Did you notice I haven't scrapped for a while?

After weeks I have finally broken out of my scrappers' block and put some layouts together! It was a combination of busy evenings, no crops due to summer and a lack of photos that meant that for an entire month I did zero scrapping. I hadn't 't even unpacked my bag from the last crop I had, back in late June.

But anyway, my monthly all-day crop was back and we had a very pleasant Sunday and I even managed to find some photos to work on. As I didn't have an awful lot, it meant I could slow down and spend a bit longer on these layouts. I also challenged myself to use embellishments and a few techniques, so in general I'm very pleased with the results.

When I printed out the photos from Croatia I quickly realized that there were endless photos of gorgeous scenery and I just would never get a chance to put them all in my scrapbook (unless I wanted to go crazy, of course). So I decided to print a lot of those in a collage and then use that in my layout, so here is the result - there are 56 photos in this layout!

I also printed out a large-format photo (something I never do) and challenged myself to create a layout with a single large photo. I also wanted to use embellishments in that lovely bo ho style that seems all the rage. I think it is a good layout and I love the muted colors of the papers that seem to go verywell with this lovely photo. It's not often I don't journal on a page but I felt I'd said all I needed to say about our vacation in other layouts so these two did not get any journaling, because I also felt the photos said enough.

Back in the UK, I had some photos of a sponsored 'brolly walk' that we did around one of the lakes locally. The idea is to decorate an umbrella with the theme (which in this case was 'around the world') and then walk around the lake, stopping at all the different 'countries' around the lake.... hmmmm, what a good concept, sounds very familiar! Anyway, it was a good job we took an umbrella (decorated with flags of course, as my son just loves flags) because the weather was pretty cold and rainy even though it was July. Still, we had a nice time and Samuel enjoyed walking around the lake and seeing all the various exhibits that represented various countries, and of course seeing all the flags.

A few weeks ago we had Samuel's best friend Luke come and stay with us for a sleepover. Luckily it was a sunny afternoon so the boys spent a lot of time playing in the garden, decorating 'their' house and just having a nice time. This September both boys will move out of nursery and on to different schools so they won't see each other every day. I hope that they will remain friends but if their lives move on, they will always have these photos to remember these carefree days. By the way, can you see all those flags in the garden? I tell you, Samuel loves them!

These last are a double layout and besides using photos from our recent trip to Peterborough to see the trains (and Thomas!) I wanted to put together a page using nothing but cardstock and a few embellishments. This page was the ideal one to do because Thomas has such distinctive colors and other than buying themed paper (which I wasn't going to do) I thought I could put together something suitable with colored cardstocks. I am quite pleased with the results and think the colors work well with the photos and the theme. I also used a page map for the first time to plot out the scheme and save time and I think it worked so well I'll be using those again.


So not a ton of layouts but enough to make me feel satisfied. This does mean that I have now run out of photos again though so I'd better get snapping as I'm meeting a friend next week to crop and I'm not sure what I'll be doing then!