Ouch!

Hopefully my current trip to Durham to visit No.1 Son and his lovely girlfriend won't involve a trip to A&E like the last one did!

Many thanks for all the sympathetic comments and well wishes.

Thankfully the bruising has gone and the wound has healed well: I won't be needing the sunglasses unless it's sunny!

Of course the photos had to be scrapped for my Book Of Me and perhaps I might remember to duck next time!

I've used my June Counterfeit kit and adapted the current sketch over at Purple Pumpkin to fit the 11x8½ album that houses my BOM pages (and fitted in with a UKScrappers weekly challenge).

Do you scrap the good the bad *and* the ugly sides of life or are your albums filled with purely happy memories?

Eighteen

Child No.3 turned eighteen last year and she  celebrated with her three BFFs in Manchester.  I drove them to a temporary ice-rink before they hit the shops for some retail therapy, followed by a meet-up with another group of celebrants in the nightclubs.

I love that they wanted to do something as fun as this before getting glammed up to hit the town ... and let me hang around to take some photos (and pay for the Dunkin' Donuts afterwards!).

The page is based on the May sketch from Purple Pumpkin (reflected, title and "journalling" swappped) and uses plenty of layers (colours, papers, photos) in line with the Wear Crafts {I}NSD layering challenge.

Supplies are (mostly) from my May Counterfeit Kit ... I even used some of the fibres!  Extras included the base cardstock, a Simple Stories Bingo card, some BG plain chipboard alphas, eyelets and a LOT of pink glitter glue.  I even used it to fill the eyelet holes back up again!

P.S. S J Crafts has free postage on orders over £15 this weekend!

P.P.S. Anyone else watching the Eurovision Song Contest tonight?  One day I really must scrap about the time it ruined my house-warming party!

A Hop On The Wild Side

Welcome to the final penultimate post of the January CKCB Members' Blog Hop; if you didn't reach me from Dawn then you might want to start at the beginning with Lisa.

This month we had a choice of three challenges to use for the hop (#1 Subway Art, #2 Containers and #3 Stamping On Patterned Paper) and having cheated slightly for #3 by not using my January Counterfeit Kit, I promised to return with a page which did use the correct supplies.

I chose a photo from No.1 Son's holiday to Thailand last year along with the January sketch by Lizzie Hill over at Purple Pumpkin  and got creating at my monthly crop.  I generally copy sketches into my notebook and use that while I'm scrapping.  Unfortunately this often means that the finished product and the original sketch bear very little resemblance!  In fact, when I was grabbing the sketch link for this post I thought I must have made a mistake because the similarities are very hard to see!!

The extreme divergence is partly due to me reversing the sketch and partly choosing a circular frame for the photo to blend in a little more with the wavy lines of the paper.  I did keep some of the stars and half the title placement though :-D
Anyway, back to CKCB Challenge #3: rather than cover up that beautiful paper with stamps, I've chosen to add my "who", "where" & "when" by stamping straight onto it ... scary stuff!

I think the secret to stamping directly onto your page is to:

a) plan out exactly what it is you are going to say
b) practice on a scrap of paper so that you know how much space you need
c) not worry too much if things go wrong (which they did ... twice)!

There's just one more blog to visit this month (Leslie) and if you've missed anyone on the CKCBMBH you can find the full list over on the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog - why not join in yourself next month?!

Going Dutch

Welcome to the final post of the October CKCB Members' Blog Hop; if you didn't reach me from Bridget then you might want to start at the beginning here.

This month Challenge #1 asked us to take inspiration from  jewellery in some way.  I've never really scrapped about my jewellery.  I don't have a lot.  A burglary back in the early 90s cleared us out and made me reluctant to invest too much emotion in valuables.  One thing that the "bar stewards" didn't steal (because it was ON my person) was my gold wedding band.  Hubby has a matching one and it was safe on his finger too :-D

It's about time I scrapped the story behind them:

We adopted the Dutch custom of wearing matching wedding bands on the "wrong" ring fingers during our engagement and tranferring the rings across to the "correct" hand on our wedding day.  I'd totally forgotten, but Hubby still remembered that the design we chose was called "sneeuwklokje" (snowdrop).  What a great memory for useless information he has!  Strange name for the pattern though, as to me it looks like a cicle of xxxxx around the edge.

Supplies are from my October Counterfeit Kit with the addition of some blue cardstock, brads and a little orange & gold organza ribbon. The page is 8.5"x11" to fit into my Book Of Me album and it started life as October's sketch over at Purple Pumpkin - thanks Samantha & Sandra - great inspiration as always! (Still time to join in - deadline October 31st)

If you've missed anyone on the CKCBMBH you can find the full list over on the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog - why not join in yourself next month?!

Who me?!

The Norwegian section in Disney's Epcot is full of trolls, one of whom was used by  No.2 Son and Child No.3 as a backdrop.  Typically on this holiday, these two were pulling funny faces and giving the photo with the cave troll an extra imaginary story!
I thought it was all about smells and bottom burps ...
but having finished the page at last weekend's crop, Child No.3 informed me that she thinks she was sniggering because her brother had been "caught" by the troll!  No.2 Son says it was too long ago to remember!  I reckon our different versions need recording somewhere on there, so I'll be adding some extra journalling!

I've used the April sketch from Purple Pumpkin to do the second challenge from the CKCB: use nothing but stickers to embellish your page.  Supplies are from my April Counterfeit Kit along with some extra alpha stickers (the tiny alphas from my kit were too vibrant) and my Mum's new American Crafts Knock-out border punch.  Those punched out hearts were too cute to throw away, but were soooo time-consuming to stick onto the page!