down at the second hurdle!

Good morning!

Firstly thank you to 'Momma Said' for her kind words yesterday and also to Jenny as they have both become followers of mine and I really do appreciate that, its kinda nice knowing that I'm not talking to myself lol :)

Sooo, you may remember from yesterday that I was going to work my way through the Creative scrappers birthday sketches, well ..... I did try..... it was getting on last night when I fancied making some mess so I came to my craft space and settled down to create the second sketch.

This is the second sketch that you will come across in the blog hop, I love it, I even love Ashleys layout from it but I couldn't get into it. Look at what happened when I attempted to try:

I messed up and cut my triangle in the wrong place.... I wanted his face and the hoop to be in the frame but it just didn't work as Id planned. I didn't give up straight away but I used this as a template to fit over other photographs that I would like to use and it didnt really fit well. 

So instead of spending all night trying to find something that did, I made an executive decision to move on, hopefully I will return and defeat this sketch, but just not right now.

This took me to the third sketch:

Much easier for my little brain to cope with when its tired!

This one was released by Danielle who did an amazing job with it... her pics are just stunning too, hop over and take a look.

I knew I wanted to scrap a photo of Michael after my last disaster, so when I found this very old set of him I was very happy.

* I've always loved these pictures but they've never been right before now. They make me feel grungy and give me a roughed up messy kind of feeling so I went into this layout knowing that it wasn't going to be a 'pretty' page.

* I scratched a border, which spanned all three of the photos. This was to make them feel more together, without having them touching, they definitely needed to have that little gap between them. 

* I knew the alphabet for this page would be a problem, so even as I was sticking the photos down I knew what i wanted to do with the title work.
The letters that i drew around for the outline were pink and sparkly.... made me feel better when I was writing 'gorgeous' and he will never know!

* Naked Thickers were perfect for finishing the title off, I did have to alter a few of the letters to make up for ones that I'd ran out of but i don't think it shows does it????

* TOP TIP OF THE DAY: Don't panic when your letters are disappearing and leaving the sheet bare. You can make most letters out of other letters.

I usually end up with 3's for E's or I change K's into Y's.... here I changed an N into an R and the E came from the bottom of a K... just take a few minutes to study what you have before writing it off.

You're a crafter, anything is possible!!

* I dont use brads often, but sometimes thats all you need. Then instead of the other strips of paper I drew in white lines just as an eye catching filler. 

* This grouping of brads sits on the washi tape border that acts as a roof for the photos. I didn't want the washi to be too perfect so I pushed in a few sections and ripped at others, hoping to keep the grungy feeling going. 

* I pencilled in some lines to write my journalling on... I always do this as if I don't I end up with slanted words, NOT ATTRACTIVE!

I wanted it to fit in as well as possible around the title so I carried on the sentences either sides of the drops from the letters. Luckily the gaps there aren't huge so its still legible. 

* the finished layout. I did my journalling a little different and spoke from my point of view now in relation to the pictures that were taken years ago. so I chose to add this years date and also a date for when the photos were taken. 

*the washi repeats top and bottom to keep the 'inners' together, as do the brads and the hand drawn lines. repetition is good and so are triangles around the photo. they make you look at whats in the middle. In our case the photos, which are most important on our layouts. 

Thanks for coming back to visit. Ill be doing an extra little post this afternoon about something exciting thats coming up... an adventure that if you don't know about already you may want to join me on! see you soon xxxx