Tuesday 30 June 2015

Playing Catch-up.

Hi there scrappy friends, I hope you are enjoying your Summer so far. It's just starting to get seriously hot here in the UK, something that we are not used to! We wait for summer to arrive then before we know it the kids are back at school and we are worrying where the year went!!
I have been busy with the garden and children's activities lately so not alot of scrapping is getting done.....but I realised I had not shared with you some of my double pages from my last weekend crop. So without any more babble from me..... 


Whilst in France last year we found a beautiful spot that required a small hike down to the shore of  a glacier fed river.
It was such a stunning, restful place that I could have stayed there for hours!


This is the left side.
My colour inspiration came from the clothes we were wearing,  Pebbles Front Porch collection were my choice of papers.


Right side.
My title is made from some seriously old stickers that had a faux stitching on them so I recreated the effect with a doodled border around my pages.


I was pleasantly surprised to find some pre-made flowers that were the perfect match! 
Using plain cardstock I die-cut hexagons to place around my photo's, I haven't used this shape for ages and it was nice to do something a bit different.


I took a couple of photo's from above the spot where we were exploring and tried to match them together to get a better view of the area. I quite like the effect and will try and remember to try it again when the opportunity arises this summer.


My second double is about various areas that we visited in Disney Land Paris.
For these pages I used a beautiful paper stack - Heidi Swapp Hello Today. If you use more girly papers I recommend  this line, there are pinks, blues and kraft and plenty of modern patterns in the mix.


Left side.
I am determined to use up some ultra old large chipboard letters so for this layout I left a large space and painted the letters with acrylic paint to match my papers.


Right side.
I had kept some of the Fast Passes from the days in the parks and incorporated them into my design.


Just a few close-up's....



I am struggling with my mojo at the moment and I keep trying different techniques but I think
I will stick to clean and simple as that's what seems to make me happiest. 
These two layouts seem to be more my style, I still like bright fun papers but I need to combine them with plenty of white.
That's it from me today and I hope you liked my layouts.
Hope your week is crafty.
Hugs
Kerry. xx

Friday 26 June 2015

Roof With A View.

Daphne at Scrapbooking Insanity challenged us last Friday to scrap with mostly orange and as it is a colour I am quite comfortable with I decided to play along.


Now, my layout does not look very orange because I automatically grabbed a white background and although my papers are mostly patterned with the right colour there is very little of them!!
Plenty of orange in the photo too! (I'm sure I am forgiven!).


I decided to introduce gold and yellow using 3D glitter glue and a fussy cut flower. 


I sanded these chipboard banners and embellished them with some girly goodness!


A dear friend passed on the adorable gold Eiffel Tower seen here.


My title was placed on the arch of the stitched circle.

I am sure you would love to visit Daphne's blog and see her take on the challenge so please follow the link HERE to share some love.

I am running to keep up with Daphne's great challenges, there is a new one set today with Gesso but  tomorrow I have a scrappy day so am hoping to get lots of crafty play time in.

Thanks for stopping by.
See you soon. xx


Friday 19 June 2015

Tug of War Towel.

How lovely to see you again!
Today I have a layout to share that I created for a colour challenge.
I have been following Daphne for several years and have always loved her scrapping style, last week she posted the start of a new series of challenges along with her friend Marjan.
The first challenge was set by Marjan and it is to use mint and yellow together on a page.


Beautiful combination so I had to play along!


I headed for one of my favourite paper lines Dear Lizzy Polka Dot Party as mint and yellow are in abundance.
I have been scrapping some old photo's lately and these ones are of my dog Tara from way back in 1988! 
Her favourite 'toy' was an old towel that she loved to play tug-of-war with and it had seen better days at this point!


I started off the yellow with some splats, made using Tim Holtz Distress Stain Squeezed Lemonade.


I pimped up my camera with a threaded button and added more thread before adhering .


Of course I could use Polka Dot Party without fussy cutting some of the flowers out!

I was pleased how the page turned out and as I have been in a bit of a scrappy funk lately I was hoping this signaled the start of my mojo return! 

I noticed that Daphne's challenge is up on her blog today - to use orange on a layout. Fortunately I like orange so will be hoping to find time to play along with this one too.

Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to pop over to Daphne and Marjans blogs for lots of lovely inspiration.
Hugs
Kerry. xx


Wednesday 17 June 2015

Happy Chance.

Hi there scrappy peeps! I am sharing a page and card with you today both of which were created without a challenge in mind for a change - just for fun!


The card to start off with.
I made this for my mum's birthday and used Papertrey Ink flower/foliage stamps and Paper Smooches sentiment stamp. 


A scattering of sequins and a brad for the flower center.



Next up is the layout made using a My Minds Eye Cut and Paste Adorbs kit.
The photo's are from last years holiday to the French Alps and the climbing wall was literally on the side of a shop! We just happened to glance up a side street and spotted it. Of course the girls had to try it out!  


All the different shapes were fussy cut from the sheet below. I had to cut each one twice because after I glued them all down I thought the effect was a bit flat so I cut them all out again so that I could mount them on 3D tape to give a bit of dimension!




There is also lots of stitching on my layout in a grid like design. I added some dimensional stickers and brads for fun!

There you have it, some creativity just for fun and as I have no design teams to create for anymore I will be doing scrapbooking just for me for a change. I will probably go back to designing for challenge blogs again at some point but for now I am so busy at home that I feel I should catch up first!

I hope you enjoyed seeing my card and page.
Toodles!

Monday 15 June 2015

Lovely Moment.

