yay me!

Its only 11:30 am and i have compacted 3 layouts this morning. on a roll or what!!!

I am finally up to date with my LOAD pages and here is todays:

The prompt for today was to use the sketch but change it up. as it always is on sketchy sunday, or at least thats what i hope as we got the sketch, but were sent out the wrong voiceover video for it :)

Anyways I added in an extra photo and an extra title block and took away the journalling section.

Pics are from Dans birthday meal out when we went to Za Za Bazaar. I have only recently had these printed as they were only on Pauls phone as i forgot my camera!!!

I also added a bit of ink snoosh behind the patterned paper block to add some interest. 

thanks for looking AGAIN!

see you soon 

p.s... Lamb for lunch today and it smells AMAZING!!!!!

yum yum yum

xxxxx

Day 19

So quickly onto day 19.... repeat!

the prompt was to use ideas, or products from yesterdays page and repeat them on todays.

 (or yesterdays if you are late!)

I chose to repaet 3 things... the file folders that i have used on the past couple of pages!, and also the recipe part of it.. I also repeated the word 'together' 3 times on this page.

this took me about half hour to complete, I knew it had to be quick, so being a fun, stupid kinda page i figured it didn't really matter how mad it looked so just chucked a load of scraps at it.

now onto my third page of the day whilst elsie sleeps and Lola watches tv. 

I will get it done before I need to prep veg for lunch :)

smell!!?!?!

im a bit behind with my prompts at the moment due to not having a great weekend. but here is Day 18s page:

This is the outside. with the prompt being smell i already knew what i was going to do. This picture of my homemade mince pies has been in my collection for months and I was just waiting for an opportunity to scrap it and day 18 was the right time for me.

I used a file folder from Heidi Swapp, they are definitely my favourite thing at the moment. I made it like a mini page and then just added it to a 12x12 

this is the inside view of the file folder..... when I saw the black it reminded me of a cafe chalkboard, you know the ones you see outside on the street telling you what loveliness they have inside!!!

So I chose to do the writing in white, and I drew around large alphabet letters to make my title. if i was talented I could of hand drawn it but I'm not that good!!!!

I added extra red tiny types to tie it all together. 

Now I am bonn try and catch up with the 2 pages that I am behind!!!!

hope to see you soon xxxxxx

quick roundup of the week

its been a while!!!!!

have so much going on at the moment its hard keeping up, but you will be proud to know I'm still on top of LOAD. 

Despite maybe not posting them to flickr in time I am still always doing the pages and keeping up with the challenges, some days are harder than others but I always catch up.

here are my latest pages:

This is todays page.... we had to take inspiration from cartoon heroes. however I was inspired by a friends page where she had made her hoots look like they were from a comic, I however couldn't find the same thing so added think bubbles to my pics instead. 

also got to use my new Heidi Swapp file folders with captions, and loved them so much I squeezed 2 on!!! :)

This page was done not for a LOAD challenge but as me and Carole were bored so decided to do the same sketch. she was one end of Skype and I was the other but we managed to do pages that are very similar. Carole chose the sketch, which surprised me as it had 'wet stuff' on it! I loved doing it by making my white paint watery and running it over the page but Carole had a bit of a disaster of which I'm yet to see!!!

this is a bit of a rubbish one, done for LOAD challenge of using trash! 

for the trash I used leftover hexagon frame from another layout that I did and added bits to it its not my have page in the world but its done!

This was a page that I completed at my 12 hour crop.

I borrowed a book from Becca which was called the art of layering, i have now also downloaded this onto ibooks on my iPad. 

this particular section was about layering up rub ons around the page, and altho its very simple i quite like how it turned out. thanks Becca xxx

This was done at 12 hour but for a LOAD prompt which was all about 'touch'

I chose to scrap photos from our holiday last year when I finally decided to have the fish feet therapy!, where the fish eat all the yucky skin from your feet, it sounds disgusting but actually feels quite nice and leaves your feet feeling amazing!!!

Love this picture of Elsie at Nanny Gypsys house! 

this came from LOAD on sunday, and the roes on a sunday are to use the given sketch but to make it different to what you see. I chose to shrink down the square design and change the photo blocks for more patterned papers and to use the title place as my photo place. i also then had to add a title and an embellishment to cover up an odd number 3 that was looking weird for me :)

Sorry I've gone a bit OTT with uploading my pages on here tonight, nearly finished tho honest!

This page was done for LOAD and was based on the challenge of scrapping conflict.

