Scrapping the Holiday - Birthday ice cream

Both the men in my life have birthdays at the end of August. It's a struggle to get photos of P so just a single pocket for him but R insisted on cake, ice cream and a trip to the cinema so I got plenty of him. I

 

 made my PL page first, using the bright colours of Simple Stories Snap and an A4 pack of  birthday-themed papers. I made the  balloon embellishments with the Hip Hop Birthday line and Glossy Accents and the tiny wood veneer stars are Studio Calico. I love the sharp colours.

 

After that I used the same papers and embellishments on a white background to create the facing 12x12 page. It looked a bit 'floating' so I anchored it on an old sheet of Christmas paper and added a cluster of embellishments cut from the Simple Stories papers on a doily.

  

Scrapping the Holiday - Adrenaline Junkie

These photos show my 7 year old in various activities during the holiday. She tried the bungee trampoline, which flung her 15ft in the air, climbed confidently up the 6ft wall with me nervously holding the rope and persuaded P to take her down the luge twice. It took all summer but by the end we noticed a pattern, that after each adrenaline rush we then had to contend with a major tantrum as she couldn't  handle the 'coming down'. A real junkie!

 

I wanted 3 full sized photos and a story so I didn't have much room for embellishments.I just layered and distressed the background papers and the scalloped circle then handwrote the journaling on strips for a slightly different look.

Scrapping the holiday - Goat Fun

These pictures were taken on a visit to a goats' cheese (chevre) farm. We got to cuddle the goats and then visited the dairy and tasted the cheese. P is not a fan of chevre, but I'm quite fond of it warm and, amazingly, my fussy eater son liked it too. The farmer was very interesting and it was an enjoyable couple of hours.

My design was inspired by the lovely double-sided paper from the J'Adore collection by First Paper. I couldn't decide which side to use so I folded the corners back and secured them with a brad. The photos were collaged with my journaling and then I did a little stamping to enhance the plain cardstock. (I have only a small stash in France so I tend to stick to neutral cardstock backgrounds)

I couldn't decide what to put in the bottom righthand corner and I didn't have any suitable embellishments so I printed an extra 4x6 of the kid and cut him out.

Scrapping the holiday - Bats!! I finally nailed it.

My second page from our day trip to the French zoo is probably one of my favourites. I worked hard to get a couple of good shots of the bats in flight, staying behind after the feeding to capture the shy creatures, and so that story was the focus of my layout. The Project Life camera print paper was perfect for it. The other papers are from the same Jade edition pack.

I wrote my journaling on the camera print and drew round a few of the cameras with my black pen. Then I added some doodled borders. This is something I admire on other people's pages but I don't do very often myself. I like how it turned out though.

 

The title was made with some old large white letters but, before adhering them, I drew round them and coloured them black then adhered them offset to give a shadow effect. A few drops of ink and I called it done.

 

Simple. But I really like it.

Scrapping the Holiday - Feeding the Giraffes

Life has been very full-on since I got back from France, what with work and getting the kids back into term-time routines and I recently realised that I hadn't shared any of the 12x12 layouts I made while I was on holiday. So I thought I'd schedule them all over the next few days.

 

I love this picture of R and M feeding the giraffes on our trip to the zoo. Giraffes are my favourite animal, and I'd have loved to feed them myself but unfortunately there were too many children so I had to content myself with snapping pictures! I don't know if you can see their 40cm purple tongues in the photo but they are very cool!

 

For this simple page, I just some distressed the edges 0f some scrap paper and stacked them up onto a sheet from the Jade edition Project Life 12x12 pk then added a PL card for my journalling. The flowers, brads and die-cuts have been hanging around my stash for ages. I quite like the title hanging from a string, which I think makes the white letters pop and gives the overall page a bit more interest.

Sharing a couple of layouts

I've had a bit of holiday scrapping time this week. I only have a limited kit with me, but I planned out these too layouts before I left and had the supplies ready to go.

The 'stage' paper and stickers come from Scrapping the Magic, my favourite online store for themed supplies. I ordered them some time ago as I knew I would have plenty of shoe-related photos. These are R playing Mike Teavee in Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. I didn't need to add much to the detailed paper except some journaling. I made a pocket behind the photos for the programme from the show.

 

My second layout was of M looking particularly gorgeous and grown up after a friend's birthday 'Pamper Party'. I love this background paper by MME. Just pink and pretty, like her. The embellishments were fussy cut from patterened paper and enhanced with Glossy Accents

 



Shiny happy scrapping

I love this picture of my kids stripped off in the water park at LEGOLAND. I hadn't come prepared with swim stuff as the day started cold and rainy, but the sun came out at the end of the day and I figured it didn't matter if they had wet hair and no knickers when we were heading straight back to the car!

I also love that the only new things on the layout were 3 Dear Lizzy stickers. The background cardstock is printed with a wedding cake and so has been sitting unused in my stash for several years. It is the last sheet of a pack by DCWV, as is the red scalloped circle, which I cut from the cover of the paper pack and then kept for ages.

