Member sketch challenge at the Nook. July kit. MME "Indie Girl", "Ginger".

Hi there, hope you are all well and feeling happy!!

Yesterday was my turn on the blog of 'My Scrapbook Nook'.

This month I am in charge of making the July member sketch from one of the lovely layouts in the gallery.

If you go HERE you can see the sketch and which member lo I chose for the sketch.

We also have  a GDT for the sketch.

This is my layout :

And as always ; some closeups:

 Some photos of the flowers I made with a die from Nellie Snellen.

The letter stickers are by Jillibean soup and came with the July kit from the Nook. 

Two posts down you can see the entire kit pictured. 

The tiny chipboard word 'Together' is bautiful and delicate and made by 'Imaginarium Designs'.

The different buttons in various materials are also by MME from  the ' Indie Girl Ginger' collection.

I wanted some dimension and added handcut double hearts sewn to my paper.

You can keep adding more layers of hearts, but as mine are rather small two layers are enough.

I think the sewn little garland is so cute. it is the same one I used for my card the other day.

To achieve this effect I gessoed through a mask. After that dried entirely I wanted to add some colour to enhance the circle that was in the sketch. I cut out a large circle, put the mask on again underneath and used my stamp pad to colour the gesso. 

I think the effect is quite neat. I did that before on a lo with a blue ink pad and I was equally happy!

 It's just so simple and no mess!

Some sewing added here and there as usual!

Thanks for dropping by. Hope you enjoyed my page :-)!

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"Happy Birthday" MME Ginger using July kit from My Scrapbook Nook.

Hi!

In between watching as much as possible of the sports from the Olympics I'm here to do a quick post to share one of the pages I did with the latest kit from My Scrapbook Nook.

Here it is:

The photos are from Alexandras 20th birthday when the family came over to celebrate.
We spent a lovely afternoon in the garden.

Here are some close ups. I think they are pretty self explanatory. :-)

I was trying to come up with a fun idea to use the embellishments in the kit. Over at the "Nook" they don't use many flowers, and as you know I use them on almost all my pages. Making what can be called a clean and simple page takes me much longer than one with layers and layers. I guess that's what it's like when you try a different style. -Not so very simple at all.

I do believe it is good to challenge oneself to go out of your comfort zone now and again....

I also used soem MME washi tape on here. As well as JillibeanSoup twine and journalling spot. 

The small hearts were the result after punching the heart border.

If you would like to see the kit from "My Scrapbook Nook"  just scroll down one post and you can see the card I made with it as well! Enjoy the rest of your week end.

Thanks for dopping by!

Catching up!! First share using the beautiful July kit from 'My Scrapbook Nook' .

Hi there! 

First of all I just want to say thanks so much for all the lovely comments you left me on my previous post with my layout for 'Les Papiers de Pandore'. It means the world to me!! Really!! 

Thank you so much!

Since I went away at the end of June and just got home a few days ago I only recently got to play with this beautiful new 'Nook ' kit. I was so happy tro find it in my mailbox waiting for me!

It is jam packed with beautiful papers and embellishments, mainly MME Ginger but also some 'sprouts and cute letterstickers.

I made sure my assignments would be needed late in the month this time, and have completed a few things so far. I did a couple of cards, this first one being for the fun challenge that Shellye has posted on the Nook blog for us today. I also finished a layout and have one more half-done on my scraptable. 

I will be able to share those soon!

This is what Shellye has to say about her challenge:

"This challenge shouldn't be TOO challenging given that there are soooo
many circles in this month's Nook Kit :)
For this challenge
ROUND-AND-ROUND
You will need to use atleast FIVE circles on your card
and don't forget to corner ROUND those edges if you'd like!"

 I used two gorgeous sheets of paper from The MME Ginger collection in the kit.

There are so many great matching embellishments in there and many of them round, so I decided to go with the garland on this card. Lots and lots of round lements there :-).  I added one of the Jillybean journalling spots on top. And with a few  buttons and some twine to finish it off; voìla!

I hope you enjoyed my card and thanks so much for taking the time to drop by!

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Lovely feminine combo for you at Les Papiers de Pandore.

Just got back from my hols a day ago and am loving the chance to get back to my blogging 

and visiting all your blogs again. I had a wonderful time on vacations 

(who can fault three weeks in the Provencal sun...lol..?) 

but it is also nice to be back to 'normal' again.

While in France I scrapped some more pages with the beautiful new collections from 

"Les Papiers de Pandore" called "Invitation" and "UrbanEssence". 

