Recipe Tags for my Teamies x

Im a proud member of The Ric Rak Ravers on UKS and this week our team leader Heather has organised a recipe tag swap. I had to go with a recipe for a dessert with me having such a sweet tooth and this one is a favourite of mine especially in the summer months, Strawberry & Mascarpone Swiss Roll.

Oh just the thought of all those juicy strawberries is making me hungry!

Thanks for stopping by

Hugs

Dee

xxx

Where are the Memories of Me . . .

It was recently pointed out to me by my darling husband that in years to come when our children and grand children are looking back over my albums full of memories that there would be no record of me as I am reluctant to be in front of the camera, so I have decided to address this by making more effort to scrap myself - its going to be tough as it means having my photo taken but Im going to try to be in the frame more so watch this space. I have been sorting through old photo's of me too  and there could be, no make that will be, more LO's of me on the horizon.

So to kick off this new mission of scrapping myself I have done this layout, only the second one I have ever done that contains a photo of just me (the first being an old school photo of me aged 4 which you can see in this post). The title speaks for itself - 'Just Me'.  

I have used my gorgeous January Gotta Craft monthly kit which is full of Jenni Bowlin lushness in red and black. The small chipboard butterflies have been coloured with my promarkers and had a bling makeover. 

I love the blooms! The grey tone bloom is from Prima (which came in another kit). I pulled out the centre of the white bloom and coloured it red to co-ordinate better and the black bloom came with the January kit.

Thanks for stopping by,

Hugs

Dee

xxx

Reminiscing - Some of My First Scrapbook Layouts

I've been having a sort out of my albums lately and re-arranging them to have some kind of theme to each album and I came across these, some of the first LO's I did way back in 2006! Of course back then when I had finished them I put them away in albums as I was unaware of the online community I could share these with, so I thought I would take photo's of some of them (those that Im brave enough to share with you really!) and share them now.

This first one is my daughter Amy aged 13 months looking very angelic taking a nap in her pram. I remember cutting out all those flowers, it took me forever! I used a Dawn Bibby flower stamp to stamp onto pattern paper. Did you notice the mistake I made in the top right corner ? Initially there should have been 3 stamped butterflies but I messed up on the last one so I covered it with an apoxy sticker ;)

Another one of Amy, this time on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in April 2006. The papers and co-ordinating stickers came in a kit from QVC and the embossing around the edges was me playing with my new toy at the time, my Fiskars Embossing Board!

Another one from our trip to Florida in 2006. We took a day cruise over to the Bahamas and I did this LO of Amy getting her hair braided. The lady who did it for her kindly let me take her photo too.

I love this LO solely because of the photo of Tony aged 9 months. I cant take any credit for the LO itself as I copied it from the back of the K & Co paper stack - I think it was called Eddison (?)

This one is of my darling husband Eugene taken in 2007. 

All three of my babies taken in 1998. Poor Joe could hardly hold up his brother and sister long enough for the photographer to take the photo, hence both the twins look a bit lop-sided. 

This photo was taken 10 years ago can you believe it!!  We were lucky enough to spend christmas in Disneyworld and it was the best time ever. The papers came in a kit but I cant for the life of me remember where I got the mini t-shirt.

I quite enjoyed that trip down memory lane, maybe I'll be brave and 

share some of the other LO's later on.

Thanks for stopping by

Dee

xxx

52Q - Tag 3

Last night I finally got round to doing my week 3 tag, just in time for question 4 to be release this morning!!  So a close call for 'keeping up' but I did it. Unfortunately though it means that I dont have any 'in progress' photo's to share (which was a little target I had set myself) as the artificial light in my craftroom was no good for taking clear photo's. 

The question in week 3 was 'Do You Believe In Fairies? ' so of course I had to put a fairy on my tag. I stamped the image with a memento ink pad onto coated cardstock and then used my promarkers to colour in. The background paper is from ColorBok's range Sweet Blooms.  Again using my promarkers I stamped the word 'believe' at random around the tag to add a finishing touch.

So on to week 4 !

Thanks for stopping by

Dee

xx

Photography Challenge 2011: 'B' is for . . . . .

Although the weather lately has not been the best we did have a break in the clouds on Sunday afternoon so that I could go out and about and these are some shots that I took on my quest for things beginning with 'B'

B is for Boat & Buncrana

Taken at the pier in Buncrana

 'B' is for Barbed Wire

This fence lined the pathway down to the bay at Dunree

B is for Barracks, Bars & Broken Glass

These are the derelict barracks at Fort Dunree. I wanted to get as much of the barracks in as possible so took the photo at an angle. I like how it turned out and the fact that I got 3 B's in one go!

B is for Beams & Boards

The inside of the barracks made for an interesting photo too!

Its still early on in the 'B' fortnight so hopefully I can get a few more photographs taken.

Thanks for stopping by

Dee

xx

Take 2 . . .

Tesco Value jotter pads (30p each) tear off the front covers so you are left with two pads each with a cardboard backing. Stick the two pads together facing each other so that you now have a cardboard cover front and back.

From your stash mountain (Im sure you have one!!) use up some scraps of paper to decorate. The result - a cute note pad which can sit happily on my desk to keep notes of the photograph's I want to take and record those that I have taken already for the A-Z Challenge!

Took me all of 10 minutes to alter this and most of that time was sorting 

out which scraps of paper to use!

Thanks for stopping by,

Dee

xx

Life & Me - Cover and Page 1.

