Saturday's preparations

I have my next craft classes coming up on Saturday - and this time I'm using the Vintage Springtime kit - isn't it gorgeous? Sadly this photo is really quite poor in quality - taking photographs at night just doesn't seem to ever work well as this looks lovely in real life but not very bright or pretty in this darkness. It is -honestly!

I was originally using Sweet and Sour papers for this class but there was a bit of a mix up with my order so I changed at the last minute to this kit. I was actually quite pleased as it meant I finally got to play with my vintage papers, giant buttons and goegous seam binding from the new catalogue! I'm hoping to do a 'class at home' kit for this scrapbook double layout and also for a card kit so keep checking back for that!

I just love this kit!

Lots of fun in our January Classes

We had a birthday cardmaking class and a family/love themed scrapbooking class recently and everyone made lovely projects which they were really happy with. The scrapbooking pages are made with the adorable 'Love Stories' Simply Scrappin' Kit from the catalogue, aren't the colours just gorgeous?

They would make great new baby girl or boy pages too in these colours. This first example of one of our pages was made by Patricia based on my class example, using a photograph of their parents. I thought it would be nice to share the participants examples this time.

This is the card set that we made in the cardmaking class in the morning, using the Party This Way stamp set - great for all birthdays! Using perfect plum, old olive and so saffron colours.

Just a small class this time - you can see us in action with a few missing from this shot, there were seven...

And another page from the scrapbooking session, again by Patricia. Lovely pages don't you think? This is another family shot of the other set of parents, black and white photographs match really well with these Love Stories papers...

We have stamped the background using the FREE sweet summer Sale-a-bration stamp set - have you taken advantage of the SAB offer yet? It ends at the end of February and you won't be able to get these sets again - so if you want a free stamp set all you have to do is place an order with me of £45 or more by the end of the month. What are you waiting for?! There are four free sets to choose from.

That's all from me - I might be back soon to share some images from a Stampin' Up! party which my sister hosted on Friday night - as the host she earnt herself HEAPS of freebies, I demonstrated a couple of cards and they all got to make and take a card home too! If you want that to be you, read my tabs above about hosting a Stampin' Up party.

Bye for now x

Yesterday we crafted...

Yesterday was the first of my festive days for 2010, as a group attended my Christmas Craft Day! It was really good fun - this is how the table was set up...


Each person had a kit full of the Stampin' Up! Christmas Jingle kit, a brown gift bag, a notepad, brown ribbon, green ribbon, gold cord, brads, extra sheets of red, brown and green card and of course... some refreshments!

I borrowed this idea from Natalie O'Shea, my team leader for Stampin' Up! and decorated a water bottle and a muffin wrapped in celophane with some SU ribbon to tie it up.

This is a photograph of the kit up close - this is my favourite Christmas paper set in the catalogue as its so modern and lovely design of papers and die cut stickers.

And here are the lovely goodies we made! Eight square cards, a red gift box which holds the cards, a scrapbook page, a gift bag and a shopping list note pad. Would you like to join us in making these? I am running this class again in November (Saturday 13th) and I have just a few places left so if you would like to come along, just drop me a line!

Last chance to make this mini scrapbook...

If you like the look of this mini scrapbook and have been thinking of how to record your photos and memories together, don't miss your last chance to sign up to this mini book class with me on Saturday July 17th. See the 'classes' tab at the top of my blog for more details... places must be booked by midday Friday (9th July).

Family heritage

Scrapbooking is predominantly about recording our family heritage, right? Sometimes I think we forget that, I love to create pretty pages full of lovely flowers and patterned papers and forget that I am supposed to be recording a history in my albums! This layout - which you may recognise from me sharing many moons ago - was all about that, I interviewed my great uncle about his life and recorded the answers in this text on the layout.

It took me an absolute age to make this page - I'm a slow scrapbooker anyway (give me a card and I can whip one up in ten minutes!) but there was so much detail to include on this page and I was so particular about it (did you know I'm a perfectionist!) but it was definitely worth it, as this is one page of mine that I do not feel has gone out of fashion according to what embellishments and papers are trendy at the time. This is a classic and I still love it!

I've been getting ready for my first cardmaking class in this new series, for this coming Monday so I'm not quite ready with my Stampin' Up announcements to officially mark the fact that I've signed up a demonstrator, but keep checking back as I will be offering a special introductory offer for you all for orders placed from the catalogue, very soon! Do you like my new blog header?

School Days

This is the final card from the school collection, I love the little wooden own - which is actually a wooden laser carved button. I've also used the 7gypsies book tape which I love with the alphabet all across them.


This then inspired the following layout about my school days:

Again I've used the Karen Foster rub-ons and patterned paper and the 7gypsies book tape. I kept it very simple with tags pointing in different directions and some coloured paper clips. I love the fact that I found this card a year or two ago in a drawer - I still remember making it for my mum when I was in infant school and I'd completely filled the aperture of the card with kisses, then decided I only wanted them around the outside of my photo so I painstakingly sat and rubbed them all out again! I loved being creative back then but some things never change as the drawings are supposed to be chocolates and flowers and its clear I still can't draw, even today!

