The weekly challenge on UKS called for colours of your country's flag, include a banner and use more than one photo.  Over at the Creative Craft World Challenge Blog they had a great sketch.....

So I turned it on it's side, used the 2 long rectangle strips of patterned paper and made one of the 3 squares into a third rectangle keeping the other 2 as my photos.  Then I swopped splodges for bunting but placed it at the top.... I think you can see where my inspiration came from!

I have made this photo a bit bigger than normal as I had a request for bigger pics on my blog,,,, is this big enough or do I need to go extra large lol!???  Let me know what you think.

As you can see I a actually scrapped a non Harry Potter page!  This one is taken from June of last year when we celebrated both the jubilee and DS's birthday with family.... we were all very red white and blue!

Pass the page blog hop

Welcome to my blog, I hope you are enjoying the celebrations as we play pass the page in honour of Julie's 2 year blog birthday!!  Hurrah!!

Congratulations on blogging for 2 years Julie and thank you so much for inviting me to take part as I really, really enjoyed it and I hope all the people watching and hopping today will have fun. I for one can't wait to see how the page started out and what it looks like now as it has completed it's journey.

Everyone taking part today got together at a wonderful bloggers weekend back in March (except Jo who was poorly and missed by us all) for a reminder of the original participants......

The list for those joining in today is..............

Julie                             jsquaredscrapspot.wordpress.com

Alison                          alisonslife-in-the-slow-lane.blogspot.com

Fay                              beautifullilysramblings.blogspot.com

Ruth                            chattycraftyartypig.blogspot.com

Jemma                         just-jimjams.blogspot.co.uk

Miss Smith                   journalofcuriousthings.co.uk

K                                 www.kscraftycorner.blogspot.com

Missus Wookie            mrswookieswanderings.blogspot.co.uk

Sandie                         itchifingers.blogspot.com

Mel                             www.ispeakmelsh.co.uk

Alexa                          simplyalexa.typepad.com/trimmingthesails

Jo                                curlyscrapbooker.blogspot.co.uk

Jacky                           scrappyjackylive.blogspot.com

Hopefully you have come here via Fay's blog.  I met Fay for the first time in March in 'real' life and got to see her fabulous scrapbook pages in the flesh (or is it in the paper??).  I really love her style and admired all that I saw.  Fay is very talented and very creative making many of her own embellishments as showcased on the recent UKS bloghop (Fay is a teamie over at UKS).

Anyway, I was dead chuffed to be following her on the blog hop and this is the page I received....

I loved the page!!  I looked and saw she had used grid paper with a 'messy stack' under a single portrait photo.  The main colours were pink and grey but there was also brown, green and orange. There are lots of words in 3 different areas including the journalling which is all handwritten.  All the papers are patterned and at least one has been cut with a border punch.  There is Fay's trademark swirly twine and some gorgeous embellishments (hearts, flowers, stars and banner shapes).

As many of you are aware I am loving scrapping photographs taken at the Harry Potter Studio Tour and decided to use one of my son on the bridge.  I kept fairly close to Fay's original page but changed the colour scheme making it more brown green and orange as the pink and grey didn't go with my picture.  Normally I wouldn't probably use all patterned papers but I did for this page and rather like it, I also used twine though I kept it straight to reflect the horizontal lines in the original..

I loved the page I made so was really happy to have scraplifted Fay and it also meant I didn't feel too embarrassed passing a page onto the uber scrapper Jemma (Jemma is the equivalent to scrapping Royalty and I was totally in awe when I met her for the first time in 2011 as I had been following her blog and gazing adoringly at so many of her LO's! Luckily we made firm friends and she took me under her wing as I needed a lift both from the station and up from my low levels of confidence in my scrapping abillity!!)

So please follow the page as it passes to Jemma and I will be following it with you!

Dumbledore

Over at Sarah's Cards Blog there is another great sketch to use

Of course I had some more Harry Potter photos to sketch that could be used with this wonderful sketch.

I have used the sketch but adapted it to include information about Dumbledore.....

I also did something completely  new and different for me and I added a hidden 'underneath' area.... there may be a proper scrapping technical term for this.... it took a bit of fiddling around but eventually I managed and this is how it turned out........

I have journalled about the great man and included a photograph of his last will and testament along with a picture of his obituary in the Daily Prophet and the tell all book that Rita Skeeter wrote about him.

Don't forget to come back tomorrow as part of the pass the page blog hop xxx

Loving scrapping HP

I have really been enjoying scrapping photos from the day in September last year when we visited the Harry Potter Studios, but I haven't shared that many pages with you yet.

Back in February the weekly challenge was......
+ Make the subject an important person(s) in your life (can include pets)
+ Use a monogram embellishment
+ Journal and title about their character, your relationship or information about them

Obviously Harry Potter is important to me (yep I am a HP nerdy geek) so it fitted the bill perfectly, the monogrammed paper also went with the challenge and I highlighted the large HP with some gloss and sparkle (not really seen in the photo). The title is 'Welcome to the world of Harry Potter' and the journalling was completed after the pic was taken.

I was soooo excited to arrive, in fact I was the most thrilled of all of us to be visiting the film sets and as soon as we got home I really wanted to plan another trip and guess what....... we are going again in May....... the animal actors are making an appearance and who can resist meeting Fang or Mrs Norris????  Not me that's for certain!

