CSI # 30 "The Wild Stampede" and photos from a blessed day

I scheduled this post to go live Tuesday, 31 July. Hopefully everything has worked as it should.

Summer is still in full bloom over here, although one can feel the first inklings of coolness in the air. Thought I'd start off with some photos from a wonderful day that hubbs and I spent last week at Rosendal - translates into Rose Valley - on the Djurgården island here in Stockholm.

Rosendal is both the name of the Royal pink summer pleasure palace built in the 1820's, and also of the gardens/restaurant/café. Some of you might remember that I studied art history at the university and worked as guide in the Royal Palaces before I took up the profession I have now. Each summer for many years, I worked as guide both here at Rosendal and in the other Royal Palaces of Stockholm.
 
 And this is the Royal Palace itself, located on the Old Town island. Its foundations are from the 13th century and it actually has one room more than Buckingham Palace in London - a huge building filled with the most wonderful pieces of art imaginable.

Water, water, everywhere you look you see water in Stockholm. The white steamboats going out into the archipelago are anchored just across the Royal Palace, below Grand Hôtel.

And now over to Rosendal;
 

 
Nooks and crannies in the most unexpected places, benches and hide-outs, flower beds, sculptures ...
 
Everything that grows in the green houses, is for sale and they use everything from the vegetable garden in the dishes that are served in the restaurant/café. Healthy and organic of course.
 
Beautiful picnic spots in the lush fruit orchard. It is a sight for sore eyes in May when all the trees are abloom.
 

 
Oh, no - MORE photos?!

Finally! time for the CSI case file #30 that was released some days ago. First the prompts;

And Michele's lovely printable coordinates;

It is the last week of Echo Park's sponsorship month, so I've created a page using their pretty collection called "Sweet Day". Here it is - "The Wild Stampede";



The evidence that I have used are childlike things, different patterns and fabric.

My testimony goes back to my childhood summers that I spent in rural northern Finland, at my auntie and uncle's farm. Of course they had cows and they had to be walked to their paddock every morning and back for milking every evening. This task befell on my cousin Auli and I, well on Auli to be honest. I was a city girl, totally petrified by the big creatures. My cousin could of course not help staging something involving the cows only to see me run and it always ended with me stepping in cow dung with my city-bought white summer sandals. She giggled hysterically and I cried.

The title of course refers to these daily walks with the peaceful herd of cows who knew the drill. They must have thought I was really weird as they always eyed me up before giving off a couple of languid mooh's before they continued to do what cows do - graze.

Today all I can remember is how all those summers seem to be filled with eternal summer, dips in their pond, hot dogs grilled over the open fire in their yard, taking sauna baths and drinking ice cold orange fizz afterwards, eating as many cinnamon rolls I could muster on auntie's baking day and having tummy aches afterwards. I couldn't have had better childhood summers!

 

 

 

 
The itty bitty doilies are from Leeann Pearce's Etsy shop. 
 
The white felties with button centres come from Precocious Paper's Etsy shop.
 

 

And here we are, at the end of this post. Thanks for popping by!

I'll be back on Friday with 2 pages for TCR, adding on more layers and details to my pages again :))

Take care, have a really great rest of the week!

Cheers! xoxo Eila

Lazy days are coming to an end and TCR # 121

Feels like only yester week that I jubilantly exclaimed summer hols were here. Well, now they are there and have reached their last few days before work starts again on Monday. Will have gentle easing into the routines as my boss is away for 3 days and wants me to work from our HQ in town, i.e. 15 minutes by buss from where we live instead of the 1-hour-commuting by train to our regular offices. Thanks very much!

It's Friday and Stockholm has once again woken up to a glorious summers day. Hubbs and I had brekkie out on our balcony, could hear our city waking up and then the garbage truck spoiled everything with its roar and emptying of the re-cycling container with glass. Well, that's life in the city. Me thinks my darling and I will spend the day out on the Djurgården island, it is the equivalence of Hyde Park in London, the green lush lungs of our city.

First a couple of photos showing you why Stockholm was awarded with the European Green Capital Award; we can actually fish just outside the Royal Palace and eat the catch, the water is also so clean that we can swim in the town centre. Not bad huh!



