Julie's Scrapping Fun

The beginning of a New Year

2011-12-30T19:53:00.004-05:00

I've never been one to make a big deal about New Year's. I'm not a big partier, and I don't drink, so most big New Year's Eve parties just don't suit me. Typically, we do something quiet like a nice dinner at home, and a movie night or have friends over for a fun night with the kids and a nice dinner for the parents.

I'm also not a huge fan of making sweeping changes at the start of a New Year. For the most part, I think that changes need to come about when you are ready for them, and not when there's the pressure of a date on a calendar. Having said that, I have sometimes made some resolutions and stuck to them (and other times, I've made resolutions and they barely survived the first few days).

This year, I'm trying something a bit new.

2011 has been a rough one for us in many different ways - health concerns, work stress, money pressures, etc. It's also been a great year as I've made some wonderful new friends and we feel more settled into the neighbourhood and Ottawa in general.

One thing that has been on the back burner a lot is my scrapbooking. I just haven't had the energy or focus to work on a lot of things, other than a few layouts I've done from time to time. I wanted to change that this year (along with some other things), so I made the decision to start the New Year working on two different projects - both scrapbook related, but also related to health and the changes I want to make in my life.

The first one is pretty straightforward. I signed up for a year-long course through Big Picture Classes. It is a class called Move More, Eat Well.

Here's some info on the course:

In Move More, Eat Well you’ll spend the year with Cathy, checking in once monthly where you’ll get a message from her. It could be a message of inspiration; it could be a message full of laments over muffin tops; it could be a simple reflection on how one month can make all the difference in the world. Whatever the case, she’ll share her personal ebb and flow with you each month, as you go through the process with Cathy, who hopes to give you a little burst of inspiration for your journey.

THE PROJECT

You will be creating an 8 1/2" x 11” album using divided page protectors to document the journey. Fully layered digital templates provided for digital scrapbookers. Cathy has found incredible power in writing about this process of trying to make changes in her own life. She will be giving you questions to consider, assignments for photos to take, and providing you with printable (and customizable) elements which you will use to build the album.

Cathy will encourage you to write every month and will be sharing her own album pages with you. We will also build a community of women (and possibly a few men) supporting one another, sharing the highs, lows and in-betweens of making real and lasting changes.

I liked that this was a long-term course that would allow me to combine my love of writing with making some changes in my health, nutrition and fitness. It's not an overnight change - but one that I hope to build on throughout the year.

The other project I'm starting on January 1 is to work on something called Project Life that was created by Becky Higgins. Here is some info on this system:

Project Life is a back-to-basics approach to memory-keeping. This simple format requires no skill - only your pictures and a pen. No one's life is perfect but everyone has a story and every family has a collection of memories. Putting pictures + stories together in Project Life makes us more aware of our blessings and encourages us to cultivate a good life.

The Project Life kit is a system that you can work with in your own way. There are hard-copy versions (which is what I will be working with) that involves a binder, divided page protectors, coordinated inserts and journalling cards, etc. It's all designed so that you can easily create a way to capture memories that are important to you. While you can work with the kit any way that suits your own style and needs, the way that I want to work with it is what it was originally designed for - capturing one photo a day for an entire day.

It's a big commitment. It doesn't sound like much, but I've never been one to take photos on a regular basis. I want to change that - and that's part of what draws me to Project Life. The goal is not to just record the big events like trips and vacations, holidays, birthdays, etc. but to actually capture the minutia of your life - the ups and downs, the boring stuff as well as the exciting stuff.

My hope is that it will motivate me to take more pictures, and scrapbook more, and also get out more and do more things to create lasting memories for me, Alex and Chris.

I also hope to blog more about how things are going on both projects and be more active on both this blog and our family blog.

So... the New Year is almost here - and I'm ready for it and excited about these new projects!

Weekend Scrapping Fun

2010-11-09T18:19:00.000-05:00

Wow - I can't believe how long it's been since I posted anything on this blog. I've really not been doing much scrapbooking at all over the summer, but I'm starting to get into things again.

I was lucky enough to get invited for a weekend of scrapping by Tania. We have a group of women who get together once a month to scrapbook in Ottawa's east end, and once a year, they go to Cornwall to scrapbook for the entire weekend. I was so happy to be included in this weekend, and it was a great experience. The women were all fantastic, everyone was so much fun and I just loved seeing what everyone was working on - they did some incredible layouts and cards and other crafty items.

Here's the layouts I got done over the weekend - you can click on the photo for a bigger version if you want.