I've pulled them out several times as I like the combination of colours but always put them back again. This time I found a couple of A4 floral sheets (from Scrapbooking Magazine, I think.) I layered one behind the circle and used a strip of the other to cover the wedding cake. Turning it 90 degrees so the strip was at the bottom not at the side gave me the design I wanted. From there it was just a matter of layering up around the photo with various cards, stickers and sentiments.

Nice and colourful, but gentle tones. Happy with that!

12x12 scrapping with 4x3 Project Life cards

 As I do Project Life monthly I have plenty of photos and don't use many of the 3x4 filler cards. However they are way too cute to languish in my stash so I thought I'd share a couple of 12x12 layouts  using them.

I am in France at the moment for the Easter holidays so I don't have my full stash with me. In fact, I packed quite lightly for this trip. I brought the PL cards I'd chosen for April, but as for 12x12  I knew I had a bag of scraps out here so I limited myself to some sheets of neutral-coloured cardstock and black and white alphas. I threw in 3 of the themed card packs - summer,  family and girl at the last minute because they were on offer in Hobbycraft when I went to get some adhesive (well. you know how it is!) and take up very little space.

The Balloon Fun photo was taken on the ferry and I was largely inspired by finding the balloon card in the Summer themed pack. I used that one whole as an embellishment then picked 3 other 3x4 cards to cut up as patterned paper. I had some co-ordinatincg scraps which I layered onto a plain cream background. The flowers have been hanging around from a cardmaking kit for ages. I threaded them with embroidery thread and layered them over flowers cut from another scrap of patterned paper.

This second layout really used only 6 3x2 cards,  The DCWV tree bark paper gave an interesting base. Apart from a couple of strips of Smash tape and some coloured alphas I found I'd left here, all the embellishments and paper layers were cut from Family themed cards.

Book Week Dress Up

When M announced she wanted to be Amelia Jane for Book Week I was happy to go along with it. Amelia Jane by Enid Blyton is a 'proper' book & I always feel a tad embarrassed sending her to school in a Disney costume or a TV tie-in. Also, it was easy, and I have no talent for costume design.
She already owned a patchwork sundress so we made an oversized button from cardstock and then all I needed to do was buy some stripy socks and do her make up on the Friday morning. Doesn't she look cute?

 The star of this layout was a Dear Lizzy die-cut 6x4 card. I used it as a stencil first with 3 shades of distress ink then backed it with some scrap paper from an unused Smash page and cut it into 2 to use in opposite corners of the design.
I used the same 3 inks to ink the edge of the cardstock (an effect I will definitely be using again) and to colour the foam Hobbycraft letters.
The rest of the layout came together easily with some scraps and I added texture with the Dovecraft ricrac, a couple of Flair and buttons and bows tied from the wool which was used to sew the button onto M's dress.
I had fun making this page and I love the colours.

Shiny! A layout And a pocket page

I first visited the Tower of London when I was about 12 with my grandparents. I especially remember viewing the Crown Jewels & being totally bowled over (pun intended, though I know it isn't very good) by this enormous solid gold punch bowl. It's called The Wine Cistern and weighs 8000oz.
When we took the kids this half term, I was expecting my memory to be exaggerated. Like going back to your primary school and seeing how small the chairs really are, I thought it would be much smaller than I remembered.

So I was delighted  when we went in. I was just as bowled over the 2nd time.It measures 30"x 54.5"x 40" (that's inches, not centimetres!) The Crown Jewels really are stunning. My sparkly daughter loved it. And the Tower of London, whilst certainly not a cheap day out, has something for everyone. R and P enjoyed the gory history and impressive suits of armour.

I took a lot of photos - no change there then - and wanted to use several of them, but I was also keen to record this story of my first visit with my grandparents so I opted for a 12x12 and a co-ordinating divided page layout.

I felt that if any layout called for some bling, it was this one so I went over the top with sparky letter stickers and gen swirls (both from Hobbycraft - the letters were cheap but extrememly annoying to peel off.) I also gilded the edges of my journaling cards and photos with gold Liquid Pearls and used them to colour the Mistables alphas for SHINY and the kids' initials. the background paper is by Dovecraft.

Scrapping the floods - and stitching on paper

The rain, high winds and floods have been such a feature of this winter that I wanted to record them. I started this page a few weeks ago with a couple of montages of high water taken over the last 2 months. I couldn't do the journalling though until I was confident the saga was finished.

 The umbrella print paper from the Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm collection was my starting point. I only had the 6x6 pad so I used 4 other papers from the same collection and made a patchwork design. It is based on a very old Glitter Girl episode which I happened to be browsing.

Inspired by the patchwork I decided to stitch a border round each piece. I am still very much a novice with my sewing machine. Suffice it to say, the placement of my embellishments was dictated by the most wonky stitching!

