August mini scrap kit

I had a bit of a rush to prepare my projects this month for Creative Craft World, as I didn't get the kit until Wednesday (I think, although it might have been Tuesday - the days just merge into one lol!).  The papers are ones I wouldn't have chosen myself but I soon found they weren't going to be a problem and here is the result.

The only other thing I used apart from the contents of the kit was the lettering for "Ship of the desert", and two brads for the centres of the ribbon flowers, everything else was in the kit including the blue alphas.

These pages are going to form part of a book I will be making for Holly of her recent trip to Feurteventura.

Check out the Creative Craft World blog, upload your project which has to be smaller than 12" x 12" and you could be in with the chance of a prize.

A new camera

Holly and I both got new cameras within a couple of days of each other so we took loads of random pictures to get used to them.  This photo of Holly is one of mine - not great but it suited the monthly challenge  over on UKs which was to use a colour combo of pink, grey, green and white.

As my sewing machine was on my craft desk I thought I'd make use of it to do a bit of stitching on my page and I am pleased how it turned out and it is something I will do again.

This is a close up of the roses - I'm surprised how nice pink and grey look together!

Gold

Our family have been watching and enjoying the Olympics over the last week or so and on Saturday night, Greg Rutherford from Milton Keynes won a gold medal in the long jump:)  This meant that our town would have one of its post boxes painted gold in the medalist's honour.  We thought it would be a bit of fun to go and have our pictures taken next to this box so I checked on the internet to see where it was and found we had two gold boxes!

We started to take a few pictures when suddenly, car after car pulled up with the same idea.  It's location had been on the news so everyone had the same idea.

Anyway, back to my layout.  The weekly challenge on UKs was to use a sketch, use 4 or more patterned papers and recycle a household item.   I wanted to scrap my gold post box pictures straight away and the sketch was perfect for me.

Here is a close up of the journalling.

My boys

Trimming the trees.









I'm still plying with Blog Press!

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Smug

It's scrap map time again over at Creative Craft World and here is this months sketch;

I am continuing with my Wales holiday photos (nearly done, promise) and have come  up with this page.

Pop over to the blog and have a go, you might win a prize and have the opportunity to guest on the design team!

New buttons

I'm just trying to see if I can post from my iPhone . Holly set this up for me ages ago and I didn't know how to use it.
Below are done buttons I've been making but I'm not sure if I like them enough to go in my shop. I have tried to delete this pic and replace it with a better one but haven't quite worked out how to do that yet!


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Cute or what??

Bath time for Alfie :)


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One (photo) is enough

A final page from my Wales holiday snaps from 2005 and it was done with the help of a sketch provided by our team leader Sue, for the Bijoux Belles scraplift we are doing.  The original layout was done by Chris and you'll find the sketch and the layout on Sue's blog.

mmm...

This weeks challenge on UKs was to scraplift one of Scrapdolly's layouts and as her pages are beautiful this was a lovely challenge for me:)
I haven't worked out how to link her page to mine yet but when I do, I'll add it lol!

This is mine.

I found some photos that Chris's Dad must have taken when Holly was a baby and Adam about 2.  I don't remember seeing them before so it was nice to discover them and I will be scrapping them over the coming weeks. 

Away we go

Monday, so it's a new weekly challenge on UKs.  This week we have to scrap something we couldn't do without, use your favourite colour combination and use a technique that we love.

As you can see, one of my favourite colour combinations is red and turquoise, my techniques was distressing the edges of my papers and the item I couldn't live without was Polly, our camper van.  Of course I could live with the camper, as I could live without my iPhone and laptop, but it's nice to have them and having Polly gives us the opportunity to go away at the drop of a hat.

Timber

Our team, the Bijoux Belles, over on UKs are having a bit of a scrap lift fest.  Sue, the team leader has started us off with a sketch and a layout and we have to scraplift it.  This is my interpretation of it:

and here is the sketch I worked from.

More holiday pages

When we arrived at the campsite we were a bit disappointed with the pitches - we like to have room to breathe and not have others on top of us so to speak.  We'd booked electric so that limited us even further.  We found a place on top of the hill, overlooking the whole campsite and what seemed like most of Wales butt there was no electric here.  The campsite owner said she would run a cable to us from her house, even though this meant her leaving her lounge window open for the cable to come through it.  Result.

There next two pages belong with the hovercrafting layout.

