I'm Back!

At last I have my computer back and am able to start updating my blog! You'll see my last post was all in Italian - I'd been in touch with a cousin of mine who is the litle girl you'll see in my slideshow of scrapbook pages of when I went to live in Italy (barely started-an ongoing project)! Manuela was only 3 years old back then and she's the daughter of the cousin I lived with in a beautiful little village in the Sardinian mountains called Enas. She is now 33, married and expecting her 2nd baby although sadly she lost her first baby boy when he was only a few weeks old. We keep in touch via email and it's lovely to chat with her, she keeps me updated on what her family is up to!
I've compiled a new slideshow of all the scrapbook pages I've done in the last year or so-not many compared to some peeps on CSF but I seem to take ages over them and lose all sense of time! I find it the most satisfying, relaxing and therapeutic craft I've ever done and would thoroughly recommend it to anyone! The very first scrapbook was the 8x8 album I created as a little tribute or story about my mam, I just wish I'd started something like this when she was alive as maybe she'd have filled in all those gaps I don't know about her life! I've also started doing some of the challenges set by Lesley on CSF as I find it a great help in getting me to try different things on my pages, so these are also pictured in the slideshow, (if you want to see the titles of any pics, just hovver the mouse over them) You'll see I have developed a very distinctive style - fussy and flowery would best describe it! I do tend to like working with 'pretty' things and am not very minimalistic - I like to think of my style as expressing my feelings about the content of the pages, or the mood i was in at the time! I hope you enjoy browsing through the photos, any comments would be appreciated and maybe let me know which ones you like best! You'll see I also have no problem with adding lots of journalling, and I know there's quite a few people out there who find this hard to do. I would say just have a go and write down your thoughts or memories that the pictures bring to mind - you always look at an old photo and think something - so write it down! Even if it's just to say 'what a happy day that was' or 'what a disaster, it poured down'! I often find I'll end up laughing or crying when doing my journalling - but what the heck, It makes me feel better either way!

Un Messagio Per Manuela!

Ciao Manuela!
Spero tanto che sei riucita a trovare il mio blog! Questo l'ho fatto per mostrare alcune foto e chiachere sul mio 'hobby'. Mi piace fare lo 'scrapbooking', e faccio qualche cartoline. Forse puoi fare un giro delle foto che ho messo qui.
Non uso questo blog cosi tanto, meglio che mi scrivi tramite e-mail.
Ti lascio con un forte abbraccio e saluti a tutti in famiglia. Ciao a presto, Anna

My First Attempt with Alcohol Inks!

I've had my first try with alcohol inks today! After a couple of go's to get used to what they 'do', I've made this fat page-and to be honest, I'm well chuffed with it! I used acetate and the colours are a set of 3 called Tuscan Garden, which as you can see gave me the idea for my design! I just used one of those little pads for taking make-up off with, scrunched it up a bit, added a drop of all 3 colours and dabbed away - i went over it a couple of times to get the effect i wanted. I'd also bought some 'flower soft pots' (just cos i knew i'd have a use for them even tho i'm not into flower soft at all)! and used a cotton bud to stroke bits of the inks on to change their colour, and defined it with a marker pen. Then i used foam pads to stick them down after i'd 'curved' them a bit round my finger. I used the cotton buds again to dab the inks on another piece of acetate to make the 'geranium' flowers, cut them out and that's it! I'd have loved to have been able to 3-d the flowers too, but couldn't see how without seeing the glue or whatever i'd need to use!

I think i'll give this to my sister after i attach a pice of ribbon to hang it with - (i suppose it'l look a bit like a tile) she'll love it for her kitchen!

Spring Scrapbook Challenge

This double page layout was made for Lesley's Spring Challenge, we had to use a tag, flowers and green and yellow! As soon as I read it I knew exactly which old photos i was going to use for this - they go back to 1988 when I was working at a lovely hotel in The Lakes, and a sunny spring afternoon when me and my friend wandered round the grounds (which were huge and went right down to the Lakeside) we had a fun time taking photos of each other amongst the daffodils! just looking at the photos remind me of the clean fresh air and sunshine, (and they also remind me how much thinner I was back then too)!

To make the pages I went straight to the pack of K&Co Tim Coffey design papers, which I thought were perfect and now I know that they were sitting around just waiting to be used with these photos! I made a couple of tags, one telling the 'when and where' and on the back a bit of journalling about the day, and on the other I printed the first verse of the 'Daffodils' poem by our famous local poet William Wordsworth - I think it was just waiting to be used on my scrap pages ha ha! I then added a few little stickers from the same paper kit, a bit more journalling on the page and some 'title' letters and that was it. I hope that they bring a little bit of sunshine into your day as they do for me!

Mother's Day Thoughts

I've recently made this double page layout to go into the memory album I've made for my mum, (a project I started some time ago, and every now and then I think of something else I want to add)! I wanted to do something for Mother's Day, but sadly don't have any photos at all of this occasion, so I just used a couple of old photos of Mam with me and my sisters.

There's only a little bit of hidden journalling inside the envelope embellishment, but the little bit across the bottom sums up the pages exactly - "For Mother's Days we never shared, and those always remembered"