I’ve Had A Make-Over

Well  not me personally!  To be more specific . . . my blog has had a make over. What do you think to the new look ?

I’ve had a few different templates downloaded for a while with the view of changing things a bit but kept putting it off because last time I did a blog make over it was chaos!  I am not in the least bit techy minded and all this HTML code business really fries my brain. Thankfully, the wonderful world wide web allows me access to the minds of those in the know who happily share and guide us so that we too can have pretty looking blogs. So after a bit of faffing on my part and a few copy and paste errors . . . lol   I finally have my new look.

~ Dee ~

Caught On Camera with The Loch House Ladies!

Sharing these layouts today has reminded me that I have SBS again (Slow Blogger Syndrome) . . lol  Im blaming the glorious weather we are having . . . .   it doesnt happen here in Ireland that often so when it does we have to make the most of it.

Both of these LO’s have been done for the weekly challenges on UKS over the past 2 weeks and they both feature photograph’s from my scrappy retreat to Loch House in April.

This first one features a photo of me which was taken by my lovely friend Lesley. Regular readers of my blog will know that I really dont like getting my picture taken but its something Im trying to overcome so that I can include myself in my scrapbooking . . . as my husband said, its all well and good leaving a legacy of scrapbook layouts behind but your not in any of them!

The criteria for the challenge included  using two photo’s for a ‘before and after’ theme, some fussy cutting, something hidden and using a frame.  I combined two of the criteria so my ‘something hidden’ is also my ‘before’ photo.

So, here I am caught on camera!

 

The hidden pink pocket holds my ‘before’ photo:

‘Before’ being the colour version of the portrait before it was converted into black and white! On the back of the insert is my journaling with details of who took the photo and where.

The second LO features 4 out of the 5 of us ladies who were at Loch House. Unfortunately Donna had already left before we had the notion to take the photo’s but we will remedy that next time we are there!

The challenge this time was to use Black and White with a touch of yellow, 2 photo’s, something old and something new and an element from one of the sentences of the Magpie rhyme (I chose Gold) and incorporated it by using gold bling around my bloom centre.

I thought this challenge suited these photo’s perfectly!  I was really pleased with how the photo’s came out and didn’t want to distract from them in anyway by over loading the LO with too many embellishments. Clean, crisp and  elegant is how I would describe it.

I will share the other photo’s from our mini Loch House shoot in a separate post!

Thanks for stopping by!

Finished At Last!

Finally I have managed to finish some of the classes that I did at the Scrapstars Retreat back in April. These first 2 LO’s (1 of which is THE only thing I did finish at the retreat!) are both classes taught by the very talented Emma Trout. I love her style and was excited to have 2 classes with her. The amount of fussy cutting in each of the classes was phenomenal but well worth the efforts. Emma had us cutting out elements from the Websters Pages papers that I hadn’t even noticed where there. Lesson No.1 – look closer at the papers and take in all the detail!

So, first up is this page (the one I finished at the retreat) using the In Love range from Websters Pages. These photo’s are almost 20 years old! I haven’t changed a bit have I . . lol

 

So many layers and elements on the page:

Next up  is the class using the Game On range from Websters Pages. I didnt have the right photo’s to finish this at the retreat so it was put on hold while I dug through all my old photo’s to find ones of my boys when they were wee. I came up with these two random snap shots of the boys together and I really like how they fit this LO.

I really enjoyed both classes and now have the urge to try some LO’s of my own using Emma’s style of piecing together so many small elements to make a stunning page.

Next up is the class which was taught by the lovely Kirsty Wiseman. It looks just like an ordinary LO right ? Wrong! Its actually a mini album on a LO. We were told in advance what type of photo’s would suit this class so I purposely took my family out on a photo shoot to get some group photo’s. We had such a ball up at Banba’s Crown in Malin Head. Our photo shoot didn’t quite work out as planned but then it wouldn’t be us if it did! The photo’s I got from that day are fab. I love them all for different reasons. The portrait one of us all sits proudly on the front while inside are some more fab photo’s and a few fun ones too! We even managed a group photo with the Labs!

