This is why I scrapbook...

Well I've been making a mini book for Shimelle's challenge (see her original post here), and I finally got it finished today. I've been away working this weekend so it's been a bit of a struggle to get it finished, and I've just been having a fight with blogger which wanted to rotate all my photos onto their side - grrr. But I've been determined to get it posted as I had a lot of fun making the album and want to show it off!

I decided my reasons for scrapbooking were:

1. For Love
2. To Preserve History
3. To Capture Moments for the Future
4. To be part of a Community (inc. Blog Love)
5. To be Creative (inc. Making Photos look Magical)
6. For Pretty Papers (and a good Excuse to buy them!)

The size is 4"x8", the covers are chipboard covered in papers, and the rest of the pages are card/paper/acetate. If you want to see more details of papers and embellishments I used see my post here from when I put them all together. I did include other bits from my stash too of course, especially some Anita's gold 'glitterations' lettering and a few sheets of My Mind's Eye 'Wild Asparagus' papers, both which I bought the other day and had to use straight away! (Except I've used a lot of the letters up on this project so of course I had to buy another pack!)

Here's the book:



(I was inspired to put a key on the front after reading a Copy+Paste blog post here, I have been working on a key necklace too which I shall post when finished!)



Journalling reads:

There are not enough words to say how much I love my family and my friends.
Some photos make my heart ache with it, and taking the time and care to scrapbook these helps me express how much I love you.



Journalling reads:

These photos are of my granny and grandad and my nanny and grampa, getting into taxis on their wedding days.
I love that scrapbooking has inspired me to copy their old photos and ask them about their experiences - I don't want their memories to be lost. I can't believe I might not have thought to get these, if it wasn't for my hobby. xxx



Journalling reads:

Without scrapbooking people may forget that we're all laughing because a donkey has just walked past the window!



Journalling (on little heart) reads:

SJ's blog taught me how to make this (arrow to button necklace pic - see my necklace blog post here)




Journalling (inside envelope) reads:

Even though I don't have many direct conversations with other scrapbookers I still feel part of a community, reading blogs helps me to learn and lets me know others share my passion!



SJ's blog also taught me how to make the flower above, see her post here.


Back cover:



I'm incredibly tired now so I'll leave it at that! Hope you like my book, if you like it enough to vote for it, there will be a chance to on Shimelle's blog http://www.shimelle.com/.

xxx

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lovely button necklace!

So I was just doing a bit of blog hopping, you know, when I was supposed to be doing some work, and I came across this post: http://scrappyfairy.blogspot.com/2010/01/quick-button-necklace-tutorial.html by the brilliant SJ who's blog I've been following for a while. This lady creates seriously pretty stuff. And when I saw this tutorial for a button necklace I just had to have one - right now!

Out came the button box (old ice cream tub!) and I delved through looking for suitable colours and sizes. Unfortunately my selection of big flat buttons was not vast, I seem to have mainly fiddly little ones or those which don't have holes through. But I managed to find enough in a pale pink / grey / teal colour range to put together. I managed to finish it in about 25 mins; this did involve a bit of huffing when my wire wasn't doing what I wanted it to! I don't think I've managed to capture how nice the colours are but here's some pics:

Thanks SJ for a great teach! Wearing stuff like this will help me fufill my 2010 word to be more 'vivid'. (See my post about that here.)

Anyway, should really do some work now!

x

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This is why I scrapbook?...

Ok, so a week or so ago I read Shimelle's latest cool idea - to get us scrapbooking about why we scrapbook. Or trying to explain it in another creative manner. I love the idea of trying to explain scrapbooking, as so few people know what I mean when I mention it, and even if I show them an album they still might not get why I require a whole scrap room to accomodate it! And it got me thinking about what it means to me. I lost my scrapbooking mojo last year, and only started to regain it when taking part in Shimelle's Blogging for Scrapbooker's class last autumn, and I'm worried I'll lose it again, even though I love it so when I have the bug and am producing pretty things. So I really want to delve into this thought and produce a mini album about it, and I am looking forward to seeing why others scrapbook. (If you want to see more about the project click here.)

One of things that Shimelle mentioned was trying to use those papers that you love but just don't want to use - come on people, what did we buy them for? So I grabbed on this for inspiration and chose these Papermania Secret Garden papers and acetates as a starting point. I am totally in love with little owls at the moment, I made an owl cushion for my friend for xmas (see here) and my little girl loves them too - calling them twit-twoos and shouting it out with a smile whenever she sees a pic of one. So this collection is very 'now' for me though I bought it a while ago:

I then made myself up a 'kit' which I had never thought of doing until I read Sarah Youde's article in issue 42 of Scrapbook Magazine. I always go through my stash to find colour / theme co-ordinating products, but not until I already have photos and a layout in mind. It was quite fun to get it all together pre-project, I have always wanted to buy a 'scrapbook kit' but haven't been able to justify it when I have so much stuff! So I've put together some owl / woodland / brown / green / beige / scrapbooking loving stash. Here's my stickers, buttons and other embellishments:

Some alpha stickers:

Some plain background papers:

8x8 patterned papers inc lots of 'Once upon a Time' by DCWV which is another collection I love but hardly ever use:

And some 12 x 12's:

And I've crammed it all into this Pizza box to keep it all together. Now I just need to start the project:

I put this together at the weekend, but then I was feeling ill and started to question whether I should be doing something like this when I still have so many 'normal' pages to catch up on after not doing hardly any last year. Then my friend Rosie said perhaps I should do it because it got me excited and that's the whole point isn't it? To have a passion and enjoy what you're doing? And then I read Sian's post about horsey which is totally unrelated to this project but made me laugh (read it here) and it re-itterated the 'lighten up Jennifer' message, so I've got my enthusiasm back now! Check back to see the finished project!

x

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Extended xmas

We didn't manage to get to Kent to see our family there until last weekend, so Christmas lasted until then for us! It was especially festive as they had tons of snow, we were a bit worried we might not make it there because of the weather but had to try as we wouldn't be able to get there for months otherwise because of work. And luckily we arrived there with no mis-haps and to see a beautiful white wonderland! I was in heaven as I love the snow and was gutted we had nothing but a dusting where I live!