Finding a Scrapping Space

2010-07-18T09:11:00.000-04:00

Wow... I haven't posted here in so long. I really haven't done much scrapping lately but I find I'm really missing it. Part of the reason I haven't scrapped as much as I'd like is I don't have a dedicated space for it. Our house has a bit of a strange layout and there's a room at the back of the house with a fireplace and nice big windows, but it's a bit hard to use it as any type of useful space as it's narrow and long. Right now, we have a love seat in there, but I find it's really only used once in a while and Alex sometimes plays in there.

Right now my scrapping stuff is up in the loft area but without a table set up to work on, I find I'm not ever getting any projects done. We decided to repurpose the back room so I can have a table there as well as my scrapping stuff - we'll see if it works out.

Ideally, we'll finish our basement at some point in the next year, and that might give me a scrapping space as well as a big play area for Alex. For now, we'll see how the new plans work out and if Alex is happy having the upstairs loft for his big play area.

Wow - I Won a Free Class!

2010-04-06T17:13:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, Jessica (http://www.jessicasprague.com/) had a little contest for a free class. She'd written a post about Birthday Photo Books - all you had to do was post a comment and they picked a random name (or names?) from the list of people who commented to win a free class.

Well I won one of the prizes (I can't remember how many people they were picking). It is a free class called "Up and Running" and I'm looking forward to completing this class - it's self-paced, so I can do it at my leisure. A lot of what's in the class is stuff I'm already capable of doing, but there's still lots for me to learn so it'll be exciting to work through the projects in the class. I won't start it until I finish Part 2 of the Type+Writer class I've been doing for the past two weeks, but once I do some things, I'll be sure to post them here.

Hey Little Girl

2010-04-05T22:28:00.020-04:00

Here's the latest layout I completed for the Type+Writer class I'm taking at the Jessica Sprague website.

Normally I don't find journalling difficult at all - I might not always love what I write, but it usually comes pretty easily to me. This layout was much harder. Not only did I find it hard to write about myself, but I found that the whole idea of writing to your younger self wasn't comfortable to me. I'm not sure if I found it a bit cliché or if it was just hard to write things knowing what it was like growing up. If I was doing the same type of thing to my own son, or another child, the journalling would have been very easy - but I found it awkward to write something really sweet and fun and positive when I know that growing up can suck at times... hopefully the journalling doesn't come across as totally negative though. I took a few liberties here and there, and overall I'm okay with what I wrote.

Aside from the actual writing, the actual layout techniques were neat to learn. I wish we learned a bit more of the 'meat' of what we were doing somethings, but I'm sure I can flesh out the techniques a bit to be able to apply them to other layouts.

Maybe I'm not typical in that regard. If the lesson calls for me to change a layer style, I love learning how to do that - but I also want to know exactly what that does and what other ways we could use that same technique in other layouts or with other photos.

Now to try to get some of the other layouts completed as Part 2 of this class began yesterday - YIKES!

Moments

2010-03-28T20:21:00.002-04:00

The latest assignment in my online Type + Writer class was supposed to be focused on capturing the little moments in a typical day. Unfortunately I wasn't able to do that, but I still wanted to learn the techniques used in the layout, so I modified the assignment a bit.

One cool thing that we did for this layout was to incorporate a "word cloud" using either the content from our free writing assignment (a snapshot of that day) or by using your own blog (assuming you have one). The site that we used to create this "word cloud" is called "WORDLE" and it's a very cool site. I just typed in the link to my family blog (not this scrapping one) and it captures the most common words and creates a 'word cloud' from them. You can modify the colours used, and the layout. I then did a screen capture and brought it into the layout and put it on its own layer so it was above the background paper. By playing around with some of the settings, I learned to create a muted background image that incorporates the actual words from my blog.

When I noticed that words like "Chris", "Alex", "Snowman", "Maple Syrup", etc. were prominent in the word cloud, I decided to use photos to link to that text and journalled something to tie it together.

It wasn't exactly what the homework called for, but I'm happy with the results.

20 Little Things

2010-03-25T23:21:00.002-04:00

Okay - this next project for the online class was a little bit more difficult to complete. The writing we did yesterday was a bit more difficult as we were supposed to write about ourselves. It would be interesting to do that same exercise again in a few weeks when I'm hopefully feeling better. I've been struggling a lot with some pretty intense pain for the last two weeks (I had a few days of feeling good - but the rest of the time it has sucked). One thing we do is a 15-20 minute free write - just pick a topic and write about it without worrying about organizing our thoughts or grammar, etc. Normally this wouldn't be hard - but to have to write about myself when I know and admit that I'm in a pretty dark, hopeless mood surely had an impact on what I wrote.

