May Craft Challenge–Scrapbooking

So, after sewing and photography challenges, I thought I would set myself a scrapbooking challenge for may.  Actually, it’s challenges.  I belong to a team (Scrap Magic) on www.ukscrappers.co.uk, and we collect points each month on the number of pages we finish.  If we join with the challenges, we can gain more points.  I always mean to join in the challenges, but don’t very often get around to it.  SO this month, I am going to join in with as many scrapbooking challenges as I can.

I am going to start with UKScrappers challenges:

UKS WEEKLY CHALLENGE
UKS MONTHLY CHALLENGE
SIMPLE RECIPES
HAVE I GOT SCRAP FOR YOU
OLD STASH NEW STASH SU
STASH BUSTERS 2013

Then there are other site challenges.  I have just rediscovered http://counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/.  This site encourages you to ‘forge’ a kit from your own stash following a commercially available kit.  Great for those of us who have too much stash!  I had a go yesterday at counterfeiting the April kit.

Here’s the original, from Gossamer Blue.  I hadn’t heard of this company before, but they do gorgeous kits!  This was their March main kit.

Here’s my take on it:

It’s amazing how much better I like these papers now they are in a kit!  And I dug out my box of die cuts to find the embellishments. 

Rooting around the Gossamer Blue design team I came across this page by Nicole Harper:

which I unashamedly scraplifted yesterday:

I loved the banner flags in rainbow colours, so just had to scraplift almost identical!  Actually, all of these papers come from my scraps, and not from the kit!  The photo is a group of us who attended the same antenatal classes some 25 years ago.  I came across this photo from a get together in 2003, and decided to find all the other photos over the years, and scrap them all.

Back later with more challenges I want to take part in.  If you know of any, please leave me a link!

Photo a Day–final 2

Two more photos to show you:

Yesterday I went for a walk through the ‘twittens’.  It’s an path that goes in between some back gardens.  I know that these are called lots of different names (alleyways, gullies for example).  Twitten is a local Sussex word.  What do you call them?

 

This morning has been lovely and sunny so I have been out in the garden planting some daffodils and plants I’ve bought recently.

 

SO that’s the end of my April Photo A Day challenge.  I have really enjoyed it, and found myself reaching for my camera much more often, especially in the garden!  April has been a good month to take photos as the evenings are getting longer, and the weather has been much brighter.  Hopefully, it will get me back in the swing of taking photos!

Come back tomorrow and I will tell you what my May challenge is going to be.

Photo a Day April 2013 (21st to 28th)

Working backwards from today:

This morning we went for a lovely walk up to Chanctonbury Ring.  The walk up to the top takes you through these trees.  It’s a lovely walk, rewarded by lovely views to the North and South at the top.

Yesterday (Saturday) I was ironing in the dining room.  I couldn’t resist taking this view out of the window.  That’s forsythia in the foreground, then red pieris, then orange berberis.  It looks fabulous when the sun shines!

On Friday I spent most of the day sewing.  My Tuscan Village quilt is nearly finished!  I’ll show you next week.

On Thursday, while driving along the seafront coming back from shopping, I noticed a sea mist blowing in.  So I took Merlin down to the beach for a quick walk and to take some photos.  Can you see more big cranes in this photo?  They are on a hotel/apartment building site near the centre of town.

No photo a day would be complete without one of my handsome dog Merlin!

After decorating the porch inside, we realised that these rather splendid oak front doors with the stained glass are going very rotten.  We’ve had several occasions recently where they have swollen and have stuck fast, meaning we have not been able to get in.  Time for new doors? (By the way we don’t know why we have got 2 doors!)

Couldn’t really do photo a day without mentioning exercise!  I am far too shy to show you what I look like in my gym clothes, so here’s a peek at my new trainers!  The brown flat loafers are my newest pair of shoes, but I ma still wearing the black boots above most days.

I do try to eat healthily, here’s a typical lunch.

Photo a Day–April 2013

Here’s some more photos:

Tuesday.  These polyanthus have flowered their socks off in my greenhouse for several weeks.  They are just going over now, but aren’t they lovely?

Wednesday.  remember those bananas we bought in Chichester?  Well, 2 of them made it into these scrummy banana muffins.  I’ve never made banana muffins before, but they went down a storm with the family.

Thursday.  Hurrah!  Blue skies at last!  The blue of the sky contrats brilliantly with the orange berberis flowers in my front garden.

Friday.  I took Merlin for a long walk along the beach.  It is quite a long time since I took photos on our local beach.

Today, Saturday.  Here’s a quick peek at the inside of my greenhouse right now.  I planted lots of vegetable seeds yesterday, and dug my vegetable patch in readiness.

Another class revisited

Have you done Shimelle’s class ‘The Perfect Collection’?  I am sure some of you will have, as I  ‘met’ most of my blog readers via a Shimelle class!  The class shows a way of using a collection of papers quickly and easily.  There is a video that shows how Shimelle made her pages, and a pdf that you can download with the cutting instructions.

