Strike A Pose

Another scraplift from the Fancy Pants gallery, this time the original is by a very talented lady called Vicki Chrisman, hope she doesn't mind me posting her Vintage layout here. I copied the position of the papers, my favourite papers at the moment, Happy Together by Fancy Pants then die cut some flowers and leaves using sizzix dies and then trimmed the flowers to give a "tattered" look and shaped then with a large balled embossing tool and made some greet flowers using florists ribbon and added a butterfly cut from using a Marianne die. The photo is of my daughter's best friend Maddi, who is a dance student and always looks stunning.

I seem to have lost my mojo a bit recently so I decided to do some scraplifts to use up some of the patterned papers taking over my craft room. I have lots of Fancy Pants papers so I went to their website and printed off some layouts from their gallery. From some left over Happy Together papers I put together 5 page kits and two from left over Love Birds papers. Together with a couple of page kits using the Stella & Rose monthly kit from Sarah's cards I had eleven page kits to be going at. I completed the "You Had Me At Hello" whilst watching the qualifying for the Grand Prix. I have scraplifted this from a layout of the same name by Ronda Palazzari. I have a bit of a thing at the moment for shaping flowers now using my McGill flower shaping tool kit, which comprises lots of big balled tools and makes the paper flowers lovely and rounded and gives them a more raised look.

Dad's Month

June is my Dad's month, it's his birthday and Father's Day in the same week. I made the above card for him for his birthday using one of the new male stamps by Lili of the Valley and a nestability die. I don't seem to have done much scrapbooking this last week but I hope to catch up on my 3 days off this week.

Our Day

This is a layout from a class at Sarah's Retreat in March this year. The papers are lovely Websters Pages papers. Lots of cutting out of the images on the papers, some fancy punches and a flower and some netting and Bob is definately your uncle!!

Scrapstars - Who Is Going????

So who is going to Scrapstars Retreat in September? It's about 15 more weeks to Caroline's amazing retreat in Leeds. She has got so many fabulous things planned for the weekend, 4 amazing teachers, competitions, some great prizes. I'm really looking forward to the weekend. I am lucky that I get to see and hear what she has planned whilst it's in the planning stage and her attention to detail is second to none so be there or be very square.

Further details are on www.scrapstars.co.uk

Gorgeous Gardener

What's with all the cloudy weather in Yorkshire at the moment? The rest of the country is basking in glorious sunshine and we are under a near-constant cover of clouds, the Cullen family from Twilight could move here without much fear of sparkling!!! It's making taking decent photos of my layouts a problem but that's life I suppose.

I created this layout today. The papers are from the Sweet Threads range from Basic Grey and the kit is the June monthly kit from Bellaboo. (www.bellaboo.co.uk). When I got the kit I had no idea what I was going to do with it. I used to love all things Basic Grey cos their papers were grungy and lovely to work with but the patterns on these papers are so "in your face" I was tempted to shove the kit to the back of my kit box and ignore it but, having started buying kits for the challenge of getting creative with something I haven't chosen, I decided to have a go at least. I cut the big flowers out of a strip of one of the patterned papers and added the flowers to a lattice strip I cut from kraft paper using one of my Martha Stewart punches, I wanted it to look like a lattice fence panel so after punching one side I turned the paper around and matched up the holes so both edges had the scolloped edge. I chose the photo of Louise in the garden cos the colours of the grass blended with the greens in the patterned papers and the pink background paper cos it's girlie. I added a couple of strips of the other patterened papers for contrast and a strip of blue ribbon and then added a strip of one of the sweet threads over the top. I cut and added some extra leaves on foam pads and curled the leaves that were attached to the flowers. I punched some large butterflies with another Martha Stewart punch, inked the edges with some distressing ink, doubled them up, added some bling and attached them to the layout along with a few buttons I had left over from another kit. Some letter stickers and a flower label finished the layout off nicely. The papers have grown on me now and I'm about to start a second layout using them.

A Cracking Day

This is the last layout I completed today. I bought the April Bubblegum Hills kit

from Bellaboo which contains papers from Kaisercraft's Lime Twist range. I found it a challenge to do something with the shaped, foiled page as it has lots of detail on it already, the bunny and eggs and flowers etc. I printed off some photos from Easter showing me smashing a huge Easter egg into bits with my pink craft hammer. I cut a circle the same size as the inside of the circle on the page using my Expression cutter then added the photos to it, cutting the edges off so it made a circle shape then cut around one of the eggs on the paper to tuck a photo under. After sticking the photos down I added the ribbon with a bow to hide a bit I bodged when cutting the photos, cut some butterflies from a glitter sheet in the kit and added the title with the incuded chipboard letters. There are still alot of papers and goodies in the kit to do a few more pages and perhaps a few cards.

Picnic In The Park

Another Wednesday layout. This layout shows Monkey having a drink and a gorgeous double chocolate muffin in St James Park, London when we went down for the weekend a few weeks ago. Of course I was being good and didn't have a muffin (ha ha, liar, liar) but Monkey said his was lovely. The papers are more from the May monthly kit from Sarah's Cards which is choc full of Stella & Rose papers and other goodies from My Minds Eye. I have cut alot of the patterned papers up for planned layouts so for this layout I used lots of odd bits of paper and cardstock that were left over and as usual I went mad with my Martha Stewart butterfly punches. I am loving this kit, it has so much in it, going to be able to do lots more layouts and all for less than £20.

Guess Where We Went?

I love Wednesdays, my mid week day off work. Today I finished off this fun layout about our trip to London a few weeks ago. First time I've been to London and first time I've done a "fun" layout, it's not very artistic but it makes me smile. I bought and downloaded a digital kit from Dawn Inskip, printed the images off and layered up some spotty paper from the May monthly kit from Sarah's Cards with some white cardstock (my favourite), added some pretend stitching around the pieces of cardstock/paper and stuck the digital images down alongside some small photos of us in London. As I said, not very artistic but I love it.