A blast from the past

Another quick share of a page I did for the March gallery over at A Trip Down Memory Lane. Working with the 7gypsies papers again. I had just been given some old photos by my mother in law and really liked this photo of her own father. He had died long before I ever met Len and, truthfully, I don't know much at all about him. Not even his proper first name. Everyone knew him as Bootsy - even his children and grandchildren. I have got to get more details so I can add some journaling to the tags.


The papers were very clean looking, so I dirtied them up by adding Distress ink and spray mist to the papers, adding some ripping, curling and tearing for good measure! I used lots of circles with the stitching, cardstock, buttons and stickers, to echo the tyres of the motorbike. It's quite simply embellished with a variety of buttons, rub-ons (7gypsies) and stickers (7gypsies and Jennie Bowlin). I love using word and label stickers, they are such an easy (as in, lazy) way of layering and adding interest to a page.


The gorgeous American Crafts thickers on here are a cream pearlised finish. Beautiful but, again, too clean looking so I spritzed them with the spray mist again and lightly blottted. I love the effect - a bit like colourful oil splatters! Oh and can you see that there? A blast from the past - a Making Memories metal word washer - and how perfect is it for this page? Just proves having a good old rummage through your stash can reveal treasures indeed.

Oh and check out the A Trip Down Memory Lane blog - giveaways and challenges mean there's plenty of ways to win some lovely goodies :)

And now ... digital delights

I'm a dreadful procrastinator. Always have been. With life stuff as well as scrapping. Those last minute 'nerves' always seem to get me fired up though.

It was Mia's 9th birthday last week. She had been so excited (even more so because she was getting some long awaited bunnies for her birthday).

We had a lovely little party planned, just my two girls and four of Mia's friends. Off bowling followed by McDonalds, ice-cream, jelly and cake at home followed by a treasure hunt in the garden.

The year Mia was born it was Easter weekend on her birth day, so even though the dates for Easter do change year to year, we usually celebrate with an Easter themed party for Mia. It's great to just buy an Easter egg for the party 'bags'. And, of course, the egg hunt always goes down a treat!

Anyhow, back to the procrastinating ... as ever I had left it to the last minute to get things ready. To speed the process up a bit, I decided to 'do digi' and, to honour the arrival of Mia's own little Easter Bunnies, I trawled the net and found a wonderful digital kit called Honey Bunny by Dani Mogstad at Sweet Shoppe Designs. I used this super cute kit to design and decorate the party/treasure hunt bags, prize tickets and cake boxes.

The cake boxes were made from a variety of patterned papers and cut using a great design, made bigger to fit the bigger wodge of chocolatey birthday cake, from a free template by Marie H over at UK Scrappers (if you have a need for GSD files and you aren't already registered with the Craft Robo template section over at UK Scrappers, it is well worth the effort as there are some fabulously talented people who share their goodies and knowledge there).



Some of the prizes didn't fit into the eggs, so I made tickets to fold and put in them instead. And Mia won a large Easter egg at the Easter fair a couple of weeks ago. Since she doesn't eat chocolate, she offered it up as a special prize at her party. She had a tub of Pringles in lieu :)



And finally, a picture of Mia blowing out the candles on her birthday cake (based on the one I made last year which she specially requested again this year).


For years I have cheated and bought novelty chocolate shapes from Thorntons to decorate the birthday cakes and also they will ice the little plaques with your own message too. Easy peasy! And that chocolate cake recipe is just wonderful. Also easy peasy. And easy peasy to make gluten free too!

I'm back ... and all of a flutter!

Oh heck how predictible is that title for what I am posting? You will see!!!

I've not blogged for so long. That's what comes with having a boring life (like woo hoo when it's supermarket day) plus being too lazy to photograph what I've been doing to share anywhere.

Anyhow. I want to get back to the land of the living, including the land of blogging. Just to share things, though I will generally not bore with lots of personal stuff.

Except to say that YAY good news is that Chiara has been accepted for high school of choice. So ends another six months of anxiety (and this time I didn't put a second option, nor the local education authority option *gulp* so, yep, this was a good result). Apparently there will be a different system for when it is Mia's turn because she has a statement of special needs. Just when I had got the hang of it.

So onto scrappy stuff. I've been neglecting my craft desk rather too much lately and want to get back into the swing of things, which means I am trawling the net for challenges to take part in. Hence this post because I found one on the Bo Bunny blog. To use green, aqua, cream/white. So perfect for me because it fits right in with their Flutter Butter range which I absolutely adore. So much that I am sharing three pages using this range. Confession, the first one Such a Girly Girl is the one I created for the challenge, the other two I did at crop sometime last year, but the Full of Promise page was sitting in a to be finished pile (something else I want to get motivated to sort out).

The papers in this range are so pretty and I'm pleased to say that my new local scrapbooking shop stocks Bo Bunny so I have lots more papers ready to use. I'm hoping they will have some of the new ranges in soon too.

Such a Girly Girl records how much Mia loved pretty dresses at that moment in time. She still does to an extent ... certainly more so than Chiara ever has.






I spritzed the cardstock background with Radiant Rain Teal Zircon and used Vintage Photo distress ink to blend and add a softer look. Used the Fiskars Apron Lace punch liberally (on the accordian fold flower too, see?). The sheer journaling spots are Maya Road, bracket sticker October Afternoon, Prima crystals, letter rub-ons Scrapworks and tiny letter stickers Adornit. And lots of hand stitching. Was doing this late at night and the sewing machine is just too noisy for then.

This next page uses an older photo of Chiara. She suffers dreadfully with lack of confidence despite me always telling her different. She's pretty bright, determined and beautiful. Wish she would see that for herself.




I used Bazzill dotted swiss cardstock background, scalloped edge from a DCWV cardstock pack, American Crafts chipboard letters, My Little Shoebox tiny alphabet stickers, Hero Arts stamps, brads of various sources including MME and Autumnn Leaves, lots of stick on pearls and my trusty photo corner punch by EK Success. I love this punch!

Finally, a page featuring myself *gasp* and the guinea pigs. They are so cute!




The gorgeous butterfly stamp is by Hero Arts, the journaling card Cosmo Cricket, journaling notepaper Making Memories, felt letter stickers American Crafts and ... yes ... I told you I love that corner punch (I stamped and embossed using a Hero Arts stamp to add some subtle interest to them).

You can see the difference between crop pages and at home pages that's for sure! I love doing the busy pages but generally when I am at crop I stick to plainer layouts. Not really because of lack of product (you should see how much stuff I take with me) but because I don't concentrate on scrapping as much whilst out at crop, I love socialising more!