Family Day Out

It is my 40th birthday tomorrow and we had planned some family days out but as usual the great British weather hasn't played ball! So we had to change our plans and find somewhere to go today where we could go inside if it rained, we chose Kingston Lacey which is a National Trust property. We actually had quite good weather, not much sunshine but no rain so we managed to have a lovely walk around the garden and it gave me a chance to get some lovely photos of the girls and my nephew Josh.
Tree huggers!

A while ago I took some photos of Rebecca against a lovely old brick wall, this isn't such a nice wall (I seem to have a bit of a thing for nice walls at the moment!) but I thought it was worth a few photos and I really like this one of Emily.

Emily outside the lovely old house.

On our walk we came across this gorgeous field of daisies, it was like a maze with pathways all through it so we didn't have to walk over the flowers to get in amongst them. It was a photographers dream and I could have spent ages taking photos of the girls there. There were so good all day and let me take loads of photos and didn't complain once!

Emily is very attached to her mobile phone!

Josh loved the long grass in the field but he thought it was their garden, his comment was "seriously, they need to cut the grass!" He does make me laugh.

Tomorrow the plan was to go to Brownsea Island but again the weather isn't meant to be great so not sure what we are going to do now :(
TFl
xx

Question Time

A few years ago I saw a layout where the scrappers child had answered a series of questions on the page, I loved the idea and have tried to do one each year for both the girls. They are great to look back on, Emily and I had all the scrapbooks out last night and had a good giggle at some of her previous answers.
I wanted Emily's layout to look a bit like a page from a personnel file so I kept it very simple without too many layers or fancy embellishments. On Sarah's Cards design team we have got an amazing scrapper Lou, she manages to use paints and mists on her pages in the most creative ways. I struggle to do anything messy or irreversible on my pages but she has inspired me to try and be a bit more adventurous so I stamped some circles on the page using brown acrylic paint. I have used MME fine and dandy papers for Emily's page.
I know there are a few spelling mistakes on the page but that is part of the charm of getting them to do their own journaling.

I was going to do Rebecca's page pretty much the same as Emily's but it didn't turn out quite as I had intended! I used a combination of MME papers for this page, fine and dandy along with stella and rose. They work really well together and I love the small floral print paper, it is exactly the sort of print that Rebecca loves so perfect for a page about her. I did keep the page quite simple with only a few embellishments but created a pull out tag for the questions and her answers.

TFL
xx

Little Wooden Heart

One of the things that I bought at Ally Pally in April was this little wooden heart, I had an idea in my head of what I wanted to do with it so set about altering it this morning.
I started by painting the heart with green acrylic paint and added a coat of crackle glaze over the top and then finished it off with a coat of white acrylic paint. Once that had completely dried I misted the heart with Maya mist dabbing off the excess with a tissue as I wanted it to be quite subtle. I had planned to add some bling, flowers and tissue paper but then I had another idea.

I had some Pink Paislee Butterfly Garden rub ons left on my desk from a previous project and I decided I wanted to add one onto the heart. It worked really well so I added a few more and then just kept going until I was happy with it. To seal the whole project I coated it with a layer of matt varnish, I am really pleased with how it turned out and is now hanging on our bedroom cabinet door.

TFL
xx

All Change!

There are some exciting changes taking place over on the Sarah's Cards blog from 1st June! If you don't already follow the blog and don't want to miss out why not pop on over and add it to your blog list. If you are looking for a blog with challenges, inspiration, classes, tutorials, giveaways and much more then Sarah's Cards is definitely going to be the blog for you!

I thought I would share a couple of the pages that I created with this months Sarah's Cards kit, it is a gorgeous kit and definitely right up my street with lots of MME Stella Rose papers! The colours in the Mabel range made it the perfect kit to use with photos of Emily and her gorgeous ginger hair.
For this kit I combined the kit with a sheet of Kaiser Timeless paper for the background. I stamped the border of the page and photo matt and then cut around them.

I added a line of liquid pearls around the stamped square, so much quicker and cheaper than using adhesive pearls but just make sure you let them dry thoroughly!

For my second page I used a photo of my two little girls back in 1997 when Rebecca was only a tiny baby, this is one of the first photos that I took of the two of them together.

There were some great designs on the paper that were perfect for cutting out to embellish the page.

TFL
xx

Retreat Apron

For the Sarah's Cards retreat back in March we all had to decorate a lovely Prima canvas apron that Sarah sent us. I was a bit stumped for inspiration so trawled the net and found a great class by Donna Downey, I used a lot of her ideas and added a few of my own, I had great fun doing it and got extremely messy! 