I really hope some of your stores abroad will be carrying them because they are really beautiful.

This is one of my "French" pages. It does not have a lot of bought embellishments as I only brought a small kit with me on holiday. I made it for the July combo.

And here is the lovely colour combo for those who like to take part. If you post your pages on the Pandore  Facebook page, you have a chance to be the winner of some Pandore stamps.

I am very much into using strips of patterned paper on my layouts at the moment.
You will notice that on some of the layouts that I made while on holiday.
-Maybe because I was working out of a small kit... I now need to add some titles and other details to finish off the pages and in a day or two I will have more to share.

The photo is one of Beatrice from the Spring when she still had her long braids.

 A close up of my very simple but to me very decorative lollipop flowers. 

-As I said I was low on supplies while away,...lol. I can truly say that almost everything here is made with the "Invitation" collection!

When I first showed my page to Julie she almost fainted that I could wrinkle her beautiful papers up like that. With a big smile on her face she told me that she always did her utmost for the paper to reach me in pristine condition. I am now afraid that after seeing IRL how I treat her papers maybe next time she will not be so careful....LOL. I am sure she will though, just kidding. And I promise you my next pages will be less wrinkled :-)

It is absolutely right though that I often completely roll the papers up into a ball and pull them in all directions to make them more pliable, if that's the right word.

And sometimes I prefere the nice and flat ones.

I leave you with a close up of my layers and I hope you will check out the combo HERE  and see the other DT projects for it.There is a fabulously detailed card with Parvatis famous 3D flowers and an adorable page by Jennifer.

Hugs!!

The hunt for lavender.

Hi again!

I am back with one more pre-scheduled post with some pretty provencal pics.

The other day we went northbound for Gorge de Verdon and eventually to Lac de Ste. Croix, where the girls love to swim in the fabulous turquoise waters and have fun with the paddle boats that we can rent by the hour. 

I am not so keen on the paddle boat thing, but I said that as long as they would indulge me in one thing first, then we could go to the lake later.

The thing was, I have long dreamt of seeing large wonderful fields of lavender spreading out in all directions. Normally we come to the south of France later than we did this year when the flowering period is over except very high up in the alpes.  Last Saturday I spoke to a charming Englishman at the local market in Brignoles. He has been living here for 20 years making his delicious nougat and moving his bees around the area to get different kinds of honey. I bought a jar of laveder honey and he told me that his bees had spent the last weeks up in the lavender fields in the higher regions. I was of course curious to know where I could find these fields. 

He said; "Just go to Lac de Ste. Croix and continue UP..."

Sounded reasonable to me....

When we arrived at the lake the girls were already hot and would have liked nothing better than to jump in the tempting water.... Mum however, was on a mission to find lavender....

Sooo, we had arrived the lake and there were no obvious signs of lavender ,..nor indeed of what would be considered 'UP'...

I can be stubborn sometimes , and let me just tell you this was one of these times,...lol!

After driving around the French countryside for three hours on roads many would hesitate to call roads at all, I was all but ready to give up. We had stopped a very handsom young German on his bike far up in the alpes and he was kind enough to share his map with us and told us he had indeed seen some plants a while back but he was not very encouraging. He did however,ask us if we would like to take a photo of his map... -And people say the young are not considerate :-)

After some more miles in the car and no lavender to be seen anywhere we decided to get out of the car for a little while and eat our  packed lunch.

Another biker approached and this time it was a middle aged American man. We started talking and he wanted to know all about us and said it was unusual to see 'a car of women' driving around. We explained the situation to him. 

He was fun to talk to even if he was very happy to give his opinions on absolutely everything and not very keen on hearing ours... I think we talked for an hour! And he had not seen any lavender for days either. Sooo I decided to give up.

After a short while we had to stop and ask directions from two local ploicemen standing by the road. They seemed happy to try their English and pointed us in the right direction.

We did not have to go far before I was in heaven!

Everywhere I looked were large blue patches of lavender in at least two nuances (true lavender and the lavandin). It was just breath taking!

Here are the girls in front  of what I think is lavandin because of the unusually light colour.

And here is the field next to it with a darker coloured lavender.

This little fellow is a 'cigale'/cricket and together with his friends they make the fantstic sound effects in this part of Europe. I would really miss the sound should it suddenly stop!

The next shot is of the famous German map!

We were lucky because right next to one of the fields were a large patch of sunflowers that were just starting to open their beautiful faces to the sun. What a wonderful colour combo this would make!

