Can You Have Too Many Butterflies?

Happy Sunday everyone. Hasn't it been beautiful again, well unless you're a football fan I guess.

I was sat in the garden while the match was on and knew when to pop inside for a look because I could hear the cheers and the groans echoing around!! In the end there where more groans than cheers and my DH turned it off half way through the second half declaring he had better things to do with his time!!! Things must be bad. He'd sat through the Grand Prix first and I think that was more entertaining. Red Bull gives you wings, just ask Mark Webber!!!

I have lots of half finished projects and some cards that haven't been delivered yet so I thought I'd share another Layout tonight, just to prove to Sarah that I am still scrapbooking.


This one was of my Wisteria this year which was fantastic and smelled heavenly. It's a standard in a pot and is just at nose height. My Mum and Dad always enthused whenever we saw them when we were small and my Sister said it should be called Hysteria instead, hence the title.

I stamped onto the paper again with my new Papermania Hampstead stamps and coloured it with self coloured pro markers. I really like the effect I get with this. The title was printed on the computer and cut out and I also used a Nestie which was inked with the die still in place so that you get that lovely white edge.


The main border was cut with a bendy ruler and I added stitching and gems for interest.

The flower was cut out of some very old Do Crafts paper and then I went and added all those glittery butterflies punched with my new Martha Stewart punch and to my mind spoilt it. Trouble is I used wet glue and I can't get them off now. A great example of adding one thing too many!! Oh well, I thought I'd show you anyway.

Thanks for stopping by and whatever you're doing, have a great week.

It's Been A Funny Old Day

Evening lovely Bloggers.

It's been a funny old day after a funny old night. We were sleeping soundly last night when suddenly the burglar alarm went off. Without thinking we woke up and flew out of bed and down stairs to turn it off, then Hubby went to investigate. Luckily, it was only the cats who, it appears, have learnt to open the kitchen door and chase around the living room setting off the detector. Guess who was not popular!!!! We will be making sure the door is properly wedged from the outside before we go to bed tonight.

Consequently, we have all been walking around with fuzzy heads today from a distinct lack of sleep.

I haven't produced anything worthwhile to show you so I thought, as it's supposed to be the last day of Winter, I'd share a layout I did of the snow on Christmas Eve. I used lots of embellishments made on my new Slice and was quite pleased with the results I got.


The snowflake paper was Fancy Pants and the music paper the inside of a lovely shaped paper from the Snowy Serenade set from Bo Bunny, who make my favourite papers at the minute. They are just gorgeous.

The title was cut on the Slice, as was the shadow for Winter, which I added glitter to for extra sparkle.


The snowflakes were cut in different sizes, the first layer sprayed with Denim Glimmer mists and the top layer covered with Martha Stewart snow glitter.


I printed the swirls from a Photoshop brush and then cut them out, very fiddly, but worth it I think.


I'm still learning what to use my Slice for but I'm finding the more I use it, the more I love it.

Well, I think it's almost time for bed, but before I go I'd just like to say that I've now been a fully paid up member of this lovely blogging community for exactly one year this weekend, wow, that went quickly, and what a wonderful year it's been. I've met some fantastic, warm, friendly, very talented people, both in cyberspace and in person and I'd just like to sign off by thanking each and every one of my followers for their continued support and inspiration. Here's looking forward to another great year.

Some Scrapbooking At Last

I've been a really bad blogger lately, please forgive me. For once, I've done more crafting than blogging. I thought it was about time to dedicate some serious time to all the things I want to do and I've had a lot of cards to make for various occasions which have kept me busy. I will show you those at a later time.


The other reason has been this gorgeous weather we've been having. After the poor summer and the impending winter I've been spending every spare minute in my garden trying to get things sorted out and just enjoying being in it. It's looked a mess all though the rain but with the warm sunshine everything has suddenly come good and it's looking great at the minute. There are still bits left to do but we have got a bin strike on here at the minute and my garden bin and compost bin are full to overflowing and so there's nowhere to put anymore for the time being. At least the rubbish bin has been emptied and that's more than a lot of people have had so I'm not grumbling!


