That Other Reason

Yeah I know nothing for weeks and then two posts in one hour, the reason is I didn't want to overload my posts because I've lots of photos to share.
So the other reason I've not been blogging, I've been scrapping! I counted up this morning and I've completed 14 layouts so far this month. I've been scrapping so much that I've now got to sort through my printed photos for the next batch that I want to scrap.
On to the layouts
I'm starting with a double page that I started at my scrapbooking group this month. The photos are from a trip back to Aberystwyth we took last year. I showed Himself some of the places that played an important part in my life as a student and this LO records them. I decided to use the same papers etc on both pages but not to make them match exactly and although Himself reckons the papers are too busy I like it.

It's back to mum's cat for the subject of the next page

I love some of the photos I've taken of Willow and like using the excuse to make quite girly pages even if they are about a cat.

This was another trip out last summer and I wanted to capture my favourite images from Stokesay Castle on one page. There is no real journalling because I think the photos speak for themselves.

Finally it's back to that Aberystwyth trip

And another LO with three pictures, something I'm currently enjoying. The actual tickets for the cliff railway were a modern receipt so I found a better looking older ticket from my stash as the basis of my embellishments. I am really trying to create embellishment groups and think they are getting better.

This is the reason

Why I've not been blogging. Well one of them, I shall blog the other very soon.

I've been busily sorting things in my craft room you see. Namely two large Really Usefull Boxes that were supposed to contain random embellishments but in fact contained all kinds of everything.
This was my desk after I tipped the boxes out when I was trying to figure how the heck I was going to make head or tail of it all and had just started pulling out a few things.

A bit of a close up, there was an awful lot in that pile
I figured that if I piled it all on my desk I would have to sort it or do something with it all before I could do anything I wanted to do and strangely it worked LOL

This was the scene the following afternoon when most, if not quite all, of the stuff had been sorted into piles of similar articles. Then came the really hard part integrating it all into my actual stash storage. Now that took another couple of days because I then got caught up with putting parts of that into order too. I am pleased to day that it has all been sorted for a while now and I am loving knowing where everything is and more to the point those random embellishments are finally starting to get used because I don't have a large box stuffed full of everything to dig through.

A New Year

So I didn't get off to a great start with my new year of blogging but I'm here now. And whilst I've not been here I have been busy creating. Very busy creating. Amongst other things that is.

Now I don't know if it has anything to do with it but I started the year by joining a lovely new points collecting team over on UKS, my wonderful old team having drifted into silence over the past few months, and well I needed some incentive and encouragement to get me back focused on my scrapping. Last year I became far to focused for my liking on cards and having had limited success selling them I decided that I wanted to cut back a little and go back to my first papercrafty love the scrapbooking. Whether it is the new team, who are a great bunch of girls, or just my more focused attitude but I am scrapping with a vengence. I even manged to complete two pages yesterday and pull some bits out for a third, scrappy action unheard of for a while.

This is a page I completed on monday for the january monthly challenge over on UKS. There was a sketch to use which, of course, I had to play about with but I like how it turned out.

So this year I am hopefully going to make a serious dent into my pile of photos to scrap and get those albums filled up!

Got to fly the postie has just brought my first scrappy parcel for ages and I am longing to get it open!