March Photography prompts - how did you fair?

Hope you joined in with the March photography prompts with ATDML.
Here are my photos for the month

Selfie on the first - taken whilst out walking

 Something Green - Trees on a reflective day

And more green in my youngest running man in his first race

Look what I made - Kaisercraft gallery for ATDML

Fun & Laughter - the start of the Shaun in the City hunting in London

Time/Clocks - Time remembered at the RAF Bomber Command Memorial

Next challenge for April will be over on the Created by ATDML blog on Wednesday.  See you there?

Kaisercraft Design Team 2015 Entry

Given my love of virtually every paper collection that Kaisercraft have brought onto the Scrapbooking market recently I thought I may as well try out for their design team call for 2015-16. We are lucky in that we have a Kaisercraft specialist online shop here in the UK so it is nice and easy to get hold of the latest products to play with!!

To apply to be on the design team I have to create a blog post showcasing three projects I have recently designed using their products from the last 12 months. So here goes...

First up, a Layout, one I shared recently that I designed for my local crop in March. It uses papers from the All that Glitters collection including the gorgeous foiled butterfly paper. I love that this particular paper from the collection needs very little adding to it to make for a quick page. I cut out several of the butterflies from the foiled paper and added them to the page along with some gems for more sparkle to go with the lush flowers and golden aspects of the page.

Products Used:
All That Glitters - Shine P1774, Twinkle P1779, Golden Foiled Butterflies PS394

Second up is a Beyond the page project I designed using a Kaisercraft Beyond the Page tag calendar. We have a bit of a thing for perpetual calendars in our house with the kids particularly eager to be the one to keep them up to date - so this is one of three we now have! I used the lovely neutral toned colours of the Hello Today papers.  I particularly loved the "don't save some things for a special occasion, every day of your life is a special occasion" sticker which I used along the bottom (although I had to trim part of it to fit so it's a slightly abbreviated version). I used the Tiny Dots clear stamp to around the edge of the background and along the top and sides with some inking to highlight.  I also added a Wooden Flourish "today" at the top of my calendar, a couple of layered flowers from my stash with a sparklet in the centre (REALLY love these sparklets so they feature on some on the month tags too!

Products Used:

Beyond the page tag calendar SB2325 
Hello Today Collection Pack PK489 
Wooden Flourishes  Stationery FL568
Cameo Sparklets RS411
Tiny Dots Clear Stamp  CS151

Lastly I am sharing a card I created for a fellow feline loving friend of mine. We are both lovers of cats and convinced we would be mad crazy cat ladies if not for our husbands, so this "have a Purrrfect day" card was made for her using the latest Furry Friends collection combined with some of the Blue Bay collection. I don't tend to make what I would call flat cards very often and like mine to have some kind of interactive element or something unusual about them. This simple easel card looks like a normal card when the recipient receives it but is just that little bit more when opened.

Products Used:

Kaisercard - Coconut Weave, Bluebell Weave
Furry Friends - Four Legged P1785, Paw-fect P1784
Blue Bay - collectables  CT817

It was so hard to chose just three items to share so watch this space for more Kaisercraft layouts and projects as I have many more! Fingers crossed and good luck to all who are applying :)

Well I do like a challenge!

After a few months of not really putting myself first, or looking after myself much since losing mum I have decided I needed to kick myself up the behind! I lost over 3 stone 2 years ago, with regular gym days, I completed a swimathon of 100 lengths, and I walked 2 night-time marathons.  I was eating better and making sure I took care of myself, the person who is responsible for taking care of several others and usually put herself towards the bottom of the list! The weight has crept back on lately, not all of it, but a fair amount and it is not helping me fell like me.

Well it's time to climb back up the list, I have been back in the gym, I have been striving to achieve my 10,000 daily steps and I have signed up for a 15km night hike in May and another 5km Race for Life Pretty Muddy run in July (well I did enjoy last years!!). The local Mayors fun run will be early September (only a 3k or a 10k - yet to decide if I think running 10k is mad!!) and the Shine Marathon is the end of Sept which I am strongly thinking of doing again so I can focus my training during the summer.

And this is one of the photographs from last year that I have yet to scrapbook so it will be printed off soon and added to my take-away pile for the forthcoming A Trip Down Memory Lane retreat. I am teaching two classes (one Fancy Pants and one Crate Paper) and a make and take card.  I finished the last class this evening :) and am actually rather happy with it! Sneak peaks to follow next week and of course I will share the final creations after the event. In the meantime here is a layout of one of those two walking marathons I completed, just to remind myself I am awesome and I can do this!!

Card challenge

Early in March I noticed that Kaisercraft had a card challenge to create with the All That Glitters collection. As I designed and taught with these papers at our crop on the 14th (see this blog post) I knew I'd have enough left over bits to create a card, it was just a case of "would I have time in my busy March?!"

Well I did, and here is my card which I am giving to a friend tomorrow for her 21st birthday. She's a girly girl so I am very much hoping she will love it!

The instructions on how to make this card were on the Kaisercraft blog by one of their design team and what looks quite complex to make was actually pretty easy given the excellent instructions! I have made another one for another friend who's birthday was last week but we are seeing her and her husband for dinner on Sunday so I can give it to her then. This one uses Teresa Collins Blessed papers, flowers from Hobbycraft UK and a few butterflies from the Kaisercraft All That Glitters sticker sheet.

