Sassy fun

Just made some LOs using the last two Sassy sketches

In a bit of a hurry at the moment- trying to squeeze in a blog post between the royal wedding and school pick up.

In both of the Los I have changed the photos about a bit to fit with what I had but I was trying to follow the sketches!

the first has some lovely pictures of Arthur playing in the Cow Parsley on out impromptu picnic at the weekend

The second is Arthur during his 2km race on Monday- we had to lie about his age so that he could join in with his brother- they were supposed to be seven to enter- he was virtually last (125th out of 128 in his category) so the title is "our No 1"

Counterfeit Kit Blog hop- inspired by

This month the Counterfeit Kit Blog hop challenge was to be inspired by one of the design team

I was inspired by Kim Strother- she made a Lo about her daughter's school project about Sinterklaas (Find her original post HERE)

Sinterlaas is a Dutch tradition (he's St Nicholas but he brings presents to Dutch children on the 5th of December - his birthday) so I took the inspiration to make a LO using some pictures of my daughter in traditional Dutch costume from Marken- the large picture is a close up of her clogs while the other two are pictures of the complete outfit

If you don't know about the Counterfeit kit challenge let me explain- every month they encourage you to make your own version of a current kit and then use it!

So far this month I have made 4 Los using my kit -all of which was old paper languishing in boxes- but last month I mad a lot more- why not get involved its a great way to use up old stash

Hop onto Milissa next at One Happy Scrapper

And in case you were wondering this is the LO by Kim that I was inspired by

I think if you look closely the hats in both LOs are very similar!

Can't think of a fun title- scratch that can't think of any title

I made a couple of LOs based on some sketch challenges I always try and participate in

The first is for Pencil LInes

It wasn't supposed to look like this! I was playing about looking for a good position for the red arrow - it touched down on the photo and when I pulled it up the photo started to rip- so the arrow stayed where is was and the title became larger and went round the corner to meet up with the arrow- then I decided it was too far over to the left of the page so I stuck on the tag with the journalling to take things further across the page- it turned out OK

And why does Arthur have a black eye? Nancy poked him in the eye with an unknown implement!
And this one is for Shimelle

Again it wasn't supposed to look like this! If you look at Shimelle's sketch there is a border further down the LO but I pushed it up as a border under the photos as I liked the colour but not the original position.

The photos are from last summer of Arthur playing jenga with his Grandpa- I love how the son is shining through the window onto his face
the sketches

Twisted Paint

The Twisted sketch this week is my turn to work on- go to the twisted site to see the sketch but the twist is paint

Now i sometimes use paint on my Los but I'm not very confident and it can lead to a lot of discarded paper or card- so instead of using paint I made it the subject of my photos- i used strips of blue and green paper to make the border at the bottom and even went as far as inking the edges of my tags

faces in the crowd

I decided to print off a huge copy of this photo for the sketch from the SEI blog. It's a picture of an outing ( probably to the horse racing) of the people from our village in about 1959- in the picture a large number of faces from my childhood that I can't remember the names of now but also a large number of my family- in there is my Mum, Nan, Grandfather, Great Grandmother, tow of my Nan's Sisters and my Great Uncle Arthur.

I love that the photo is so rooted in the fifties- look at that bus- a real charabanc and the ladies are all in pretty flowered frocks ( please ignore the pint glasses in their hands)

Little Bitty Song

Little Bitty baby- well he's not quite so little bitty really- Stanley was one in this photo- I love the confused look on his little face- This is my design team effort for Scrap it with A song- its from the song Itty Bitty by Alan Jackson. this song has so many options in it this was the first photo that came to hand but I was also tempted by the lines

Big Old City

Pretty little girl

and

Little Bitty Car

I'm sure you'd find lots to inspire you in the lyrics- check it out here

a couple of sketches

This one is for Sarahs Cards

You may have seen the Lo i made of Arthur's face painting a few weeks ago- this time its Nancy's turn- she chose to have delicate flowers painted on her face but it was really hard to photograph

She wouldn't let me wsh her face for two days after this she didn't want to lose her pretty flowers.
here is the sketch

And this one is for Dutch Dares

Yet more photos from the photo shoot in the garden for my large photo canvas- I used mainly Echo Park for the record for this.

Mijn drie kinderen in de tuin- een fotoshoot voor een grote foto canvas

The sketch

Quick this week- but I still cheated!

This week I'm a bit more organised with my LO for Sketchy Thursday but i still don't have any kraft card so this LO is also just posing on this paper until I get some I can stick it down on! ( this paper is a printed kraft that I don't want to use up by sticking stuff on the back!)

