Two more plus an extra !

I've now finished another class from the retreat - Claire's. Really loved the idea of the window frame and shutters and especially the inking & painting to distress them. The flower is fab. I chose to cut my circles with a scalloped punch and it came together much quicker after I put my brain into gear and used the lead end of the pencil to make the cone, rather than the other end that I originally started with - I really am absolutely brainless sometimes !!!
To add to the frustration I decided to use the hot glue gun that we were so generously given in our goody bag at the retreat. Another not such a brilliant idea - the glue dries too quickly to lay all the petals on if you cover the base circle in one go!!! All was not lost though as I then glued each petal as I went along. What a fab bit of kit this is. I can see me going through tons of these glue sticks - love it !
Now here's Claire's class :-

and here's a close up of that beautiful flower :-

I forgot to add Helen's yesterday.Another inspirational page. Although my chevrons are far from perfect I love the effect and it was brilliant to learn how to make your own. How useful is that when you can't find the right colour in the ready made papers and will certainly be using the technique again.

On the Saturday we were again given a challenge, this time we were provided with a sketch. Yes, you've guessed it, didn't get very far with this either ! No further than a couple of base layers in fact !
Yesterday I decided to carry on with this page, leave the base papers but totally changed the design from then on and this is what I finally produced.
Love these photos of my grand-daughter Molly taken by the photographer at a recent dance competition.
I've used the Stella & Rose collection from My Minds Eye with some various bits & pieces from stash.

I've now just got Lou's to finish off but I can't see myself doing that until sometime next week as Miss Molly has another Dance Festival to attend over the next four days.

First of Three classes at the Retreat.

Well I finished off three of them yesterday and after I cut the back lawn I'll finish the other three today, hopefully!
All six classes were beautiful and some great ideas picked up in all of them. The girls on Sarah's Cards DT have worked very hard to pass on their inspiration and enabled us to all to produce some really lovely pages.I'm really pleased at how mine turned out.
Here's the first one from Tracy Gough lots of lovely ideas in this one including hidden journalling.

This one from Jen looks much more difficult than it actually is. The " rays" if that's what you call them really makes the page pop.
The photo is layered with a sheet of acetate and I've chosen to position my butterflies to hold it down.

This one is by Ifa, so pretty but my misting hasn't come out very well and I certainly need a bit more practise!

And finally we had a challenge set on the Friday night. We were provided with some paper from the My Minds Eye Lost and found Two range,a length of ribbon, a couple of stick pins and a sheet of stickers together with a journalling card and an acetate flourish. We were only allowed to use tools,stamps,punches etc but we were allowed to add plain cardstock.As always I was running short of time to make this but this is what I came up with.

I'll hopefully be back tomorrow with the remaining three classes.

A great week-end

I came home last night about 7.45pm having spent the week-end up in Warrington at the Sarah's Cards Scrapbooking Retreat. Wow! this is the third year running I've been to one and it didn't dissappoint, still an amazing week-end. It was lovely to meet up with old friends and making some new ones,fab classes and a wonderful shop that they set up in the very spacious crop room.Even the weather was glorious.
Everyone is so so friendly at this retreat, we all laugh together and there were quite a few laughter moments, everyone talks to each other, Oh, we all crop together too - nearly forgot there for a minute why I went LOL.
All in all an amazing week-end. Sarah & Lianne and all the design team and helpers all work extremly hard to make everyone welcome and the whole week-end is so well organized and everything works like clockwork.
I can't wait to attend again next year.

We had six fantastic classes from some of Sarah's design team but you'll have to wait a few days for them as I haven't finished them all yet. If there was an award for the worlds slowest scrapper I would win hands down every time LOL.
As well as being a slow scrapper I also had to make time for the shopping - well you can't sit there all week-end and look at this wonderful stash and not be tempted now can you?
So here's a photo of the goodies I bought. There's some beautiful and of course, my favourite manufacturer- My Minds Eye "Follow your Heart" line in both the "Be Amazing" & the "Be Happy", some "On the Bright Side" line,together with the 6 x 6 pads. I find the 6 x 6 pads really handy for cutting out smaller pieces of papers or for cutting elements that are printed on the papers without having to cut into a 12 x 12 piece.
There's some Pink Paisley Indigo Blue - very nice !!, American Craft Dear Lizzy Neapolitan - beautiful summery colours, American Craft Gardenia - love this and I should have bought some more! and finally a couple of neutral coloured Studio Calico and some Simple Stories Documented paper.So all this should keep me going for some time I think.
Added to the papers, there's a couple of the D ring albums that I desperatly needed, some bling of course, Thickers, some Mr Huey's spray mists, a few punches and other bits & pieces.

