Just add photos!

Hi everyone

Hope you have had a wonderful weekend.  I spent some quality time with my crafting friends so I had a lovely time!  We chatted, ate sweeties, laughed, drank coffee, shopped and maybe indulged in a little crafting now and again….nothing too taxing you understand ;-)

…….actually saying that I was actually quite productive for a change and you will know what was on my mind….well you will do when you see what I made.  Trying to keep my mind of hoping too much but I think I am dreaming Graphic 45 right now …..only 10 days to go!!!!

On Friday as well as teaching a class got started on some baby bunting for my friend Rebecca who is opening up a brand new baby shop very soon.

Lots of frilly ribbon and some pearl trims topping off my bunting made from Graphic 45's Precious Memories Collection.

I added the lettering on Saturday Morning.  So far I have a string to hang over the Boy Section, The Girl Section and the Pre-Loved section so I only have the shop banner to complete.  I might see if I can get to that later in the week.  I have left the stringing of the banners until I am in the shop so I can judge the spacing between the flag to get the prettiest effect.

All this baby paper inspired me to make a layout and matching card too.  Graphic 45 always have lovely patterned strips you can fashion into frames for your layouts.  I carefully cut out four strips from the Puppy Dogs tails papers and I used my fancy edge scissors on the title strips of the pages I had removed from the paper I had used so far creating my bunting (8 strips in total)  I edged my blue paper strips with them and then used them to create a frame for my layout.

Working on a coordinating sheet of swiss dot bazzil card stock as my base I mitred the corners of the strips to make myself a very pretty frame.

I then added a pearl trim to create a second frame with lots of texture.  Not to be wasteful I removed the centre of the green card stock and then added in a square of the opposite side of the Puppy Dogs Tails card stock over the centre of the layout.

I cut the remaining green card into 3 1/4" squares and edged them with a baby blue ribbon frill.  I didn't have any baby pictures with me at the crop but in this case it doesn't matter as you will see at the end of this post.

Next it was out with the scissors and a little fussy cutting latter I have a cute little washing line of little boy outfits draped across my layout.

I created a triple bow for the bottom right hand corner and added a small section of the pearl trim to the centre of all my bows and a couple of green glass hat pins for a little sparkle.  Which reminds me I must share a tutorial with you at some point to show you how easy it is to make these gorgeous embellishments.

Here is the finished layout and a matching card that I made.  I took this photo in the gorgeous bright sunshine we have here today in Derbyshire.

I know that when the photos are finally attached to this layout they are going to look fab!  That is when I had an idea.  Rebecca has suggested I might like to make baby cards to sell in her shop and I was thinking ……..what about selling baby layouts in box frames?!!!!

They would make lovely gifts and I could create a couple of different versions.  I would need to look at the costing and time they would take to see if it was a viable thing to do but I know I would definitely be using my Graphic 45 papers as they look divine.

I made a matching card using some of the off cuts I had left over so a gift and matching card!!!  Check out the pretty button in the middle of the bow.  I must say a big, big thank you to Jamie at Punch Place Plus for sending me a package of lovely buttons all the way from America!  You may remember last year I won a couple of Crafty Academy Awards for my You Tube videos - Best Tutorials and Best Mixed Media and Jamie at Punch Place Plus was one of the lovely sponsors.  So once again a big big thank you Jamie and as you can see I have used one of my lovely buttons already!  This is the link to the winners video if you want to pop over and visit the lovely Betty who also makes videos and organised the whole event.

I am hoping for more of this lovely weather and I will spend my week catching up on my Rubber Dance Tutorials and popping in and out of the garden to do some fruit tree pruning.  I have tackled the pear and might be able to do the plum on my own but I think I might need a man with a ladder for the Apple, Crab Apple and Cherry which are reaching for the sky right now!  I sound like I have a huge garden but I don't.  I just love trees in the garden and if you are going to have trees you might as well have fruit ones!!!!  I wonder if the birds will leave us any cherries this year? ;-)

Hope you all have a wonderful week and thank you for popping by X