Memory Box

Hi everyone,
Cannot believe how close to Christmas we are. Its coming too quick as I have so much left to do but tomorrow will give me plenty of time to get organised at least. Lucky Christmas falls on a Sunday. How is everyone else's plans coming along? What do you hope Santa will bring you?

Our house is full of excitment with our recent addition... my christmas present kitten. He is so full of energy and love. Keeps us busy when we are home but the introductions with my siamese Villain are going slowly... and a little painfully lol She's a very territorial girl... which is normal of the breed. But we'll get there.

Today I wanted to share a very sentimental creation I made recently, which is something I am so very proud of, simply because of the importance. As some of you may know, we lost our other cat Felix not so long ago. It has been a sad time not having her around anymore after more than half of my life with her. So I wanted to make something more than a simple layout and decided to put this fabulous Scrapware memory box from my stash to good use.

 Materials: Scrapware memory box, scrapware, twidleybitz, scrapmatts chipboard, Manor House creations flowers & leaves, prima bling, Kaiser flower and paper, Bo Bunny paper, Tim holts distress ink, other: metal charms, paper doily.

I am linking it up to the current Scrap Our Stash December anything goes challenge because it is so special to me and I want to share it.

It has been a mega busy time for me lately so I have been a bit slack on the blogging but I have a few things to share (hopefully I'll squeeze in another post tomorrow) and some exciting news to kick off the new year.

Holly xo

Scrapbudz DT & Scrap Our Stash GDT Layouts

Hello everyone,
Hope you are all having a fabulous weekend. Its Saturday night... and I'm enjoying the evening at home. Just had my dad over for a roast dinner since mum is away and spent the afternoon doing bare foot lawn bowls for a friends birthday. Now time for some scrapping, however I just wanted to share a couple of DT layouts.

This month I am a guest designer at Scrap Our Stash and my layout has just gone up. The challenge is something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. I absolutely love the layout I created for the challenge. Its the first time I've been really happy with my glimmer mist attempt. I added a little green and red glimmer for some extra colour. Here's the post.

Materials: Prima patterened paper & flowers; other embellishments by Handmade by Marg
& vintage lace.

Also, there is a new challenge up at Scrapbudz. Check it out here. This is my June DT layout.

Materials: Bo Bunny die cut; Grace Taylor pp; Kaisercraft journal tag, rub on and flowers; Pretty paper petals flowers

Winner at Scrap Our Stash & GDT Layout for Scrappassion

Hello everyone,
Well I'm in the process of a new OTP project and checking blog updates at the same time... since my work desk tends to be the space in from of my monitor. During my browsing I discovered that I am one of the three April winners at Scrap Our Stash. Yay!

You can find the blog post here.

It was for this 'sunshine' theme layout featuring my gorgeous niece Liarna. Pretty exciting for someone who is not confident with brights. And I get to be a guest designer there in June.

And speaking of guest DTs, here is my guest DT layout for May at Scrappassion Interational Challenge Blog, which can be found here. Be sure to play along.

 The challenge is to create one of these felt flowers, so here are some closer views. It was challenging for me as I have no skill with thread and needle lol

Hope you are all having a fabulous weekend. It's a long one here so plenty of scrapping time!

Sunshine of My Life

Hi everyone,
Last night I decided to scrap outside my comfort zone in brights again. I've done a couple of bright layouts lately and they still do scare me. I'm so much more comfortable with dark colours or lots of white or black space. Anyway, this one was a joint inspiration. The main inspiration came from the current Scrap Our Stash challenge, where the theme is to create a project relating to sunshine. With summer long gone, it seemed like a nice time to make a bright layout and who better to feature than my own little ray of sunshine, my niece Liarna. She is 4 and no longer the baby in her family. But still the princess! I guarentee she will tell you so lol

These photos were taken the day her baby sister was born, when we were filling in time waiting for them to come home from hospital.

The princess rub on could not have been more perfect for my sassy little miss! Funny thing is she almost always puts on serious face for the camera instead of smiling.

The bright colours and embellishments were also inspired by the lovely inspiration pic at Scrap the Girls. The paper I used was from my little shoe box with painted raw chipboard and some other bits and pieces added.

Happy Valentines Day and a Love Layout

So its that day of the year most of us either love or hate... Valentine' Day. A day filled with love, romance and possible gifts. Personally I enjoy the extra chance to do something romantic with my husband... and this will be our first Valentine's day as a married couple so certainly a signficant one. We tend not to make a huge deal out of it, but always try to go out to dinner and get each other at least a card. For us, its off to an Indian resturant for dinner this time around. My husband has actually never been to one so its something different.

I completed a layout last night for the Scrap Our Stash 'LOVE' challenge so its perfect to share on this particular day of the year. I'm not really a pink fan so it has been something new to be using a bit of it in my last couple of layouts, but it suits the romantic wedding theme.

Of course, its another wedding layout. I absolutely love the photo in this one. I softened it using an online editing software, which only made the photo even better. I think its just a very simple and romantic photo and I especially like the way we are looking into each others eyes, as the wedding day is a bit of a blur but those simple moments we shared have been captured on film.

The journalling is actually our first reading from our wedding ceremony, which was Corinthians 13:4-7 "Love is patient, love is kind.... etc". At our wedding, we had this reading read by each of our mothers. My husband's mother read it in Polish and my mother read it in English, as a representation of a joining of cultural backgrounds.

The layout also shows a few of my early experiments with my cuttlebug, such as those flowers, created with a sizzix flower die and my favourite cuttlebug embossing folder - stylised flowers, to create some extra depth to the strip of white card down the side. There are also chipboard and metal embellishments added, a vellum sticker and a love rub on.

Here's wishing you all a very happy and romantic Valentine's Day!

Interactive Honeymoon Title Page Layout

I was watching tutorials on you tube the other day & came across a great video by Swissgirl90. It was an interactive layout with a flip down journalling section. I am still fairly new to journalling and not overly confident so it's a great solution to keeping it subtle.

I'm not totally happy with the way the layout turned out overall, but it's all part of the learning experience.

The photo is of us on the final day of our Fiji island cruise in our complementary sulus (sarongs). I've used our return ticket stubs from our flight as an embellishment and created a banner with cardboard embellishments and letter stickers. I've used foam tape to give it a more 3D effect.

When you flip open the photo, the journalling has been printed on patterned vellum paper. I think this was maybe too much. I've also decorated this and other parts with flowers punches and stamps, along with some artificial flowers and brads.

The honeymoon title box is probably the part I like least. I was trying to incorporate colours similar to the banner but it did not work as well as hoped.

I plan on entering this layout to the Scrap Our Stash 'NEW' challenge, as the interactive layout is a new technique I have used and the honeymoon represented our new status as husband and wife.

You can view the video by Swissgirl90 from youtube.com here
Let me know your thoughts.