Sailing down the Grand Canal

The last day of our holiday and we are spending it in the mist amazing place... Venice!

Listening to opera as we sail into Venice made me want to shed a tear... How lucky am I?

Ok, so I'm not so lucky to be able to afford one of the many motor launchers we saw on route!

First glimpse of St Marks Square...

Wow, seriously... how many people!

A beautiful day, an amazing place that I'm lucky enough to say I've explored once before and I'm as excited this time as I was the last

One bridge of many no doubt!

Sadly it's home time tomorrow, but a great holiday has been had by all...

Creating with goodies from Hey Little Magpie

And so the 25th of the month sees my turn to reveal what I've been up to with a selection of very yummy goodies from the Hey Little Magpie shop…

I'm actually enjoying the sites and sounds of Istanbul today - were visiting the worlds biggest market and boy it's BIG!

But back to more scrapping related issues… I decided to pick from a selection of new releases in the Hey Little Magpie shop, including 'Story of Us' and 'Good Day Sunshine' both by Simple Stories and 'Me-ology' from Fancy Pants…

Be Serious used a background frame cut on my silhouette and then a selection of the sections was backed with a couple of papers from the Story of Us collection and then clusters of die cuts created depth to certain sections.

How cute are these - so aptly named "bits and pieces"

Some Bunny Loves You came together so easily - once my title had been cut on the silhouette, I used a red ink and blended the colour to frame the title. By back mounting with book text and then adding back in the die-cut adds both interest and enables you to add layers behind the title…

I just love the word ephemera… I always find it so hard to say, let alone spell!

Lastly You Colour My Life Beautiful enabled me to play with a recent purchase - my gelatos… Once I'd got over the angst of simply opening the box, enough was enough - I got brave and used them! I LOVE THEM… you can really build up the colour, from very subtle to strong and vibrant and unlike more congenital paints, the paper doesn't get all soggy!

The B side of the 2 x 12 elements paper was the perfect starting point to create a fun and vibrant layout using the paint swatch panel

I've already got plenty of ideas for next months product - check out Life Emporium by Teresa Collins cause I certainly will be!

One week to reveal and counting...

Greetings from Barcelona…

Only one week to go before my first CT post for Hey Little Magpie. In the meantime, here's a taster of what's to come...

UKScrappers 2014 Summer Scrapbooking Challenge

Having recently become a member of the Creative Team for Hey Little Magpie has enabled me to connect with some wonderful likeminded scrappers including Niki Rowland, who I already knew from the GoGoGetaways.

When Niki invited me to create a sample layout for a Summer Scrapbooking Challenge 2014 over on UKScrappers. I jumped at the chance!

The layout, for Challenge 6 is based on a colour palette of peaches and greens, and uses a multitude of different patterned papers, ideal for using up all those scraps of papers that we all seem guilty of saving.

Using a Silhouette heart cut file by Wilna Furstenberg, I created an ombre effect through a series of patterned papers - 44 papers to be precise! The file cut a series of hearts and I can confirm that each and every heart was filled with a different patterned paper! It might be a labour of love, but I find the arranging and sticking of the papers very therapeutic indeed! Sad but oh so true!

Embellishments from some of the recent Maggie Holmes and Amy Tan releases were a perfect match to the colours on the layout, but keeping them simple didn't detract from the array of decorative papers.