4x6 Photo Love- Month 3

You might just pick up on a theme with my weekend scrapbooking makes. I must've been feeling hungry when I did these LOs *laugh*  And it wasn't until I came to put them all away that I realised I'd only scrapped about cake. Oh well, cake is one of my favourite things, so why not....

 

The first is a double LO for my sisters 21st birthday. I baked her this birthday cake (which I have previously posted on my blog). But I what I failed to reveal in my earlier post was that I had coloured all the layers in various bright shades of colouring. It would have been a surprise when she cut the cake had she not seen me baking the green layer and wondered what was going on with the mouldy cake ;0) For these two LOs I decided to go through my brightest stash and try and keep the colours as close to the cake layers as possible. I also set myself the challenge  to use up paper scraps and some retired Stampin' Up! stash too. So nothing to report product wise (except for those gorgeous Bright Buttons) but i had fun creating the LOs at our monthly Wight Craft Circle crop all the same. Upon a second look I've just realised that I did sneak in a little bit of stamping on the first LO. I managed to colour a couple of little cake stamped images using Crazy for Cupcakes and the new level one hostess set, A Slice of Life. Can you spot them? ;0)

 This next LO I created one evening last week. This features my others sisters birthday cakes. Mum baked her the most delicious tray of cupcakes (all topped with various delights from coconut to chocolate to fudge pieces!!). I've wanted to have a go at creating those paper rosettes for a while and was made up with the result. Again no new product to share (except again for those gorgeous Brights Buttons and a sneaky bit of Pear Pizzazz Poly Ribbon) but just wanted to post my creation ;0)

And lastly here is my Week 18 page for my weekly highlights journal. This again focuses on Sophie's 21st. This time I rolled out a stamp set I havent used in ages- Crazy for Cupcakes. I coloured the images using my Stampin' Writes and tried to match them to the cake layers.

Happy crafting ;0)

-X-

More Retreat Makes

Here are a few more of my Retreat LOs. Many of them are part of the Wight Craft Circle weekly scrap challenge.

Week 49- 'Did You Know'

I reinterpreted the prompt to read 'Don't You Know How Much I Love You'.

 Week 47- 'Whats Your Colour'

Lime of course ;0) I loved this 8.5x11 LO and how I tied it in with what I was wearing that day in Icelandic snow.

 Week 45- 'Blast From The Past'

I chose my childhood dog Tigger as the subject of this layout. 

 And the final two LOs are just ones I did for fun. With the first photo I wanted to do the photo justice as it was my absolute favourite photo that Sam and I took on our Icelandic trip. I wanted the photo to be the focus and to tell its own story. Although I couldnt resist a bit of bling in the form of some Stampin' Up! rhinestones.

 And my final LO was completed using my favourite Sweet & Sour DSP from Stampin' Up! and Rich Razzleberry C/S. I accessorised the LO with some hand made crocheted flowers my Mum made for me using leftover embroidery floss. I found a whole stash of rather embarrassing childhood photos of me in various different outfits. I tied the colours of the LO in with the colours I was wearing in one of the pictures. I also chose the butterfly accents to compliment the butterfly motif of my top in the middle photo.

If you'd like any further info on Stampin' Up! products, please do not hesitate to get in touch on poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 07830 343830.

Happy Crafting ;0)

Home from snowy Iceland

Hello all ;0) Well I'm back from my super relaxing Reykjavik break and have come back full of beans and crafting ideas. I sat down last night and finally put some of these down on paper. I think my inspiration returned having a whole new set of photos to play with and scrapbook (I have designed about 50 LOs around pictures I took over the weekend- I'm going to be very busy at the WCC Retreat next weekend ;0)

Here are just a couple of the photos I took over the weekend. These were taken on the Golden Circle tour  (and taken during very brief periods over the weekend that it wasn't snowing!). The first is taken where the two tectonic plates meet in Iceland (you can see where the Mid Atlantic Ridge meets and is pulling Iceland slowly apart). So on one part you are stood on the Eurasian plate (I wanted to type Eurovision then!) and on the other you are stood on the N.American plate (I really don't know enough about Geology to explain this all properly! Really need to get my Geologist sister to guest blog and explain it ;0). The second photo is Gulfoss waterfalls. The picture doesn't do it justice or give you any sense of the massive scale of these waterfalls.

 Here is my '2011 Journal' page for last week. I was inspired by a LO Paige completed recently and after she gave me a cropping and resizing tutorial on photo printing software last week I decided to have a play with lots of mini pics. Although this small selection took me about 10 hours to align and size correctly so goodness only knows how she managed 60!!! I also used the WCC Sketch for Challenge 46 to design my page. Not entirely the same as the sketch. But I'm really pleased with how it turned out ;0) Broken my own golden rule though - no thickers in this album. I'm never gong to make it to December- it'll be bursting at the seams! 