Over the weekend I finally got round to starting on my Life & Me project. I bought this blank journal last week :

I covered it with a couple of coats of Gesso:

Then I set to work with the pink acrylic paint!! Pink is my favourite colour.  I played around with glimmer mists to create a base background which I was happy with but it seemed to be missing something so I added some detail using a stencil to the top left corner. The chipboard letters have been living in my stash for some time (they are from K & Company) and the metal 'M' and 'E' are stray letters left over from a set which is also quite old so Im doing well on my resolution to use up some of my stash mountain before spending out on new stuff!!

This is the final result:

Then the task of page 1. The prompt was 'This is Me',  an introduction to who I am. The difficult part of this page for me was getting a photo of myself (there aren't that many as I am a reluctant model much preferring to stay behind the camera!) so I decided to use this one and chop my darling husband off the photo! The reason I decided on this pic is because it was taken in Red Rock Canyon just outside Las Vegas which is where we went to celebrate my 40th Birthday and as this journal is going to be a record of my 40th year I thought it fit quite well. 

The background was created painting layers of blue acrylic paint and then stamping a decorative edge in Denim distress ink using a Stampin' Up stamp from the Vintage Vogue set. The journalling is self explanatory - words and phrases I would use to describe myself at this point in my life and then a bit of doodling and a cute mouse stamp just because I like him!

OK, Im ready for page 2!!

Wee Danny x

Another LO is complete for my furbabies album, this time one of the baby of the bunch - Wee Danny x

This is the first LO I have done using my sewing machine that I got for Christmas. The lines are not too straight as I admit to being useless with the sewing machine, but this is something I want to master so hopefully you will see an improvement as the weeks and months go by! 

The weekly challenge on UKS this week encouraged us to use up old stash and so I have used just that - things that I have had for quite some time all except the butterfly that is. The flower brad at the end of the ric rac must be at least 5 years old so Im pleased it now has a home.

Im loving these Jenni Bowlin butterflies at the moment and 

am sneaking them on to LO's where ever possible!

Dee
xx

52Q - Tag 2

Q. 2 in 52Q is  -  'Am I Afraid of Change'. I had my distress inks to play with and did this tag pretty quick and simple. First I stamped a flower image from my Stampin' Up set Vintage Vogue using the Old Paper distress ink. Then using Spiced Marmalade distress ink I inked the edges.

Once the whole tag was inked with the Spiced Marmalade I added a contrasting colour, Worn Lipstick and blended it in to give a warmer affect.

Next I stamped the butterfly, All A Flutter by Stampin' Up, onto acetate which had been coloured on the reverse using alcohol inks Caramel and Pink Sherbet. The word 'change' is printed onto acetate and the rest of the wording was added using Adornit Mini Alphas which I coloured with the distress inks to co-ordinate.  The finished result:

I wanted to add a butterfly to this tag as the first thing that sprung to my mind when I read the question this week was the caterpillar changing into a butterfly. Am I afraid of change ? No not really, everything changes, embrace it! 

Thanks for stopping by,

Dee

xx

Joe@16 . . .

This month the house challenge on UKScrappers involved this sketch, which I decided to turn on its side for my layout :

The other challenge was to use 50% journalling on the layout - something that I really did find a challenge! I dont usually add too much journalling to my layouts so I had to think about the photograph I was going to use so that I had something to write about.

Our darling son Joe turned 16 last week! This photograph was taken of him on his birthday and I had it in mind to scrap at some point so I decided to use it for this challenge. Once I started writing the journalling it actually came together quite well.

thanks for stopping by,

xxx

52Q - A start!

Now that my 2010 Album is finished I can make a start on my 2011 yearly projects. The first one I've tackled is 52Q as Im still waiting to get a decent photo of myself for my first page of Life & Me - its proving even more difficult then I thought as I really do not like to be in front of the camera!

Im really looking forward to following the 52Q project on UKS as there are so many people taking part and so many different media formats being used as people adapt it to suit. Im personally using tags to record my 52 questions. And in typical me fashion I forgot to buy some blank tags to get me started so I turned to my Cricut and cut my own using the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge. I cut them from Kraft cardstock which I then covered in Gesso.

I am going to be keeping all my tags on a huge book ring and I wanted a 'front cover' tag to set everything off.  After playing around with the water colour paints to create the background I stamped onto the tag with one of my PaperArtsy stamps. 2011 is cut out using my Cricut and then embossed with a plantinum embossing powder. I didnt like the way the numbers looked so new and shiny so I stamped over them using a Stazon ink pad to give them a bit of a tarnished look. The clock image is from a digi-stamp which I painted over with acrylic paint to give it a muted feel and for a final touch of sparkle I coloured in the butterfly with a Sakura pen.

This is the start of my first tag. I used the water colour paints to create a background using various shades of blue. 

Once the background was dry I stamped the flower image from one of my PaperArtsy sets and embossed it in white. The bird in flight is from the Stampin' Up set 'Just A Note' - I stamped onto kraft cardstock and then triple embossed using a navy embossing powder and just before it cooled I stamped into it with the text stamp from my PaperArtsy set to give it some texture. 

To highlight the texture on the bird I rubbed in some pale blue acrylic paint before covering it in glossy accents. I used the same text stamp to add texture to the word 'Hopes' and to decorate the top of the tag. To finish off I inked the edges using a Distress Ink Pad 'peeled paint'. 

On the reverse of each tag is my journalling spot and a stamped number so I know which order my tags go in. I've kept my journalling private but my hopes for 2011 are quite simple - to live life to the full!

Dee

xx

Mini Album 2010 - Its all finished!!

Im really pleased that my 2010 mini album is now complete. At times I fell behind schedule with this but I did keep notes and photo's organised to that when time permitted I could put everything together.  I know I have posted pictures of previous months pages on my blog already but as the entire book is now finished I thought it would be nice to post all the pages together so here it is my 2010 in words and pictures:

Now I can start working on my 2011 album!!

tfl

xxx