The other assignment was easier to write down as you just had to complete each of the following sentences:
•I am proud of my ability to…
•I am amazed by…
•I am blessed with…
•I am a sucker for…
•I am freaked out by…
•I am calmed by…
•I am always up for…
•I am ready to…
•I am excited by…
•I am baffled by…
•I am fascinated by…
•I am listening to…
•I am intrigued by…
•I am challenged by…
•I am extremely fond of…
•I am challenged by…
•I am wild about…
•I am tickled by…
•I am humbled by…
•I am honored by…
•I am amused by…

I then took four subjects from the above list and expanded on them so I had a list of five things for each = 20 small things.

The techniques used were cool to learn. Things like creating and saving a brush (.abr) file for use on other projects, creating circular text, creating art word layouts for things like titles and quotes.

Here's my take on the page. Once again, I used some papers from another kit I had (Echoes of Asia) from the Jessica Sprague website.

The Final Tally

2010-03-23T23:25:00.000-04:00

Well I've started the class. It's been a bit rough keeping up as I haven't been feeling well the past little while, but so far, I'm working pretty steadily on the different projects.

It's neat format. Each day, participants get an e-mail with basic info on what needs to be done/learned/practiced that day and that links to the class page, where more information is posted.

The classes run in two-day cycles. The first day relates to writing - with simple exercises to get us writing about different things, or using different approaches as a starting point. The content we work on this day will relate to the layout we complete on Day 2.

On Day 2, we get a template to work with, and quite a few video instructions showing some very cool techniques or tricks for Photoshop Elements or the full-size versions of those programs. We can pick our own photos, and use the papers provided in the class kit, or we can use our own papers from our own digital stashes.

It's been fun chatting online with some of the other people taking the class (people from all over the world), and seeing the work that people have been doing.

Here's my own take on the first page's layouts. You can click the image to see a larger version.

Typography + Writing Class

2010-03-22T11:12:00.004-04:00

Today is the start of a two-week class I'm taking on Jessica Sprague's website (www.jessicasprague.com) that relates to typography and writing. While I'm relatively comfortable with writing, I do feel that I need to step out of my comfort zone as I feel that a lot of my journalling just captures the basic info and not how I felt about things, or what things meant to me.

I'm also just going a wee but nuts lately as work is slow and I haven't scrapbooked in many months, so doing this class as a way to get me focused on something and hopefully scrapbooking more.

In honour of the first day of the class, I decided to post one of my favourite videos that I stumbled across online. It uses a poem by Taylor Mali and was created by Ronnie Bruce as part of a course.

I hope you like it!

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

Where has the time gone?

2010-03-15T16:42:00.003-04:00

Wow - it has been far too long since I've posted here. I've been so busy with life and moving and holidays and work that I haven't done any scrapbooking at all since before our cruise at the end of October.

I still haven't even been able to get my stuff unpacked yet but I'm slowly working through the boxes to get the scrapping stuff organized.

I've found a local store and the owner and staff seem very nice, and I signed up for a crop there in April but it's a very small store so I'll be doing some online shopping through some of my favourite online stores, I'm sure.

I also signed up for a course run by Jessica Sprague. I had started on of her online digi-scrapping classes last Fall but never got to finish it, although I've been working on it more lately. It was a self-paced class so I can finish it whenever I like. This new class starts in a week and is designed to help people with journalling and typography for layouts. I already journal a fair bit and I'm pretty comfortable with that aspect of scrapping, but there's always room for improvement plus it will be fun to learn more about typography and try something new.

It's a two-week class and I'm taking both level 1 and level 2, so that's a month for this class - should be fun and hopefully I'll get motivated to do some more scrapping.

I'll try to post pictures of the layouts I do in the online course over the next month.

HOLY COW - I WON!!!

2009-08-07T00:07:00.003-04:00

I just got a message that I won the summer-long contest that was being run by Two Scrapbook Friends!!!!

I'm totally shocked to be honest. It's been an amazing contest and pushed me to try new things and new colours, embellishments, styles and subjects I might not have otherwise done.

So many other people in the contest did such incredible work as well. It was fun seeing the new challenges being posted each week, and it was also amazing to see the incredible range of beautiful layouts that the other participants produced.

When I entered it, I had no idea what the prize was going to be... and I didn't really do the contest to win the prize (partly because I wanted to do it for the experience, and also because I really thought I'd be voted out pretty early on lol).

The prize I won is:

- a Guest Designer spot on the store's Design Team in an upcoming month
- a 50.00 gift certificate from Two Scrapbook Friends to be used in the store
- and a free pizza crop for me and 17 of my friends....

I'm so excited!!!

Given it's after midnight, should I go wake up Chris to tell him?

