A Happy Day in May

Good morning Bloglanders

Today I'm sharing a layout of my Mother's Day activities.  I wanted it to look sort of "a day in the life"-like.  All over Blogland I can hear sighs as I know you don't like my layouts but yes, this is IMPERFECT ME's blog and layout day it is.

I wanted to use stuff that I had and the whole idea came from MME's challenge of the month "MAY DAY" so I paged through my stash and stumbled upon this cardstock.

To tell you the truth, it is awful!  Sorry MME!! And I received 3 sheets in a kit I bought.  So, out came the Guesso and my "canvas" looked like the picture on the right. Too white, too dull - so I sprayed it with yellow fabric dye and stamped the orange scrolls to zuss it up.

I added what was left in my stash from The Sweetest Thing range, stapled my pictures on, some stamping in black and the journaling. I used my Spellbinders dies to die cut the letters out of scraps of cardstock. It now reads "A happy day in MAY". 

And a close-up:

That's Mother's Day 2013 done, dusted and filed away in my Project Life binder. Thanks for visiting my blog. I'm off to do some office work but will be back tomorrow with some more crafting fun to share.  Have a Terrific Tuesday!

Happy Mother's Day 2013

Good morning Bloglanders

Happy Mother's Day to all the Blogland Mummy's! May you have a great day and enjoy the love of your kiddo's.

I'm up and on my way for a walk in the park.  Both my boys are "otherwise occupied"  today and I don't mind - I see them a lot and they would do anything to make me smile. Having them around most of the time even though they don't live at home any more, makes up for all the Mother's Days of a lifetime. IMPERFECT ME's take on things!

But I did do something special for my mum and I'm here to share it with you. My mum lives 350 kilometers from me and therefore I don't see her every other week. Also, they don't have a lot of chain stores in Vredendal and online shopping is not for my elderly parents. This rules out all the easy options - parcels (I hate mailing off), gift cards and electronic vouchers.

This was my solution:

I got a standard mail envelope, took the measurements and then made this envelope - yes!! I've still got some of  the hand painted fabric left on my craft desk. I told you all about my painting technique here if you missed it. Once again I used my Spellbinder dies to cut out hearts and the letters MA (Mother in Afrikaans), ironed it on, added some stitching, ribbon and a button. Inside is a small chocolate,  a card (of course I made one!) and a receipt for fabric. I bought some stretch denim (mum even makes her own jeans!) and left it at the beach house when we went there a few weeks ago. Inside the card is a note to tell her where I've left it and she can just collect. The beach house is about 50 kilometers from Vredendal and they go there a lot.

This is the color combo that I worked with:

                               Steel Blue ... Peach ... Apricot 

It is from The Play Date Cafe and you can see the other entries here. Sorry about the green button but I didn't have one in the desired color scheme and he just jumped out of my button jar onto my project.

 I took some more pictures - if you want to look. 

Oh, I forgot to mention that I used my scallop die from Spellbinders to do the edges of the envelope - just adds that extra bit and it keeps it from fraying. I suppose you can do the sides as well but the straight stitching looked good to me with the edges as they are.

That's it! Have a great day. Thank you very much for visiting my blog and please come back to play.

Layout day

Good morning Bloglanders

It's Friday and time to kick up your heels and do that little something for yourself and your loved ones!  I'm here to share a layout I made of our Mother's day celebration earlier this year.

Girlfriend #2 invited us to spend the day with her family. Sunshine, good company, great food, wine and a beautiful setting. Once again, I just couldn't get myself to do a new age layout - I loved the pic's too much and each and every one tells a story.

Here it is:

I used paper from days gone by - very, very old Creative Memories that I had in my stash.  Die cut letters  and the leaf flourish and we're done.

When I look at the layout, I can just feel the love and fun we share -  not only on Mother's day but every day of the year. I'm so blessed to have them in my life.

Now, I don't normally blog on a weekend but you can check back tomorrow as I'm working on a notebook cover in the colors of The Play Date Cafe. I can't wait to share it with you so I'll be back .

This week's color scheme:

I just couldn't resist the colors. Also, at Scrap RDV there is a card sketch by Kathy Martin that I want to try out. Boy, can that girl do miracles with cards and her stitching is to die for. Want to try as well?  Check it out here.

Have a great weekend and please check back to see the book cover that I'll be sharing tomorrow. Have a great weekend.