Beautiful Butterfly

You'd be forgiven for thinking that I haven't scrapbooked anything over the last few months but, in fact, I've been working on an album documenting a big holiday last year. I think I'll probably just do an album flip when it's done, but who knows when that might be!

However, today I fancied working on something a bit different and, inspired by this Glitter Girl episode, I decided to work with a photo I took last weekend. The background paper is the b-side of the 'Little Bird' paper from the Maggie Holmes Bloom collection which was just the right pinky-purple to go with the flowers in the photo.

I didn't have the die cuts pack used by Glitter Girl in the video, but I did have a sheet of the 'Flock' paper from the Hazelwood collection by One Canoe Two, so I was able to fussy cut the butterflies I wanted. I had some die cut flowers from the Amy Tangerine Oh Happy Life collection, so added those to some wood veneer butterflies and hearts, a couple of random vellum owls, and some enamel dots to complete the layout.

One Ball Waterfall Scarf

A few weeks ago, I picked up some lovely 'fancy yarn' from the middle aisles in Aldi, without really having a plan for it. I eventually decided it would make a cute scarf so had a quick browse on Pinterest (as you do...). I found a few I quite liked, although none of them were exactly what I was looking for, so I amalgamated a couple of the patterns to come up with my own.

These are really easy to make and only use most of one 50g (130m) ball of wool/yarn. The large crochet hook means they look lovely and lacy, but come together really quickly - easily doable in an afternoon, and ideal Christmas presents!

Pattern (I have used US crochet terms - UK crochet terms are in square brackets)

50g yarn (I used a cotton/acrylic mix)
10mm (P-size) crochet hook

Ch 100
Row 1: sc [dc] in the second ch from the hook (1 sc [dc] in each ch) to the end. ch 2 and turn
Row 2 - 5: (1 sc [dc] in each sc [dc]) to the end. ch 2 and turn
Row 6: (2 dc [tr] in each sc [dc]) to the end. ch 2 and turn
Row 7: (2 dc [tr] in each dc [tr]) to the end. Fasten off and weave in all yarn ends

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

Having started crafting as a cardmaker, I now rarely make cards - if you receive one from me, you're privileged! However, I do try to find the time to make Christmas cards. There is rather a conveyor-belt process to making them - they're all the same but, after a bit of effort this week, they're made, ready to be written and posted.

The stamps are all from the Mistletoe collection acrylic stamps by Kaisercraft and, although it's not clear from the photo, I've used clear Wink of Stella on the trees to give them a lovely shimmer.

Happy Christmas!

Twelve Photos

In direct contrast to last week, this week I was scrapbooking with lots of photos!. I recently had printed around 250 photos from our holiday - essentially I picked all the photos I really liked, without any scrapbooking plans in mind. Having sorted out the photos, I found that I had nearly 30 photos for this particular excursion! Obviously they're not all going to fit on one scrapbook page, so they then needed to be split up further. Some of those photos havent' made the final cut, but this page has ended up as a double layout, plus two half pages - effectively a 3 page layout!

This has enabled me to include 12 photos in this layout - the landscape photos are all 4x6 inches, but I was able to keep the portrait photos at their printed size of 4.5x6 inches. The two 12x6 inch strips will sit in between the two 12x12 inch pages and have been created to benefit from the design on the full sized pages.

I've mainly used the Good Morning paper with some accents of the reverse of the Happy paper from the O Happy Life collection from Amy Tangerine for American Crafts. The Good Morning paper is very easy to fussy cut to make further embellishments, and looks great with accents of Nuvo crystal drops. The cute camera is from the Simple Stories You Are Here collection.

I still need to add labels to the photos - I'm already pretty close to forgetting what some of these flowers are, so that's definitely an important step!

Scrapbooking Without a Photo

When you think about scrapbooking, it's almost always pages with a photo - whether you're wanting to record precious memories, or you have a story to tell. Just sometimes, though, there's information you want to record which doesn't have, or need a photo. This page is one of those.

This is actually going to be the first page of an album to record a special holiday we've recently taken. There was a lot of flying involved and I wanted to record our route. The Here paper from the Go Now Go collection by Shimelle for American Crafts was ideal for this and I stitched our route with metallic thread, marking the locations with brads. The addition of enamel triangles from the #Happy collection by Alison Kreft for Webster's Pages indicate the direction we travelled. This really forms the centre of the page, in place of a photo.

The cluster in the top left-hand corner contains a little journalling, and stickers and scraps from the Shimelle collection by American Crafts, the Posh collection from Simple Stories, and the Let's Go collection from Bella Blvd.

Go Big with Red

The weekly challenges are back on Shimelle's blog this week, with the latest being to go big with red on your scrapbook page. I do often scrapbook with red so, initially, this wasn't too daunting - and then I thought about the photos I currently have ready to print - lots of scope for blues, or greens, or yellows, pinks or oranges - not so much red, so I looked through them again, and discovered that these pictures from our trip to the south coast of Ireland in September had hints of red running through them - ideal!

In one of the examples on Shimelle's blog, Heather had used the 'Keller' hearts paper from the Shimelle collection by American Crafts and, knowing that I had this paper in the 12x12 paper pad, this seemed a good place to start, especially as this trip was to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. The red/pink/off-white diagonal stripe paper from the same collection also worked well as it gave the hearts a bit of breathing space against the blue cardstock I'd chosen for the background, and a strip of the ledger type paper made a good spot for my journaling.

The embellishments are a mix of die cuts from the same Shimelle collection, and Elle's Studio, and the white ink splatters are the Dylusions White Linen mist.

New Yellow Convertible

At the end of last month, my husband picked up his new car. I'm sure you'll agree that it's definitely yellow, although the official colour, as registered, is orange. Anyway, we're calling it yellow, and this new car was the subject for this week's layout.

When I saw the Borders Paper from the Let's Go collection and the Play With Me paper from the Cute Baby Boy collection, both from Bella Blvd, I realised they'd be perfect for these photos. The addition of a piece of kraft cardstock for the background and the layout had some direction. The photos were matted on some dark brown cardstock and the journalling spot was the stamp from Shimelle's Go Now Go collection from American Crafts.

When it came to the title, I discovered that I only had one set of yellow letter stickers - and I couldn't spell 'yellow' with them... So, out came the Zig Clean Color brush pens to hand script part of the title. The tile letter stickers are from Simple Stories. I kept it pretty minimal with embellishments and the cork arrows and camera are from my stash. The layout did need a little something more, though, so I outlined it with my brown pen and added a few sprinkles of brown mist to complete.