Even the elder girls liked the lavender and sunflowers a lot, but Beatrice was actually in the hot car sulking a bit because it took so long before we got to the paddle boats.

I am pretty sure that some of all the shots I took will soon make their way onto a scrapbook page near you!...Just saying,..LOL!

After these beauties and the lavender had made my day I was very happy to continue the last few kilometres over to the lake and we all spent a nice afternoon with the two boats I rented. 

We really needed to cool off !

Hugs!!

New sketch on the Pandore blog and a page using" Urbanessence".

At Les Papiers de Pandore  we have  a beautiful sketch for you this month!!

I will keep this post short and sweet just to share the sketch and page with you while it's still new :-).

To read the fine print please go HERE .
If you make a page be sure to post it on Pandore's FB page and you may be a lucky winner of some goodies!

Some of you may know that my eldest DD goes to university in the UK. These photos were taken this Spring when we went to visit her and to see how things were at her end. In these photos we are visiting a large shopping mall in Birmingham, called "The Bullring",...maybe you got that from my title....

 And with these few close ups I leave you.... See you soon again!

Hi,..remember me...?

HI I have missed all of you my blog friends!

I am away on vacations in the South of France and do not have internet access  in the small provencal house where we stay. Some of you may remember from last Summer that I had quite a few ice creams at McDonalds then to be able to log on to their free internet...!

This is the little street with the entrance to our small house. We are placed very central in the small village and very near to the old church.

Our house is number 4 and has a basement and three small storeys. The top floor which houses the bedroom and one bathroom has a small terass built out over the roofs.

Our neighbours.

Due to unforeseen events my husband had to stay in Sweden at least for the time being so I was quite

nervous last Wednesday when I loaded my three girls into the car after leaving the cat at the 'cat hotel' and entered the address for our French house into the GPS. Having gone there for 13 or 14 (?) years I know the roads well  but not first hand so to speak. Usually my DH will drive most of the way and I will do shorter bits in between. The first half is on roads through all of Germany with free speed which can be quite nervracking and in France we are particularily cautious when we get near to the  heavy traffic on the  busy carriageways around/through Lyon. We had planned to drive the nearly 2000 kilometres in two or three days depending on our progress. We arrived in Cabasse late the second night after a sleepover at a familiar motel in the Kassel mountains.

It is good to be here!!

This is the town square where the tiny market is held on Tuesday mornings.

The entrance to our street.

We arrived on Thursday just over a week ago. 

The next day we went in to Brignoles to stock up on food etc at Leclerc. We also managed to look around the other shops a while. The day after was Saturday ,and we had all been invited to a very sweet French scrapbooker friend and her family in their lovely home. The girls swam in the pool with her children while we grownups chatted about this and that. 

We had alovely French meal and stayed there far too long.... :-)

Then on Sunday we picked up two friends of our two youngest  DDs who were flying down from Sweden to spend some days with us. We have done so many things since they arrived and 

I have actually  about had it with spending so much time in the car....It feels almost like home...LOL.

Yesterday I took one of them to the airport and tomorrow the other girl is flying back. It is nice to be able to share this beautiful place with some people from back home:-)

I have a lot to share about the many things you can do and experience here in Provence/French Riviera, but I think for now I will share some more photos of our small village so I dont stay too long here in McDonalds,...lol!

This is our favourite bar, Bar Dotto named after the famous Frenc cyklist Jean Dotto who took part in Tour de France 13 times.

The main 'place' where we usually manage to park, but it is never easy.....

The local grocery store.

So many scenes to be photographed, but I feel my photos cannoot convey the atmosphere here.

Beatrice is in the bakery saying 'Un baguette s'il vous plait'.

I always drive as fast as I can here to avoid meeting another car and be forced to go a long  way in reverse gear! Many of the streets here are soso narrow. This is actually not the worst one at all!

The cross-roads where roads lead in all directions. ...All equally narrow and winding!

The many tiny doors are a testimony to the age of the buildings in Cabasse.

Beatrice saved this butterfly that was stranded in the middle of the cement road. She kindly placed it on a large flower.

These stairs will take you back up to the square with the fountain.

Everywhere you'll see these old paths and roads that are far too narrow for cars but great for strolling around taking photos. I hope ypou have enjoyed looking at pics of 'our' little village in Provence.

I now really need to get back out into the sunshine after spending all this time with my laptop!!

Hugs!