Still In The Red!

I actually made this layout before the card I posted yesterday - the card was made from the scraps. It's another multi-challenge layout, based on Valerie Salmon's latest sketch; the 'love your body' prompt from All About Eve & Sisterhood of Scrap's '50 words of journaling' challenge.

The journaling reads: This body is almost forty years old and has been through six pregnancies. It has been sizes 10 to 20 and everything in between. It has a crooked smile and a nose that's a little too big. This body is mine and it fits me perfectly. I love the skin I'm in.

The papers are from HOTP & Bo Bunny's Homespun Holidays - so it's another non-Christmas layout using Christmas papers! I used EK success retro flower punches to make the flowers, doodled the edges with a black vellum writer & a white sharpie. the flower centres are red buttons & twinkle gems. I don't have any journaling stamps (yet!) so I made the dotted lines with a white sharpie & a ruler & stamped brackets from the HOTP Thinga-ma-jigs clear stamp set - I think it's pretty cool! LOL.

Cards coming next!

The End Of An Era

I took these photos during our Friday scrapbooking class to mark the end of an era. Jackie has been coming to classes since the very first one in Dartford library before I had the store. I used the latest Valerie Salmon sketch (#32). I'm cutting it fine as usual - the new one goes up tonight!! Thank heavens for time zones! LOL. I'm loving these papers right now: Renae's House, 'Aubrey' by Creative Imaginations. All the embellies are handcut from paper & I've only actually used 3 designs - they are double sided, so plenty of patterns to choose from & I do like A LOT of patterns on my LOs.
For the title, I've used a couple of stamp sets - I particularly like the paisley clear alpha stamps from A Muse. They are quite expensive but I reckon they are sooooo worth it! For the bracket & swirl, I drew around a couple of chipboard shapes & I've doodled a thing black line around the edges of all the paper pieces and the journaling strips as well as edging them all with black ink. The flowers are also cut from one of the papers, petals curled and layered with foam tape. I'm not sure the photo shows it of too well but there's a micro dot Twinkles gem in the middle of each flower. The gems are self adhesive (& really tiny!!) so I find myself reaching for them quite often - subtle bling with minimum effort.

Have A Break!

Well Sean did anyway! LOL. I've been desperate to use the Cloud 9 Sorbet Villa papers since I got them last month & thought I better get in quick before they sell out. I love how this page turned out - it's actually half a double page sketch from Valerie Salmon's Got Sketch? #30 (there's only so many 'broken arm' photos that you can put into a layout methinks!)
It's a very simple page really, using just three papers (one is sparkly!) a couple of retro punches and some black ink - but I love it!
Been crafting LOADS today - so keep popping back over the next few days - I'm gonna have lots of new stuff to share with you.