Very Happy!

Wow, Christmas has come and gone for another year! I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. I was very happy last week to find out that the layout I did of my Mum ( in the post from Dec 20th below) won "Layout of the Week" for Dec 21st over at Swirlydoos. So tonight I go onto the Swirlydoos Forum and find out that my layout was chosen for "Layout of the Month"! To say I was excited was beyond words! There are so many talented ladies at Swirlydoos and they have taught me so much about scrapping and I owe them, and many others in the online scrapbook world, for helping me express myself through scrapping! Thank you all!

Vintage Layout

I love this old photo of my Mum from July 1936 when she was 15. I knew that the "Treasured Yesterdays" kit from Swirlydoo's would be perfect to scrap it with. I'm trying to use more different mediums like Sprays and molding paste etc. So this is one of my attempts at doing this using some molding paste and one of my stencils and then a couple of different Tattered  Angels sprays, Tuscan Sun and Lily Pad. I did a lot of distressing on the papers and using bits and pieces of paper torn in to strips. I'm really pleased at how the whole layout turned out.

Well I'm off to the airport shortly to catch a plane to have Christmas with my son and grandchildren. I hope that everyone has a happy & safe Christmas!
 

A Quick Post

I just wanted to post a photo of an altered picture frame I made for my girlfriend for Christmas. Her youngest daughter had her first child this past October and this photo that was taken of my friend with the baby I thought was so nice and I knew immediately that I wanted to do this as a Christmas present for her. I'd love to hear what you all think.

 

A Busy Month

Well I'm sure like everyone else we are all busy this month trying to get ready for the holidays. I've been busy working on our daughters wedding album as I wanted to get it finished so I could give it to her as a combined Birthday (her birthday was Dec 10th) Christmas present. Noelle and her new husband came up for a visit this past weekend, a surprise for her Dad which went perfectly! I was so happy to watch them going through the album and seeing the smiles on their faces. I thought I would share the rest of the scrap layouts here.

So our daughter & son-in-law and all of their friends are addicted to these silly cat hats so nothing would do, they brought all of the hats and had all their friends and themselves have pictures taken with them on. 

Our daughter and her Mom getting ready on the "big day"

This was the setting at the beach they got  married at at sunset, so pretty!

 This one taken just shortly after the ceremony.

 My In-laws with the bride and groom. Noelle is their only grandchild so they were pretty happy.

 I've had this sunflower paper in my stash forever (I believe it's from Prima) and since our daughters flowers for the wedding was sunflowers it was perfect for this page of the bride & groom and the Maid of Honor and Best man!

 This one of my DH and I with the bride and groom.

These photos were just taken through out the evening and I thought the November sketch from Swirlydoo's was perfect for these photos.

 This  next layout is for a photo of the bride and groom cutting the cake. Since most of the photos I've used for the album were ones that I had taken I didn't really have a good picture of the cake cutting so I left it so the kids could put a photo in once they got the good photos from the photographer. The next one is also left for the kids to add what ever photo they wanted from the photographers photos.

Thanks for stopping by and I'd love to hear your comments!

Christmas Cards

Well I'm quite amazed that I actually managed to get my Christmas cards done and mailed out before the middle of December for a change. Got them done and mailed out last week - yay me! So I thought I would post a few of them here. This first card below was inspired by one I found on Pinterest, which I thought I had pinned to one of my boards but apparently not so I'm unable to post the link here. 

My card below was done for the November card round robin at Swirlydoos Kit Club for team 2, week 3. You can see the other cards for this round robin here: Swirlydoos Card RR

 

Thanks so much for stopping by and I'd love to hear your comments on my cards!

Cricut Mats...for all us "thrifty" people!

