Scrapbook Success

This will be my last post for a few days, as we are travelling up to Worksop tomorrow to prepare for Daughter 2's wedding on Saturday. I am so excited.
The back lady has been today and manipulated Barnaby. He definitely likes all the pulling and twisting. She had another go at his poll. She said he has probably had a permanent headache for the last six months, poor lad. Anything that improves his quality of life and way of going is good, as far as I'm concerned. I'm thrilled that I'll be able to ride him again by Sunday, I can hardly wait.
But while we're on the subject of weddings, I just wanted to show you the cross stitch I made as a present for the bride and groom.

I am extremely pleased with it, considering how awful the dark green thread was to use. I will always buy my own threads from now on and not use ones that come with a kit. I am pleased that I managed to meet my deadline, too, as I'm still very much a beginner, and it's hard to tell how long a bigger project like this will take.
While I'm on the subject of wedding preparations, this is the card I've made for the happy couple.

I really enjoyed making this and hope they like it. I searched around for an appropriate verse, and was very pleased with what I found. Bear in mind that I've also made their place cards, and you can see I've been pretty busy.
Finally, I just want to show you my first ever attempt at scrapbooking. When I first looked at scrapbooking, I decided it was too complicated and to get to grips with card making instead. Also because our cottage is tiny, and I feel our photos are better off on the computer, where they don't take up any space! But we've ended up with some fabulous photos of Barnaby this year and I'd really like to show them off, so as my confidence has grown with the card making I've been drawn back to scrapbooking, but now with much more of an idea of what I want to do.
So my scrapbooking challenge is that I have to do a page for each month of this year, and it must:
contain at least one photo of Barnaby
the photo must have been taken during the month in question
have a tree of some sort on each page
have either decoupage or a punched image on each page

You will understand about the trees when you see what I've made.



I've decided I'm not prepared to fork out seventeen pounds for a proper scrapbook, and have bought the normal old-fashioned sort. (If it's good enough for Paddington Bear, it's good enough for me!) I've bought the most beautiful papers from My Mind's Eye called 'Wild Asparagus' which are so stunning you can't really fail with them, but to be honest, once I realised what I was trying to achieve, the main paper on this first attempt is by Papermania (I think) which I found in my Christmas stash. It seems funny to think of all that snow now it's red hot and I'm sitting here watching Wimbledon.

The other little, itsy bitsy, teensy weensy challenge, is that for the whole of July, I am not allowed to buy a single thing related to crafting - no cards, no glue, no paper, no embellishments. I am only allowed to use things I already have in my stash. That should be interesting, especially as I have to make a card for the Flower Fairy by August 1st.
Have a great weekend everyone (and pray for sunshine on Saturday!)
Mrs O.