Hand Crafted Memories

Another card for the boys, I've used this idea of punching circles out before on both cards and pages. I favour the cloud paper and layer them up rather than just a strip of paper. I love the way it looks. This is my favourite card I've made in a while.

I recently made a page for the UK Scrappers cybercrop, where I journaled about not being able to get the Christmas lists from my nephews. The page was here , and shortly after I managed to get the lists. They've kicked around my craft room since December because I didn't know what to do with them. Today I came across the remnants of the papers from the page and decided to use them a try and make the original layout into a double page spread. I think it has worked, I hope so.

The challenge this week over on the Penny Black Saturday Challenge blog is for mens cards , perfect for me at the moment trying to stock up on cards for the boys at work. As I said in my last post I want to try and keep them simple. I don't want them to be boring though, I liked this red on the blue it really pops.

Another male card for the box at work. This is one of my favourite stamps for creating men's cards. I'm trying to keep them all  simple, so that means they are quick to make and not too 'fancy' for the boys.

This month's challenge over on the Scrapology blog is one using lots of borders and punches. I have loads of borders lying around. I just either don't know what to do with them or don't want to use them. Enough of that, these things are bought to be used, this project was perfect to make me use some of them up. I had previously scrapped this photo but wasn't really happy with the page, it was just too pink. I still wanted to go with pink but really needed to tone it down. This was the sketch   and here is the page I made, I've got to say I'm so much happier with it and love the colours. Now I want to buy more borders, I really enjoyed this challenge.

The card box at work needs topping up again, so that means lots of boy cards. I try to keep them very simple and Craftwork Cards Anglomania range is perfect.I made a few cards over the weend and here is the first one.

Anybody fancy a day out dedicated to scrapbooking with some great teachers? Thought so, Scrapstars have just released their day delegate booking details.This is going to be a day not to be missed. I'm so looking forward to it. Click on the logo on the right to go to the website.  A quick post today to show this page for my brother's album. I made this page a year ago, but Robin wanted two of the pictures scrapping again only bigger, so I came up with this page to match the other. That way it look like a double page spread, it was lucky I still had some of these papers around.  

Two Peas in a Bucket are running four free monthly classes each month through out this year. I loooove free, especially when they have such inspirational tutors. The classes are here . Jen Gallacher' s classes are called Stretch the Sketch. Well you all know I love a good sketch, and here it is This one took some thinking about, I really wanted to rotate it so the title was along the bottom, but the photos I had were landscape. Eventually this is what I came up with. I was really happy to use up leftovers from other pages. I also changed a couple of the photos, they weren't quite bright enough so the internet came through in the end. I can't find the pictures again to give credit, but the top two photographs are not my work, I have similar ones, but the ones on my layout are not mine.  Just thought I'd better make that clear in light of recent copyright issues. I'm happy to link if anybody finds them. I believe they were copyright free, I usually check. Anyway the

Happy Valentine's day everybody, hope you all got lovely surprises today. I made a card to celebrate the day, no for any husband/boyfriend/lover but for one of the boys I work with. I have such fun with him we joke all the time about how I'm his favourite girl. We tease everybody that we are having a secret relationship and everybody just 'gets it'. Why is it funny? Because he's half my age and it really is just fun, he sent me a Valentine's card last year and spent months trying to convince me that it wasn't him. His pet name for me is hotlips, so do you think from the card he'll guess? I took the close up to show the glossy accents on the lips. Edited: Yep he guessed, and he bought me one as well, AWWW how sweet.

Do you ever have a pile of 'bits' left over after scrapbooking? I always so and it breaks my heart to throw them away, but if I don't I would end up disappearing under a pile of scraps. Occasionally I go through mt scrap box and if they are smaller than 5 inches in any direction they have to go. This weekend I felt I needed to tidy up the craft room following my recent scrapbooking efforts and there they were the 'bits'. The colours all looked so pretty together and I noticed they were all strips, over at The Studio Challenges blog today they have their first ever card challenge, and it is to use 13 of something on the card. I have to restock the cards at work, so there is the answer, I've used 13 strips on my card.This will now go into the work stash of cards. Done!

I was so happy to find the Scrapbook and Cards Today Blog last month. They had a great sketch that inspired me twice and prodded my mojo back into action. They've done it again with this lovely sketch   and here is my take on it It was the perfect opportunity to use more of my Sarah's cards restoration kit. Believe me I've really got my mileage out of this kit . I also used my new Martha Stewart border punch , I love it so much.

More work from our mini retreat for you. Although Julia and I are scrapbookers at heart we like to make other projects as well. I came across this project on the Pink Paislee website in their free projects section. I'd already got the pegs but had no idea what to do with them. A few scraps and they were transformed into these impressive memo/photo holders .

Another page that I made with my friend at our mini retreat. This Sarah's Cards kit  (October) certainly stretched, and thank you  for the page idea, it was lifted from the brochure that came with it, and only very slightly tweaked. Sometimes I start with the page and find the photos to fit it. Other times I see papers and know exactly which photos will work. The worst is when I've got the photos but haven't the foggiest idea what papers to use or what to do with them. Those are the times that my mojo just goes on a little holiday, the best thing to do is just put the pictures away and start something else. This photo is me 20 years ago, I started this page with no real idea of what photo I was going to add. then as if by magic it all came together.

It's a week since I last posted, that doesn't mean I haven't done anything, it means the light I need to photograph my efforts has been rubbish. Last weekend My friend Julia and I had a mini retreat in my kitchen. I love these weekends, we order a kit and then go searching for pages or challenges that catch our attention and away we go. This month we ordered the October kit from Sarah's Cards , it was yummy.We are both attending their retreat  in November so playing with this kit has made us doubly excited about the event. I came across two peas in a bucket's free monthly workshops, I love free, so I've signed up, these will be perfect for our little get togethers. I also came across this page by Nichol Magouirk , I loved it. This is where we started with this lovely layout design and the gorgeous kit and I had just the right photo's for it. Here's my page I just love it, you know when you make a page and just keep going back to look at it. It makes