A couple of Challenges...

Wow! What a beautiful day it's been. I hope people have been out enjoying the sunshine - I have! We've had friends over for a BBQ today so it's been a busy (and hot!) day hence why my blog post is sooooo late today!

I have a couple of challenges to share today. The first one is this week's challenge over on UK Scrappers and the criteria was:

1. Scrap your wild side
2. Use flourishes or stars
3. Include an affirmation or positive statement on your layout

I don't really have a wild side. I do have a couple of tattoos that appeared when I dared to be a little wild at about 19 but I think that was the last time I was wild. I can't really count any of our holidays as wild as even though we've been on safari in Kenya, we were always with a guide and never did anything really wild. We don't really take risks and live fairly quiet lives so what could I scrap about?

Well, 15 months ago I had a baby and decided to use my maternity leave to the full  - I set up my own craft business. I invested quite a bit of money in stock which was quite risky and I jacked my fancy job as a solicitor in...I'd say that's fairly wild. It's certainly as wild as I get! This layout features photos from my first exhibition:

I managed a couple of flourishes on my layout - one to the left of the title and one up in the top right corner with a few other pretty bits!

I was struggling with the affirmation part so searched online for something suitable and I came up with my title 'The Perfect Job for Me' which is apparently an affirmation. Towards the end of my journalling I have also written 'onwards and upwards!' which I would say is a definite positive statement so I definitely managed that part of the challenge! The layout was based on a sketch by Shimelle.

Onto the second challenge I've done this week. Again a UK Scrappers one but this time the monthly House challenge rather than one of the weekly ones. I had to use this colour scheme:

I wanted to go for a mainly white/grey background as they were the predominant colours in the inspiration photo even though that wasn't strictly necessary, but figured that was a good starting point for a wedding layout and as I'm working on my wedding album at the moment that seemed like a good idea.

I love this type of layout - those strips across the centre of the page act as a sort of shelf for the photo to sit on and stretches the layout out across the page without using loads of paper or embellishments leading to a simple but elegant layout.

and how gorgeous is that pleated ribbon?! It's by Stampin' Up and I have it in all four colours because it is THAT lush!

That's for looking!