Sunshine Kisses

I was inspired by a mixture of two of Shimelle's challenges to make this card. I loved the polka dot butterfly in this challenge and I was inspired to use hot pink in this challenge.
I'm pretty pleased with how it came out and I used my favourite sentinment on it: 'Sunshine Kisses and Birthday Wishes'.

3 Really is a Magic Number

I'm picking and choosing from the remaining challenges, partly because I know I don't have time to do them all and partly because my aim for the weekend was to finish off the remaining layouts for our Florida holiday from four years ago and guess what? I only had one single and one double left to do! I am soooo happy to have achieved this since the weekend and my scrapping mojo is well and truly back on track.
So this challenge was about using elements in threes (which I have with the buttons, photos and rub on corners) but I also thought the title of the challenge made a perfect title for these pictures of the kids which were sort of extra to the pages in the album.

A Colour Story

So on to the next challenge - a colour story in red, white and aqua. I really do love this colour combination and I have more than a few sets of photos that fit perfectly with it. The layout is called '(Not quite) Surfin' USA' but it's as close as we were likely to get in Orlando.

Grid It Up Challenge

I'm still having fun completing challenges from Shimelle's weekend of scrapbooking. The next challenge was to use a grid and I loved this because truth be told I am a very 'straight lines' scrapbooker at heart. Here's my layout which I had to prop on my lappy to photograph. This could equally have been the colour challenge because it just so happened that the colours in the photo were red, white and aqua but I went with some other photos for that one.

Adding To The Stories

The next challenge really wasn't difficult for me because I've told so few of the stories in this album I'm trying to complete. I've often left spaces on my layouts to add journaling later but as the album isn't even finished neither is much of the journaling.
This challenge has inspired me to complete all the missing stories in my album and I've done several already. On the the layout shown below I hadn't left journaling space so instead I've written the story on a journaling card and tucked it between the boys' photo and the mat. You can just see it sticking out at the side of the photo and on the bit showing it says, 'Once upon a time'. On it I've written the story of the three little pirates in the photos.

Still Inspired!

I've decided that all the layouts I do this weekend for Shimelle's online scrapbooking weekend will be to finish off an album of our holiday in Florida four years ago. That's because we went again this year and I don't want to start on the new album until I get the last one finished! I think the challenges will be enough to get through all of my remaining pages - hurrah!
So here's my next layout for the Chop Your Paper challenge. I had the perfect piece of patterned paper for this from Teresa Collins from 2008 which was just a year after the trip. I love using up old stash!
Again, apologies for the poor photo: I will get better at this.

Inspired

It's been a very long time since I scrapped. I've created lots of things over the past few months but I haven't actually made a scrapbook page for longer than I care to remember.
I've thought about it often enough, I've tidied my workspace, stroked my stash, even bought new stash but just not picked up paper, glue or scissors.
So I was delighted to catch a mention of this over at Shimelle's blog. Shimelle can always be relied upon for inspiration. She seems to be constantly dreaming up ways to kickstart the imagination. I don't know how she does it but I'm glad she does.
 At last then I've been inspired to pick up my mojo along with my photos and have been scrapping like a mad thing.
It's past time that I photographed and uploaded some of my efforts so - here is my first scrapbook layout for hmmmmmm....however many months and my response to the first challenge from Saturday (I will need to come back to Friday's challenges).
Sorry for the poor photo - I'm totally out of practise for taking photos of layouts.