The title draws attention to the fact that I taught my students this phrase after we had so many conversations about 'big weather' and 'bad rain'. I also pointed out that the one weather expression

 lots of foreigners think they know- 'It's raining cats and dogs' is never actually used. Correct me if I'm wrong but I have never heard a British adult say it seriously.

 

Has anyone else been documenting the weather this season?

Rescrapping heritage photos - Floods 1968

I first discovered scrapbooking when I was looking for a way to preserve the heritage photos I had collected. My heritage album is A4 because I started off with a cheap kit from a discount bookshop, then I went online and discovered the wonderful world that is Internet Shopping!

All the recent rain got us talking about the big rains of 1968 (before my time, but only just) in which my grandparents' house was badly flooded and I remembered this picture-isn't it great? I love that white open-top car trying to drive down the street and those hardy souls swimming to safety in their tin bath.

I think my scrapping style has probably evolved, just a bit since this minimalist layout. LOL! I thought the wavy border and cheeky whale were the height of artistry! And the journaling was restricted to date and place.

Having talked about this with my Dad and had Facebook conversations with my Aunt, I have much more of a story so I decided to rescrap this one to complement my page about the 2014 floods. I haven't finished that one yet, because I fear the story hasn't yet ended. 

I've included their memories in their own words as far as possible:

 "We  were taken to the nearby school until Friday. My boss from Helena Rubenstein (I never even new this was my aunt's first job!) came to get me back to work and she was so shocked I was the only one allowed the whole week off with pay."

 

"The water was pumped out of the house by firemen on 18:00 on Monday and was still in the garden on Saturday."

 

"A canoe came by and Mum (my grandmother) handed a bottle of milk from the bedroom window. He sailed over the top of the fences into the house next door but one and gave them the milk then sailed on through the house to the next road."

 

I've kept the new layout at A4 to go back into my heritage album but I am happier with the style and I think the story is told much more effectively now.

 

I finally got them scrapped.

I've been looking at these photos and putting them away again since November last year. That's quite a long time for me - I much prefer working with recent pictures - but the purple and black color scheme was just too scary! 

But I wanted to scrap them because it's not often I get an (almost) full family group. I considered changing them to black and white but all the meaning would be lost. A large part of the fun in this ice cream parlour is the 70s decor and sleezy nightclub feel.

So I decided to embrace the colour scheme but steered away from too many patterned layers or fussy embellishments.  Instead I created one oversized ice cream sundae embellishment and left it at that.

I drew a sundae dish by hand on scrap paper and covered it with 'scoops' of purple patterned papers. I poured some purple glitter over to represent the sauce, added some whipped cream made of a length of fluffy ribbon and topped it with a button. I so wish I'd brought the paper umbrella home from my virgin cocktail last week (unforgiveable lapse of scrapbooker's etiquette).  Finally,  I traced the dish onto star-patterned acetate and adhered it on top. The outline was a bit lost on the black & white dots so I drew round it with a white gel pen.

This is different from my usual style, but I'm happy to have the pictures in my album. I always enjoy it when I make my own embellishments, I should do it more often.

The Scrapbooking Angel

Several of my Christian friends believe in the Car Parking Angel and Guardian Angels so I don't think it's that much of a stretch to believe in the Scrapbooking Angel.

 You see, I picked the DCWV woodgrain background paper for these pictures last night. I couldn't find a green mat to match the sleeping bag so I went to the other side of the Colour Wheel for a pop of orange. I picked out the Project Life cards and tags to match, adhered them down and went to bed. When I woke up at 4.30 am (as I often do) I remembered that, ages ago when my brother first promised the kids a sleepover in his camper van, I had found an embellishment in a French Scrapping Magazine and kept it for when the event finally happened and got scrapped.
                             
I got up this morning, amazingly managed to find said embellishment and, even more amazingly, it co-ordinated perfectly! Very pleased with myself (and sending up a payer of thanks to the Angel) I finished it off with brads, Studio Calico wood veneers and Ranger liquid Pearls.
                            
As January has been pretty much defined by work and  rain I haven't taken many pictures yet so I've gone back to the Autumn to do some catching up.

These photos were taken in October. My brother parked his camper van in our drive and let R & M have a sleepover. R loved it, but M was not too sure. I didn't know whether she would last the night (hence, parking outside the house) but to her credit they did not come in until about 6.30. Very brave, as the weather was pretty cold that night.

Here she comes

Based on my Zoom In Zoom Out photos of M cycling without stabilisers, this layout came together quite easily.

A sheet of DCWV woodgrain cardstock gave rigidity to the most delicate handmade pink paper. I doubled-mounted the close up portrait to highlight and overlapped the others behind so M appeared to be cycling towards me. The bicycle cards are from Simple Stories Snap, the bingo card was a 12x12 Christmas cut apart, washi tape was from K&Co SMASH and everything else was selected from my stash purely to complement the colours.