Crafting!

I have had the past couple of days off work to recover from the travel and lack of sleep over the weekend and catch up on the housework. Alex has been in nursery and loving it, leaving Tim and myself free to catch up at home.  The house is now looking spick and span and I have had time to craft!  In the evenings Alex has been enjoying playing with his birthday presents, especially his quarry set which is the current favourite.

Crafting wise I have been focussing on scrapbooking and have made two layouts following the Crafty Cardmakers theme of 'Challenge yourself'.  I decided to challenge myself to do some free-hand doodling, which is not something I normally do, other than a brief line of hand-drawn stitching!  For this first layout I doodled some swirly lines around the edge of the central panel and then some circles and dots (not very adventurous I know but it is a start!).  This layout follows this weeks Unscripted Sketch and also fits with the MTTC on the spot challenge (spotted paper and hand-drawn spots), the Spoon Full of Sugar challenge of 'one for the boys' as it features Alex, Practical Scrappers as I used my Whispers marker pens for the doodling, Daring Cardmakers diamonds theme (there are quite a few little diamonds scattered across the layout), and Magical Crafts 'animal antics' theme (I'm assuming fish count!). The journalling reads 'Alex really enjoyed his first trip to the Deep in Hull and was fascinated by the fish swimming around, especially the big ones and was still talking about seeing 'sharks swimming in big tank' weeks later!'

The second layout is entitled 'Waiting for the train' and follows this weeks Pencil lines sketch.  I got a little more adventurous with my doodling this time, freehand doodling the central frame and the title word 'Train', again using my Whisper Marker pens (fitting with both Crafty Cardmakers and Practical Scrappers themes). This also fits the OCC theme of 'buttons'. The journalling reads 'Alex having a cuddle with Grandma and finishing her ice-cream while watching the steam train puff along the top of Blue Anchor beach. Aug '09'

Finally I completed a layout of a Peacock butterfly that I took in the park last August, which fits with the Stamp, Scrap and Doodle challenge of 'Wings', and follows the Stamp with fun recipe of 3 papers, 3 flowers (I am counting each flower stack as one flower) and 2 buttons (can you see my tiny little buttons to the right of the photo!). The stamps are a mixture of Crafty Individuals, Tapestry and Stamps away done using distress inks. I hope you all have a great rest of the week and a lovely weekend and I look forward to reading your comments.
Love,
Caro
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