Hurray for Scrappy Days!

Hi all. At last the summer holidays are here and the sun is shining - wonders never cease! I hope you have all had time to enjoy the sunshine whilst still finding time to play with pretty paper. Helen and I had a scrappy afternoon on Sunday which was heavenly as we had no kids between us. It also means I have plenty of pages to share with you today.

A while ago I had a bit of a stash sulk. You see, the lovely Nat said she was going to use the Basic Grey What's Up range for her blog post - and guess what I wanted to use - yup, the same range. So I had a mini sulk to myself. Nat's post was fab. You can find it here. Reading the post I realised the colours Nat focused on were very different from the colours I planned to use so I still ordered some of the What's Up range but I realised that the PB&J range was just as appealing so I ordered several of those too.

I love red in papers as so many of my photographs of my boys suit reds and blues. These photographs of my eldest at The Lowry Gallery are a perfect example. I used the Toasted paper from PB&J as a background along with White Bread and a Layered Felt Sticker from the What's Up range. The clouds in that packet are so tactile on the page.

The little accent at the top is made from the PB&J Pins and Tags pack. When I ordered these I wasn't really sure what the little pins were for/like. They turned out to be very much like safety pins in the way they open. I threaded a couple of the tiny tags onto the pin then secured it all in place with a little wet glue. I like the way they add a little extra dimension to the page.

 My next page used red as the main colour again. Without realising it I began using the July sketch again. (Have you entered yet by the way? You can do it here.) I used PB&J Creamy on kraft along with some What's Up Friendly Skies and the Hambly  Rain Clouds overlay in white. A couple of accent stickers from the Authentique Celebrate range coordinated nicely with the page also. I love to use bits from my stash that I've been hoarding - don't you? Lastly I added another of the What's Up tags attached with a pin. I pulled out my DIY Thickers for the title, covering them with scraps of Basic Grey paper to make them coordinate perfectly with the page.

Still in a very red mood I moved on to using some more of the PB&J Creamy paper along with Whole Wheat to make the background for this page. I added a strip of the Hambly Rain Clouds overlay then started to look for a few accent stickers. This time I turned to the Simple Stories Summer Fresh range that I had left over from my last blog post. The little wagon, sunshine and phrases fit this page perfectly.

This next page used What's Up Friendly Skies as the background. At this point Helen and I were deep in gossip mode. I had no plan for the page, I decided to just randomly put pieces from the piles of Basic Grey around me onto the page. I loved the Alpha Stickers but thought they may be hard to use, however I think they work perfectly on this page. There are so many little tags in the Pins and Tags pack that I could use 6 more of them on this page and still have left overs! This time the pins don't have anything hung on them, instead they act as little accents in their own right.

My last page of the day features Helen's son Oliver and my Sammy. They are best buddies brought together by our love of scrapbooking and gossiping. Using White Bread as the base I added scraps of the papers I had already used to build up a couple of layers. A couple of Simple Stories Summer Fresh stickers found their way on there but the "O&S" title uses PB&J Alpha Stickers (these can also be seen on Layout 1 above.)

Admittedly none of these layouts are heavily "technique" based. Whilst I love seeing how others use paint and ink etc and I get a little green with envy at their creations, it dosen't work for me. Different strokes for different folks. I could live without ever using another ink pad, but take away my patterned paper and scrapping would grind to a halt for me entirely! What scrapping staple would you be lost without?