Coming Together Nicely..........

I cant believe how much time has passed since I posted......SORRY......

I thought when I separated my vintage album into 3 separated albums I would have some space to carry on working on my pages, I cant believe that I only have 2 pages to do and one of those albums is full.

I was also very pleased to have found an incredible amount of new vintage photos at my cousins home ( who is the son of my dads sister) , these ones are from the other side of my family opening up a very exciting collection.

Again they are dating back to the 1800's and I cant wait to start working with them.
The family history is really taking shape and it fantastic to be able to put faces to all the names and little stories about them all. It is very interesting and my books have spurred aunts to look for more photos for me to work with which is great.

I am sorry that I havent managed to blog very much lately , I must try and get caught up, but I must admit its hard as this project is consuming alot of my time, but well worth it as its making a brilliant collection of albums for my family and my grandchildren.

Thank you for stopping by my blog.

Dire Straits, Why Worry

Dire Straits was Hannahs Dads favourite group.

Recently a friend mentioned she had seen Mark Knopfler and she had been lucky enough to get some great photos of him.

His favourite album was Brothers in Arms and he always loved the song "Why Worry".

It seemed quite fitting as it was his birthday, to make a layout for Hannah for her memory album replicating the cover of the albm and incorporating some small photos of her dad with the photos of Mark Knopfler.
Im sure looking down from heaven....or wherever he is, he would be pleased with the layout as Hannah is unable to send him a card.

She will keep this in her album as a reminder of his birthday and also his favourite band and album.

Happy Birthday Dave wherever you are ........

Church Fete is here again.....

Once again the Church Fete is here again and we are making bits and bobs for sale......
This week I have managed to make some bookmarks and some notepad holders....

Its hard trying to think of different things.

The kids at the after school club have been trying these also and done a fantastic job.

When 1 becomes 3......

This week saw the final 2 pages in my vintage album........but not for long.

I was really pleased with the album , I adore all of the pages although I must admit I do have a couple of favourites.

However it hasnt ended there, due to the fact that I still have hundreds of amazing images I have spent the last hour splitting up the album.
I have separated the pages into families now, One album (the original) now contains Memories of the Wilson Family, the 2nd album, Memories of the Lavery Family, and the 3rd Memories of the Douglas Family .

So now my new task is to work on 3 separate albums until they are full and then I can split them again to other family groups.

It may sound complicated but it is creating some lovely pieces of family history.
I am enjoying finding out all of the information to create the journaling also.

Well off to do another page....Thanks for stopping by my blog.

New Pages, the first album is nearly complete....

With only a few pages left to do my first vintage album is nearly complete.

These pages show my Great Grandfather Edward Cherry, Great Grandma Green who was actually a neighbour that helped to look after the family when my Great Grandmother passed away. Also my Grandparents Thomas Henry Lavery and his wife Isabella ( nee Cherry). Thomas and Isabella were my Dads parents.

This set of pictures were actually made from a set of oil paintings that my cousin has. I used my melting pot to make some embellishments for this page. Also a stencil to make the flourishs for the page.

The very pink page is me when i was very small. This page was inspired by the Vintage Pram card on the bottom left of the page, and also the little wooden rag doll which were a gift from my friend Pauline. Thank you Pauline.

Only a few more pages and thats the first album done, cant wait to start the next and as I complete more pages i intend to separate them into families, so that each book will be a record of each leg of the family. I really enjoy working with these old images and I am very grateful to members of my family who have rallied around to make sure i have lots to work with.
Thanks for visiting my blog

Vintage Scrapbook

This is the sister of the lady in the other layout below.
Believed to be my Great Aunt Annie.
It looks as though the photo was taken at the same time as the one in the previous layout. It is another image from the glass negatives that we found.
Annie grew up and went on to marry Joe Gray , had 2 children, May and Tom.
Annie owned the local hairdressers in Boldon and her husband Joe owned the local hardware shop.
There is a previous layout of the Gray family earlier on my blog.
I remember being told when i was young that she pierced her own ears with a hot needle straight from the fire.......

Again using some heritage papers and some lovely lace that my friend Denise sent from Africa.

The first album is nearly full, but i still have hundreds of photos so i suppose volume 2 is fast approaching !

Thanks for stopping by my blog

Awfully Big Art Adventure - Photo Challenge

I would like to say Thank you to Linda and Rosie at The Awfully Big Art Adventure for asking me to be the guest challenger this week.

For some weeks now I have been working my way through some very old family photos and putting together a vintage album. We are very lucky that my Great Grandfather and Grandfather both had photography as their hobby so they left behind some fabulous images.

Recently my cousin Tom found some glass negatives that used to belong to my great grandfather in the garage, they had been there all this time since my Great grandfather put them there, I took them to a local photography shop and they developed all 12 for me. They are excellent quality.

This is one of those images, believed to be my grandfathers sister my Great Aunt Rosina, then she was Wilson and when she married became Rosina Douglas. She had one daughter Amalia Augusta Douglas.

I am really looking forward to seeing what everyone does with the image and im sure she would be very pleased that she was now being included in everyones artwork.

Thank you for working with my image and thank you for visiting my blog.

Heidi Swapp Papers and Scrapaholics Class

On tuesday night I attended my Scrapaholics class at the community centre near where I live.
This months kit consisted of some Heidi Swapp papers called invisibles and also the Heidi Swapp mask set , "Hearts".

I cant tell you how excited I was to get this kit , its fab. These top 3 photos are of the finished page I created at my class, although I didnt have my camera with me its only the finished results sorry and not a step by step so that you can see how we did it.

Here you can find a demo of Heidi using these masks and see just how easy they are to work with.

However you do get 2 of everything in your kit so I was able to get some photos of the 2nd one which I did last night , and had just as much fun.










You can see here that the masks come on a large adhesive sheet, and you need to peel them off and decide which you would like to use ,the positive or negative image.




A supplied guide gives you some examples of finished work.




I hope you can see , the image on the invisibles paper , ready to accept the ink.





On this page I only used the tiny heart masks in the corners of the page as I wanted the attention to be on the circular image.









Using a selection of inks and distress inks and a blending tool I coloured the paper until I got the look I wanted.










Ater adding some feathers and a couple of scrap image fans, the photo and my aunts name and some stickles glitter glue I was happy.

The photo is of my mams cousin , Amalia Augusta Kell.
Amalia used to be on the stage and didnt always dress like this........
I have alot of pictures of Amalia in costume and I think they will make a lovely set when they are all finished.





The finished page. I decided just Amalias name was all I wanted on this page. I love the colours and they way its turned out. I will be using these papers again , they are great to work with.

Thanks for stopping by my blog.