Saturday 22 June 2013

Sarah's Cards Challenge. We Are Amused!

It's been a while since I last blogged but I have been busy preparing the family (and myself) for when I go into hospital for an operation on my spine next week. Making sure they have food (that my husband can make or reheat!) and getting all the kids school stuff done for next week. Phew! Us women just don't have time to be ill or incapacitated do we?
Anyway I couldn't miss out on Sarah's Cards June Challenge so I made the time to finish my page before I disappear in case I don't get a chance later.

Here is this months sketch and I have flipped it once clockwise to accommodate my photo's.
 
 
The photo's are of my girls humouring me by posing on a little throne in Norwich Castle and I even got them to wear some of the props!
I remembered that I had a Sizzix die of a crown and I was thrilled to use it for the first time in years!
 

The title was made from some fuzzy letter stickers that I am running out of (sad face) most of the letters are whole but I had to cut up a Q to make the U. I wanted to play on the quote from Queen Victoria 'We are not amused' as the girls are pretending to be royalty and we were thoroughly amused by Norwich Castle.


This is a picture of the top corner cluster. You will have to excuse the washed out look as the sun decided to peek out from behind the clouds for just a second as I took the photo!
 
Sarah's Cards always has a great challenge and fantastic prize so why not head over to her blog and check out the details of the challenge and see the DT's wonderful layout's too. Just click HERE.
 

Sunday 16 June 2013

Girl Friends.

Hello and welcome back to Kerry Land! I hope your weekend is fabulous so far and if like me you are visiting your Dad today (Fathers Day in the UK) have a wonderful time. We are all travelling to my brothers home for a double celebration as it's my mum's birthday as well as Fathers Day!

Well onto crafty things now and today I have a page to show you that I made for the June 1st challenge over at About A Girl. The challenge was to use doilies on your page and for me that really was a challenge as me and doilies have a love/hate relationship - I love the look of them but I am never happy with them once I try to incorporate them onto my page!

 
The photo shows my girls with their friends, who they have known all their lives and who we will be going on holiday with this year. They have posed for me only after I bribed them with ice cream!!
Someone had given me some bright pink doilies and I seemed happier with those on my page as apposed to white. Maybe it's because I am a bright/bold scrapper?
 

As usual for me, glitter title and lots of lovely fussy cutting!
 
This About a Girl challenge runs until the end of the month and they also have another one of Using Bright/Bold colours and papers. This sounds like the perfect challenge for me! 
 

A quick show of the cards I made for Fathers Day, I haven't entered them into any challenges so I thought I would just post them on here for you to see.

Whatever you have planned for the rest of your weekend I hope you have a wonderful time with your family.
Kerry. xx
 
 
 
 

Saturday 15 June 2013

Don't Shoot!

Good morning and today I have a layout to share with you that I made for the Sketch N Scraps #35 challenge.


Here is the sketch designed by Brenshevia that the design team were given to work with.
 

 
Here is my layout, as you can see I turned it on it's side to accommodate my photo's.
This was such a fun page to make, the papers from Pebbles Family Ties are one of my favourite paper lines ever! and the photo's of my youngest daughter were taken during a really good day out at Dover Castle in 2011.
 I thought it would be fun to hang the title banner from the branches that I fussy cut from one of the sheets of papers.
 
 
The title was cut from some glitter card and the flowers were fussy cut from a sheet in the line.


More fussy cut flowers! This is one thing I loved about the Pebbles Family Ties, there are so many lovely 'cuttable' images on the papers, perfect for making your own embellishments.
 
Now all you need to do is pop on over to the Sketch N Scrap blog and check out all the other designers layouts using sketch #35 then have a go at making a layout too.
 
Have a wonderful day and hope you visit again soon.
Kerry. xx
 

Friday 14 June 2013

Before, After, Then and Now!

Hello fellow scrappers and welcome to the start of the weekend and I have had a wonderful start by spending the day with my dear friend Helen.
Those of you that have been following my little blog a while know that Helen and I get together to scrap, chat and challenge!
This time the challenge we gave each other was to scrap some 'before and after' photo's as Helen has recently had a new bathroom fitted.

 
Here is my page and it shows my home before our extension in 2004 when it was a little two up, two down semi. Then in the after pictures which were taken last year it shows our larger home and our new solar panels.
 

Lots of faux stitching and some flowers from my old stash that I added some Card Candi to.
 
 
Here is Helen's page showing her old and new bathroom. It was finished last month and Helen is still wearing a big smile. She told me she had difficulty matching the two different coloured photo's with some papers so she just went with the colours from her new bathroom and what a lovely job she has made of her page!
 

I especially like where Helen has made her title out of wood and lilac felt to show the two different aspects of her bathrooms.
 
We have been coming up with some great challenges for each other but the next one will be using some really cute cloud and heart washi tape that Helen had managed to order two of by mistake (I like Helen's mistakes!!) But you will have to wait until next month to see them as we won't be getting together for a few weeks.
 
Thank you so much for dropping by my little space and hope you have a fabulous weekend.
 
 
 


Wednesday 12 June 2013

Keeping it in the Family.

