Peace and Joy

I'm not going to have much time to scrap in the next week but that won't kill my mojo - I've rediscovered my love of scrapbooking :-)  I'll definitely try to flick through some of my accumulated scrapping magazines during the week though (even they went ignored in last year's scrapping desert) - they are full of great ideas and inspiration ...

In the meantime, here is another layout I have produced this week.  We had a quiet christmas day with just the four of us, which is unusual in this house; I'm more used to catering for 8 - 12 people, sometimes more.  Anyway, partly because it was so quiet, I didn't have many interesting photos, so instead of choosing one photo as a focal point, I chose three smaller ones to tell part of the story  ...

Again, most items are from a ScrapaGogo kit, this time December's (very appropriate).  I also used a distress ink with the ScrapaGogo stamp to add pattern to the plain beige cardstock (underneath the photographs) and some lettering from a previous ScrapaGogo kit.  

Sonshine

And no, it's not a spelling error, it's a play on words

It's an unusual photo as it has me in it (I'm usually on the other side of the camera) and it was a sunny day (taken last summer, which was more rainy than sunny).  And the "sonshine" reflects the fact that I am incredibly proud of my two wonderful sons.  (Sorry about the quality of my photography today - it's a dull day and I didn't want to use flash as it reflects on the photo and distorts the colours).

The layout continues my recent run of creativity - I think my scrapping mojo is here to stay :-)  I loved the ScrapaGogo kits I received last year but never got round to doing much with them so I was itching to use some more of them.  This layout is a mix of items from the August and September kits and I think they work very well together.

Last year ...

... wasn't a complete scrapping desert; I did do some scrapbooking, but not much and I didn't always enjoy what I was doing.  Not much of it is worth showing off, but today I was looking through some of what I did last year and found a few pages that I remember enjoying creating ...

 This is my favourite of the three.  As soon as I saw ScrapaGogo's September kit, I knew I had to use this background paper, and the other bits and pieces went together so well with it.  I like the faux-Polaroid effect and the random lettering.  I think it turns a not-very-exciting photo into one that you want to look at.

These other two layouts were also created using ScrapaGogo kits.  They are probably not the best layouts I've ever created, but they make me happy because I enjoyed creating them.

Happily, my creative drought appears to be over and I have been scrapping a fair bit over the past few days.  I hope to share some more of my creations soon ...

 

New Year, new focus

Happy New Year!

It's been a long time since I last blogged.  Much of that is because I didn't do much scrapbooking last year, and not as much stitching as I'd have liked to either.  A combination of things got in the way - work being done around the house (a new kitchen, a new patio and driveway, complete redecoration of the lounge), work and other commitments, and my creative mojo going AWOL for a while.

BUT, things are calmer around the house now and my mojo appears to have returned, so I'm busy stitching again, have sorted through all the photos (a HUGE job as I'd not even done much of that last year either), and I've been doing some scrapbooking and really enjoying it.  So I thought it was time to restart the blog ...

... and my first post is about one of the pages I completed today -

   
It is a page for an A4 sized "book of the year" that I am compiling for last year.  Each month has a double page devoted to it with a selection of mini photos and journalling.  This is the final page, devoted to one single photo that is one of my favourites of the whole year - I love the photo as it is so bright and colourful but also because it was such a happy occasion as my 17 year-old son returned from a long trip abroad.

Liebster award

What a lovely idea - my good friend Michelle put this on her  blog and was kind enough to nominate me as one of her 5 blogs :-)  So here I am passing on the favour -

Here's how it works (and I admit to hitting 'copy & paste' for this):

This award is given to bloggers with less than 200 followers, in the hopes that it will bring many new friends/followers.

Leibster is German and means 'dearest' or 'beloved' but it can also mean 'favourite'. The idea of the Leibster award is to bring attention to blogs with less than 200 followers. So, in the spirit of good fun I am passing this award on to five other bloggers. Please stop by and visit them.

The Rules are:

1. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.

2. Reveal your five picks for the award and let them know.

3. Post the award on your blog.

4. Bask in the love from the most supportive people on the blogshare-other bloggers.

5. Finally and the best rule of all..........have fun and spread the love!
My favorites for this award are listed below. Click on over to their sites and take a look!

So, after a fair bit of thought, here are my 5 nominations -

1. My good friend Vicki at thebiskitbarrel - she has been a scrapping inspiration to me and she also runs my favourite online craft shop.

2. Lou - theteacherspett - a fellow team member over at UKScrappers, and a talented crafter.

3. Dawn - auroradawn - also a teamie on UKS

4. Leah - running a CJ (circle journal) over on UKS, and this is her blog

5. An altered life - a blog I've enjoyed following.

More glue book pages

I blogged last year about glue books but then ran out of time to do any more - the busy-ness of christmas got in the way.  But I have done some more pages in this book now and am really enjoying this new way of expressing myself.

These two pages are about my love of books

And these two pages are the first to include a photo.  I was very brave and got out my scissors to cut us (a very old photo of DH and I) out of the photo as the background was totally unsuitable for this page ...

New stash

Firstly an apology for not blogging for so long - the holiday season was busy in this household and I had little time for scrapping, so didn't have much to blog about.  But things are back to normal now (whatever "normal" is!) so here I am ...

Anyway, I was lucky enough to be given some gift vouchers for one of my favourite online craft shops  for christmas, so I had a bit of a spending spree - mostly distress inks, filling in some of the gaps in my collection.  I had a little play with them yesterday and produced this tag, which will soon be on its way to a friend of mine ...

I've used distress inks in various shades (tattered rose, victorian velvet and worn lipstick, mostly), a versacolour ink pad (raspberry) for the over-stamping using some Tim Holtz stamps, some Making Memories butterflies and a spritz of a perfect pearls mist (pink gumball).

Oohh, and since I got a nice shiny new smartphone for christmas, I've now joined the twitterati too - @JYorks80.