Good Morning Ladies!

Did you have a great weekend?  I did, except they go too fast, don't they?!  

Mum and I started our weekend off with Midnight Madness down at the shop, although after a busy week, we only managed 10pm Madness.  Oh well, some madness is better than none!!!  I had a play with some pocket page layouts, which I might just come back and show you once they are finished.

The rest of my weekend was filled with the usual housework and washing, and a bit of time catching up with family.  I even baked gingerbread men with my not-quite-three-year-old nephew yesterday afternoon. Took me right back to when I used to do that with Jacob at that age... quite a while ago now, as he will be 10 in January :)

Now, get to the point Becks, why are you here today?  Well, I have been playing with the lovely Lady Rose collection this weekend...  I have a layout and a card to show you!

Before I show you the FRONT of the layout, I am going to do something you don't see every day... I am going to show you the BACK of my layout.  

You see, I did some sewing on my layout.  This is one of those things that adds a bit of texture to your layout without adding bulk.  And it is SEW easy (see what I did there?).  Ha ha ha, it must be Monday morning if I am making silly tired jokes!  

Now, one of the best things about sewing on paper is that you don't have to do reversing stitches or tie knots in your threads when you are done.  I just pull the threads through to the back of the layout (if you tug on the thread coming out of the back of the layout, you will make a little 'loop' of front thread that you can pull through easily), then I tape the threads to the back of the layout, and snip off the excess.  Way too easy!

So I suppose I should show you the front now?  Here 'tis:

I made a 'quilted' effect with 1.5" squares of patterned paper, inking the edges and only gluing in the middle of each square (so that I don't sew through glue and made my needle sticky).  Then I sewed a zig-zag stitch right around the outside, and through the middle between each line of squares.  Then I matted and popped up on foam the photo I had chosen, and arranged a cluster of flowers and buttons for the bottom left hand corner of the 'quilt'.  I finished it off with a couple of Kaiser pearl flourishes, to anchor my flowers to the layout. 

You will notice that again I have made some rolled flowers using the same range of patterned paper, like I showed you on my last blog post, here.  Using difference sized circles to start with gives you different sized flowers.

The photo in the layout is one of my paternal grandparents.  It might not look like much, but my family and I love this photo.  It is one of the last ones of the two of them together, and they both look happy, and very typically 'them'.  It was taken at a family barbecue out at the river, something we often did over the summer with Aunties, Uncles and cousins in tow.  Yep, some great memories right there.

Well, I guess I should show you the card now huh?  I made a tri-shutter card with some of the offcuts and other pieces of paper I had from the Lady Rose range.  (There is a tutorial for the tri-shutter card here if you are interested).

I used some of the borders that come with the 6.5" x 6.5" paper pad, and some of the collections elements to embellish the card.  All of the background papers have been inked with Prima chalk ink 'dark bark'.

This is one of those card designs with plenty of wow factor, but isn't terribly difficult to create.  Go on, give it a go, I dare ya!

Righto, that's enough from me, I'd best get off to work.  Have a fabulous day ladies, I'll catch you again on the 20th.  This month's theme is 'In The Pink', so I'll bring you something pink then.  Check out this blog post for more info on this month's theme and challenge.

Toodles, Beck x