Previous Christmas Project Challenge

I'm not sure how much time I will get this weekend to take part in Shimelle's Online Christmas Preparation Weekend but I thought one of the first challenges was relatively easy - link up to a project you have previously created... I figure I can do that relatively easy, but when I looked I don't actually seem to have blogged anything individually! 

Oh well.. a kind of cheat...here is where I blogged about several "Christmas crafts" I created with my daughter Hannah last year and then Day 3 of JYC 2010 is my entry as it shows both JYC which is definitely a previous Christmas project that I love and at the same time it includes the Christmas card inserts I made last year using little Miss's footprints, which I really enjoyed.. so much so that I have started getting together materials to make a different insert this year :-)

Are you planning any special Christmas projects this year?

 Carrie x

More Challenge Layouts!

Wow... three posts in a week for various challenges!
I have had a great week and am feeling really inspired by the challenges from Shimelle! I'm also enjoying seeing what so many others have done for these challenges as well - it always amazes me how the same suggestion is taken in so many directions by different people!

This layout again meets two challenges - I can't seem to help combining these though.. it is the Half Page challenge - where Shimelle encouraged us to leave at least half of the paper blank(!) and also the "Signature" challenge - butterflies seem to be a permanent fixture on my layouts recently, regardless of the topic of the page!!  I can't seem to leave them alone... made worse by the fact that my Uncle has just come over for a visit fromTexas and brought the gorgeous Martha Stewart Punch All Over The Page Butterfly punch with him - I have been waiting (im)patiently for weeks for this so I see a lot of butterflies in my future!

The half page challenge was difficult for me to get started as I feel the urge to add more things if I see white space and I truly admire the brave people using plain white cardstock for this one - I just can't do it though - so I used this gorgeous patterned paper that I have had for several months instead! 

I think that I will be using this half page idea a lot now too as I love seeing so much of the pretty paper and I may actually get through some of my older stash this way as I have lots of papers that I can't bring myself to use as backing papers as it covers too much of it and I can't decide how to cut them up!

C x

Scrapping Old(er) Photos!

Another challenge from Shimelle's Proud to be a Scrapbooker online crop... this one was to scrap an old photo and was just the nudge I needed to make a page that has been sitting in my To Scrap box for a long time... my graduation pictures!

Again, please excuse the poor quality picture - I will find some natural light soon!

I bought the paper a couple of years ago and had been trying to work out how to use it as I didn't want to cover up all the lovely phrases and I couldn't bring myself to hack it up either so I have just left it.  However, I have been learning new styles over the last couple of years, including hidden journalling and learning that a simple page is also acceptable, so when I was flicking through my box looking for an older picture I decided that it was time this paper had its day! 

The hidden journalling also let me tell the full story of the day, where I have previously struggled to scrap this sort of photo as I do not like my handwriting when I write more than a couple of (visible) lines, so overall I am really pleased with this layout, despite it being very simple.

C x

A second challenge page..

I am very impressed with myself, as normally I *intend* to follow a sketch or do a challenge and somehow never quite get round to it or never finish it in time, and yet here I am with a second layout for Shimelle's challenge to use a border between photos...

I also had a go at creating my own embellishment out of bits and pieces left over or lying around and I'm really pleased with the result, even if it is quite simple.

I have had these photos in my To Scrap box for ages - they are both photos of the first time our Dads held Hannah after she was born and I only recently looked at them together and realised the look on their faces was so similar!  The top photo is my Dad when we were still in hospital and the bottom is Dean's Dad, who lives in the US and flew over to meet Hannah in the July, so the photos were taken about three months apart.

Back tomorrow (hopefully) with my Photo of the Week...

C x

Document 2011 - and my first ever Challenge!

First up, Shimelle's Challenges...

For National Scrapbooking Day, Shimelle posted a series of challenges and I decided to try some of them, unfortunately with being ill, I have only actually completed one so far, but I am holding out hope that I may manage a few more!

Challenge 1 was to use a full page of patterned paper

This challenge worked perfectly as I have had this paper for a while but couldn't bring myself to use it.  I always feel wasteful using patterned paper as a background as you hide most of it behind photos and journalling (or I make my pages to avoid covering it - see below!), but for this page I used the clipping from the local paper for the journalling so you can still see lots of the gorgeous paper!

I love this photo of Miss Hannah in the bluebell patch so have been looking forward to scrapping it!

and also, a catch up on blogging my current project... As promised, just a little while ago, I have finally got round to taking some pictures of my Document 2011 February pages!!
The envelope page..

The mini-picture pages, including Project 365

  and my feature page, which shows the moving of my craft area out of the nursery and into the corner of our bedroom, now that Miss Hannah is getting bigger and nosier!

Hopefully I will catch up with March and April's Document soon - I have run out of ink (again!) so I am thinking I may need to start ordering my prints online (I'm just so impatient, I hate waiting for pictures when I have pages in mind!)

C x