Life just won't stop...

It has been ages since I have blogged, or even scrapped for that matter. Life as a wife, mother and teacher just does not leave me enough time to indulge my hobby. However this weekend I attended a crop, for 2 1/2 hours (that was all I could manage), but I managed to do 3 LOs. They are very basic, but I really enjoyed the time there and my boys are pleased with the additions to their albums.

One of the risks of scrapping at speed is making mistakes, no I'm not a time traveller :)

A year late, but here is Liam's year 1 school photo.

More current, my gorgeous 5 year old. The caterpillar is missing it's eye in this photo. I also added an apple at the top left hand corner of the photo.

Really enjoy doing these, hope I can find some more time to scrap very very soon.

Kid's LOs

I've been scrapping with my boys again.

My style is done by Connor 2 1/2. He chose the outfit in the photo as he did with all the embellishments on the LO. Obvisouly I helped with sticking everything, but he placed most of the things where he wanted them. His freedom inspired me as I spend far too much time second guessing myself when I scrap.

Liam, nearly 5, has done many LOs now and each one is better and more independent. The choice of photo placement was entirely his, he also chose the title himself and alphas, but I did have to help him getting the title to fit in. He spent absolutely ages pushing the brads in, I was so impressed with his concentration.

Scrapping with a Toddler

Last weekend we worked as a family to create my 4 year old's first ever school project, he loved doing it and is so proud of his rocket. Ever since we made it he has been asking to make a LO, he has no interest at all in any form of art, drawing, painting... but for some reason does enjoy making a LO from time time so I try to encourage it.

I did all the cutting and placed the basic structure, he then glued everything (he finds my roller glue very exciting) and placed the stickers, he chose the title and we stuck the letters down together and he wrote his name on a piece of card which I included in the LO. Last but not least he had great fun (with help) blinging up the sea creatures with stickles. The stickers and letters are left over from my younger son's birthday party, they had been used for decorating the party boxes, and were also used to decorate the rocket.

Ish cake

This is the 6th birthday cake I have attempted for my kids. My Mom always made our cakes so I was determined when I had kids that I would do the same. Connor is 2 today and is having an 'under the sea' party tomorrow. I've had a good idea of what I was going to do for a few weeks, but was planning on using coloured coconut on the cake board as I usually do, but this morning when my son found shrimps in the shop I had a light bulb moment and decided to ice the whole cake board, I am so pleased with how it has turned out and Connor says, "like ish cake." :)

Happy Birthday my precious baby, I hope you have a lovely party tomorrow xx

30 and Loving it

Wow I'm shocked by how long it is since I have blogged, life just seems to get away from me. Also I have not been scrapping as much as usual, but this LO was inspired by the UKS weekly challenge :) Thanks xx

I turned 30 in November and was dreading it for about a year. Some how the jump from 29 to 30 suddenly seemed like a rather large one. My husband planned a boat cruise disco party down the Thames and with many of my friends able to join us I was really looking forward to the party but wishing I didn't have to turn 30 in order to celebrate.

Well the day arrived and instead of feeling 'old' like I'd expected I felt accomplished. I looked at my life and felt proud of who I was on my 30th birthday and mostly I felt so blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life.

The LO is some photos taken at my party of some of my wonderful friends,the journalling is hidden under the big photo, you can see the tab and it reads:

At 30 I have:

A wonderful husband (Married 8 years)

2 Amazing sons

A loving family

Fantastic Friends

The job I always wanted... (Primary school teacher)

What more could I ask for?

Thank you to everyone who has come in and out of life, I have been touched by so many extraordinary people in so many different ways.

Thanks for looking xx

Gift Albums

This 90th birthday album for my grandmother is the 3rd gift album I have done and definately my best. I am not going to tell you how to make your own one, but rather tell you how I made mine and hopefully pass on some handy himnts to you. I am only uploading these now even though I finished it over 3 weeks ago as the album was missing in the post and finally arrived today. I am so relieved and my Grandmother loves it. I won't be uploading the whole LO here, but rather a few of my favourites.

The first page of the album was the very last page I made. It is important to me that all journalling is made from the heart and I thought the best way to start the album was with a letter to her.

I found it quite hard going when you have so many LOs to do and only have a limited amount of time to do it in, but I found a fantastic solution. There are so many wonderful patterned papers around these days that you can make a very beautiful page with very little effort. This is from the papermania olive collection and all I did to this page was add the photo, title, ricrac and from a second identical paper I cut out some of the flowers and then stuck them on foam pads to give them a 3D effect (hard to see in a photo) I used this technique on quite a few of the LOs.

I had quite a few photos which I didn't know when they were taken or exactly where, so instead of leaving no journalling at all I wrote about how the photo made me feel and what I could see in it.

Weaving is a technique that is quite quick but can be really effective. I tried to use flowers here that matched her bouquet and then chose pink to make the page feminine and added a stamped flourish.

I wanted to use a poem about mothers in her album because although she's not my mother it is so much a part of who she is and of course the way she raised my mother led my mother to be the person she is who raised me and taught me to be the mother I am (Well done if you followed that) The poem comes from the wonderful resources on sb.com.

I changed my mind a million time about colours, I first decided to stick with a theme throughout the album, as I have done in previous gift albums, but then I got bored. I decided then that I would stick to dull colours to match the black and white photos, but this one just wasn't dull, it was such a happy family photo, it just had to be bright, so I decided to let the photos talk to me, and I love how this page turned out. The flowers are stamped and then I coloured them in.

These colours were so beautiful that the LO needed little more than the layoured paper. The quote, again from sb.com, for me, said it all.

This was the very first page I did for the album. I spent I huge amount of time doing delicate bead work, but when this page was finished I realised that there was no way i was going to be able to spend this amount of time on 20 pages. I would never have finished.

This Lo was a lift and the lovely quote came from Lou on UKS. I really love the way the doodles turned out and it is such an easy and quick way to fill a space.

I think the best way to finish a gift album is to let the recipient finish it themselves. At her actual birthday party my mom ensured a photo was taken of all the family together and that will be the very last page of her album.

This album took me a lot of time and I was so sad to be so far away and unable to share her 90th with her, but I really hope that this album will show her what a wonderful woman she is and what an outstanding life she's had and more than anything else, i hope she will never doubt how loved she is.

Thanks for looking xx

AND THE WINNER IS!!!!!!

kimmie_35

Thank you to everyone who took part, it has been a lot of fun reading all your comments and some of them really made me laugh.

Kimmie be sure to let me have your postal address :) You can pm me on UKS if that's easiest.