Happy Birthday Sketch N Scrap.

At Sketch N Scrap we are celebrating our 1st Birthday, a whole year of scrapping fun!
It's Celebration time and the fun will be flowing even more during May with more challenges, more inspiration and more prizes than you can shake a stick at!
We will be having lots of things going on and we want YOU to come along and join in the fun and frivolity.
There will be NEW card challenges alongside the usual layout ones and in addition, the Design Team will all be posting  special challenges on their blogs for you to play along with.
If that's not enough we now have a new Pinterest page HERE where all the inspiration and sketches can be seen AND we are now on Facebook! So please come along and like us HERE and we will bring all the updates and extra inspiration to you so that you are totally up to date on your favourite sketch challenge blog - Sketch N Scrap!

 

Only leaves me to say, see you tomorrow over at the SNS blog for our 1st reveal of the month - a new layout sketch challenge.

Sarah's Cards April Sketch Challenge.

Hello and happy Tuesday. Well spring has finally sprung here in the UK and I am checking everyday on the seedlings growing in the greenhouse ready to plant out at the allotment. The strawberry plants are coming along nicely now the sun is shining and my new rhubarb patch is amazing!
How is your veg patch or flower seedlings coming along?
I have a page today that shows some photo's of one of my favourite birds, the robin. I know he is normally associated with Christmas and snow but we went to a bird sanctuary over the Easter holidays and the robin was the most prolific bird there and so tame!

 

Sarah's Card's blog has the perfect sketch this month to showcase the photo's that I have of the little robins. I wanted to play with smaller photo's so this sketch was ideal for me.

Please click on the image for a better view.

 

Here is my page and as you can see I have kept very much to the sketch as it really was exactly what I needed for these photo's.

All the papers are My Minds Eye a line called 'On The Bright Side' and it's my favourite paper line at the moment as it has some subtle patterns and also some brighter sheets as you can see with the papers I used.

 

I purchased some new washi tape from Sarah's Cards shop recently, as I was missing orange in my growing collection (and you know I love orange!) I purchased the triple pack also from My Minds Eye and you can see one of the patterns in this photo. Check out the pack HERE it's so nice!

 

 

A last close up of the sweet wooden butterfly that I placed in the corner where the star is on the sketch.

Ok, now that you have seen my take on the sketch for April's challenge, it's your turn to have a go and you have until the end of the month to play along. All the details can be found HERE and there is a wonderful prize up for grabs too, £20 voucher to spend in Sarah's Cards shop, which you should check out HERE.

Hope the rest of your week is fabulous with lots of sunshine and plenty of crafty time.
Thanks for taking a peek.

Friends Challenge.

Hooray. It's the weekend! I have a busy one planned and very much looking forward to some time with family and friends.
Talking of friends I spent yesterday at my dear friend Helen's home (in her craft cabin mostly) scrapping chatting and generally having a wonderful time as usual.
As you know, Helen and I challenge each other with a scrappy theme every time we meet up, sometimes it's colours, other times it's a theme like Christmas or a wedding.
We had recently visited our local scrapbook shop called Papermaze and both fell in love with the Pebbles line called 'Family Ties' (you can see the range HERE). So we decided to buy some sheets of the papers and use them as our challenge.

 

Here is the page I created using a photo that is one of my favourites, showing my niece and my father having a hug during a recent family get-together.

I love papers that allow you to cut elements from the pattern to use as embellishments, like all the flowers and the birds/houses on my page.

 

I added some Stickles glue to the centre of the flowers to add a bit of sparkle and raised some of them up on sticky pads.

How could anyone resist putting these cute birds and their houses on a page? Not me.

 



 

Helen's delightful page showcases her daughter and a neighbour who have been friends since they were little (cute photo at the top). Not that any of us have ever done this! but Helen staged the second photo so that she could scrap the 'then and now' But hey, we will do anything for a scrapbook page idea! 

 

Helen also fussy cut out the flowers on her page from a patterned sheet (please don't compare the cutting out quality between the two of us).

Helen's page shows more of those cute birds and bird houses and she also cut some of her title letters from blue glitter card the same as me (we all love a bit of glitter).

Do you have challenges with your scrappy friends, if not you should try it. Helen and I have been challenging each other for years now and still find new ideas to experiment with and it's interesting to see each others take on the same theme/papers. 