Last weekend my husband took part in a 10km race here in Hilversum- we were waiting by the 8km mark and Nancy wasn't very happy about all the waiting- she was crawling round on the floor, sitting on the road, dropping things down drains, running round in circles- anything to make it difficult to keep an eye on her and her brothers. I made this LO using some of the photos I took of her sitting waiting- its called "bored waiting"

this is the sketch

Simple Simon

This week I'm enjoying making some super quick, super simple LOs. Unfortunately I have now run out of ALL white card and kraft card ( apart from the printed kind)so I may have to wait a while until I can make some more like these.!

This first one is another for Creative Scrappers using the sketch i used here
This one is a lovely simple sketch from pencil Lines

On Tuesday when I went to Amsterdam they were just setting up the fair on Dam Square that is there for Easter ( and maybe Queen's day)- the title is the Dutch word for a fair- kermis- I think its a great word- in the background id the Queen's palace
the sketch

Easter

The latest challenge at journalling Junkie is Easter and what that might be for you and your family- last Easter Sunday we were at Keukenhof Gardens here in Holland- they are only open in the spring and are full of bulb plants- tulips and daffodils are everywhere

The Lo is about the boys and the Easter bunny- they weren't thrilled to be standing next to a man in a rabbit costume who had no chocolate eggs to give out
sorry about the strange shadow down the side of the page!

love these stamps!

I just bought two Jenni Bowlin Stamps and I love them- I can't stop using them.

On this first LO I used the large Butterfly stamp- I only decided to use it after i stuck everything down so there's a bit of missed stamping on one of the butterflies

Its for the challenge at Get Picky

It's called "Cake Beach"- named by my three and their cousins after they spent many a happy hour there making sand cakes
On this LO I used the receipt stamp again they were an afterthought- i stamped it twice over the patterned paper and once in the top corner.

This one is for Stuck sketches- it's called ready Steady Go- It's Nancy doing her sprint start at the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam
both the sketches are here ( and the links)

Get Picky

Stuck

What shall I do with it?

I bought this book at the flea market in Amsterdam last week for two euros. Its called pick a dayInside there is a quote for each day of the year ( in Dutch)
Originally I thought I would pull the pages out of the book and use them on LOs as the date/ as embellishment or patterned paper

Now I'm thinking I might save it until next year and use it to make a book of the year- stick a small photo, a tiny bit of paper, an embellishment for each day to cover up the quote ( that I can't understand)

What i really wish is that I had two or more of these! then I could do both. What do you think?

Just like he was flying

This Lo is for the challenge at Scrapping the Music- Good Days by Alain Clark- the line i chose was " Daddy used to pick me up make me feel like I was flying"- well this line just went so well with a photo that is hanging on our wall at home.

For my first Mother's Day in 2003 James bought a photo shoot for us and this photo was one that we chose to buy- Its sealed really well into the frame so I took a photo of the photo through the glass hence the strange shadows but it's good enough I think.

I added the punched birds and the bird paper to go with the flying theme

Shh I cheated

This Lo is for Sketchy Thursday ( just in time) I took the photos yesterday especially for this LO and whipped it up this morning.

I took a stroll round the ring canals in Amsterdam and took pictures of the gable end of the canal houses- these shots are mainly from Herengracht, Prinsengracht and Keizersgracht

How did I cheat- well I ran out of kraft card so I used the back of two sheets of printed Kraft temporarily- at the moment nothing is stuck down onto the kraft card ( although I have stamped on it) I shall use those sheets of karft on the other side later and when my order of Kraft cadstock arrives I shall finally finish this LO by sticking onto the background!

301/365

This is the sketch

silly faces ( or forlorn hope)

I don 't know why I bother entering some challenges- the Crate Paper one is always so tempting but the winners Los are always so fab- so full of little details and ALL the embellishments that I never buy. My Los are maybe a little too simple

Anyway this sketch challenge caught my eye- my LO keeps the three photos across the page but shrinks it down and then layers it onto a 12x12 piece

Its Nancy pulling stupid faces last weekend- I used my Pogo to print the photos hence the slightly grainy feel to them

Edit-

well I didn't win but I was picked as one of the eyecatching LOs on the Crate Paper blog here

have I used this too much already?

The Counterfeit Kit blog always has some good ideas for creating your own versions of recent releases- Gabrielle from the design team posted about how to mace the echo park Stamp of Approval paper on her blog here

She tells you how to mark out the page and do it properly but my paper had a regular pattern of flowers on so I just jumped right in and it turned out OK. the trouble is now I know how to do it I can't stop! Just look at the second LO- I used the technique three times on it! Overload?

