September at Simple Scrapper #2

Another late share but the last from September before I post my Simple Scrapper and Scrapabilly makes for October.

September's Story Starter©️ collection with the theme of Simple gave me the chance to talk about our progress on decluttering our life.  I matched this with a sketch from May 2013 (#124) which has lots of layers and space for journalling as well as plenty of white space.

My Counterfeit Kit Challenge August kit, Alpine, was perfect for this because of the many neutrals that were in the kit and which I was able to select to match my theme.

It's not easy to see in these photos but instead of the paint swashes featured on the original sketch, I misted through a stencil before building my layers on top. It's a subtle effect but adds interest and texture to the overall layout.

To find out more about the many resources and inspiration - including the sketches and story starters I use each month - available to inspire you to create beautiful pages and tell meaningful stories in a supportive, communicative community environment, check out the Simple Scrapper premium membership here.

16 loves {April 2016}

Welcome to the next in the series {16 loves} for 2016.

For the last few years, I've been sharing my loves each month - a little bit of everything that has caught my eye or been enjoyed over the last month. So, a new year and new inspiration. I hope you will come back each month to see if there is anything in my list to inspire you. 

To see what's inspired me in the past, click to find all my {13 loves}, my {14 loves}, my {15 loves} and my {16 loves}.

I hope there's something in here to inspire you or maybe just make you smile.

one

One of the things I miss most about the UK is the wonderful BBC so I'm very happy to have the chance to download literally dozens and dozens of podcasts each week to keep me in touch with the great programmes available on BBC Radio 4. This documentary presented by German comedian Henning When (link here to listen) "This Is Me Totally Sausage" is one of the funniest views of the difference between the British (and their language) and other cultures and languages I've heard in a long time and goes a long way to describe why we are "different". It's something I've recommended to my students who are getting to grips with the language and the culture. I laughed out loud several times as I recognised several British-ims that I use with my own German husband. No wonder people can't understand us!

PS. This is me totally sausage makes perfect sense in German - ha ha!

two

I know I say this every month, but this salad is a must for me to try in the next 30 days.

Recipe from Two Peas and Their Pod

three

Love this layout by Magda Mizera for My Mind's Eye. All those neutrals with the hint of yellow is so appealing. 

Magda Mizera for My Mind's Eye 

four

I went back to the UK for a few days over Easter and dropped in on beautiful Cambridge. When I lived there, I didn't have a camera nor did I do any sight seeing whatsoever so I took the chance to grab a few shots to remind myself of just how lovely it is. Of course, the friends I caught up with while I were there were more important but I have a terrible memory right now and forgot to take photos - yes, I dare to call myself a scrapbooker!

five 

And I stopped by my wonderful schoolfriend Geraldine who runs Gerry's Cakes - amazing!. She rustled up some cupcakes for me and R which were delicious. Once again, I have photos of cakes but not of the two of us :-(

 

six

But I didn't forget to capture my gorgeous nephew and cheeky niece...
 

seven

And my beautiful niece... I miss them all so much.

eight

Next up, I headed "up north" to meet fellow Counterfeit friends Jemma and Lesley. It was simply wonderful to meet them both and cement our online friendship in real life. Hope to do it again sometime soon.

 

nine

Jemma gave me a cute selection of eyelets so that I can complete Whimsical Musings prompt WM#203 which features eyelets. Now I just have to get them onto a page. If only there were time to do more scrapbooking!
  

ten

Even though I tried to get all 4 of my siblings into one photo, I failed miserably and had to content myself with my two handsome brothers who make me feel both small and old! It was so lovely to see them and spend a little time with them. Hope to get all five of us in a photo next time.

eleven

English niece #3 was horribly camera and aunty shy this time around so I will leave you with two photos of sweet niece #4 who doesn't have any choice but cuddle up with Aunty L and have her photo taken! 

twelve

This might be my favourite. 

thirteen

There's somethng about the bold border, the stitching and the layers on this layout which I adore. Another one for me to think about lifting. 
 

