"Granda's Tree" layout

Another of the layouts I made on the November Scrapbooking Retreat!

During one of our trips over to stay with my hubby's family last year we visited his Granny and as it was a beautiful Spring day we were all out in her garden when I snapped this photo of my daughter stood by this beautiful tree. Sadly his Granda had passed a few months before but he loved this tree and tended it carefully for many, many years. We all said how the tree had never looked so good and was in full bloom in his memory! My daughter loved "Great Granda's tree" saying how pretty it was.

Some close ups:

The gorgeous floral paper and the puffy heart stickers are both from Heidi Swapp's Favorite Things Collection. The "Life is Good" card is from Jennifer's "How Refreshing" collection from her "Happy Scatter" Etsy Shop. If you haven't yet had a look in her shop, do pop over as she has some lovely items.

I also added a Basic grey tag, resin flower and stamped some arrows and phrases mixed in with a few phrase stickers!

How is your 2015 crafting going?

I was at my first crop of the year last Saturday and managed to get a couple of layouts finished!!

Thanks for stopping by today.

River Photos Layout

I hope you all had a wonderful and peaceful Christmas time!

I am keen to get my 2015 scrapping off to a great start so in preparation I've been having a bit of a sort out of my craft space recently and earlier today I found myself putting away some of my recent layouts. But before I put them in my albums I took a few photos as there was a fair few I've not yet shown you.

First up is this "River Photos" layout, made at the recent scrapbook weekend!

I'm lucky enough to live near both the beach and the River Stour and so tend to have a never ending supply of both beach and river photos to scrap. 

This particular day was just another weekend stroll by the river ...  with my daughter in the mood for posing for a few photos!! She only took a little bit of persuasion!

I took inspiration from this "Explore" layout which I had pinned onto my Pinterest board quite a while ago. 

I changed the original layout to include my 3 photos rather than 2 photos + a journal card and also moved the embellishment cluster to the bottom left corner. 

I used some Echo Park papers from their "This & That" Collection which I received in my "Secret Santa" gift on the retreat. Thanks to Paula for the loan of the gorgeous border punch and to Lisa-Jane for the pink Cosmo Cricket "Tiny Text" stickers. The camera stamp is by Stampin Up and is coloured with pro marker pens. 

Here's some close ups of the details ...

Thanks so much for stopping by today .... I'll be back soon with another layout to show you!

Are you ready to kick start your 2015 crafting?

Scrapbook Retreat - Beach Layouts!

A few weekends ago I was away on a Scrapbook Retreat with some lovely ladies including my good friends Lisa-Jane and Jennifer, staying in a beautiful barn deep in the Dorset countryside. 

We spent our days chatting, eating yummy, home baked cakes, drinking tea/coffee/wine, enjoying leisurely strolls around the farm land and some of the ladies went in the swimming pool/hot tub/gym although I decided that wasn't really my "thing". There was much laughter and of course lots of playing with pretty papers!!

I managed 8 layouts in total over the weekend - fairly productive for me!

Today I'm sharing two of the layouts, both feature photos taken from the same day out at the beach last Summer. 

Beach Day Layout

Regular readers will know I live near the south coast and scrap rather a lot of beach photos. It's getting tricky coming up with different titles - hence the somewhat uninteresting and predictable title of "Beach day" for this page!

I'm afraid I didn't take note of the papers I used as most of them were out of my "Scraps" Box. 

I've been waiting for just the right layout to use this lovely Happy Scatter Sandcastle wood piece on and I think it fits perfectly with these photos.

I added a couple of stickers, a splatter of gold Heidi Swapp Colour Shine and a few enamel dots and it was another fabulous "Beach Day" recorded and in the album.

Little Surfer Girl

For this page I  used a photo of my daughter taken on the same beach trip as the first layout.

She loves to use her body board in the sea and will quite happily spend a whole afternoon splashing about and trying to "catch a wave"! This particular day she was using a brand new board purchased on the way to the beach as her old one had broken. It's a bigger board than her previous one and so she felt like a proper "Little Surfer Girl"

Papers and stickers are from Simple Stories "Good Day Sunshine" collection and I used my favourite Stampin Up Chevron punch to punch out the coloured chevrons from small scraps.

I'll be back soon with more layouts from the retreat.

Thanks for popping in today - please do leave me a comment to let me know you stopped by!

"Hello Santa" Layout

A few months ago I was asked to create a layout for Scrapbook Magazine on the theme "Hello Santa" .... it's in the current issue No: 85 on sale now so I'm now able to show you at last.

The lovely Jen at Wear Crafts sent me the Simple Stories Cozy Christmas collection kit to work with and it was just perfect for this theme. I knew I had to use the "Hey Santa" 3" X 4" journal card as soon as I saw it in the pack!

I started with a sheet of red cardstock onto which I layered white cardstock and then began to layer up some patterned papers and journal cards.

See the little red and white striped pieces just peeping out each side - I cut one of the 3" x 4" cards in half so I could tuck a piece in each side of the photo. This is something I often do with journal cards!

I added a little bit of sparkle with some American Crafts glitter tape and some My minds Eye gold stars.

The title is a mix of red chipboard alphas and white foam thickers.

The Simple Stories sticker sheet in the Collection pack has some lovely word stickers on it - I added "Wonder & Magic", "Ho Ho Ho" and "he's making a list" in 3 different areas of my page, adding a star and red gem to each making a visual triangle.

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The photo is one of my favourites of the many that I have of my daughter meeting Santa over the years. Even though it doesn't show her face, I love the twinkling lights and stacks of presents in Santa's grotto and I remember how she listened in earnest to him telling her to "make sure she goes straight to sleep on Christmas Eve!"

So, that's two layouts made with this kit (if you missed the other it's here!) and I'm already half way through a third page so I'll be back to show you that soon.

How are your Christmas preparations going?

Anyone got their tree up yet?