So what have I been doing with all this crafting time. Well, my scrapbooking mojo has finally returned thank goodness, it's been absent for awhile and I hate it, scrapbooking is my real relaxation time, and this is the first page I've made in ages.


I've grown chillies for the first time this year and they are so pretty I had to take some photos of them. The colours are great and the papers picked them up perfectly. I mixed Basic Grey BP with some cuttlebugged Coredinations that was then sanded back.


The embellishments were cut out of Imagination Project paper I've had for ages and it lent itself to being used for journalling on too. The title was cut from two different Sissix alphabets using Coredinations pearl and matt card. A bit of vellum and some gems finished things off.

Thanks for visiting and I hope you have a great weekend whatever the weather.

Just One of Those Days

It's back to school day for us and there was one little girl who wasn't too keen to go. I think she's enjoyed her Summer holidays, which I'm pleased about, six weeks can be a long time to keep children entertained as I'm sure many of you are only too aware.

Anyway, the rain was lashing on the window and bed pulled but off up the hill we went and she was soon smiling once she was back with her friends.

I came home to cleaning and two bored cats who are stuck in doors until the rain at least eases off a bit. I had laid a scrapbook layout out last night and left it on the dining table to be stuck down today and I just happened to glance at it as I walked past and thought "why is that photo all curly?". When I picked it up it was all wet, as was the rest of the layout. My dear cats chasing each other had knocked over a glass of blackcurrant squash left on the table from breakfast all over the place. Yes I know, my fault for leaving the glass there!!!!!

I now have bits of paper all over the place drying to see what I can salvage, I shall probably end up having to start again. Just one of those days!!!!


As I have nothing new to show you today I thought I'd show you a layout I did just before we went on holiday. I'd seen some photos taken of big rain drops in a magazine recently and wanted to have a go myself and these were the result. I thought they were a good way of doing a layout about the wet summer. Trouble was we spent days walking round singing "Drip drip drop little April Showers" while it was on the table, it was very catching.


The title was taken from a free digital kit I've acquired at some time. I typed the title in and then printed it off and cut it out. It was coloured with watercolour pencils and then the whole lot was covered with glossy accents. The journalling was written with a Sharpie pen on acetate.

The backing papers were from DCWV, the All Dressed Up stack and I also used some green mirri card and a piece of green glimmer misted card to mat the photos onto. The GM drops look like rain drops in real life.


The flowers and swirls were cut with a Sissix flower die using scraps of patterned paper and gems just added a bit of bling.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope everyone who has returned to school today or this week, young and slightly older, have gone on OK.

More Rain!

I'm sat here typing this listening to the rain again. It's not stopped here all day. Typical, when it's the first day of the Summer holidays!

I'm up to my eyeballs in cakes at the moment so no craft happening again!!! But I thought I'd show you a scrapbook layout I did awhile ago to celebrate rainbows, there has to be one good thing about the rain doesn't there?


I scraplifted the idea of creating a rainbow of flowers from a layout I saw in a scrapbook magazine a long time ago so I can't claim any credit for it but I love the effect it creates. I went further with the rainbow idea by hand drawing my title in rainbow colours and using waterbased pens round the edges and brushing out the colour with a waterpen to blend it all together in one continuous rainbow.


Freya reads the Flower Fairy books and one of them said that there are really fairy wings at the end of a rainbow and if someone tells you there is only a pot of gold, then they are too old!!!! (You have been warned) so this is what I put in my journaling.

Thank you as always for visiting. I love getting your wonderful comments.

What A Surprise

I was sat here quietly reading through all your lovely blog posts tonight when to my surprise and delight I saw that I had made the Top 5 in the the Allsorts Challenge this week. It was my first attempt at entering so I cannot say how thrilled I am. What a lovely start to the weekend.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to wish Brenda well. She set the Wings challenge and has been very under the weather this week so Get Well Soon Brenda. I'm sending this photo of my favourite red lilies, which have just come into flower, to you.

