IN GOOD COMPANY

This month, SUSANNE over at SNAPS AND SNIPPETS is challenging us to scrap using SASSAFRASS products, for her IN GOOD COMPANY challenge.

On rifling through my stash, I discovered all of one sheet of Sassafrass (Woodland Whimsy),so tried to be a bit creative and use both sides, plus the scalloped bottom edge, as well as some fussy cutting. I also 'gutted' the sheet, so that I had the outer blue border, and attached some Bazzill CS to it. The doily shape under the flowers is the cream paper cut on my Silhouette, and inked a bit.

I have just realised what a dreadful picture this is...apologies!

Please consider joining Susanne's challenge, as she is threatening to call a halt on it  due to lack of interest, which would be a real pity. It has made me  much more aware of what products I actually have in my stash...and use them! I had had this particular sheet for a few years, and hadn't been able to come up with a way to use it until now-thanks Susanne!

I am abandoning COVER TO COVER for the moment...tomorrow I'm off to Barcelona for a few  days, as this is Kirsty's last half term there and this will be the last time I won't have to pay for a hotel!!

Kirsty will come back down with me for a few days, and then I have a friend coming over for five days...I'm hoping to dip in and out of COVER TO COVER, but certainly won't be participating  in the way I was expecting to!

Hope you're having a good weekend

Thanks for dropping by!

Take care of you

Alison xx

COVER TO COVER -Prompt 2

You will  notice that I am already running a day behind with this class!


The 'homework' for Prompt 2 

1.Have a look at the photos and ‘get rid’ of anything you really don’t want to keep. This means different things to different people: if you shoot sixteen of the same shot to get one you like, you might want to delete the other fifteen and keep the winner. But you might be quite happy to keep all sixteen if the sheer number of images doesn’t phase you (or your hard drive) in the slightest.


I went through the folders of pictures I've taken so far this year. I already keep my photographs in folders, by year and then separated into months. I also have folders for individual projects,like the album I'm doing for my niece's Birthday, minis I've made etc.

I discovered that I've taken 500 photographs this year, but by the time I had deleted those which were 'excess', I had whittled that down to 220!

2.From the remaining photos from 2012, what have you printed? Assuming you’re happy with the prints, you can ignore those images for right now. Let’s look at what you have not printed. Make a new folder so you can grab anything you want to print. Err on the side of printing a bit too many rather than not enough (don’t worry about the price right now - we can edit it down later if needed). Go through all unprinted photos from 2012 and drop

anything you can ever imagine wanting to print into that new ‘to print’ folder.

I actually ended up doing the opposite of what was suggested by Shimelle, and made a new folder for my 'already scrapped' pics for every month...it means when I go into that month, I can see immediately what pics I still have to work with. This works for me, because I still intend printing my own pics.
When I open each month now, my folder looks like this

It will definately be helpful, if I do this each time I make a layout- then I know exactly what stories are left to scrap. The funny thing is that I do  this when I'm working on individual albums...I have no idea why it hasn't occurred to me to do so with my chronological albums!

 3.Sign in with the photo printer of your choice and upload all those images to your account.

Sorry Shimelle, this just isn't going to happen for me......apart from the fact that I actually am quite happy printing my own pics, the mail between Spain and the rest of the world is a bit unreliable, to say the least.

I'll leave you with a couple of Layouts  I managed to get done for NSD....both were for challenges over at SCRAP FRIENDZY.

Thanks for dropping by!

Take care of you

Alison xx

COVER TO COVER...Prompt 1

Yes, SHIMELLE has a new scrapbooking class (it started yesterday)...and after much humming and hawing I decided I would sign up for it.

The first Prompt asked us to:

Take a photo that helps describe your current status with scrapbooking. You might have dozens and dozens of albums. You might have two. You might be completely happy with your albums. You might have a big stack and no books or ideas on where things should go. Share your photo (and more details if you would like) with us either by posting on the forum or writing a blog post.

I do actually keep my scrapbooks in chronological order...much easier since I started using D ring albums...I changed from postbound to these, about a year and a half ago. I don't scrap chronologically....I sometimes scrap recent pictures, but I often go through my photo archives- which I keep on my hard drive- to see what catches my imagination.

These are my albums from New Year's Day  2007 till the present time..one day I shall date the spines! I hasten to add that there are lots of pre-2007 albums in various places around the house.

At the moment, this is acting as a 'Holding Album'....the LOs for my niece's album, LOs for Stuart's eventual album and LOs for a 'My Life' album (about me) are all in here.... until I send for more.

I print my own photographs, as I like to use different sizes on my pages...I know it probably costs me more in the long run, but I never know what sizes I'll use before I actually start a layout!

I am in awe of some of the bloggers I know who are VERY much more organised than me.....but my 'system' works for me, so I'll stick with it...unless of course Shimelle is about to enlighten us with something that 'fits' me better! 

Thanks for dropping by!

Take care of you

Alison xx