Here are a few photos to be getting on with and I will post the classes when they're finished !If you click on the photos it will give you a better image.

The hardworking team

I shared a table at the crop room with Rosie, Ali & Kirsty - thank you girls for making the week-end so special.

I'm not sure what Jen had done here but it looks as if she's about to receive a black eye LOL

Wonder what the joke was on this one !

Sarah getting to grips with a camera !

Ifa making sure that Trina really did enjoy her class !

The Crop room

and finally before I bore you all with so many photos in one day the " delegates" together with the rabbit !! The rabbit belonged to the hotel by the way.

Pop back tomorrow and I'll post the rest of the photos I took.

Crop Class Layouts

Just thought I would share the two pages that I did at the crop I went to on Saturday run by Merly Impressions. The classes were designed by Chrissy and used the Kaisercraft's newly released Tigerlilly range available here
The two layouts were right up my street with all the layering and the cutting out of the flowers and butterflies. Takes a bit of time but I'm pleased to say that I managed to finish both pages on Saturday except for the title of the second one, which I added when I got home.The whole range is beautiful as you would expect from Kaiser and the Freesia Gloss Paper with all the butterflies is particularly yummy.

here's close up of the cut out and layered flowers

When she was a toddler, Emily liked nothing more that to rummage through her Aunty Sian's handbag. These photos I took all those years ago fit the colouring of the papers so well don't you think?

I love those little envelopes that Kaiser have brought out to match this range. So handy for hidden journalling,memorabelia or adding a few more smaller images to the page if you didn't want to make a multi photo layout.

Boys & more boys !

Not sure why but I always seem to have a mental block when it comes to scrapping photographs of boys.
Having done one of Charlie earlier in the week with the paper I was determined to make a bit more of a dent in the American Craft Campy Trails pp that I bought at last years retreat.So here's another two I put together yesterday.

The 1st one is the boys playing in the garden last summer. They wanted to play trains but in the absence of a proper train they both improvised and turned the plastic children's garden furniture upside down.Full of innovation my two grandsons LOL !

This second one if of Jack in the stocks at Centre Parks, again taken last summer.

I suppose I had better look for some more boys photos now as I have quite a bit of this paper still untouched !

Scraplift !

The My Mind's Eye newsletter came through the other day and the LO that was featured on the first page immediately caught my attention. I didn't have the MME stash to scraplift it so I improvised with some Kaiser Craft ledger paper that I punched the corner of and drew some lines round the edges to make it look like the MME ledger paper from the Miss Caroline Howdy Doodey. I added some Glitz Design beautiful dreamer pp that I had left over for the rest of what was needed.Punched a few flowers, rumaged through my rub on box, stamped a journal card and I was there except for a couple of paisley pieces but we won't worry too much about them!
The original LO by Amber Packer can be seen here
and here is my take on it.

While I was rummaging through my photo box I came across these photos of Charlie taken a couple of years ago, playing in the dirt using the excuse of watering my pots !!!
I've had these papers since I went to Sarahs Cards retreat last year. As I'm going again a week on Friday I thought it might be a good idea to use some of them,I can shop then without feeling too much guilt !!!

Hope you all had a good week-end. It was a gorgeous warm spring day here on Sunday and I was stuck inside a hall watching all the dancers. Molly did well again, A gold ( 1st place) for her Ballet Duet with Miles, a Bronze ( 3rd place) for her song & dance and 4th place for her modern.It's nice to see these dancers but the delight soon wears off when you have to sit through 22 of them as there was in her modern and 21 in her song & dance though.Thankfully there was only 5 entries in the duet section.
I need to explore how to put my slides back on here sometime too, as Slide.com has now closed and there's now big gaps on my sidebar.

