Sweet 16

Sometimes you get drawn in by a sketch, as soon as you see it you know you have to give it a go, this for me was the February challenge at scrapology.

All of the examples were beautifully feminine with lovely flowers, which wouldn't work with my lads or my style. I wanted something grungier, more teen boy to go with this photo from Zacks 16th birthday, so I went exploring my papers.

Teen Angst papers immediately grabbed me, as they usually do, with a few other papers and embellishments.

As most of my teen angst papers are now scraps the squares worked perfectly with them.

If anyone has any teen angst papers by We R Memory Keepers they want to pass this way, give me a yell as I've almost run out & love them ... or if you know where I could get some, I'd be really grateful.

Gingerbread

for Christmas my lovely other half bought me a Cricut Explore, and I am finding it so useful.
Such as for the layout below, based on the February sketch from the Me & Mini blog.

I found I didnt have any gingerbread embellishments so went searching online for ones I could cut out on my machine & came across quite a few. With a little bit of altering & running of the machine I was sat sticking "icing" onto "gingerbread shapes". I could then put together my page, keeping it fairly simple as the paper is so busy and I wanted the photo to remain the centre of attention.

Maternity T-shirts

As some of you know I'm now in my 14th week of pregnancy with my 3rd child. Though planned we didnt really expect to have another child so almost all our old baby items have been given away, so we're starting from scratch.

First thing I needed was Maternity wear. Full of excitement we went shopping knowing most of the shops in our area advertise maternity wear online, only to find only 2 actually stocked maternity wear, & they were quite pricey. So online shopping it was. Plain tops were well priced but those with cute slogans etc were triple the price, so I decided to make my own.

I bought a set of tops from George, Asda, & another from New Look. I was lucky enough to have won some Cricut iron on vinyl in silver, red & white, so set up the Cricut Explore and started playing.

First the maternity tops.

One of my 2 personal favourites. The baby sits (at the moment) perfectly on my little bump, I'm hoping as my bump grows the baby skeleton will just rise up the bump.

Here is me wearing it today. I LOVE long t-shirts, and vest tops means I can layer up with shirts & cardis, or wear as is in the warmer Summer months.

This is Kai's favourite, he finds it hilarious. 

My weekly counter T-shirt, I cross out the weeks gone by. The numbers sit over the bump.

 The tops I got from George are both maternity & feeding tops so I wanted a design I could wear after the pregnancy as well.

The design moved slightly as I was distracted when ironing affecting the m & s unfortunately.

This is my other personal favourite as I love bats, this particular bat is from Miss Kate Cuttables, an online svg shop I adore.
This also shows how well it stays on after being washed & tumble dried, which was my my main worry.

I've only got a small amount of iron on vinyl left, maybe enough to do a baby vest or 2 :)