Embellish your World

What no pets or people?

A great challenge to go with sketch #47 over at LCOM last Friday - to create a page with no people or pets in the photograpbs. Thanks to the abundance of Elephant Parade photos taken May/June I had plenty to work with a made myself a little kit up to take away with me to scrap.  I used more of my Echo Park papers (from ATDML) and a mixture of My Little Shoebox alphabet stickers to create this 2-photo layout.  It was a great  challenge - have a go if you've the time. 

And talking of no pets or people, here are some no pets/people photos from our week away, Malmesbury Abbey, Carved woodwork from the Timber trail at the Cotswold Country Park & Beach, and the view across the lake at which we stayed. 

I have plenty of photos for printing off and scrapping now, all ready for my Norfolk crop in a couple of weeks with some of my ATDML retreat buddies!!  Can't wait!!

May Project 12

Now I have my laptop back in lovely working order I can share my May project 12 double layout that I saved and then couldn't access.  May, as my blog readers may have observed, was mostly full of elephant hunting around London so it should come as now surprise that my pages for May mostly contained Elephants!!

My layout used my fave Queen Bee papers by Pink Paislee which lend themselved to cutting out small details for layering (which I kinda love to do!) and judging by the clips we get to see more of from July 19th over at Pink Paislee, the new releases are going me winging their way into my shopping cart very, very quickly!! I just love their papers, and my next class from ATDML in August will be using the Pink Paislee 365 degrees collection.  #

Just take a look at what is coming soon from Pink Paislee ....

Here is what Pink Paislee say about this collection!

 "Elegant design meets eclectic materials in this new Parisian Anthology collection.  This stunning array of products will include designer ink resist papers, brooch brads, polymer clear stamps, printed corrugate shapes, and several unique embellishments designed with crafters in mind" 

And this rather catches my eye too! Especially as I'll have all three of teapot humans (quote from True Blood Season 2 - Eric referring to children!) at school in September! I can't wait for these!

Back tomorrow with Week 3 Recipe from ChickenSoup - are you playing along? Come see what we are up to, and join us on facebook too (ChickenSoupDT)

 

256 of 258 Elephants!

So it's the final weekend of the elephant parade London and yesterday was the first viewing day of over 200 of them being located together at Chelsea. Having spent weeks with the children exploring the streets of London to locate these whilst they were scattered across pthe city I managed to almost complete my search yesterday with 256 of 258 found. Still not seen Gerald and think I've missed one of the Untitled elephants. Of course if my beloved laptop was working I could be sure but my photographs are currently stuck on there til I get it repaired and I only have the last 2 visits on my memory card. Other news, hubby starts a new job on Monday, 3 months to start with but looks promising, so I'm back to the school runs, least until the end of term. Then we've got a week away in the Cotswolds to look forward to and hopefully plenty more of the glorious sunshine we've had these last few days. Problem with the sunshine?....too bice for housework and being indoors scrapbooking, perfect for watching cricket and enjoying a good book though! Enjoy your weekends!

More Scrapping challenges and more seeking Elephants

32 elephants and lots and lots of walking, today Clare and I found those on Park Lane, Kensington, Notting Hill, Paddington and a couple of odd ones in between! Great fun, but hard work! I have just 36 elephants left to find of the 258! Certainly more than enough for a minibook, or two, or three!!

And talking of scrapbooking I've another couple of pages to share, again created as part of the birthday celebrations at LCOM.  Firstly we were challenge to scrap ourselves, with journalling a must. I based my layout on one I had seen in Scrapbook Trends recently that I like.

Secondly we had a colour challenge to create a layout in the LCOM forum colours BLACK, WHITE, BLUE & HOT PINK - perfect for Eloise's new pink highlights photos!

Now I have updated my blog, sorted my elephant photos and had a divine soak in the tub with LUSH Comfort bubbles, a face mask and plenty moisturising I am off to bed! TTFN x

Birthday Bash Sketch #6

Still playing along with the birthday sketch challenges over at LCTS.

Today's sketch can be found here by the very lovely Guylaine and her challenge is to have a black title on your page. I almost made that, but used a couple of white letters for my elePHANTASTIC layout.

 

I'm 6/6 so far, with my virtual birthday cake piling up nicely! How are you getting along? Do post a comment to let me know and link to your creations, I'd love to see them all!

