A Scrapbook Page

I was reading Sian’s blog post about the sketch challenge on the Scrap 365 blog.

The sketch is of a classic house, complete with windows and a fence.

It reminded me of a page I did in 2007. I thought you might like to see it.

It was a 12 x 12 double page spread and was part of a memory book my 3 sisters-in-law and I made for their fathers (my father-in-law) 80th birthday.
The finished book was fabulous with such a variety of pages and ideas from lots of the family.
Anyway this was one of the pages I did.

Since I took the picture I changed the plain red roof paper to a tiled paper I found.
Behind the front door is my in laws wedding photo.

At the time I didn’t blog and didn’t appreciate the importance of photographing the pages!
One day I will borrow the book and photograph it properly.

The house has four windows for their four children and nets at the window because ‘that’s as it should be’ my MIL told me once.
Number 37 is their house number.

LO House 1

The tree eventually had 6 grandchildren’s faces on. It was difficult and time consuming to get pictures from people, no digital camera and internet access to send them to me!

RH page before 2 more grandchildrens faces are on the tree!

Behind the curtains, pictures of four children when they were very young and a story about each of them that I had coaxed out of MIL. (She didn’t know we were making the book).

LO House 3

And behind the photos were more photos of wedding days and snippets of stories of their children.

LO House 4

My parents in law were thrilled with the book which had pages recording so many aspects of his life, work and family.
It was a lovely thing to work on with the sisters-in-law. And because we all live away from each other no-one but me had seen the finished book until the day before we presented it. Good memories.

I wonder what you think of the pages now? scrapbooking has moved on a pace since I started.

Ten Tips for better Type

I was inspired by Cathy Zielske’s new class, Ten Tips for better Type this week and put some of her tips into practice on this layout of my story from Sunday.
The hardest thing for me was to look again at the classical fonts, I just love handwriting fonts! but I had a play and have made a list of the classical fonts that I (now) like. This is one of them.
It is called Optima, I am going to use it for a while to see how it sits with me

This is the Layout using a couple of Cathy’s tips.

I used a classical font for the text/journalling
I used the same font throughout but in two different sizes
I used just a little of a second font Zapfino in the title
I adjusted the leading (the space between the lines of text)
Oh and I finally made a text box with no trouble at all!
Text boxes have been a mystery to me for ever!

My latest photography mag helped out with the layout.

Just One Sketch

Miss Smith said to take my sketch for a ride, actually I think she may have said spin, following instructions was never my strong point! Anyway I had a play and came up with this.

Making a paper page doesn’t come easily to me. It takes me hours of faffing, leaving, choosing, not liking it, faffing, re-choosing, replacing bits, taking away bits (actually I like that bit!) until l I give in and call it done.
Titles are the worst bit. What title, how to make it, what size to make it, where to place it…..

When I see the Sumac or Staghorn in it’s beautiful Autum colours, I think of my mother. She had so many of them growing in her garden, the suckers used to spring up everywhere but she would never cut them out! She really loved their beautiful Autumn colours and took endless photo’s of them…much like me.

I think we are flipping for the next sketch, I am so behind it will probably be Shrove Tuesday before I get around to it!

Just one Sketch

I signed up for Kirsty’s Just One Sketch challenge to help me get back to paper scrapping and then forgot to look for the prompts!
I have been swamped with work and too tired to do anything else in the evenings lately but veg out in front of a film. Does that happen to you?

I found my sketch quite quickly for this as the Waitrose Magazine constantly inspires me! I use the recipes most weeks, the layouts of the recipe booklet appeared in my LSNED 2011 and there are more than a couple of page layouts I would like to use!

Well here is the sketch that I liked

I drew it out in Photoshop so that I can easily turn it around and over


I intended it to be A4 but I changed my mind and put it together on a 12 x 12 LO, how this will work will be anybody’s guess but this is it for this week.

I lay my page out in a 12 x 12 shallow plastic storage box while I am putting it together. I always put my pages together like this. It means I can move it off my desk when ‘it is not speaking to me!’ I store the bits I am using in the lid and put that under the base with the page in.

Here is the page and a few pictures of the elements…all two of them. Well four if you count the strips of kraft paper.

The paper flower was supposed to go over the corner of the picture but I changed my mind (again) and turned the one picture into a book of five pictures which won’t open if there’s a flower in the way!!

The title says Happy Christmas in Finnish and the flower and little tree are cut from the pages of a paperback also in Finnish.
Ben brought it back from Helsinki the first time he went. They all thought I was nuts asking for a second hand paperback written in Finnish but I knew one day it would come into it’s own.

I have just read prompt two, take the page for a spin! Now we will see if my plan will need re-working.

Scrapping the Everyday

Two birthday party layouts.
When I scrap with paper I frequently use fabric or a paper bag or a calendar picture or something that is not traditional scrapbooking paper as the background, so I wanted to try using one of my photos as a background to a digital layout.
The background on this is one of those paper lanterns that you put a tea light in.

And the background here is a photo of the fire pit.

They look kind of Autumn to me, just right for late October and lovely memories of a fabulous weekend when it was slightly warmer!