DT Seaside creations using Bella BLVD

As mentioned in our blog post yesterday the Design Team worked with Bella BLVD papers this month. There are some lovely seaside/beach themed papers in the All Inclusive range perfect for the sunny day layouts as demonstrated by Debbie in her Fun Times layout.


And in my Family Fun layout.


If you've not yet been to the coast yet this year and are maybe saving for your holidays how about decorating an inexpensive money box to encourage those pennies to build up? I got this moneybox from our local 99p shop and used the Bella Blvd papers and the stickers to cover it in a holiday theme. We are saving our 1p and 2p coins ready for the seaside slot machines!



Don't forget our Bingo challenge too which this month could see you scraplifting a design team member - the perfect time to go check out the DT gallery this month and see what inspires you!

New Gallery Uploaded

The June Gallery is now online and features work by Sarah Meacher and Jo Willis as guest designers. The gallery spotlights the Bella Blvd paper ranges.

Click HERE to see the June Gallery

A new Ranger Blog!

I was very excited yesterday to learn that Ranger have started a new blog!
Sure to be full of inspiration with tips and tricks using their products I for one cannot wait to see what they have in store. The shop now has Ranger Stickles reduced from £2.20 to just £1.89 and Distress ink pads also reduced from £4.50 to £3.83 so it's the pefect time to stock up on your Ranger products and eagerly await the inspiration from the new blog!

Stickles have to be one of my favourite scrapbooking products, inexpensive and they add that little something to your cards and layouts.

I'm just off to add a few more to my shopping basket!!

Missing in Action!

I feel like I have been missing in action a little the past few days. Isabelle, my oldest daughter, turned 5 on Friday and we had two parties and a family day out in the last three days and another family visit tomorrow! Needless to say I am shattered!

I haven't been completely non crafty though. I have been making birthday related items: personalised packets of colouring pencils for party bags - VERY sinple to do and cheap to make. Unfortunately I gave them all out without photographing them but I haven't done Izzys pack yet so will photograph and upload when I do that!

Then there was the birthday card. Some people are not so keen on them but I like poppets a la Claudine Hellmuth so Izzys card featured herself and a variety of stamped bits and pieces. Lots of fun to make and she loved it :) I used the American Crafts "Warble" stamps from the Dear Lyzzy collection to make the bunting, the doodling under "Happy Birthday and the dress and some Hero Arts ones for the balloons, butterfly and greeting.

And finally of course there was the cake, actually two but the first one didn't count as it was a quick and easy choccy cake with smarties all over. The one for todays party though had been planned in my head for a while. Here is the cake, a plain sponge tray bake covered in green buttercream texturised with a fork to make grass. Tinkerbell was borrowed from a friend and the little sugar flowers were from Tesco! The Toadstools I made with a dome shaped sillicone cake mould. Once the cake domes were cooked and cooled I rolled out red icing and covered them with red icing. Small balls of white icing were flattened and adhered to the red with a little water. The stalks were made from marshmallows, covered in white chocolate and allowed to set in the fridge on baking parchment. I then used more white chocolate, covered the underside of the toadstools and stuck the stems on.

I am never terribly organised when it comes to parties but I was very pleased with myself as I made a whole load of extra toadstools which went straight into cake boxes when ready so that all the party guests could take a cake toadstool home!

I know this is a papercraft blog really but a lot of crafters like baking too so I thought I would share my cake pics :)

A Few More Ribbon Layouts...

We really loved the entries we had for the ribbon challenge, such a lot of different effects, techniques and styles. Here are a few more for inspiration :)

By Yvonne Izzard

By Andrea Gourley

By Maria Thomas

By Olivia Robertson

Thanks to all those who entered, don't forget that this months challenge is Scrapping Bingo and details can be found HERE.

May Ribbon Challenge Winner

We have had some lovely entries for the May Ribbon challenge and hope to showcase a few of them later but we have chosen a winner.

This layout, "I Want" by Sue Jones is our winner, here is what she said about her layout.

"I saw these necklaces on the accessorize website and thought they were lovely. Probably quite easy to make with a few curtain rings. I decided to use them to inspire me for the ribbon challenge. I cut some circles and wrapped them with ribbon and even got out a box of threads to embellish the discs, attached a few gems to one or two of them and finished the "necklace" off with a flower cut from the Tim Holtz alterations die. The bottom edge also has ribbon threaded though it and adhered with 3D foam pads."





We loved how well the technique matched the necklace in the photo, a true case of the perfect embellishment for a this photo. The effect of the ribbon wrapped around the discs really is very striking and something I'd like to have a go at very soon.

June Challenge: Scrapping Bingo!

This month our challenge is a little different. Throughout June we are playing Scrapping Bingo. It is very simple to join in and once again you could win yourself a £25 ATDML stash voucher.

Look at the grid below and choose a line (can be vertical, horizontal or diagonal) and create a layout with those four elements in. Email your layout to me ( Mel@atripdownmemorylane.co.uk ) on or before 30th June. Please list the four elements which make up the line you chose in with your entry. Please note you CAN use other elements from the grid too but your layout must also include 4 elements that are in a row in the bingo grid.

Thanks to Ann for giving me this idea for a challenge, it sounds fun and I will definitely be playing along!