Scrappers Island - Final Layout

2009-08-04T18:17:00.006-04:00

Tomorrow is the finale of Scrappers Island - the Two Scrapbook Friends contest I've been participating in all summer. It's down to myself and two other amazing scrapbookers - and I think they're announcing the winner on Thursday.

For the final week, we had to submit one layout that met the following requirements:

- must use bling
- must have a title on the layout
- must have journaling on the layout
- must use embellishments
- must use distress ink
- must use an edge distresser

Here's the layout I did for the contest:

As part of this challenge was to include journaling, I decided to focus a lot on the journaling - even though it’s essentially hidden journaling. I put it on a cardstock behind a little pocket I made for two reasons.
1. The journaling was long enough that it would have taken over the layout, so by putting it behind the pocket, it didn’t overwhelm the page.
2. The subject of the journaling and layout is somewhat personal and emotional, so I liked the idea of having it ‘hidden’ so not everyone would read it if they looked through my book but it would also be easy to pull out if someone wanted to read it.

Here's a picture showing the journalling tag that was hidden in the pocket.

For this layout, I used some pretty papers from Heidi Grace Designs (Marina Drive) and some card stock from various companies.

For the title, I used some metal letters, rub-ons and a chipboard heart/swirl. Using my computer and printer, I modified the word “HEART” to fit within the heart cutout of the chipboard. The chipboard heart/swirl was inked with dewdrop inks and then I covered it with Distress Stickles in Vintage Photo.

Flowers were from various sources (Prima, etc.). Swirl bling is from Prima’s Say It in Studs collection. Rub-ons are by Daisy Bucket and buttons are from Basic Grey. I added stickles in Copper and Vintage Photo to the flowers as well.

I inked all of the edges of paper and cardstock, and used my edge distressor on the brown cardstock I used for the photo mat.

The photo is one of my son from when he was 8 months old - I’ve wanted to use on a layout for a while, but just couldn’t find the right type of page to do with this photo.

Wow - I'm in the Scrappers Island Finale!

2009-07-23T21:10:00.003-04:00

They just announced the names of the three people moving into the final challenge for Scrappers Island. We have two weeks to submit a layout that meets the following requirements:

I have to create a layout that reflects my style, my choice of papers, my choice of embellishments, my choice of photo. In addition, there's a few specific requirements to follow.

First of all, for this final challenge we are allowed to use a sketch, but we must link to the sketch used (or post a copy of it.
**must use bling
**must have a title on the layout
**must have journaling on the layout
**must use embellishments
**must use distress ink
**must use an edge distresser

I've got two weeks to come up with something that is really reflective of me and my style. Thankfully I tend to use a lot of photos and journaling and distressing and embellishments, so meeting the requirements won't be the issue. What will be the issue is coming up with an idea and a design that really works well together.

So lots to think about... but for now, I'm just quite chuffed to still be in the contest now that it's down to only three people.

The Home Stretch

2009-07-20T21:32:00.004-04:00

Well, it's now Week 7 of the Scrappers Island contest and I'm still in it! I'm actually a little surprised as the work by the other participants has been utterly breathtaking, but thankfully I've been voted through each week so far.

This week it's down to eight participants, and I think we'll probably lose at least three people this week... maybe more. I'm not exactly sure. I have no idea how many people will be in the final challenge - it might only be two or three, or it might be five people. But after this challenge, there's just the one final challenge and the winner of that will be declared the winner of Scrappers Island!

This week's challenge was quite a departure from the previous week's. There was NO sketch, and you weren't allowed to use a sketch for inspiration, or scraplift anyone else's ideas (not that any of us would copy a design outright like that).

The basic requirements were:

Requirements:

- We had to use paint or glimmer mist to create our own background, which must be on white cardstock.
- We had to use several layers of paper on the layout including patterns or cardstock
- We had to use the following embellishments: ribbon, brads and buttons
- We had to use chipboard for the title
- We had also were expected to incorporate some edge distressing and distressing with ink

I'd never used Glimmer Mist before, nor was I sure what I wanted to do. I had a few pictures in mind, and an overall image in my head, but I had to find papers that would work with them. I went to Two Scrapbook Friends and looked around, and around and around the entire store trying to find something that matched what I had in my head... poor Joanne (one of the owners) had to watch me circle that store countless times as I considered various options (with Chris and Alex having a small picnic of treats out on the sidewalk in front of the store).

I finally found some papers I liked, picked up some coordinating card stock and also bought three different shades of Glimmer Mist to use with the papers.

