Another challenge!

I've left it rather last minute for posting this layout for the sketch challenge over at Sarahs Cards!  It seemed like such an easy sketch but I couldn't find any vertical photos so ended up rotating the sketch to make it work! I really like the end product although its not my normal style!

Challenge is good!

Gems

Feeling festive!

Last year was my first year doing. Shimelles  Journal Your Christmas.  I really enjoyed doing it last year and my little boy really loved looking at it this year when I produced it from the cupboard to get a feel for what id like to do this year with my album. 

I went for a traditional look last year, mostly reds and greens. 

And when I ordered my little Christmas stash for this year I found I veered back to the same colour palette, for me blues and pinks just aren't Christmas!

So I managed to find a little red folder which I figured would do the job perfectly and managed to complete the front cover but no matter how hard I try I can't seem to do much more prep than collect together coordinating coloured papers! 

Only one more day to go though before I'll have pictures and I can build from there, I'm really looking forward to the run up to the big day especially as my little boy is now old enough to get excited about all the little christmassy things I love so much!

Gems

I just dont do cards!

For years now peolpe have asked by I don't make my own birthday cards and if I'm honest I just don't really like them, well at least the ones I make plus to me they're just wrong as they don't contain pictures!   My in laws however, pretty much demanded that I make theirs this year and I felt I had to.  After much grumping and huffing about how stupid cards are here was the end result...

It turned out a lot better than i'd hoped and it may have changed my mind about how I feel about cards, its certainly much more personal than a shop bought and I do like that its so pretty with the extra dimensions of the buttons and little sparkly bits!

So all in all worth the extra time and effort id say!

Gems

Finally!

So I've had these pictures sitting in my little photo pile for rather a long time and don't know why I never seemed to find the page coming together.  However, I somehow managed to complete this layout using up lots of leftover scraps of paper which I love because they are some of my favourites!

I'm kind of desperately trying to scrap as many photos as possible before baby #2 arrives but feeling so rubbish these days its so hard to get the motivation! Only 3 months to go though! :-)

Gems

Needed the challenge!

So its been a while! What with exams at work and getting pregnant (and very unwell) I haven't been doing much scrapping but with this little ones arrival looming I realised I have so many photos of my little boy still to be scrapped so figured I better get my butt into gear and get making before I get a thousand more photos collected!

So the Sarahs Cards sketch challenge seemed the perfect incentive so here's my version....

Hope it won't be so long before next time!

Gem xxx

Its been a while!

I don't know why I haven't blogged in so long but I have been creating so thought i'd post my latest page, this ones for the sketch challenge over at Sarahs Cards.

Really quite enjoyed the sketch, think I'll use them more as I seemed to churn this page out pretty quick!

I promise to be back again soon as I've discovered the joys of Instagram so my aim is to get some photos developed soon!

Doilies, doilies everywhere!

So seeing as doilies are obviously very cool right now I decided that I would use the wonderful Pinterest to find inspiration for home decor for Mothers Day, there were so many ideas but this is what I ended up with...

I made a doilie garland, pretty simply folded them in half over bog standard string and stapled to make them stay in place, loved it! Also decorated old jam jars with them too and tied them up with some bakers twine, added some tea lights and some flowers, very cute!

Elliot, my little boy didn't want his photo taken but I was determined to get at least one photo of us together on Mothers Day as I didn't manage to get one last year! I made afternoon tea for my in-laws which was nice although did consume a few too many cream scones but they were extremely yummy!

Then after a walk along the harbour to assess the progress of our local play park which is currently under renovation, it was onto dinner for my parents.

Pink bubbly, to not only celebrate my lovely Mum on Mothers day but also to celebrate the fact that after 18 long months I have completed my last module and it feels great to be free from work, for a while at least!

I did a wee layout to have out of Elliot and I, there arent too many pictures of us together so it was nice to do one of the two of us!

Hope to be more scrap happy now that I've a bit more time on my hands!

On a theme of chevrons.

So I'm sure everyone's got the chevron bug, I figured they would be great for my "boy" pages and due to the fact that I haven't bought any new pages (on a New Year mission to use up a good lot of my older pages before I'll allow myself to get any new ones as the budget doesn't allow for such luxuries at the mo!) I decided to try and make my own. I cut up lots of different pages and started sticking but the end product wasn't exactly what I'd imagined and once I'd made the one strip and discovered I had an arrow shape I decided to stop there and use that on my page.

So I kinda Love how its turned out! I find my favourite pages are those that evolve slightly from what you had planned in your head! And on a plus side I used up tonnes of scraps that I've been holding on to for quite a while! Super economical!

Hope you have a happy Wednesday!

Current favourite!

I have been meaning to scrap about all the little quirks of my 3 year old "right now" and when I seen this picture which pretty much epitomises him in one shot I knew I had to do it now otherwise the moments would pass and probably be lost forever in the whirlwind that seems to be our lives at the moment.

I found inspiration from the amazing Maggie Holmes, she is very into flags and lovely fresh colours. I sometimes find it hard scrapping boy pages especially where embellishments are concerned! I would love to be able to use butterflies and flowers but can't quite bring myself to use them on boy pages, lets face it they are lovely but to me have no place on a car loving, tree climbing, mess making boys page! So what I'm getting at is I'm all for the flags so looking forward to using them more!

Also felt the desire to make buns so these are a variation on my Auntie's amazing chocolate marshmallow cake, I made a batch for work to my delight had enough left to make this little mini cake woop!

Sorry for the terrible lighting in the pictures, its night and the light in our house is terrible so I'll keep this in mind for future photo taking! :)

The beginning!

So this is my first post ever!  I figured it was about time I joined the 21st century and got myself a blog!  Also got to find myself a way to showcase my pages!  I'm an official scrapaholic of three years and of late I've had to put the scrapbooking on the back burner as I'm trying to complete a course for work but I'm only one month off completion of the 18 month course and I've allowed myself to breathe a little and create something which I've been meaning to do for years now, I just hope doing this blog will enable me to vent my creativeness and allow me to explore new things and maybe inspire a few people along the way, just as so many other blogs have inspired me!

So my first challenge was to complete the Sarahs cards February challenge which is to create a movie themed layout. I ended up choosing this line from Toy Story as my title because the day before I made this my little boy Elliot was telling me in the car how much he loved his little cousin Maia and I just knew I had to use that quote!