Happy Birthday to Minty and Me ....

... yes it's my birthday today! I love birthdays and am such a big kid - I love all the attention, cards and presents!!!

When we got Minty last year, we never found out the day she was actually born on, all we know was that it was in July, so we've decided to adopt this day as her birthday as well.

I have one more year of being able to say that I'm in my thirties, so I'm going to try and make the most of it that I can.

Haven't been up to much crafting recently, apart from making some wedding invite samples for my cousin. So in other news:

- My weight loss is still going really well, I've now lost 24.5 pounds in 9 weeks.

- I'm off camping to Wales on Sunday - so please let it not rain! Have bought a new tent for the occasion and now own 3!! I really need to rehome one of them!

- The girls break up for the school holidays on Friday. I'm quite sentimental about it as DD2 leaves nursery this week and will start school in September.

- I'm waiting for some crafty parcels to arrive such as Scarlet Lime ad Unity Kits and some new Cosmo Cricket and Scenic Route stash

Butterfly Crafts Challenge 15....

... is a travel inspired LO. Seeing as though I'm doing my travel album, it was a great opportunity to do another LO! I'e also used the current PencilLines sketch.

I had these cork flowers as part of a Xmas Advent swap and haven't used them up til now, but thought they were perfect for this.
A couple more LOs that I did last week - very simple.This one is the reverse of the other, I scrapped straight onto the back of it!

What a weekend ...

... it started early on Saturday with the girls swimming lessons followed by 3 hours of setting up the School Summer Fete. Lugging tables around in this heat is exhausting! A few more hours spent with the girls enjoying the fete meant that I was asleep by 9.30pm!

Sunday saw the CraftyStash Summer Workshop with Tracie Hudson, 10am- 8pm. She taught 4 classes - Sassfras Lass and Prima - and I had great fun learning some new techniques I would never usually do on my LOs.

Oops - I was a bit premature in posting my LOs from the workshop, as they are running another one Mid-July. So I've taken then off for now and will replace again later.

Lots of cutting out on this LO and I just need to add some journalling.

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This one is mainly done with stickers. I loved making the cute rosette embellishment out of denim.

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The afternoon was spent on Prima LOs and painting. The first one is actually acetate and is painted on the reverse. More paint on the front with some stickles and bling - voila!

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More handcutting, painting and distressing. The title is stuck onto stamped acetate. I've added 'Here comes the' after the class, otherwise my choice of title wasn't particularly meaningful!

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The Sassafras Lass LOs are definitely more my style, and I've got some inspiration on how to use that pile of their paper I've got sitting here.

Another couple ...

... of quick LOs. The Scarlet Lime kits generally only come with a couple of sheets of cardstock. Normally this is fine as I just use patterned paper as my background, but for this album I've been adding in some cardstock just to make the paper go further.

Majorca album ....

... when I got the latest Scarlet Lime kit I knew it would be perfect to make a holiday album. We have access to an apartment in Majorca and have been lucky enough to go there 3 times in the last 4 years - so have plenty of photos to scrap.

This is a scraplift of Janna Wilson (SL DT) and is the opening page. The view is from the apartment. Each time we've been, I always take a picture of DH and the girls sat on the balcony - great to see the way they are growing up.

Another scraplift of Janna's.

My design (for a change!)

Sketch taken from latest PencilLines challenge.

I did these all yesterday, had a sudden mojo spurt! The papers are mainly Little Yellow Bicycle and I love the cute postage stamp date stamp.

Will hopefully do some more in the next couple of days - have bought a new AC 12x12 album for them and also some divided page protectors so I can add photos I don't scrap into the same album.

Toot tooting again ...

... I was delighted to have my 2nd LO published in Scrapbook Inspirations mag this month. The magazine's been out for awhile but I've only just got hold of my copy. Our wedding cake was a present from my stepmum from a shop in Brighton called Choccywoccydoodah. It tasted as good as it looks!

The latest Scarlet Lime kit has just arrived and it's full of summery travel related paper and I've got the perfect pictures to scrap!

Twisted sketches

... found a great new sketch site whilst blog hopping last night - Twisted Sketches - and it inspired me to do a LO straight away! I do LOVE to use a sketch!! I kind of liked the way the background paper looked a bit like specs!!