Snowball fight in Summer

Last weekend Jennifer held her second Frosty Festivities Event on her blog. I love her events as not only are full of inspiration & tutorial but its also all for free!

I made the above layout using several posts for inspiration.
I initially decided to use Elf as my movie inspiration (mentioned in THIS post), and wanted to use it with my summer snowball photos. Jennifer suggested starting with a title (post HERE) so I googled for some buddy the elf snowball quotes & came up with the one I used.

Though I could fit photos on a single layout I went with a double having read THIS post, and began looking for both christmassy & summery papers & embellishments. Having found some christmas wood patterned paper covered in dots which reminded me of snowballs, I cut it into strips (from THIS post) this gave it a look of planks of a fence or a sledge.

The title didnt really make sense without buddy though so I found an image of him & printed it out fairly large (20cms tall) finding inspiration from THIS & THIS post.

The page needed a bit more texture so I added half pearls, buttons & wrapped bakers twine around a photo (inspiration from HERE). I had some old wooden butterflies that I wanted to use but the colour of the wood clashed with the wooden paper panels so I took on THIS suggestion & painted them white.

I finished off by adding the PL cards, & journalling before sticking everything down

A Fresh Start

Sometimes you come across a layout that you love, want to scraplift & dont want to alter too much about the placement/items etc. I found such a layout on UKScrappers during a challenge, if you're a member on uks you can see it HERE.

I had several other photos to go with the main photo so turned it into a double layout.

Graduating

Once again Sue has come up with another great challenge sketch for April over at Me & Mine.

I picked out the two strongest colours from the photo, the red & the blue, and used those was the most predominant colours on the page. It then came to me that the strips of paper could combine these colours, going from red through the colours to blue.

Scrapbooking: Meet My Mummy.

As many of you know, I love Halloween and have always helped my kids get dressed up ... of course that means I get to dress up as well without looking too much of a weirdo, ok, so it means I look less of a weirdo than usual ;)

I couldn't find any Egyptian scrapbook papers, or ones that showed a Mummy on it so I created my own..

Ripped white papers with the edges inked up, stuck onto black paper - I left a few gaps & glues on pairs of googly eyes in varying sizes. The photos are from Halloween night 13 years ago, a 2 year old Zack (almost 3) covered in bandages (sewn onto his clothes so he could put them on & off easily, even sewn onto a pair of pumps & hat) & plastic bugs.

The Journaling reads.....

With Zack in his Mummy costume, clothes with bandages sewn over them, plastic flies & snakes stuck all over, we returned from trick & treating in Duffryn, Hollinswood, the street I'd grown up in & knew the neighbours. Zack had a large bag full of treats & sweets

31st October 2001"

I'd like to enter this into the My Mums Craft Shop october challenge.

Scrapbooking: Happy Birthday to You

You guys know me, I like a good theme, and theres rarely a better theme than starwars or lego, except when you combine the two!!

With that in mind I took the colours from Kai's birthday cake to create his layout

I must remember to make cakes like this the day before as they take me aaaaaaaages to do as there are so many layers, and almost as soon as they are finished they get eaten so no time for decent photos.

Scrapbooking: Gangnam Style

Kai is a boy full of personality, part of that personality is him loving a good joke & especially making people laugh. He most certainly showed this characteristic on sports day while doing the class relay race. Kai decided to start his stretch by doing it gangnam style! Trotting away, crossing his arms with a huge grin on his face.

Do you like my lil gangnam Kai? based on the popular lil cartoon & altered to have shorts, shirt & cap on like Kai did that day.

He's back to school today after the holidays, lets hope his new teacher likes having a joker in the pack :)

Scrapbooking: Awesome

The summer holidays are once again drawing to end and we are squeezing every moment of fun out of them that we can.
One of those moments of fun was meeting up with an old college friend & her daughter to play at the park.

Scrapbooking: Welsh Mountain Zoo Colwyn Bay

A simple double layout where a grid of different sized photos creates the main feature & shape of the layout.

The journaling reads........
"We took a trip out from the caravan for the day to the Zoo.
Walking around the hilly grounds, visiting the animals, & a picnic in the gardens. We ended up at the play park which I think the kids enjoyed most of all, & finished with them having their faces painted."

Scrapbooking: Fun is Good

When I was younger I'd never heard of Dr Seuss let alone read one of his books. As I've got older the more I've heard of his books the more I've wanted to read them, so of course I bought Kai the set for Christmas ;)

They are full of nice lil bits that are fab to quote on scrapbook pages, such as the one below

"If you never did, you should. These things are fun and fun is GOOD"

Perfect for a page about Kai having his first play on the park.