 

Isn't she Pretty in Pink?

Dearest teenage daughter sporting her latest hair-do! A head of pink/purple highlights, which I think really suit her (but then again, I'm probably biased!) We are not long back from another Elephant Parade seeking morning in the city of London. Pleasantly surprised to find that the trooping of the colours was on as well! A real sight to see. 

Some more beautiful elephants seen today as part of London's Elephant Parade this summer. We've found 190 now, with 68 to go, although a couple of those have been removed for the time being, but we're hoping to round up those we don't find on our travels later this month when they are all moved to Chelsea.

 

And finally, before I head off to snoozeville, sharing my LCTS Birthday Bash Sketch #5 based on Susan's sketch today and surprise surprise, I scrapped elephants!! Didn't manage to stick to the monocromatic challenge though, but I like it!

  

Back tomorrow with more to share :)

Super Sunny Day

Fingers crossed that the weekend continues to be a glorious as it was on Saturday, where we whiled away the day in three of London's beautiful parks, along with quite a few other people! Hyde Park was our first stop, for our companions, Debbie & her girlies, to photographs the elephants along the Serpentine. We then enjoyed our picnic to lighten our loads before moving over to Green Park.  Here we managed to photograph the 2 elephants that were missing on our last visit and enjoyed seeing the others again. There was a scarey part to our time in this park when Jamie wandered off and went misisng- not sure I have ever been so frightened in my life, but when I finally found him, after only a few minutes but long enough, he was fine, not bothered at all, and simply said "ah, hello Mummy, you found me!" Little tyke!!

After Green Park, we bid farewell to Debbie and co who had their return train to catch, and we sauntered over to St James Park.  Not sure I have ever been here before but it was so pretty. Sadly the boys were getting tired and we didn't manage to locate any more elephants, but after some time in the playground and another cool drink we caught the tube home, having thoroughly exhausted ourselves!

I had planned on taking the kids to the coast today, but I think we may have had enough excitment for one weekend, and there is always half term!

Phant-astic layout? Could be!

And what a glorious end to the week we have, the sun is shining and there was much excitement in our houshold this morning as the weekend is about to start and we've much planned! Given the sun will be shining even more tomorrow we are back up London searching for more elephants from the Elephant Parade, meeting up with Debbie and her gorgeous girlies too for a lovely picnic in the park.

As mentioned before I already have over 200 photographs of elephants from the parade, and here is my first layout making a teeny-tiny dent into that pile! The layout (using the new Basic Grey Manilla Basics paper - available from ATDML) is based on this weeks Let's Capture These Sketches sketch which will be up later today (Canadian time difference and all that!). Go check it out and have a go, there are prizes up for grabs!!

So hard to just pick 8 photographs for this page! Think another layout will be following very soon, probably using Sketch inspiration #9 from Created by ATDML this week which is another multi-photo sketch. Mel's layout using the sketch is too darn cute, and full of fab details, can't wait to play, but first, the final day of the week at work to endure...ttfn, have a happy Friday x

I am seeing heffalumps before my eyes!!

"They're black, they're brown, they're up, they're down
They're in, they're out, they're all about
They're far, they're near, they're gone, they're here"

Well I have mostly been hunting elephants around London these last few days, aside from having to go to work (oh the joy!) and have over 200 photographs so far with 143 found of the 258 around London.  It is a perfect way to visit London, walking around taking in the sites, and I would highly recommend it as a day out (or several) in Half Term.  The map can be downloaded from here and Hyde Park is a good place to start with over 25 there and a perfect picnic venue too!

   

Apart from that I have been playing with paper (not all elephant orientated!) for both the ATDML design team, for Lets Capture These Sketches and for the My Little Shoebox DT call.  As well as creating two layouts and a card we had to submit a project as well, and I made this home decor items for my kitchen. 

My layout for this weeks Capture These Sketches layout featured my eldest son playing in the local park. We are lucky to have lots of play areas near where we live, including a new one not 5 minutes away which we are off to now, before joining the man of the house at the cricket, come on sun - shine for us!

    
 
Have a fun Sunday one and all x
 

Phantastic start to the search

40 elephants found yesterday! Plenty left though!!