Precocious Paper Blog Hop

Hello and welcome to my blog if you are joining me from the Precocious Paper blog hop! You should of come here from Lisa's Blog. If not here's what the hops all about, my lovely friend Tessa is turning 30 and we are here with this blog hop to celebrate her special birthday! It is sponsored by Tessa's lovely Esty shop Precocious Paper, there are 20 stops along the way and Tessa is also giving away $100.00 in product so make sure you join in! You can start the hop at Tessa blog here.

Tessa kindly sent me some of the lovely products from her shop to create with, I was given the pretty felt flowers and sweet spots, here's the layout I made with them.

The photo is of all my family as we got together for my Nan's 90th Birthday to have a tea party, I have listed how many children, grandchildren and great grandchildren my Nan has in the journaling.

How pretty do Tessa's flowers look?!

I stamped around the corners of the cardstock with a swirl stamp to make the cardstock pretty too!.

If you would like some Precocious Paper goodies to create with, you need complete the entire hop, leaving a comment on every designer’s post. You will then be entered to win the grand prize – the September, October, November and December Samplers! That’s a $54.00 value and dozens upon dozens of gorgeous hand-crafted scrapbooking embellishments. Follow Tessa’s blog to be entered to win a $20.00 credit to the shop, and if you follow Precocious Paper on Facebook, you could win another $20.00 credit. Tessa is also giving away surprise credits to blog hop participants, so make sure you leave a comment on this post too!

There are lots of other lovely embellishments from Precocious Paper so make sure you look at all the other items in the shop, you are bound to find something you like!
If you do buy anything please quote this code: AWBBHFREE when you're at the check out and it will get you free shipping and a free gift on orders until 5th September! (If you are ordering from anywhere other than America please spend over $5.00)

Hope your having fun hopping through the blogs!
Your next hop is to Heather's blog.
Thanks for stopping by and happy hopping! xx

I Love Crochet!

It's official I caught the bug for Crochet, I'm loving it!! Here's a post just for my crochet! I must show you my finished baby blanket, I finished it about a couple of months ago now and I just given it to my cousin and their new baby and they really LOVED it!! I went to visit them the other day and he had it around him the whole time!!

Here it is, you may want to put your sunglasses on!

 They loved the bright colours and the baby's mum even said it was the most beautiful thing he had! So it couldn't have gone down any better! Not bad for my first attempt at Crochet, if I do say so myself!

I've now started another couple of crochet projects, I've been busy making Granny squares! I am making a 2 blankets, one for myself and one for my nephew for Christmas hopefully!! They are both in Granny squares, I was going to make my nephew a ripple blanket (like above) but I started the huge row of over 200 chain stitches and decided it was going to be too boring making a big blanket like that especially just after finishing the baby one! I'm loving making granny squares, they are really satisfying as it only takes just over 1/2 hour to make one! I know I will probably get fed up them in the end too!
This is Rowan's in greens and blues, I'm keeping all the outside squares in the same green so hopefully it will all blend together and then you'll just see pops of colour in the middles! (The colours aren't very good in these photos as it's so dull here today!)

And this is my blanket, in pink,yellow, turquoise and light green, summery colours!

Both patterns are from the Attic 24 blog.

That is what is keeping me busy in the evenings as the nights are now getting longer!
Back soon with a special Blog Hop! xx

Trying New Things

A couple of layouts to share today. First up is Sketch 262 from Scrapbook Challenges. I loved the sketch so kept quite close to it. I haven't used strips of patterned paper down the sides of layouts much and really wanted to so this was the perfect opportunity! It love how it looks, you got to love these Crate Paper Papers anyway, haven't you?!!

The photo are of our day out last month, we were looking for fossils on Kilve beach, and found some lovely ones without too much looking! There was even a proper group of fossil hunters with a guide that came to look at them!

The Second one is for Sunday's challenge at The Studio. We were challenged to scrap about what we were excited about so I scrapped about my Sister and Brother-in-law moving to Bristol, after about 3 years of trying to move they are finally moving! I can't wait to have them closer to home!

I went for a bit of a experimental style with this one, it's one of those layouts that doesn't photograph that well but you get the idea!

I misted with yellow Shimmer mist and stamped using my new gird stamp I've wanted a gird stamp for so long, it's great to finally get my hands on one! It will be used a lot more in future! I also used some new washi tape in red and grey. I really like this style so I will be trying more like this!

Thanks for stopping by, I'll be back with a crochet update soon! xx

Picnic Invaders

Just popped in to show you sketch 261 from Scrapbook Challenges. It was a nice simple sketch that Natalie designed.

This is my take on it:

 I scrapped photos from our holiday, we were enjoying a nice picnic by the river in the peace and quite until a herd of cows decided to come out of nowhere and cross the river and join us!!

I used a nice bit of copper mist on this as I thought it looked a bit like mud! When I just added some swirls, twine and little butterflies, simples!!

Back Soon! xx

Pirate Party

Today is my little nephew 3rd Birthday, Happy Birthday Rowan! I was asked to make lots pf pirate cakes for his Birthday. The first lot were pirate cupcakes for his party with all his little friends.

 They were a lot of hard work but really pleased with how they turned out in the end! Here's a little close up!

 The next cake was a big pirate cake for his party today for all the family!

 I wasn't sure about the face on this one as I thought the cupcakes had cute little faces, but it didn't work so well bigger! I punched out some gold circles to put around the board like gold coins!

 He seemed to like it anyway!!
These cakes have certainly kept me busy this week!
I had a lovely time at his party today, luckily the weather was gorgeous so it was a garden party and barbecue which was lovely!

Thanks for stopping by, back with some layouts soon! xx

Book Inspiration

 I'm pleased to say I have made it on to The Studio Design Team for another 6 months! I love doing these challenges and it has now gone back to just layout challenges every other week so can't wait to get stuck in!

 This weeks challenge was to get inspiration from books anyway you like. I had a look around for book covers to inspire me and as soon as I saw this one I knew I have to have a go at this!

I loved the images around the outside of the book and I decided to have go at it myself! I hand painted quite a lot of it, misted a bit, used a few die cut bits and stenciled the three big images. My Mum recently found a sheet of stencils of three beach themed images on that we used to have in the bathroom many years ago, when stenciling was in fasten!! She gave them to me to use and they were great for this, they misted and painted really well!

The photo is one I took from my few days aways and the journaling is about my love for the beach.

You must see what the design team did with this challenge as everyone took a different take in their inspiration!

Thanks for stopping by, please let me know if you dropped in, I'd love to see who's looking, I'm always on the look for new blogs to follow!!

Back Soon xx

Hard Graft

Just popped in to show you a quick layout I made for the first weekly sketch of August on Scrapbook Challenges. You can see sketch 260 here.

I've wanted to use this 'under construction' ribbon and scrap these photos for ages so it's feels good to finally create a layout using both!

I've had a lovely afternoon with my nephew, we were very busy, playing, we went to the park and he got in his paddling pool! It's his Birthday next week so I have lots of cakes to make for it next week!

Have a good weekend

Thanks for stopping by! xx