The first LO is for Counterfeit kit- their first mini challenge is to use memorabilia on your LO- I've been doing this a lot recently ( see here for example) but i need to make one using my kit so this is what i came up with

I save the train ticket from my trip to Amsterdam last friday and the map from the Hermitage in Amsterdam that I visited- the colours of yellow and teal worked perfectly with some of the colours from my kit- so I added a photo of some canal houses ( I took those a while back but who's checking?)
This one is for Sassy Lil Sketches- instead of the three photos in the sketch I cut up an old photo I had of Arthur blowing on a dandelion. My old camera had a function that would take 16 images within seconds but they would all appear on one print

I used my fun new technique and some new Studio Calico Papers
this was the sketch

Como

I have been so busy these last few days- no time to scrap or post - today I went to Amsterdam wit the sole purpose of taking photos to scrap- the trouble is I'm not a confident photographer at times- I don't want people to look at me strangely when I'm trying to take photos of shop signs and bike seat covers and cyclists- i think I need to try again next week. Why am I taking ( or trying to take)the photos mentioned above? The plan is to move back to the UK in the Summer so I'm trying to gather photos of ordinary things I want to remember.

Anyway back to the LOs they are both with photos from our trip to Lake Como last October-

this one is for Creative Scrappers- its called Mummy Look- and its Nancy wandering up the beach with a stone to show me

using this sketch

This one is for the Paper Trail Makers- their latest challenge is water so i thought this photo of Stanley sitting by Lake Como was appropriate although its not quite April Showers! The red colour of Stanley's t-shirt led me to add the tiny strips of red paper as a highlight.

Shimelle- can't resist

Shimelle's sketches are becoming addictive- i really didn't intend to make two LOs this week but I have ended up with two!

I started with the photo of the three children, the green spotted paper and the flower paper on this LO- but I just didn't think it worked and I found this title from Crate Paper that I really wanted to use,so I printed out a second photo and put it all on a white cardstock- I think it works!
Its called Pretty Funny but the funny is in tiny type

So I was left with the other large photo and the green spotty paper. this is what I came up with- I flipped the sketch because I needed the children's bodies to be coming out from behind the paper otherwise it looked a bit weird. Its called "real love" because I think the children really look like they love each other in this photo. There's some bits from Echo Park For the Record on here
this is the sketch

Beach baby

I found this cute picture of me and had to scrap it ( Is it OK to call yourself cute?) I was 18 months old at the time on holiday, probably in Cornwall.

Its for Show us your stuff and the challenge this week is buttons, with the added element of adding something handmade on the LO- so the little pin wheel is made by me ( I hope this counts) and there is a border of buttons under the picture

Card?

It's my week for the design team over at Twisted sketches this week- go and have a look to see what the sketch is but my version is here.

The twist this week is card- any way any how - and I was racking my brains to think of an idea for this- the brainwave happened when I was searching through a pile of old photos and found a postcard- I had sent it to my Nan in 1980 when I was 6 and she had kept it. I scanned it into the computer and printed a copy of the front of the card to use on my LO- the handwritten back of the card is tucked in the envelope on the LO- it's especially nice because my Mum had written the address so I have her handwriting on it as well as mine age 6.

the postcard a a great tinted effect on it giving it a very vintage feel- I added a vintage cigarette card of a diving lady to add to the vintage feel.
Get to Twisted Sketches here

Sketchy t

Another forlorn attempt at the Sketchy Thursday design team LO- need I say more

too many complaints

I must be in a bad mood today because I have been moaning about everything I've been scrapping with today!

Take this for example it's a nice LO for the Scrappiest and I really seriously love this Jillibean soup paper with the bike and the red polka dot reverse BUT its the bikes- I live in Holland and for my mind these are men's bikes- no woman would ride a bike she couldn't wear a skirt on ( of any length from mini to maxi)- these are men's bikes because they have that bar across from the handle bars to the saddle- but then they look so pretty with the flowers that I can't stay mad at them for long!

Its called" Happiness is a cycle ride in the sun"

using this sketch

Rant number two

I bought these Paper Whimsies from Sassafrass Lass but the came from two peas in the US. When I opened them yesterday there were no number 8s and three number 11s. hmm, can't take them back- can't use them quite how I wanted to.

Anyway this LO is fro the Sassafrass Lass blog- its Stanley describing his cricket match last summer- the top photo he was talking about hitting a six- the second a diving catch he made- it called " he hit a 6"
using this sketch

Rant number three

I had so much trouble with this LO today- It took me almost an hour which is absolutely unheard of from me- I ran out of Kraft Card stock yesterday so I couldn't use that. So I spent ages laying the bits I had onto different colours and shades of cards- cream no too much like the tags, aqua no, brown no, grey no, I'm not really happy with the colour its on but its ok
using this sketch for Creative Scrappers