Well thanks for dropping by and I wish you a fabulous weekend. xx

 

Cards, Cards and More Cards!

With quite a few birthdays coming up I had a card making day yesterday and I used this weeks sketch over at Retro Sketches as my starting point. I got a bit carried away, I liked the 1st finished card so much I carried on with  the sketch but changed the elements.

 

Here is this weeks sketch over at Retro Sketches.

 

 

This is the first card that I made, it's for my daughter who's birthday it is today. This is the card that I will be entering in the challenge. Go and visit their blog for some inspirational sketches and DT creations, there are fab sketches every week. The details are HERE. 

 

 

 

Here is card #2 made with some scraps that I found lurking and some flower images that I coloured with Promarkers.

 

 

Card #3 is almost the same as card two but with a different colour combo and a sentiment to suit most occasions as it's going into my 'emergency box'.

 

 

And now to something completely different and quick card for a six year old!

 

With the last three cards I have used a sentiment stamp set from Paper Smooches called Sentiment Sampler and if you are not familiar with their stamps just go check out their blog Here, you'll love it.

 

Hope to be back in a couple of days, until then thanks for visiting and have a great week.

 

 

 

Sketch #31 @ Sketch N Scrap.

Good Monday morning to you and today has started off with the sun shining and a new sketch reveal over at Sketch N Scrap so what could be better?

 

Here is the wonderful sketch we have all been working on and it's another super design by Brenshevia.

 

I loved getting really inky on this page with a heart made from just dipping the tube from the ink spray and drawing the shape with different colours and splatting to my hearts content.

The photo's are of our newest member of the family who adopted us recently (we think a neighbour moved out and left their pets behind!!!) The photo's are in different shades as I was testing out the different printing options I had and these are the 3 results (so different considering they are the same photo!). So when I saw this sketch I knew these photo's would be perfect and I wouldn't have to choose only one to scrap!

 

 

A close up of my inky fun!

 

I had to squeeze in some washi tape! and the butterflies were cut from the patterned paper I used for the strips top and bottom.

 Now you still have plenty of time to enter this month's sketch challenges so hop over to the Sketch N Scrap blog for all the details.
There are lots of wonderful things happening at Sketch N Scrap, we have new card designers starting in May and also our 1st Birthday Celebrations with lots of challenges and prizes up for grabs so why not start following us and then you are sure not to miss a thing! Click HERE to visit the Sketch N Scrap Blog and check out the other designers layout using sketch #31.
Bye for now. xx

 

Come Dine With Us.

I had a lovely couple of hours scrapping last night and today the sun came out and announced that spring was finally here, so I even got to photograph my page in descent light for a change!
The page I have to show you today was done using the Creative Craft World April Sketch below.

I liked the sketch straight away and even found photo's in the first few minutes of searching so I was destined to create with this sketch!

 

I flipped the sketch on it's head as I wanted to overlap my photo's (they are a bit on the large side) and it just worked better that way. I also tried to keep the papers I used very subtle as the photo's are all busy, they are ancient S.E.I. papers that some of you might recognise from the flowers that I fussy cut.

 

Instead of paint splats I used some Basic Grey tiny brads scattered around the flowers.

More brads and the title letters were a bit dull so I put some faux stitching on them to liven them up.

 

Not only have Creative Craft World got a great sketch challenge this month again but they also have a blog hop so even more reason to pop over to their blog HERE and check them out.

 

 

Sketchbook 365 April Sketch.

Hope you have all had a great week, it's the last few days of the school Easter Holidays here in the UK and we took the opportunity to spend a couple of days away with the family.
We didn't go far and it was still a bit cold by the coast but the hotel was lovely and we visited a great bird sanctuary. So there will be some layouts soon featuring some featured friends rather than furry as is the case today on the page I have to show you.

 

Here is the sketch challenge over at Sketchbook 365 this month and there is a great prize up for grabs as usual.

 

Here is my take on the sketch and the design reminded me of a house so I went along those lines and put my title on a chipboard house that I cut out by hand and doodled around before adding some washi tape to sit the title on.

I took inspiration from my daughters jumper for the colour combo, (not that I need an excuse to use orange these days) the background paper is by Pink Paisley.

 

Our dear old cat Bramble used to love to sit with whoever was using the computer and even though she was usually in the way she was just too sweet natured to be cross with and always got to sit where ever she liked and we just worked around her!

