Layouts to make me happy :-)

I promised to share a couple of layouts today.  The first one is the one I was waiting for the coins for, that I started at the crop where I was poorly and couldn't concentrate.  I'm actually quite pleased with how it came out in the end aside from one small bit, but we'll ignore that :-)

The dragonflies are coloured with Faded Denim Distress ink and then painted with clear Crackle Glaze.

I couldn't seem to get a clear enough shot of the detail of the coins but they are all different and all very pretty, some with oriental writing and some with dragons on.

The next one is another one I started at the crop (its less than a week to the next one so I will have to get a wriggle on with creating my page kits!)  It's in celebration of our night away at a local but posh hotel.  It was our first night with someone else looking after both children and it was less than 24 hours away from them but so magical.  I'm happy with some of the elements and some of the placement and the colours but I'm not happy with the whole thing overall and I dont know why.  I'd be really grateful for any feedback on where I might have gone wrong as I really want to improve and learn.  I wonder if it is just too crowded or has too many elements on the page?

 I wanted to include lots of photos so I made a teeny mini book to go on the page which folds out to reveal several shots of the room.

I also wanted to include the brochure to hold all the details so that in years to come we can see how much it was and read all the information they sent us.

I used papers and brads from the Papermania Hanoverian collection to match the era of the hotel and I used vellum punched with a lacy border to link the pages.

I did patchwork squares on both pages to aid the flow too and this was my first time of stitching on a layout!  It's far from perfect but I don't mind that too much.  I did find that stitching onto the backing cardstock is slightly tricky and I should have planned ahead so I didn't have to do that.  Partly it is difficult to feed through the machine as it doesn't gather up like material so I had to roll it slightly.  The other problem is that the needle effectively makes perforations and so the card becomes liable to detach itself when you insert a brad or something... (yes I did do this and it is now taped onto the back to keep it secure!)

The heart button there has several points on the back so they are not easy to use but I thought it was just right for this layout.

Now I need to make breakfast for my wonderful husband for his birthday but I hope to start planning my kits for next week sometime today.  Hopefully that means I will have lots to share next week.

Bye for now xx