Extra, Extra!

This week at The Studio was my week for the Wednesday Extra. I was having a think what I could do for it and was running out of ideas that haven't been done already! While I was looking around for ideas I had a flash of inspiration and thought that I haven't seen anyone try paper weaving in scrapping so I thought I would give it a try! It's quick and easy to do but looks good and it uses up lots of scraps of paper that are lurking in your stash! Here are the layouts I made for it I wanted to do 2 really different layout to show different ways of using weaving on your layouts.
I'm sure most of us did paper weaving at school at some point so I put together a little tutorial to remind you how to do it if you want to take a look it's here.
For this first one I made a big patch of paper weaving with the lovely Cosmo Togetherness papers, they seem to be a favourite of mine at the moment!!

The second one I made small patches of weaving with thinner stripes of paper. This is one of these layout that really does look better in real life!! I've taken loads of photos of it trying to get a better photo of it but it doesn't get any better than this!

I really like this layout in real life, it's a shame it doesn't look that great here, never mind, it looks good in the album!

If you do give it a go I love to see it, put a link in the comments.

Today I have spend the day up to my ears in pink icing!! I was asked to make a 'Pepper Pig' Birthday cake for my nephew's best friend. I don't know if you've ever seen what Pepper looks like but she's a funny little character! Here's the cake I made!

I spent quite a while on it today to get it to look right but Pepper doesn't really look right anyway!!! I'm quite pleased with how it turned out in the end, I really hope Alexa likes it!

More scrapping planned for the weekend so I should have lots to show later!
Thank you very much for your comments, they brighten up my day!!

Have a lovely weekend whatever you get up to! xx

Very exciting

I have to share with you my layout that is featured in no other than Pagemaps! The girls from The Studio were kindly asked by the lovely Becky Fleck to make examples for October's Pagemaps. We all jumped at the chance! We each have our own sketch to play with. I was very excited to be part of it as I love Becky's sketches and I was disappointed by the sketch I got! This is the layout I made from it:

You can check out all the sketches and layouts here. Was a bit of a shame my name is spelt a bit wrong though!!

Next up Sunday's challenge at The Studio was 'We'd like to challenge you to create a page featuring your home. Maybe your favourite spot, the flowers in your garden, or even the leaking pipes under the bath. Just make it an authentic snapshot of your life right now!'
Here's the layout I made for it:

My front door! I journaled the things that make it home to me like sitting buy the fire on a cold winter's night and my own bed!!
My mum bought my a great present the other day...

...lots of doilies and in 4 sizes too!! So I had to use one of them on my layout! 
I had a great weekend it was busy but lovely too! We had our family picnic at Westonbirt arboretum The weather wasn't too bad it didn't rain so we were lucky!

It was lovely seeing all the trees that were turning lovely colours.

I took lots of photos of them!

On Sunday we had our family photo shoot which went ok, he took lots of photos so hopefully there will be some nice ones out of them all! Then we had a big family Sunday roast as it was my aunties Birthday, which was lovely.

I've got more to share so I'll be back in the week. I've even being enjoying a bit of scrapping today so I'll be back with that too!
Thanks for looking as always! xx

A bit of a week

It's been a bit of a week for me this week, I haven't been feeling great as the cold I had 4 weeks ago come back, not so bad though luckily but it's still making me feel rough. I have had a busy week too, lots to get done. I have had to launch my new kit for my shop and get that sorted and make a layout with it.I have to do my challenge for Sunday for The Studio and I also forgot to do something else for The Studio so that is going to have to be today's project. I had to cancel some of the things I was meant to be doing as it was too much for me as this cold leaves me with less energy than usual and I need to rest.
On top of all this I have a busy weekend too as my sister and brother-in-law are coming to stay for the weekend. We are having our annual family picnic tomorrow, it's happening a bit later than usual so fingers crossed for the weather!! Than on Sunday we are having a family photo shoot, it was a present my brother give my mum for her 60th Birthday.

Anyway lets get on to the crafty things!
I made this layout from a sketch the lovely Reija made. I follow Reija blog as I love what she creates and she came out with a sketch the other day so I had to give it a go. Its great she made this sketch as it was very much her style so it pushed me to create a layout that I wouldn't normally create.

I used sequin waste to mist over to create the little circles, love this effect I will be doing it again!

I also hand stitched the 3 lines under the photo. I'm quite pleased with how this turned out as it different. I like experimenting with different styles!

