My Grandparent's Wedding

I think adding the newspaper clipping has improved and balanced this now from first attempt below

The original clipping from the Newspaper in 1930s

Dictionary pages, flocking, lead and brad and liberal amounts of ink for heart embellishment

It seems at this time the bridesmaids looked like brides too - mid 1030s

 used Prima's Shabby Chic Collection My Lovely matted with Lily Bee's Three little birds. Dictionary pages and hearts cut from Lily Bee for embellishment that I added flocking and ink to and attached with a fancy brad. I used peel offs (not my favourite) but had some wedding themed ones in stash. Very simple but the picture tells the story. I am trying to coat an old newspaper clipping to add to it - will see what happens

Sunny Relaxing Weekend at Arisaig, North West Scotland

Camusdarrach Beach

Loch Morar

Camusdarrach Beach

Crab fishing with proscuttio as no bacon - it worked!

Sun setting between Eigg and Rhum

Skurr of Eigg

A beautiful weekend of long walks on the beach, fishing in rock pools, crab fishing, card games, seeing Tamara Drewe at the travelling Screen Machine and relaxing.

Subtle textured background and one of the hardest los I've ever done

I have been struggling with this lo for three days. It is the first time I have tried to scrap pics of my little brother and me (sadly he died 2 years ago). I so wanted to created a happy lo of our childhood memories but everything I tried seemed wrong and I made many mistakes.

The wrong embellishments and too morose

punched border, and glitter alphas

 After matting photos with Basic Grey Romani and creating a scalloped edge I decided to mimic doodle lines in paper onto card with white pen. It  ran out... so I used gel pens to go over bits already done and created more. The trying out embellishments I struck them down by mistake and ripped paper taking them off.

adding doodled texture

ink, stamps and embossing helped to make journalling area

I used a ranger pen to create more texture and then embossed it and thought I was finished but it seemed too morose so I liberally added flowers and butterflies and I think it happier now.

Best friend and companion

This lo is a series of happy accidents and I planned it to sit opposite the 6 photo lo on the post below so used some of the same colours and papers. I wanted to try a circular photo and mount but drawing round masking tape and then cutting it out makes for wonky circles.

 To disguise this I cut more words out of the American Crafts Blue Skies Good Thing paper to make a sun shape as it was a happy lo. I painted the edges of the chocolate brown background and jazzed up the prima flowers with acrylic paint.

Using 6 photo page protectors

This works well for a group of mismatched photos in a larger album

I have so many photos for mum's album and they do not easily lend themselves to one or two layouts so I decided to use a 6 photo page protector (American Crafts) and embellish it like a scrapbook page - something I learnt from Shimelle's class. I mounted each photograph onto a different coloured patterned mount (all brown/orange) and then stuck ribbon down the centre and then made a loop bow and sewed it on using a button.

Simple loops in ribbon sewn onto ribbon below and held in place with button

I used Jenny Bowlin corrugated letters and inked and painted them to spell her initials. Finally the Martha Stewart flower punch was used on the scraps of mount paper and the flowers were stuck on top of the page protector. I am now created a lo to go opposite this in the album continuing he paper and colours started here and hopefully in the album it will work well...

Inked and painted letters and punched flower embellishments

I should also say these are not colours I would normally be drawn to but I think they work well with the black and white/sepia photos.

Pretty in Pink

Simple and lots of "white space"

This is a simple layout using a photo of mum as a young girl that was tinted with colour. The paper and embellishments came from a DCWV set called all about the girls. I used a ribbon to make flower and provide a bow detail and numerous small brads. I used a Martha Stewart lace punch to make the dotty edging and cut out text strips for the other edges. I stamped the title on patterned paper and then cut it out and stuck it on.

I cut ribbon into strips sewed in a cross and then looped over and sewed together with a button

Liberal use of brads and ribbons

Frugal use of paper for father and daughter layout

The finished layout

I have just created another page for mum's album showing two photos of her and her dad. I am finding it quite hard to scrap these old photos as the colours are so sepia. I found two pieces of coloured card stock from Imagination Project (Chloe's closet range) that I thought would work... but did not have a full sheet of either - a result of my desire to make my own embellishments by cutting flowers etc from a page. I have used the pieces I had to make my own background mounted on a thin recycled rough style paper. I then added distressed orangey red mounts and sewed on buttons, added strips of ribbon and stamped and inked a title and made a flower embellishment with added glossy accents from the paper. I also doodled stitches around the flowers but that does not really show up.

Layered flower embellishment with ink, button and glossy accents

The flowers were placed so that the pattern would look more complete when photos and other strip was added.