 I also made this little mini album last night. I was inspired by the lovely Peg over at Pegcraftalot and the little Meander Book she made recently. However, all my Iceland photos are 6x4 so I had to adapt the Meander Book to fit this size photos (so effectively it ended up nothing like Pegs so I'm going to have another go at that over the weekend!). I did this using two 12 x 12 sheets of Bashful Blue Stampin' Up! cardstock which I then folded and taped together to make a mini album holding 8 6x4 photos. I added journalling tags into the little pockets I'd created between each page, which were finished off with Round Tab punch. The DP is non-SU unfortunately but this mini album could easily be adapted to use any of the Stampin' Up! Designer Papers.

And finally, here is a sneak peak of this weeks card class:

This is the Elegant Soiree version of the Mini Notecard Wallet I made recently. It is created using coordinating cardstock and inkpads and the beautiful Just Believe stampset. I still have a few spaces remaining for my Wednesday night class on February 16th (7pm start, £8 for the class). If you'd like to come along and make this project then please get in touch on poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 07830 343830 to book your place.

Happy crafting ;0)

-XXX-

In The Spotlight

My lovely crafty friend Hayley recently emailed her first layout for the Wight Craft Circle 'Scrap With Us' Challenge. As she doesn't have a blog I offered to upload it so the WCC ladies could have a look ;0) Here is Hayley's gorgeous interpretation of the sketch below.

WCC Week 46 Sketch Challenge:

I love the Christmas-y colours and the texture added by the embossing and glitter. I also spy a gorgeous scrapbooking use of the Bliss Sale-A-Bration set too ;0)

Now, as Hayley has put me to shame, I should really get on with my sketch interpretation for the week ;0)

Happy Crafting ;0)

-XXX-

Shimelle's Sketch of the Week

Over on Shimelle.com the latest Scrapbook Sketch of the Week has been posted and I had the luxury of a night all to myself. So I decided to sit down with my Christmas photos and have a go at the sketch. Once again having the sketch as a prompt really helped to get me into a scrapbooking frame of mind.

I loved this sketch as it allowed me to use this gorgeous paper. I've had this for a while and not known what to do with it as I didnt want to cover the bird. So this was perfect. Having recently packed up all my Christmas accessories and embellishments and put them away for next years Journal Your Christmas, it was quite a treat to get them out again so soon and craft with them again ;0)

This also fits beautifully with the Wight Craft Circle's Week 44 Challenge to create a Christmas LO. I've got so many copies of these photos that I'll probably be scrapping them in some variation all year. But they are so joyful that I cannot resist keep using them.

Thank you for stopping by and happy crafting.

-XXXX-

WCC Challenge Week 42

I spent another lovely crafty evening out last night. I went with the sole ambition of completing my 'Year in Review' LO for the Wight Craft Circle scrapbooking challenge. Part of me really wanted to scraplift the LO completed by Sam and Paige for this challenge (see here) but I dont have a 1 inch square punch and I'd already printed the 12 photos for my LO. And yes I do realise the deliberate mistake. I had printed the 12 and then realised I had one portrait and 11 landscape photos. What a wally I am! Anyways, easily solved, I just turned the photo on its side. Looks a bit weird. But I'm guessing most people won't notice unless I point it out *laugh* The background paper is a retired SU paper from the Night and Day collection.

This LO was near impossible to photograph at 7am this morning. I tried it all over the place trying to get enough light. The camera want having any of it. But I hope you get the idea. I wanted to go for a black and white theme with a splash of colour with the journalling tags at the top and the same colour mini butterflies scattered across the LO. I think there are a couple of things I would change with the position of the wording if I did this again.  But all in all I'm pretty pleased with it and it looks lovely in my album.

-XX-

Sweet Summer and Crop Make

This evening I decided to sit down and have another play with my Sale-a-bration sets and mix them up with my new Cricut cartridge. I cut the square and tree with my Cricut then mixed these elements with stamped and hand cut images from the Sweet Summer stampset. The leaf border is also from the same set. The colour scheme is Wild Wasabi and Garden Green with a hint of Pumpkin Pie and Baja Breeze (mainly just for a square border on the inside). The greeting is from another Sale-A-Bration set, So Happy For You. The felt flower embellishments are now sadly retired so I use these sparingly, but felt my card needed a bit of colour to brighten it up.

