Kits, Kits And More Kits...

First - thanks to all of you who left comments on where I could find the AC albums yesterday, you're the best :) I should now have a blue 8,5x11 portrait album on the way to me.

And while we're talking stash (and you're all sooo good at finding supplies) - has anyone seen anywhere with BOTH the 2 inch and the 3 inch Woodware Scalloped Circle punches in stock please? I have just spent a very frustrating 30 minutes with my friend Google. I get excited as I find one in stock...only to see the same site is sold out of the other size. Nowhere seem to have both in stock. Very frustrating!! So if anyone has seen them around I'll be soo happy if you would post in the comment section. Thank you :)

Now kits...I signed up for the "My Freedom" class by Shimelle which starts on Monday. So I have my album (well, not here, but at least sorted) and I was determind to use my exisiting stash...that is until Shimelle announced that she was going to have some kits for sale to go with the class too. One look at the previews and I couldn't resist LOL! I was instantly drawn to the middle one. Green...hrm...I wonder why :) Are you taking the class too? Did you buy a kit? Which one did you go for? I'd love to hear :)

And talking about kits, I just received another kit from Shimelle in the post which has made me really eager to start to scrap with it. But this is what I want (need!) those scallop punches for. So it's a bit like ----> aaaah at the moment LOL!

[Supplies: "Me Ro-Bot" by Robin Carlton at Sweet Shoppe Designs (SSD)]

Can't Wait...

...for the "My Freedom" class to start :) But I need to do something about getting an album. Asap. I really love the American Crafts ones...you know the chipboard looking ones with the cloth spine in different colours. Can anyone help with where they sell these AC albums in the UK please? I'm pretty sure I want the 8,5x11 format...maybe portrait...possibly landscape. If you have seen them for sale on-line anywhere - please post a link in the comments. Thank you soooo much :)

Oh and I almost forgot, I was working with the Karissa kit yesterday and I have finished the card too now:

Do you think the summer weather that finally arrived yesterday actually stayed? Oh no...within one hour in the evening the weather went from blue sky, sunshine and 24 degrees to extreme darkness, 16 degrees, and such rain that it even affected our TV picture (which it only does very, very rarely in extreme weather conditions).

Summer...

Today it FINALLY feels like summer! Yay! The weather both in May and June has been...well let's just say it hasn't even FELT like it's summer. Cold, dark, rainy...

Today the sun is out and it's hot, hot, hot... Of course we can never be quite happy though, can we? LOL! Sun and hot weather means my little scrapping room turns into a sauna. It's nearly unbearable to be in my little room. *sigh* Anyway, I'm not going to complain as it's soooo nice to finally see some sun :)

I must show you this kit which I have been playing with today:

It's called "Karissa" by Mindy Terasawa and you can get it at Designer Digitals. I knew I had the perfect photo to go with it so I made a layout straight away this morning. I just love the pretty swirly flourishes in this kit :)

I'm also making a card with the same kit. Though it's not finished yet and I doubt I will get the chance to finish it today, but hopefully by tomorrow I might get the chance to finish it off.

Taking A New Class...

Making male cards (or indeed buying presents for males!) is sooo hard. I'm just off to post the birthday card below after I have written this blog post. In this case I knew what to do straight away. He likes to play the guitar and I'd seen the perfect idea for a card in an issue of "Card Creations". My version ended up like this:

I was pretty pleased with the result as everything is freehanded. And even better - it was made using cardstock scraps only! That is such a great feeling :) And you know what? My old chalk palettes even came out of the cupboard for this project. Yay LOL!

...and talking about projects. As if I haven't got enough already, I signed up for a new class. I must have taken about 10 classes by Shimelle and when she announced last week that the sign-up would open on Saturday for a new class, I of course couldn't resist signing up for this one too. :) I think on my walk to the post office I need to figure out when on earth I will have time to do it LOL!

Keep Practising...

It feels rather unreal for me to think that about 2 months ago I'd never digi scrapped. It feels like I have been doing it longer than that. I think with taking the courses...well, it's made it a bit more "intense" and I have practised more than I probably would have done otherwise. You know, made more of an "effort" to practise...rather than just letting it take it's own time.

[Supplies: 'Dear Diary' by Robin Carlton, Melissa Bennett & MandaBean, 'Skippy Doo Da' by Lauren Grier & Julie Billingsley, 'A Springy Kind Of Fling' by Lauren Grier & Julie Billingsley,
'Foamy Stampy Alpha' by Traci Reed, Template by Aggie Aviso ...all from SSD]

I find both with paper and digital scrapping it's easy to find a "style" that is very "you" and you tend to stick to it (with a few variations of course). So one thing which I've discovered while digital scrapping is templates. It's a nice thing to use every now and then. I think it helps you try new ideas, new placements and just fuels your creativity :)

Working Through The Challenges...

Every Wednesday we get a challenge in the digital scrapping class...it's to help us practise what we have just learnt and to come up with our own ideas for using the techniques.

This is a layout done using the exclusive (to the digi class) "Carnival" kit from SSD. We also had a list of things to do/use/try and had to pick a minimum of two of them. I was intending to pick two but I think I ended up using about 4 things from the list. I really enjoyed this challenge and can't wait for the one next week :)

Alton Towers...

I have a little confession to make. I have never been to Alton Towers. Yes, it's true - never been. People haven't quite believed me when I have said that in the past - never ever been. Until Wednesday that is. The place surprised me a bit. It was like a normal funfair (in terms of the amount of rides etc) but very spread out. A huge place with lots of big areas looking more like forests/parks that you had to walk through to get to the next lot of attractions. A little unusual I thought. God job they had the Skyride that can take you from one part to another a bit quicker. LOL!

