The weekend that was ...

Well what a full on weekend of scrapping!! Two cybercrops and a pizza crop at my LSS. I participated in the CC's at both Craft Bits & Bears and Uproar2Scrapmore. If you have ever tried to play two games of bingo at the same time in two seperate browser windows then you may just be on the road to beggining to understand how hectic my week end has been!!

The CC at Craft Bits & Bears was themed "Summer by the Sea" so it was time to dig out those beach pics. There were 3 challenges for this CC, the first a beach layout, the second a bright summer layout and the last either a beach or summer pic using the colours lt green, yellow, orange and blue. My layouts are below (sorry the 2nd & 3rd got mixed up):

The second cc at Uproar to Scrapmore was a "Retro" themed crop. It was a whole weekend of challenges, fun and games. I got some great specials as well, 3 Bugs in a Rug PP - Yummo!! 10 sheets for $10 - Bargain!!

I have only completed two of the challenges so far which were both OTP items. It seems that a few of us are having touble completing all the challenges which would normally be due midnight monday, so the lovely Dee has extended till Wednesday to give us more of a chance to get them all finished.

This OTP challenge was to make a money box. It had to have wild and funky colours and textures and needed to be flower power. I choose to make a box rather than decorating a tin, which I made from a softdrink carton. I cut out the box template than stripped off the top layer of cardboard to expose the corregations. I inked the outside in hot pink and then added a tag to the front with ribbon. The stamped flowers were stamps from Autumn Leaves and Inque Boutique. I took photos of top, front & side angles and then did this montage in my photo editing program so that I would only have to load one entry into the gallery:

This next challenge was an OTP which was supposed to be constructed on a vinyl LP and then displayed on a plate stand. I didn't have an LP so I cut a circle out of black bazzil and made mine on that. I like the idea of it being on CS better as now I can mount it on a full sheet of CS and put it in my album. The challenge was to use pink & green, lots of layering and a retro word in the title.

I am quite pleased with my efforts from the weekend, even thought it was a lot of hard work. Apart from my brief trip to the grocery store and the Crop at my LSS I have been hard at it in my scraproom all weekend.

The Crop at the LSS was good, I got two layouts half done and did a little shopping :-P. The food was to die for, we had Pizza Capers for dinner and yummy cakes and slices with ice-cream for dessert. I must see if I can get the recipe for the chocolate and almond cake that we had cause it was devine! It was interesting to see other people working on their pages and seeing the different styles. There seemed to be a lot of TLC demonstraters there. My only gripe was that no one really talked to anyone other than the person that they came with. The last crop I went to the shop owner introduced everyone to everyone else so it was more of a group event but I got the impression that this crop was just about getting some uninterrupted time to get some work done and not so much of the social aspect. I will definitely go again though and maybe next time I will make conversation with others, maybe they are all a little shy?

New challenge blog.

There is a new challenge blog on the net, check it out!!http://www.outofthehatscrapchallenge.blogspot.com/

The concept is simple, you send us in your ideas for page requirements and on the first of the month we will draw 3 of them out of the hat!! These will be the elements with which you will build your page. There are three prize packs up for grabs, one winner will be decided by the design team, another by public vote and the third will be a random name drawn from all of those who have entered. Even if you don't get time to complete the month's layout you can still be in the draw for one of 10 monthly RAK's just for sending in your ideas for the hat. So come on all you scrapbookers out there, cause as they say, you gotta be in it to win it!!!!!

I feel human again!

Yesterday I treated myself to a trip to the hairdresser, which was probably long overdue. Does anyone else find that the days in between when you decide that you need to go and make an appointment to the day when you actually go are torturous!!! Your hair just doesn't want to co-operate at all! It's almost as if it is punishing you for not going sooner!

My hairdressers is one of those little gem finds that you want to share with everyone cause it s so fabulous but on the other hand you want to keep to youself in case popularity puts the price up. They put out coupons and it is the best deal. I get 10 foils, massage, deep conditioning treatment, style cut and blowdry for only 50 bucks!!!! To think I used to pay $180 per trip to the hairdresser and didn't come out feeling any more beautiful than my $50 experience. There is something to be said for that!

Doggy Dramas!!

I have been feeding my bf's dogs as they are currently away on holidays which you would think would be an easy job. Right .........Wrong!!!! Yesterday when I got there I found one dog on the courtyard wall (2 mtrs off the ground) and the other ........ nowhere!! She was gone. I was packing it, what was I going to tell my friend, ummmmm I lost your dog?? Well after some searching and calling around the neighbourhood not to mention setting off every other dog on a barking spree, I finally located her ....... in the next door neighbours backyard!!!!! If she wasn't so darn cute I would have strangled her. The next 45 mins was spent blocking up the hole where they were getting out off the balcony with whatever I could get my hands on. So I pray that when our other friend gets there to feed them today that my clever and quite resourceful trick has worked. (fingerscrossed)

So to the friend who owns the dogs (you know who you are) finally reads this, and I know she will, you owe me that hour and a half of my life back!!!!!!!!

Spring is is the Air!!

Well the weather is certainly warming up nicely, with a top of 28 predicted for today I would say that we are in for a long hot summer. Bust out the boardies - Cody looks so cute in his!!

