A Hello from me!

Hi everyone, Rebecca here with my very first blog (ever!). I’m new to the team so thought I would take the opportunity to introduce myself and share with you some of my favourite layouts. 

I live in Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire with my husband, our 2 year old son and 3 cats. I’ve been a Police Officer with the Metropolitan Police since 2010 - starting off as a Special Constable and then I joined full time in 2012. 

I gave birth to our son in 2017 and decided to take a career break so that I could stay at home and raise our son. It was having Riley that sparked my interest in scrapbooking. I remember as a child my parents had stacks of photo albums and I used to love flicking through them. These days, we take hundreds of digital photos and they sit on a computer where nobody can see them. I wanted Riley to have something physical to look through to remember family time spent together, amazing days out and just those fun moments at home. I had a friend who used to do scrapbooking, and I’ve always been quite creative so it seemed perfect for me. 

About 18 months ago I started joining Facebook groups and searching for ideas on Pinterest and YouTube and before I knew it I had a load of supplies and I was off! My layouts started off very basic but as I’ve learnt more techniques and built my stash I find my layouts have become very mixed-media focused and these days I struggle to complete a layout without some form of mixed media background on it! 

I’m far from expert and I learn something new with every process video I watch on YouTube and that’s what makes this hobby so interesting and exciting for me - I’m always learning and there’s no right or wrong way to do it! 

To give you an idea of my ‘style’ so you can see what kind of layouts to expect from me, I’ve selected a few of my more recent and favourite layouts to share with you. 

Buckets of Fun: This was the first layout I did where I told myself to just throw things at it and see what happens! I’m not the best at embellishing my layouts as I find a lot of things too ‘girly’ for my little boy, but I just went with it on this one and loved the result. It gave me the confidence to embellish a bit more.

Loving Life: I wanted to improve on layering because it’s not something I do often (or well!) so this layout involved lots of layering. It didn’t feel complete though and so I had to add some paint splatters to finish it off. 

Thank my Lucky Stars For You: I really enjoyed creating this layout. I wanted a Galaxy background so got lots of inks and paints out and just let loose! I’ve used distress ink pads and watercolour pens to create the background and then added some paint splatters and a hand-drawn cut file.

Remember the Purple Flowers & Oh Snap: I’ve included these layouts together as they were created in a similar way using distress ink pads, watercolour pens and cosmic shimmer paints, along with some texture paste.

Big Bubbles:And finally one of my most recent layouts. The background was created using a stencil and texture paste, Brushos and a LOT of water! It was very messy but great fun to make. I love how vivid the colours are on this layout and I’d forgotten how much fun Brushos are to work with so will have to use them again soon! 

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my first blog. I’ll be back later in the week with my first layout using the Authentique Glamour collection.

Take care

Rebecca xx