The sketch challenge over at Sketchbook365 is open until 19th April so there is still time to whip up a page and enter. You can find all the details HERE.

I am off now to start another page whilst hubby is watching Dr Who with the girls. Wishing you a fab weekend. xx

Negative Nellie @ Little Red Wagon.

I sometimes just have a little challenge for myself and today I have a page to show you that was inspired by a colour combination on a challenge blog called Little Red Wagon.

 

This is the colour challenge from their blog last week and as soon as I saw it I remembered I had some scraps left from one of my all time favourite paper lines from Scenic Route (no record of what it was called). So I challenged myself to use up these last few scraps on a page,.
Now I think that Little Red Wagon is a card challenge blog so I was going to show it to them just for a bit of fun but life just got in the way and I missed the deadline.
So when I checked out the blog this week I found that the challenge was set as 'Negative Nellie' and decided to finish my page with some negatives!

 

Here is my page and I'm a 'little' late with scrapping the photo on this page as I turned 40 some years ago (if I told you what year I would have to kill you!) The page as you can see is virtually made up from strips of left overs and I have hidden the journalling behind the photo (it states the year I turned 40 so needed to be hidden).
As you can see the papers are exactly the colours on last weeks challenge!

Here is a close up of the flowers in the bottom corner and they were all fussy cut from a piece of paper in the line but the results are worth the time spent cutting each one out.

Here are some of the 'negatives' I added to my page for this weeks challenge, there are some more at the bottom corner.
So I was pleased that I combined the two weeks of challenges at Little Red Wagon and finished off most of the paper line, just a couple of flowers and a few inches of paper left (for a card maybe?).

The sun is actually shining today in my part of the Uk (is spring finally here?) so I am off outside to plant so seeds in the greenhouse.
I am so glad you popped by today and I wish you a fab weekend.

Sketch to Scrapbook Page- using Triangles.

Hello and welcome, I hope you all had a fantastic Easter break and had plenty of time to put glue to paper!
I have a page to show you today that I made using Shimelles prompt - Sketch to Scrapbook Page - using Triangles in your Scrapbook Design.

Here is the sketch that Shimelle used as her starting point and you can see her page and that of the talented Piradee Talvanna HERE.

 

Here is my layout based on Shimelle's sketch using triangles but as you can see I turned the sketch to best accommodate my two photos. Then added lots of triangles curving down to the photo that I cut from both pattern papers and book paper.
I decided to use book paper after reading a post on Shimelle's blog written by Julie Kirk all about different ways to use book paper on your pages. You can read the article HERE.

I wanted to have some book paper as a background as well but it looked a bit plain on it's own so I took inspiration from another post on Shimelle's blog written by Wendy Sue Anderson about making frames using washi tape HERE. Although I did not use several types as Wendy did because I was after a cleaner look (and I don't have any orange washi tape YET!) so my washi tape just frames the book paper.

Here is a close-up of the cute starfish that I made using my children's seaside stencils, I used them and some banners instead of the other sets of triangles on the sketch.

Now that I have left you lots of links to Shimelle's blog posts you have no excuse to not visit her awesome blog and even have a go at the regular challenges she has to get your creative juices flowing.

Sketch N Scrap #30.

Pinch and a punch for the first day of the month!! And a new month means another sketch reveal at Sketch N Scrap.

 

As it's the first of the month it means that it's Lisa Hidy's turn to provide us with the inspiration to get our creative juices flowing.

 

I have made a double page this time with the first page following the sketch. The photo's are from a disposable camera that I let my girls have on holiday last year and I will definitely be doing that again as they took some fun photo's.

 

 

Here is the first page on it's own for a closer look. I love the new bubble die I purchased last month as I can see myself using it on so many beach pages!

If you click on the image of the page and look at the bottom left photo you may be able to see that although my daughter was smiling there is a fish swimming right in front of her so it looks like she has a fish for a mouth (so funny and what's the chance of that happening?). 

 

 

The second page.... more bubbles!

 

 

The bubbles were made with a Memory Box die called Loopey Rings, such a fun die.

The little fishes were just fussy cut from some paper scraps I had.

 

Now all you have to do is pop over to the Sketch N Scrap blog and check out all the other designers creations and the details of how to enter the challenge HERE.   

So what are you waiting for????