We nearly didn't get there tough... We had a long car drive in the morning and about half way through the sky opened and the rain was pouring down like crazy. When we had 5 mins left, the weather was still the same. Not a little bit of rain but just totally pouring down. Even though we'd driven for a long time to get there and we were so near our destination, we were actually thinking of turning around and going home. We decided to brave the weather though and it calmed down quite a lot after a while.

All in all we had a really nice (but long & tiring! LOL!) day out and I think it's definitely somewhere I would go again. Though it will never beat Liseberg for me :)

Cadbury World

Wow it's been some buys days. Ross had two days off and we had some fun things planned. On Tuesday we went to Cadbury World (I SO want to write "Cadbury'S World" as that seems to make more sense and that's what I thought it was called...but it seems like it's "Cadbury World"...which sounds a little strange to me LOL!) We'd never been before and it was a quite fun experience. Lots of reading on signs (think: museum) and loads of videos to watch. Maybe too many videos really.

It was really fun to watch the factory bit, to see how all the bars got packaged and boxed up. Unfortunately the cameras were forbidden in this bit so I have no photos of this. I did get one at the end though where we could see some handmade chocolates being made.
You got given a few chocolate bars as you went along the "tour" (yum!) and it was all a nice experience. Though maybe after smelling chocolate for about 3 hours it was starting to feel a tiny bit (only a tiny bit!) sickly. On the outside they had this place called "Essence"...some more video material and then you each got given a cup full of melted chocolate and your choice of treat. I'll tell you...melted chocolate is nice but when you got to the bottom of the cup you felt like your mouth was glued together with melted chocolate and it was almost hard to swallow. LOL!
You also got a free pass to the "staff shop" where the public normally can't get access. Most people seemed to spend lots money in the Cadbury shop at the end of the tour. I don't think they could find the staff shop. It was NOT easy. We decided to see if we could find the staff factory shop anyway. We had a poor (very poor!) map of how to find it at the back of the pass and it was not easy. We walked and walked. Wondering if we should turn back. No signs at all. Were we even heading the right way? I guess they wanted as few people as possible to bother going to the factory shop! It was miles away and really hard to find. But what a goldmine when you did! Huge (and I mean HUGE!) bags for 50p. Chocolate bars starting at 10p. Bags of 20 (or was it 25?) big Cadbury Creme Eggs for a pound etc etc. People were buying several carrier bags full each!! We decided to not go mad and only spent £6...

"Trying {So} Hard" + Decorating Your Own Buttons Layout Class...

Please feel free to use these instructions to make your own layout. You are free to link to this page from any forum etc if you wish. Please do NOT copy this information and/or photos to use for your own classes/forums/webpages without permission.

Supplies needed:
Tinkering Ink – Al Fresco – Pano Di Tavola (Tablecloth)
Tinkering Ink – Al Fresco – Grigette (Snails)
Tinkering Ink – Al Fresco – Strisce (Stripes)
Tinkering Ink – Al Fresco –Tabs & Tags
White cardstock (I used Bazzill)
American Crafts – Thickers – Platforms, Black #42813
American Crafts – Thickers – Gift Box, Green #42762
Doodlebug – Teen Girl – Sugar Coated Rub-Ons
Three flat matte buttons (I used a white, baby blue and baby pink)
Junkitz photo anchors and brads (two of each)

Also needed:
Glue (I use Herma removable)
Black journaling pen
Scalloped scissors
Three small clear jewels (optional)
Three small green/peridot jewels (optional)
Charcoal Chalk Inkpad (optional)

Start by cutting your white cardstock to size. I scrap in true A4 size, so I cut mine to 29,7x21 centimetres (cm). Please feel free to adapt to another layout size if you prefer (remember: you will need to adjust the size of your photos too if you do this).

Pick your photos. I’m using three 10x7,5 cm landscape photos. This meant I could print two photos to a 15x10 cm (6x4) sheet.

Take your stripy paper and cut two strips. Use your scalloped scissors on the top edge of one of them if you wish, ink the edges and attach according to the photo below. You will need to overlap your photos slightly (or cut off the excess).

Cut a strip from the “Tablecloth paper”, 22x1,5 cm, and angle one of the ends. Cut a similar strip from the “Snails” paper, 19,5x1 cm, again angle one end. Ink both pieces and attach, slightly overlapping.

Now, time to have fun and decorating our own buttons. Pick your rub-ons and cut them out. Rub onto your buttons. It’s a lot easier here if you make sure that your buttons are temporarily attached to your working surface (Blu Tack works great!) otherwise they will move when you try and add the rub-ons.

Pick a tag and a circle that you like from the die-cut sheet and do your journaling. Attach to the right, below your photos.

Glue your buttons in place near the end of your paper strips. Then attach the brads & photo anchors at the top right and top left of your photo strip.

Add your title.

(Optional) Attach a few jewels onto some of your chipboard letters.

…and your layout is done!

I hope you enjoyed my class! Wishing you lots of fun creating your own version!

My Latest Class...

As those of you who visit my blog regularly probably know, each month I do a step-by-step on-line layout class for Mel & Jill at A trip Down Memory Lane. I design the classes so that even a scrapbook beginner should be able to follow them. They have lots of step-by-step photos and even details of what size to cut your papers to and how far from the edge of your layout to place them etc (if you need this - of course you can just take inspiration from it and then do your own thing should you prefer that).

June's class has just gone live. So if you have a moment, please do go and take a look. It's all free to do so anyone can take part :) Thanks for visiting :)