Stuck . . . at the pool.

It's coming up to the second anniversary of living in our house, so it was high time to document how important our pool was in that first summer after we moved here. 

I'm showing you two different stories here, both using sketches from Stuck?! this month.

Here's the first sketch:

and here's how I used it:

The hidden journaling talks about how my daughter struggled with the concept of moving house, but loved having a pool and spent hours playing in it. (she still does!)

The next sketch:

and my take:

The journaling (which I haven't added yet) will talk about how important the pool was to our whole family that first summer, especially as we were spending hours fixing up our old house to sell, and really appreciated coming home to just relax!!

November Counterfeit Kit Challenge Member Blog Hop

Hi and welcome to my stop on the CKC member blog hop!

You should have arrived from the always talented Susanne's blog, but if you haven't, you can always head over to the CKC website and start from the beginning!

This month, we've been given the freedom to show anything we wanted to using our kit.  If you've visited recently, you might remember that my kit this month is a somewhat expanded version of a Shimelle/Glitter Girl challenge, Layouts with Limitations. 

The recipe for the final page in that challenge is to take your last full 12" background sheet that you've chosen as a background, then layer up your smaller pieces of paper as a mat for a single photo.

Having a bit more paper in my kit, I've followed this recipe . . . times three!  Using the same photo . . . one page for each of my children's albums . . .

At this point I had built the layers.  I then went through all the embellishments in the kit and chose ones that I thought would best match each page, a bit like Shimelle in her follow-up video, Batch Scrapbooking.

And here's the final products . . .

No prizes for guessing which page is going into my daughter's album! And here's that polka-dot I saved from being cut up in my last post - I'm so happy seeing it as the background that it deserves to be!

Thanks for stopping by, or should I say hopping by!  But before you move on to the lovely Kelly's blog, I hope you'll take the time to say hello and let me know you were here!

The answer is: stickers, circles and wood veneers.

 
{The question is: what do the first three pages from my November Counterfeit Kit have in common?}

As I mentioned last post, the creation of my Counterfeit kit this month was somewhat inspired by a challenge of Shimelle/Glitter Girl's.

Although my kit is bigger, it made sense to start my first couple of pages in a similar way to hers, which started with a 3-photo layout, followed by a 2-photo page and finishing with a 1-photo page.

Here's my three-photo page . . .

and my two-photo page . . .

Both these pages follow the formula of the original sketch, although I've used border stickers in place of the paper strips that Shimelle used.
This is when I deviated, and  decided to do another photo-heavy layout . . .

Page number four is a single photo page, but doesn't particularly follow Shimelle's formula. I was inspired by the floral paper and the rosette, and wanted to make a feature out of them both.  But it was at this point I hit a problem with the "rules" I had created for my self (to not add any papers to the kit)- I really couldn't bear to cut into my full 12" sheet of that lovely Shimelle polka dot when I knew I had a perfectly adequate 6" sheet of the same paper! Well, I thought to myself, as the crew of the Black Pearl would say, they're really more like "guidelines", and I've saved myself that polka dot to potentially use as a background for another page . . .

Thanks for visiting, and I hope to have a few more pages to share with you soon!

November Counterfeit Kit

Have a load of this pile of goodies . . . it's the "Cedar Lane" collection from Pink Paislee, and the inspiration for this month at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge.

My last Counterfeit Kit was rather huge, and, by the time I tend to add bits as pieces as I go, felt almost never ending.  So I've decided to limit my supplies a bit this month.  Back in May of 2013 I played with a challenge of Shimelle's where she uses limited supplies.  I'm giving myself  a little bit more freedom, this time, although still with some limits.  But more on that later.

I usually like to start with a multi-coloured paper to determine my colour scheme, and the coloured chevron in the Cedar Lane collection caught my eye.  I ended up choosing a chevron from Basic Grey's "life of the party" and diagonal stripe from Fancy Pants "Happy Go Lucky", which gave me the name of my kit . . .

"Happy Life"

The Shimelle challenge I mentioned earlier calls for 6 full 12" sheets of paper and a similar number of 6" papers in order to make 3 pages using a specific formula.  I've chosen a few more than that, and hope to make 5 or 6 pages.