Don't you hate it when your Cricut & Silhouette mats loose their stickiness. I know I do and at $10 or $11 a mat it can tend to get expensive after awhile. I was surfing through Pinterest last night and came across all these great tips for renewing the mats. Here are the easy steps:

1. Take your mat and with warm water and any mild dish soap (I used Palmolive) and one of those plastic/rubber scrubbers and scrub the mat well to take off all the lint and paper bits that end up on them through all the use. You can also use one of those Mr Clean Magic erasers rather than the dish soap & scrubber to take off all the lint.

2. Let your mat air dry, this is important as you don't want to dry with towels or paper towels as you'll just put lint right back onto it. Once it's all dry you can feel it with your hand to see if it's sticky enough for you. Both of my mats were quite sticky after it air dried so I didn't do the next steps.

3. If you want your mat stickier take some masking tape or painter's tape and tape off the edges of the mat. This is done so you don't get the sticky glue on those edges where the rollers of the machine will run over it and start getting them sticky, which would not be a good thing for the machine.

 4. Once you have the edges taped off you can use some "Krylon Easy-Tack" or "Quilt Basting Spray" and spray the mat with it and then let air dry. You can also use "Zig 2 Way Glue" wide tip and just run down the mat from top to bottom with the the glue and let it air dry. Once the mat has air dried if you think the mat is too sticky you can condition it by place your hands on and off the whole mat.

**Disclaimer: Using the above methods to recondition your mats may void the warranty.

I hope you'll try this out and that it works as well for you as it did for me, I love anything that will save me money! Have a great day!

Swirlydoos October Card Challenge

So I entered the Swirlydoos Card Challenge for October 2014. Here are the twists for this month.
:
#1: Basic colors of your card have to be white/off white/cream/beige/light brown/light blue. You can use them all or just 1, it is up to you. You can use 1 different color, for example, the flowers. (you may use different shades of this color for your flowers) Of course it is okay to use black or dark brown for your sentiments.

#2: Stenciling/ or stamping

#3: Use some sisal/ unraffled twine/ thin thread, as long as it adds texture!

I'm on Team 2, week 2, following Linda Pekrul's card from week 1, here's her pretty card:

I basically stayed true to Linda's card. I used some blue and brown/creme winter papers from my stash. I used some blue ribbon instead of twine and a snowflake instead of a flower. I used my "Noel" stamp for my sentiment and used a few blue gems dotted around the card along with some lace. Here is  my lift of Linda's card: 

 

Another wedding layout

I decided since I was doing layouts for our daughters wedding album for her I should do a page with one of the invitations I did for them. The layout is based on a sketch I found on Pinterest but now  I can't remember who's sketch it was, if anyone knows let me know so I can give credit where credit is due. So here's the result, hope you like it!

Father of the Bride

Another page for the wedding album. I just love both of these photos of my husband and his/our daughter. I love how happy our daughter looks in these photos and how happy my husband is, he is so happy that Noelle has found such a wonderful husband and he knows he doesn't have to worry about her anymore...even though he'll still worry, you know how men can be about their daughters, lol. The papers I've used for this layout is a wedding kit that I bought at Walmart. The paper is not really a heavy type of card stock but it's still good for these wedding layouts. The black flowers I've used were in my stash but I believe they are from Petaloo and the white flower is from Manorhouse. The die cut white branch & leaves are from Die-namite's dies. I'm quite pleased at how it turned out. TFL!

The Ring

Well I seem to be on a roll, I've actually managed to do another layout for our daughters Wedding album. This one is a photo of her engagement ring. It was so cute, she was saying how sparkly it was when she sent this photo to me. A few minutes later she text me a 10 second video of her hand moving so I could see how it sparkled, lol. For this layout I used Websters "Hollywood Vogue" collection that I had in my stash. Once I started laying things down it came together quite quickly...I think my mojo finally decided to come home from vacation. Anyway here's the finished project, TFL!