 Here is the LO I completed on Saturday at the WCC crop. The challenge for week 43 was '6 Things I Love Right Now'. Well for some reason I only printed 5 photos. Then when it came to lay them all out I couldnt make them make sense. So instead I decided to mix it up and make a LO with hidden photos! The pics are on on the back of the DSP insert. I used some lovely Stampin' Up! retired DSP for this LO (the Sweet Pea Designer Series Paper Stack) embellished with cut out doilie shapes from a printed sheet of acetate I found in my mixed papers (no idea where it came from but glad I have now found a use for it).

In case you were wondering, the 5 things I listed/pictured on the back of the journalling insert are:

1) Cee Lo Green's album 'The Ladykiller'

2) My new multi coloured coat bought in the Jan sales

3) Frazzles! I love them. I'm having a retro snack moment ;0)
4) My Cricut

5) The Night Sky app on my android phone.

I haven't scrapbooked properly for a while so I had fun playing with my embellishments and papers again. I have my eye on a couple of LOs I might have to have a go at. Hopefully I'll be back in the swing in no time....

For any questions about Stampin' Up!, Sale-a-bration or to place an order, please do not hesitate to get in touch: poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 01983 609249.

Happy Crafting ;0)

-XX-

Catching up with the WCC ladies

So I finally took some time today to catch up with the Wight Craft Circle Scrap With Us Challenges. It was the WCC monthly crop in Binstead and I managed to complete two layouts, as well as some Christmas cards, Christmas bunting and a little tree decoration (Christmas is definitely my papercrafting theme at the mo ;0)

It was lovely to catch up with the ladies and have a bit of a crafty chat. I am very spoilt with all the crafting I am getting to do at the moment. Convention last weekend, the crop this one and the Charity Christmas Craft Event next Saturday. And all this will be leading up to December 1st and the start of Journal Your Christmas (which I am no where near prepared for but excited about all the same).

So here are todays LOs:

Week 35: Me in 2010

I chose to focus on Stampin' Up! and the year I have had from making new friends, demo-ing, convention and just loving being creative again. The big 'Sarah' tag was made by the lovely Debbi Taylor, my roomie at Convention. I wanted to incorporate this into the design as I loved the glitter and colours so much. I designed the LO with this in mind and used the Sweet and Sour DSP to coordinate.

 

Week 34: The Great Outdoors

I couldnt get a good photo of this LO. But I really enjoyed doing this page and the colours were so lovely together (Garden Green & Elegant Eggplant). I used the Scallop Trim Border Punch to add additional strips to A4 cardstock to make this 11 x 8.5 LO. I chose this photo as it was such an iconic image from my childhood. This photo was in frames in my parents home as well as in my grandparents. I remember seeing this daft old picture of me all over the place when I was younger ;0)

So I'm not completely up to date just yet. But it got me back in the scrapbooking swing! I think I am a bit out of practice having put all my scrapbooking aside since the WCC Retreat last month.

Any questions about Stampin' Up! or the products, please do not hesitate to get in touch (poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 01983 609249). Also, only a few more days to book for the Hospice Crafting Fun Day next Saturday (Nov 20th). It'll be a great day including some lovely make and takes and demonstrations. Just £20 for a day of crafting fun.

Happy crafting
-x-

Retreat Makes

Well, I've been having a real struggle with my camera this morning. I have been waiting for a dry day to use the natural light outside to photograph my LOs. Sadly, this doesnt seem to be on the cards anytime soon. So I've had to take the pictures indoors. None of these are a true representation of the LOs I completed over the weekend. But wanted to upload them asap.

Here goes....

Week 30: 10 Things About... Me!

Week 31: How I Feel About.... Being a Sister

I was really pleased with this LO until I realised I completely forgotten half the challenge. I completed the title half of Week 31's challenge (the 'How I Feel About...' part) but not the colour challenge part of Kiwi, Chocolate, Baja & White! So I've uploaded this half of the challenge and I'll look at doing a colour themed LO for the other half.

  

Week 32: Could It Be Magic?

This is my favourite LO of the weekend and it is the worst picture. I really couldnt capture the detail of this one. I bought some heat resistant acetate and Versamarked a lovely Butterfly borrowed from P's new stampset and then Heat & Sticked it and set Dazzling Diamonds into the glue. I love having a play with a new technique. And I would never have thought of heat embossing onto acetate. But it turned out really well and fitted the 'Magic' theme of the week.

Non challenge related LOs completed:

Roald Day Day & Inventive Crafting

I completed this double LO to fit my new 8.5 x 11 inch page protectors. Sam and I recently visited the Roald Dahl Story Centre in Buckinghamshire and spent ages in their interactive craft room colouring and sticking the two illustrations included in the above LOs. When we'd finished them we blue tacked them to the craft room wall. But I knew I wanted to theme a LO around them so I photographed them and reprinted them when I got home. For this double LO I wanted to capture the fun and colours of being a child and represent how Roald Dahl made me feel when I was young.

