Christmas Card Comp Winner....

and the winner of our Christmas Card Competition was this card posted by Karen. We loved the way she incorporated the photo into the card design and made a fun card which I am sure will be treasured by the recipients.

Karen drop us an email and we will send you over your shopping voucher!

Happy New Year to All!

Say Cheese!

Sometimes you ust want a quick and simple page! I loved the colours in the Amy Tangerine collection and with the addition of a couple of stickers this was soooooo speedy but I really like it!

I am totally in love with the whole page of cameras which I am cutting up - yes I know this is not a *new* thing by any stretch but I have only just got my hands on this paper so you can expect to see a fair few more appearances by these little cameras!

Finishing Part Done Projects...

Once again as  end of the year draws near I find myself looking back over the past year from a crafting view point. I found the Shimelle "Perfect Collection" class I took immensely helpful in developing a system for *some* of my scrapping. I often feel like I have only a short amount of time available to scrap and so working with those base pages and a limited selection of product makes it possible to be quite productive in a short space of time.

One thing I always end up realising is that I am going to end the year with quite a few part done projects (usually layouts)

I had a short amount of time available on Sunday afternoon and so I pulled out a layout I started at a crop over a year ago! I managed to make a quick decision about what I wanted to add and finished the layout off and filed it in my album - boy did it feel good to finally finish it!

Christmas Card Competition

So this year I have FAILED miserably to make even a single Christmas Card *hangs head in shame.* So I am going to accept defeat and buy even for close family as well as the few that I have already sent :(

For the sake of adding a picture here is a card I made in a previous year when I did actually make some.

To cheer me up (or make me feel even worse!) we thought we would have a little Christmas Comp. Upload a card you have made to your blog or online gallery and post a link in the comments section (along with your name) and we will choose one to receive a £10 ATDML gift voucher (Post Christmas Sale anyone?!?!?!)

The deadline for uploading and posting your link is Sarurday 22nd December at 6pm.

Looking forward to seeing your creations.



PS we may like to share some of the entries on the blog (with full credit of course) so please let us know in your comment if it CAN'T be shared.

Trends on Tuesday - Busy Backgrounds

I thought I would do a Christmas-ish page for this post....and the trend is using busy patterned papers as a background.  I used this paper from the MME All is Bright range, and it is quite a busy pattern with lots of different elements to it (take a look at Mel's class from the retreat (the 3rd page on this post) which uses the patterned paper in a totally different way).

I tend to always mount my photos on white card stock or a plain card to help them stand out against a busier background, but also to tone down the background a little I use some gesso - dry brushing it on the page and then I did a little stencilling too with a knitting needle measurer (yep use a few household objects to see what effects you can get :)).  I added lots of layers too which is another popular trend at the moment.  Another tip is that if you have a busy background paper a layer of vellum  behind the photo matts can just mute it a little and help the photos pop out.  So this week I would like to encourage you all to dig out some of your patterned papers and use them as the base layer for a page and I would love to see anything you create to so post a link on this post if you do.

I also want to wish you all a fantastic Christmas and New Year as this will be my last Tuesday post before the big day.

Drowning in a Sea of Scrapbooking Supplies

Operation clear out and sort the scrapbook area is well underway! It is one of those jobs that I have been to frightened to start for a while as there seems to be such a lot of stuff much of it with no logical home within my stage.

I just woke up one morning and thought "right, that's it!" and started emptying shelves and temporarily filling really usrful boxes with stacks of paper, emptying hoarded boxes and other 'possibly alterable items' from under my desk and sorting out embellishment storage.

It is still nowhere near finished but I have worked out where I want my most used supplies and am now going through the difficult process of working out what I really am likely to use and what could be donated to a craft club or the kids craft boxes.

I really do hope when it is done I will be able to grab a couple of spare minutes scrapping every so often without needing a major excavation project to get to the surface of my desk!

Wish me luck!

A Little Bit Crazy!

