Layout to share....

The wedding album.
Here is a little story, I was so determined to have the cheapest but beautiful budget friendly wedding possible and I believe that I had exactly that.  In saying that having a cheap wedding often means doing a lot DIY and boy did we DIY.  I made all the wedding and hens invitations, the food and decorations for the hens, my dress was made by a friend, we did the flowers, I did all the candy buffet, I made the the cupcakes and the 100's of flowers and monogrammed hearts for the top etc.....

Basically it was an entire year of wedding planning, preparations, shopping, e-bay buying, Internet comparing, find storage room for a whole wedding of decorations kind of event,  and apart from a wee little bit of rain on the day it was amazing and went off perfectly.

As soon as that wedding was over however I wanted nothing, absolutely nothing to do with weddings ever again, I have still not looked at all the photos, I have still not watched the video and I still have not done thank you's (very naughty and a wee bit rude and I think that ship has sailed).  I was so over weddings that I never wanted to have ANYTHING to do with another wedding again, ever.

Last week 11 months since the big day I finally got the empty wedding photo album out and started adding photos to it.  I also paid for an online class and one of the prompts was using multiple photos, I only had leftover wedding photos lying around so a wedding scrapbook page was made

I am really pleased with this layout, it ticks all the right boxes, the right colours, its nice and simple and I managed to use the paper from our wedding invites on there, perfect.  Now that I have actually got a start at the album I now need to sort out what photos I  want to use and I need to order the paper, and then maybe I just might have the start of an actual scrapbooked wedding album.

Crafting to report

I have finally had the time to get some much needed scrapbooking time in, seems like forever since I last played crafty.

First up a card.  I do not celebrate Halloween, something to do with living in Australia, American tradition not ours, grumble grumble...

As a kid Halloween was some kind of magical concept as it was never a part of my childhood era in Australia, these days it is becoming much more widely accepted but I don't celebrate especially as I now have kids of my own and the thought of them with a bag full of lollies scares me a bit if I am honest, LOL.

I do however have a friend in England and apparently the sweets over there do not compare to our down under goodies so a Halloween parcel must be sent.

 Next up is a layout that has kind of been a bit of a hassle to get finished.  You know the ones, you have all these great ideas and nothing seems to work, yeah that was the Happy Birthday layout, probably did not help that my daughter did some impromptu pencil artwork on one side of the layout before everything was glued down limiting my choices, but perseverance paid off and I now have a finished layout.

 After I started this layout I saw that Big W was selling the DCWV Celebration stack so I bought it and got all my embellishments and title from it except the banner sticker, totally LOVE this stack.

And finally I scrapped a layout of one of my best friends weddings that I was in from 6 years ago and, I actually watched a tutorial and made a layout from it. 

I have never, ever taken a layout class and I have never done a tutorial.  All I can say is it was awesome and I love the finished product.

I am most certainly going to do another of the 4x6 Photo Love by Shimelle.

I can honestly say that I would never have thought to do a layout like that and I would never have done it before but I love the results and it has opened up a whole lot of new options on how to scrap all those events that I have multiple photos from and that I have been putting off for years.

 Makes me so happy to see these wedding photos finally scrapbooked.

Back to reality...

The last year has pretty much been a haze of busy and the last three months I have been in wedding overload, not to get into too much details but everything went off perfectly and the day was beautiful.  We are now however in the very last stages of post wedding wind down, all the guests have gone, the thank you cards will begin, we have a mountain of paper work to sort, leftover wedding goods to either sell or store, mountains and mountains of washing that needs to be taken care of and just the getting back into the routine and reality of what is "normal" life.

 An actual Holga wedding photo not a fake iphone number, one of my favourites, can't wait to see the others that were taken from this camera.

I am looking forward to embracing the nap where I can, they are a luxurious and self indulgent treat that I discovered after the wedding, having the time to clean and sort my house out again, having more time to socialise and finally having the time and inclination to craft and bake again.  Ohh how I have missed the simple pleasures of having a few hours all to myself with no wedding planning and organising.