Mother's Day

It is Mother's Day here in Northern Ireland and to all the wonderful harding working mothers, mommies and mums I wish you a very...

A gift of inspiration

I'm in love with this layout. It was a gift from JanMary of JM Digital Designs. She's a fellow blogger from Northern Ireland and also blogs at Welcome to my World JanMary and I'd encourage anyone to take a look. Her layouts are to die for.

I really like the simplicity of this layout, although having recently had a bash at digital scrap booking I know how much effort went into making this and how time consuming it was.

I always start of with an idea in my head of something ending up looking like this. My problem is that, being a newbie, I'm like a toddler let loose in a sweet shop with a £20 note. If an embellishment comes with a kit you can be pretty sure I'll cram it in there somewhere and the photograph ends up looking like an after thought that I've had to make room for. Not really the idea behind digiscrapping as far as I can tell. I would imagine the plan is to show off the photos to their best.

I plan on using this as part of my mum's Mother's Day present. She enjoys receiving photographs of Toots. She doesn't often take many photos herself. She claims to be allergic to cameras.

I'm still not sure though whether to print the layout and have it framed or try to make a few more myself using older photos of Toots, maybe a couple for each year and put the layouts in a huge photo album I bought a couple of years ago and never got round to using. That way I can leave part of the album empty and add to it with things like her first day at school and some day trips we're planning on taking during the summer.

Now if I could just restrain myself enough to be able to produce something even half as good as this layout I'll be happy.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Adventures in digiscrapping

I finally fell in. Head first.

My name is Leanne and I am a hobby addict (without a hope in hell of ever being presented with a chip).

I love new hobbies, especially the creative, crafty hobbies and even more so if there's an "Idiot's Guide to being Crafty and Creative" to go along with the new hobby, because I'm anything but. I can copy things easily but don't ask me to come up with a new idea all by my lonesome, because you'll be waiting a long time.

Anyway, I've been seeing a lot around about digiscrapping and I love me a hobby where I can get my hands on everything I need online and for the novice scrapper you can even get a ton of stuff for free.

Now I happen to be lucky enough to have Photo Shop Elements, but you can download some software perfect for the job online and again you can some free stuff. Also I've heard mention that you can use the photo editing software on Flickr.

I've been nosy about digiscrapping for a while now but decided it was far to addictive for me. I only see the the family from the shoulders up at the best of times, but I decided to have a go for a Christmas present for a friend. She loves to bake and always when its my turn to bake she always asks for the same few recipes over and over so I figured I could try and make some recipe cards.

This is what I came up with

Packages by Marie Stones and June Hill

Packages by Marie Stones and June Hill

And I know, I know there isn't a photo included, but I picked up a bundle of offcuts of mounting boards and card at my local framers and I thought I could have this on one side of the card with a photo of the recipe on the other side, laminate them and hold all the cards together with a keyring I found in a birthday card shop with a huge plastic piece of cake attached.

Cutesy, I know, but I'm really starting to like cutesy. Sometimes I even picture myself in a nice apron.