 

The Engagement

Well I've been in a real scrapping funk these days, my mojo went on vacation and forgot to take me, lol. I promised our daughter that I would do a scrapbook of her wedding for her. Yesterday I got my butt in gear and did the first layout for the album. I started with a photo that the kids got taken on the night they got engaged. I was texting back and forth with Noelle about getting engaged and she filled me in on exactly how Frank proposed to her. I took her words from that text and used it for the journalling on the layout. I thought that it would be cool for their future kids to read this and see how it all happened and how happy their Mom was by reading her own words. So here is the layout, I hope you like it! TFL

 

Beautiful Wedding

Wow I can't believe it's Sept 26th already, it's been a crazy month what with weddings, company and a short little 2 day girls weekend. . The wedding was beautiful, ceremony on the beach at sunset, walking down the beach with her Dad, just brought tears to my eyes, she was so beautiful. That little girl I'd known since she was five had grown into this beautiful bride that looked so happy as she stood facing her husband. I looked at my husband as he watched them exchange their vows, blinking to hold back the tears, he was one very proud Dad! Here are a couple of photos.

Now I have my work cut out for me as I try to get all of these photos scrapped to give them their wedding album, hopefully by Christmas, lol.

Countdown

Only  11 more days until our daughters wedding! Since they live on the mainland and we are here on Vancouver Island we are not to involved in all of the planning and organizing, that's mostly up to Noelle & her fiancee and her Mom. It's going to be a small wedding with the ceremony on the beach and reception at a local club. 

My dh and I went shopping for a new suit for him this past weekend, I must say he looked pretty sharp when he tried it on. I managed to find a nice out fit yesterday at only the second store I went into, so I'm very happy about that and it should look nice with with my dh's new suit. My dh even managed to get his speech all written out for when he makes his toast to the couple. I think he's getting nervous, I'm pretty sure he'll have a few tears in his eyes when he gives her away!

I did the invitations for them for the wedding. They found one they liked, with a fall theme on the internet but it had owls in the tree and they wanted to have 2 cats with their tails forming a heart. So I drew the cats and basically copied the tree in my Paint Shop Pro program. They really liked it so it was basically printing the invitations off and matting them with a nice burnt orange color card stock and they were done. Here's the finished project.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Funny Face

I swear my scrap mojo has gone on vacation and totally forgot to take me with it. I've only done two layouts all summer and this one would be no.#2. Thank goodness for sketch's that help us out when this happens. This layout was my take on the July 2014 Celestial Summer sketch challenge at Swirlydoos Kit Club. This is the sketch.

I'm a scrapper who believes in scrapping all sorts of photos of our lives, beautiful moments, family gatherings, Christmas, birthdays and yes even silly photos. So with that said I had this very funny photo strip of my grandson & I. The wedding that we went to in August the couple had rented one of those photo booths you see in the malls. The fellow that owned it had all of these silly costumes and things you could use. So I had the big bow on my head and my grandson had this silly half mask on. I love the pic of my dgs kissing my cheek with those exaggerated lips, lol. So here's my take on the sketch, I hope you like it!

 

Weddings

Some friends of ours wedding was at the beginning of August and I have to say this was the most fun wedding I had ever been to. The bride and groom had both been married before so instead of the regular type of wedding they decided to do a theme wedding, which was the "Roaring Twenties". The couple have acreage on a lake and the wedding ran through a whole weekend. Everyone brought their campers, trailers or tents and we all camped on their property. Most people arrived on the Friday night, there was a "Speak Easy" bar set up in one part of this huge work shop that had been built and the other half of it had a stage and all the tables set up for the reception. On the Friday night one of the fellows of the band for the wedding played an acoustic guitar and was taking requests and a bit of karaoke, even my grand kids got up and sang. The ceremony was at noon on the Saturday, the wedding party were all in costume and most of the quests were in costume.  There was a few hours between the ceremony and the reception, which was a good thing as it was so hot we definitely needed a swim in the lake. The reception was fabulous, lots of good food, good friends, dancing....definitely the best wedding I've been to. I did the wedding invitations for our friends wedding, here's a pic of the invitation and a few of photo's from the wedding.