I chose to do the conflict between head and heart when it comes o my children. we all love our kids and would do anything for them but when do you draw the line and say no, either for their own good or because you can't let them be spoilt little brats!! with a face like this tho Elsie is very hard to resist!!!

Now this one I don't like at all, but I'm posting it here to let you see that even when we make pages that aren't great, we should still keep them and be proud that we have got another memory down on paper. 

The prompt for this one was to use someone else's journalling. I was so stuck as to what to do for this that it took me all morning just thinking about it, I originally thought I would scrap a story that Michale wrote when he was younger, but I couldn't find it. then as i came back downstairs form looking I speed elsies book staring at me. 

It is  how Zoe lets me know everything that Elsie has been up to during the day, i borrowed a pic from Facebook showing Elsie doing cling film painting whilst at does and I naughtily tore out the page in the book which corresponded to this to show a day in her life at Zoes house!!!

I hope I haven't bored you too much with my mammoth post but at least its all done now and I promise to try and keep up with blogging also from now on xxxxxxx

LOAD 14

incase you were wondering if I'd given up...I haven't, its just been a hectic weekend. I can't update you on it all now as I've gotta go get Elsie from the childminders but just wanted to get this page up to keep you going lol.

This is todays page, the prompt was to use 1 photo.... check

2 patterned papers...check (I also used the backs!)

and 3 embellishments..... mmmmm ok so I used a couple more than 3, but they are only tiny!

liked the quickness of this one and how it all sits together nicely. had to add the splash of red to it, to brighten it up and to pull his hat into it. 

thanks for looking xxxx

Day 10

Phew...now into double digits and I've completed a total of 13 layouts ( a couple double too) and 4 smash book pages in this time. 

Today I'm a little late in posting as its been a bay one, we've been food shopping to feed the 5000 on saturday at 12 hour crop...ok so not 5000 but 22 seems like 50000 when you need to remember everything! but we managed it, 4 shops in 4 hours, plus a spot of lunch and a few wee stops for lola!!!

so tonight I'm a little tired, Lola has her tonsillitis back again, it flared back up this afternoon, and my glands are starting to swell up..so once again she won't be going to school tomorrow and I'll have more little helpers than expected doing food prep for Saturday!

still at least I won't have to go out in the cold and wet :)

here is my page from today:

It was a very quick one today, as i only had an hour to do it, from Ali leaving us, to collecting Elsie form Zoes. as then i had to make steak pie for dinner.... I'm told it was delicious, i only had the meat part as I'm on my diet, but that was good enough for me, at least i didn't miss out completely.

anyways back to business....todays prompt was to take inspiration from a cereal box that we had in our cupboards. I chose to use a ready brek box as i loved the design and the colours and this is what I came up with. 

what do you think?????

day 8 and 9!

hello....

I did complete a page yesterday, I uploaded it to Facebook and to my flickr page but did not have time to blog about it. 

 here it is:

The prompt for yesterday was to document a story from someone else's point of view. 

It took me forever to decide what I was going to do, then I remembered the teeth story from last week so HAD to do it. 

These pics show Lola investigating inside my Grandads mouth, and the journalling tells about the funny story that goes along with the pics. I did the journalling from Lola's point of view and said things how i think she would say it. I think it adds to the funniness of it all.

This second page is from todays prompt, which was to use 6 or more photos on a page. i struggled to find a group of 6 pics that I hadn't already used, but these were leftover from the birthday pages I did from when Elsie turned 1, and there were 6 of them so I went with it. 

The mahoosive flower was Carole's idea... not my usual thing and i did struggle with it but its on the page and I'm done with it.

thankfully :)

i have an hour before the kids get home...wonder what i can do now?!?!?!?

xxxx

Day 7!

Yup we are a weak in and I'm still loving it.... for those who thought about signing up, but didn't , next time you really must. you all ask how I get this done, but with motivation, and time management its really easy! I promise xxx

anyways first off heres a page that i finished last night, i didn't feel well enough to post when i had finished it so I'm adding it this morning.

Pic is of my Grandad with Elsie and Lola. 

I used more Amy Tangerine papers and embellishments and a scrap lift from the Echo park blog.

heres the link

I also used some leftover hexagons from my second page yesterday, as i liked them so much, this time tho i inked them up to make them stand out more against all the bright colours.

now onto today.....

the challenge today was to create a layout in less than 30 minutes.... eeeekkk! 

now I know I moan at Carole for thinking too much, but I can't say that I'm usually quicker than 30 minutes, so this indeed was a challenge for me.

i downloaded a stopwatch app on my iPad and set to it... All I had done before I got going was chosen my sketch, and that was only because I had dreamt about it and ended up sketching it out at 5am this morning because i didn't want to forget it. 