Although it's been a lovely week and the garden has called and I have been sidetracked by the tennis, I have surprisingly managed to do quite a lot of crafting. There's been quite a lot of late nights involved!!!!

Anyway, I thought I'd show you the last layout I've just finished. During the May bank holiday weekend when the weather was so glorious, we had three days without a cloud in the sky and I sat in my favourite spot reading and looked at this beautiful rose against the bluest sky everyday. In the end I just had to get my camera and take a photo of it. It's a climbing rose called Handel and is very special because my Mum and Dad bought us it when we first moved into this house over 12 years ago now and it was one of the first things I put into the garden, which consisted of 6ft high grass and nothing else when we arrived.

I've kept the layout quite simple. It was done on the reverse of a double-sided paper which already had a layout on the other side and all the other papers came from my leftovers box, so I was very thrifty. The journalling tags were taken from a free digital kit from 2 peas in a bucket. I typed them using photoshop elements, resized, printed and cut them out and was quite pleased with how well they worked. A bit of Hybrid scrapping there!!

I inked up a strip of white Bazzill Just the Edge cardstock strips with blue whispers ink and set eylets in all the holes and added a few bits of ribbon and some gems to finish things off.

Thank you for looking and I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Butterflies

I hope you are all having a great weekend and enjoying Father's Day. We have been quite relaxed. It was our local Carnival yesterday so we went to watch the parade with some friends and then ambled home eating ice cream and were invited into a lovely garden for coffee on the way. What a pleasant way to spend the afternoon. I then indulged in watching Mamma Mia for the hundredth time last night and now wish I was on a secluded Greek island soaking up the sun!!!!
Oh well a girl can dream!!

Now back to reality. In between tag making and card making to post on here I always have a scrapbook page on the go. I don't always show them too you because we are a shy family and I don't want to post the photos which is why you just get bits of them and only the full layouts when they of objects!!!!

Today is no exception. I have at last used the crafters workshop butterfly stencil on a layout that my lovely blog friend Sally included in her blog candy a few months ago.

I made my own background paper by spritzing with starburst stains and then drew the stencil with a soft pencil and went over it with pastel Whispers felt tip pens and just coloured parts of it in.

The photos were of a visit to a butterfly house so I stamped some of the lovely Butterfly Beauties from Stampendous using distress inks and cut them out giving them gem bodies and used these as my embellishments along with a few flourishes from the same set. I didn't want to cover up the background too much so didn't add anything else apart from the title, which I did on acetate and a bit of journalling which was cut from a nestability.

I really enjoyed using the stencil and will have to think of more ways to include it, thank you again Sally.


Before I go I must also say a lovely thank you to Kate who sent me these 2 lovely awards. I shall wear them with pride and would like to pass them on to my following blog friends, all of which are a great inspiration and always full of encouragement.
Sally
Lynne K
Jill
Karen
Jill (the stampman)
Brenda
Michelle
and
Debbie
and if anyone else would like them, please feel free to help yourselves.

Kerkira

Thanks so much for your comments to my last post. It was really interesting to read what everyone else thought. A mixture of both seems to work for everyone, which sounds perfect to me.


Well tonight I thought I'd share another layout with you. This one was from our holiday in Corfu last year. We were desperate for some sunshine after the recent poor summers so headed to a guaranteed sunshine island and we were not disappointed.

These photos were taken around Corfu town, which is really picturesque, especially when you look up at the buildings. They are all crumbly and weathered and I wanted my papers to reflect that. I used a Basic Grey distressed paper for the background and Kay & Co for all the rest which I cut unevenly and inked all the edges to make them look even more distressed.


Some of the paper looked like strips of lace so I added some matching fibres for interest.

The title is the Greek name for Corfu and I used Thickers chipboard letters and painted them with texture paint and ran black ink round the edges to make them stand out. I painted the other embellishments with the same paint to tie everything in and then used a Kelly Panacci border stamp on the photos and the edges of the layout to reflect the wrought iron on the balconies.


I was pretty happy with the end result. It all seemed to have the weathered look I was after.