I finally caved - I have Pro Markers!

I bought my eldest a couple of sets of Letraset Pro Markers for Christmas along with a Manga drawing book.  He has had great fun with them, and it has been very difficult not to wrench them from his hands and try them myself - oh the self-control!

Well, on Friday the boys were at a rugby course with Northampton Saints at Franklin Gardens in Northampton, and when I was pottering, killing time, I found a Hobbycraft there.  I circled the store, getting every closer to the Pro Markers ...... finally I bought a couple of sets - Stamping 1 and Stamping 2.  Just to see, you understand.  When I got home, I went on to order a set of skin tone pens and another set of 12 and a blender pen.  And how do I justify all this?  Well, the husband just treated himself to an i-pad 2.  A few pens?  Only my due!

Bo Bunny tags

Inpsired by yesterday's bit of scrapping, I looked at the pile of scraps on my desk and decided to make some tags with the left overs.  In fact, I went further and made a couple of tag cards.

I dug out a Sizzix original die, which is a jumbo tag die, and punched two tags and two tag cards out of a beautiful blue cardstock I had cut into three 12x4 strips.  To make a tag card, you have to fold the cardstock in half and line it up on the die so that there is still a fold when you remove it - this means flattening off the top of the tag, but it's a small price to pay.

The tags were very quick and easy - paper offcuts, a touch of bling, stickers and ribbon and hey presto.  The narrow ribbons I used were a freebie from a company called A Trip Down Memory Lane - they always pop in a few lengths of ribbon to coordinate with bits in your order.  Another company who do that are Craft Obesessions - but with them it's a couple of lengths of Basic Grey fibres.  I don't really use fibres, but when they come I always wish I did!

Well, here are three tags/tag cards, which took all of about 20 minutes between them.  I think I will put them in a drawer and get them out in November when I will need a bit of sunshine!

Cleo Park

Last year we went to Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt for a week at the end of May/start of June.  While we were there, we decided to visit a water park called "Cleo Park".  It was immense fun - but I think health & safety was not something anybody thought about in its operation - lots of very large water slides, with very few visible safety precautions!  Still, the boys had a lot of fun.  The pharonic styling was fabulous - tall statues at the entrance, water slides that dropped out of pyramids, down pyramids, and slides going round and round snakes/scorpions.  I've scrapped most of the beach photos from that holiday but hadn't done these, so when I saw the Bo Bunny Barefoot and Bliss collection, it was an ideal opportunity.

Killing two birds with one paper collection, as it were, I did three layouts for the Scrapbook Express August competition, which was called S.P.L.A.S.H.  There were various requirements, including the requirement to use something that started out wet (not adhesive) ie paint/ink/mist etc.  I am quite pleased with how these turned out, but I think the "cleo park" layout is my favourite, just because the title looks so nice on the old Sassafrass label!  I have bought a few sheets of these lovely cardstock labels from old lines at bargain prices, and find they mix with all sorts of more recent releases.

What do you think?

The blue grotto

We've just come back from our holiday in Rome and Sorrento in Italy. I took over 500 photos (I was very restrained!) so I have lots to scrap.  Ruins and the Vatican, Pompeii, Herculaneum, Vesuvius and Capri.  Lots and lots of blue skies.  It was very hot - by my standards anyway!  I've ordered my first batch of photos from Snapfish (I load all of my pics there, it's nice to know they are secure, just in case) and I am looking forward to cracking open some of the paper collections I have accumulated recently!  This first batch are mostly one or other or both of the kids, and a few other things, like a sequence of photos up and down the chairlift at Anacapri, on, not surprisingly, Capri.  (BTW I will not make a special effort to go back to Capri, lovely though it is;  it is far too crowded, and it's a bit of a rip-off, even by Italian standards).  One other print I have ordered in a fair size is of the blue grotto.  This is an underground cave, where the water shines the most wonderful shade of blue.  Getting in is a bit hairy, someone has to row you in and you have to lie flat on the bottom of the boat if you don't want the rocks to rip off anything sticking out!  I have no idea how I'm going to scrap it, but it will be fun trying.  I might go for a black cardstock combined with some Bo Bunny - need to match it up.  Anyway, here's the pic - what do you think?

Is anybody out there?

Well, this is the third blog I've had.  I used to be a pretty regular blogger, but life intervened and I deleted the previous ones.  However, in the next three months I should have some time to myself again and thought I would have another go!  I have a pretty full schedule with a full time job (during school term-time), two boys to run to various activities, a house to run and (at the moment) a course which they said would take about 240 hours of my time over the year.  Yeah, right.  Second year-long course in a row, too.  Talk about a glutton for punishment!  But, I've not had enough time for creating, so I won't be signing up for another one in a hurry!

So, what do I do?  I used to be a cross-stitcher before I decided that babies and needles didn't mix.  I made cards for sale for a while, then discovered scrapbooking.  I still make cards, but mostly as a disciplined way to used up all those scraps left over from my scrapping!  I love to take photos, too, but again, not enough time as a rule to do as much as I used to. 

This time I'm hoping to blog at least once a week, sometimes more - we will see how it goes.

In the mean time, here's one of my more recent layouts, done for a competition at Scrapbook Express - a recipe based competition, so not necessarily the things I would always put together, but I think it works!