New Scrapbook page

Its quite cold today but we did manage to spend an hour or so in the garden, cutting back some shrubs and trees which has tidied up the back garden and surprised a few birds when they came down to my seed feeder to find half the tree they sit in, gone!

Doing a bit of hard graft has made me feel justified in spending the remains of the afternoon indoors, on my computer making a few scrapbook pages.

The other day I downloaded the excellent free photo editing programme Paint.net and am learning how to use that to make scrapbook pages and digital collages. I'm not very Au Fait with it yet but have managed to make one or two.

I cheated a little with this one by using a gorgeous ready made quickpage by Pam Lefors Designs and just added a couple of images.

The pictures I used are of really poor quality. They were taken over 30 years ago on a really cheap and tacky camera. Since then they were stuck in a non acid free album which faded and damaged them. I came across them and even though they're so poor they are the only photos I have of my little dog Ben who died a few weeks after these photos were taken.

Even though he was just a baby when he died and spend just a few short months with me so many many years ago, I have never forgotten my lovely sweet baby Ben.

This way a few more people can share him.

He was a miniature long haired dachsund and the big white dog was his best friend whose name was Hypo and belonged to a neighbour. Even though Ben was so tiny he could sit in the palm of my hand he was a feisty little chap and used to run this big puppy ragged, jumping all over him and showing him who was boss.

I hope you like the scrapbook page.

Winding down

I've finished my Christmas shopping and did my main grocery shop yesterday. I was a bit surprised that it wasn't terribly busy in Sainsburys. I bet everyones waiting until the very last few minutes of Christmas eve and then they'll all rush in and wonder why theres nothing left!

I really don't enjoy food shopping at all the only kind of shopping I enjoy is thrifty shopping at fairs and markets and shopping for arty and crafty stuff.

Today I'm cooking us a big chicken that'll do us for the 3 days until Christmas as we'll have a roast chicken dinner today then tomorrow we'll have some cold with chips and salad then I'll turn whats left into a sweet and sour stir fry.

I've been sitting watching tv and making some vintage altered slide mounts. I love making these and I use them to add to cards, altered cds and in collages and on the front of decorated notebooks.

I take an ordinary blank plastic slide mount and cover it with pretty printed paper (sometimes I age the edges with ink or add some embossing powder or glitter) then I add a miniature vintage portrait from collage sheets or my collection of old postacrds and photos and decorate it with a vintage button, bits of ribbon, or anything else which takes my fancy.

They're only tiny but I think each ones a little mini artwork in itself.

I'm always looking for more different ways to use them - any ideas?

Digital collage

Here are a couple of simple vintage collage pictures I've made today on my computer.

I love messing about with collage and using vintage images but as the house is all nice and tidy for Christmas and my DH wants it to stay that way I decided to have a dabble with digital collage. I'm not very good at it yet but I enjoyed having a go... What do you think of them?

I've been playing around with my Scrapbook flair software and some free digital scrapbooking backgrounds and embellishments from Simply clean digi scraps , and a Vintage photo I tinted.

There are lots of lovely free digital scrapbooking backgrounds and kits to get you started if you fancy having a go and you can find some of them by clicking this link Digital Scrapbooking Freebies

Free collage sheets

Just found this lovely website ten two studios where they're offering a free collage sheet every day in the countdown to Christmas. There are some really lovely ones too.

If you're into collage please do go have a look.

Recolouring vintage photos

I just found this website where you can download a free trial version of some really cool software which makes it east to add colour to black and white photos.



Its really useful for me as I like to use vintage images and portraits in my altered art and collage projects. However I'm always drawn to those which were hand tinted as that touch of colour really makes a difference.



I'm not very skilled with digital imaging and not patient enough to teach myself properly however in just a few minutes I managed to turn this

Into this - ok its not perfect but not bad for a first go.

Vintage style cards

Just thought for a change I'd show a few vintage style cards I've made.

I love using these old photographic images.

They look so pretty and romantic.

Hope you enjoy looking at them.