Next up I launched a new kit for my shop today as it's the 1st October!
I'm quite pleased with this kit, it's called Golden Leaves and it full of earthy colours with a splash of gold, very autumnal! It was added to the shop this morning, here it is...

Hope you like it too!

This is a layout I made with the kit.

I loved using the crepe paper to make some texture, I also screwed up the leaves so they look old and crispy! It is difficult on these dull days to get good photos of layouts isn't it!!

The other thing I must show you was my challenge from Sunday for The Studio. The challenge was 'Fairy tale challenge! This week I challenge you to scrapbook a perfect day... that hasn't happened yet! If you could spend a day doing anything, what would it be?'

So if I could have a perfect day I would spend it with African Elephants. I have always loved them

 so to see them in the wild and maybe help out at a elephant orphanage would be a dream come true, I'll get there one day! Here's my layout.

Right I better go and get on with today's project and I've got to make some cupcakes for our family picnic and hopefully have a bit of a rest before my sister and Brother-in-law arrive this evening, wish me luck!!!

Have a great weekend whatever you doing.

Thanks for looking xx

I'm on the team!

Lots to share today, first up some very exciting news!!! I have made it on to another design! The lovely Tessa has been looking for a brand new team to design for her Esty shop Precocious Paper, and I'm one of the lucky few that got on the team! I can't wait to get started as everything Tessa makes for her shop is lovely.

Next up was The Studio challenge from Sunday, we have a guest challenge setter this week who was Lain Ehmann she set the challenge 'Use holiday theme stuff on a page that's NOT about that holiday. I have tons of holiday stuff (Christmas and Halloween in particular) that only makes it out once a year - I'd love to use it in some creative ways and see what other people can do.'

I used some Christmas papers for this photo of my nephew waving at the ducks! Luckily the papers were not too Christmassy!!

It was a good challenge to do, it's not as difficult as you think!

I did some scrapping at the weekend one of them is for another project that I can't tell you about yet but I did make this quick layout just for fun!

This photo was taken on holiday in Devon, my sister insisted we had a paddle in the sea even though it was grey, misty and a bit chilly!! The sea was freezing! I like the way my sister was the one behind the camera on the sand!! I used my hand made felt clouds from the 'Summer Splash' kit from my shop and the new Seaside papers from October Afternoon.

It was my sister-in-law's Birthday on Tuesday so I made her these cupcakes with two tone icing!

 I'm sure there was something else to share but I can't think what it is at the moment so it will have to wait for another day!
I have the beginnings of a sore throat, I'm not feeling that great so don't think I'll be doing much this weekend I don't want another nasty cold so soon!
Have a good weekend. Thanks for looking xx

Inviting

This Sunday's challenge at The Studio was 'Food and drink - dedicate a layout to your favourite consumables! Whether it's chocolate, coffee or wine, tell us all about it :)'
This is the layout I made for it.

 To me there is nothing better than a nice cup of tea and 2 pieces of caramel as afternoon pick me up!! I had fun being really pretty on this layout to match my mug! I used a doily that I quickly put in my bag from a pub I went to on holiday, I was really pleased with it. My Dad even went back to the pub a few days later and asked them for some for me but they said they had run out!!

I also used a bargain bit of ribbon, the wide green ribbon at the bottom of the layout was from my local craft shop. They were selling this ribbon off for 15p a metre so I snapped some up, it's wired so its even to make nice pleats in it that stay put!

I made this card for my lovely friend who has just started teacher's training. I used the 'Back to School' kit from my shop as I thought it would be perfect for it!

I used the ric rac, ribbon, journaling card, handmade felt pencils and red thread from the kit. I hand stitched with the red thread to make the border at the top.

I managed to finish the Christening invitations. They even have proper inserts in them that I cut and printed on vellum. I did make a horrible mistake though and printed the wrong inserts for them!! As I had done the Christening invites for their other daughter a few years ago we just changed the name and date so I got mixed up and printed the old ones, I was so annoyed with myself! Luckily I noticed they were wrong while printing them and not later on! But they turned out ok in the end!

I received some new stash this week, I haven't bought any for ages so as I've been busy making kits for my shop I thought I deserved a little treat! I order the new October Afternoon Seaside range and my Cosmo Togetherness. The OA paper will be great for some of my holiday photos! Can't wait to get stuck in!

I must mention that my fellow DT member and boss(!!) Amanda has got a new review site and she is running a giveaway for a Scrapagogo kit so go and check it out, those kits are lovely!

