Scrapbook Workshop - Return to the Collection - Part 1

Hi Everyone,

Happy Tuesday everyone. I hope this finds you well and enjoying far better weather than what is our lot at the moment ... wind and rain that looks as though it will never stop!

Yet again, I have to admit to having made not a thing, nada, zilch, nothing. Anyhow, to make up for the lack of industry I thought I'd do a series of blog posts covering the layouts I completed with the help of Shimelle's Return to the Collection workshop last year. This workshop was a follow on from her The Perfect Collection class of 2012 ...the idea of which was 'to take a collection pack of patterned papers and use it until it was all gone'.  

Shimelle was working with the same kit she used in the 2012 workshop but, a) I wasn't too smitten on that particular kit and, b) I wanted to make a kit from stash ... as ever it's my aim this year to find a way of using stuff up! So here's the kit I put together. 

Apologies for the glare in the photo but I hope you can see that it was a sizeable kit, made up as follows: 

• 12 patterned papers: from Basic Grey's Fresh Cut collection, My Mind's Eye Lime Twist, Lasting Impressions Cotton Candy, Docraft's Papermania Happy Days, and the Memories sheet which had no maker information on it.
• 3 cardstock: BoBunny Aquamarine Dot, Coredinations Worn Lipstick, black American Crafts. 
• 3 alphabet sets: Basic Grey's Fresh Cut, Echo Park's Splendid Sunshine, Hobbycraft White Felt stickers.
• Embellishments: BoBunny Ambrosia Cut Outs, Basic Grey's Capture Snippets, My Mind's Eye Now & then flairs, Basic Grey bobbles, Mr Huey Estate Green colour mist, a red/white washi tape, a selection of enamel dots from various sources, 
• Stickers: Basic Grey Fresh Cut sheet, My Mind's Eye Miss Caroline labels, Pebbles Masking Tape & Border stickers, Teresa Collins Canvas sheet, Dear Lizzy Accents & Phrases.

With a lot of help from the workshop prompts I managed to create 4 one-page layouts and 2 double-page layouts altogether. Here are the first two layouts created with items from the kit.

This is the first I put together and perhaps you can see that already I had to add two more alphabet sets (Pebbles ABC stickers& Jenni Bowlin Chalkboard Black). The ones originally chosen for the kit did not work with this page. I also pulled out some heart-shaped wood veneers from stash too - they were easily coloured with Promarkers. Otherwise everything else came from the kit. The photos date from a 2010 trip to the Yorkshire coast - we stopped off on the way home just to see Antony Gormley's Angel of the North.

I'd love to say that everything on this page came from the kit but, in truth, I added some stamping and some die-cut flowers (lilac, to match what my late mother was wearing in the photos). The base is a sheet of patterned paper trimmed and layered on to the sheet of black card from the kit. I particularly love this page. The photos were taken in the spring of 1996 during a stroll round the campus of the US college where I was studying at the time. Mum, at the age of 69, had never been in a plane, before, in fact, never been out of the UK before, so this was a truly unforgettable experience for her!

I think that's enough for today ... otherwise this would be a very, very long post and I doubt you'd want that. And, in any case, it's way past my bedtime (it's Monday night at the time of writing). I'll be back with two more layouts soon.

Take care and stay safe.

Happy Crafting,