100th Post and a Layout to Celebrate

Well, I've finally got to my 100th post.  I was really surprised to see that and please at the same time.  I've been trying to thing of something great for the 100th post but couldn't come up with anything interesting so I thought I'd show you this layout inspired by the Sarah's Cards Sketch Challenge. I've been shopping at Sarah's Cards for about a year and really love the good service and value for money I get from the shop.  I've seen the Sketch Challenge on her blog for a few months but this is the first time I've taken part.

Hope you like the layout.  It's to go in my Document 2012 album for April recording when I was a bridesmaid at my friends wedding.  Going to watch I'm a celebrity and try and think up something cool for my 200th post!

Baby layouts

Since my third child was born I've had little time to scrap. All the layouts I've been making have been current events about them as they are now. I realised in May while doing Shimelle's Cover to Cover course that Tom doesn't have any baby layouts of him. So one morning last month I rectified this and got 2 layouts made in about 2 hours!  Here they are Tom's baby layouts.

Cutting trees

One last page for Shimelle's challenges as I won't get any more time tonight.  This was the quickest page ever, made with 1 sheet of patterned paper (Amy Tangerine's Work in Progress paper) which I cut of the strip at the bottom of the page which is the green paper hiding the join, then cut a strip approx 4" in and used the yellow side for most of the page and then the coordinating side for the rest of the page.  I added my picture and some Amy TangerineThickers for a title and some journalling.  This description has taken longer to write than the page did to make!  I made it for the Two Patterns challenge.

Document 2012 cover

As stated in this post I had planned to do Project Life this year.  I have my friends and family give me Amazon vouchers for Christmas and my February birthday so I could purchase the page protectors and the Turquoise core pack when they launched in February.  I couldn't wait and spent most of January planning the way it would work for me.

Then the debacle happened. Project Life instantaneously decided to change the way they would sell the product to their own website and delivery methods. They announced the products would go on sale at 4pm on the Wednesday afternoon but they web site immediately crashed and didn't come back up before I had to leave for work.  By the time I returned home, the site had sold out of all available stock for February and March with a product wait for May delivery and this was the case for the products I wanted.  The prices seemed quite reasonable until you went to check out your basket where VAT and shipping was added.

Eventually I decided against doing Project Life and started work on Document 2012, based on Shimelle's Document 2010. I'm using American Crafts divided page protectors from Sarah's Crafts and some 12x12 page protectors I already have.  I'm currently working on January and February as, if I'm honest I spent about another month in crisis trying to decide between them.  So far I'm finding Document 2012 really easy to do as I'm using the Evernote app in my iPod to make notes about what happens each day and the albums function in Picasa to store all then pix I want to use.

So to tie in with Shimelle's colour adventure challenge I created this title page for Document 2012.  Can't wait to show you January and February pages when their complete.

Use your Scraps with Amy Tan Layout

Having spent a fun week with the Andy and the kids doing lots of things - reviewing the show Out of the box and the accompanying workshop, visiting Carmarthen and going to Llansteffan Castle I came home exhausted late Friday night.  So yesterday, when I should have been putting the clothes away I had a couple of hours scrapbooking, here's the first page I made to tie in with Shimelle's online crop challenge of Use your Scraps with Amy Tan.  Here I've used a picture of my Grandmother (Mama) and my mum with the 3 kids and added some of scraps from the pages I made last weekend as well as some scraps that are older with some of my favorite Washi Tape.  I love it!

St Fagan's

Wow, three layout's completed today!  It's amazing what you can do without the children around.  This layout is again from Shimelle's Online Scrapbooking Weekend and this time it's Challenge 10: Something Bold.  I have had this green paper in my collection for years and never really knew what to do with it.  When I saw Jill's layout in this challenge the first thing that came to my mind was this paper.  I used a really bold picture taken at St Fagan's and matched to red cardstock as closely as possible,  I love the way it has turned out, a great way to use and unusable paper!

Roar!

I'm back again with another challenge from Shimelle.This time it's Challenge 1 where we take inspiration from a layout that Shimelle chose.  Here's my interpretation of the layout:




Journalling Reads: probably the only time we have managed to get face paint on Jonathan, during a trip to Roath Park in 2008.

First day!

This weekend Shimelle is running an online crop with ideas and inspiration. As the kids are away I've allowed myself a few hours to take part and get some layouts done. The first one I decided to do was Challenge 9: Take Your Pick because it allowed me to look back at one of my favourite classes ever 4x6 Photo Love. I had 3 lovely pix of the kids on their first day in school on September 2011 so using the layout for 3 pix I created this page:




Thanks Shimelle for running these weekends as it really helps getting pages done.

Learn Something New Every Day!

In my tidy up yesterday I realized that I had not finished doing all my layout for Learn Something New Every Day in September. I have blogged a few on my other blog here so here are the ones that have not appeared online before.  The first one (sept 8) talks about getting stuck in a car park without any money and the second is about catching up with family.








So with the kids playing out the back all afternoon I managed to do 2 layouts yesterday, here they are:







Rach

More Layouts!

Summer holidays are here and it feels like my feet haven't touched the ground I had so many plans (see here) and so far none of them have been achieved. This weekend the weather has been all over the place, yesterday it was so warm I made some water with slices of lemon and lime, best drink I've had all summer.



However today the story is really different. The rain has been intermittent, coming and going all day, it's been loads colder and I haven't set foot outside all day. After a lovely lie in this morning, thank you Andy, I spent some time sorting out my craft area and adding to the ever growing list of things I want to do.

I also found some layouts I hadn't blogged, so done sometime in the last few months I present to you:

Meet Roby a robot made entirely of A4 sheets of paper and Sellotape.

Snowbuddies - playing in the back yard in the snow.  

I'll be back in a couple of days with my 10 things.

Fountains at Cardiff Bay

A fun page for Shimelle's Sketch of the week celebrating our love of the fountains in Cardiff Bay.  Another Digi layout using Cosmo Cricket's Snorkel Alphabet and papers and twill from Splendid Fiins all from Jessica Sprage's shop.

WOYWW - 11/5/11

Good evening, really late with WOYWW. Thanks for the lovely comments last week I am loving doing all these layouts and this week it's another 4 by 6 photo love layout.





Pix are of the kids eating M&Ms on the train to Tenby on Easter Sunday.

Smile - loving the weather

Last Thursday I took the kids to stay in Carmarthen so A and I could have a couple of days sorting and organising in the house. That included the usual Bank Holiday visit to Ikea on Friday to buy a shelf unit for my crafting area (more on that in WOYWW tomorrow).  Instead of getting the kids back on Sunday we decided to spend a couple of nights in C'then as well so on Sunday we could go on a day trip to Tenby, we couldn't think of a better place to be on Easter Sunday. Amazingly I have managed to scrap 3 pix from the beach on Sunday today.  I have done a whole layout from start to finish today! I can't believe it - it usually takes months!  Here's the layout:

Journalling reads: Easter Sunday 24/4/11 We're having beautiful weather for April.  Temperatures are soring with a high of 26C.  We decided to make the most of the weather and head to Tenby on the train to enjoy time on the beach.

Rach