Here we've got 4 sheets of cardstock, and papers from Dear Lizzy, Crate Paper, Studio Calico and Shimelle's first collection,  as well as Pink Paislee and Basic Grey.  I've thrown in 2 A4 sheets of vellum as well.

The 6" papers are from Crate Paper's recent "Wonder" collection, more Basic Grey and Studio Calico.


Now to stickers, including that same Fancy Pants "Happy Go Lucky" Collection.  Alphas and words . . .

Next, some border and label stickers. . .

And finally the rest of the embellishments . . .

I've included some more 6" papers - the cut apart sheets from the Shimelle and Wonder collections, then a range of tags and journaling cards, and other bits and pieces for layering.  I've tried to include different sizes and shapes - some round elements, banners and florals.  The pink rosette was made for a past Counterfeit Kit, and the orange chipboard swirl has featured in previous kits at least twice, so they are going to be my "must use" pieces for the month!

This month, I'm going to try really hard not to add any papers or flat embellishments to my kit.  Dimensional items such as wood veneer, DIY flair, buttons etc, on the other hand, are fair game!

Sorry for my terrible lighting, but I'm too excited about this kit to wait for a sunny day before I start scrapping!  I hope you've collected some goodies you're excited about scrapping with too!

October "Scrap the Boys"

Hi friends. Today I'm popping in quickly to show a page inspired by this lovely mood board from Scrap the Boys:

And here it is . . .

Although I did add a touch of red for contrast, I think you can see how I was inspired by the colours, the timber and the arrows.

Thanks for visiting, I hope I'll see you back here soon!

September Counterfeit Kit - killed it!

How "dead" do you like to get your kits (Counterfeit or otherwise) before you consider them killed? My September Counterfeit Kit(s) were absolutely massive, and I decided I wanted to use as much as possible before packing them away or creating another kit.

Here's a quick reminder of the pages I've already posted over the last month or so . . . feel free to scroll back through my posts to see close-ups or find out what challenges they were for.

Then there's a few other fairly quick pages . . .

and on some I challenged myself to use those Crate Paper cut-aparts . . .

Some pages were just plain fun . . .

So that's it, a massive 24 pages!

 I managed to use heaps of the frames, die-cuts and cut-aparts that I had pulled, and while I didn't use them all, I did pull others from my stash. I also pulled things like wood veneers, diy flair and washi tape.  I was especially pleased with how many of the rhinestones I used, they are currently my favourite embellishment and I wish I had them in more colours! Although I wasn't too worried whether my alphas were from my kit, my stash or my Silhouette, I was pleased with how much use the white chipboard one saw.

I used all but 3 of the 26 patterned papers I had chosen, but pulled more than that from my stash throughout the month, as well as plenty of cardstock, and it's all about using your stash, right?

The orange paper will eventually end up on a birthday page, I'm sure, the blue ledger paper will certainly be used for a school page, but the doily paper I tried numerous times to use without success . . . any suggestion?

Thanks for taking the time to visit, and don't forget to stop and let me know what your strategies for kit killing are!

When you're not so "stuck!?"

Hi and welcome! I'm back again playing with the second "Stuck!?" sketch for the month . . .

I followed  their last sketch very closely. This time I took a slightly more relaxed approach . . .

Much as I loved the giant star in the sketch, on this occasion I substituted it for a not-quite-so-giant vellum doily.

This page is about my daughter's birthday party last  year.  Sadly, I only took a couple of photos, and they're not great.  But a birthday party must be documented!

I'm still working on using up my September Counterfeit kit, and was pleased with how much I included on this page, including some Basic Grey rub-ons, Crate Paper cut-aparts and especially those gold rhinestones. After sitting in my stash untouched for so long, I've got maybe a quarter of a pack left, and I'll be sad to see them gone!

Thanks for dropping by.  I hope you'll stop and let me know whether you've fallen back in love with any old supplies lately?

Play With Me

Why hello there! Today I'm playing along with Scrap Our Stash, using this lovely sketch:

I found some photos of our dog Hamish, from when he was a puppy, and they fit the sketch perfectly!

I really enjoyed making this page, but I almost forgot the "stash" element of the challenge, which was to use some metal - and that was nearly my undoing. I couldn't find anything in my small metal stash that would go with the gold elements I had already included on my page, and I was loath to take them off.  Eventually though, I settled on the yellow star paper clip, and it turned out to be the perfect finishing touch!