King of the Barbecue:



Smores LO:

I also completed a couple of other smaller projects and worked on my Convention swaps but I'll have to post these at a later date ;0) All in all it was a very productive weekend. But I never knew crafting could be so exhausting ;0)

-xxxx-

I'm home and new catalogue is now LIVE ;0)

So much to report on... I'm home from the WCC Retreat in Totland. Had a fantastic time, completed some lovely layouts, got slightly hooked on the Paper Dolls cartridge for the Cricut, spent a bit too much on new stash and generally had a lovely time chatting and crafting with likeminded ladies. Got to play with some of my new SU stamps and inkpads and finished some long overdue challenges for Scrap With Us on the WCC blog. Photos will follow, however, my camera is playing up and the light is naff- so will take pics tomorrow to upload.

In other news, I now have the internet at home!!! Finally I've caught up with the digital technology age. I can now blog from home. Makes life a lot easier than trying to fit it in at work.

And most importantly, the new 2010-2011 catalogue is now live. Orders can be placed and new stash delivered direct to your door. Any queries or questions, do not hesitate to get in touch.

Sarah: T: 609249, poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 07830 343830.

Just a taster of one of the layouts I completed over the weekend.

Off for the WCC Retreat...

Well I had hoped to get losts of crafty things done this week to post on here. However, its been a quiet one all in all. I have been planning a craft charity event for November which is taking up a lot of my time. And all the crafting I have been doing has been with the new Stampin’ Up products which I cannot post till tomorrow.


I am off this weekend for the Wight Craft Circle Retreat over in Totland where I will hopefully be getting LOTS of crafting done. I have been writing a list of things I’d like to scrapbook and there just aren’t enough hours in the weekend to get it all done. But I am excited as it is my first retreat and it’ll be great to spend some time with the lovely WCC ladies talking all things crafty ;0) (and any weekend which involves a Cricut to play with has to be a good one ;0)

So I’ll be back online Sunday with lots of new things to share. In the mean time, the new Stampin’ Up! catalogue launches tomorrow. I for one have a wish list as long as my arm of things I’d like to order. So if you have anything you’d like me to add to my order, just let me know and I’ll get this in asap! Contact me on 07830 343830 or poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk.

More Wight Craft Circle Crop Makes...

Here are two more LOs from yesterdays Crop. The 'Water Babies' LO is for Week 28s challenge- 'Traditions' & 'Journalling'. The second one was just for fun using some old baby photos I had in my photo folder.

Had such a lovely day chatting and crafting with the Wight Craft Circle Ladies. Looking forward to our scrapbooking retreat next month even more now.....

Funky Friday Challenge #74

I've missed a couple of weeks challenges, so I laid aside some time especially to complete this at yesterdays Wight Craft Circle Crop. This is my #74 challenge for Funky Friday Challenges.

This weeks challenge was based on the sketch above. I used this lovely old photo of my cousin, Shayla, and school friend, Jayne, and I dressed as angels when we worked on a Christmas Extravaganza on a historic steam train on the IOW.

I also used this as the basis for the Scrap With Us challenge for week 29 'Lost and Found'. I decided this was a perfect photo as it was a lost memory (I had completely forgotten about doing this and about wearing my Nanny's wedding dress!) that was found in my Nanny's box of photos I borrowed. A perfect challenge fit ;0)

Scrap With Us Week 27- What Makes You Happy/ Alter Your Paper

I'm on a scrapbooking roll at the moment.... I completed another double LO last night with two photos I took a month or so ago in my garden (its hard to remember a time when the sun was shining and it wasn't tipping down with rain!?). The challenge was to scrap 'What Makes You Happy' and to 'Alter' your paper.

Well I sat down with a table full of 12x12 papers and cardstock in front of me a bit bewildered. I recently bought a stash goody bag with various papers and accessories in and in that I had 3 printed acetate sheets. One of which was printed with a stitched garden design in orange. I used this as my basis for 'altering' the summer LO. Its a bit of a cheat I know. But I altered the basic Yoyo Yellow CS by layering the acetate print over the top (creating my own designed background). I altered the Only Orange paper with a series of ladybird stamps I have collected over the years (the ladybirds in red are from the Garden Whimsy Stampin' Up! set and the ladybirds in black I bought on holiday in the states back in 2006). I then used my circle scallop and circle punches with the Schoolbook alphabet for the titles.

