What's in a name?!

When we first started thinking about naming Connor, I was very sure about the names I liked. My favourite was Isaac, meaning 'he will laugh'. Who wouldn't want their child to laugh? Of course I would have nicknamed him Zac, but Isaac is a name that you can grow into when you grow out of Zac. What I forgot to factor in was my husband's opinion ;) He got so fed up with me going on about baby names that he flushed the name book down the loo :) So it wasn't until 'Poddy' was born that I dared raise the subject again. Why Poddy you ask? Well our surname is Brumby. A Brumby is an Australian horse, and a baby Brumby is called 'Poddy'. The baby was called Poddy from about 3 months in and we called him Poddy for 5 days after he was born too. Finally Poddy's Dad sat down with the book. 'I only like one name' he said. I held my breath. 'Connor'. 'Connor' I said, trying it on for size. 'I don't dislike Connor'. So in whispers we tried it out, not telling anyone in case it didn't suit our new baby. We 'tried it out' all weekend and on day 6 we announced to our family that Poddy was Poddy no more (except that it was a hard habit to get out of and every now and then we did call him Poddy by mistake)!

Connor means 'lover of hounds'. Connor loves animals fullstop. He loves snails and cats and dogs and rabbits and, well animals!! I wonder if he had been Isaac he would have loved animals quite as much as he does now, or whether he would have just laughed more ;)

Anyway, I wanted to do a LO to remember what I had wanted, and what we got. The title is simply 'Connor'. I used a fabulous sketch from My Sketch World, this one being one side of the January sketch. I didn't follow it as religiously as I might usually, but because I had such a specific idea in my mind, adding embellishments and subtitles just made it look cluttered. I'm still really into trying out rub ons and stamping now that I am more confident that I won't ruin whole LOs that are nearly finished when the rub on doesn't rub on correctly, or I stamp in the wrong place. Both these techniques feature here.



The photo is of Connor when he was 5 days old. The description of the meaning of the name is from the actual book that we used to name him (a second version since I had to throw the first one away ;) ). I liked the idea of using the genuine article. I'm pleased with the result and have recorded the Isaac/Connor story in the journalling.

Scrapping in PINK, what a treat!!

Woohoo! I got to scrap in pink :) I have two pairs of wellies for Connor, some green crocodile ones and some blue Thomas the Tank engine ones. Could I find either of them when the snow fell this week? Could I heck! I went everywhere to find some and in the end found a shop with a choice of three wellies; green crocodile (didn't even get a look in), Smarties (which I really pushed for) and Peppa Pig ones. DS was adament that he was having the Peppa Pig ones, and I thought 'He'll grow out of them soon enough'.

I used Serif PhotoPlus SE (free download!) to remove all colour except for the wellies and then picked up on the pink in the rest of the LO. The challenge on UKS was to use a sketch they supplied, use black and white, use stamping and use flowers. I achieved all of these things, and am really pleased with the LO.

I wanted to scrap this because Connor calls wellies 'willies', which makes me smile everytime, rather childishly. I spent 20 minutes trying to get a decent photo of him in them and eventually resorted to bribing him with chocolate buttons. But just look at that smile :)

Materials:
Bazzil cardstock
MM noteworthy journalling spot
daisyds rub on journalling spot
Ric rac, blooms and brads from stash
Thickers Daiquiri
MM alpha shimmer
Dotty card from back of 'Say it with crystals' packaging
Doodlebug designs stripes

Snow!!

I did hear on the weather forcast that they were expecting snow, but I didn't really take it too seriously. We hardly ever get decent snow. So I was very surprised when I got up on Monday morning and found a good 3 inches or so blanketing the ground and everything else for that matter. I had great fun trying to get decent photos of Connor, and in the end enlisted my Mum to help me out. I got some lovely ones though. Here are a selection of them and I'm sure you'll see them on LOs pretty soon.







Anyway, the snow has brought chaos across the country. We just can't handle snow, however much warning there is. Trains have been going nowhere, the airports are closed, offices are empty and schools are closed. I'm not complaining about that, don't get me wrong :) I had today off work (paid) and managed to get my first CJ of the year underway. It's Kathb's 'Big Cats' all your own photos CJ and I had a lovely photo of a Tiger to work with.



I'm going through a definition phase it would seem. I created a LO using the 'Connor' part of our baby name book and now this one with the tiger definition. On the other side, I tried to keep it fairly simple to make sure the focus remained with the fabulous photo, and just included William Blake's poem 'The Tiger'. I'm still not sure about scrapping in 8x8, but think I will get the hang of it and don't think I've done a bad job with this one either.

