Aviemore

Today's layout was lifted from Creative Keepsakes Volume 15 issue 6 page 80. Near the Cairngorm mountains ins is the village of Aviemore. We all wished we had more time to spend there. When we arrived at the guest house, Peter greeted us and showed us to our room and offered a bit of cake which turned out to be slightly sweet dry bread. Then we were going to take a walk to find a restaurant. It turned out to be not much of a walk because just three or four houses from the guest house, we discovered International Starters. It was a nice restaurant with a posh feel, but reasonable price. I had melted brie with cranberry relish for an appetizer and when my prawn (shrimp) and scallop pasta arrived with prawn crackers, you should have seen the look on the waitress’ face when I asked her how I was supposed to eat the crackers. Donna had bread with melted cheese and then seared prawns. Mary Rose had skink soup and steak pie. Sharon had magic Mushrooms and fajitas. In the morning when Gail found out we were going to the Meigle museum because we were interested in stones, she told us about a circle of stones that was only a few blocks away. They aren’t very big, but it was quite a good circle. We had not found them on our internet searches and were excited to find this out, so we took a quick detour out of town. other notes: The bathrooms at this B&B were wonderful, the breakfast delicious, and the sun room wonderful. Sharon was enjoying a wee cup of tea at breakfast.

Culloden

Culloden might not look like much to someone who doesn’t know their Scottish history, but it’s a very emotional place for someone who knows that about 2,000 Highlanders died in one hour here fighting for their land. We didn’t go to the visitor’s center, but walked around the field a little. On the way back to the car, Donna threw a snowball at me. I caught it in the photo; and it only hit my shoes. This was based on a layout in Creative Keepsakes: Volume 15 issue 6 page 16. A couple of years ago, my sister had someone doodle some Celtic borders and symbols for me to use in my scrapbooking. Tonight I rediscovered them in my stash and cut them out using my fiskars fingertip knife and pieced them together...they were on 8 1/2 x 11 pp, so they would not have worked the way they were created. I love the look they gave to this page! The parenthesis around the journaling came from a Scotland sticker set. I used my coluzzle to cut the picture of Sharon and the mat.

LOAD512!

I am so excited about doing another LOAD (LayOut A Day) challenge that I woke up at 3, and couldn't go back to sleep no matter how much I tried to tell myself that I needed to get some more sleep to be alert for work today. I hope I'm as wide awake at 4 pm as I am at 4 am. I've done a little preparation for this LOAD and even have sketches chosen and pictures printed for a week's worth of layouts. But there are still decisions to be made. You see, I'm going to scrapbook my trip to Scotland this month. I've decided to do all of my layouts based on other layouts I've seen and liked in the CK magazines. For the layouts I've planned so far, I have a list (love the android app "listmaster") of the layout and which magazine and which page using the volume and issue listed on the spine of each magazine. For instance: Urquhart Castle CK 15 4 101. I had to keep up with it somehow! Other decisions that I'll be making today, but subject to change this month: Do I use a cool Celtic font for all of the titles to narrow down that decision? Is there a specific ribbon or paper I want to use throughout the book? Will I want to use those Celtic stamps I bought a few years ago on every page or just some of them? Off to see which pictures I had printed yesterday and make the first decision!

Using a plaid ribbon is a definite possible thread, using the font for the journaling instead of the title is a possible thread, using the stamps is quite possible...I used them to make a design on the yellow cardstock, and I love this pp, but don't think I have enough for the whole album, and can't get any more. The journaling strips say: Urquhart castle is known as the Jewel of the Loch Ness. In fact, most of the sightings of the Loch Ness monster have occurred from the grant tower which was last built in 1509. Visitors can still climb up the stairs and look over the loch. In ancient times, this was a location of major strategic significance because it was the key to the ‘spine of Britain’.

Mojo Monday 226

Tonight I decided to create a masculine card. What better paper to use than Marjolaine by Basic Grey? I used a label shape on my silhouette to cut out the sentiment, and used Weathered Wood to ink the edges of the pp and the sentiment. The background was a scrap of grey I had in my stash, and the base of the card is Kiwi Kiss by Stampin' Up. Here's a tip for you. If you have ribbon that is wrinkled or creased and you want to remove those, a mini hair straightener works wonders! I got one at TJ Maxx a couple of years ago for my hair, and I've used it on ribbon more than my hair.

Card mojo

I found some card mojo today! When I think of how long it took me to make 7 cards, I shake my head...but I love how they turned out. I printed out a file I had created of scriptures from a company who sells wall art. I wish I had stamps like these, but that just isn't in my budget right now because the only company I know of that sells anything like this is Our Daily Bread stamps, and while they have amazing stamps that I drool over, their stamps are too expensive for a single mom...but one day I will have some of their stamps. In the meantime, this is the solution I came up with. So I can't sell these cards, but I know some shut-ins that are going to love them. If you click on the words 'a card' in the descriptions, you'll be taken to the blogs of the cards I lifted.

This is pretty much a straight lift of a card which I pinned to pintrest several months ago. The papers are from Basic Grey's Curio collection.

I found a card which had this quilt motif while surfing for inspiration. I couldn't wait to try it! I love how Karen tells how she did it so it was easy to recreate. The papers I used are from Basic Grey's Sugared collection.

This card was also made using Basic Grey's Sugared Collection. It was inspired by a card on the same blog as the last inspiration. I like Karen's cards better than mine, but still love the way mine came out.

There are times when one inspirational blog will lead to another artist, and I think I found the inspiration for this card by clicking on one of the cards I liked from the Mojo Monday links and then clicking on her blog to see other cards she had made, and fell in love with a card by Joanna. I had never heard of the Card Patterns blog before, so now there's another place for sketches! I can't wait to explore past sketches they have. This card used paper from Basic Grey's Ambrosia collection.

The last card looked so good, I had to make another, so this was the result. A big disadvantage of these not being stamps is that I couldn't just stamp the image, cut it out, and be done. The way these were printed, several don't have enough room around them to cut creative shapes like this. I faked it by taping a scrap to the bottom of the paper with the scripture to complete the shape, then made that scrap a little more interesting with a background stamp I lucked up on last week. This card used paper from Basic Grey's Pyrus collection.

SFYTT January 2012

This is such a pretty design based on a sketch at ihearttostamp.com and the bittersweet papers from Basic Grey went with the card perfectly.

Mojo224

I used the Mojo Monday sketch 224 for the design of this card. I used a corner punch on a circle for the mat around the verse and added bling. The focal panel is also raised with dimensionals. The paper I used is from Basic Grey's Bittersweet collection.