The colors I used were: Old Olive, Pumpkin Pie, Only Orange, Real Red & YoYo Yellow. I combined this with the butterfly & ladybird papers from my stash. All in all, I am super pleased with how they turned out. In fact these LOs turned out better than the picture in my head for once ;0)

For any questions regarding Stampin' Up! products, workshops or hostess benefits, please do not hesitate to contact me on either poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 07830 343830.

Scrap With Us Challenge- Week 24- Accessorize

Well, I am completely out of sequence now.... but I sat down last night and did a double 12x12 LO for week 24- Accessorize. I've been thinking about this one for a few weeks now and settled on Christmas themed LOs for some photos I took of two gingerbread houses Sam and I created for his nieces and nephews two Christmases ago. I thought these photos fitted well as Sam and i spent days creating, baking, making, glueing and accessorizing these lovely little houses. We were so proud of ourselves when we finally had them all wrapped and ready to deliver on Christmas day. They were a perfect pressie in a year when we were quite hard up for cash.

Wight Craft Circle- Scrap With Us

Saturday was the Wight Craft Circle crop. I was having a bit of a creativity block (I blame it on the late night Friday at Sam's Stampin Up workshop followed by sitting on the Downs watching the meteor shower!) so only completed two LOs. At the time I really didn't like them and felt like I was banging my head against the scrapbooking wall. But then when I took them out yesterday to show Mum and take these photos I was much happier with them. I really love the 'My Lucky Guilty Pleasure' one. I bought these papers on the off chance having seen them online and they turned out to be perfectly matching (I knew I wanted to use the scanned image of the lucky scratchcard I bought the other day). So, from being disappointed on Saturday it actually ended up that I love them. And to celebrate I made the 6x6 mini LO yesterday ;0)

Scrap With Us:

Week 25 "Guilty Pleasure"

Week 26: "Life's A Beach"

Pictures taken in Hawaii of the Lost location beach. Sadly no cast members or filming the day we were there. But we did get to see all the key beach locations.... Locke's sweat lodge, the burial mounds of Shannon, Boone etc., Sawyer's tent, parts of plane 815 and rows of Dharma Initiative cans and food.

And one final 6x6 just for fun in my mini LO album. My sister when she was little causing havoc in the local nativity play ;0)

Thanks for stopping by and reading. Any questions or queries about Stampin Up or to find out more about the products, just email or call (poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 07830 343830).

Scrap With Us Week 21

Wight Craft Circle Scrap Challenge- Home is Where the 'Soul' is.
I've set myself a bit of a personal challenge scrapbooking wise. My storage box full of odds and ends and scraps seems to be getting a bit out of hand. So I am attempting to use up old bits of card stock and oddly shaped bits and pieces to tidy up and make things a bit more manageable. At this rate I'll need a brand new mansion just to house my crafting supplies ;0)

For this weeks 'Home is Where the 'Soul' is' challenge I went round to my Mum and Dads house and took photos of their house and a lovely home sampler my Mum stitched a few years back. I wanted to give this LO a bit of a home stitched feel. Unfortunately (after all my drawing effort) the photos havent picked up the cross stitching detail I drew on all the way round the outside. Oh how much easier life would be with a mini sewing machine *lol*

I tried out a couple of new tricks as well. Whilst last crafing with Paige I watched her sew buttons onto one of her LOs so I gave that a go (using up the remainder of a box of Playground SU buttons I've had for a little while). And the linen thread matches the feel of the LO a treat ;0)
All in all, a good LO for me! I am getting a little happier and more confident with each scrap challenge week that goes by. I am reading more online (and watching the odd tutorial too) so I am able to think a bit outside the box scrapwise. Although I still see very strong straight lines running through every LO.

Also really enjoying the Paperclipping roundtable blog. Makes me smile each week and has good info on where to go for tips and tutorials.

Right, now two more LOs to catch up with (still stuck with 'A cherry on top')....

And one more final post for the day.....

I have finally gotten around to starting to catch up with the Wight Craft Circle Scrap With Us challenge. I am still two behind. But here is my LO for Week 22 Days Gone By. I borrowed a huge box full of photo albums and loose prints from my Nanny a while ago. I had my fingers crossed for a wedding print of my grandparents and I found a whole wedding album full of beautiful pics of their big day. I think I might be scrapping a fair few of them as they are all so elegant and gorgeous.

So here is what i put together. I wasn't 100% happy as once again the image in my head looked a lot different to the finished product. But I will have another go at a later date with a picture of my Nanny in her wedding dress and try and create my perfect vintage LO.

Products used: Mini Catalogue Night and Day Papers, Pretties Kit.