National Trust Passports - documented :)

A couple of pages to share that I made a couple of weeks ago.  The first one is from a pile of square photos I got printed at Sticky 9 which I am slowly making my way through.

 

Using my 1st Like For Ever kit I came up with this.  I enjoyed the stitching and need to some more of that.  Also used up some old brads and stars on this one.  This captures the moment Alex got her last stamp in her NT passport meaning she had visited 30 different properties!

Josh was a few stamps behind as he was a late starter lol!  But eventually on my birthday last year he visited his 30th property too.  So after I'd scrapped Alex I felt it only fair to do one for him although I had no pic of him holding his passport.  I did however have a series of photos I'd taken trying to get just one good one of the two of them (it's so hard these days!!).  I used a sketch from the Sketchy Scrappers challenge group...

And a Like For Ever kit...

And if you're not sure what the hell I'm talking about here are the passports - old and new...

And several stamps inside...

I think the next 30 are going to be more challenging to find as we have exhausted most of the ones within an hour of here and my parents!

Hello... Is anyone still there?

IOh my poor little blog how I've neglected you but life has been full on thee past few weeks.

Week days have been full of work which has been very challenging with every member on my team bar one giving me some sort of issue. The evenings have been full of commitments - some fun and some rewarding - and I'm desperately trying to fit regular excercising into both my week and weekend which has had some success. (I'm loving Map my walk and enjoying a new form of excercising with Barre Tone). 

In between all that there is the usual running around after offspring for lifts, revision reminders, testing on aforementioned revision and shopping for new clothes and shoes (when is it they stop growing?) plus a little downtime with TV viewing (Gogglebox is a new family favourite round here) and game playing (we rediscovered Yahtzee last week!). Tony and I have been busy in the garden which is looking very green and lush and I even managed a bit of scrapping (actually quite a lot for my rate on NSD). So let me share some of those pages now completed for the Like For Ever challenges...

Using up multiples of one item in your stash - those butterflies have been on my desk for a few years now!

A bingo challenge.  My line was stamping, yellow and staples,  This one is based on a Stuck! sketch...

This last one was inspired by script lettering and is a scraplift from one of Inkie Quill's layouts where she used the left over packaging from her hearts.  It was nice to scrap 6 x 12 for a change and I think I'll do a few more...

Back later this week (I hope!) with a few more.

February Project Life

 I woke up early this morning and realised Inkie Quill was doing a scrap stream so logged and watched while I ate breakfast and then felt inspired to catch up on my February pocket pages (seeing as everyone else was still asleep!)

Feb was quite a quiet month and I didn't take too  many photos so it's just a two side spread.  Again I've used my Gossamer Blue kit which came with some really lovely Fancy pants puffy dots, hearts and stars plus I printed and cut up the free printables to add...

So now I've lost my morning to crafting (not a bad thing obviously!) I need to crack on with the main plan for the day to sort and clear Josh's room ready for decorating and move him into the spare room. Wish me luck!

Spike

The Smitten Kit from Like For Ever included a pack of die cuts with a cute little hedgehog.  I looked at him for ages and then realised I could scrap the story of Spike - Alex's cuddly, furry friend.

I picked a sketch from Page Maps...

Added a tiny gold word sticker and some enamel dots from my stash and came up with this...

The journalling has been added to a tag which is in a pocket on the back of the page.  It tells the story of how Spike was a hand me down toy from Alex's cousin but is now a very well travelled hedgehog, having been on nearly every holiday with her since she got him in about 2004 (she drew the line at India - to be honest she couldn't fit anything else in the rucksack!)

Project Life - and we're off!

This year I decided to do a pocket page album.  It's not quote traditional project life as I knew I wouldn't keep up with a spread for every week but I thought I could do a few pages for each month - no specific amount, just however many I could fill up.  Sometimes life is busy & all go and other times not a lot is happening.  I also wanted to capture some of the smaller details as well as the things I'm doing to celebrate my 50th birthday as I knew I couldn't make a 12x12 page for every single thing!

So with this in mind I watched videos. read blogs and subscribed to the Gossamer Blue Life Pages Kit.  These things combined have given me a system I think will work for me...

When I've done pocket pages before I have printed and made the cards as I've gone along.  I now realise this is not an efficient method and explains why it's taken me so long to complete pages in the past!

This time I've done it in stages.  First I printed off all the photos I wanted to use and chose the style of page protector.  This was made easy using my Canon Selphy that I got for Christmas and I can now print straight from my iPhone...

The next evening I picked out all the cards to go in the pockets either as a base for the photo or on their own.

This side I left fairly minimal when it came to adding embellishments as the photos speak for themselves...

The final stage was the fun bit - adding the journalling and the embellishments.  This again was easier as I stuck mostly to the kit only adding a few wood veneers and enamel dots from my stash.  By sticking to a limited number of alphas and embellies I put the cards together really quickly.  Watching Inkie Quill's Grab 5 videos gave me this inspiration :)

The end result is four pages for January that I am really pleased with.  Now it's time to crack on with February!

Memorandum Monday

A Good morning all you Memorandum Mondayers... how was your weekend?

It's been a busy and a quiet week all at the same time here as I was off on holiday.  Some days we packed lots in and I ticked loads of jobs off my list.  Other days were spent in the slow lane, chilling out and catching my breath.  So what about the weekend?

On Sunday Alex and I made an apricot tart for the first time.  It was a combined effort with me on pastry and Alex on frangipan...

And yes, it tasted delicious!

I also learnt that we can fit a skip and my car on the drive! (It's only a small one mind)  We have a mini-project to keep Tony occupied this week to clear away the bark from the area where we used to have the kids trampoline along with a couple of feet of clay too!  Then we can decide what to do with it.  Any garden designers out there with some ideas?

I'm linking up with Sian today along with lots of other Memorandum Monday people so head on over and take a look.

I'm also featured on the Like For Ever blog this Monday with a little insight into what makes me tick and why I love scrapbooking so if you'd like to read about that then click here.

Have a good week all!

Like for ever kit pages

Time to quickly share a couple of pages I made with the Like For Ever January kit - Twenty sixteen...

I actually made both of these without a sketch which is unusual for me! I added kraft card stock to this one to pick up the Kraft in the tags that came in the kit plus I used the tissue paper again ( which the kit came in) for layering. I love this snapshot of my Dad and I on his 85th birthday...

 

This next one is a favourite photo of Josh when we went on a boat ride in Greece. I added a little camera and the small numbers from my stats hand got the idea for sewing around the triangles on my machine from Mercy Tiara...

I have a couple more pages to share so back soon!