NSD and creative craft world challenge

Shimelle's first challenge was to 'scrap in pink' and I thought I probably wouldn't manage this one as I am not really a pinky kinda girl. However when I was looking through my Olympic photos I realised that actually quite a few feature pink!  In fact I haven't used as many red white and blue papers as I thought I would so they will have to be used for something else now.  I cut the 4x6 photos down to various sizes so i scrapped 'smaller photos' and this is the page I made,,,

 For the next page I used the Creative Craft World Sketch for May

and created another Olympic page to co-ordinate with the hockey one this time featuring Basketball.  I used 4 square photos, inked over a doily to create the circle effect and I made similar embellishments to those on the hockey page (with circle punches and netting fabric) so I managed to get fabric on 2 pages with the addition of more brads thus completing another challenge.

NSD more Shimelle challenges

How I have loved scrapping this week... it was great to have a long weekend with the Bank Holiday then I only work a few hours on a Tuesday and Wednesday is my day off.....perfect!

I bravely tried the use mist and use paint challenges and attempted to go a bit arty on this page with more Olympic photos..........

to be honest I am not sure that it worked!  I don't think I like this page but at least I tried something different!

Next up I used a sketch from Sketchbook365 the Scrap 365 challenge blog (just got the latest issue delivered today so will be indulging in an inspiring read this weekend no doubt)

I adapted the sketch to use larger photographs and to record our experience of using games mobility at the Olympic Games and the journalling expresses my gratitude to the wonderful Games Makers and the games mobility team who really looked after us and were so helpful.

I have left out almost all of the swirly elements and the flower and butterfly embellishments (I have featured umbrellas instead!!) but I think you can still see the original sketch in mine and it fits Shimelle's challenge about recording gratitude.

NSD Challenges

So obviously throughout the week I had to make more pages and the next challenge I tried was to make a mood board, a totally new concept to me, I guess I do get inspiration and ideas from various places and media but have never tried putting anything together before.  I collected some things on pinterest but had also got ideas and my scraplifted page from the Scrapbook Remix Class that I am retaking at the moment so I wasn't able to pin any of those. The power of 3 challenge is also met in this LO although I could have put almost any page up for this challenge as I am definitely a cluster of 3 kinda girl these days! This is another Harry Potter page talking about wigs and make up from the films.

Next up keeping in the HP theme was a page created from a themed Harry Potter scrapbook paper.  This proved a challenge in itself to use as it had a large picture on the paper and made placement of my photos really difficult.  So I cut the paper up, removing the picture completely (hoping I will use it elsewhere in my HP album) and remodelled it so there are actually 3 pieces of the original, stuck back together slightly differently. I needed to fill some gaps so used an embossing folder to create the coggy journalling card, some cog dies to fancy cut  (another challenge) some cogs and gears, I kinda fussy cut the photos to get rid of distracting background colours, punched a few stars, photocopied something on the printer and used up a 3d border sticker that I have had forever....all stuck onto a heavy weight gruesome patterned paper that I would never have used!  So I definitely 'stretched my stash' as this was the ultimate stash buster for tools and paper goods as I used lotsa scraps too.

NSD the Knight Bus

On Bank Holiday Monday I did persuade (and it took quite a bit of persuading!) all the family to go out to a local National Trust property for a walk, some fresh air and to enjoy the good weather whilst it lasted.  The previous post shows a photo I took whilst there.

Of course I had to continue with my NSD challenges and I decided to make a double page as this is something I rarely do but was something Shimelle had asked for here.  

I had these photos of the Knight Bus taken at the Harry Potter Studios and really loved them so a larger LO was perfect for showcasing them. Can you see the 3 little black and white buses?  These were actually cut from the side of a box of tissues and mounted on acid and lignin free paper before being added to the pages, which I think definitely meets the 'use unexpected supplies' challenge.

