30 October, 2016

2016 Cat Lovers Blog Hop and Shimelle Challenge #05

Phew! I made it!

Finishing that layout was a bit too Ride of the Valkyries for my liking...but then again:


I wasn't sure I would finish in time to enter their 2016 Cat Lovers Blog Hop hosted by Janis over at Her Peaceful Garden.  I'm not entirely assured I made the deadline despite being able to use the linkup.

A migraine all weekend hasn't been kind, so I had to combine my entry for this Blog Hop along with one of the challenges on Shimelle's  blog going all weekend since she's having an online scrap booking party.

Challenge 05 was all about the outdoors, but I'm getting ahead of myself.  I'll come back to that part soon. 

I had a great idea for a card, but if I had implemented it and then attempted to make a layout for Shimelle's challenge, I wouldn't have finished both.  Fortunately, I had two photos and a story to tell which involved cats and was outdoorsy so challenge 05 would be the one.

The challenges are open all week. But finishing one today has a little bonus in store!

Guest artist Helen De Ram presented this challenge and it was about getting the great outdoors scrapped in bright colours.  I'm all for colour so off I went.  I loved her layout and it had some aspects I don't normally do like that section of word stickers to fill in the centre, but I decided to be brave and  try it.

A fairly important part of the layout was a journalling card separating the photos.  I'm making an effort since #The20Project to use something besides thickers for titles sometimes.  I rarely separate photos, but I wanted to try that too.  My result is below.  Not my finest work, but I'm fairly happy...besides my shaky almost illegible handwriting (really bad shakes today)

scrapbook scrapbooking page layout shimelle laine american crafts true stories christmas magic starshine go now go collection cat lovers blog hop

I decided to attempt to use just supplies from Shimelle's collections (in a vain hope to make things easier by limiting supplies) and to include at least something from each collection - I even managed some B-Sides from her christmas collection (I don't celebrate christmas, but lots of the b=sides were so lovely!).

A few close ups...you might be able to decipher a word or two of my writing if you look  hard enough!!

scrapbook scrapbookin page layout shimelle laine american crafts true stories christmas magic starshine go now go collection cat lovers blog hop

scrapbook scrapbookin page layout shimelle laine american crafts true stories christmas magic starshine go now go collection cat lovers blog hop

scrapbook scrapbookin page layout shimelle laine american crafts true stories christmas magic starshine go now go collection cat lovers blog hop


scrapbook scrapbookin page layout shimelle laine american crafts true stories christmas magic starshine go now go collection cat lovers blog hop

PhiPha aka Ophelia aka Crafty Cat is feisty and sassy and frequently explores the roof despite her...rather...ample physique.  Poor Fossy was 14.5 years old when these photos were taken, and I don't recall him ever being an avid tree climber, BUT if PhiPha does something, he refuses to be outdone.



Sadly, Fossy passed away early this month, so I wanted to make a layout about him, but not sad stories.
So what happens the morning after the dust from the craftnado has settled?  You survey the craftermath and briefly consider some sort of salvage operation.  you soon come to your senses and add stuff to the layout - a couple more words to the middle area and some enamel shapes to each embellishment cluster.  I had better get it into the album before I do anything else!!



scrapbook scrapbooking page layout shimelle laine american crafts true stories christmas magic starshine go now go collection cat lovers blog hop