HOLY COW - I WON!!!

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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!

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

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

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

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!!!

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

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

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.