It is a sunny Friday afternoon and I am back from the park, with two sick kids at home from school / childcare today. I have a layout to share though and between loads of morning laundry I managed to photograph it to put it up today.

I actually made this layout about a week ago during Lain’s Scrapbook Improv, I was only there for the end, but was inspired to make a layout along with her for the last round. I didnt include embossing, and only just realise now that I meant to go back and add some, whoops!

OK so the challenges were:

• Subject/Title: “How to…” – check!
• Technique: Embossing – um nope meant to do it later when i could find my embossing stuff
• Journaling: Callie-generated – I didnt have a callie, so it was just me
• Backgrond: Cardstock – check
• Embellishment: Wood veneer shapes – oops, i now realise that I added veneers but then swapped them out for heart stickers later for some reason.. LOL

So actually only 2/5 were actually included Ha! that is a bit poor of me. Anyway, I used the Life Paper Scrapbook Sketch #2 as a starting place, but switched the circles for triangles I had no punches at the computer desk where I was scrapbooking. I am always scrapbooking in random places, as I use my supplies almost exclusively as kits of one kind or another (I will scrapbook about this more another time). I would probably make less than half my layouts at my designated desk, with the others being made at the computer desk while online (eg this one), at work in my lunch break, at crops at a friends place or outside on the table while the kids play. It makes it much easier to fit in my craft time, when it can be any place. I will post next week about my little portable pencil case with my absolute essentials. This habit means I am usually substituting something on my layouts for whatever is at hand, and I never ever go digging through my stash for some special item I plan to use. In fact anything that is not in a kit is completely forgotten and ends up donated to the childcare after a while.

Enough rambling, here is the layout

The other layout I have to share today was made with the Citrus Twist Kit and their Sunday sketch this week. It is based on the story of how at first both my kids didnt realise that Cousin and Friend were not synonyms, and when we realised and explained this to my son, he coined the term “cousinfriend” to clarify things. It always makes me smile when he says it, it is instrinsically representative of the really positive relationship my kids have with my sister’s 3 daughters.

I used the February CT kits for this, plus a wood veneer heart and a glitter banner from Teresa Colins. As part of the kit I used the Seen and Noted 6×6 pad by Pebbles, and the 4×6 pad as well, Studio Calico wood veneers, and the tags and brown paper bag you see in the last photos are from the packaging of the kit. They were such lovely neutral tones, I thought they might offset the bright colourful Pebbles line.