In my 30 minutes i had to find and cut all papers, chose a photo and embellish...it was hard

Here is my page that I completed in 27 minutes and 59 seconds!!!!

In researching paper flowers this week, i have learnt that if you get card stock damp, you can make it do what you want a lot easier... originally, in my sketch i was going to roll the pieces of card back.... but i thought it would look a bit fat, and odd on my page, so instead i misted my card with my mini mister and a bit of water, then i kind of pushed them back on themselves so that they crumpled nicely. 

the hardest bit for me was choosing an alphabet, i wanted it to be black but i didn't have a black alpha that had all the letters in it that i wanted so i had to settle for these. if i would have had more time i may have cut some letters on the cricut instead but thats all part of the challenge. being happy with the choices you make. 

Also in my sketch the photo was going to be on top of the strips of paper, but the scraps of paper that I used were all quite short and it looked too big over them. so I found a smaller photo and added it next to them instead. 

what do you think??? does it work???

Day 6 part 2

so looks like we didn't go out for lunch.... instead Elsie has gone to bed and I've squeezed in another page... 

being NSD yesterday there were tonnes of online crops, challenge weekends etc. so I chose one: the studio calico blog...and started there.

I looked through a few of their challenges and the sketch one called to me, as I wasn't sure how much time i would have. 

there are 5 sketches to choose from and I just did the one at the top of the list, and i may continue to work down it until I can scrap no longer :)

anyways heres a link to that page

and here is my page based on the first sketch

Hexagons seem to be the latest trend at the moment, and one that i hadn't tried so far so i thought i would give it a go.... to be honest I hadn't tried it because I didn't think I had anything to cut them with and i didn't fancy cutting them all out by hand.

It suddenly came to me whilst looking at the sketch that maybe the cricut had a hexagon, so I goggled cricut hexagon and found a post where someone was asking the question that i needed.... which cricut cartridge has hexagons?!?!?!

It turns out the answer was accent essentials and I have that so I was very happy.

I loved piecing together all of the bits and already knew which photo I was going to use before I started. it was very quick very easy yet I think it looks very effective.

what do you think????

xxxxx

Day 6!

and I'm still eager and going for it....

heres todays page:

A  very simple one, as today is sketchy sunday! so we were given a sketch to work from but we had to change it to make it our own.

I swapped the journalling spot along the bottom for a cluster of butterflies.... I added the circles to the top row, as they were only at the side and on the bottom...and i also changed the layout of the photographs to a block of 2x6 pics and a 2x6 piece of pp, as it suited how i wanted to cop my photos up :)

Im not sure what we are gonna be doing today, we are cleaning out the oven, but have to wait hours for the stuff to work so we may venture out for lunch.... or we may just slob about the house some more and when elsie goes back to sleep I will try and make another page!!!

Wonder where i can find more inspiration!?!?!?!

might see you later, have a  fab  day xxxxx

Day 5!

Evening!!!

And i promise, only one page today.... I have been a busy bee..... was out shopping etc all morning, then had to rush home and grab a quick lunch cause today was 'teaching the Rangers' day!!!

It went really well, the girls created some amazing pages, all different too, just the way I like it :)

If you have never been to my crop, or to a class that I teach you won't know how i work, I'm not a teacher that says, this must be here, or it must be this wide and this far in... I love people interpreting my classes in any way they choose. after all, my page will go in my album, your pages are your own!!! make them however suits you and what makes you happy! thats how i see it anyways.

I tell people that I teach techniques rather than 'this is how you must scrapbook' as it is how I like to learn. 

I think it works, it tends to make people more brave, and if they aren't feeling brave then they can copy mine to a T and thats fine too lol

anyways, i want to share with you a couple of photos that I took today:

Firstly, the bee cakes!!!...... don't they look fab?!!?! and made by one of the Rangers.... must add she was also very very good at scrapping so she must be naturally creative. I didn't have one due to being on my diet but Sara did :)

She was Laughing as she didn't know which way to eat him so I told her to bite his bum first...so she did as I took a piccy!!! lol

this is a photo of all the finished pages together, even from this angle you can see the differences in each.

And hers my final pic, of all the rangers and leaders with their pages.... don't they look pleased!! and so they should fab job girls xxxx

Now onto other stuff.... did you know today is national scrapbooking day?!!?!?!?

good job I have been doing some scrapping then isn't it!!

Obviously I am keeping up with my LOAD assignments and today, despite being very very busy was no different.

