Nuts About Sketches Week 171 :: Al Fresco!

It's time for another new sketch over at Nuts About Sketches, and this week there is a great one page sketch designed by Shawn.

Living in the far North of Scotland means that al fresco dining is a bit of a novelty! The weather isn't always our friend, and when it is, we try to make the most of it. On a trip to Lossiemouth, we decided to use one of the outside tables at La Caverna. It overlooks the beach, and the views that day were more like the Mediterranean than Moray!! Tom also seemed to have a thing about the sachets of sauce on the table, and HP sauce managed to make it's way into at least 2 of the photos.... Talk about product placement...!!!

I flipped the sketch, to make it fit with my photos - I hate having people look off the page LOL. I finally managed to used up some very old Sassafrass paper (back when it was called Sassafrass Lass!) on this page, as it matched in with all the colours in the photos (my DH is very comfortable, by the way,  wearing a bright cerise pink t-shirt) and gave the page a nice summery feel. The flowers were cut from the Accent Essentials Cartridge on my Cricut, layered up and fastened with a jumbo brad. They remind me of the Livingstone daisies I have growing in my garden.

Head over to the blog and see what the rest of the Design Team has done, their work is fantastic!

TTFN


xxxx

Nuts About Sketches Week 170 :: Findhorn

Week 170 sketch over at Nuts About Sketches, and it's a great double page sketch. I loved this sketch - it uses mainly 4x6 photos (which I use alot) and particularly landscape 4x6 photos (which I tend to take alot of).



These photos are of Findhorn - a seaside village not far from my home. Until we moved to Hopeman, Findhorn was the closest beach to our house.  We spent a lot of time on the beach there, having a coffee at the cafe by the Marina, having a meal at one of the pubs, walking through the woods to the wind turbines, jumping off the sand dunes. There are lots of great memories around this village for our family. I wanted to do a sort of tribute to the village, so I looked out my favourite photos of Findhorn.

I used up some scraps of "seaside-y" colours, and kept the background nice and neutral with kraft cardstock. I stitched round the papers and title block with DMC thread to add some dimension. I wanted to keep the layout quite simple to show the photos, so I just used a couple of quotation stickers as the only embellishments.

It's been a while since I've done a double layout, but I think that I will be trying to do a few more!!

TTFN

xxxx



Sassy Lil' Sketches DT

I am proud to announce that I have been chosen to stay on the Sassy Lil' Sketches DT for another term!!

Katie and Cherie have mixed it up a bit this time, with layout sketches being posted every Tuesday, card sketches posted every Thursday, and a brand new "Switch it Up" feature every Saturday!

I will be moving to Week 3, and joining a new group of gals, and I can't wait to start on the new sketches!!

Head over to the Sassy Lil' Sketches blog for the full announcement, and see who else made the team!

Thanks Katie and Cherie!

Nuts About Sketches week 169 :: Pickles

Another DT layout for Nuts About Sketches, this time using week 169's sketch.

I don't have many 5x7 photographs, but sometimes if I see a photo I really like when I am uploading to Photobox, I order a 5x7 copy of it. This is one of those photos. This is our cat, Pickles. She is a 4 year old moggy - and a very fluffy moggy at that. Over the years she has collected a few nicknames, so I wanted to record them.

I didn't want to go down the themed paper route for this layout - I don't actually have that much themed paper anyway - so I went down the white-on-white route. I made all the flowers myself using Natasha's flower turorials, and then handcut the leaf sprigs. The scalloped square was done using a Crafter's Workshop template - I handstitched the outline, and then cut round the stitching afterwards. I added half a doily, and cut the title from foam using my Sizzlit Nouveau alpha before adding some Frosted Lace Stickles to it.

My camera skills aren't that great, so the layout in real life doesn't look as washed out as my photo!

TTFN

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Nuts About Sketches week 168 :: Dad's Plane

I am doing a bit of a catch up today, with  DT layouts for the Nuts About Sketches sketch blog.

This is week 168's sketch, and it was a 2 pager, but I chose the right hand side of the sketch to do a single page layout. You can find the full sketch here.

These photos were taken at the Friends and Family Day at RAF Kinloss in 2006. The kids always wanted to go and have a look around the Nimrod - Dad's Plane. They liked to go and sit in his seat, look at all the kit he worked on, and even look at the toilet! Sitting in the pilot's seat wasn't as much fun, as that wasn't Dad's seat...  I enjoyed it too, as I could visualize when he was at work, what he was doing, where he was doing it etc.

The Nimrod Mk2 was a big part of our lives. Yes, it's interior may have been held together by bits of bodge tape, but it did it's job and it kept my husband safe for 15 years. Unfortunately, not everyone was as lucky as I was, and the loss of an aircraft over Afghanistan in 2007 started a chain of events that eventually led to the retirement of all the Mk2 aircraft. The proposed replacement aircraft - the MRA4 - was scrapped by the government in October 2010, leaving Mark with an uncertain future. It still is uncertain. All of the aircraft have been broken up, so all we are left with is photos and memories of this magnificent aircraft, and a keyring.  No, the Nimrod certainly wasn't a pretty thing, and it certainly wasn't a quiet thing either - but it still brought a lump to my throat to see it in the air, to hear the roar of the Spey engines, and to see and smell the huge amount of smoke it kicked out the back...!!! It has always been beautiful to me, and always will be.

We don't know if there will be another "Dad's Plane". I really hope there is, as for Mark to be able to go flying again would be great. He loved the flying aspect of his job, he joined the Air Force to fly and see the world. Yes, he has been lucky to do that, but flying a desk doesn't really have the same appeal somehow.

TTFN

xxxx 

Sassy Lil' Sketches - July 7th sketch :: My boys

It's the 7th of the month, which means it's time for another sketch over at Sassy Lil' Sketches!!

As always, we have a couple of generous sponsors this month, who have given SLS some prizes to give away. To be in with a chance to win a prize, just play along with us this month - link up your layout using any of July's sketches on the main blog!

This month we are being sponsored by  

May Arts

Sassy Studio Designs

Now for my layout for this month....

Yes, these are my boys!!! Big and Little....LOL.  I took Cherie's sketch, and rotated it 90 degrees, and then adjusted the elements until it looked just right LOL. I love this photo of Mark and Tom, taken in the summer of 2004. They are sat on the roundabout at the park in Syston - the village where Mark grew up. It was pretty cool to see the kids playing on the park we played on as kids (Mark more than I, as I lived in the next village. But we did stop there sometimes on the way back from the Doctor's Surgery...)

I used a dinner plate as a template for the stitched circle, and scraps of Jillibean Soup and Fancy Pants papers. The spiral arrow is from Maya Road, and I coloured it in with a ProMarker before coating it in Glossy Accents to give it a shiny appearance. The other two chipboard elements are also from Maya Road, and I added Stickles to those after coloring them in with ProMarkers. The loopy cardstock border is from Bazzill Basics, as is the kraft cardstock. The title is a mix of American Crafts Thickers, and Scenic Route chipboard alphas. I Stickled the chipboard... I don't know what came over me that day, all this glitter on a boys page LOL.

Please head over to the blog to see what the other 7th Sassies have done with the sketch - lots of inspiration from the girls this month!

TTFN

xxxx