 In case you're wondering the fellow with the bunny ears in his hat is suppose to be "Bugsy Malone", lol.

 

Swirlydoos Featured Member

I've felt really honored this month as I was chosen to be one of the "Featured Members" for August over at Swirlydoo's Kit Club. What makes this so special is that while I am a member of the group I have not been able to purchase the kits yet but that doesn't matter with this group, you are treated like everyone else. Krissy has built a great group, everyone is like family. Swirlydoo's is definitely the right place to hang out! Thanks so much for this honor ladies!

I seem to have disappeared in the last few months. It seems my MS has been really acting up for quite awhile and I haven't had a lot of good days where I wanted to scrap. We have had a really hot, dry summer and the heat, as much as I love it, is not really good for my MS it just exacerbates my symptoms I already have, as well as create new problems. Combine that with getting older and you find that this getting older thing sucks big time! 

Well enough about that. I did manage to get one layout done in all of this time and am quite happy as to how it turned out. This was a photo I took of my grandson when the kids were here last summer (2013). My grandson was just sitting relaxing after searching for crabs under the rocks with his sister. I just called his name and snapped this photo as he looked up at me. This was also done for one of the round robins at Swirlydoo's Kit Club, my lift of one of the DT members, thanks for the inspiration Maggi!

Swirlydoos March 2014 Layout Round Robin

As usual the past month as flown by and all of a sudden I find it's April, almost a month since my last post. Amazing how once you become an adult the weeks and months just fly by....I'm not really sure I like this getting old thing! 

Swirlydoos, my fav online Kit Club has a round robin each month and now this is challenge is open to everyone, no need to be a "Kit Subscriber".  Anyway here is my layout for this challenge:

My layout is for team 4, week 2. I really enjoyed doing this layout of my son and my grandson, I've always told my son how much his son reminded me of him when he was young. Well he still reminds me of my son, and my son is 34 now and my Grandson is 11. If you would like to see the other layouts for this round robin you can check them out here:  Swirlydoos March 2014 Round Robin

Swirlydoos Card Round Robin!

Hello all! Thought I would post my card that I did for the card RR over at Swirlydoos. This is my entry for Team 2, week 2. Not totally pleased with it, for some reason my brain as gone on vacation without me again, lol. Anyway here it is....

We are taking sign ups for the April 2014 Round Robin right now, if you'd like to join in. You don't have to be a Swirlydoos member to play and it's a lot of fun. I'm hosting the April Card challenge and the winner will receive a RAK from me, so hope you'll all join in, the link can be found here: April Card RR

Longing for Summer...

So our weather has started to warm up finally, which makes me want summer to get here all that much more. So what better way to make me feel good than to scrap a summer layout, so here it is!

 So for my background paper I used the "Sandy Shore" paper from the Websters Yacht Club collection. I then took a duplicate piece of this paper and fussy cut the flower cluster from the bottom left corner of the paper and then added them to the other piece of background paper popped up with foam to the same left corner. I also did the same thing with the bottom right corner of the background paper. The top right corner of the paper was done using a corner piece of the 12x12 Designer Vellum paper from the Yacht Club collection. 

The  sailboat was cut from the "Celebration Bay" paper along with the small light house. I popped both of these with foam dots. All of the words that I've laid on the background were cut out from the "Boardwalk" paper. The netting on the bottom is actual fish net that I bought from a local supplier of fishing equipment. I bought a huge piece of this fish net for about $3.00 a few years ago and still have tons of it! In the netting I have a few tiny hermit crab shells. The small sand dollar is an actual real sand dollar and the small blue anchor is from my stash. The three photos I took of my grandchildren in the summer as they were walking out to one of the big rocks out on the beach that we go to when we want to look for sea treasures. The twine I've used around the photos is from my stash, I find it reminds me of fishing line so I thought it would look good around the photos. Thanks for stopping by and I would love to feel your comments on my layout. Have a great weekend everyone!

