Neon Prize

I entered the Docrafts prize draw last month and was lucky enough to win a box full of papercrafting goodies in wildy bright colours.

I decided to use black and kraft cardstock so the neon colours would really pop.. and after searching through my photos I found some exceptionally brightly coloured ones taken in a market in Barcelona.

As I made the layout at a crop and left most of my dies at home so I stitched half of the title..
and added brightly coloured dots and some chalk ink splatters to finish the page.

The squares were punched with a palm punch (large) and the washi tape is from Ikea.

Botanical Gardens; Madrid

While away over the Easter holidays, we spent an hour or so in the beautiful Botanical Gardens in Madrid. After battling other tourists in the Reina Sophia museum it was lovely to escape the crowds for  walk in the spring sunshine.

 All the bulbs were in bloom, a couple of weeks ahead of ours at home.

Papers are by sei and Graphic 45.

The title and subtitle were die-cut using Embosslit alphabet dies Lollipop onto white core card which was then sanded.

mini book part two...

Following on from the previous post, this one completes the mini book project during our time in Barcelona.

 On our first day, our Silver wedding anniversary, I wanted to see the World Heritage Sites the city had to offer.

After arriving we spent a good few days viewing Gaudi architecture, La Pedrera

La Sagrada Familia

and Park Guell...a very busy (and expensive!) day.

Fundacio Miro and Catalan Museum and fountains

Las Ramblas and Playa Catalunya

Art highlights

and the Metro.

Glad I finished it quickly so I didn't forget all the fabulous things we did.

Spain Mini Book

I kept all the tickets, passes and memorabilia collected in Spain so I could make a mini book to put it all into.

To maintain a similar theme throughout I used Roald Dahl scrapbook and papers by Papermania, they seem to tie together the whole book.

The book began at our wedding day and continued in chronological order.

The journey, 

Arrival in Madrid

Visiting Art galleries

San Miguel Mercado

The royal palace

the Monastery of the Barefoot Countess

and our journey via high speed train to Barcelona.

Barcelona and the end of the book next time.

La Pedrera

or Casa Milo was one of my favourite Gaudi buildings..

when you consider that it was built around 100 years ago it still has such a modern feel with its undulating walls and steel construction.

We got there fairly early, beating the long queues and the tour started on the roof.  The chimneys, air vents, water tanks and skylights all give the space a fairytale castle like appearance, decorated with tile mosaics and broken bottles. Gaudi himself was reported as having said that an undecorated roof was like a bald headed man with a single hair!

From the roof we descended to the attics with arches supported inspired by the natural world, and from there to an apartment which was decorated in the Modernista style.

Papers are Graphic 45 'Artisan'; I saw these in my local craft shop and thought they would be perfect for the Gaudi photos I had taken.

Park Guell

Continuing my 12x12 Spain scrapbooking  before I forget it all!

Here's a page about the World Heritage Site at Park Guell,  the papers are by sei, plenty of photos scrapped here :)

The map and other cut outs are by Graphic 45.

My UKS Challenge.

This week, I set the challenge on UK Scrappers. Every week,this group of Scrapbookers (who are free to join) set a challenge to have a go at, and I set one for the first time today:

May the 4th is a Bank holiday in the UK, so I thought scrapbooking some holiday photos would fit the bill. To make life easy for you, by holiday I mean any holiday at any time of the year, so if you have summer, Christmas or Bank holiday photos in your pile waiting to be scrapped, now is your chance.

I was lucky to travel to Spain for two city breaks over the Easter holiday just gone, as I celebrated my Silver Wedding Anniversary...with my husband too of course! Naturally I took a huge number of photos, so in an effort to get them scrapped I am making as many multi-photo layouts as possible. So could you make a muliti-photo page please, with a minimum of 3 photos?
Finally, I know fashions come and go in scrapbooking, but one that just hasn't waned for me is the use of Kraft, so can you use Kraft somewhere on your page?
Easy scoring this week, 10 points per category met.
So, to sum up:Any holiday photos 10Multi (more than 3) photo page 10Use some Kraft 10
Enjoy!

I made a start on my photos from Spain for the challenge, using the Instaweather set to record where we were each day, this has to be my favourite App for my phone, I used it every day on my holiday in Weymouth last year, and once a month for my PL layouts. 

The Kraft card is from an old QVC purchase (remember when they sold craft materials?) and the other papers are partly Graphic 45, and an sei Valentine set.
Embellishments: Ticket and arrows are die cut; doily Dovecraft; gold dots are a self levelling material by Tonic,  a really economical way of making your own enamel dots.

I hope you have a go at the challenge yourself!

Barcelona!

Sadly we are back at school now, but returned from a special trip to Spain to celebrate our silver wedding just a couple of days ago.

On our anniversary itself we visited La Familia Sagrada,

 as were were married in Holy Family church in Coventry it was a perfect place to go on our special day.

Our holiday ended with 3 days in Barcelona, staying in a rooftop flat on a terrace with fabulous views over the city.

 We visited many Gaudi designed buildings 

and parks

Las Ramblas

and saw fabulous ant-fascist lithographs from the era of the Spanish Civil War.

More about Madrid later in the week.