Once home, I played around with the Glimmer Mist a fair bit to try out different effects. I decided for this layout, I wanted a more subtle effect, so I only used two colours on the paper (a orangey colour and a nice green), and did a light misting versus a more solid coverage. I also kept the colours to the left of the page so only about 2/3 of the page was covered.

Before actually applying the Glimmer Mist, I created a mask of the title by using three chipboard letters that I glued down lightly with temporary adhesive. I then sprayed the paper - and once I removed the letters, it left a blank spot for the three letters "JOY". I then sprayed another style of chipboard with the green Glimmer Mist and sprayed a chipboard swirl with some purplish Glimmer Mist.

I cut out a bunch of different shapes and sizes of cardstock and played around with layering until I had a layout I thought would work. I inked all of the edges, and also distressed one of the cardstock pieces I used for a photo mat.

I layered the painted chipboard "Joy" over the white mask word, and then used a rub-on for the word "Sheer" so that the title is Sheer Joy. I layered and played around with different flowers, brads and buttons to create a nice effect in the corner and also put some buttons and ribbons in the bottom corner to balance the layout.

I used a favourite photo of my niece when she was a lot younger... just such a cute, happy photo.

Voting takes place on Thursday and for the first time, only members of Exile Island and the Design Team will be able to vote.

Week 6 Challenge

2009-07-14T18:57:00.006-04:00

While I wait to see if I won immunity in this week's challenge (see post below), I figured I'd post the layout I did for this week's actual challenge as it's unlikely I'll win immunity.

This week's challenge was a bit different. We were given a great sketch that was created by Karan Gerber (I have her blogs on my list of blogs I visit if you're interested in seeing more of her amazing work).

In addition to the sketch, we had to use the following photo for 'inspiration' in any way we wanted to.

And to make it even more complicated... we could only use items we already had in our stash - no new papers or embellishments or letters, etc. Thankfully I had some great paper in my stash that I'd used to make invitations for a friend's surprise birthday party late last year... but I only had one partial sheet of the paper I most wanted to use, so it was tough figuring out how best to put it all together. In addition, we had to use an old, crappy photo instead of something new.

It's hard to see in the photo, but it's pretty grainy as it's a scan of a really old picture that I tried to fix up a bit to get rid of some scratches and tears.

I used white cardstock for the background, then sanded a black Coredinations cardstock with teal blue inner core so that it showed through a bit. I used the old teal/black papers from my stash, and put in a hint of the lime green with the one bar and the flower. I put Felt Fusion (by Queen & Co) over the lime green bar and trimmed it back (man is that stuff every sticky and hard to work with lol), and then carried the felt fabric idea through with the black letters in the title and the lime green flower over the big Prima flower. I also did some doodling by hand. I added in some crystal gems (by Prima I think) that I cut apart a bit and also used for the centre of the flower.

I put the journalling behind the main photo by making a pocket and printing it on coordinating cardstock and then inking the edges as I had done for all the other paper.

Scrappers Island - Immunity Challenge

2009-07-14T13:47:00.009-04:00

I'm still participating in the Scrappers Island contest being run by Two Scrapbook Friends in Waterloo. Every week, in addition to the regular challenge that everyone participates in, they also run an "immunity" challenge where one or two people are given immunity if they complete the challenge within a tight timeframe, and are picked on of the winners of that challenge.

I haven't yet been able to do any of those immunity challenges as the timing was too tight for me or we weren't around that night.

This week, they gave everyone 23 hours to finish a layout and post it on their forums, so I decided to try to do it.

This is the sketch that was posted, and you had to do something related to 'baby' - whether it was pictures of yourself as a baby, or your own child. I don't really have any pictures of me as an infant, and I don't have a huge amount of pictures of Alex prior to his Gotcha Day when he was 7 months old (7 months, 3 days old to be exact). I decided to use photos from a photoshoot that was done when Alex was almost 8 months old (he'd been home a few weeks).

I de-saturated the photos as the colour of them was too intense for the papers I wanted to use. For papers, I used the Sweet Branch line by Crate Paper, and distressed all of the paper with chalk ink. I also used some coordinating card stock from my stash for the background and photo mat. I modified some of the Sweet Branch die cuts for the two flowers. I used some foam adhesive dots on the title to give it a bit of height.

I stitched using a cream thread and used two different stitching templates for the stitching.

The layout didn't scan as well as they normally do - the background paper actually has a hint of teal blue to it, but it scanned as quite a bland blue/grey colour for some reason. Hopefully you can get an overall sense of the layout even if the colours are a bit flat.

They are announcing the people who have immunity later tonight so we'll see if I get it or not. I've already done my layout for this week's regular challenge - except for the title, so even if I don't get immunity, I still have something to submit for tomorrow's deadline.

