Some Layouts from the Retreat

Following on from yesterday's post, I thought I'd share some of the fruits of my scrapping labours.  One of my aims was to use up some old stash on my layouts as well as newer purchases. On one I cracked open the fibres (yes! I was addicted like many others, and rak-ed many of my collection a couple of years ago, but I did keep the ones I thought I might use, and I do occasionally.  This was one opportunity to use them - autumn colours and a range of hills in the background just made me think I could use a few of my collection.

These photos were from our trip to Shropshire in October half term, when I took the family back to some of my old haunts. I loved these photos and have had the tree die cut on my windowsill for ages waiting for the perfect time to use it.  I soooo NEED a Cricut!!   The papers are from the Glitz Vintage Blue collection which I bought from Gottacraft.  I used two punches and a little leaf stamp to complete the layout.

I did another layout from the Vintage Blue collection during the weekend, in fact these two were the first ones I did.  This time it is the blue side of the papers!  They show off the black and white photos beautifully.  The old stash on this layout are the Heidi Swapp stars which are 'mistable' - she was so ahead of the trend!  I've had them for ages!  The chipboard is Crate Paper and I even hand sewed on it!

The need for a Cricut was exacerbated by the addition of the Paper Lace cartridge which has the most beautiful die cuts which can be extended to near 12 x 12 size - well 10 to 11" anyway!  I found the one for the layout below and as I've got a bit of a thing for interlocking circles I just had to cut it. I backed some of the loops with patterned paper, sanded the photo and added a title - so simple but I love it.  The photo of DS1 isn't your classic birthday cake photo, for one thing it's a really poor quality photo taken in the dark before I knew about ISO (lol) but the thing that made me want to scrap it  was the look on his face - sort of 'What IS this?" - although I think he might have been checking we had the right number of candles!!