Fantastic February

Woohoo! I survived January and actually enjoyed most of it too :)



As I think I already said I've been planning on doing the 12 months=12 projects challenge and today I completed the January review. The hardest part was choosing between the photos, and then trying to work out a LO that could include them and a bit of journalling. Am pretty pleased with the result but may try hidden journalling next month to overcome that issue.



Shimelle's challenge for 'Scrap Like You Mean It' this week was to scrap in black and white. I thought that the best way to accomplish this was to use only black and white papers/embellishments and then have really colourful pictures. The topic I chose was the newly decorated house. I've put so much of myself into the house over the last 6 months with a little touch here or a little touch here. I've enjoyed being able to make things feminine and have exactly what I want, where I want. The consequence of that is that Connor is able to move things around and already things are getting a little tired, or cracked. The LO will keep everything perfect!



Another thing that I've been wanting to do is to redo some of my older LOs. The one I chose to do this week was my photos of Connor sleeping. He was born three weeks early and for the first three weeks until his due date, he just slept. One morning I took a series of photos over about 10 minutes and he changed pose about 8 times whilst I was doing it. I love the photos and the LO uses four of them. I printed Brahms lullaby off the internet to use as an accent and am pleased with how it turned out. It's much more accomplished than the first attempt, which was very basic indeed.



And finally, it's CJ time. Tomorrow my 'Connor's Second Year' sets off on it's journey. I completed the October page '1' last night. I've never scrapped in 8x8 before (other that CJ) and actually found it really hard to do with my own photos. I think it will come with practice over the next few months though!

Where the heck did January go???

So the new year's resolution to blog more didn't quite work out then?! I can't believe that it's almost the end of January already. I have had a productive month however, scrap wise if nothing else ;)

Last weekend a UKS friend (Lis) and I went to The Living Rainforest for a photo shoot. I nearly didn't take my camera but I'm so glad that I did. The photos were stunning and I couldn't wait to scrap them. The first I fired off pretty quickly using a Pencil Lines sketch from a while back. The second was in response to Shimelle's 'Scrap like you mean it' challenge on UKS, in which she provided a sketch for us to work from. I was really pleased with how both of them worked out.

This week's challenge on UKS was set by Blooming Pages. We had to scrap an animal for 10 points, use stitching for 10 pts and use black, red or yellow for 10 pts. I had a fabulous photo of Connor after his face painting last week. The perfect paper I had used for my sister's cat LO that I gave her framed last year. I still had some odd bits left though so I cut out the paw prints and stuck them around the edge. The hardest part was incorporating stitching on what was a fairly simple design. I spent ages stitching around the letter 'C' but it just looked stupid so in the end I settled for two stitches to hold the 'C' in place in the title!! Almost a cheat but not quite.

The other two pieces I've been working on this week are the pre-crop challenge that is based on

as our inspiration and the LO for the Scrap Sisters challenge on the 16th February. Don't want to unveil either of them just yet though so watch this space.

This weekend I have a CJ to get ready for posting on Monday and various pieces that are in my head at the moment, just calling out to be put to paper!

Shimelle is a star!!

I was doing so well, wasn't I?! Although I've not been posting on my blog I have been hard at it scrapping wise. I was thrilled this morning to have an email from Cheryl at SI asking for one of my LO and am going to pack that up to send tomorrow.

It's been an exciting week on UKS too, with the unveiling of the 'Murder, Mystery and Mayhem' cybercrop. I've been assinged to the FBI and have been enjoying the challenges so far. I didn't manage to resist the kits though and had to buy both Bubbly Funk and Shimelle's.

Speaking of Shimelle, she is doing a free mini class to say thank you for the wonderful experiences she's had as a result of what she calls the 'crazy scrapbooking thing'. I think that it's very her! I've only met her once at the Skraptacular retreat but she is a lovely warm and funny person and her giving this free mini class is fab! I'm really looking forward to having a go. Thanks Shimelle! (For more information, click here:) )

Happy New Year

Well, I have been a little absent recently! Since Boxing Day I've been back in the scrapping mood and have messed up what was a tidy scrap room but have created 9 new LOs. I'd forgotten how calming and all consuming scrapping was and can't wait for my Snapfish delivery- hopefully tomorrow. I will share the LOs with you another time (mainly because I'm living in hope of getting some sunshine in which to photograph them ;) ). Today I'd like to show you my CJ entries. I did two just before Christmas to finish off the 10 month adventure. They were Roo's 1968 and Sarah's Fairytale females. I don't seem to have taken photos of the Fairytale females. I did Snow white. For 1968 I did a review of the year. I was fairly pleased with the results;