Another 2 challenges

Crikey you should see the state of my craft room!  I keep trying to take pics but the light is so bad here today that you can't see anything.  As such, I must apologise for the state of the pics of the layouts today.  I tried all manner of contortions but I truly don't know enough about light and photography to account for days like these and light like we have at home.

Today's offerings are both mine although I did have a little assistance with the rosette flower (twitch).  For this layout, I was inspired by the colours in the challenge about Butterflies and Bingo Cards.  I was also inspired by a Sketch of the Week from a while back which used a photo that was almost half the page.  When I saw it, I dismissed me ever using it because I never have photos that big.  When Management came home with this photo from his Thruxton racing day, I knew immediately that I would use this sketch for it.  I used Papermania Capsule collection papers in greys and yellows and I have decided that I love this combination. Ordinarily I would include a close up so you could see the colours or an embellishment better but I couldn't get a pic without my head shadow in the shot! (edited to include shots taken on a sunnier day, including a close up!)

This next layout was for the "Grid it up" challenge.  I loved the sketches using the 9 circle embellishments from the Explore class so I decided to use one of them here.  I made the background for a previous layout but I couldn't make it work and then came across this photo that I had been meaning to scrap for ever.  There were a couple of photos of me and L or of Management and L but this was the first one of all 4 of us.  I had no idea of the horrors of what were to come although I already knew that it didn't feel the way I expected to feel a few hours after L was born.

Although I am still struggling, I can definitely feel a move forward.  The time we have spent together this week has been really great and we are probably closer at this point than we have ever been.  This is a huge deal for us :-)

We're having a TV day today as it is hammering with rain and we didn't have any thing planned that involved other people so we are just slobbing out in the warmth of the front room.  I can't believe I am saying that in the middle of August!  I have had to start using my daylight lamp again too.  On the plus side, I hope to start catching up with all the blogs I have been missing in the next few days.  So put the kettle on, I'll be visiting you soon.

Bye for now.

xx