Yahoo! Week 5 Challenge

2009-07-06T00:02:00.009-04:00

We're now into Week 5 of the Scrappers Island Challenge run by Two Scrapbook Friends. Each week, a certain amount of people are voted off and sent to Exile Island so we're now down to 16 people with only a few weeks left to go. I'm having a great time with these challenges and getting to play around with some papers and product I might not otherwise have used.

For this week, the challenge was based on this sketch by Karan Gerber for TSF. You had to create the layout so that it integrated the elements of the sketch, but you could interpret things a bit to show a bit of creativity or to have things work with your own photos, papers, embellishments, etc.

This week's requirements were to:

- Use a diecut shape as the background - it couldn't just be a partial background
- Lots of layers with blended patterns or cardstock
- A photo corner, either with bling or chipboard
- Brackets had to surround the title

Here's the sketch that Karan created for this week:

I decided to use a cute photo of my niece, Amanda, and some great papers by My Little Yellow Bicycle (Zinnia line). I used a great lace cardstock diecut background (I used white behind it so it would show up on the scan). This was actually really hard to scan because of the layers. The journalling box (yellow Coredinations cardstock) was elevated a bit with adhesive foam squares, so I couldn't lay the layout as flat as I normally would - so there's a bit of an inconsistnecy with the brightness, but perhaps only I would notice it. *grins*

I created my own photo corner around the photo using different sized gems in a pale purple colour and put them into a bit of a swirl pattern, and then built a really cute flower for the corner with a flower set from the Zinnia line.

The brackets around the title are chipboard that I inked and then put stickles on for a bit of texture and sparkle. I also used some rub-ons on the photo itself, and used a combination of metal and cardboard stickers for the actual title.

I also added in a felt floral border over the other two strips of paper and cut the diecut flower out of Coredinations cardstock using my Silhouette.

The deadline is Wednesday night, and voting takes place on Thursday with the list of people continuing on posted on Thursday night... keep your fingers crossed I make it through, but even if I don't, I'm sure I'll continue on with the challenges as they've been so much fun.

Week 4 of Scrapper's Island

2009-06-29T20:57:00.008-04:00

This week's challenge in the contest I'm in was to create a layout using the following sketch, with the following requirements:

- Had to use an edge distresser
- Papers must be pink, not all papers, but pink must be visible
- Must use bling
- Must use flowers

I find that I'm pretty literal when it comes to some sketches. I have gone in different directions with a few, but overall, I find I stay pretty true to the sketch, even though you can interpret the sketch however you like.

I had planned to do a layout with photos of my eldest niece, Amanda, for this layout, but I couldn't get pictures that would print properly on short notice, so I used some adorable pictures of my niece, Sarah.

For the papers, I used Basic Grey's Euphoria line, and some nice Bazzil cardstock. I was able to use some Prima flowers I had around for eons (two scanned quite reddish in colour, even though they're actually magenta). For bling, I used two "swirls" in sparkly green gems. I inked the chipboard letters for "sweet" and then used stickles to add some extra bling to the letters and the flowers.

Favourite Things

2009-06-25T18:45:00.004-04:00

I was catching up on some blog reading today and read a fun post on Carolyn's Blog - she's one of the owners of Two Scrapbook Friends and both she and the other owner, Joanne have their own blogs, in addition to the blog for their store. It was a fun post, so I decided to include it here on mine.

My favourites:
1. Color - Teal blue
2. Dessert - Tiramisu
3. Smell - Cilantro
4. Flower - Tulips
5. Animal - Elephant
6. Month - October
7. Beverage - Dr. Pepper or Mango Shake
8. Pair of shoes - Bare feet
9. Snack - Apple and brie
10. Song - Big A Little A by Crass
11. Place - Paris
12. Fruit - Mangoes
13. Hairstyle - Anything that doesn't look like I just woke up
14. Piece of clothing - Comfy t-shirt
15. Store to clothes shop - Hmmm no real favourite
16. Season - Fall
17. Hobby - Scrapbooking
18. Thing to collect - Scrapbooking supplies
19. Movie - Princess Bride and Shallow Grave
20. Restaurant - Thai House in Toronto

Week 3 Challenge

2009-06-24T17:52:00.006-04:00

It's now Week 3 of the Scrapper's Island Content organized by Two Scrapbook Friends. Karan Gerber created a new sketch for this week, and there were also some strict guidelines that we had to adhere to:

- all papers must be black and white
- photo must be black and white
- embellishments must be black and white
- must also include some stitching, either actual or faux (pen-stitching), on the layout

Here's the sketch that Karan created:

I could have sworn I had some black & white papers in my stash (my ever-growing, ever-expanding, totally chaotic stash of yummy papers I've been collecting for upwards of four years now), but when I went to look, I couldn't find any. I know I wasn't thinking totally clearly either as I've been sick for a few days with some icky sore throat and cold, so I might have missed some papers. I had some lovely black and cream papers, but wasn't sure if I could use them. I called up Two Scrapbook Friends, but they were pretty much sold out of most things as so many people from their forums had been in to pick up supplies for this challenge. Thankfully I found some nice papers at another local store, and had them put aside and hubby went to pick them up (I was still too sick to drive anywhere).