Do you remember the post earlier in May when my cousin Jan and I challenged each other to scrap the same photo? You can find it HERE.
Well this month my mum joined in the fun and so the three of us scrapped not only the same photo but the same papers too! Not content with that Jan suggested stitching and more than one button as well (she is a slave driver!).
Jan had provided the papers (three doubled sided sheets) which she admits are way out of her comfort zone as they are quite bright! But mum and I thought they were perfect.

 
Here is my page and the photo we all used is of my mum and her three sisters one of which is Jan's mum. Don't you just love these papers they are so bright and girly?
I thought I would play with my stitching templates as I don't use them enough so the word sisters is hand stitched and also the heart at the top of my page.
 

As for the buttons I managed to get four on my page (for some reason it wasn't a struggle!) and I threaded them with some black embroidery thread.
 
 
This one is Jan's page and she has used her sewing machine to do the hard work, I love the zigzag stitching and all the bakers twine.
Check out all the banners on Jan page - super sweet.
 


There were four buttons used on Jan's page as well and did you spot this cute heart bead?
You can see her page in more detail on her blog Jan's Arty Junk.
 
 
Mum has enlarged the photo for her layout and her sewing machine was used to stitch the banners in place under the title as well as around the outside of the page.
 
 
 Only three buttons were used on mums page but they were placed in the centre of these gorgeous flowers that she made from pulling apart artificial flowers that were on stems!
 
I hoped you enjoyed looking at our pages and there are still three sheets of papers still to play with so we will be back with another family challenge soon!
 

Tuesday 11 June 2013

Hey There!

I am still making cards for this month of many birthdays! So I have made one using this weeks Retro Sketches.


Here is the sketch that I worked with.
 
 
Here is my card.
It was made for a young boy who has a pet dog so I thought he would like this cute dog stamp that I used on the card.
Instead of having twine around the bottom of the card as the sketch suggests, I used it to make the string on my bunting.
 
Thank you for dropping in and hopefully I will be back tomorrow with a layout!

 

Sunday 9 June 2013

Time for Tea?

Hi all and I hope you are having a great weekend, I was very lucky to have a whole day yesterday scrapping with some of my wonderful crafty friends and I was pleased with how much I managed to achieve.
Amongst the pages I got finished was one for the current challenge over at Scrap Our Stash which is to create a layout about a guy in your life. Plus..
Stash: use 5+ brads on your layout.
 
 
I had to scrap this photo of my nephew dressed up as a teapot at a recent party, he should not have been in the costume as it was in the foyer of the hotel we were in. (I think they use it to promote their afternoon tea events!) Unfortunately after he paraded around in it all the other little children in the family wanted to have a go and I had to try and convince them that it wasn't a good idea as the hotel would not appreciate it getting damaged.
 

My brads (six of them) were placed in the centres of some of the patterns on the cut out shapes placed around the photo. Not only are the brads quite a few years old but the pattern paper is too so I was quite pleased with my old stash use with this page.

About Our Guys challenge at Scrap Our Stash is open until 29th June so plenty of time to have a go yourself and reduce that growing stash!

Thanks so much for stopping by and hope your weekend continues to be crafty! xx
 
 

Thursday 6 June 2013

Tweet, tweet!

Hello and welcome, sorry I have been AWOL these last few days, I have been trying to make arrangements for a Saturday crop this week and trying but mostly failing to get some kits ready to take with me.
June is also a busy month for birthdays with our family/friends and I am attempting to get ahead of myself before I have surgery near the end of the month.
So as I was having to make a card today I thought I would encompass a challenge, so I searched blogland and found this sketch from Retro Sketches.


 
Here is my card that I made and as it has to go in the post I tried to make it fairly flat.
I embossed the edges and added the pearly spots instead of the chevrons.
 

The background paper had some glitter on it so I added some stickles glue to the flowers.
The image was free from a link on Pinterest, I did try and go back and find the link but too many days has passed!
There is one day left of the Retro Sketches challenge #66 and all the details can be found HERE.

Hope you have found time to craft this week and are enjoying the summer sun, we are finally getting some in the UK!
Thanks for stopping by.
 

Sunday 2 June 2013

Winner!

Today I have the winner of my Sketch N Scrap Birthday Bash Tic Tac Toe Challenge (that was a mouthful)!


Here is a reminder of the prize on offer.

 
Here is the list of the participants cut up ready to be folded.
 

Everyone in the pot!
 

And the winner is .........Lori.
 
Well done Lori and please contact me at kerry.bruce@btinternet.com with your postal address and I will send your prize out to you.
 
I would like to thank everyone who participated in my challenge and hopefully there will be another opportunity soon to have more fun, crafting and prizes. 
 
 
 

Saturday 1 June 2013

Sketch N Scrap June 1st Challenge.

Welcome to June! Well here in the UK it looks like summer has finally decided to join us as the sun is shining at last!
The page I have to show you today is for Sketch N Scraps first sketch challenge of June and the sketch was designed by co-owner Lisa.


Here is the sketch which I turned on it's head.
 
 
The papers I used were all SEI from the Desert Springs collection, lovely papers with foil touches.
My family had a few days in the Easter holidays to visit Norfolk and we discovered a bird sanctuary that was beautiful if VERY COLD!
 

Some of my favourite things to put on my pages at the moment - sequins, a little washi tape and this cute wooden bird.

I hope you are going to join us this month with our layout sketches and don't forget we now have card sketches too. For this sketch and the design team examples visit the Sketch n Scrap blog HERE.