Vintage style layouts of Budapest...

So I hope that I have whet all your appetites telling you how many layouts I have completed in the last few weeks whilst I have been off work. I have been completing lots of 8.5 by 11.5 layouts as this is my favourite size and I am still scrapping our fantastic mini break in Budapest (more about it here) Perhaps because I have been listening to lots of retro tunes on magic fm I have gone for some quite vintage inspired layouts.

The first layout is about the Children's Railway and the little conductors on board who were trying to sell us lots of cute little trinkets about the railway. I used a variety of Daisy D vintage papers, washi tape, ribbon and I even got the needle and thread out and sewed some buttons on. I photoshopped the picture and added a sepida tint so that it has a nostalgic feel to it - which is the feeling this railway evoked in me.

The second layout features one of those classic pictures taken in front of you - when we were on the cable car on the way down from the railway stop. We managed a better one with the instax mini and so I decided to mix it up - I also added a generous dose of bakers twine around the picture and then just tucked the instax into it. I used one of my gorgeous Jenni Bowlin journalling card spots as my title and then expressions stickers for the captions.

I am linking up to Purple Mailbox.com love linky. I have just discovered her blog recently and I am in awe of the amount of layouts she manages to create with so many details and lots of paint and misting effects. She has a totally different style of scrapping to mine, but yet I have picked up some good ideas on her blog. I am looking forward to seeing what everyone else has created!
Join my on Monday for my new Messy Monday's tutorials beginning with STAMPING WITH PAINTS some layouts and ideas that I have been playing around with recently.
Have a great weekend - even if you're a Brit and are caught in all of this crazy rain!

We've got a golden ticket...

There is a red, white and blue challenge over at SJ Crafts and I have just had an order from snapfish of all our Jubilee pictures. I loved this picture and even as I took it I was imagining a page all about how we'd got Olympic tickets and were looking forward to the event. Although do you think us scrappers have scrappers liscense as opposed to poetic liscense? As in truth I'm not THAT excited about the Olympics. London will be packed. I don't like crowded tubes. I don't really like crowds. We're taking the coach down as it's cheaper and I don't like that four hour sweaty bus journey! Plus we got tickets for football (which I don't even watch on telly - not even England..hence why I am blogging now!) and something called handball - which is...?
But I had some Union Jacks lying around, I liked the pic and I started getting carried away with using up all my red, white and blue scraps. For the title I totally had the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory song in my head as last year there was gloating on Facebook to be had when we got tickets in the ballot and many of our friends didn't.

So I AM grateful we won them - so I could scrap this picture and include a cheesy title and use up some of my scraps. I am sure I will enjoy it when it comes down to it...as my husband keeps telling me it's a once in a lifetime experience.

More photobooth fun...

Some photobooth pages from a wedding earlier in the year. I  just used scraps and lots of washi tape leftover from other scrapping.

These were taken on my phone and may need to be clicked on to see the detail more clearly.
I also love what Kathryn has done with photobooth pics over at Lily Bee Sketches.
Photo booths at weddings really appeal to the scrappers out there and it's great to have a little momento of your day.

Baked goods scrap off...

In the one corner we have the lovely layer cake and it the other corner we have delicious churros. Who wins in the scrapping bake-off?

An ode to the delectable choice of delicious cakes in Budapest - using a washi tape border that I found on this blog.

A layout about a humble little Churro store which opened in Camden - we were among his first customers.

The vote is in YOUR hands!

 

How to have the perfect day in California?

I thought I'd better get blogging since I lost a couple of followers in the last fortnight. What do followers want from you? I think you have to live first and blog second. But I have got quite a few pages and projects I have been working on that I've been meaning to share.
I'm still working through our holiday pics from our California road trip last summer and I love creating every page as it takes me back to some really happy memories - especially in this miserable June weather! This layout captures some of the activities on our first day. We awoke really early in Santa Monica thinking that we had slept in, when it was actually 5 am! So we started early and went for a walk along the pier. Then later we rented bikes and really explored the craziness of Venice Beach and the tranquility of Santa Monica the opposite way. I was struggling to think of a title but then went for 'Perfect Day in California' as at the end of the trip we all agreed that it was our favourite day of the trip.
I used a sketch from Shimelle for this layout (at least I'm sure it was although I have just looked through her blog and cannot find it, it may have been from a magazine then!?) as I have been having scrapper's blog recently. I was glad as I used a few sheets up that I was struggling to know what to do with. I fussy cut the bottom California part from a fussier sheet and felt it was perfect for the title. I like the hidden journalling too.