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A new mini kit

I was lucky enough to get to play the July mini kit from Creative Craft World which is due out today.  When I first saw it, I panicked a bit.  The colours were neutrals and I usually scrap using bright colours but I had a go and this is what I came up with.

We have a couple of shelves at the end of a unit in our kitchen and  I used to keep recipe books on the bottom one.  When Alfie was a puppy he used to squeeze himself onto this shelf and lie down and go to sleep.  I think he felt safe, he wasn't going to get trodden on (he was such a little boy) and he could see what was going on.  So the recipe books got moved and even though Alfie is 8, he still gets on his shelf.

Just us being silly.  I think I have a Gulliver's Land crown on my head, as you do:)

My pretty little girl.

Finally a card.

The only extras I used were a couple of buttons, some card candy for the centres of the flowers and my trusty distress inks.

I still have enough left to make more pages and another card or two.

Oops!

This will be the last holiday layout for a few days.  I really need to tidy up my craft room as I have a very special visitor (the lovely Jen) coming to stay with me on sunday for 2 nights so she will need some space to work in there as well as me:)

Unexpected

This is another page from my Wales album.  I probably wouldn't have scrapped these photos but the weekly challenge on UKs this week was to use far from perfect photos.  The one of Holly is quite blurred and the one of Chris with his arms outstretched, looks like he has his eyes shut, but again, they all tell a story.

We found this place by accident, just driving back to our tent from a day out.  As the children (including Chris) all love water we stopped here for a quick dip.  It was a very pretty place although we did have to climb over a fence to get there and with two dogs, this was a tad tricky.

Betws y Coed

Here are two more layouts made from our holiday in Wales.  If I carry on like this, I'll have all the pictures scrapped and actually finished my first album.  I'm not there yet so it's no good me getting my hopes up:)   One thing I have done on these layouts is to use more than one photo.  Normally I scrap using one picture but this time I've used several and not necessarily good ones, but ones that tell the story to me.

The teapot and cup and saucer buttons came from some London fabric and I didn't know what I was going to do with them but I'm happy with them here:)

I haven't done the journalling because I can't remember the name of the hotel we were sitting outside so I'm going to have to do a bit of research.

Most evenings we would go down to the river and Chris and the children spent a happy hour or so in the river, being swept down stream.  I looked after the dogs and the clothes!

This is my first and probably my last attempt at a "singleton" button.

A paper chopping exercise

I did a class with Shimelle once, where we had to take a selection of papers that all went together and chop them up into rectangles, strips, squares etc, take some plain cardstock and a selection of photos and scrap.  I thought I'd give this another go but it's quite a scary thing, randomly chopping up lovely papers.

I've had some photos from our holiday in Betws y Coed 2005 lying around waiting to be scrapped so I decided to use them.  This first page is when we went hovercrafting.  We were given instructions on what to do and how to go the fastest but of course the boys didn't listen, they knew exactly how to do it, but who was fastest and the most competent?  Holly:)

These next two pages go together but they are not a double layout.  We were on a camping holiday and the lady who owned the site suggested a walk for us all.  It was supposed to be a couple of miles but we clearly went badly wrong, we were out hours and must have walked about 8 miles.  Alfie was only little and couldn't cope with such a long walk so Adam ended up making a sling out of his hoody so he could carry Alfie.

It was almost dark by the time we got back to the campsite lol!  Never again.

This final page I've made so far is of Chris, Adam and Stephen who decided they'd like to climb to the top of Snowdon.  Holly, the dogs and I stayed back at camp.

On the way down, there is a lake which the boys decided they'd jump into.  They stripped down to their boxers and leapt straight in.  The water was absolutely freezing and the weather wasn't much better, grey and misty.  They only had a small hand towel to dry themselves but it was all part of the fun.

I'm hoping to get a few more pages finished this week and I will probably add some more embellishments when they're all done.

A right Royal mess

It's that time of the month again, Creative Craft World's scrap map and here it is:

This is my page.

and some close ups

Pop over to the Creative Craft World blog and have a go, you could win a prize.

"I would not wish any companion in the world but you"

It's our teamie, the lovely Jen's turn to set the weekly challenge on UKs this week.  Here is a summary of what we had to do:

Put your photos in the middle of your layout 10 points.
Use a shade or tone of blue 10 points.
Use a link to Shakespeare 10 points.


This is my effort:)

I've added a couple of butterflies since I uploaded this to UKs.