Snowing still..........

Okay so we had a huge dump of snow the other weekend, Feb 22-24, over the three days we got about 13 or 14 inches! That is crazy snow for us here in southern British Columbia. Then the weather warmed up a lot and the snow was all melting from the roads & sidewalks and then what happens...we wake up to snow again yesterday here in Campbell River. Okay seriously? It's March 2nd and we get snow, this  morning the same thing...very unusual for this time of the year. Luckily it was melting on the roads so that was okay but I'm sending a letter of compliant to Mother Nature, when is spring coming!!

So with all this snow I figured I may as well start scrapping some more Christmas photos. These are a couple of photos of my son carving his "turkey masterpiece" on Christmas Day. For my background paper I used the Kaisercraft "Bellsnickle" paper from their St Nicholas collection and distressed all the edges. I cut the matching Christmas balls from the "Noel Baba" sheet from the same collection and used foam pop dots and layered them over top of the ones on the background paper and used some pretty gold trim to "hang" them from. I then cut the "Christmas Memories" banner piece from the Kaisercraft "Twelve Days" paper and pop it up with foam pop dots.

I then cut out the "Family" tag from the Bo Bunny Silver & Gold collection "Christmas Red" paper and the "Sugar Plum Shoppe" piece from the Bo Bunny Silver & Gold "Gift Shops" paper and distressed these and laid them down as shown in the photo. I matted my two photos with some deep red cardstock and laid them down on the layout. To finish the layout off I used a holly sprig and small red flower and attached them as shown. I hope you like the finished project and I would love to hear your comments! TFL! 

Christmas layout

One of my last Design Team projects for Meg's Garden. Now if you’re like me you have lots of Christmas photo’s to scrap and this photo of my son and I is just one of many that I have to scrap. For this layout I used papers from the new ‘Tis Christmas Time" collection as my background paper.

For my background paper I used the “Christmas Roses” paper from the collection. I distressed all of my papers in this layout with my distress tool and some “Vintage Photo” distress ink. I also made a small tear in the paper along the bottom of the left side of the paper and rolled it back, glued a tiny piece of the Christmas Greetings paper behind that and popped a small latte paper rose between the rolled back paper. Using some of the lace from Meg’s Garden I cut two pieces approximately 4” each and laid them down the center of the background paper, one piece from the top end and one piece from the bottom of the paper, so you end up with a space between the two pieces. No sense wasting pretty lace that no one’s going to see behind the layers anyway, lol.

For my other layers I’ve used one of the Christmas Angels from the Angel paper, a clock from the “Old World Time” clocks paper, a 5” x 4” piece from the Christmas Greetings paper and a 5” x 4” piece of the French Bird Cage papers I had from a previous DT kit I had left over. I laid these all down as shown in the photo. For my photo I attached a couple of pieces of cardboard to the back of the photo to pop the photo up and then laid it down on top of these layers.

For my flower cluster I used two of the Idyllic Burgundy paper flowers and one of the paper Azaleas. I used a few leaves from my stash along with some Dusty Attic leaves from Meg’s Garden behind the flowers along with a few pearl sprays tucked in here and there. The pink pearl flourishes and the heart charm were from my stash. Thanks for stopping by and don’t forget to check out all of the awesome products at Meg’s Garden!

Meg’s Garden Products Used

Paper – P6364 Christmas Roses 
             P6361 Christmas Greetings
             P6366 Christmas Angels
             P6297 French Bird Cage               
             1037 Old World Time Clocks
L2976 Lace
Small Latte Paper Roses
Idyllice - Burgundy

White Azales

Other Products Used

Recollections Small Pink Flourishes
Small Heart & Chain Charm
Pearl Sprays, Dusty Attic Leaves

St Patrick's Day

I totally forgot to post this picture of a card I made for a friend who's having a St Patrick's Day for charity this year. I made him 21 of these cards. I used the Graphic 45 Bohemian Bazaar collections "Mystical Masterpiece" for the background paper. The leprechaun I drew myself in my Paint Shop Pro program from a tutorial a number of years ago and popped him up with pop dots on the card. I apologize for the bad photo but we had snow today so I wasn't able to get a good photo of the card.