I misted the lace to coordinate with the background colour which worked really well, to speed up the drying time I used a hair dryer. The tags were misted and inked using distress inks and then stuck into the pocket.

I added my lettering using a variety of alpha stickers which I secured using my hot glue gun.

I had to add a few butterflies to my project so I stamped and embossed a butterfly onto the background before I misted it. I also added a couple of Prima butterflies, I painted the tips of the wings with the mists that I had used on the rest of the apron and punched a few out of patterned paper.

TFL
xx

Sweet 16

I can't believe Emily has now turned 16, it only seems like yesterday that Justin and I were up in Dorchester awaiting her arrival. She was 4 weeks early but was still a good weight at 5lb 10oz but was a scrawny little bundle and very jaundiced bless her. She had a few problems feeding and used to be sick after every meal until she turned 9 months, you would never know it looking at her now. She has grown up into a beautiful young lady who we are all very proud of.
A few years ago I saw some photos that had been taken to document a birthday, I think they were in Scrapbook Trends, anyway each year since then I have taken similar photos of the girls. It has become a bit of a tradition, so I thought I would share some of the ones that I took yesterday.

She has got a wonderful group of friends and our house seems to be their second home so I thought it would be nice to get a photo of the 6 of them together.

No scrapping to share with you today, but I did have a lovely order yesterday of WP's Spring Market collection from Scrap Revolution so I might just have to go and start having a play with that!
TFL
xx

Sneak Peek

You know how I like to tease...well here is a little sneak peek of what I have done using this months Sarah's Cards kit. Most of you who read this blog will know that one of my all time favourite manufacturers is MME and this months kit is full of it! Gorgeous, and the colours were perfect to scrap photos of Emily with her gorgeous hair.

So here is my little snippet of one of the pages that I have put together. Looking at this photo it is hard to believe that Emily will be 16 tomorrow! Where has the time gone.

TFL
xx

Dream

Last weekend I spotted a post on the inspireME site from the Aussie Scrap Source blog, they had set a challenge to create a page using Websters Pages and you had to include WP trims and alpha stickers. The prize was in my mind amazing, the chance to be a guest designer for Websters for a month! So I set to creating my page, I only had a couple of days to get it done as the closing date was Tuesday. Sadly I didn't win, there were some amazing entries and the winners page was just stunning. I loved creating the page though and am still totally loving WP!
When I went to Ally Pally in April I picked up some Life's Portrait WP's, I have used them on this page with a small amount of Ladies and Gents.

I have had another go at using Liquid pearls and thankfully didn't smudge it too much this time! I simply added a line of dots along the edge of the scallop and highlighted some areas of the photo frame.

I also have some exciting news to share! Last week I received an email from Caroline, she is organising the Scrapstars retreat in September this year and has asked me to teach! I was so shocked, I have taught a couple of time before, despite the nerves, once I have got going I really really enjoy it, but never really thought about teaching at other venues. There have been two other teachers announced so far and I can't believe I am going to be teaching along side them. I am one excited scrapper!
TFL
xx

Sketch Challenge

I can't believe how quickly the months are flying by! The May sketch challenge has just gone live over on Sarah's Cards blog, Nat created a fab sketch and I loved using it even if I did deviate a little bit from her original. If you fancy playing along and be in with a chance of winning a £10 e-voucher then all the details are here.
I used more Pink Paislee Butterfly Garden papers combined with a sheet of script paper from the Kaiser Timeless collection which is just great for vintage pages and makes the perfect background.
I used a Martha Steward border punch to create the edge on the bazzill but the white was too stark against the rest of the papers so I used distress inks to try and merge the papers into the bazzill.

You can't really see it on the photo but I added a layer of glossy accents to each bar of the bird cage and to the paper clip at the top of the page to add a bit more texture.

I just wanted to say a big thank you for all the lovely comments that have been left on my blog, I really do appreciate them and love reading what you think.
TFL
xx

Craft Obsessions

A little while ago I had arranged to go and visit David and Brenda at Craft Obsessions but for various reasons we put it off until today. We found their unit with the help of the sat nav, it was quite strange really as we have often driven past there, I certainly wouldn't have driven by had I realised they were there!
I have to say a big thank you to both David and Brenda as they were both extremely welcoming and friendly, even Justin enjoyed the visit and said he would happily go back. They had a great selection of stash and I could have spent hours delving in all the boxes and drawers. I think I did quite well to limit myself to this little pile of goodies!

TFL
xx