Hand Crafted Memories

I was really looking forward to having a lovely long weekend of gardening and crafting, but it hasn't happened. I did get my patio furniture delivered on Saturday. It took me two hours to build it and when I got to the last chair somehow things were not matching up. It took a good 20 minutes for it to dawn on me that one of the chair sides, wasn't for a chair. I have a lovely table and three chairs and this   I contacted the suppliers and its going to take two weeks before a new side can be delivered. I'm still really happy with the furniture, it looks great on the patio.  I managed to tidy a little bit of the garden and cut the grass but then the wind and rain came down. That's normally not a problem when I've always got loads of crafting to do, I've even got the photos printed first before the pages are made.  Disaster, I started to feel very sick and haven't had much energy.  I have managed half a page and now have run out of steam. I think an hour in b...

I am so happy its a long weekend, I've got a bit used to the long weekends we've had over the last couple of months and I'm wishing that every work week was only four days. My new furniture for my new patio arrives tomorrow so once its assembled I will make full use of all my hard work over the last few weekends. I don't care what the weather is like I'm going to use it. I also plan to make some pages, everybody is busy so I l know I'm not going to get interruptions. I found Sketch Support a little while ago and bookmarked it, when my brother turned up with his paint balling photos and wanted as many as possible on the layout, I searched through to find the right sketch. It was sketch 11 of the two page sketches and here is the layout I made. It was fun trying to create the paint splash effect, with so many photos it didn't need too much embellishing and it was a hit when he collected it.

I need to make a few cards both for work and for my own stock which seems to have depleted recently. Scrapology have started to issue monthly card challenges, I take part in the scrap pages challenges and found the card challeng while I was checking out the latest scrap challenge. This months card chalenge is a card to say thanks using this sketch  U had a look through my box of offcuts for the papers on  this card and have wanted to make one of  these gerberas for a while. I love how the pink and yellow looks so fresh and girly.

Today I will mostly be laying down, after yesterday's building experience I'm broken. In the cold light of day I am very happy with my first attempt at patio building, here it is   I now need to decide what furniture to put on it and try to get my brother help me to remove that lump of concrete, its too heavy for me to pick up.  Not to abandon my crafty side altogether I made a little gift bag, I was first shown how to make these at a workshop at Craftwork Cards and it is one of my favourites. I've used some more of the lovely Fruit Scoop project of the month.

So today I am exhausted, I have been trying to get a reasonable price for a 2.5 m x 2.5m, do you think anybody would do it. Not on your nelly,there was much sucking of teeth before either they wanted the equivalent of 1/4 of my monthly salary or it just wasn't worth it to them. So I thought pot 'em and I've done it myself. Well almost, I ran out of slab fix for the last two slabs. It will be finished tomorrow. I have just one thing to say to all those men who sucked their teeth and tried to rob me blind. EAT MY PATIO! and it cost me £130. I am feeling very proud and very sore. I also got some great news this page that I made for the National Scrapbooking Day over at Scrap Whispers won me the challenge prize, I was so pleased. A couple of days later I found out I'd won the first prize for the whole day. My prize a $20 voucher for scrapbook.com and an Echo Park Life is good collection. I am doubly thrilled. All this activity means I haven't done any crafting but I h...

This posting is a plea for a bit of help, not for me but for somebody I've never even met. I recently read on Kirsty Wiseman's blog and Facebook page about a little dog who needs an operation. The minimum it will cost is £1600, I mean who has that kind of money around these days? Even if they did it comes down to priorities.  Anybody who knows me will know I'm not an animal lover, they will know of my frustrations about having all of the neighbourhood cats doing their business in my garden. They will also know of my frustration that all of the houses surrounding my garden (3) have 10 dogs between them that bark everytime I go in the garden. I love my garden and at times have been driven back into my house to get away from the noise, but don't get me wrong I wouldn't harm any of them and it would make me really angry if anybody did harm them. I read about Daisy who had a little accident, a cute little Jack Russell and now as a result needs to have an operation tomo...

Each Month over on 2 peas in a bucket , there are four free classes/challenges. Shimelle Laine is hosting 4x6 Photo Love . The idea of the class is that each month since January we are making a page with an  extra photo on it. January was 1, February was 2 and so on. This month it was 4 4X6 photos.So here we begin getting a bit fancy, with a hidden photo. Also the Studio Challenges theme this week is to raise it up , although its a simple page I wanted to do something to make it special. I cut out some of the clouds and sun and raised them up to give it dimension. Here is my page I've no idea what's happening with my photos at the moment, they always seem dark and not so sharp. May be I'd better start by polishing the lens!