Scrapbooking: First Steps

I frequently curse myself for not having a camera on me to capture those magical, or more often, funny moments in life. Occasionally though I celebrate the fact that being a scrapper & a blogger means that a camera, that should be put away in its rightful place, has been left out within reach to grab an important event such as Kai's first steps.

We were given lots of colours we had to use for a house challenge on UKS &these papers were perfect for it. Pastel in shade so the darker, stronger coloured photos popped without needing matting.

The journalling reads...

"Kai took his first few steps towards his Dad before they both sat on the floor to play."

Scrapbooking: Pirate & Princess Party

I wanted to kind of split this layout in two to reflect the two themes of the party, while still having it flow & merge into a double layout. Not only was it going to be split into the themes of pirate & princess, but also the photos into animal man & food; as well as my lot (on the pirate side of course) and centralising on the birthday girl (on the princess side)

To merge the 2 themes I used the same party list sheet for the background for both, noticing that the lines would be perfect for journaling on. I also added a strip of a pirate map paper across both sheets.

On the pirate side I added a pirate treasure type X & trail, gold coins, pirate sword, gold card strip embossed with cogs (well, every pirate treasure needs to be protected by traps), a pirate mouse and gold letters.

On the princess side I cut out castles to put along the pirate map strip (very sahara, Aladdins lamp type thing), pink stars and a butterfly. I finished the title in pink foam writing.

I also sneaked three animal brads on both pages, can you find them? (thats 3 all together, not 3 on each page)

Scrapbooking: Dotty Spotty Kiddies

We're past half way through the summer holidays and as usual its been rather busy here. We've done less crafts but have had more visits out & visitors. One of those visitors was the lovely Ruth (some of you may know her as Furry Pig from the Chatty Crafty Arty Pig blog) along with her family. We had a great weekend including a day crafting. Ruth had set us a little challenge, which you can see & join in on her blog HERE. We both completed it, I was quite impressed as there was a lot of chatter & distractions.

Ruth provided a sketch & we had to use something old, something new, something borrowed and some buttons.

The New - white paper from a new pack :)
The Old - Dotty red paper
Borrowed - I nicked Ruths scissors at one point ;)
Buttons - yay, dotty buttons.

Scrapbooking: Snownanny

With getting closer to completing my 2009 albums I browse through them to find any pages I'm not happy with. My snownanny page was one that just didnt sit right with me.

This is how it started, as you can see from the image above I've kept much of it the same with only the red background really being the change having removed the dots & snowflake punched strips.

My eyes sit far more comfortably on it now :)

Scrapbooking: Horse Riding

This is my favourite page so far this year...

Why?  because of the use of the 2 large photos in contrast to the smaller ones and the silhouette of the horse and rider. For once I didnt hand cut it out I used my craft robo. I need to get it out more often & learn how to use it properly as it can do such wonderful things, once I know how.

Scrapbooking: Ice Skating

I love my pack of Winter Park by Echo Park, it has come in so handy for snowy pages, and lends itself perfectly to this ice skating page as well, giving a lovely chilly feeling.

The ice skates are Jolees boutique stickers which are of a really high quality.

The photos here were actually taken by 3 people, myself, my Mom & Kai, all of which are in the photos as well, playing pass the parcel with the camera comes in very handy.

Scrapbooking: Fourteen

Oh xcut cog dies, how I do adore thee!

You might remember that I spent ages one day making a scaled paper iphone (if not you can take a look at it HERE). Now you can get paper with iphones printed all over it! perfect for a scrapbook page about Zacks birthday where his main present was an iphone.

Scrapbooking: Diamond Jubilee

Theres something so british about pinwheels and bunting, especially when done in red & blue.

Scrapbooking: Happy Haunting

My favourite time of year, halloween, and as such is one of my favourite subject to scrapbook. It gives me a good excuse to use some of my favourite images such as spiders webs, skeletons, & bats.

Scrapbooking: MCM Midlands Comic Con 2007

I love Sci-fi, absolutely adore it, so its rather enjoyable to do a scrapbook page about this subject. I surprised even myself in making it a rather simpler than I expected..

For the title I simply printed off the heading the event uses it self, mounted it onto black & raised it with foam pads. I then stuck to those colours for the rest of the page.

Any sci-fi fans recognise the "writing" above the title?

Scrapbooking: Fun in the Park

A simple double layout that shows off a group of photos wonderfully.