Valentine's postcards

Thanks to Alison, Jane, Sheena, Julie, Ruth and Saura for my postcards, what a brilliant selection! I really like seeing the places they have come from, Sian makes sure it is such a wide variety, it adds another dimension to the idea. I've still not checked out any blogs yet but I will do and it was great getting cards at this time of year, I hope mine arrived in time.

At the moment I'm absorbed with textile crafts so between making crochet Owls for a yarn bomb event in the summer and creating a piece of fabric craft to enter into our county show via our WI there's not a lot of time spare. And that's after I've worked on my current literary project about a historic character in Manchester, Elizabeth Raffald. To find out more about her go to my website, www.suzeapple.co.uk, or Amazon where my first booklet about her is on sale, she really was a fascinating character, a piece of forgotten history.

Here's a picture of my postcards, what a random selection!

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More postcards

Yay! Sian has started it again, another postcard challenge. I'm not sure I'm going to craft my own this time as I have a wide geographic spread of addresses that I think I should send them a little piece of my home town, Manchester, UK. In fact I've hardly done any scrapbooking in the last few months, I could do with another tutorial from someone who knows what they're doing. I did start a new scrapbook after finishing one of an A-Z of my favourite things, this time I'm scrapping around pictures that make me laugh, mostly of my grandchildren but there are some other ones in there. 

I'm looking forward to getting my postcards for Valentine's Day, as normally my letterbox is annoyingly unmoved on that day. What do you have to do to get a card? I suppose a good start would be to send one to someone I like the look of but I've not noticed anyone recently (make that for a long time!)

I think I'll go and check out some of the scrapping blogs to get some fresh ideas.

Postcard scrapping

Thanks to a challenge from Sian 'High in the Sky' I had some fun making my own postcards. Never having taken part in anything like this but excited to be connecting with other scrapbookers I dismissed my first thoughts of buying some local postcards and thought I should make an effort to impress with some clever artwork. From the ones I've received back so far it seems I missed the point completely but hey, I enjoyed the exercise. I searched Pinterest for some inspiration and transferred some clever ideas with my own interpretations and the help of my Cricut mini.

And here they are individually

This next one I think was my favourite because of the owls!

This last one was actually different by the time I posted it because the frill and the button were so thick I thought I may have to pay extra postage!

I'd be interested to know which ones you like best, they will probably appear on my Pinterest board soon too. If you received one I'd love to hear from you and thanks to the people who sent me a postcard. It was a thrill to receive cards from Canada, Rochester NY, Edinburgh,Northern Ireland and Chichester so far.
Thanks Sian for including me in this game.

First steps

Hi,

Here I go on my first blog about my scrapbooking attempts. I've had a love of scrapbooking for about 12 months now, well, I've always liked sticking pictures in a scrapbook, but have only recently been introduced to the art of modern scrapbook presenting. I love the abundance of papers and techniques and would love to have a regular group to go to but I seem to live in a scrapbooking desert. There's lots of card making going on but not many will admit to indulging in scrapbooking. It does seem very indulgent when I spend time at my desk with all my coloured papers and glue and pictures (instead of getting on with my writing) but it is such a pleasure that I love to do it.

So, how did I get to this blog? I have 'liked' several scrapbook pages on Facebook and often pick up Scrap365 magazine when I want a treat - it's a real joy to read. The Facebook page led me to the recent blog hop challenge with Quirky Kits, which incidentally look brilliant if a little out of my price range, and so onto the monthly sketch challenge. I tried to get to last months but couldn't get my head round it in time. As it is I have only just (I hope) made it into the July challenge with my attempt. It is very light on techniques, something I would like to attend a group to learn but it is full of meaning for me. It is also on an 8x8 page which restricts the options slightly.

The pictures I chose were of the sunset which I watched from the beach, with friends and family, on my once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Caribbean. I was told to keep watching as there was a phenomenon of a green flash which only happened occasionally as the sun went down so we stood for a long time gazing at that scene which is literally burned into my memory. These pictures take me right back to that moment. Hope you like my layout.