Royal Wedding Review

• TV on since 7:30am




• 14 hours of Royal Wedding coverage watched and counting




• 3 rows of WillKate bunting put up and taken down




• 20 balloons blown up




• 2 flags waved




• 12 friends to celebrate




• 1 bottle of bubbly drunk




• 1 block of battenburg cake eaten along with about 19 Will and Kate themed cupcakes




• Miscelleanous amounts of Earl Grey Tea brewed




• 1 wedding tiara put back away again




• Umpteen happy tears almost shed

I'm so glad we don't have Royal Weddings every week. I've loved the build up. I've loved the day off work. I've absolutely loved the pomp and ceremony but boy, am I pooped now!

Playing along with the Scrap factor

UK scrappers is currently holding a Scrap factor competition to find some of the best scrappers in the UK. Alongside the competition is a chance for others to play along with the competitors using the same prompts.

Week twos prompt was to take a print advert i.e. an advert from a magazine or newspaper and use that as the inspiration for your LO. I chose this advert as I had a photo I wanted to scrap for my version of the Project Life album:I liked the white square in the middle and originally envisioned the title, main image and writing in this section to be three distinct areas perhaps in large blocks of patterned paper. In the end I turned the make up bag image into my photo and used the smaller images around the make up bag as my embellishment cues.

The advert writing became my scalloped area and journalling spot and the title was placed in a similar place to the advert.

To match the patterned paper, I pulled out the blanket stitching element and mirrored that around the edge of my central paper.

TFL xx

Signs you know summer is on it's way

1. The weather is much warmer -loving this!
2. The days are longer (loving waking up to the sunshine too!)
3. You have dusted out the BBQ
4. You dig out and freshen up all your skirts, shorts and summer tops
5. You pack away your jumpers and winter gear
6. You don't need to take a coat with you when you go out
7. You scare the neighbours with your white legs
8. You shave your legs for the first time in months (see above)
9. You comtemplate digging out the self tan but aren't sure whether this would look like you were 'trying too hard' (see above!)
10. You know that next week you'll be back to wearing jumpers/taking coats out/covering up etc (assuming you live in Britain!)

Some pics of the lovely spell of weather in our neck of the woods:

A spontaneous picnic and my gorgeous nephew smiled at me for the first time!
I was trying to enjoy the sunshine. Emma thought I made the perfect 'horsey':

Time for icecream:

Too warm for some:

Time to play:

Thanks for stopping by. I'd love to hear what you've been doing in this gorgeous weather!

Return of the Astronut!

These photos had been waiting to be scrapped since Christmas and so I had them all ready to go in a homemade kit of papers and embellishments. However, the finished product turned out completely different to how I imagined- to start I'd only envisioned a SLO! The star themed lace cardstock never got touched either. Funny how these projects evolve... I misted the background using some chipboard pieces as masks. I think originally the pieces were actually meant to be flowers, but they looked like gears and cogs to me! The background paper was the reverse of old Crate Paper that I had lurking about. I used some Cogsmo paper from Cosmo Cricket (again old stash) and cut out all the cogs. I put one large one on the left to balance out the 3 photos on one side and one at the top to fill in some of the space. I also put this one slightly over the join to link the two sides together. I also added a cluster of smaller cogs here too using foam dots to make them pop from the page. Taking inspiration from the Cosmo paper I could see arrows that were made with perforated lines so I hand stitched arrows around the cogs using my WRMK Sewing tool. I added a couple of the element cards from the Cosmo Cricket line as well as a Fancy Pants star acetate border that I had lurking in my stash box and some alien/monster stickers that I bought from Paperchase. Some scanned images as I couldn't photograph it well as a DLO (excuse the fact the scanner has cut the edges off). LHS: RHS:

The title was a play on words and was a favourite line of mine from ToyStory3 which is my sons favourite movie. He was desperate for a Buzz Lightyear at Christmas which made me think of Rex's line in the movie when Buzz goes 'all Spanish' - "It's the return of the Astro-nut!" . Typically I didn't have enough alphas in one range so I delved into my spare lettering stash and pulled out a range of font styles in co-ordinating colours. To make sure that the play on words is highlighted, I underlined the word 'nut' using hand stitching.