I used a really nice photo from my parents' wedding 50 years ago. They'd just celebrated their 50th anniversary last month, so it was nice to be able to do a page to honour their 50 years together.

I found the layout a bit of a challenge overall - I've never done something B&W before, and it was hard to find a good way to balance the papers and patterns. Overall I was pleased, but I still look at the layout and think of things I'd do different if I was to do it again. I won't find out until Thursday evening if I've made it onto the next round... so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I get enough votes!

Here's the finished product:

Scrappers Island - Week 2!

2009-06-17T17:37:00.005-04:00

Well, I made it through the tribal council for Week 1 of Scrappers Island, sponsored by Two Scrapbook Friends, so today is the day that the Week 2 challenges are due.

This week's challenge was to use the following sketch (created by Karan Gerber) and to also use at least two different types of materials for the title.

Here's the layout I did for my entry. I cut the sunburst using my Silhouette and added some glitter with stickles. For the title, I used grungeboard, cardstock (hand cut for outline for the grungeboard), stiched the "in the" with lime green embroidery floss and used cardstock that I inked with chalk inks and then sparkled up a bit with stickles.

Scrappers island!

2009-06-10T00:04:00.006-04:00

One of my favourite stores, Two Scrapbook Friends, is having a fun contest over the summer called Scappers Island. Each week they'll be posting a new challenge and you have six days to work on the challenge and post your work. I'm not sure yet how people will move forward from week to week, but the general idea is that some people will get "voted off" the island - sometimes because they miss the deadline, or don't follow the guidelines of the challenge, etc., so by the end of the 8 weeks, only one scrapbooker will be left on the 'island'.

Week 1 Challenge

The first week's challenge was a Sketch by Karan Gerber (link to her blog can be found on my list of favourites I visit, and she also has a sketch blog).

I used some lovely papers from the Dancing Jewel collection by Kaiser Craft. I also used some of the black Coredinations paper with the pink colour core, and sanded it so that some of the pink came through, and distressed the edges with scissors. I chose to use a photo of one of my lovely nieces as I felt like using a more girly paper than I usually use, and I just loved this recent picture of my niece.

Sketch Contest

2009-05-20T10:53:00.007-04:00

Back in April, I attended an incredible retreat hosted by Two Scrapbook Friends. They had a bunch of fun games and prizes, as well as a sketch challenge. The sketch was created by Karan Gerber for Two Scrapbook Friends.

Using someone else's sketches isn't something I've done a lot (I think I've done it once before), so I decided it would be fun to try to do the sketch. I had no intention of submitting my layout for the contest... I don't usually do that type of stuff.

I had such a good time doing the sketch, and I was really pleased with the layout, but I still wasn't sure about entering the contest on the last day of the retreat. After some prompting from my amazing tablemates, I decided to just go for it and submitted the layout.

I was so impressed with the creativity shown by all of the other people who entered the contest. They had tons of entries, and they were so beautiful. It's amazing how everyone could use the same sketch as their starting point, and yet every layout was unique and special while still reflecting the sketch itself.

Here's the layout I entered into the contest... no one was more surprised than I was when I won!

I won two adorable totes from Creative Options. The first is a little "tackle box" that I will probably use to hold small embellishments. I have a match box in a much larger size - which is great, but can be heavy if filled with too many things.

The second tote is one I'd had my eye on for eons as it also matched my big rolling tote and the larger version of the one above that I'd won, but I couldn't bring myself to spend the money on it just so everything would "match". I was just thrilled to win it, and was happy I didn't chicken out of entering the contest.

Some more layouts

2009-05-19T17:38:00.005-04:00

I had such fun scanning and merging the other layouts that I decided to scan a couple of others and post them.

This first layout is one I did a while ago for a challenge for an online crop I participated in. It was a pretty simple challenge to incorporate the wooden letter/number, and I had fun capturing some of the cute things about Alex at age 3.

