Technique challege at CMH

kisses for James

 It seems there may well be something in the water, this is the 3rd baby born in our family in the last 2 months and there is another on the way! Baby James Anthony arrived on the 9th of August to proud parents Dean and Erica. He was a teeny tiny little fellow, making his entrance to this world 4 weeks early, but arriving safely and already much loved.

Challenge me happy set a technique challenge this month - sewing.

This made me very happy since I sew on my layouts far more frequently than I sew clothes nowadays, and I packed my reliable Janome to take on our retreat.

Being a thrifty scrapper I have recycled some old pillowcases and stitched frayed strips onto a transparency, with some old curtain lace made new again. Some stitched hearts completed this simple layout.

Thanks for looking xx

Hoopla theme: celebrate!

Eight



Another layout completed for the Challenge me Happy Hoopla, this time taking inspiration for Norine's birthday theme. These photos were taken at Savannahs belated 8th birthday party. Lots of friends from school joined her for lunch at  

Mc Donalds and then we watched 'Arthur Christmas' in 3D at the cinemas (hence all the cool kids in shades).

I have literally thrown this layout together using pretty much whatever was left on my desk, so the haphazardness of it all is not deliberate but rather the result of mother guilt at having not scrapped her birthday yet. I pulled the Princess Jasmine 8 card from a game and used the last of some glittery AC Thickers for the title. I tried my hand at the confetti look by punching through my page and putting a contrasting colour behind it - I'm not convinced by it and doubt I will try it again.

CMH Hoopla continues...

Stop and Smell the roses

And so theChallenge me Happy Anniversay Hoopla continues.

I was inspired by the simplicity of Marie's sketch and wanted to put my own spin on it and love the result!

I adore these photos of my sweet and gentle goat Souva (yes, it's short for Souvlaki). She is just like a big puppy dog - with horns - who loves nothing more than a scratch and a cuddle. Don't be concerned, she will never meet her fate in the kitchen, can't you see what a wonderful job she does of pruning?

The background paper is from one of my fave Bo Bunny collections, and I have rummaged through my scraps and found some beautiful Pink Paislee and Prima papers to make my rosettes from. I picked up the frame from the Warehouse, zshushed the Kaisercraft wood flourish with some glimmermist and filled the gaps with some simple Prima blooms. The Basic Grey vines have been rubbed onto some acrylic and attatched to my layout with Scrap Dots to add just a little more dimension.

And here's the sketch that provided the inspiration:

Don't forget you have until the 15th of July to enter the challenges so get to it!

Challenge Me Happy

Challenge Me Happy is celebrating with their one year anniversary HOOPLA!

If you haven't yet checked out this great challenge site you need to!

This month they are running a challenge extravaganza and there are 7 - yes, seven - amazing different challenges to try.

Cuboree



I have taken inpiration from Lisa's Advertisement challenge for this layout.

Okay - honestly, I know the end result doesn't look much like it at all, but I have included a lot of photos, tilted my favourite pic and included a word cloud where the text was. Try customising your own at Wordle.

My son was lucky enough to attend Cuboree last September.This is a huge Cub camp that occurs only once in three years, with kids coming from all over the Victoria to tent, play and learn together.

As a parent I think they time it wrongly - it is cold, wet and windy in Victoria at this time of year. From a kids' perspective its perfect: mud, mud and more mud.