Theto on this layout is one of my favourites from our trip to New York! Obviously it could have been taken anywhere but it captures a very specific memory and feeling from the trip. We had just been visiting the High Line park and it was a very long walk back from there to our hotel. With a 4 year old and a 7 year old in tow it was definitely necessary to take a rest along the way. I used these rest stops to take all sorts of photos against a wide range of backgrounds. The light was just beautiful at this point, really golden and warm. The girls were mucking around making shadows on this shuttered door and getting Elizabeth to join in and I just loved this photo.

I used the Echo Park Note to Self Collection to create the layout - I loved the quotes and colours in this collection.

On Top Of The World

A couple of months ago  was very lucky and won an Everyday Eclectic Collection Pack from Echo Park during their blog hop.

 

I used the collection for the first time on Saturday to make this layout with a photo of my girls and my cousin Elizabeth taken on top of the Rockerfeller Center. In the background you can see the vast rectangle of open space which is Central Park!

 

Everything on the layout was from the collection pack except for the "Love This" tab on top of the photo which came from the Note To Self collection pack, I love a brand new set of letter stickers, within reason you can make any title you like without panicking if you have already used all the vowels!

New York New York

Way back in August I posted this blog entry about a layout I planned to make using this paper from the Bo Bunny Liberty range:

I wanted to make my own version of Anns lovely October Afternoon layout from her blog post

My layout ended up being quite different from Anns original but of course shared the main element of the "sunburst" being cut to look like ribbons coming out.

I used some old Basic Grey lettering I had hanging around and punched parts of the paper out to create other embellishments.

The three papers I used were:

Liberty - Patriot
Liberty - Stripe
Liberty - United

Scrapping At The Speed Of Light!

I went to a craft day on Saturday run by Tina, one of the regulars at our retreat. I always enjoy the day very much, it is such a luxury to be able to spend a whole day scrapping or card making with no distractions!

Although I usually have a little dabble in some card making while I was there I decided to focus on scrapping all day and I managed FIVE completed layouts which I think may be a record for me. What's more they were all done from scratch, no pre made base pages and only one of them had even had a glimmer of an idea before I got to the hall so I was very impressed with myself!!!

Today I am going to share the first two I made. A while back I decided that I really needed the Sassafras Sunshine Broadcast collection. It was one of the last they did before they stopped making scrapbooking papers and we didn't stock it in the shop but I did really love it.

I had a few photos taken with Instagram in my pile waiting to be scrapped and the vintage look, sun flare and colours work really well with this collection.

 

In addition to the items from the Sunshine Bradcast product I added some Studio Calico butterflies (love these, they go with everything!) Websters Pages lettering and some bits and bobs from old sticker sheets I had hanging around in my box of bits!

 

 

As before I added some stickers and this time I added October Afternoon lettering.

 

Back later in the week to show you more of my creations from Saturday!

It's Starting To Look A Lot Like A Christmas Class!

My Friday afternoon class at the autumn retreat was a triple layout class. Well three single layouts to be more accurate. I loved the My Minds Eye All Is Bright Christmas papers and decided to use them to make some seasonal layouts. All the ladies had the option to make the layouts without photos in case they wanted to add photos from Christmas 2012 to them. On one of the layouts we added an acetate frame where the photo goes as there were stickers overlapping the photo. They could then slide the photo in behind the actetate.

The layout below IS straight in real life but the photo is wonky! I wanted to use the layout to tell a story about a family tradition as "Telling the Story" is something I am trying to make sure I get into all of my albums as often as possible.

 

This last layout features and pull out zig zag accordion booklet with space for adding photos of my favourite Christmas things.

 

It was only the beginning of November when we did the class but it was quite nice to play with Christmas papers!

Giveaway Winner

and the winner of the Graphic 45 giveaway is.....

 

Comment number 8 - Butterfly (Alison)

Alison, please email your details to Mel@atripdownmemorylane.co.uk and you G45 paper pad will be on it's way to you.

Thanks all for taking part :)