Afternoon tea with the girls in London

One of the most amazing things I have found about Scrapbooking  is not only do you get to preserve your photographs, stories and memories for future generations, not only do you get to play with pretty paper, glue and sparkle (love it!), but you get to meet some lovely like-minded crafty people along the way.  The ladies I spent this afternoon with are such people. Met via scrapbooking they make me smile from ear to ear whenever I hear from them or spend time with them and today was no exception when they kindly took me out for afternoon tea as a "we love you" treat following mum passing away in December.  Time spent with friends who make you smile is so important and it was so nice to take time out of the weekend household chores and running the kids around (thanks hubby for taking the baton today!) to simply smile, take photos, laugh and make more memories.

Here are a few snaps from our crazy day that included some sunny warmth,early signs of spring, cake, tea and laughter!

Meet up at Marble Arch, London

Selfie in the Sunshine

Afternoon tea at The Cumberland Hotel, Marble Arch

Shadows in London, famous five?

Walking off tea!

Capturing springtime

  

Discovering new monuments

All in all a rather lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon xx

Scrappy Inspiration from the ATDML DT

It is virtual crop day today over on Created by ATDML where three of my fellow designers are sharing FREE classes to join in with, and there is a challenge too by yours truly to scrap with 5 different patterned papers. Pop over and see what they have been up to!

www.createdbyatdml.blogspot.com

Loving this class by Katherine particularly!

Throwback Thursday - Royal Wedding 1981

Me (10) - bunny girl (how I wish my legs still looked like that!)

My brother (7) - Scarecrow (complained he was itchy all day!)

My sister (4) - cutest hula girl ever!

My mum was pretty damn creative with her home made costumes she would dec us out in, these being just an example of one occasion. She made all those pompoms my sister is wearing from tissue paper, and she made the grass skirt, my bunny ears and bow tie and the tray was repurposed for the day. Not sure my dad ever wore the t-shirt again she adapted for my brothers costume though!. 

Whenever I wonder where my creativity comes from, I don't have to look very far. Just wish she was still with me x

Miss my mum

Playing with paper makes me happy

Finally got my kits to design with for the forthcoming A Trip Down Memory Lane Spring 2015 Scrapbooking retreat. Once again we will descend on the gorgeous Stoke-by-Nayland Hotel for a weekend of creative joy. I cannot wait for April 10th to role around!!

I am teaching two classes, four layouts in total and chose these papers to work with. Firstly Fancy Pants True Friend where I simply love the combination of colours!! This is going to make for fun class!!

And for my second class something completely different - the Maggie Holmes designed Confetti range for Crate Paper.

Going to be adding some stamping and glittery sparkly loveliness to this collection - so exciting!! 

But first I need to get some photographs printed off to play with, so many to chose from now I have discovered a love of getting my older photos in to albums. I used to struggle with this thinking I needed to use vintage papers to go with the older images (and I am not that big a fan of vintage papers) but I have found myself being able to get those older images scrapped with newer papers, just needed the inspiration to kick in and to do a bit of shopping!!

On top of these collections to create pages with I also have two or three of the Kaisercraft collections from 2015 sat here to play with as and a crop layout class to design for May as well. Busy busy happy Ann x

All that glitters

More scrapbooking with older photographs this month and the brand new Kaisercraft collection All That Glitters. Probably a more floral and feminine collection than I would usually design with but it felt good to change things up. First layout made the most of the heavily decorated background paper to which I added a few foil butterflies, some gems, a few word strips and names using foil alphabet from the Range (only £1).

The second page was based on a simple grid format which makes for a quick but effective scrapbook page. A few gold skeleton leaves add a touch of texture along with more gems, more gold foil butterflies and a couple of fabric roses.

That's another wedding photo from 12 years ago in my album!

These layouts were taught at my local ScrapMates crop which runs on the second Saturday of every month and welcomes many crafters who scrap, make cards, crochet, knit or natter the day away. Please email annfreeman1971@gmail.com if you are interested in joining us!

Running man

After a year of watching his brother run Jamie finally turned 8 last month and was old enough to join the local running club too. Last Saturday saw his first time trial, a race held monthly over a 2.25km distance where runners are encourage to improve on their time each month. He was so excited to be racing and even borrowed his brothers spare club running top! For his longest ever run without stopping (though he admits he walked a tiny bit) he ran 12:47.

For someone so young waiting another month before he can "compete" again is too long but he does have 4 weeks of training in the meantime to look forward to!

Creating with triangles

I have wanted to create another layout incorporating triangles for a while now and it is a great way to use photos that might not be all that wonderful and need cropping down. This was a fairly quick page to pull together using a 2" square punch to select a number of photos and then cutting some of these in half on the diagonal. I made a template from a piece of black card that covered half the punch and then turning it upside down helps to gage what parts of the photo will be seen. I then made up the other half of the square with a further triangle of patterned paper (punching a 2" square and cutting in half again). 

The title was cut on my silhouette (from the silhouette library) but you could easily replace with a hand-cut title or use of letter stickers.

Paper used on this page are Kaisercraft Mix & Match available HERE from A Trip Down Memory Lane and this page along with others can be found in the March Design team gallery HERE for ATDML which will be added to throughout the month by the Design Team.

Happy crafting!

Photography prompts

Already a third of the way through the month, how can this be? Although it means the clocks spring forward in a couple of weeks and I welcome the lighter, brighter days.

Also means more opportunity to be out and about with my camera and hopefully the chance to take a few more photographs for the ATDML monthly photography challenge.

See this post HERE for the March photo prompts which include a self portrait (selfie) taken on the 1st but if you are starting now who will know different? Hope you can join in!