Basically, you take a collection of papers (I used an older collection from Crate paper called ‘Story Teller’), and cut them up as per the detailed measurements.  You will have kept some back that you can use as backgrounds, and then you begin to layer and stick!

You end up with a selection of starting point pages like this:

I really like to use a collection when I am scrapping several pages of the same thing, eg, a holiday or event.  So I decided to do another old holiday with these.  This is a holiday in 1998 to Sidmouth in Devon.

We stopped in the New Forest for lunch at our favourite picnic spot, Rhinefield.

Friends of ours were holidaying nearby at the same time so we arranged to meet them at Lyme Regis.

We fell in love with Sidmouth!  This page has lots of journaling explaining why.

The folk festival was on while we there, a whole town filled with Morris Dancers!

Holidaying with children can be difficult and frustrating at times.  Reading my diary from the holiday I decided to record these frustrations on a page about the day we went to Lyme Regis and Lucy had the most almighty tantrum!

We had some really good day trips including this one to ‘Pecorama’ which is where the company make model trains.  There are model train exhibitions, miniature railway to ride on, crazy golf, face painting, play area and a whole load more!

I made 6 pages for my holiday album and have one page left over.  I did add some Basic Grey letter stickers, but no cardstock.

I used divided page protectors for the rest of the photographs and journaling and used up lots of the paper scraps and stickers.

So that’s another holiday scrapped, and another online class revisited! I enjoyed having a go at this, and  I really like the finished album. It was a bit weird starting with the pages – I usually start with the photos.  I will probably use this technique again, maybe making up a kit from my stash.

Photo of the day April 2013

My friend Tash keeps chickens, and bought me half a dozen freshly laid eggs when she came for the sewing day.  Look how dark this one is!  And it tasted absolutely delicious!  Thanks Tash!  Now I want some hens in my garden

Another business has failed.  Here’s the empty Blockbuster Video store in town.  Seems like we are all hiring DVDs and games online these days and from high street shops.  I know I do!  I have 2 DVDs per month from Love Film.  At the moment we are watching Jonathan Dimbleby’s 3 part series ‘Russia’.  Really enjoying it.

I am fascinated by cranes!  We have several building sites in Worthing at the moment, and I love to watch these tall cranes swinging around and moving things about the building site.  The structure in the foreground is our new yacht club, the crane is on a building site for new seafront flats.  Did you know that they don’t have men in the little cabin anymore, they are remotely controlled!  I’ll have to go back and get a better photo when the sun is out!

On Saturday morning I went to a sewing workshop ‘customising your wardrobe’ at Mazalino Designs.  It was fun to design cut and sew this lace collar, but I don’t think I will be wearing it!

Yesterday (Sunday) was warm and sunny!  YAY!  Has spring finally arrived?  We decided to go to Chichester for a wander, and coffee and cake.  On the way back to the car we walked through the last remains of the market.  We stopped to buy some bananas.  Look at this enormous lot!  Cost me £2, bargain!

Here’s another sign that the weather is better.  I have hung some washing out on the line today

Sewing Bee

Are you enjoying the new BBC tv programme ‘Sewing Bee’?  Each week a group of amateur sewers are given challenges – last week it was a to make a skirt, embellish the neckline of a broderie anglais top, and make a dress to fit a real life model.  One unlucky sewer is voted off each week, leaving the champion at the end of the series.  I love it!  The second part is on later so will be watching avidly!

It was my birthday recently, and look what I had as a present:

Yes, it is about time I had a new sewing machine.  My trusty old Frister and Rossman has done many thousands (maybe even millions) of miles of stitching since it was purchased in 1979!

Today I hosted my own sewing bee!  Well, it was a quilting bee really.  Tash and Burnice came armed with sewing machines, fabric, scissors and tape measures, and we managed to make 2 quilt tops for charity.  Nourished by copious mugs of tea, coffee, muffins and a short break for baked potatoes for lunch, we amazed ourselves at our progress!

Burnice had previously cut these 2” squares and sewn them together in 2’s.  Tash spent all day sewing these together, and look what she ended up with.  Isn’t it great?  All made with scraps from our scrap baskets.

We are going to back it with fleece and give it to our local children’s hospice.

Meanwhile, Burnice cut and I sewed these funky fabrics together to make a ‘Yellow Brick Road’ pattern quilt (pattern by Terry Atkinson). We loved the part when we placed our blocks on the floor and moved them about until we had them ‘arranged in a pleasing manner’.

Here’s Burnice ‘dashing about with the smoothing iron’!  She did most of the ironing by far while me and Tash sewed, and then went home to do a whole lot more!

Finally here’s a look at the gorgeous cushions and craft goodies my chums bought me for my birthday: