Tonight I'm off for a long overdue scrapping session with Leigh. I have printed all my Christmas photos off and am going armed with them :)

Here are some more of the Ruby Album photos. No prizes for spotting the deliberate mistake ;)

Back to school blues

How is it the day before I have to return to work?? In some ways it's nice to return to the old routine but in others it's not. So today I will mostly be doing all the marking that I've been putting off for the whole of the holidays but I might sneak in a little bit of scrapping this afternoon.

In the meantime though, here are some more Ruby Album pages:

Two days in

Found a few things that might interest you :) There are some free digital frames with a sewing theme here. And it's the last day to submit your entry for the Indigo Monthly challenge here today. I wasn't brave enough to do the 365 challenge last year but I'm tempted by the 52 walks challenge this year. Seems much more achieveable and I love taking photos outside. 52 walks with my camera was suggested by Wombat over on UKS (you can see the thread here) and she says 'A walk can be up a mountain, around a supermarket-whatever. I've started a flickr group to upload photos to. Please feel free to join me: http://www.flickr.com/groups/52_walks_2010/ '.

And here are some more of my Ruby Album pages.

Happy New Year

Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past. ~Henry Ward Beecher

Welcome to 2010. I loved 2009 and hope that 2010 will be even better. Now I know that I'm not supposed to look back but I did want to share the Ruby Anniversary Album with you :)

Ages ago Tony mentioned wanting to do an album for his parent's ruby wedding anniversary. Suddenly we had a month left in which to get the photos from his parents, scan them, print them and make the album. We were still putting the finished touches to it at 11 am on the day of the celebration lunch. But the end result was pretty nice, and Tony did a great job on his pages too. Tony's Mum had so many photos, all in a drawer and choosing between them was hard. For the most part we tried to chose photos that were strong enough to stand up on their own and still tell a story of the time. We only combined Christmas and holiday photos to get a page of each of those.

The first page shows a photo of Tony's parents from earlier this month. It's a scraplift from a class using Basic Grey Ambrosia, Hobby Craft lace and Bazzil blooms.We then did some baby photos but that page is my least favourite so moving right on...

These great photos of Tony's Mum should have been done better but I wanted something girly and I have so little stash in pink that I struggled. In the end I kept it fairly simple and used Basic Grey Sugared (I think!). I also gave the photos a pink tint in picasa for a bit of a change.

We loved this photo of Tony's Mum. I used lots of layers for this one and was pleased with how it came out.

I'll show you more tomorrow ;)

Last year I took the 12 months=12 projects challenge. I decided to create a DLO of each month combining my favourite photos of the month. There are a few websites launching it again this year but this one is my favourite with a sketch for each month included. Why not have a look? I'll be having a go again this year.

Sharon has already prepared her January pages for another monthly challenge and it looks as though it'll be stunning. Why not check out her blog and the art journalling challenge?

My top ten of 2009

It's that time of year when we review what's gone before. I've amassed a massive collection of LOs this year and had a great time doing so. There are some that stand out for me though and for the most part my top ten of the year was pretty easy. I'd love to see your top tens so if you're blogging about it, please add a link :)
This one is from the November UKS cybercrop and was a scraplift of Ifa's class. I love it!I love this one, although it's not finished yet because I left it to add photos to after the event.

This one was from the CC in February. I like the colours and it made me braver with ink :)

Quite a few of my favourites would have to have been inspired by Shimelle's 'Scrap like you mean it' challenges this year. My favourite of those was this one. I love the blue butterflies against the black and white. It really makes them stand out.
And this one was another SLYMI one. It's also one of Shimelle's sketches and I've used it since too.
One of the projects that I undertook this year was 12 months=12 projects and each month I created a DLO of my favourite shots of the month. This one is up there with my favourite LOs of the year depicting April 2009.

This year I also got my first DT slot and this was one of my first LOs in that role. I love the papers and the photos worked really well I think :)

I was lucky enough to have several of my LOs in Scrapbook Inspirations this year. This was my favourite one. I used my newly acquired BG files on this one and haven't looked back!!When Shimelle had an inspiration weekend she asked me to join in. This was the LO I created using her downloadable elements.
In 2009 I was part of 4 different CJs at different periods during it. My favourite LOs from doing them. I find working on smaller pages a real challenge. This one was using Alicat's photo of her cute little boy.

And this CJ was a recipe CJ and I loved doing this Banoffee Pie DLO.

Ooops, that's 11 and I still have more I could add. I've had a great year with lots of opportinities to take great photos which I really think is the key to scrapbooking. I'm very thankful. I hope that you all have a great New Year's Eve whatever you're doing. And don't forget to take your cameras!!

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves. ~Bill Vaughan

I've been meaning to say...

...what a talented lot of people there are in this scrapbooking arena. Back in November we hunted high and low for the advent houses from Tescos for £5. Leigh managed to secure some after many a phone call and Julie set about altering hers. Mine is still unchanged (but I have a year now to rectify that!). You can see how it turned out here on Julie's blog and it's well worth a look! How's the printer's tray coming along Julie??

RAK alerts!!

There's a minibook kit here. Absolutely gorgeous, but you'll have to be quick!!!