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

LSNED ~ The Final Instalment!

Back as promised... with the last few pages!

I have struggled to get this project completed, however it went much better once I got back from holiday in the middle of the month, as I managed to put together a mini kit bag with stacks of 4x6 journalling cards, all my small alphas etc and actually started taking it to work and getting a lesson completed during my lunchbreak (much more productive than browsing Facebook for an hour!).  I will definitely need to be more organised if I intend to keep up with JYC this year - I think finishing a month late will probably be a bit more noticeable!

So here are the last days of my lessons learnt in September 2011... 

Day 22 -

Day 23 -

Day 24 -

Day 25 -

Day 26 -

Day 27 -

Day 28 -

Day 29 -

Day 30 -

and the finished book...

I am really pleased with my first ever mini-book - it has definitely been a bit different from my usual 12 x 12 pages!

I am off for a scrappy weekend away this Friday with VJ and Rachel and I am so so excited!!  No hubbies or babies to distract us from pure creativity (and cupcakes of course!) and I am hopeful that in amongst the chatting and cupcake eating I might actually work through some of my "To Scrap" lists and have some more layouts to share when we get back!

C x

LSNED ~ Weeks 2 & 3

It's finished!!!    Well, to be fair, it was finished a while ago but I have now finally got round to taking pictures and blogging about it - My first year of Learn Something New Everyday is now done - not quite a month late!  I have actually really enjoyed keeping daily notes, but even though I kept the pages small (4x6) I still struggled with completing 30 of them.  I think if I do take part next year I may have to prep my pages in advance (plus I may actually stick to a theme then!)

I read all the prompts from Shimelle but I did not necessarily follow them in any order, they were just really good to fall back on when I got to the end of the day and thought "did I actually learn anything today?!"

So, a quick round up of weeks 2 and 3... please excuse the rubbish pictures.. it would appear that there was a small person's fingerprint in the middle of my lens which I only noticed when I uploaded all these pictures (taken in the same session, typically!).  Oh well.. the page is still visible, it just has a bit of a funny colour in places!

Day 8 -

Day 9 -

Day 10 -

Day 11 -

Day 12 -

Day 13 -

Day 14 -

Day 15 -

Day 16 -

Day 17 -

Day 18 -

Day 19 -

Day 20 -

Day 21 -

Thank you for sticking with me- a lot of pictures for one post!!

Back soon with the last week (and a bit)


C x

September is here... are you ready to Learn?

* Accountability Post! :-) *

Hi All,

This is just a quick post about a new class I am taking which starts today.. Shimelle's Learn Something New Every Day.  I am hoping that by posting early on that I am joining the class then hopefully I will be more likely to remember to come back every couple of days and post my progress! 
I had such fun with the online crop hosted by Shimelle last month and got loads of layouts done during the week so I have high hopes that I will be able to complete a daily lesson page (although I am on hols for a long weekend next week so it may be a case of "Have Notebook, Will Travel" for a few lessons until I can get back home to scrap!)

I had already decided that if I intended to complete a page each day it would need to be manageable and so I chose 4x6 as I thought it would be relatively simple to prepare the page or use a journalling card (I seem to have acquired most of the range of Pebbles Share and Tell cards over the last few months!) I intend to attach a 4x6 photo to the back if I need a bigger photo than would fit into my "page" but I was starting to worry that it would be too small. 
However, having read Shimelle's Getting Ready prompt I was pleased to realise she would also be preparing a 4x6 page each day so I won't be alone and am feeling much happier about my start now.  I also like the idea of envelopes so I may mix and match my pages, or even use the journalling card and photo back-to-back and make envelopes when I have something extra to include... I am hoping to just let this mini-album "flow" and just bind it all up with ribbons at the end when I see what I have managed to achieve!

Thank you for stopping by and if you are also playing along, hopefully see you in class!

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

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