News Flash - Tidy Craftspace!!, not for long though

Well I have finally got organised, put all my new storage boxes etc to good use and have tidied up my craft space. Now, to put it into perspective, the space isn't as big as it looks - its along one wall of my bedroom. Although Graham likes to tell folk that we have a craft room with a bed in it :D
So this picture shows the whole length of the wall...

Since I took those picture this afternoon I've been using glitters, embossing powders and punching hundreds of tiny flower shapes, so its not quite as tidy as that now. But at least I know where everything is now :D

I've spent a few hours doing this layout of Faith for the Ibiza album, I took a series of photographs of her sitting beside the patio doors in our apartment and she had the cheekiest of faces, but we never figured out why.... she looked like she was up to something lol
I used Cosmo Cricket Honey Pie paper as a background as it has a lovely distressed look and saved me a bit of time. I then used one of the papers from the ATD Beach kit which had an all over tiny deep pink and white daisy print - I punched hundreds of flower shapes from this, trying as far as possible to position the daisy in the middle of the flower punch. I then stuck these individually round each of the two photos (which I had cut into circles using my brand new X-Cut shape cutter) to make a frame effect. I then used my 3" circle punch to cut a circle of card from a sheet that had a speckled pink effect (I got this from the Papeterie last time I was there with Mar), and framed this with the wee punched flowers too, this was my journalling spot.
I stuck a line of the wee flowers 5cm from the right hand side and in the space to the right of that I stuck card stock letters from a Pebbles page kit spelling out the title "adorable".
I stuck pink gems onto each of the punched flower shapes as well as flower gems on the A, D, O, A and B of adorable and on the fabric flower and the journalling spot.
The fabric flowers were stamped using clear ink and a papermania ornate stamp then embossed with tinsel embossing powder. I also added a wee bit of pink glitter to the petal tips.
So I'm quite pleased with the end result, its quite a clean simple design, despite the fact it was quite labour intensive.

Doesn't she look like an impudent little monkey?!!

Lainy - Thankyou!

Many thanks to Lainy who awarded me this...

It was a lovely surprise Lainy, I really appreciate it. And in keeping with the rules, I'll just go do the following
The rules...
1. The winner can put the "I love your blog" logo on their own blog.
2. Link the person you received your award from.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Put links of those on yours.
5. Leave a message on the blogs of the people you’ve nominated.

I'm pretty new to the blogging community so I don't have any problems choosing just 7 people to award this to so here goes...

Mar G for finally making a start on her blog and being so keen to join me with the greatest hobbies ever - cardmaking and scrapbooking. She is a constant source of inspiration for me and manages to stretch me without even realising. Another Scot too!!

Lainy because yours was the first crafy blog I had come across (thanks to Mar) and you were my inspiration for starting my own blog. Yet another Scot!

Beckie Dreyer because her layouts truly inspire me, and she always has the time to offer suggestions and she lives in Scotland which is always a good thing lol

Irene whose layouts are absolutely out of this world, and thankyou so much for all those fantastic hints and tips

Lori as her cat layouts are absolutely gorgeous - I really must take more pictures of Kizzy and Ziggy

Kirsty - I love your unique and fresh layouts, and particularly your use of white space on your LO's

Amber Jane - I sooooo envy being able to mix patterns and colours with the ease you do

New banner

A huge thankyou to my wonderful and super-talented other half Graham who made my new banner in Phototshop for me.
let me know what you think?
I'll have to get Graham interested in digital scrapbooking as he is a whizz with photoshop and I don't have a clue with it.

Have managed to fit in some time this afternoon to do another layout for the holiday album, this time it was Graham and Scott on Port d'es Torrent beach, I used 2 different papers from the HOTP beach kit and some of the die cut embellishments and ribbon from the same kit. I used a couple of the splashes from the ATD Beach kit stickers. And I really enoyed using my new X-Cut shape cutter, templates and glass mate to cut the photos and the mats from one of the HOTP papers.

A couple we "met" online through Extra Special Parents had a baby boy the other week so I made a simple baby card for them using the swirly embossing folder and a congrats die for the cuttlebug and added a few pearly adhesive stones and a baby ribbon onto an elements card all from Papermania

Parcel Arrived

wooohooooo, my parcel arrived from ArtyMiss while I was out at the dentist this afternoon - which is a whole other story, ending rather badly with me bursting into tears!!
Anyway, I digress...
My parcel contained:
papermania colossal citrus pack of papers - perfect colours for my Ibiza scrapbook
ATD Scrapbook pad - again for the Ibiza scrapbook
MAMBI Vacation Album
Craft Tonic clearaway boxes - 2 of the 12x12, 1 sticker box and 1 8x8 box
6 stackable bead boxes - for sorting out my brads 
X-Cut shapecutter gift box - which includes the oval, round, diamond, rectangle and square templates
and finally
X-Cut glass cutting mat

so can't wait to play later on.
Was also a bit sneaky this morning and nipped into WH Smith to get Scrapbook Magazine  and picked up a pack of yellow silk flowers, then nipped to Holburn Crafts and got a 6x6 pad of Basic Grey Two Scoops paper, matching brads, a tape roller and sticky gems. So hopefully thats my shopping curbed at least for a wee while - oh apart from the sizzix dies that should be arriving from ebay lol

On a roll......

well, have managed to squeeze in a few hours scrapping time over the last couple days and have put together 3 layouts for our holiday album.
This is the title page, and I'm especially chuffed with the postcard that I made in MS Publisher
I used some clipart for the stamp and recoloured it to a sepia tone, and inserted text boxes for all the other wording - tilting the "wish you were here" caption. I printed it out onto photo paper and used a postmark stamp from a baby set in brown ink across the stamp then embossed it with clear embossing powder for a raised effect.
And I have also put together 2 beach layouts - one featuring Faith and the other featuring Willow - I've kept them fairly simple.

