My very first design team layout

I never imagined this would be so difficult. I think panic set in a little, it's one thing messing about with papers and putting together a layout, its another to use someone else's supplies and come up with something that you hope they will like!!
 

 My parcel arrived with a lovely little note from Sarah.....
and I settled down with a glass of wine.....

My parcel was filled with the new Fancy Pants Summers End paper Collection.  The designs and colours were fantastic and very much what I like. Neither girlie or boyish, the papers are perfect for all subjects.

This layout is my very own photo shoot with a seven year old. I thought maybe my first layout should be of me - I have no idea why!! Do you ever get an idea in your head and just go with it, without reason?

The Fall Frames were perfect for all the journaling these photos required.....I mean it's not very often us scrapbookers pose for photos!

 Pop across to SJ Crafts to see my layout there too - with more details on the products I used.

I found this Fancy Pants range very versatile and managed a beach layout as well. If you do purchase this range you should check out the chipboard banners-they add so much depth and dimension to a layout.

In celebtation of her design team SJ Crafts is offering 2 FOR 1 on selected paper ranges including the range used here! So be quick before they all go.

Thank you to Sarah for my box of goodies, I really enjoyed working with them.

Photo of the week

This weeks challenge was "family portrait". 

So I rounded everyone up and I found a wall for the back drop.

No formal poses for me, just a relaxed photo of us all was the aim.

I took tons of photos, as you do, and when I viewed them, Stanley (number 3 son) had a face like this in every single photo. Anyone would think we forced him...........telling him I wouldn't take him to rugby today if he didn't do something for me isn't actually forcing him.......is it??

 

 The second batch of photos looked something like this one

Oh my........when this boy doesn't want to do something, we all know about it!

eventually after much persuasion I managed to get some half decent photos.

Still  no smile though...........

You can check out Karen's photo here. Thank you for hopping by and have a lovely week.

Converse...All Star

 Have you something in your scrap stash that you've saved for years and years?

Well last night I was trying to work out how long I've had this chipboard Converse boot. The boot came on a pair of converse boots I brought Col years and years ago....he only wore them once or twice and eventually sold them on Ebay.  So I reckon the boot must be at least 8 years old, if not older.

 

 A little paint, splash of mist, some jean fabric and some scraps of paper and this is what I came up with.

 

Jack picked some Converse All Stars in the summer holidays and they were a perfect match for the boot I'd been harboring all these years. I used the chipboard circle for the title and journaled about Jacks determination to lace up the shoes even though the laces were so short there was hardly anything to grab to tie.

Thank you again for all your wonderful comments on the post below. I'll be sure to share my very first DT layout with you very very soon.

In the meantime Sarah is celebrating her new DT by offering you 15% of all orders placed between now and 11pm tomorrow evening Friday 23 at SJ Crafts. Just enter Team5 in the discount code box and remember there is free postage on all orders over £15......happy shopping.

SJ Crafts

I have some exiting news.........Sarah from SJ Crafts posted about putting a Design Team together for her shop!!

I read her post, typed an email and hit the send button.........before I really had time to think about what I was doing!!!If I stopped to think about it I know I'd never have sent the email!

Sarah emailed me a few days ago to say that she would love me to be one of the design members........I was totally gobsmaked!!

Sarah is based in Bournemouth and has her own on-line shop,  she also holds regular open days and crops, so if you are in/near the area then check out the dates of the Events, Crops and Classes on her website.

So.... please if you haven't already, pop across to Sarah's shop to have a perusal and follow her shop blog so you can find out what the new DT are up too.

The new DT members are

Lisa-Jane 

Jenny

Jo

Jennifer

and of course me.

and I look forward to getting to know these ladies......i'll be off to say hello to them this evening!!

Photo of the Week

Before I share my photos from this weeks photograph challenge I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed yesterday's blog hop and wish to thank everyone of you who took the time to look at my post and leave a comment. I was overwhelmed with all your comments, each and every one brought a smile to my face......so thank you very, very much!

Last weeks photo challenge was Documentary/Decay. Had me puzzled for a while to photograph something you wish to document which could be pretty much any subject, or to photograph something old, decrepit or run down.

I chose to document an item that I've been meaning to for a while. Many years ago, when we lived in London, we were burgled. For insurance purposes we had to try to produce photographs of certain items, a tricky job when you don't actually take photos of individual items. This was a good lesson to take on board for any future purchases...........hence todays photography subject......

Guitars!!

My husband has a fetish for guitars, he can play in a fashion, and drives us all mad when he's learning a new song....so I tell him!! His first guitar was an acoustic, followed closely by an electric (far far too loud for indoors - although he says I'm just getting old!!). Having three boys he wasn't happy with just two guitars so he purchased an electro acoustic guitar. Three guitars, three boys......perfect!!! Oh no no no.....he now needed one for himself!!! Bearing in mind you can only play one guitar at a time and they are far far too precious for the boys to play we now have four precious guitars hanging around the house!! 

I have chosen my favourite photo of each guitar to share with you this evening.

you can see me taking the photo in this one!

This photo looked so much nicer (I think) in black and white. 

I feel so much happier now knowing I have them documented, should they ever go astray!! 

Now pop across to Karen's who chose Decay as her photographic subject this week!

Have a lovely week and I'll be back soon with a layout.

Blog Hop

Hello and Welcome.

If you've arrived here from Beki's blog, for today's blog hop, a very warm welcome to you.

When Kirsty from Journal of Curious Things, first posted about joining in on her blog hop........it meant using one of her handmade embellishments on a layout to mark her 200th blog post.  Her work is fantastic so the embellishments had to be too - right.