My only issue with this LO is that the paper has curled slightly where I misted it (I'm v.new to misting)- I'd appreciate any tips on how to stop this?

Thanks, L xx

Shocked.

I read and heard these reports yesterday and I'm completely shocked. 11 babies a day die in the UK from stillbirth. 11 babies that will never be heard cry, never crawl, never take their first steps. And all in a developed nation that has health care cover that means that some of these deaths could be avoided. I was involved a few years ago in the SANDS (stillbirth and neonatal death charity) awareness drive 'Why17?' SANDS claim that 17 babies a day die in the UK from either stillbirth or neonatal death. That's such a shocking figure. Admittedly, I'm fortunate in that I had relatively straightfoward pregnancies and births even though Jack was premature and Emma was high risk for Downs Syndrome and I got to take home two healthy babies but I have a keen interest in this area knowing that my mum had 2 miscarraiges before I was concieved. Going further back, my maternal grandmother had 4 pregnancies of which my mum is the only surviving baby. One of my 'aunts' died at 6 days old and the other babies, a boy and an 'unknown', died at birth. Admittedly, healthcare has improved greatly since then, but that still means that somewhere along the line we're still letting 11 babies down. Like the first article stated, some of the risk factors can be avoided. Being overweight, smoking, drinking and being an older mum can all increase the risks. Better monitoring and awareness might make a difference too. I know that this seems simplistic because ultimately, we're never going to have a situation whereby stillbirth doesn't exist, but surely in a developed country such as ours, we shouldn't be near the top of the stillbirth 'league table. Shocked.

From the funniest of places..

..can I find scrapping stash!

I had a small online shopping spree the other day and was really excited when the items arrived. I was even more excited when I saw the fab packaging that came with the items- there were embellishments galore! We often chat at crops about using clothing tags etc as embellishments and joke about only buying an item for the scrapping potential so imagine how I felt when I saw this fabric tape measure: I love this peg tag:

Living the good life tag:

They would have matched perfectly with some papers that I've had in my kits recently such as the Modern Homemaker line from October Afternoon.

Such a shame that for various reasons, the items all went back to the shop. :(

I'd love to know what unusal things you make embellishments out of- go on, inspire me!

Weekend pics

We had the loveliest weather this weekend so I spent lots of time practicing my OLW 'Balance' by spending oodles of time with the kids in the garden and on our bikes. I really need to find myself a smaller camera as we missed some fab shots whilst on the bikes simply because my DSLR is just too big to take with us. Anyway, I digress... :) Here are some shots from the weekend that I did capture: Jack the Dragon: The cutest spider you've ever seen?

Toooooo cute!

Completely random but I'm guessing a certain 3 year old put all the teapots together... lol.

Have a great week!

Circle Journal

Finally, I've managed to find time to finish my Circle journal album and upload the LO's from it! This CJ was completed by ladies in my scrapping team on UKS and I'm sooooo pleased with the results. The theme was 'Women in my family' - I sent each member an envelope with photos of a different female member of my family, going back several generations and asked my teamies to scrap it with either a sewing theme or colours from the Cosmo cricket 'Material Girl' line. So with out further ado... My mum (scrapped by AD):

My maternal Grandmother 'Nanny Nora' (scrapped by Sally):

My Paternal Grandmother (scrapped by Jackie):

My Maternal great grandmother (on my grandfathers side) scrapped by Dawn:

Me as scrapped by my best scrapping buddy, Mel (love ya Mel!):

Florence May, my maternal great grandmother as scrapped by Tracy:

My paternal great aunt, Pauline scrapped by Paula:

Thank you girls so much! I love my album. You did a wicked job! :)

Now all I need is a snappy name for the album cover- any suggestions?

Happy Mothers Day!

I hope you had a good day- I'm sure you deserve it! My family thoroughly spolit me by giving me two gorgeous Cath Kidston bags. I'm a massive CK fan and love my bags so these were perfect! More importantly, K made sure that I had a lie in this morning - bliss! - and when I was woken up, it was with a cup of tea. A very rare experience nowadays but one which was very much appreciated and enjoyed. After Church, we went out on our bikes for a while to spend some quality family time and then K cooked dinner for us all. A perfect day in my books. How did you spend Mothering Sunday?