 Not my favourite layout - I need to find a way to scrap these sepia style photos as there are many more. Perhaps monochrome is the way to go. The other problem is that I am just trying to use what is in my stash as once I've bought the album, inserts and contributed my share for the party there is not a lot left in the kitty.

Family Album - Glamorous Travels

Page one of layout

page two

The double lo effect

I have just completed the first page of the album for my mum that shows her parents in the 1930s in various exotic locations. I  found a sheet of paper I liked but wanted to make a double lo and it was missing a square I had cut out - the solution was to add plain blue card as inserts and cut the paper to make a trim. I wanted an old vintage feel and applied liberal amounts of stamps and then layered the pads over the lo to give the feel of old passport stamps. The lace was in a box given to me by my grandmother before she died and seems an appropriate embellishment.

Detail of velum transparency and rectangular stamping

The photos were matted onto old green paper and then vintage style postcard mats

The lace - and what a bathing suit!

Emotional Rollercoaster

As part of my mum's 70 Birthday present I have undertaken the task of sorting out all her old photos which were sitting in numerous old plastic bags. I have been at this for about three weeks and have laughed, cried and howled as I did it. One of the reasons I offered to do it is that mum can still not cope with sorting out old family photos now that my dad and brother are dead. I thought I'm strong, and can do this, but doesn't life just like to come and give you a good kicking? I have loved looking at old photos of my parents and their parents and grandparents, photos of grandchildren and friends but there was some I was avoiding. I did the ones of dad and my brother as adults but that pile of us as children... Today I made myself do it. Why are the pictures of my brother and me as young children the ones that most upset me? They are all now separated into envelopes of different times and people and events. I want to create an album for mum but part of me wants to avoid this at all costs. I suspect these will be albums with little journalling as it is too hard to write down just now. I might create hidden pockets for tags that we can journal on as we feel more able to do it.
I am scanning in a lot of the photos as I want to keep some for scrapping and others for good old photo albums and posterity. I am sure they will be gracing these pages in a few days.

Get Well Card

The finished card reads Get Well Soon... or we'll send the 'bots to fix you!

Detail showing layered acetate elements

A friend of the family's son had a terrible car accident this week and is lucky to be alive so I wanted to send him a card from us all. I used papers, elements and alphas from one of the Owl Tree Studio September Kits called Grungy Bots by Linda Tieu. I created a digital file with all the elements I wanted and printed it once onto acetate and then onto card.

The sentiment using a flower brad inked black to act as a cog

I started by printing these elements from the kit

I then used sticky pads and coloured them to stop them being too obvious to layer up the acetate and cut out acetate cogs and stuck them to the card using flower brads I had inked black to make them look like cogs. I think it will appeal to his sense of humour.

Paper layouts from weekend

Left my camera at school so took some snaps with iphone but they are not ideal. The first layout is of Lens Guy, youngest daughter and sister in law. I used pink which is a bit of a first for me. The frame around the photo came free with a magazine but was too pink so I layered on some tissue paper I had. The decorative strip was cut out of a smaller piece of paper and I used a thickers glitter alphabet. The journaling was done in the right hand corner using a sakura gel pen.
The other layout is for the Birds cj. I was struggling with this one as had no pictures of birds. I drew a freehand bird and covered it in skeleton leads for feathers and then used images from the Graphic Fairy on the other page. The flowers were punched out from an old dictionary and inked and layered and then I glued small glass seed beads into the centres.

Fun cropping at weekend and what I do when bored...

Had great fun going to my first ever crop at the weekend with someone I met through UKS. They were a very friendly bunch and I will now be making it a regular monthly event. I completed one 12 x 12 and did most of the work for the Birds cj which I then finished at home. Pleased with both of them but no photos as yet as DS2 borrowed camera and only brought it back when dark. As I was deprived of camera at weekend and was texting on my phone in the sun I just had to play with that Histamatic app - hope the silly photo makes you smile.

Too close for comfort

Created a quick page using the Owl Tree Studio (August Collaboration) kit for the the numbers challenge using 1 photo, 2 fonts, 3 embellishments and 4 papers.  The papers and embellishments were all from the kit and I used Impact and Lucinda Handwriting as font. Those of you that follow this know that my guy (aka Lens Guy) is a professional photographer but at this point I really felt he was too near the edge.

Questions I am asked

As a teacher I do get asked some very daft questions and I always mean to write them down. This latest one is classic. During a lesson on the religious and moral ethics of organ donation and transplants I was covering views of major religions. It was a class of 16 and 17 year olds and one girl (blonde) asks in all seriousness, "Miss, am I a Christian? How can I tell?" Cue attempts to stifle my laughter as I tried to explain this to her. She wanted to know if she was "wan of they protesting people or a catholic?". What do you do? I suppose it shows sectarianism may be dying out as they ain't got a clue!