I've been working on the next kit for my shop and making orders so haven't done any scrapping this week so you know what I'll be doing later!

Thank you so much for your lovely comments, they really do brighten up my day! I'll be back soon with what I create later! xxx 

Crafty Challenges

I've been enjoying being crafty this week and last week so I've got quite a few bits to share!
First up was Sunday's challenge at The Studio, this week the challenge was 'as it's my birthday week(not mine Amanda's!!), I want to see your birthday pages or mini albums! I always struggle to make birthday pages that don't look 'cheesy', so I'm looking forward to stealing all your ideas!'

I had some great photos to chose from of my nephew's Birthday a few weeks ago!

I love this photo of him as he looks like he's having a great time! He loved to sing along when ever anyone sang Happy Birthday to him even though he can't say the words properly yet!! I painted over some stars to leave the outlines of them. The music paper is actually Christmas paper but you can't tell that it is!!!

I also made this layout of my nephew, the photo was taken a whole year ago now! I do love this photo though it's so cute!

I launched a new kit on my shop on the 1st it's called 'Back to School' and is full of bright colours. So I made this layout with the kit I used some ribbon ric rac, stars, dictionary paper, my handmade felt pencils, arrows and handmade journaling cards. For the layout I used a Pencil Lines sketch, No.199.

The next two things are from The Studio Cybercrop I was hoping to do them before I went away but I ran out of time in the end.
The first one was a challenge to make a card using Cosmo Cricket papers so I made this with some lovely Delovely scraps!

I love the bright colours of the papers on white they really stand out.
The next one I did was a layout from a lovely sketch from Becky Fleck of Page Maps. My nephew again, I didn't realise they were all of my nephew, sorry about that!! He started playing around with a brolly but it wasn't even raining! I made my own little umbrella for it!

There were some great classes in the crop and I plan on doing some more soon! That's the beauty of Cybercrops they are always there to go back and look at! The winners have started to be announced now over on the blog there are lots of lucky people winning prizes!! Wish I could of won some of them!

I've been working on the Christening invites that I have to make, I've made all the bits for them now just got to assemble them! Thanks for your comments they are much appreciated and as always thanks for looking!! xx

Wedding Favours

I have lots of wedding themed things to show you today. I was asked to decorate a guest book for family friend, their colours were ivory, gold and green. I used some material on the bottom with frayed edges then layered it with gold angel hair paper, lace some green ribbon and some wedding ribbon. It is quite difficult decorating something for someone that you don't know that well, I really hoped they would like it and they were trilled with it so that was good!

This is what I did inside the first page, I keep it quite simple.

This was the card I made for them, I used one of my handmade lace flowers on it

I was also asked to make some cupcakes for the party the day after the wedding. I swirled the tops with butter icing and then made some little sugar paste flowers so put three flowers in a line on the side and then sprinkled them with some gold glitter dust! They went down very well, everyone commented on them and asked who made them!

While we're on the wedding theme I have a couple of wedding layouts that I don't think I have shared with you yet. The first one was a challenge for The Studio that went up the weekend I was away. The challenge was to use to horrible papers you have hiding in your stash! It was quite a challenge as I felt so uninspired by them but once I got into it I enjoyed making something that I like from the nasty papers! 

These are the two paper I didn't like, I found I had quite a few, don't know what I was thinking when I bought them! It is funny though as people like different things so some of you might like them, but I didn't!

I thought this photo of my sister on her wedding day would go with the papers quite well. I punched flowers from the lighter of the papers and inked the edges, then I cut the swirls out of the other paper to go with them. I then took bits of the darker paper and rubbed some ink over it so it wasn't such a nasty colour! I'm quite pleased with the result and it really makes you use your stash!

The next layout I made for inspiration on how to use my Very Vintage kit from my shop. The layout was based on a Pencil Lines sketch, I had been wanting to do a layout like this with the lines, for a while so the sketch helped me out! It's another photo from my sisters wedding, of the bridesmaids, yes one of them was me! My brother managed to capture us laughing at something.

I used buttons, lace, decorative ribbon, lace flowers and the tag from my kit. I also used my Basic Grey papers on this I love the lace paper and the background with all those colours in it, I was saving it for something special so decided this would work well on it.

I have no idea why this photo is in the middle but I can't seem to move it!!

That's it for now, hope you enjoyed my wedding wonders!! I have been enjoying creating this week so there will be more layouts to share soon.