Back from Retreat and full of inspiration!

Last weekend I was lucky enough to go to a retreat with my friends Karyn and Nicole. I had an AWESOME time and made so many new friends, met some amazingly talented people, scrapped till 3am, laughed until my belly hurt and arrived back home refreshed and revitalised and full of inspiration. 

AND, I get to do it all again soon at the Pages 2 Scrap retreat in October!

I wanted to share some of the projects I completed over the weekend. I had a goal of getting 20 layouts done between 7pm Friday and 11am Sunday - I didn't quite get there, but 14 and a canvas is pretty good I reckon!

I'm a bit light on the details of what products I actually used, usually I try and note it down for when I'm blogging but I was in the zone and there was no time for notes!

This is my beautiful canvas from the very talented Lisa Oxley's class. Lisa's class sample was quite different and featured a big heart made from tissue paper rosettes, but I liked the idea of using the tissue paper in my class kit as 'grass' and needed an excuse to use those luxe Prima satin flowers! This was really simple to make but the finished effect is so pretty, I think I'll be making a few of these for Christmas presents this year. 

This layout is of my husband Richard and my little girl Holly - the photo was taken when we were on a big family holiday last Christmas and it really captures their special relationship. I used some Amy Tangerine stickers and a rosette from D'Lish Scraps, and a Kaisercraft canvas tag. Simple but pretty! I really like this colour combo, I will definitely use hot pink and navy again.

This one is of me on my first day at school - again a simple layout using a sketch I had prepared from another layout I saw online a while back. I wanted to get the most of our the limited time I had at retreat so I  put all the photos I wanted to scrap with matching papers to save time and kickstart my layouts. This one came together in about 20 minutes :) The birdie was from a craft show and the brads are Basic Grey.

This is another one from a sketch I had prepared earlier - using Crate Paper Random as the background (Love the tiny chevron print) and some scraps to create a 'pie'. The camera and clouds are Amy Tangerine stickers. Note my new favourite technique - it's called 'I don't have any runny black ink so I'll just use pen'. My little 'ink splats' are done with a Sharpie pen... same result, less mess!

Here is Holly enjoying her first babycino at the Coffee Club; she's even wearing a black turtleneck - what a hipster! This one is based on a layout from the Paper Bakery Kit Club.

Well that will do it till next time, I'll share the rest of my projects over the coming week. I'm off to fix myself a hot chocolate and work on my October DT projects for Pages 2 Scrap - seeya!