It is my sister Tamara's birthday today and she was the one who accompanied us on the trip. It was great to have her there as my shopping buddy (especially in the scrapbook shops) and my cupcaking buddy as The Belgian is not the biggest fan of these two activites. I wish I was in London with her today, especially as she had brunch with my other sister, Gem, at Bill Granger's in Westbourne Grove. I just reviewed it recently for my other blog.
Will be back later with some more of my A4 scrapping.
Have a great Saturday!

Ode to happy mail!

What a beautiful little package to arrive hime to on a soggy Friday night when the only entertainment seems to be a certain footie match on telly...

 And even happier to discover these goodies inside. One of these will be perf for scrapping about our Jubilee weekend.

Aren't some bloggers so lovely and generous?

Photostrip fun with wedding pics...

So you may have noticed from my cheeseburger pie baking (which has gone viral on pinterest!), creating a new restaurant reviewing blog 'Yummy Yorkshire' (which needs some more followers please!) and tales of Jubilee celebrations that I have been in a creative funk.
How do you get out of this funk? I find a sketch I like and I scraplift it - just to remind myself I can still scrap. So i used Shimelle's photostrip layout idea - she even gives step-by-step instructions so it could not have been easier. Really.
I remembered about some mini wedding pics from the wedding last summer in California that I needed to scrap and so I arranged them into a photostrip. I also went fro more muted colours and this gorgeous bird cardstock, which I had been saving for a special occassion, for once the misting didn't go wrong and ruin my layout. I felt that using doilies and punching delicate white borders added to the wedding feel of the layout. I had the usual struggle with thickers of not having an 'e' and so used another scrappers advice and went for the 3 backwards - thanks Louise! I am not entirely convinced and may change it when I invest in some more thickers. 

Shimelle's original and instructions to be found here

So now I am back in the zone I may not leave it so long before sharing some more pages with you all!

Storytelling Sunday: The One with grumpy Jubilee guards!

So we had the chance to be in the capital for the Queen's jubilee - almost by accident as my husband (The Belgian) was had tickets for the game at Wembley on Saturday night.
Saturday day time we headed to our fav haunt Westfield in Stratford and got to decorate cakes for free in Lakeland and hung out with the Olympic mascot.

So on the Sunday it seemed only natural that we would head to the Thames to check out the floatilla. Hmmm...I think it needed some better planning and certainly an earlier start. We had got some flags and then OK magazine was giving away free ones - so we were very patriotic looking. Although by no means the most Union Jacked up!

 And this was our amazing view...we couldn't see a thing!

However we noticed a fairly stable looking fence behind some wheely bins and decided to climb on and get a better view. But you know what sheep we all are and everyone started following our 'example' and the fence was beginning to get a little wobbly. A steward came over and muttered about 'health and safety' and we all ignored him. He sent over two rather timid police officers who compromised that we could sit on the bins, but not on the fence. We stayed on the fence - safety in numbers and all and we had now been stationed here for about thirty mins. They then sent the heavies over - a whole selection of burly stewards and police men. We reluctantly moved off - not before the Belgian complained about how they were changing their minds and how dare his colleagues say one thing and then change their minds. He was told very firmly - "we have every right to change our minds." So there! Here Mara is showing how she feels about those killjoys.

We still tried to have fun and the Belgian even got remotely patriotic!

But then slowly, but surely, as the procession got ever closer people started not only to climb on the bins, but also the fence and then sit on the flat roof - shock horror! We enjoyed watching as the power of the people outwighed the power of the police - I can see how the riots happened so easily. We stayed out of it but Mara did climb back onto a bin to try and get a few snaps - that is what we came for after all!

I think you can see in this pic the tail end of a boat! And below is the closest we came to HRM! It was all about the atmosphere I argued and we sure had a good story to tell about our Jubilee.

Linking up with Sian's storytelling Sunday