Scrapping Crop

I went to my first all day crop last Saturday and managed to complete a couple of pages! One of them was for the kit which was provided. It was using Tim Holtz Distress Inks but it didn't quite work out for any of us! I have been able to make the inks bleed at home so I think maybe the card we were given was too absorbant, or even the inkpads could have been too dry. As I have a few of these myself in my small amount of stash (LOL) I will probably have another go at this technique sometime. The rest of it worked ok though! We had to cut around images to make them go over the border and I chose to do the same over the photo. The photograph I used was of Frank, sitting on the terrace at Hotel Sipan in Croatia.




The other layouts I did were of our trip to DLP last October.

This first layout used some paper that I was sent from US. It has ghosts on it, so I thought it was ideal for Halloween. I thought the grey was a good background for these photos and the orange pumpkin was a die cut that another lady in US sent me. One of the ladies at the crop gave me the orange ribbon/fibre which seemed to really go well with this layout.





At Coleman's Warehouse I found some other Halloween paper and also some embellishments - these are what I have used on the layouts showing the Halloween Parade.





The next crop is Thursday evening! Watch this space to see if I finish anything else!

Back at College

Term has now been started for one week. It is good to be back and see all the students again, but I do miss being at home and being able to do some scrapbooking, crafting, messing around etc..

The students are, as usual, lovely, but it has been very hectic trying to get them the options they want. I am in charge of all the AS students (year 12 to the folk in UK and aged about 17/18 to those of you not in UK!). The college I work at gives them a free choice of subjects and we construct an individual timetable for each student. When they arrive at college they have already chosen what subjects they want, but often these are not exactly what they thought they were! Sometimes their English skills are just not up to what they have chosen so they want to change to a different subject (We have students from 22 different countries!). Needless to say the first couple of weeks is a bit of a nightmare, but then things settle down and it all runs smoothly.

After these AS students are settled, then I have to start on the UCAS references. The Vice Principal writes all the references for the Oxbridge entries (those wanting to apply to Oxford or Cambridge) and all the medical applicants as these have to be completed within 4 weeks of us returning. There are usually about 25 of these and then the rest are divided mainly between myself and the lady in charge of A2 students (those one year older than mine!). We usually write about 35 of them each and it takes up most of our time between now and December 7th when college closes for Christmas.

Hopefully, this will still leave me time for some fun!

Disneyland Paris

We had a great time as usual! We decided to go into Paris for two evenings and eat there rather than in Disney, so that was good. The first evening we were there we ate at a Mexican restaurant near our hotel (in a small place called Torcy) and that was very pleasant. Our first meal in Paris was at Le Petit Bofinger (at Bastille) and I had exactly the same meal as I had last year on our anniversary. It was SO delicious. Calf's liver served in a raspberry sauce and Rum Baba for dessert. The dessert is huge and overflowing with rum! Lizzie and Frank both had snails for starters and then their main course was Duck served in a peach sauce. The following evening we went to a restaurant that specialised in mussels. This was also at Bastille! As I am allergic to fish I went for steak but Frank and Lizzie tucked into a bucket of Moules each. French food is wonderful!

At Disney we were able to get into the park early with our Annual Pass, so were able to ride all the Fantasyland rides before the park opened to the public. It was really lovely with hardly any people there. Needless to say at 10am when it opened properly it got much busier. We still didn't have to queue for very long. We have been so often now, we have it off to a fine art. The only time we did queue was in the Disney Studios, for the new ride Crush's Coaster. There is no fast pass so we had no choice but to join the queue if we wanted to go on it! 90 minutes we queued! It was a good ride and I would go on it again, but not until the queue has got to a reasonable length.

There is a small show based on High School Musical at the Studios Park and Lizzie managed to tape most of it on her camera. We knew there was a girl from Northampton in this show and since getting home we have discovered that it was a girl who used to dance with Katie and Lizzie. She went to Kilburn School of Dancing in Wellingborough. Apparently, before joining this show she has been several of the characters at DLP!

We had to come home on my birthday which was a shame, but it was an enjoyable trip.