Hello scrappy friends and welcome to my take on the latest Sketch N Scrap reveal. 


This is the sketch, design by Kelly Holifield.


Here is my take on the sketch and I decided not to use a sunburst as the photo's are a bit busy and the overall layout would have been too cluttered.
I recently found these older photo's that I hadn't printed out so of course that needed to be rectified as they are so cute. They show my youngest daughter being artistic and our old cat Molly sleeping in the box part of my daughters easel! These two have always had a special bond and it's lovely to see them together.


I loved the clouds in the sketch so I recreated them in stitching making the sun into a heart.


More stitching for the title.


Just a slash of flowers at the bottom of the layout.

This month we are giving away a fun set of We R Memory Keepers double sided journaling cards to one randomly drawn winner, these are perfect for cards, Project Life pages or even your traditional scrapbook pages!
I hope you can join in with us this month especially as this is my last challenge with Sketch N Scrap. After a few years on the design team I am hanging up my hat and going forth into the unknown!
The rest of the DT examples and the details of how to play can be found on the Sketch N Scrap blog HERE.

Thanks so much for dropping in and I will be back soon with a fun layout to share. 
Hugs
Kerry. xx


Thursday 11 June 2015

Those Eyes.


Today Sketch N Scrap revealed their 6th Twistback Thursday challenge, this time Kelly Holifield set the challenge and as I am on her team I created a layout based on the sketch. The twist is to incorporate washi tape into your design. 



Here is my layout and as you can see I kept very much to the sketch apart from the orientation of my photo. It is of my dog Tara that I got when I was in my early twenties and she lived to a ripe old age of seventeen! 
The story behind those eyes is that when she was about 14 years old she got eye infections which caused the hair around her eyes to fall out. As she was elderly when the hair grew back it was white and being an all black dog she got the nick name of Panda Eyes!


I girlied up the page with a doily, flowers and punched circles.


A few splats of black and blue Mr Huey mists and I was happy with how it turned out.

This month we are giving away a fun set of We R Memory Keepers double sided journaling cards to one randomly drawn winner, these are perfect for cards, Project Life pages or even your traditional scrapbook pages!
I hope you will pop over to the Sketch N Scrap blog to see the wonderful examples of this challenge from the other DT girls and perhaps we can inspire you to play along!

Thanks so much for dropping by today.
Big Hugs. 
Kerry. xx

Tuesday 9 June 2015

Sharing.

I have two very different layouts to share with you today both of which are just for fun - no challenges or DT assignments!


This fun bright page was made using American Crafts papers and when I have a colourful layout to scrap AC are the manufacturer that always springs to mind!
The photo's are of my eldest daughter and our big cuddly teddy bear of a cat Ginger having snuggles together.


To add a bit of texture I stitched in a couple of places on the page. I always think that PL type cards look cute with a bit of embellishing.


More stitching and even some journaling!


As you can see my other layout is very different to the first! I went with a muted colour scheme as I was trying to make it a more masculine page. The photo shows our pond full of bull frogs all vying for the attention of  a couple of females! We did get a lot of frog spawn though!


Don't ask what papers these are as they were just some scraps left in a box, but I did manage to cut a few flowers from them for my embellishing.


I had spritzed some gold Mr Huey mist over the background but it doesn't show up so well on the photo's.

Both these pages are ones that I created quite a while ago at a weekend crop. I am in a scrapping funk at the moment and rather than leave my poor blog to fend for itself I thought I would post some older layouts that were not shared on here previously.
 I will get back into the swing of scrapping but until then I hope you will forgive the lack of  posts. 
Thanks for stopping by. xxx  


Saturday 6 June 2015

Friendly Challenge - Beads.

I do hope your weekend is going well and the weather where you are is as glorious as it is around here. The sun is shining and the temperature is not too high whilst I have been emptying out our pond in order to locate a leak! Bit of a smelly job but someone has to do it and that someone is me!  
The frogs and newts were not happy to say the least when we were trying to catch them all and I'm not sure they are overly impressed with their temporary paddling pool home for the next couple of days! 
Anyway, onto the real reason I am posting today - Helen and I met yesterday to scrap, chat and eat our way through the day and to share this months friendly challenge which was to create a layout with beads.
It was a great challenge that got us both thinking outside our respective boxes and we used the beads in very different ways to each other.


Here is the layout I created.
I had a rummage through my stash of beads and came across some gold coloured tube beads and thought they would be perfect for a sparkly festive page and the lovely selfie my girls took last  Christmas Day.


My beads are threaded through every other stitch in a grid design (yes, it took hours to complete the stitching!) onto some subtle patterned paper.
I decided I didn't want to use Christmas paper and went with non traditional colours too!


Simple embellishment of tiny pink paper stars with even more tiny star sequins. Topped off with a glitter crown. 


Here is the layout Helen created for our challenge.
Photo's of the towel sculptures they discovered in their room whilst on holiday last year in Egypt.
Helen created multiple circles as the backdrop to her page, stitched and glued in place. 


For her bead embellishment Helen found a tutorial to make these gorgeous bead flowers.
She has since shared the link with me so I thought you might like to have a go at these too so here is the link to the tutorial on YouTube - HERE. 
The black seed beads look fabulous in the center of the tiny die cut flowers. 


Not only has Helen made those beautiful bead flowers but she included beads randomly in her stitched circles.

This was certainly a tricky challenge for me but I loved how our layouts turned out.
I wonder if beads have featured on any of your pages lately? 

Thanks so much for stopping by today and checking out our latest challenge.
This months one is to create a layout based on a season, what will we come up with!