 

Friday also means release time over at TCR, we've come to palette # 121 and the last week of The ScrapCake's sponsor month. Once again the DT has been provided with delish papers to play with. Everything on my page is from their newest collection called Sweet Childhood. Absolutely divine colours and really such sweet sweet fussy-cuttable details!

So here's my page; "Sunshine Girl". I have kind of followed Lydell's sketch but my photos are square and the round shapes have been moved down the page.
 
You have seen me scrap this cutie pie before, Miss M.
 
Can you believe it, I have used only 3 (!) itty bitty Prima blooms on my page!
 

 
The additional 4th colour of choice that I have used, is mint.

 

 
I also used a bitty stamp with cross stitching from Marianne Design.
 

 

 
I'm bidding you a Happy Weekend with a sneak of the next CSI case file that will be released this evening US eastern time/midnightish European time/Saturday morning Australian time.



It's the last week of Echo Park's sponsorship month so I am going to share a page based on one of their collections.

Happy Friday and have a splendido weekend! Mwah to ya all beautiful ladies!

xoxox Eila

2 pages for CSI # 29 "Margaret" and "Summerfun"

Hello, me again!

Monday was a grey and overcast day, perfect laundry day and pottering around at home doing a little of this and even less of that. Had to log on to my office email and swoosh it took me like a nano second to be in work mode again. Not good at all for the old ticker! Good thing I only had to fix a couple of minor things before I could close the lid of my lap top again.

As I mentioned in my previous post, CSI case file nbr 29 was released just before last weekend. I'll be quick about it, here is first the case file itself;

and the delish printable coordinates to match that Michele Singh has created for us;

The testimony for my first page is about labels, how some people put labels on me without even knowing me or understanding that the professional me in the office has a role to carry out because I have the boss I have.

If only some people would invest 2 minutes in actually looking me into my eyes and saying something nice like a "hello, what lovely weather we have" they would be surprised to see that I can smile and that my eyes crinkle up when I do that. They would see them filling with tears hearing about a sick pet or poorly parents, they would feel that my heart breaks to hear about how their co-worker was laid off and my boss was the executioner. Still, I AM NOT MY BOSS nor do I make the decisions in our company. I am human! I have feelings! and no I am not a replica of the iron lady Margaret Thatcher (yes, I can hear you gossiping in the kitchen) -  I am just me!

OK enough of the kitchen gossip, here's my page "Some Call Me Margaret Thatcher";


The papers are a mix of Echo Park and Norwegian Tilda. As you all know, I love flowers in any shape or form. I am the ultimate old-fashioned romantic and I adore pretty things. No I don't wear the florals myself, nor do my clothes have frills or flounces, I'm far too practical for that. But I do splash out on my pages!

 
This photo was taken last summer, it photographed rather weird on my LO making my face pink as a lobster. Never mind. I've tucked in a square of Swedish Maja Design's paper from their Vintage Summer Basics collection in the layers of matting.

 
The words "Margaret" and "Thatcher" were pasted down with matte gel. The gel is invisible IRL and the stickers stay put absolutely rock solid. Hate it when stickers come undone because the glue isn't strong enough at the back of them. That itty bitty thread spool is part of a gift from beautiful Lean de Reuter! Mwah!

 
Love this big calico bloom from Precocious Paper's Etsy shop where you can also find the cute felt and button circle. The cream doily is from Leeann Pearce's Etsy shop.


Got the idea of layering seed bags on chippy chicken wire from a local store where they had pegged some on real chicken wire. I made the seed bags from kraft paper and fussy cut details from a Tilda paper.

My evidence this week are the weathered look of the chipboard, sanding off paint from the papers and placing the sead bags, butterflies, flowers, embellishments and the matting at different angles.

 
The watering can is also from Tilda.

 
Plenty of bulky chunky layers in there.

 
Always after a longish period when I have created bulky and multi-layered pages, I feel the need to make flatter pages. However, I have come to terms with the fact that I will never be a truly crisp and clean scrapper nor master the skill of white space. Clean for me is frightfully busy for someone else.