Altered Image

This is going to be a bit of a moaning post !
A few months ago a new scrapbooking magazine was introduced to the UK called Scrap 365, great I thought,a new mag for the UK, something that we're sadly lacking in this country as far as scrapbooking magazines are concerned. There is only one other which is The Scrapbooking Magazine. Don't get me wrong I actually like TSM but it's always nice to have a choice other than buying US/Australian mags and I'm a bit of a sucker for mags !!
I wouldn't say I'm overboard with enthusiasm for the 365 mag though, far to much messy painting for me personally but I was prepared to give it a few months to settle down so I'm still buying it at the moment.
Now here's my moan ! In the March issue there's an article by one of their design team members Emma Stafrace for STEP by STEP instructions for altering a photo. This caught my eye as soon as I saw it. I enjoy playing about with my photos in Photoshop Elements and I do have a fairly decent knowledge of how the basics work.The LO is a digi one but it also suggests that altering the photo would enable you to use just the photo on a traditional " paper" layout.
Off I go and find a photo to alter. Step by Step say the instructions, for someone with basic knowledge of Photoshop Elements.I spent a few very frustating hours trying to follow the instructions given and in the end just gave up as I couldn't get it to work.
A couple of days ago someone posted a question on UKS asking if anyone had managed to follow these instructions as she hadn't been able to make head or tail of them either. That made me feel so much better and confirmed that I wasn't such a numpty after all :)
With the help of Maryanne and a couple of other members contributing to the step by step instructions in a much more clear uncomplicted way, I finally managed to get some resemblence of what the finished image should look like.
I admit it isn't perfect but with their help at least I do now know how to go about it if I ever wanted to do another.
My biggest moan is addressed to the comment written in the instructions that the designer assumes readers have some basic knowledge of Photoshop Elements. I find that very patronising to say the least, especially that the step by step instructions are a far cry from being step by step and even a digi scrapbooker on that thread in UKS found it difficult to follow so what hope did someone with basic knowledge have !!! If they're going to title an article as being step by step then that is what it should be in my opinion.
Anyhow, moan over and this is the photo that I finally managed to get altered. Not the best photo for the job I admit but having printed it out and cut the excess round it I wasn't going to waste the print so I decided to make a " paper" layout with it yesterday. I have taken most of the design of the page from the digi LO that was featured by the designer Emma Stafrace with just a couple of small alterations.
The photo is of Jack & Charlie at Centre Parks last summer. They had a fab time riding these for a whole afternoon.

Hope you have a nice week-end. I'm off Dance watching tomorrow at Luton!

Cute Little Boy !

This is the last of this months kit. I did have to use a sheet of yellow cardstock from stash for this LO, it doesn't look very yellow in this photo though but all the rest of it is made up of what was left of the kit.This page fell into place quite quickly, unlike the last one. One tip though - punching a border with the studio calico fabric strips doesn't work very well. I just had to tidy up the scallops a bit and gently ease it out of the punch. Don't think I'll try that again !!



No scrapping for me today though as I'm off to Molly's 8th birthday celebrations, just family today as she had her friends party yesterday, thank goodness !

Not quite how I imagined it!

This LO is nothing like what I had in my mind when I picked up the scissors to cut the last sheet of this months's kit - the pink paper that's behind the photo. Yes, you've guessed it, I cut it all the wrong size - doh ! So with the wrong size pp I had to then re-design the page and by then I had lost interest in what I was doing.So I grabbed a couple of sheets of Sassafras Sweetly Smitten,did a bit of sewing, added some lace and tried to make the best of a bad job !!!!
Oh well,this "use it all up before the retreat" mentality isn't really working as quick as I would wish it to but at least I'm now one kit down and a couple of random papers less.

Another LO from the Kit

Used a bit more of February's Sarah's Cards Kit last night.I did add a few flowers and some bling from stash in this LO. I love the colour of the cardstock that came with this kit,it's such a rich deep colour so I didn't want to cover too much of it up - I often say that about patterned paper but I don't think I've ever said it about the colour of the cardstock !!! It perfectly matched Emily's tu-tu in this photo which was taken a couple of years ago.