down.

Finally, I do 'Best' - add all the extra embellishments... clips, buttons, ribbons, icons, ink squirts ... whatever I want to add.

I could stop at any one of these points and have a nice layout... 'Good' would be simple and graphic... 'Better' would be distressed or defined... 'Best' would be whistles and bells and bling!

Now it is over to you... show us your 'Good, Better, Best'

These are my three stages:-

The first stage is quite plain and the buttons haven't been sewn on.  It hasn't got a title but as it's going in a holiday PL album I wasn't too bothered as the other photos taken at the same time would be along side with some journalling.

Some paint splatters and a different arrow on the left and I put a title on!

The finished result, buttons with twine and some other little embellies I stamped and cut out.  

A close up of the buttons - I just love them, they are like red mother of pearl buttons, mmm...lush

Finally, and I can't believe I forgot this, but I used Sue's fab sketch which you will find below:

and the winner is...

Ta da... Suzy is the winner of my blog candy!  If you'd like to contact me with your address Suzy, I'll get the stamps sent out to you.

Thanks everyone who commented on my blog and is now following me.