First Scrapbook Layout of 2011

Some of you spotted this layout on my WOYWW post this week. I had started with a sketch from Scrap-A-Little and produced my first scrapbook layout of 2011. My first page for months actually.

Having no new photos to play with has really affected my creativity and I need to get out with my camera and take some more. Unfortunately, I do tend to be a 'fair-weather photographer'!

The layout features photos of DD2 at a Halloween party. The photos are taken from Facebook and had already been put through an ageing process before being uploaded there, so they are not the best to use for scrapbooking. But as I've already said, I'm lacking new images to play with so these were better than nothing!

Using Tim Holtz paper, I drew a large cobweb starting from the top right-hand corner. Some black velvet ribbon, buttons and jewelled brads completed the page. Before I actually saw the photos, my daughter informed me she had dressed as a Victorian Vampire (whatever one of those looks like!), hence the words in the poem I made up instead of having hand-written journalling.

I must admit I'm much quicker making pages with a starting point like a sketch. If I'm trying to make my own design from scratch I can take hours to finish one layout! 

But I'm sure I'm not the only one with that particular problem.

Another Mini Book

Having all my photos on a computer is better than them gradually fading in a shoebox, but they are still in a place I do not really care for. For a start I have to turn on the desktop computer to see them, and that's in my tiny cupboard, and it's too small space for others to squeeze in to view them! 

I don't know if you feel the same but I need my photos to be more accessible to everyone and I like to be able to dip in and out when I want to. Hence I am a scrapbooker. And a mini book maker! 

That being the case, a mini book of our day trip to Arundel in July was bound to happen....more about that later.

August has been too dull and wet to make any new photography excursions, so my apologies, this post shows a few more of the shots I took on our visit to Arundel (previous post here). I took lots of photos, both around the town and in the Castle grounds, and it turned out to be the hottest day of the year.

Yes, that is a crown balancing on top of a fountain! It spins with the force of the water, but what is not immediately obvious from this photo are the hundreds of shells on the wall behind.....shown in the next shot.

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On to the Arundel mini book and here are a few pages. I kept it very simple, using Tim Holtz papers and journaling with a black pen. Not only do I like photographs to be accessible but I also like them to be 'interactive', not just stuck into a plain album. So, I made two of the pages into a pocket to hold extra photos on pull-out cards and, of course, the essential tourists' guide to the Castle.

As I had to appear in here somewhere, the final photograph is of me.......

......... sweltering in the 30 degree heat and taking a well-earned rest from all that exhausting Photography!