Scrapbooking - The Return!

I haven't scrapbooked a single page for about two years, without a lie. I don't know what happened, well actually I do, it was the discovery of photobooks.
I create these wonderful books of all of the year's photos, and it instantly takes away the desperate **need** to scrapbook all of my photographs, and the guilt of feeling 'behind' on my scrapbooking and never being able to keep up with recording all of life's events as they happen. Do you know what I mean?

Many scrapbookers have that feeling, that you can take so many photos, how can you possibly get them down into a scrapbook album fast enough, and the truth of the matter is, you can't. But the great thing is, that I don't feel the 'need' to anymore!

Now that has resulted in a revolt from me, hence why I haven't scrapbooked a single page in two years. But like with everything, you have a break and then you begin to miss it a little. So ta da - a scrapbook page, just because I can! Not for a magazine deadline, not for a class, just for me.

So thanks to the photobooks, I can now document all of my year's stories in a fast and easy way (which everyone seems to love by the way, so if you haven't created a photobook for yourself or especially for a gift, give it a try!) which leaves me to scrap just the special photographs. Hooray!

I hope the sun is shining for you this bank holiday where you are, it's a bit chilly here!

Who stole my sleep?

Well as I predicted, last night did turn into a late one as I worked on getting my clay project finished until 2.30am. I'm a bit of a night owl, and needs must when the deadlines loom. I paid for it today though as I had to take great Uncle Alf for a hospital check-up before rushing back to get it packaged and posted off, and had a headache all day. Still, all done and gone, and as promised, here is a sneak peak of what I have been doing. You will have to wait for the published feature in Papercraft Essentials for the full picture!

Talking of Great Uncle Alf, here is a layout of him that was returned to me today, published a few months ago in Simply Cards & Papercraft. I don't go for the heritage style layouts often but I really liked the way this one turned out. What I was pleased about was getting all of the journalling down in print, as he often says snippets of where he worked and what he used to do but I could never remember the details, so now we have a record of it to know for sure. I saw on the Digi Dares site that the current challenge is to interview someone and record it on a layout, even though this kind of fits with that, I'd like to do a proper layout, interview style. The question is, who do I choose to interview???

Going, going, gone

We didn't get the second burst of snow that was predicted for today so we have the cold but not the fun. I can't complain though as I am off skiing in a couple of months time so hopefully there will be plenty there! That's had me thinking about holidays and why I love scrapbooking - you can relive those moments anytime of the year just through a layout.

Here are two pieces of work that are beach and holiday related. The first is a quick-make reply card for a nautical-themed party - I found the tiny bottles in a miniature dolls house shop and managed to type a tiny message to insert inside. I used an old piece of cardboard (painted with acrylic paint) and some oddments of string to add to the washed up look.

The layout is from a holiday in the sun in 2005 and features my lovely group of close friends (minus one who couldn't make it). I like what this reminds me of - a week spent relaxing doing not very much at all! I made it for a magazine project last year using the Big Shot dies - the negative strip was the main die used to create the border which was a great way of using up odd photos too. I then die-cut flowers to alternate between the individual photographs too. You could substitute the negative strip for another kind of border, let me know if know other great ways to use lots of little photos! Where would you like to be right now?

I love snow!

I had a bit of a surprise this morning when I opened the door to the postman and realised that it had snowed! We rarely get it here so it was quite exciting.

I had a quick trip to the park first thing to take some photos before it disappeared but I would have preferred to have had people to photograph. Until I learn to use my camera properly, I just play a little with the settings and take pot luck on the results... they weren't too bad. I wish I could take better photographs and one day I will.

What do you wish you could do better? I'm sure I could make a good few scrapbook layouts on that topic. The answers might not be something you want to share but it's definitely something to think about. I'm going to do a photography course at some point so at least I am working on that one.

I'll leave you with a double layout that I made from photographs of our last real snowfall here - that was two years ago!

I like to take photographs of the little details but they don't make good layouts when used alone. To get over this I punched out snippets of the photographs and used them along the bottom of the page instead of embellishments - a cheap alternative and a great way to use more photos on your page. This was for a magazine project using a variety of punches and cutters. I hope you all get good snow photographs!

Getting there

So I've added the main parts to my blog but it looks a little bare. I need to create an exciting banner - I remember reading some instructions somewhere on how to customise your own banner so I will have to have a hunt for them.

This layout is one of my all time favourites. It isn't necessarily the best in terms of balance and page design, but it's just one that I love anyway! I seem to go for pink and brown every time and although I made this layout about a year ago, I still haven't lost my love of these colours.

I am going to try to use my blog to share ideas, tips and any other inspiration that I find useful for crafting. I'm also going to use it to keep track of what I have been doing generally as I tend to forget!

I need to have a good read of the blog prompts that are posted on UKScrappers to get my head around ideas for what to write, I've seen lots of good ones and I am hoping that the more ideas I share on here, the more I will begin using them myself.