Shimelle's online crop party

Firstly sorry I haven't been here for ages I have been away on holiday and haven't had a chance to catch up since I returned, but will do soon.

Events this weekend have forced me back to blogland, as I have been joining in with Shimelle's first ever online crop party. It has been such a great weekend for me and I have worked really hard to try and join in lots of the challenges though I have missed out several!! Thank you Shimelle for everything you did to put this crop together even down to emailing me from your train journey I do appreciate it!

Do go over to Shimelle's blog and see for yourself what all the challenges were and more importanly what everyone has created as the other scrappers are just awesome! I literally drool over some of their amazing layouts and I am completely in the shadow of their greatness! Having said that i am really pleased that I had a quiet weekend, with lots of sunshine and managed not only taking some pics but also scrapping them already! I just need to keep on scrapping and I am sure my confidence and ability will improve.

The first challenge I did was using 4 patterned paper squares as the background

a nice simple one to begin with. Really want to scrap some of the school photo's as well as having them on the wall.

Second challenge I did was a layout including handwriting

I am sooo pleased with this one. I used a favourite photo from last year in Florida and just managed to find all the papers and bits to go with it. Quite bright but it seems to work and even DD likes this one! Using lots of things in my stash too and finally used one of my Martha Stewart journalling tags!

My third layout was about my neighbourhood

This is absolutely up to date as it is the post match photograph from DS's local footie team, his last match of the season and a win!! Again I used lots of untouched stash so feeling really pleased. On the back is a photocopy of the photo with all the boys names and some journalling.