As Echo Park is the July sponsor of CSI, I also made a second page using their papers. Here's "Summerfun in Turkey";

 
The design of my page was inspired by elements from both C'est Magnifiques July sketch, as well as a couple of sketches by Susan Stringfellow, one of which is nbr 91. Thanks for giving my mojo that much needed inspiration!

The testimony for this page is the top 10 list of Miss M's summer delights. It is very much alike many other children's: icecream, swimming and strawberries. Could easily be 10 of each and make a top 30 list! On that list is also her pretty swimsuit, they start young our next generation of fashionistas tee hee :))


The little doll in the photo is Miss M, little sister of Miss T, both of whom I have scrapped many times before. It was taken last summer on their summer hols in Turkey.


Another fabric bloom and felt'n button centre from Precocious Paper's Etsy shop. The dimensional sticker "girly girl" and accordion bloom are both from Crate Paper.


Raided my stash and found this long-forgotten pearl swirl from MME.


This butterfly is really ancient, goes years back. Still have a couple of packs left of them, somehow they are a little bit too big to fit in on my pages.

 
My evidence for this page are the rolled papers and the striped bands around the rolls.

 

And that's it!

Thank you ever so much for taking the time to look at my pages! Am so happy you wanted to pop in for a visit!

Toodelipip! xoxo Eila

Just some summer photos

Our last week of summer hols is here and soon I will resume my twice-weekly blog posts when work starts next week. No more barrage from Stockholm! I hope you will bear with my ramblings till then.

Today I will not be sharing a layout with you, but just give you some photos of summer Sweden to browse. You might remember that DH and I took a spin out to a baroque palace on Friday, and today we drove out on the countryside about 1,5 hr from Stockholm.



First a photo from picturesque and quaint city of Strängnäs. Cute little cobble-stoned streets in the old parts and the very typical, very old red lumber houses
.
Beautiful Mälsåker palace by lake Mälaren was built in the 1600's but was seriously damaged in a fire in 1945. Restorations have taken years and are still not finished. Just love the quality of the craftmanship, almost 400 years old and still standing strong.
Ceilings were painted on linen and nailed to the wood panelling of the inner ceiling.
 
Did you know that tiled stoves is a Swedish invetion from the 1700's? beautiful example in Delft blue and white
.
My fave furniture style from the 1790's
.
Rococo mirror in the countesses bedroom, gorgeous carving and guilding.
 
Had to ligthen up this photo as it was rather dark, looks a bit spooky but you get the lovely proportions of those archways and pillars.
 
After more than an hour of culture, it is definitely time for some ..... fika!
 
Cinnamon rolls, or as we call them in Swedish; "kanelbullar" and apple juice. I had a big cup of coffee of course.
 
Driving back from the palace, we passed typical "blue berry land", i.e. pine forest where blue berries thrive. For those of you who have only seen blue berries big as small grapes growing on miniature trees and have picked them standing up; this is the genuine thing and what blueberries look like in the wild.
 
We picked enough to have on our breakfast yoghurt the day after. Alas, as blueberry picking was not part of our original plans, we had to take the plastic bag that had contained our lunch sandwiches to pick them in.
Show these little yellow beauties to a Swede and he/she will go OOOOH!! it's the gold of the forest, aka wild chanterelle. Even Jamie Oliver thinks they are best eaten simply fried in butter with a hint of diced onions or perhaps with a dash of double cream for a sauté.
 
Today's trip took us to Strömsholm palace, which this is NOT. This red house is very typical for the 17th century rural building style for houses belonging to the royal household. In France that roof would be called mansard style, here it's a plainer version of it.
 
Very charming sight for city peeps like hubbs and I ;))
 
TOLD you, after cultural explorations always follows .... fika!
And with this photo of hubbs thoroughly enjoying his butter sultana biscuit and raspberry/blueberry pie, I say bye for now! thanks for your patience and for joining me on a re-visit of our delightful little outings.

In my next post I will share 2 DT layouts for CSI case file # 28. Here's a peek of the release that went out last Friday.

Cheers! xoxo Eila