Pinterest source here

fourteen

I was delighted to see my layout featured on the cover of the Simple Scrapper membership magazine, Spark this month! What an honour. It's a fabulous Creative Team to work for and a really super membership to be a part of. You can find out more about the many resources and inspiration - including the sketches and story starters I use each month - available to encourage you to create beautiful pages and tell meaningful stories in a supportive, communicative community environment, at Simple Scrapper here.
 

fifteen

Happy mail this week thanks to sweet Susan over at Little Things Big Days. I had been admiring all her confetti layouts and look at the delicious goodies she popped in the post for me. My scrapbooking friends are really fabulous and I truly treasure each and every one.
 


sixteen

Sometimes I just need to remember this.

Pinterest source here

I’d love you to share your own {16 loves} lists with me. Why not link up in the comments below?

{16 loves} is a series that will feature on my blog each 16th of the month

Missing things from back home

I was in the UK last week seeing family, friends and "home".

After 15 years living in Germany, it's always interesting to notice what things I miss the most when I'm back there.

Of course, I miss the people - that goes without saying. But apart from that, most of the time it's Marks & Spencer's, Sainsbury's supermarket and British TV.  Funny, isn't it?

There's always a moment when I wish I could bring a little bit of that culture with me and while I was there, we'd reminisced a little about a classic comedy sketch that is surely one of the UK's favourites by The Two Ronnies - very old now, but known by young and old alike. So it was particularly sad tonight to find out that the second Ronnie (Ronnie Corbett) died today. It's been a hard year so far with the loss of so many much-loved figures.




Many international readers might not get this British humour with all that word play but it never fails to make me laugh.

I had a wonderful time in the UK, meeting old friends and making new ones in real life. There were many, many photos that I forgot to take (as a scrapbooker, that's a bit embarrassing!) and I will have to record those meetings in words as soon as possible so I don't forget the details.

But it was fabulous to meet fellow Master Forger Jemma and a much-missed ex-Master Forger Lesley in person and I received thoughtful gifts from both - thanks to them for thinking of me!

So after feeling a little sad with the loss of a prominent figure this evening, I will end with a couple of photos that make me happy - a new, special friendship and somewhere that earned a special place in my heart when I worked there back in the 90s.

Cambridge - King's College

This trip made me realise that next time I have more than a weekend there, I need to be a tourist again - both in places I know well such as Cambridge and Birmingham, but also places I've always wanted to visit. A layout in the making I think.

Don't forget to come back tomorrow for the new Counterfeit Kit Challenge April kit reveal. It's an interesting one this month and I can't wait to share.

Counterfeit Kit Challenge September member blog hop

Welcome to the Counterfeit Kit Challenge September member blog hop!

Hopefully, you've been hopping along and are here via Julie's creations and I'm at the end of the hop. But if you're here direct, you might want to start back at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog so that you don't miss out on any of the fun and inspiration this month.

We were given the following challenges to get our creative muscles moving

• Challenge #1:  Single Pop of Colour on White - keep most of your project white and use one nice pop of colour 
• Challenge #2:  Card Collection - make a collection of three cards using the same type of paper/embellishments 
• Challenge #3:  Mix a Sketch - mix the two sketches together to make a fun, one of a kind project

I decided to go with #1 as this seems to match my style recently. However, I "interpreted" the "white" as more neutrals! Considering I had such a bright kit, I was happy to find some wonderfully calming colours in there and the bookeh paper was perfect as the background to my layout.

Counterfeit Kit Challenge September kit, Difference #1

Again, as is usual these days (more because I never have any photos printed out and ready to go when I start to scrap than by design), I made up the whole page before deciding on which photo to use. I knew I wanted to use something from this summer but it also needed to be calm and not too colourful to match the mood of the page. When I saw this sunrise photo of the white cliffs of Dover, taken from the ferry on the way to London, I knew it was the one. Yes, it's colourful, but also very relaxing to look at all the same.

 

The die cut foam leaves create my pop of colour and I even used a silver pen to journal round the outside of the page so that it didn't distract from what was going on across the rest of the page. Note to self: organise a new silver pen, I like it!

I even stitched - did you notice? Now that I have my machine out right next to me all the time, it's a great fast addition to my pages.

I hope you enjoyed the hop today and are inspired to make something of your own using one of our prompts. Don't forget to link up your creations over at our Mr Linky page. You can upload your page to our Flickr group (here) if you don't have a blog - always a way to join in on the fun.

Here's the full list in case you got lost along the way, and the next month is almost here with its new kit. I'm excited already!

