Scrap Our Stash Challenge - February - LEAP

Afternoon Everyone

This layout is one I've made as a DT member for Scrap Our Stash. If you haven't been over to have a look at the many great submissions posted on this site yet, I would urge you to check them out - Kathy would be delighted. There's a complete array of layouts in a variety of styles, cards and many other projects to view. The challenge for February is to 'take a leap'.

I took several leaps in the making of this layout. I leapt into a book on scrapbooking, The Busy Scrapper by Courtney Walsh, which I treated myself to last year, looking for inspiration and found a simple layout that I thought would be quick and easy to use. Then I leapt again, this time into my boxes of unused stash and found this brilliant sheet of design paper. The colours include black and red which mirror the colours in the photographs I'd chosen to scrap. After that the supplies needed came together very quickly. Another leap into my snippets/leftovers stash brought together the bits of black and red card with the red spotty piece and the scrap that looks like a piece of lined notebook paper. And another leap ... the photographs were taken in a leap year, although I may have the details slightly wrong. My DH thinks that these photos were taken, not on Hogmanay, as I thought, but in the very early hours of New Year's day, 2008, therefore the date on the journal note should read 1 January 2008. And the Hogmanay in question would have been 31 December 2007!  He could very well be right but I'm not changing the date now - at least I got something right, the photographs were the first taken of us, with our friends, in a leap year :)

Because I find the source of other crafters inspiration from, I thought you might be interested in where I found mine for this scrapbook page, so here's a photograph of the layout that inspired me:

You can see that I haven't strayed far from the original layout at all, although I did have to size up as this is an 8"x8" page and my page measures 12"x12".

And here's the book it's from ...

... full of inspiration to whet my scrapbooking appetite.

Materials used: 
- 1 12"x12" sheet of designer paper ... maker unknown - apologies, this is another page snapped up at my local craft shop just because I'm a magpie!
- leftover scraps of My Mind's Eye, Love Me Do, Blooming Love design paper and Bo Bunny, Sophie's Notebook
- Tools: Kiwi Lane template shape - Abbie Road; Spellbinder Shapeabilities die - Layered Poinsettia 
- Title computer generated and printed on to Sophie's Notebook paper
- scraps of cardstock in red (poinsettia), black (for matting and leaves), and white (for matting photographs)
- journaling stamp: Papermania Boutique by Jesse Edwards


- Ink pads: Tim Holtz Distress Ink, Vintage Photo and Memento Rich Cocoa
- Epoxy Brad from Papermania, A Silent Night collection
- Zig Vellum Writer, black, for journaling

All the supplies were found in my seemingly bottomless pit of stash so this is another project that is:

After using all those leftovers and snippets I'm hoping this qualifies it for inclusion in Di's weekly challenge:

Pixie's Crafty Snippets - Challenge Number 6.

Although it's not a card, it's something different to do with all those larger pieces of leftover bits that accumulate, when 12"x12" is cut into for earlier projects.

Once again I spent the best part of the morning, and a goodly chunk of the afternoon,watching Barbara Gray's demos on TV but stayed true to my pledge not to buy anything new this year ... although I was sorely tempted and had to sit on my hands throughout :) However, even if I spent the next year just using the digital stamps I have on file, I'm not sure I'd get through them all. And then there are the stamps in sets that don't get used ... you know the ones I mean ... they're the ones that you didn't buy the set for, probably didn't even look at properly, and have never even inked up to test them out ... they deserve an outing surely. There, I've talked myself into feeling better about not treating myself to those new stamps that were reaching out to me this morning :))

Right, I'm off to start another DT project and hoping to complete it before dinner - the EM is cooking up a storm so I have the luxury of not even having to think about it. And, before you say it, I know how lucky I am and appreciate it very much.

Before I go, I do know that unlike my wee corner of the UK which is merely damp, a lot of you in the south are snowed in and are either having fun in the snow or cursing it and wondering if you are going to get to work tomorrow. Whatever your circumstances, I do hope you are keeping well wrapped up and warm and safe, and I hope the weather improves for you soon.

In the meantime, keep crafting,