On Tuesday I decided to construct my page for the UKS weekly challenge which was a masculine page, with added flowers made using this sketch

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

I really liked all the combination of all the blue with my son just gazing out over the sea in Antigua whilst on a boat trip.  I copied Shimelle's idea of combining lots of embellishments by creating a banner (I have buttons, tags, twine, chipboard and gems) therefore 'lining up embellishments' and I 'used brads' in the middle of each flower and on the punched turquoise border. So 2 more Shimelle challenges completed with this page.

How I wish I was back on that boat..... sigh........

May 10 FAMILY x 12 Blog Hop

Wow the last month has just flown by and here we are again hopping around the world to look at family photos..... if you haven't joined us before please pop over to Margie's blog who created the idea and she will tell you all the details.  But in a nutshell a small but dedicated group of us get together once a month and share photos of our families so we have a record of the changes and for me personally it is a rare photo of me and an uncommon snapshot of us all together!

This is my hot of the press photo only taken this weekend as I realised I didn't have a family photo to share.... thank goodness for self timer.  Taken at a local National Trust house in a quiet spot as it was busy this Bank Holiday weekend.

Please take some time to visit this months participants

Margie http://xnomads.typepad.com/blog

Ruth http://www.chattycraftyartypig.blogspot.com

Patricia  http://patoliveira.wordpress.com/ 

Louise http://www.scrapbook-me.blogspot.co.uk/

Diana www.thestudio56.com

Welcome to Diana who joins us for the first time and I am sooo pleased that Louise is back for her 2nd family blog hop.

Looking forward to seeing all the photos xxx

NSD with Echo Park

Over at the Echo Park blog they organised 4 challenges and I managed 3 of them and they all had to be completed by Sunday.

First up was a summer card, so I created something incredibly simple......

The 2nd challenge called for a LO of Love so I made this page about my family using all Echo Park products... I am a bit or a collector of EP papers but it felt really good to actually use some of EP note to self finally!  This page also fits 2 challenges from Shimelle which are to scrap about me and using favourite papers.  Over at SJ Crafts they suggested we make a page using one manufacturer and both these pages fit that challenge.

The last challenge was 10x the love, where you had to use 10 of something and I opted for 10 different opapers but got a bit carried away and used 12!! I scraplifted a page I made a few weeks (see it here) ago so this fitted another Shimelle challenge to 'scraplift yourself'.... I am hoping it is ok to scraplift yourself when you originally scraplifted Shimelle!! 

National Scrapbooking Day (NSD)

I attended my local crop again on Saturday which fitted in perfectly with National Scrapbooking Day... what better place to be!!  It was great to be with the lovely girls all scrapping such beautiful pages.

There have been lots of blog posts from many sources around NSD and I decided to try out some of the challenges that took my fancy.  So at the crop I decided to scrap some Olympic photos from last year....

On both of these pages I added some freebie digital elements that were given away  here  as part of the NSD celebrations, by Studio Calico.  I loved them so much that I printed some off in the morning and took them to the crop to use and to show everyone how awesome they were! So obviously I had to enter the Studio Calico 'mix in a digital element' challenge with these pages and they also fit the challenge to use 5 different patterned papers.  This is my first time entering anything on Studio Calico but I have followed the blog for ages as it is packed full of ideas.

Another blog I have followed for ever is Shimelle's, she is a scrapbooking Godess and I love almost everything she creates.  For NSD, Shimelle totally rocked my world by blogging a total of 24 challenges and I set myself the challenge of trying to complete them all (some are definitely more challenging than others!!).
So my first LO is for the 'make it sparkle' challenge as I have added sparkly brads and fussy cut some glittered paper into circles.
The second page about the opening ceremony (journalling  is added post photo) tells the story of how proud I was that we hosted the Olympics and wished I had been there on the opening night... these pics were taken from the television! This page was my entry for the UKS weekly challenge to scrap an achievement/something we are proud of/ a butterfly..... the pic on UKS has the butterflies this was obviously taken before oops!....and yellow. I am submitting this one for 'use 4x6 photos'.