Sarah's cards January Challenge

Sarah's cards has a sketch challenge every month, I usually do the challenge but often forget to post it and upload it to the blog..... but not this time!

This is the sketch

and this is the page I came up with.....

Yet another Harry Potter Studio Tour layout, this time showcasing 3 of the animal actors... the rat and the toad were actually in the films.... really interesting learning about all the work involved with filming and training these clever creatures.

Miniowner's January Sketch Challenge

You may have noticed that I am joining in a few different things this year, 2014 is a year of trying to ....

• do some more blogging ... I hope to manage at least 2 posts a week, I know everyday wouldn't be realistic for me
• try a few new things, I tried out for a DT this month, didn't get in but I tried and that is half the fun, I want to dabble in Project Life, try out making a mini book or two, try some altered art and some more messy stuff.... different things whilst keeping it fun!
• buy less stash and use more..... I am not going to buy another piece of scrapping paper until I have made at least 50 layouts....I can't put myself on a complete stash ban as that would be too hard! Having said that I have only bought one lot of craft items and have been very good at not spending money so far this year.
• join in more fun bloggy type events like Abi's time for tea and 1P20W, I know there are more 'blog goings on' out there so I may partake of some this year
• complete more challenges.... so far I have joined in with the challenges on UKS, I have completed a Scrapology Challenge and I have other challenges in the pipeline. Today I am taking part for the first time with Miniowner's January Sketch Challenge.

This is the sketch

this is my page, slightly altered and flipped to make a layout that will go with the page called stirring the Christmas Pudding that I shared yesterday.

(For some reason I seem to have got a bit of grass on the page.... not sure how though but it isn't on the layout must have blown onto the paper when I took the photo)

Simple Recipes January

UK Scrappers is full of inspiration, just looking through the gallery I guarantee you will find several pages to add to your Pinterest boards. The UKS organisers are constantly striving to encourage us to scrap more and there are numerous free classes/challenges/ideas easily accessible by everyone.

Simple Recipes has been up and running for a couple of years now, in fact I made a page following the class back in June 2012 which can be seen here .  This year for the first time you can collect 30 points for completing the challenge, which is great encouragement for points collecting teams.

These are the colours chosen for this month

January's class in full can be found here with a downloadable PDF including a sketch, and some 'added ingredient ideas'. These extras include using a large format photograph (or a group of photos) and altering an alphabet.

I chose an unloved chipboard alphabet, sitting unused for so long it had lost it's adhesiveness (is that even a word?)

I covered each alpha in red ink, sprinkled on some clear embossing powder, dusted down the heat gun and voila a re-vamped set of letters!

I didn't have one large photo so I used 4, I struggled to use the purple colour most of all but managed it in the end.  A real challenge but one I really enjoyed. The page also fits a JOT challenge about layering a title on a photograph.

Time for tea

 source

Welcome to my first 'time for tea', a monthly Meme from Abi over at Creating Paper Dreams. Such an English idea, grabbing a cuppa and sitting down for a good natter.  I would seriously love to meet up with a blog friend or two in 'real' life and indulge myself in a chat and a mug of something refreshing, but for now, we will gather here.

The last time I met with some blog friends was in November and one of our favourite beverages was this....

Originally discovered (by me) at the Bloggers Weekend in November, thanks to Jacky. So will you join me in reminiscing about past retreats or perhaps in planning for the next one? I have another weekend to look forward to at Grafham in March and I am also hoping to be going again in November! Thanks to Sandie.

As we drink our mugs of tea (I have lots of different tea, don't worry if you don't fancy the Vanilla Earl Grey!) or a cup of coffee, I will offer you some of my homemade pineapple, carrot and cranberry muffins, still warm from the oven. 

I am feeling happy to have you here and I have enjoyed myself, shame you have to go really. I hope we can get together again soon xxx

Sharing Scrapbook pages on Sunday

This week's challenge on UKS was 

• use an outside photograph
• use some triangles
• use either layers or a cluster
• and use at least 3 of these colours

I decided to combine the weekly challenge with the Scrapology B is for Badge challenge using this fabby sketch....

This is the page I came up with.....

difficult to see the colours used but the paper matting the photo is actually red, honest and it has triangles on it which you can probably just make out! I have lots of layers using up lots of scrap bits of paper and only used a whole 12 x 12 for the background.  I had a couple of badges that seemed to fit the theme of the photo one was advertising a drink but I blacked out the wording under 'get lost' and the other badge simply says 'naughty boy'!

Journal Your Christmas pages 21 to 24

A few more pages today....

slightly off topic for day 21 I talked about my annual purchase of the radio times so I can plan my Festive TV

On the 22nd I told the story of my cousins 2 children who were set a challenge to buy food for £5 to show them how expensive it is to buy food and understand that some people do not have much money.  They ended up using their own money to buy the food and donated to a local shelter.... it really did warm my heart!

Slightly odd photos of the childrens stockings hung on their bedroom doors for December 23rd

This last page is also my House Challenge entry over on UKS which was simply 'twas the night before'.  I stuck with tradition and used it to describe Christmas Eve and how we usually have people over but only one family could make it this year.

Sharing Scrapbook pages on Sunday

Another week means another weekly challenge on UKS and this weeks was fantastic.  We had to choose 3 elements from the following...

1. hot tropical or warm summer colours
2. ribbons or flowers
3. birds or butterflies
4. sparkle and bling
5. break open your new stash after the holidays
6. use your favourite photo from last year (2013)
7. ice cream
8. sand or water
9. frame the photo
10. scraplift from someone else's work and please do credit them when you post your LO picture

Initially I thought this might be hard as it struck me as being a bit girlie for some reason.....but of course it isn't and there is something there for everyone.

I love sketches but without them I love a good scraplift so that was my first choice made, then I used a favourite photograph from 2013, which I framed and I also managed to add a flower and a bird into the mix!

This is the fabulous page by Jo that I scraplifted

I had added this page to pinterest as I have some of the same papers and as I really love Jo's work I kept pretty  close to the original as you can see below....