In the flash of an eye

ETA - I must sincerely apologise as I truly believe in giving credit where credit is due. The design for my layout below came about after I was inspired by these cards by my friend Val. I instantly fell in love with her messy stitching and the way she used the Basic Grey bloomers and decided I needed to do my own version on a layout. I asked and received her permission first, but as it was a few weeks ago and in my haste to post this layout I totally forgot to give her credit. Go and visit her blog and leave her some love for me please!

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that it's disturbing how fast time seems to go sometimes! If you take a moment to think, I imagine you're like me and will get surprised when you realise that the memories you thought were only from a little while ago were actually from a year ago or more. At least, that's what happened to me recently. I was going through some of my pile of "must scrap" photos and came across some of my left-over pregnancy shots that my sister took for me. Suddenly I realised that these were taken about 12 months ago when I had just started my maternity leave.

So I did grab a couple of them and quickly slapped together this layout. Of course I had to include lots and LOTS of journaling as I got a bit sentimental about my impending return to work and all of the changes that we have gone through as a family over the past year.

I used my August DT kit from Handmade by Suzanne plus a few extra bits from the store.
For a start, I used a page from My Mind's Eye Life Stories collection as the background cardstock. There are still a lot of these in the 60cent paper clearance section of the store (although I'm going to be adding a few more to my cart!!) and I think they're brilliant as a kraft background with another layer of detail already built into them :-)

The tags I wrote my journaling on are handmade, as are the decorative pins. But meanwhile I want to draw your attention to those alphas. These foam Thickers are called Cinnamon (peony is the colour I'm using) and these are so lush! The product pictures in the store don't do these any justice! They match perfectly with the Basic Grey Olivia Collection papers I'm using, and are just so lovely. You can also see how I've sneaked a little bit of my favourite washi tape in to secure the photos too :-)

I've been wanted to try out free-motion stitching on my sewing machine for the longest time! In fact, when I needed to get a new sewing machine a little while back I specifically made sure I got one that allowed me to do this. And yet, this was my first attempt. I'm not one for doing practice runs or experimenting, I run full-tilt into my projects so when I say this is my first attempt I really mean it! But perhaps you can tell, and certainly there are things I'll do differently in the future :-)

I drew a rough outline of the flowers on my paper first before I did my messy stitching, and then I pulled out my water-paints to add a little colour to the leaves. The flowers themselves are the gorgeous Basic Grey Olivia bloomers, and I put a tiny bit of paint on that bottom one too. Don't be afraid to embellish your embellishments I say! I also added some of the 4mm mint half pearls to the leaves for another layer of dimension and texture (although I'm a little afraid they look a bit too much like peas in a pod now!!)

I wanted to thank everybody for their kind comments and well-wishes about us moving house and my return to work this past week. It certainly helps me get through some of the more difficult times to know I'm surrounded by so many supportive people out there in blog-land. We're still well and truly in the adjustment phase but I'll be trying my very best to continue crafting and keeping my blog up to date, but I appreciate your understanding if things are going to be a bit different from now on.

:-)