An 8 x 8 scrap page - Jennifer at the Christening

Morning Everyone,

Life at Casa Worthington is slowly getting back to normal, the EM is getting a little better every day, and I'm squeezing in a bit more crafting time too.

This is my first Guest Design Team member submission for the month of December on the Scrap our Stash Challenge Blog. It's an Anything Goes challenge this month so I thought this page fitted the topic very well. It's yet another 8 x 8 layout  - I'm finding that when time is short this is the page size that's just right for me - it can be quickly made using only one photograph and needing fewer embellishments.

My daughter, Juli, had her four oldest children Christened at the same time in 1999 - gosh, that's 12 years ago, doesn't time just fly? Somewhere I have a photo of the family altogether in the church but haven't been able to lay my hands on it yet ... when I do, that will be another page to make. In the meantime, I love this photo of Jenny, aged 6, with her happy, gappy smile and pretty dress having fun at the Christening party.

For the base, I've used Core'dinations, Aged Wine, sanded lightly around the edges, and for the layout I've used a selection of papers from a Kay Miller Designs set, Simple Pleasures, that came free with Scrapbook Magazine. The colours in the floral designs echoed the colours in Jenny's dress perfectly and the ornate heart-shaped shapes together with the little ribbon bow were just the right embellishments.  I've used Kiwi Lane templates to cut shapes from the paper - Bracket 1 for the floral & pink check pieces and Paisley Place mini 2A for the pink wavy strip that can be seen going along the bottom of the layout. The computer generated journalling was printed on the floral paper before cutting out the bracket shape. The floral trim came with the set too - I just trimmed round it with scissors on one edge to add a bit of interest. All the paper edges were inked with some Tim Holtz's Victorian Velvet. The rest of the embellishments, butterflies, flower, gems, came out of my stash - the butterfly embellishments I found whilst on holiday in Wales earlier this year. To make the butterfly trail, I lightly pencilled in the shape I wanted and then used tiny sticky-backed gems to cover the pencilling.

It's another dull and dark day here in Ayr - yesterday we even had a shower of hailstones - ugh! I'm so temperamentally unsuited for this miserable weather :) Here in Scotland we've had enough rain in the last few weeks to make the farmers in the south of England green with envy! To cheer ourselves up, the EM and I have been planning next year's holiday. We are going on a road trip - now that's adventurous of us :))

We've posted the map of the UK up on a wall in the snug and the blue spots you can see are stickers indicating the places we would like to visit. Most are in the south of the country so that's where we are headed next summer - I can't wait :))

Right, I'm off to make a bit of lunch for us, fill the washing machine, empty the wastepaper baskets and so on - then I'll be back to craft a bit more.

In the meantime, I wish you all a happy day and keep crafting,