I used some Cosmo Cricket papers as backgrounds - I got them free with a subscription I took out with Scrapbook Inspirations magazine, am not too keen on the patterned sides of the papers, but I really like the distressed look of the plainer sides.

Now with a bit of luck I might find some time to put together the 3rd beach layout of Graham and Scott

Neglect

I've been neglecting my blog over the last 10 days, have been really busy though - thats my excuse and I'm sticking to it....
Mar and her boys were up visiting last weekend, Graham volunteered to take all the kids down to Dizzy Rascals and let Mar and I go crafty shopping which of course was a great way to spend an afternoon. I even managed to find an old DoubleDo die in the shape of a film strip - something I've been trying to improvise for ages.
Scott started back at school this week, he's now in primary 4 so has a longer school day. Faith started at 2's group and loves it, I thought she'd be hard to leave as she's definitely mummy's girl but she was no problem at all. Willow had her nursery visit last week and starts nursery for real on Tuesday this week. So its been all go.... I know it sounds really geeky, but I have had to make up a spreadsheet that shows me where each of the kids are just so I can keep track of where and when they have school, nursery and 2's group - and it only gets worse when the after school activities start argh!!
I also decided to have a bit of a clear out this week and sorted out the girls toys - 2 huge bin bags ended up going to the charity shop. This then gave me the clearing bug so I started on our bedroom - 3 bags of clothes for the barnardo's bin, a bag of books went there too. Then I bought 2 deep bookcases from Argos, 1 for my hardback books that I got for xmas and the other to try and tidy up my craft space.
And finally I have managed to get some scrapbooking done - woohoooo!!
Completed a 6x6 mini scrapbook for Rachel as a wee memento of our holiday in Ibiza,




made a double page spread for Mar of the weekend they came up in the spring,
and made 2 pages for my holiday album.

New Arrival

I can't believe I forgot to post about the new arrival.....
My best friend Pamela gave birth to a gorgeous baby girl at 7.31pm on Thursday 7th August. She weighed in at 6lbs 8 and 3/4 oz and her name is Emma.
am so chuffed for them all

Here's big brother Daniel giving Emma a cuddle


And Willow was chuffed to bits with being allowed to hold baby Emma all by herself

Willow in black and white

We were away on holiday to Ibiza in July for a fortnight. It was our first family holiday abroad and took ages to organise as the kids all needed passports and my one needed renewing - but thats a whole other saga! We went to a fantastic complex called the Sirenis Seaview Country Club at the far end of San Antonio Bay. I picked this place as it has so much for the kids to do and also because a friend of ours, Rachel, from our Extra Special Parents website lives over there and I thought it would be nice to meet her after talking online for so long.
One of the features of the complex that i thought was really special was the fact that they have a couple of photographers whp spend the day on the complex taking photographs of everyone in the pool and around the grounds and playgrounds. Right enough, you have to buy the photo's but they also were available to have printed as jigsaws, mugs, t-shirts, bags etc.
Anyway, here are the photographs that we got...
Willow

Willow and Graham
Willow again

I can't wait to scrapbook our holiday pictures, but the first one I really wanted to do was the black and white study of Willow. I have been onto a few scrappy sites to try and get some inspiration as I'm so scared of not doing the picture justice. Some people have suggested pastels and some have suggested bold colours so I'm going to have a bash at both.
Firstly I tried out the pastels, and went for a pink and beige theme - although I haven't added a title yet as I'm stumped there for the moment. But my good friend Marion is coming up this weekend and I'm sure she'll be able to help.
I managed to get Mar hooked on cards and scrapbooking earlier this year - I bet her husband Bobby curses me lol, lets face it, this isn't the cheapest hobby in the world!


edit: here's another attempt at a LO with Willow's b/w photo...

The Hoose in the Garden

This is the hoose that Graham built..... (May 2008) well in actual fact it was my dad and I that built it as Graham was still recovering from his hernia operation. Graham did do all the finishing touches like the faux windowboxes, the nesting box and the trellis on the outside as well as the carpeting and laminate flooring on the inside - oh and I made the curtains

I then decided the interior needed a bit more brightening up so decided to scrap some pictures of the kids playing in their new hoose....

Catch Up

Aha, time for my first post...
well I think it might be an idea to upload one or two of the LO's I've completed to date. I only started scrapbooking earlier this year (2008) and still consider myself very much a beginner, so here goes....


This is one of my very first layouts, I made it as a gift for a good friend of mine who came to visit one weekend with her boys. I managed to give her the crafting bug too.


This is another early LO, this time of my son Scott - I wanted to show off the concentration he has when he's involved with his Bionicles


This is the first LO I did of my eldest daughter Willow, the picture was taken in early Spring 2008 in our garden


This was my favourite of my first attempts at scrapbooking, I think it captures the spirit of my youngest daughter Faith (or Fayfee as she's known)


After I'd done a LO for each of the kids I thought I'd play around with a half decent picture I'd managed to take of myself on the webcam - looking back at it now though I think its crying out for a title that explains the significance of the different puzzle pieces


I really enjoyed making this one - it's a lovely photo of my dad and my nephew Kyle taken one summer in my mum and dad's garden, Kyle and dad are just two peas in a pod! The other reason I enjoyed doing this LO was I got to play around with my new Dovecraft Fantasy papers - took me ages to cut out just those two elements though.

So that more or less takes you up to date, I know there are very few LO's but finding a couple of hours to devote to scrapbooking is a rarity in this house lol