Bethany's November and December pages

Sorry for the hiatus in blog posts whilst I recommenced full time employment! Yikes, I forgot how hard that makes things like crafting and blogging and photography and well... nearly everything apart from vegging out in front of Netflix when you come home ;-)

But I'm slowly adjusting to it all and remembering how I used to fit these things in just whenever I have a spare 20 minutes. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to catch you up with last years' November and December spreads for Bethany's album.

My November page started off with some basic building blocks from the Studio Calico Canyonlands Documenter Kit (those lime greens and aqua felt very Springy to me!) and then I started adding little extra bits from past kits and my stash too.

As usual I tried to include some kid-art documenting as well as lots of stories and decent photographs too.

But when it came time to do the December page it was a little trickier. Only because I did a Not-Quite-a-December-Daily album again this year and I was conscious of not doubling up on photos and stories but trying to get something unique into their Project Life album, whilst still capturing the whole spirit of the season too. 

  

I guess in some respects it wasn't hard because I don't know about you but I tend to take about a bazillion photos at Christmas since every single moment seems so magical!

For my December title card I used the Studio Calico gold letterpress calendar page from the corresponding month. I don't know why it took me until December to think of this! But I haven't thrown away the rest of the cards yet, I figure I can still use them for something!

And then I mostly used past scrapbook papers to fill the rest of the pockets rather than actual PL cards. I embellished with Gossamer Blue acrylic and wood veneer pieces, and those geometric animal diecuts made another appearance too.

So that's Bethany's 2015 album done and dusted.
I haven't quite wrapped my brain around the fact that if I'm doing a similar structure again this year that I'm already a month behind! Whoops!!

Here's to 2016!

The Story of My Affectionate One

I'm the mother of 2 girls. But they're quite completely different from one another.
In summary, Munchy is a miniature version of me (in both appearance and personality) and Moodles is a tiny version of her father. Which also tells you a little bit about my marriage. I think for the most part we're a case of "opposites attract".

By nature my little Moodles is the more affectionate of the two. She's quite cuddly and will use any opportunity to be near me. She'll sit on my lap watching TV, she'll hold my hand and stroke me, and she loves it when I pat her hair and smooth it down. Yep, that's pretty much a reflection of her father, although thank goodness he doesn't sit on my lap as he's much MUCH bigger than I am ;-)

Although I'm not too much of a touchy-feely kind of person myself, I do love it when she comes to snuggle.

I put this layout together using a lot of odds and ends, but with a focus on some Fancy Pants products (as I'm entering this layout into their competition with Gossamer Blue this month). I used their Artisan Filter Papers as a highlight on my page, colouring them with my new Gelatos and typing my journaling on them too. What a versatile material!

I also used the sketch below from the July challenge at The Scrapbook Store as my starting point too. As usual I took a few liberties. The main one being that I only used one photo instead of two. But I'm getting more comfortable with looking at sketches like this and just deciding that I can interpret it to fit as many (or few) of my photos as I choose! And it's quite easy for me to replace the photos with journal spots instead.

Happy scrapping
xx

The Story of her Training Wheels

There's a few days left before I draw the winner of my RAK, so there's still time to enter here.


I'm planning on using the month of March where I'm in limbo (before finding out the results of my big exam in April and then I have to knuckle down to studying again) to take part in some scrappy challenges where I can. I do enjoy a good challenge!

I found this one where Elle's Studio have partnered up with Gossamer Blue and challenge you to scraplift one of their designer's pages. I thought that would be a good one to start with to get the creative juices flowing! In fact the hardest part was choosing which layout to lift because there's so many awesome pages to pick from :-)

In the end I picked this page by Elle's Studio Designer Katie Gordon to base my own layout on. What really attracted me to it was her clever use of lettering to make a long quote into a title, and all the layers of paper and tags as a photo mat.

I have to be honest though - it got a little tedious sticking each of those letters on individually. I guess I'm not very patient with things like that. It got even worse when I finished the page, hung it on the wall, took my photos and then had scrappers-remorse and wanted to change them all around! Ever so gently I lifted them all up again and stuck them in their new arrangement (and changed their colour in the process too). You'll have to tell me which version you like better because ultimately I'm still undecided!

The second version of my layout also includes the journaling which is always important to me so I'm glad I added that. It tells the story of how Munchy has really become interested in riding her bike around everywhere this summer. And she's getting so much better at it. The next hurdle is now to take her training wheels off - she can't wait for that too. Maybe that will be her challenge this coming weekend!

I used a variety of Elle's Studio Summer Lovin' Tags which were just perfect for my theme. Love their fun colours :-)