Well she didn't disappoint they were gorgeous and fitted in perfectly with a holiday layout I had planned. I have tons of photos from the Eden Project and wanted to include a few odd photos that just won't get scrapped on their own.

 Keeping in with the holiday postal theme, pretty pretty stamps were added and Kirsty's embellishments were mounted onto black card so they'd stand out on the patterned papers.

 

The embellishments were beautifully created, they included a postage stamp card, paper clip, tag, lace and butterflies.

You may notice that the top right photo states The Eden Project, so it felt right not to include a title.

The journaling reads "Ten years ago the Eden Project opened, so I guess for ten year I've wanted to visit this place.We had a great day walking around the Biomes, you all made it to the top of the suspended platform where the temperature reached 43 degrees"

Thank you for stopping by and if you're following the blog hop you're next stop is the very talented, young and crafty Hannah.

A big thanks to Kirsty for organising the hop and wishing you all a wonderful weekend.

Giant times

 Earlier this year we had a day trip to london. We arrived at London Bridge tube station with the intention of visiting The London Dungeons. We stepped outside the station and was greeted by this rather tall chap. The boys were in awe. 

Well I couldn't help myself when he got down on his knees to speak to us and was still taller than me (5ft 4) I had to ask him. 

He was 7 foot 1inch tall!!!! with size 19 feet............yes you did hear correct........ size 19 feet!!

....and you know what they say about men with big feet.............

 ......they have big shoes!!! 

Come on then......what were you thinking??! lol!!

    

This man was so nice and as it was H's birthday, he gave us a great family deal for entrance into the London Bridge Experience. I have to say everyone thoroughly enjoyed their history trip through london.

We saved the London Dungeons for another day.........the queue to get in was (allegedly) over three hours long. There's far too much to see in London to spend time queuing for that long!!

This layout was inspired by a Lily bee design blog post pinned to Pinterest.

Photo of the week

How hard can it be to take photographs of food do you think? Extremely hard it seems! This was one subject that I thought would be rather straight forward and I never gave any thought to forward planning.

I mean food.....it's vibrant in colour (mostly)......it doesn't move......it can't answer back.......give you gip or moan at you to hurry up.....a perfect subject wouldn't you say!!!

After many trials I googled "How to take a picture of food" and came up with this article, its opening sentence read:-

"Taking pictures of food is one of the most difficult skills a photographer can master."

You don't say!!!  

So what i'm going to do is share a selection of photos I took, I won't include the Sunday roast....you'd never want to come here for dinner again!!.....these photos are simply of cupcakes.  

Please bear in mind I took photos from every angle, it was a drab day so there was very little natural light....my ISO was high, 800 in some of these photos, this makes them very grainy looking!

Squashed cupcake cakes after my man-handling, lifting, carrying from room to room to try and get the best light (it was raining outside!) and all the repositioning didn't help. The idea was to get the first one in focus and the others out of focus.

 a close up, with the blue cupcake the main focus.

 Only a small element of the green cupcake case is in focus in this one.

and one I messed about editing, to see if I could make an improvement.

If I was taking part in LSNED *sigh* you can imagine my lesson for today! 

Please pop across to check out Karen's photo this week. I wonder how she managed this weeks subject!

In crafting news I have been working on some stuff ready for an all day crop I'm hosting in a few weeks, as soon as I can I'll share them with you. In the meantime a lovely lady who comes to my crops (and happens to live opposite me) started a blog a few months ago, yesterday she posted a fantastic heart frame made up of tons of butterflies. It's here if you would like to have a look.

Thanks for stopping by.

Well it feels like the summer holidays never happened *laugh*.

It's been all systems go, three of them back to school, me back to work and can you beleive it homework on his second day back for number 3 son!! 

This week I'm enjoying Shimelle's camera school posts. I love being behind a camera but find the technical side baffles me at times, (Karen is always on hand to give me some advise thankfully). So after reading Shimelle's post tonight I thought 1'd share some photos I took one day in the holidays when we were out. 

I need to explain that when I take a bunch of photos, there are always ones that are out of focus, ones that are too light, too dark, washed out....and so. From 100 photos there is only ever a handful that I like and maybe only one that I really like!! May this be because I have the wrong settings on the camera....so so guilty of this one....or because I'm trying to get a creative shot......This particular day I was in experimenting mood.

Out of focus, over exposed and no heads....good start.....this was the first photo of the bunch. Further adjustments were made. Camera settings checked and cool bag moved, repositioned and camera precariously balanced.

 Oddly I rather like this one........still no heads though!!

and then there's this one. This was after much faffing around and the amused looks on their faces from laughing at me running from the camera's timer so I could try to be in the photos. Eventually I was reminded that I have a remote control!!!! say no more!!!

My photo challenge this week is food.....so I need to get my thinking cap on.

Before I go I wonder if you have seen the giveaway over on Sarah's blog.

and they lived happily ever after!

It's time for my photo of the week - this weeks subject was Bokeh and would you be surprised if I said I hadn't managed to complete the challenge.....my apologies to Karen.

In case you fancy having a go, I found this great tutorial.

In the absence of photos I have managed a layout, based (loosely) on Shimelle's sketch of the week and in keeping with her wedding week. 

Not the best photo of us, but the best of a bad bunch......taken by H at a family wedding earlier in the year. 

The journaling is on the back and refers to our 13 years of marriage and 22 years of togetherness. Attending a wedding is certainly a reminder of my own day and you know the best thing about a wedding is that you know "everyone loves a wedding"........ well at least I do!!

I'm loving this blogger makeover, it seems a lot easier to navigate and says I can have extra large photos.....will they be nice and clear I wonder!?

It's all back to normality this week, with both school and work....huh...and I'm not looking forward to either!