CKCB    http://www.counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com

Jemma    http://just-jimjams.blogspot.co.uk

Tina    http://tinasscrapcorner.blogspot.com

Stephanie    http://skylinepaperie.blogspot.de

Binty    http://scrappingpluv.blogspot.com/

Julene    http://julenebydesign.blogspot.com.au

Julie    http://spendlesscraftmore.blogspot.com.au/

Lisa    http://lisahausmann.blogspot.de

Rolling along

As you know, last week I joined in on Danielle's Earth Day blog hop which ties in to her passion for being kinder to the Earth and finding greener ways to craft. I learn such a lot from her and always smile at her ability to make me think about my scrapbooking in new and interesting ways while being environmentally conscious at the same time.

Recently, she challenged her readers to come up with creative ways to use up their spare toilet rolls. We all have them, we all end up throwing them away but how much better to find a way to reuse them in some crafty project.

So, as part of my Whimsical Musings challenge last week (see the post here), I decided to take up the challenge and see what I could come up with.

At first I thought about going back to my childhood and turning "Blue Peter" with ideas of kiddie pen holders or something similar but then decided to use Pinterest to give me some more grown up ideas. Man, are there some incredible projects out there. Just search and be impressed!

I chose a wreath project (here) and as I only had a few rolls, went small scale and made a mini-version. I glittered all the edges and added some book paper flowers (inspired by Nic H's True Scrap class last weekend) and hey presto, something new is hanging on my wall making me smile.

I'm a bit challenged as far as home decor items go - it's not really my forté if it's not a 12x12 page, but I'm happy with the outcome and may well have a go at something a bit more full scale.

So, drag out those loo rolls and get creative. Join in on Danielle's challenge for the chance to win some goodies. And while you're at it, subscribe to her blog for ongoing green inspiration!

Creating for Halloween

Halloween is not big over here in Germany. They don't really know much about it and only think it's something commercial imported from USA to get kids to spend money they don't need to - I'm trying to educate them about this!

But I have introduced it to my German family and what is really good here is that November 1st is All Saints' Day which is a Bank Holiday and therefore, always a day off. And that means that we can do something every year on the actual day, and not worry about getting up for work the next day.

For years, we kept it very low key with just a family dinner, but we have been building up the spookiness and the decoration and the whole look and now it's become a tradition that the Hausmanns will host a Halloween dinner and everyone should come along - in a costume! They do so well, and humour me in my attempt to bring a little bit of home over here. ** Actually, I think they probably only come along for a piece of delicious pumpkin pie but at least they come!

I have been building up my decorations recently and last year I made this banner (here) and this wreath (here) that I have talked about before, as well as this banner (here) from early Bellaboo days. But this year, I really wanted to go a bit further and use up some more of the bits and pieces that I have collected as well as some of the papers that are filling my Halloween drawer but are rarely used on a layout. I mean, how many layouts can I make about a single evening, once a year!?!

And I decided that my poor under-used Cricut needed some attention and an idea for a simple banner came to be. Serious inking, glitter and Stickles add to the mix:

** Sorry that the photos are not so good but it's a loooong banner and I struggled to get a good shot - and difficult light these days.

And I had a leftover wreath that was just crying out to be used up and I had an idea to use black feathers and make some felt roses. These roses were just so fun to use and I love the effect - I added in some Stickles and glittered up those horrible spiders and the bat:

I painted some candles for my large candelabra and added some black feathers and lots of spider webs:

And last but not least, I decided that my mantlepiece was screaming out to be Halloweened up so I got some black candles for here too, added some candy eyes (they taste as disgusting as they look apparantly!) in a glass and glittered up some decorative pumpkins and a potted spider, mixing these in with mini real pumpkins which are all the rage over here:

** Couldn't resist taking a flash photo here to get the sparkle showing! Soooo pretty!!!

And costumes? This year, we are trying to create a Frankenstien's monster and a ghostly "bride" (we'll see how we get on - costumes are always thrown together in a matter of minutes, shortly before everyone arrives!)

I hate to think what the neighbours think of me - several of these items are outside the flat door - in the communal stairway and they must think I'm mad!!!

Life at the moment ...

This is going on:

** Life on Balconia

And a bit of this:

** Bratwürst on the BBQ

And a whole lot of this:

** Germany storming through the World Cup

And plenty of filling time alone: scrapping, organising, tidying up, decluttering, finishing off some old projects. More later.

Happy Sunday!