I usually have a good blog hop each Sunday, sometimes for inspiration, sometimes just to see what's up and coming in the crafting world. Today there doesn't seem to be much going on, so I have tidied the craft room out ready for my next burst of activity. Well you know what happens, of course you start playing! Last week I made a few pages for National Scrapbooking Day and I played along with Scrap Whispers . I noticed that they had a current challenge to create a page by scrap lifting from one of their pages, sadly there were only two entrants, so why not have a go and show some support.  Here is the page I made Why not go and have a go yourself.

A couple of weeks ago Julia and I had a weekend of crafting, we made quite a few pages but my problem is picking the photos to go on them. We used the January hit from Sarah's Cards , its sold out now but it was absolutely gorgeous. One of the great points about this kit is that the design team are featured in an ideas booklet. I'm a big fan of Rachel Elliott and she had a page in the booklet. We both fell in love with it and decided to scrap lift it. I take no credit for the page idea it is totally Rachel's concept. What I will take credit for is cutting out all those blooming flowers! Here is the page  Those papers are just beautiful, I've got loads to work with and intend to use every last scrap. I am so happy that Rachel will be teaching at Scrapstars retreat in September, my place is well and truly booked.

May's project of the month from Craftwork Cards arrived this week, Fruit Scoop , delicious! I decided to go with cards for this month. I usually like to have it sitting out and examine it for a couple of days, but I have to go to Salisbury for a couple of days for work and I know from past experience I'll be shattered for the rest of the week after that trip. So it was nose to the grindstone.  In fact they came together really quickly the colours are just fabulous against the pristine white card stock, but team it with black for drama. I spend so much time on my layouts that I'd forgotten how much I enjoy cards.   There is so much left don't be surprised if this kit pops up again soon.

I am sooo happy with this page, I kind of knew that I wanted to make the rolls of paper to complement the prayer wheels, but the rest of it just 'happened'. Kelly posted a recipe challenge for National Scrapbooking day over at Scrap Whispers . The page has to include 5 different patterned papers - paper rolls 4 flowers - really there are four, I cut one in half for either side of the photo 3 different embellishments - dragonfly, photo corners, 'faith' tattoo made into a plaque 2 word title - Prayer Wheels 1 type of stitching - machine stitching around edge of paper I thought it might end up looking busy but I'm happy it doesn't. 

This page came together quite nicely ,but I'm not happy with the title. Georgina at Scrap Whispers challenged us to create a layout that features our favourite cake. Shimelle challenged us to use a patterned paper for the background. Hands down it was my wedding cake, it was made by a friend, and was the last he made due to arthritis in his hands. We were both working in Saudi at the time and couldn't get hold of any glycerin for the icing, so it set rock hard, we struggled to cut it, but believe me that didn't detract from the flavour, delicious!  This layout was inspired by a sketch in Page Maps , why don't I use this book more often?

Today is National Scrapbooking Day, is anybody playing along? I found a couple of sites that are playing along firstly Shimelle is posting challenges on her blog here or Scrap Whispers are posting challenges here and Big Picture Classes  have 12 hours of challenges arranged. As the weather doesn't look too promising today, I'll probably play along with some of them. I have finally put a couple of photos onto some of the pages I completed last weekend, I still have more pages to decide what photos to add. The first completed page is one inspired by a sketch over on Scrapbook and Cards today,  this was the sketch I loved this sketch and it was perfect for using scraps of paper, I can see me using it over and again. Fortunately one of the challenges for National Scrapbook day over on Scrap Whispers is to use up leftovers. On this page the grey mat behind the title is left over from the last blog entry I made(I gutted the grey card stock that was the base), the oriental squa...

Wow what a weekend, all started by the wedding, I know its been discussed and done to death so I'll just say two words, classy and beautiful. I think that covers everything. My scrapbooking buddy Julia has been here for the weekend and we have had another of our kitchen retreats, I can't believe how many pages we have almost finished. We usually buy one of Sarah's Cards kits and then make as many pages as we can from the kit. Back in January we bought the Fancy Pants - Happy Together kit, sorry its sold out. These papers were so delicious. We also had made a kit up using the Dovecraft - Tea House papers. I have managed five single page layouts and two doubles. I've also got the bones of a book. I still need to get the photos onto most of them and the final little touches but they are mostly done and I'm very chuffed with myself. The one that is completely finished isn't using any of the papers I've mentioned but I wanted to make it while it was all stil...