Weekend Retreat

I spent a wonderful weekend away at a CTMH retreat run by my niece Laura. It was great to be able to create at leisure and not have to worry about the trivialities of life. Here is a special layout that I completed.

This amazing young woman is Laura's daughter, who is now 17 years old and these photos were taken for her year 12 school ball. It has been my privilege to be a part of her life, I was one of the first to visit her when she was born. I love her dearly.

     Here she is as a wonderful and brand new addition to our family. Laura and Michael was so thrilled.

When she was old enough to happily leave her mum and dad, it was my great pleasure to have her visit and stay with me for a few days. Xanthe loved dressing in pretty clothes, she would rather wear a dress or skirt rather than shorts and top. On this occasion I painted her finger and toenails and she loved it. Funny how things change, she still loves to dress up but mostly she wears jeans and a T shirt now days.

Photo and memory preservation is so important, I love that I can look back on these pages and relive these precious memories.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week and why don't you spend some time reminiscing and hopefully you have your own albums that allow you to relive special memories.

Hawthorn Blog Hop

Welcome to the Close To My Heart Australasian Hawthorn blog hop, if you arrived here from Doreen's blog you are in the right place. If you arrived here by chance you can continue the hop by clicking on the link at the end of this post.

At first glance to me this collection shouts autumn or masculine but with CTMH's great design team there are always other options.

I do find making masculine rather difficult but I am happy with this one, I have used the motorcycle sticker, the sentiment stickers and some of the lovely papers.

I didn't have any photos printed suitable for this collection to make a layout so I decided to make an off the page project. The white daisy background is 9"x 9" you can put it in a shadow box frame but it will also look lovely as filler page in my album.

This is what it looks like framed and I think it looks great.

On this final card I have again used one of the stickers but I have also added two stamped leaves that I fussy cut. I thought I would stamp part of the sentiment on the leaf sticker.

Thank you for stopping by to continue the hop go to Kylie's Blog Creating with Kylie and see what great project she has created. Please take a moment and leave a comment, they are always appreciated.

October Stamp of the Month "AutumnAir"

Welcome to the CMH Australasian stamp of the month blog hop, if you arrived here from  Lauren Moore's CTMH Craftings you are in the right place. If you arrived here by chance click on the link at the end of this post to see more great ideas using this stamp set.

Even though this stamp set is called Autumn Air and here in Perth it is now spring, it doesn't mean we can't use this stamp now. There are some lovely sentiments that can be used with other stamps that will create lovely new titles etc.

There are so many things I love about CTMH stamps but today's love is that we can cut the larger sentiment stamps into smaller parts which give you so many more options and you wont damage the stamps. I cut away the "and just like that " and was able to create a whole new sentiment by adding other stamps. I have also used the leaf stamp  and the border stamp in making this card. I find the flower thin cuts so versatile and love using them in my projects.

For this layout I have used the summer is in the air as my title with these lovely photos of the first of the summer flowers blooming in my garden. CTMH have such a variety of flower stamps that I easily found flower stamps that matched my photos

Thank you for stopping by to continue the hop go to Danielle Edwards Scrappy Chicks blog and see what great project she has created. Please take a moment and leave a comment before you move on, your comments are always appreciated.