If you want to be part of another exciting adventure then there is a fabby blog hop on Sunday which I am thrilled to be part of.  Julie is celebrating her second blogerversary with a pass the page game and blog hop ... so come back and join in, I can't wait to see how the page started out and what it looked like at the end.  Hope to see you there xxx

UKS and Scrap 365 combined

The weekly challenge over at UK Scrappers is to use pale greens with burgundy pink, a photograph of something/someone you love and a shape.  Over at Scrap 365 they have this fabby sketch based on a page from the uber talented Sian.

So I have combined the 2 and  translated the sketch into this page.....

I managed to create this layout today whilst having a virtual crop with some of my scrappy buddies.  I think I did more chatting than scrapping but it was great to catch up with a few friends!  This page includes the last 2 photographs taken outside of the Harry Potter Studio tour with the amazingly huge chess pieces (as featured in the second film HP and the chamber of secrets).  This was the only time the 4 of us were together as DD went round with her friend.  We are actually planning another trip at half term as guess what they have the animal actors visiting!!!  Who can resist meeting Mrs Norris or Cruickshanks in real life...... not me!!

My first ever crop!!

After the fantastic Bloggers weekend at the beginning of March I was determined to find somewhere local where I could meet up with like minded people and craft.  I had previously looked into the idea of attending a crop but to be honest I felt a bit inadequate as an inexperienced scrapper and definitely wasn't brave enough to meet up with complete strangers!!

But the time had come to get involved and seek out fellow paper crafters who would be happy to share their space (and possibly ideas and stash!) with  me.  I contacted one crop via UKS and 2 via their websites but only had one reply via UKS followed up by a reminder when the next crop was (yesterday!) so I decided to go along.

I thought I would be ok as I consider crafters to be among the nicest people I have ever met and you know what, I was right!  I met up with a wonderful bunch of girls who were really welcoming and friendly and despite the fact that they had all known each other for years, and I was the odd newbie I felt at home almost straight away (I think the bowls of mini eggs on each table definitely helped lol!)

Here is a shot of most of us minus the photographer and another scrapper who came after this pic was taken

I even managed to make a couple of scrapbooking pages from start to finish, a process that can often take me days (I am definitely a slow scrapper!)

The first is for this weeks challenge on UKS  I went for a B&W photo of the everyday with bright coloured papers and lots of journalling.  It is a lot brighter in real life as the grpah style paper in the background is a fairly bright green!

The second layout is yet another from the Harry Potter Studio Tour.  THis is for the UKS monthly challenge which was taking the third letter of your user name and searching under that letter in the members gallery to find inspiration.  I used my teamie Roxy52's page found here and took inspiration from the 2 photos, embellishment placement and large rectangle patterned papers.

DS and I are posing in a pretend fireplace to look as though we have just travelled via the Floo Network!

So for me a hugely successful first time crop and I don't think I upset anyone too much as they are letting me come back for the next one in May and I can't wait!!

Julie Kirk in collaboration with Jennie Bowlin Studios asked us to share ......  this is definitely one good thing that blogging has done for me..... allowed me to get to know some people virtually, feel confident enough to meet up with them in real life, helped me discover and feel competent in the hobby that I am now really enjoying and love and ultimately meant that I could walk into a room of complete strangers this weekend who I know share the same passion as I do (so I am definitely a braver person too!!)

April Family 12 x 12 blog hop

I'm late................
so sorry everyone I have been in London for the day and forgot to write my post in advance I apologise!

Anyway, the fantastic Margie is the founder of our monthly family blog hop, which is a really fantastic way to record your own family photos....... if you remember to take them!!  I have looked through all my March pictures and there are not as many as usual, I have lots of scrapbook layouts, my mother's day presents and my daughters new trainers but very few people pics and definitely no family photos (I took several of DD's English/French exchange group but they don't count as family!)

So I have cheated!  I bring you hot of the press this photograph taken on Sunday

This is a celebration for my Mother in Law's 80th birthday, which 17 of us joined her for in Dorset and what a fun weekend it was. Yes I got everyone to pose snapped away then asked a complete stranger to take one that included me!!

I expect you have already visited all the other participants blogs (sorry again for my tardy entry!) but here is the list just in case

Margie http://xnomads.typepad.com/blog

Carol Ann http://www.scrappingthoughts.com

Louise http://www.scrapbook-me.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth http://www.chattycraftyartypig.blogspot.com

just wanted to say a special welcome to Louise as this is her first time joining in and I hope she continues to do so.  If you are interested in joining us please get in touch with Margie, it really is simple and fun to do xxx

Harry Potter Studio Tour

Back in September the family went to Leavesden home of the Harry Potter Studios.  My son and I are huge, enormous, great big Harry Potter Film Fans and this was the perfect day out for us!

Recently I have started to scrap some of the 400 plus photos hubby and I took (I haven't actually seen any of the ones that DD took yet).  I have taken the opportunity to use some in conjunction with the challenges over at UKS.  Last week we were asked to use a primary colour, 3 clusters of embellishments and some washi tape.

I love a sketch as a starting point for scrapping and found this one......

over at the Creative Craft World Challenge blog.  I immediately fell in love with the layout and knew exactly how to use it with a photograph of the Gryffindor Common Room............

and entered into the first non UKS challenge I have done for ages....... who knows I might even join in again!