I actually killed 2 birds with one stone today tho as i have been stressing over the class for 12 hour crop, which happens to be next weekend....and we happen to still have 6 places left if anyone is interested and fancies joining us :)

I dont tend to do faff!!! you know.... embellishments and prettiness on a page, i love clean lines, simple pages, this is my comfort zone, so when i promised the girls a handmade flower class with a layout to go with, i was really letting myself in for trouble. 

This was third time lucky for me, I have started, and restarted and finally restarted again, this page, the flowers, and now it is done i am quite proud of myself. 

lets see what you think:

The top is the finished page, and the other 2 are close ups...or sneak peeks for the girls coming next week. i don't think any, or many of them read this so I'm all good :)

I borrowed the idea from a very clever lady on pinterest.... the original is here

and actually looks nothing like the page i have done now, but that is where the starting point for this page came from. spurred on by the fact that todays LOAD challenge was to type your name into Ebay and see what comes up, then to take inspiration from that thing.... I did just that and it found an author with the same name, who writes children's story books. 

I chose the third book down, which weirdly reminded me of the page on pinterest with its tall trees. you can find it probably only for a short while tho here

so I spent my time when back from Rangers making these little flowers, they look cute but i wouldn't do tonnes of them its just not my style but I will be encouraging my girls next week to make as many as they like, they aren't all as boring and non embellishing as i am so we should get some fab results :)

anyways, its 9pm, the girls are in bed and i have had a long day... time to chill on the sofa for a while.

see you in the morning 

xxxxxx

DAY 4 - part 2 :)

Hey...im back!!!

I did do something else crafty this morning whilst elsie slept, but this time it wasn't a scrap page.

I chose to do a couple of pages in my smash book, only because my Grandad asked me to look for some sticky back paper yesterday, which i couldn't find!! but I did find some old magazines which i was keeping as I had some of my work published in them. It suddenly came to me that I no longer needed to keep the whole magazine, that I could just take out the pieces that I wanted and add them to my 'all about me' smash book. so thats what i did.

here it is:

I should have done it the other way around with the first page first, but I didn't , and as the rules say its my smash book so i can do what i like!!!

look at how simple and yucky my original pages used to be, all shaped too ick!!!

This was when I was very very very new to scrapping so I'm not gonna be too are on myself, hopefully i have grown since then :)

anyways time to think about cooking dinner.

see you later xxxx

DAY 4 :)

I almost put part 1 in the title column, but I'm not sure if I will be back later with another or not, Id hope so but no promises :)

so we are all feeling better in the house, my throat infection is much better and i no longer sound husky! Lola is much better but still has a spotty tongue, so she is home again today, back to nursery on Tuesday I hope!!!

and elsie turned to be fine after suspecting that she too may have caught our nasty little bug!!!

this has helped greatly in being able to scrap.. and to be honest theres only so many times in a week that you can watch the lion king, or grufflalo dvd!!

so anyways, heres my page:

Todays prompt was 'hearing'

we had to think about what we could hear as well as just what we could see, either around us or on the page. as soon as I saw the title I immediately knew what photo I was going to scrap, and i knew because this is the photo that  I was going to use on my last page yesterday until I found  amore suitable one. 

In this photo my Grandad is smiling on his birthday. This is such a special moment for me, as it was his first since Nan passed and I was expecting it to be hard for everyone, but him especially. Im sure it was inside, for all of us...but this moment just goes to show what having good family around at hard times can do. 

He was made to have a KFC as his birthday lunch by and with Lola, despite the fact he was also having a birthday buffet dinner out in the evening. hence the Big daddy box in front of him.

none of the gets of us had kfc, we all had a jacket potato and salad but Lola insisted for months prior to his birthday that this was what he should have and he's never been one to disappoint.

the resin behind his laughter is that he is wearing a 'bib'.... this came about as mum was wanting some rags, so he tore one of his old t shirts up for her to use. it just so happened that he was left with the neck piece and the front, which made it look like a bib. he chose to keep it as a joke for my Aunty chris who came to stay on his birthday. and we all laughed as he put it on to have his birthday lunch...what was even funnier is that my Uncle Mick thought that he had made it especially and that he actually wanted to wear a bib!!!! hilarious!!!!

anyways that is the ins and outs of my 'first' page today, i hope to bring you a few more....Carole said another 3 today..... maybe i will :)

Day 3 - part 3!!!

Im back again!

is that a good thing or a bad thing??? :)

so I've done another scrapbook page, I can't help it I'm just loving these papers by Amy Tangerine. 

lets see what you think

So what do you think???

