Pol Prince

Hey guys! Today I'm up on the Paper Issues blog with a layout for the Product Spotlight. This week we're featuring Shimelle's Go Now Go collection.

I didn't have any paper left from this collection but I did find a packet of ephemera tucked away in a drawer. This cut file from the Silhouette Store was perfect both for the ephemera and my photos of my biggest dude getting his GCSE results last summer. A whole new world was opening out in front of him!

I used Dear Lizzy Saturday papers to back the cut file and create a strip at the top of the page. I then stuck on ephemera to my hearts content! My pages are usually quite minimal so it was fun to make this busy layout.

Hi everyone, today I'm up on the Paper Issues blog with a brand new layout and a little introduction about me.

I absolutely love this free Paper Issues cut file I've used, it goes perfectly with 1canoe2's beautiful Hazelwood collection. 

The cut file was my starting point for this page, and I added fussy cut flowers and butterflies to it. The photo of my cheeky little guy was balanced out by placing the title opposite. Jacob really is such a cute, cheeky little monkey - with his gorgeous red hair that always sticks up at the back, his cute freckles, and his infectious gappy grin, he never fails to make me smile!

Hi everyone! Hope you're all having an awesome weekend! Today is Scraplift Sunday over at the Paper Issues Friends and Fans Facebook page.

Once a month we're doing something a bit different and we'll be scraplifting a Facebook page members layout. Today we're lifting Lisa Schill Moen.

Here's Lisa's original layout...

Hi lovely scrappy friends! 

Well, it's day 2 of my blog and I'm still as excited as a kid at Christmas! I'm all on my own with it now, the 17 year old has deserted me after cheekily taking the mickey out of my blog 'skills' when he came home from college last night. He and his friends had obviously been snickering at his mum blogging about possibly the most boring topic on earth to teenage boys. He won't be laughing quite so loudly when I post the photos of him as a 2 year old wearing nothing but a builders tool belt and a tiara...

The 14 year old has demanded I take her clothes shopping tomorrow - I still haven't decided if this will be fun, or hell on earth. 

And stepson who is arriving tonight for the weekend has a sick bug. Actually, suddenly that clothes shopping doesn't seem quite so bad.

I'm pretty sure this is why I enjoy hand sewing on my layouts so much - it's the only thing I can get on with whilst refereeing two 7 year olds who are fighting over whose turn it is to play with the Happy Meal Mario toy, or who owns the tiniest Lego Star Wars ship in the box. Suddenly everything becomes 'My. Most. Precious. Toy.' and cannot possibly be shared.

Those cute, sweet photos on my layouts? LIES. They are all lies. They've been bribed with Haribo or iPad time to sit sweetly or hug each other and smile. Those beautiful grinning teenagers? As soon as the camera has clicked they're demanding money or chocolate or lifts to their friends. Do not be fooled, scrappy friends! 

And with that little myth well and truly blown out of the water I'm going to leave you with a layout of sweetly smiling children, taken at the tram station in Altrincham, before they tried to hurl each other into the path of an oncoming tram, obviously preferring sudden death to being taken to the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry.

Hi everyone! I thought it was about time I made myself one of these blog thingies. You will probably have to bear with me and be nice to me while I figure it all out. My 17 year old son was helping me but even he has gone off to college in despair, I'm sure I heard him rudely muttering something about 'old dogs and new tricks'. Funny, but his computer skills don't seem to enable him to use the washing machine or dishwasher. Last week I discovered he had been putting laundry pouches in the dishwasher for the last 6 months.

So, to start, a bit about me. I'm Pol (short for Polly), I'm 38 years old and mum to 3 great kids aged 17, 14 and 7. Even my 7 year old is more technologically advanced than me and regularly has to show me how to use the Sky box, and if the 17 year old calls me 'bro' or 'fam' one more time, I may well lose the plot.

I live with my kids and poor long suffering boyfriend in the lush green (very wet) county of Cheshire in England. He has a son the same age as my youngest, and our house is noisy and chaotic but a very happy home. I'm a part-time childminder, and I've been scrap booking since my youngest son was a baby. I've been trying to think how to describe how much I love scrap booking, but put quite simply, it is my sanity in this crazy household of teenage hormones and loud dinosaur noises! I'm a creative soul and when I can't create I get grumpy and sad. I've tried my hand at all sorts of crafts over the years - I once accidentally started a mini business hand sewing felt Christmas decorations, which is hilarious considering I still get my mum to sew missing buttons back on the kids school shirts. I also enjoy paper cutting and have made some lovely presents for family and friends. I dearly love reading, and books were my first love, but at the heart of it all, at the heart of me, is scrap booking.

I have recently joined the Paper Issues Design Team and it's amazing for me being able to do something I love so much and share it with other like minded people.

So, enough about me for now. I really hope you'll visit often and even subscribe, and get to know me a little better over the coming weeks and months. I'm going to leave you with the first layout I did for the Paper Issues design team, using 1canoe2's beautiful Hazelwood collection.

Thank you for joining me on this exciting new adventure!