Blast from the past

Who is that fresh faced young girl with her whole life ahead of her? Yep, that's right, it's me with my Mum and Dad. Don't you just love those gold curtains!!I was already married at this age and fairly skint as we were buying our first house, so no big party for me, just tea with Mum, Dad and Kevin.

Paper - Kaisercraft, Echo Park
Stamps - Papertrey Ink and Fiskars
Chipboard flower and key - Echo Park
Banner Flags cut from Spellbinders - available here

Belated birthday Leanne

 Here is a gift bag I have created for my friend Leanne, who has been very patient. Her birthday was16th March but the present I had ordered for her through a craft shop ended up being on back order for weeks, then it turned out she already had the item I had ordered. So it was back to the drawing board and eventually on 27th April I was able to give her the present.
 I had seen an envelope type bag on someone's blog ( sorry not to be able to give credit, I must remember to write these things down as I can never find them again) using the edgelet die by Stampin Up! An idea sprang to mind and I created this to hold the two dies I had brought as a present.

 The flower dies and Zig Zag die are from MFT. Butterfly - Marianne. Foliage- Marianne and Memory Box. Flourish - Papertrey Ink.

 This is the inside showing the pocket for the dies

This is the other side with the greeting on.

Finally here is the card I created using the small Madison window, window box and foliage (cut from Breezy Wreath die) from Memory box/Poppy stamps.The brick wall is embossed from a plate by Cherry Lynn

Same photos, two layouts

I have used the same photos in both of these layouts, one is for my Mum's album and another is for mine. This is Mum with her brother who spend forty plus years living abroad. She missed him so much and was always pleased when he could make the journey home. He moved back to England about 8 years ago with his family, but sadly he passed away a few months ago. I have been scouring our old photo albums and scanning them and creating pages for Mum's album, this is just one of those pages.

A card for a friend

Here is a birthday card I made for my friend Fiona who works with me.
The green paper, sentiment stamp and tag are from Kaiser craft.
Quatrefoil die is Papertrey Ink which has been die cut from Pool Party paper with Pool party seam binding both from SU.

This are Lauren and Damian on Valentines Day, photo taken at a restaurant in Brighton.
Apologies for the wonky photo editing, some days I get it spot on and other day,well, I think you can see!!

Paper and Ribbon SU
Bird and Cameo - Websters pages
Flourish die - Papertrey Ink
Chipboard sentiments - This and That by Echo Park
Title cut on my Silhoutte

The perfect getaway

Lauren and Damian had a short break up in Queensland, staying on Hamilton Island. I have captured some of their fun in these two layouts. The first one is views of and from their apartment. What a beautiful scene to wake up to in the morning. The second layout is their trip to Whitehaven beach (if you click on the layout to enlarge it you will see that the title is just above the horizon, it is in fine script in white so difficult to see when the image is reduced). I am working on two more, their trip to the Great Barrier reef, the pictures of them in their stinger suits is a sight to behold!The other is a trip to Dent Island to play golf.

An award

A big thank you to the lovely, talented Nikki Spencer for sending me this award.

A few guidelines to follow

1. Thank the blogger that gave it to you

2. Link back to the blogger who gave you the award

3. Copy and paste the award to your blog

4. Present the award to five other bloggers with 200 or less followers

5. Let them know you have done so by leaving a comment on their blog

Now to pass the award on to some other talented bloggers

Jenny Moors

Heather Summers

Sharon Burkett

Margaret

Christine Blain

Hurray for Harriet

 We have obviously very well trained our alpacas to give birth when we are around. Our third offspring arrived this Saturday just after lunch. We have called her Harriet, Holly wanted Buttercup ( more bovine, I feel) or Barnacles (come on!!), so Harriet it is.

 Here she is, still quite wobbly after a long sit down - approx 20 hours old

 Here she is with her very protective Mum, Joanne.

 Just to update you on the other two, here is Liam at two weeks, such a little cutie.

Here is Tina. The two of them are firm friends and spend most of their time together, bounding about and jumping on one another. No doubt Harriet will soon be joining in the fun and games.