Gemima

I know I have not done anything on my Blog for quite a while but I am now back and will be posting more regularly.

While I have been away I have been lucky to met some wonderful teachers while taking classes and learning lots and lots of techniques and ideas which I am now trying to put into practice and making some wonderful pages.

The page below is my very first page that I have done in a very long long time and is totally different to what I have done in the past.  I started my Scrapbooking creating books showcasing my children's life, then I moved into making cards and art pieces and now am turning to following great teachers like Di Garland and Tina Oilett.

This page has a very errors but hopefully I will learn from my mistakes and you all will be able to take some inspiration and learning from this post.

The page is my Great Grandmother - Gemima.  She lived in England and raised 8 children, most of the time she did it by herself as her husband was a Captain on a ship which traveled around Europe.  Watch out for my next page which will be dedicated to Thomas the Captain.

My feel that the stencil I did on the background was not big enough and therefore has not done what I wanted - to pop the picture out.

 The Gate in the picture on the right is a lovely gate but it does not go anywhere - I should have put flowers in behind it leading up to the flowers in the corner.

Also I made some beautiful flowers out of the paper but only put them through the flowers on the bottom left instead of all through the flowers on the left and right. 

Other than that - I am really pleased with the layout - it was my first big layout I have done like this. 

Violin

For a long long time I wanted to decorate a Violin, I looked on the internet for a second hand violin thinking I would paint and decorate it.  But the only violins I could find were to big and lets be honest a little expensive to use for what I wanted. 

Then one day I struck it lucky - I found a template to make my own.

I made the violin out of card stock and chipboard and then covered it all with pages from an old book I had purchased at the Lifeline Book Fair last year. 

The best part of the project was the fun part of decorating it with lots of flowers, metal and wooden embellishments, ribbons and die cuts. 

I had fun making this and it now takes pride and place in my display cabinet. 

Birdcage

One day when I was out shopping I found the Kaiser Craft Birdcage and decided that I needed to rescue it from the shop and take it home to add to my collection of Shabby Chic. 

I used the Paper Arts papers from The Vintage Chicks Club which I used to cover the birdhouse and then decorated with lace, metal birds that I had in the bottom of my drawer and lots of beautiful flowers

Of course there were butterflies all over the house, on the roof and flying up the back wall. 

The flower on the top of the roof was hand made from laces, muslin and topped it off with a pearl.  Of course no flower is complete without the big butterfly sitting on it in the sun.