Thanks for looking!

Round Robin at Swirlydoos

Thought I'd show you my card I made for Team 5, week 3's card round robin over at Swirlydoos. The twists for this months round robin are:
1. Must be 3 or more layers
2. Lace, twine or ribbon
3. Must be an easel card (you can find a tutorial for doing an easel card HERE)
This is my lift of the other two members on the team's cards. 

My background paper for the front of my card is Graphic 45's Bohemian Bazaar "Mystical Masterpiece" . I cut a navy blue piece of cardstock approximately 1½" wide x 5" long for the left side of the card and then added some white lace that I had in my stash over top of that strip. I used one of my dies to cut the leafy branches under the Prima flower. The small blue rosebuds I made myself and the "Love" I cut out on my cricut. 

For the inside of my card I used some light green card stock. For the part of the card that holds the easel up I used some of the same background paper from the front of the card which I punched on both edges and then used a piece of lighter green card stock which I cut a bit smaller than the bottom piece and punched it on both edges and laid that down on top of the other piece. I added a strip of blue bling from my stash down the center of the easel and called it done.I hope you stop by Swirlydoos and check out the rest of the great cards for the challenge and I'd love to hear your comments on my card.

Secret Garden

Well I think most people, especially all the people on the East coast are wishing spring & summer would hurry up and get here, because I sure know I am! Going along with this, one of the challenges this month over at Swirlydoos was to do a layout about something warm and I thought this photo of my daughter back in 1992 when she was 15 months old would be perfect to use. If you notice in the photo that in the background is this really nice kiddy pool that we bought for her and what did she play in all day was an old bucket, lol!

I decided to use my Graphic 45 "Secret Garden" papers that I have been hoarding for this layout. For my background I thought I'd use the back side of the "Leafy Treetops" paper which I distressed with my distress tool and some "vintage photo" distress ink. I then cut an 8" x 8" piece of the "Sun Kissed" paper which I cut the center out of (to save for future projects) and layered a 7½" x 7½" piece of the "Coming up Roses" paper on top of that, distressing all the papers. I matted my photo with some of the solid mauve colored paper from the 6"x6" collection. 

Before laying my photo down I cut three strips of some of the other papers from the collection which I matted and used as banners behind the photo. I fussy cut a couple of the flowers from the "Cutting up Roses" paper and added some pop dots to them and added one to the top right corner and the bottom left corner of the photo. I added more Prima flowers from my stash to make the two flower clusters as well as a couple of small rosebuds at the tears on the right side of the background paper. To finish the layout off I added a couple of Prima pearl & rosebud flourishes. Here's a closeup...

Valantine's Day soon...

Hi everyone, can you believe it's February all ready? I need to get started on some Valentine projects! I didn't realize it had been so long since I updated my blog. It seems my mojo went on vacation again without me, so I've been cruising around the internet looking for inspiration. Of course I landed on Pinterest and before you know it like 3 hours has gone buy and you hadn't even remotely looked for what you started looking for, lol. Anyway I came across this really pretty ATC card that Miranda Edney had done for Graphic 45 and I thought I'd give it a try. You can find the tutorial for this tag on Miranda's blog here: Graphic 45 ATC card. This is Miranda's ATC

 I didn't have any of the G45's "Sweet Sentiments" papers so I did mine with the G45's "Secret Garden" papers and I also left off the "Sweet Sentiment" piece on the top left corner making my quite basic but I still liked the way they turned out.

I apologize for the bad photo, it's been a pretty grey cloudy day here so I ended up taking this inside on my craft table. I hope you like it and I'd love to hear your comments!