Here are some pics I took around the backyard playing with the macro and super macro settings on my camera:

Hope you all have a lovely day!! xoxo

Another layout

This layout was for the weekly challenge at Uproar 2 Scrapmore. It was set by the lovely Lisa Kamphius and the requirements were to use three different pp's from three different manufacturers, ric rac & stamping. I have never even mixed pp's not in the same range let alone from different manufacturers so I really needed some help. BF to the rescue. Thanks Cate for the pp's from your stash, I hope you like what I have done with them, and if you have ever seen Cate's stash you would know she will never miss them!! ;-)

Tally: 11 down 9 to go!!!

Late night scrap-a-thon

I really hate leaving layouts half done, I am not even sure why. I started this one @ Cate's yesterday and as per usual I never got it finished. So on my quest to finish it before I went to bed I got on a roll and before I knew it I had finished 3 and it was 11.30!! :-O I was a little spoiled last night cause Derek went to bed at about 8pm and took Cody with him so I had some me time.

This one I made to have a play with my new EK success curvy cutter.

And this last one I really love. I was a bit unsure as I was making it that it would look a bit like a sticker sneeze (Cate's terminology) but I really like the way it turned out.

As a little celebration for finishing my layouts I decided that I deserved a trip to the scrap shop (which will remain nameless) as they had advertised a $1 paper sale where every sheet of paper in store is $1 for the day. I spent ages scouring the racks for just the right pp's for my next projects and even bought co-ordinating bazzil - something I never do - I always have to run out to the scrap shop to get CS before any scrap day which usually costs me about $80 as I get sucked in by all the yummies in the store, but that is another story. Anyway, back to the original story, so after my painstaking and long selection I find out that the sale is now on Tuesday!! WTF!! I was devistated, I couldn't bear to put everything back and I can't get there on Tuesday cause I have to work so I paid for my rather expensive stash and left. Happy with my yummy goodies but a little deflated that I didn't get the bagain I set out to get.

Off to scrap some more layouts with my new goodies, I only have 10 left to complete the challenge, and one week to go! Fingers crossed!

Some more layouts

I started this layout on Friday @ Cate's, finally found some time to finish it on Monday morning before work. It is based on the sketch challenge from Uproar 2 Scrapmore for this month. The original sketch had flowers in between the swirly lines which I have substituted for stars to make it a little more masculine.



The next layout is for the September 123 Challenge. The requirements were; Scallops, teal & Spots. I have never done one of these challenges before but it was good inspiration and it got another layout for my tally. I had a look at last months entries and the talent is awesome so I know I won't win anything from my layout, but I enjoyed doing it and I guess that's all that matters.



These last two layouts bring my tally to 7 so that means I have 13 to go! (insert oh no!! face here) don't think I am gonna make it!! Although I will be home all this weekend and I still have scrapping tomorrow and I think one more week to complete my 20 layouts so you never know.

I got Mail!!!!!

My yummy goodies from the lovely Eve at Craft Bits & Bears. I won one of the challenges at the CBB CC last weekend and it was so nice to get home from work yesterday to find these n the mailbox. It's a little hard to see form the pic, but the cleasr box is filled with xmas chippie shapes and since I haven't scrapped my pics from last year (insert embarrassed smiley face emoticon here) I know exactly how I can put them to good use!! Thanks Eve - you are just a lovely lady!!!

Cybercrop Weekend

Well my membership to Uproar 2 Scrapmore was approved at the very last second so I was able to join in on their cybercrop. It was a fairytale themed CC and not only proved to be very enjoyable but also allowed me to think outside the box and tackle projects that I normally wouldn't.

This is a picture of my layout for the members challenge. The first 4 people to reply with a requirement afer the thread was unlocked set the boundaries for this challenge. They were bling, pink, gold and a castle. I went with the my home is my castle addege and this is what I came up with:



The next challenge involved making a layout using paper piecing, something I have never tried before. My brain wandered back to my old days of applique and that's when I came up with my brainwave. The title "Little Prince" is fairytale themed, of course! :-) Here tis:

For this challenge you had to create your own sketch and then create a layout from it. I usually scrap from sketches so coming up wih my own was a little tricky but again another challenge and here is the end result which I am pretty pleased with. The other requirements were fairytale title, minimum of 2 PP's and flowers:

This final challenge was to think of our subject as one of the 7 Dwarfs or to come up with a new dwarf name. If Cody was a dwarf he would definitely be Cheeky. The requiremens were to use your dwarf name as the title, had to have flowers and stitching. I stiched the little stars in the top right hand corner and the little flowers in the top left were punched out of the circle PP, I just lined up the punch with the middle of the circle so the centres of the flowers were created from the middle dot and therefore a different colour. I love the way this one turned out. Take a look:

So there they are, my four layouts from the weekend. I am so proud of myself for completing the whole CC as it was such a large workload to get done. But I did it and even if it took me till 11pm monday night to load them into the gallery (cut off was midnight) it was worth it. Now I just have to wait for the votes to roll in. ;-) Either way it was fun and I now have 4 more layouts for my album and 4 more to add to my challenge tally. So that brings me to a total of 5 .......... 15 to go!!!!!

Happy Scrapping

Amanda xoxo