It was also useful popping up there as I could stop off at my nan's and take some pics of the acrylic album which I made for her and gramps this xmas but forgot to snap! There's only a few photos as the lighting and background wasn't great but I was pleased to be able to show something of it on here as it took ages to finish!

Here's the cover:


It's a mini-book with photos from when me and my brother and sister were young, and nan and gramps used to take us to the farm to play with the animals and let off steam! We always had great fun and those days are some of my best childhood memories so I wanted nan and gramps to know how much we appreciated the outings!


I went heavy with buttons, ribbon and beige colour papers which gave the pics a nice vintage look and complemented the farm colours. I found glitter glue swirls invaluable for prettying the empty spaces, and it looked good from both sides of the page. I was in doubt about whether to do one of these acrylic albums for myself (on a different theme) as I loved the finished product but it took a lot of careful placing and backing to get there - but after seeing this tutorial: http://lotuspaperie.blogspot.com/2010/01/tuesday-tutorials-heat-embossing-on.html over at Lotus Paperie I know I'm gonna have to get one for myself and give this a go!

While I was in Kent my sister gave me a haircut (she's an almost-qualified hairdresser), I wanted a 1920's style short bob (no fringe!) and I love it. Except it doesn't quite look like this when I style it - I don't put enough effort in!

My daughter had fun opening more xmas pressies, she'd open one, appreciate it for 30 seconds and then ask to open the next one - she's got the present bug alright! Here she is looking happy with her new big Eyeore cuddly - she keeps bringing this to me when I'm sitting at my desk during the day, I think she knows he's too big for me to work around!

Here she is with a little snowman we built with her, he's only little as she didn't really like the snow, fair enough really as it was over her knees in some places! She liked trying to throw snowballs at us though!

She looked very cute all bundled up and with her auntie's hat on! I'm gonna miss this coat whenever she grows out of it, she looks like such a grown up little girl in it!

And finally I need some help! I managed to get these super cute little animal stickers from Asda in the sale, and I want a project to put them on - something that I can put somewhere around the house so they'll catch my eye and make me smile! Any ideas? I'm feeling strangely uninspired and I don't want them to lie forgotten in a drawer!

Let me know if you have any thoughts!

x

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In 2010 I aim to be VIVID!

I was inspired to create this layout by the Journaling Junkie Challenge (http://www.journalingjunkie.blogspot.com/) and I'm cutting it very close to their deadline of midnight tonight! I know I didn't have to get it done by then, as really I'm just doing the page for me, but it was quite fun to work to a deadline and also meant I'd definitely get it finished! The challenge was to choose a '2010' word for yourself, saying how you were going to implement it etc. It appealed to me as an alternative to New Year's resolutions. Here's my LO:


The word I chose was: vivid
And the journalling reads:

'When I was in College and Uni I used to be a lot more vivid. Not just that my clothes were louder and funkier, so that I stood out more, but I was clearer, more me. I feel I've lost something of my style and personality lately, I need to work out how to combine the 'young' me with the 'wife' me and the 'mummy' me, so I give more of an impression of who I am.

I will strive to have fun experimenting with clothes and accessories, to have a bright outlook, and to encourage my daughter to have a vivid imagination by engaging in lots of pretend play and craft. I will do my best to be distinct!'


I had a lot of fun doing the page, as I haven't scrapped any current and personal thoughts or feelings for a long time, so it was quite therapeutic. I also liked digging through my stash for bright, happy colours and I even had a great magpie moment when I was looking for a rainbow and ended up cutting one out of a circle on an ASDA multigrain hoops cereal packet!


I'm going to put the page up on my wall to remind me of my word through out the year. I also hope the cheerful photos and colour scheme will make me smile and giving me a positive attitude to the world whenever I see it!

x

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Baby's first Christmas

Well I've finally got round to scrapping some Xmas 2008 photos (which I blogged about in 'I must scrapbook this: http://jennifersjumbles.blogspot.com/2009/11/xmas-looming-and-havent-scrapped-last.html). It was keeping me awake at night thinking that I hadn't scrapped them so how was I suppossed to start scrapping xmas 2009?!

I had some trouble with this layout, mainly because of the colour clashes. I had set my little girl up perfectly for some Christmas papers - wearing red and white. Then dum-dum-dum: cue hot pink wrapping paper on nanny and grandad's present to her - which is the only good shot we have of her opening an xmas pressie. So now I have to make hot pink and red work together?! I think I just about pulled it off:

I think the colour clashes will always annoy me a bit (I'm little miss colour co-ordination!) but it was quite good to get some pink on the page as my daughter looks a bit boyish in the top photo! I totally loved those stipey pj's she had on, I was gutted when she grew out of them! They really made her look like a little xmas elf, I wanted to use these cute little elf stickers with the layout as soon as I took the photo. Here's a close up of the journalling which I made a tag for so it looked like a pressie decoration (I have blocked out her name):

And of the title and the embellishment I made by distressing some circles cut from the left-over papers, trying to make them look like bits of torn and crumpled wrapping paper:

I really want to scrap some of this years photos now - watch this space!!

x

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