I did this one in a completely different way to normal, i don't know why came over me, as I reached for my photos, which is my normal starting point... I decided not to look. I was following a sketch anyways so just chose to do the page as i wanted to in the papers and colours that I wanted to and then I thought I would find a photo afterwards.... eeekkk!!!

I had actually chosen a different photo before I settled on this one, but it was of my grandad and i think this is a little too playful for a photo like that, so i went with the one of messy mini Michael. 

I have come across some things that I want to smash, so as I'm in the mood to do stuff i might do a smash book page tonight... watch this space :)

take care xxxxxx

Day 3 - Part 2

Good afternoon!!!

Ive managed to sneak in another page, despite having poorly sick children and being not so great myself. 

trouble is (unlike some people whose names I won't mention!) I HAVE to use new stash as soon as I get it. 

So when my Amy Tangerine supplies came yesterday I couldn't wait to get into them today, I couldn't do it with the challenge as they just weren't colours that were significant to any holiday so it gave me the opportunity, and reason to make another. 

here it is:

the photos are of Lola last week with Mr skinny legs, her grass head that she made at Zoes. 

journalling explains how his name came around, and how happy you were when his hair started to finally grow. 

I have just been sent another Email from Lain about Scraphappys May sketch so might just have to do that now too.....

see you soon

xxxxx

Day 3!!!

Sooo... hows everyone doing today???

we are not so great in this house.... Lola has tonsillitis and strep throat, and is off back to the docs in a while for a review as she still has a rash and lots of spots on her tongue...uugggh.... I went to docs yesterday and i have a throat infection and a possible absess..again uuugggghhh, and little elsie moo woke up this morning a bit chesty and with a frog in her throat!!! 

wish it would just go away!!!!!

anyways, i have managed to do my page of the day this morning, amongst mummy cuddles , doctor calls and attempting to drink lots! wanna see???

the theme today is use holiday colours on a non holiday page.... So i chose valentines day as my holiday and pics of Lola and my new niece Brooke as my non holiday theme. 

I also used a sketch for quickness today from scrapbook challenges.com, Ive been a bit slack with visiting them lately but chose to today and loved their new sketch. check them out here

would be fab if you could leave me a comment so I know what you think... and obviously about my niece, isn't she cute!!!!!

see you all tomorrow with the next instalment xxxxx

day 2: no photos!!!

so here i am again..... back with layout number 2 for day number 2.

todays prompt was to do a page without photos, this was daunting to me at first as the only thing I could think of was my diet certificate which I used on yesterdays prompt!!! (D'OH)

so I had to come up with something new.... I have seen quite a few pages recently with tags across the middle and I started with this as a base idea, and as I thought about it more it amounted to this... a page about me (again) and how I am loved by people around me. 

Im sure it would be a bit nicer with larger tags but I found these scraps of kraft cards rock in my scrap bag so couldn't waste it, i think the tim holtz grunge board letters work perfectly with it altho I did toy with the idea of making them white, I'm glad i kept them as they came.

what do you think???

as a bonus for today I will show you a couple of pages from my new smash book....

I have chosen to do a book about me, so the first page is just an introduction to the whole book, i had to ease myself into it somehow... and the second set of pages are about my love for crafting and has a card on it that i made for Lola on her 4th birthday. she was sooo mad at me for taking this card as it has been up on our side since her birthday. 

on the opposite page I have written about why i craft, what i love and hate etc etc... i have decided not to do my pages as i work through the book but to randomly do them as i see fit, this is helping me to work through it :)

let me know what you think xxxxx

see you tomorrow xxxx

LOAD 1

Hello there!

welcome to May and my first LOAD page for the month. 

the prompt for today was self portrait and Lain goes on to show us inspirational pages from *eek I forget names, sorry.... but it was great, it had hidden journalling which wasn't too hidden and I liked that. so took that onto my own page. which is a tad blurry I apologise!

This photo was taken a few weeks back by my friend Louisa as we were at the park with all the kids, I don't particularly like the picture as I look horrible but I decided to print it as I don't really scrap myself enough, plus Elsie moo is in it :)

When planning my page this morning, a few thoughts crossed my mind...i decided to go with the weight loss journey theme as I was very proud of myself last night as I had fat club and lost another 2.5 pounds, which takes me to 1stone alb down on when i started. 

Also I received my first stone award and was crowned slimmer of the month for April, which was a total shock. 

our leader Helen also talked about things from her leader meeting, where they discussed being on a diet as a bus journey and that really stuck with me. as sometimes i go off track but I always return and I am determined this time to reach my final destination. 

anyways elsie moo is waking up so I am off.... have a fab day, see you tomorrow xxxxxx