Journey - mini album

A few weeks ago I spent a lovely afternoon in the company of some French scrappeuses 

where we all made a fabulous little mini album under the direction of Marie-Nicolas,

 a great teacher, demonstrator, blogger

and member of so many DT's it would take me to long to mention!

The "Road Trip" kit that Ma-Ni provided was sensational,

all we had to take along were several pieces of card cut from a cereal box 

and the usual kit of glues, cutters, hole punch etc.

The aim during the afternoon was to assemble the album, 

do some embossing using Ma-Ni's Big Shot, some machine sewing 

and to avail ourselves of her amazing collection of stamps. 

Photographs and other embellishments were to be added at our leisure at home.

My idea was to create a souvenir book of our trip to Italy this past April

but I think it went a lot further than that 

as I embellished, added tags, extra inserts and other "stuff" from my stash.

I know there's a lot of photo's and a lot to take in,

 but the eagle eyed among you may have noticed that I haven't shown you pages 2 & 3. 

There's a reason for that and all will be revealed in my next post 

that will feature my first It's Crafting Time DT assignment!

Hope you'll come back to see those missing pages, soon.

July's Trendy Tag Swap - Steampunk.

The theme of the Trendy Tag Swap, this month hosted by the lovely Leanne over at UK Scrappers, is steampunk.

I inked 4 Tim Holtz Manilla tags #8 using Tim Holtz/Ranger Distress Ink pad, Antique Linen, & stamped on some vintage motifs from Paper Artsy using Ranger Archival Ink, which I also inked around the edges.

Covered the tags with graphic 45 Steampunk Debutante collection paper,

Added a variety of graphic 45 Olde Curiosity Shoppe, & Steampunk Debutante tags & stickers, some free downloaded images from the Graphics Fairy, Prima wood clock faces & vintage buttons, lace, champagne metal cap, keys & pen nibs picked up at local flea markets. Finally, accented some images with China Blue Distress Stickles.This was my first Steampunk experience but I'm sure it won't be the last.

It's Crafting Time - new Design Team

It's Crafting Time have just announced their new DT and I'm in it!!

I'm thrilled to have been asked to join the new team and am looking forward to working with everyone associated with ICT.
Click here to visit the Crafting Time blog, meet the rest of the Design Team and check out the great tutorials.
Click here to visit the online store where you will find over 3000 items, details of upcoming workshops and much more.

Merly Impressions Monthly CHallenge

Well, the "Where Bloggers Create" party was a lot of fun, I visited some amazing blogs and saw some truly stunning crafting spaces.
There is a world of beautiful blogs out there and I was thrilled to receive many visits from some very talented bloggers.
One such talented blogger is Emilie Chamel and I was very inspired by her blog when I popped over to visit during the UKS bloghop recently.
Click here for a peek into her crafting world.
Emilie is on the DT teams of Scrap 365 and Merly Impressions who hold a LO challenge on the 15th of each month.
The July challenge is "why I scrapbook" and here's my take on it.

I scrapbook for many reasons but they can all be summed up in one word "memories".
The "everyday memories", the "big event" memories, the "sad" memories, the "silly" memories and the "did we really do that" memories they all find their way into my scrapbooks.

The papers and some of the embellies are from the Saturdays range by Little Yellow Bicycle, other bits and pieces from my stash.

Linking to the Merly Impressions blog post July 2012 Layout Challenge.

Where Bloggers Create - my attic craft room

Karen @ My Desert Cottage is holding her annual "Where Bloggers Create" party tomorrow and foolishly I have decided to add my attic craft room to the show and tell list.

So, this is where the magic happens.........................

love my pretty pink Dell

love collecting pretty tins and boxes to store my stash

the shelves hold my stash of cardstock and pp's
storage boxes beneath hold most everything else!

I bought the plaid 9 star wall hanging from an Amish lady in Lancaster PA.
She took it down off her wall so that I could hang it on mine.

I keep all my paints and ink supplies on this little set of shelves

the wire Eiffel Tower was a gift from the Quimper Club.
It holds my ever increasing collection of altered tags from the Trendy Tag Swap on UKS.

close up of the Amish 9 star quilted wall hanging

the view from my side of the table

looking up to the gallery above my table
the Attic Babies are from Marty Maschino,
 the iconic "Keep Calm" sign was another gift from the Quimper Club.
Cath Kidston bunting makes me smile!

my painting table

This poster from the Dallas Museum of Art,
"Dorothy" by John Singer Sargent,
inspires me.

Mr Ben, my constant companion and muse is always up in the attic with me

It's been fun showing you around my play room - I hope you enjoyed the tour

 and will come back and visit me again, soon.

If you have the time why not pop over to Karen's 

for more peeks into

"Where Bloggers Create".

A wedding & a sonnet

Like many of you I've been staying indoors out of the rain, my poor vegetable garden is looking so neglected, and scrapping.
The inspiration for much of my crafting this past week has come, as usual, from the UK Scrappers site.
Last week they held an amazing sponsor blog hop and I spent a couple of hours hopping around visiting all the sponsors and gathering ideas for future projects and learning about new techniques.
I was surprised and a little thrilled (!) this morning to see that my blog hopping had resulted in not only "just scrapping" but also "Normandy Life" making it onto the home page at UKS in the BlogBits review.

This is the sketch for the monthly House Challenge set by the Gold Eyelets team.

and this is my take.
The pp's all came from my stash, I misted the paper with Adirondack colour wash in "Lettuce" using a flower mask from TCW. The chipboard alpha's are American Crafts "Forest".
I "quilt stitched" the hexagons using a sparkly green Gelly Roll pen.

The week one challenge was to use something, blue, a Shakespearian quote and to place the photograph in the centre of the page.

This was a great challenge and enabled me to use a photo, of my sister and her eldest son, which I've been itching to scrap for some time.
The papers are from the Tim Holtz "Destinations" series and I used a TH  "idea-ology" kraft glassine pocket to hold the tag.

à bien tôt

Scrap A Sketch - June challenge

Last month I joined the Scrap A Sketch social group over at UK Scrappers, this is my take on the June challenge.
The journalling reads:
"growing summer veggies is one of my favourite things to do"

my name is maggie and I'm a scrapaholic

when I rekindled my love of scrapbooking earlier this year I never dreamt that it would lead to me starting yet another blog!
in circumstances very similar to when my love of books was creeping into my normandy life blog a little too often in 2011, and led to the creation of just books, so it is with my addiction to scrapbooking, particularly my tag obsession.
here at just scrapping I can indulge in all things involving paper & glue to my hearts content and share my latest LO's and tags.
i'm thinking there might be smash books, atc's and circle journals involved too at a later date......
so here are some pix of LO's created for the various ukscrappers challenges in June.

mum & me in torquay 1953 & me celebrating the Queen's 60th Jubillee 2012

with a cuppa in my Coronation Mug.

beautiful purples & blues

delicate yet strong

zesty citrus colours recall our trip to Italy's Amalfi coast

in April 2012

June Trendy Tag Swap 

the theme was flags & bunting

and finally

I made these 3 tags as a gift for Jeanie @The Marmalade Gypsy

who sent me large tags when i couldn't find any