I also edited the photos so they had a bit of a tint to them that I felt went well with the papers - it's essentially a sepia tint, but with a bit more of a soft tint to them. I played around with the layers opacity and converted the pictures to B&W before doing the sepia overlay and then softened things a bit as well. Not sure how much of that will show up in the scan as I'm finding a lot of the scans look uber saturated, which isn't always the case in the original.

The second layout is some pictures of my son from the photos we were sent with his adoption referral. I love, love, love these photos as they were some of the first we ever saw of him, but the colours were pretty bright so I hadn't scrapped them except in his adoption scrapbook. I came across some very cute baby papers and embellishments in colours I thought would work really well with these photos, so I did the layout and was pleased with how it turned out.

Scrapbooking Layouts

2009-05-18T15:32:00.002-04:00

Well, I'm finally getting around to learning how to scan layouts and stitch them together. In the past, I'd always take pictures of my layouts, but I was never pleased with the results. I found that the image quality varied a great deal depending on how much natural light I had, plus I found there was always just a wee bit of distortion because it was almost impossible to take a photo 100% straight on, so the 12x12 layout never looked perfectly square and true.

Others recommended scanning, so I tried it out with my old trusty scanner. It can't scan a 12x12 page in one scan, but I have a stitch program for my camera, and it works perfectly with scanned images as well, so I'm pleased.

Now I just need to figure out the best way to post them to this blog.

This first layout is one I did awhile ago with some incredible papers by Fancy Pants from their About a Boy collection. Before doing the layout, I actually edited the photos in Photoshop Elements and put in some fun "grungy" words as I didn't want to have to use rub-ons for this layout.

It's a fun, vibrant layout and I loved also being able to use the Grungeboard as it inks up so well.

The second layout is one I did more recently of some pictures of my son from when he was still in Korea with his foster family. I edited the photos in photoshop to soften them a bit and also to put a sepia tint to them.

I used the Sweet Branch collection from Crate Paper and just loved how they had matching ribbons, chipboard, rub-ons and other amazing embellishments.

The final layout I scanned today is one I did at a recent retreat using the Beachy Keen papers from Bo Bunny. I used some fun pictures from our trip last summer to the Outer Banks with my family. I loved being able to use the bold orange chipboard, and also do some fun stiching on the layout.

Planning a Cruise!!!

2009-04-24T15:52:00.001-04:00

Woohoo. I can't believe we've actually decided to take a cruise to celebrate our 10th anniversary in October. I've been on two cruises before: The first was a short 3-day cruise to Nassau that my sister planned for my mom, my three sisters and myself. The second was a 7-day cruise to Alaska with Chris' company. I didn't get to plan either of these trips, so this is the first time I've been the one doing the research and making the decisions.

I looked into TONS of options and finally found one that suited our needs, and was also one we could afford (most were out of our price range). Our travel agent got us an amazing deal on a cruise with Holland America on their new ship, the Eurodam. We'll be staying in an outside stateroom with our own private verandah. We will fly into Fort Lauderdale and stay there for two nights before getting on the ship and going to Grand Turk in Turks & Caicos; San Juan, Puerto Rico; St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands and also to Half Moon Cay, which is a lovely private island owned by Holland America.

I'm so excited about the trip, and I've already started picking up some amazing papers to scrapbook different parts of the trip!

Scrapfest

2009-04-19T10:27:00.001-04:00

Scrapfest was held this weekend in KW and I ended up going on the Friday night. I hadn't planned on going as I wasn't sure what our plans were going to be, but then I decided I might try to go by on the Saturday afternoon if I was able to.

On Friday afternoon I received an e-mail from someone looking to sell an extra ticket to the Friday night marketplace, so I decided to go and check things out.

My first stop was to the booth for Two Scrapbook Friends. I picked up some very yummy papers from the new "Delight" line from Fancy Pants.

Believe me... this picture doesn't do the papers justice. They are even more adorable in person.

I then wandered around a bit and snagged some 12"x12" chipboard sets (thanks Karan!) that were a great price, and bought a few kits and some new adhesive that was recommended to me by Karen of Go Scrapping!

It was great to see some familiar faces, and check out the various booths and pick up some nice stuff to play with.

Now I just need to get my office/craft room organized again so I can get caught up on some of my scrapping.

First Post

2009-04-17T12:36:00.001-04:00

I've been thinking of setting up a BLOG for a while - partly so I can post some things related to scrapping, photography, family, etc., for my family and friends to check out if they want to, but also as a way to continue to move myself a bit out of the rut I've been in lately.

I'm pushing myself to try new things, get out more, meet new people and also do more with my family and friends. Part of that is to try to take more pictures, create more memories and scrapbook more pages for myself but also for others.

Hopefully I will be able to keep this site up and running and will share it with people I know.