The main cover opens up to the first of many hidden pages:

Again more openings:

It just keeps growing! I love the fun pics of Eugene and I that Amy took. It was suppose to be a serious portrait of the two of us but Eugene wouldn't be Eugene unless he was messing about. The face pulling, the tickling and laughing. He tickled me so hard I slipped down off the bank flat onto my bum . . lol  we had such great fun and it shows in the photo’s. Amy did a great job of taking them too x

The pocket contains most of my journaling detailing the date and location and a few other bits of info from the day.

We even managed a photo with all the labs although only Coco-Bean looks like she was enjoying having her photo taken! She's the one on the left with Tony x

Well, thats half of the classes done! I still have a home decor piece to finish as well as a few mini albums. Did I mention already that I loved the retreat ?  . . .  lol x

Thanks for stopping by!

Melted Chocolate . . .

Melted Chocolate, a photo by DeeMorrison0611 on Flickr.

While we are all enjoying this beautifully warm sunny weather the labs are not so keen. This was taken this morning at 10am and this is how they will stay until this evening when the temperature drops only moving around the yard to follow the shadow spots.

The Lake District . . . .

The few days I spent in the Lake District recently were fab!  My husband and I spent 5 days there in between my two back to back scrappy retreat weekends.  The weather was kind to us even though the forecasters gave an appalling forecast of wind and rain for the whole week. We did have a few showers but mostly it was dry and reasonable warm, not T-Shirt weather but pleasant enough for hiking and having a picnic lunch. These are some of my favourite photo’s from that trip:

These were taken at The Beatrice Potter Experience in Windermere

Spring flowers at the edge of Lake Windermere

High up in the Cumbria hills

A welcome break . . .   a cup of tea and a snack

I love my remote control and continuous shoot mode for getting photo’s of us together when we are out on our own, the only problem is for some strange reason Eugene always feels the need to laugh and pull faces during the 10 seconds it takes the camera to fire off all the photos! 
Roll the out takes . . . . .

More photo’s from our trip can be seen on my Flickr page
xx

The Places I Love Mini Album

I am a very proud member of The Rik Rak Ravers, my team on UK Scrappers. We support each other, inspire each other and most of all make each other laugh. 

Within the team we have had swaps and challenges which are great fun and keep the team building an on-going process. So far we’ve had a ‘chinese whisper’ layout challenge, a recipe tag swap, an embellishment swap and a handmade flower swap so when it came up for discussion as to what we should do next I jumped in with the idea of a handmade Mini Album swap (everyone knows I love a mini! x) but unfortunately not all the teamies were as inspired by this as I was as some of them are not really ‘into’ the whole mini album thing and said they struggled to know where to start with making one.  A suggestion was then made that I should make a mini album for them all to copy and we would all keep our own albums . . . .  hence this class was born.

This is the first time I have ever done a class for other people to follow but I really enjoyed doing it. One of my teamies asked for a YouTube tutorial . . . lol   there was no way that was going to happen – I am not a performer and would get totally tongue tied.  I included lots of pictures though as I think visual instructions are easier to follow.

I used an old pizza box to make the cover for this album  (yes the kind we all have our lovely scrapbooking stash delivered in!) – I told you I love to recycle.

So here’s my finished album – the link to the pdf file for the instructions is at the bottom of this post if you fancy having a go.

THE PLACES I LOVE

Just a few of the inside pages featuring my favourite places

You can download the pdf file for the instructions on how I made this by clicking the link below. If you do make one please link back to this post, I would love to see it.

Thanks for stopping by!
xx

** My Creative Sketches ** Challenge

Nothing quite like an approaching deadline to get the creative juices flowing!  Tomorrow is the deadline for entries into the My Creative Sketches Challenge.

The sketch this month was taken from a layout done by DT Member Romy. I love her work, it always has loads of layering, something I would like to  be able to do with better effect.



This is my layout using the sketch. I got a little bit carried away with the flower clustering at the bottom . .lol



Notice the gorgeous tulle layered flower with the pearl centre ?  This was made by my team mate Heather for our flower swap.  Its gorgeous and looks quite at home along side the blooms from Prima.
To check out the other entries in this months challenge pop over to the My Creative Sketches Blog!  The prizes are amazing and the winners are chosen by random draw so you just have to be in  it to win it!