Finally I finished my least common layout from Lesson 2 of LOM. Going though the albums and labelling them really was the easy part. I think I made the scrapbooking part harder than it needed to be by not stopping to think ..... .... about what I was doing (pretty normal for me!).
I put pictures of my very special pen-friend & I together from every visit we've ever had - the first in 1987 the most recent in 2007 - but then I still had to answer why. Why what? Why we're such good friends? Why we're still friends? Why she inspires me to be a better person?
Lesson learned - have the story in my head first. It was so hard - I wanted to write the WHOLE story of how Leanne & I became friends and where we are at now in our friendship - and I had to stop myself, over & over again.



The story of Leanne & I will, I am sure be a HUGE section in my new Library of Memories albums - under People We Love and in Places We Go. I could probably even squeeze out a few Things we Do too!


I've never worked so hard on getting the journalling right - but I'm glad I did.

Lesson 4 will be up in 2 days time - so now I had better go get busy completing the tasks from Lesson 3!

Lesson Two of the Library of Memories class requires us to go through all our completed layouts (in or out of albums) and label them.
The Library of Memories system incorporates album titles of All About Us, People We Love, Places We Go & Things We Do.In tagging these layouts it stands out loud and clear what we are scrapbbooking and more importantly what we are not scrapbooking.
People We Love (which includes our extended family and our friends) is the section I tend to gloss over - rather a lot actually.
Funny looking back at the old stuff with a clearer view from before I was too bothered about how a layout looked - but the photo and journalling memories were there - even if the page was only decorated with a strip a triangle and a "sneeze" of stickers.
When I started scrap booking (2004) back in the UK, we didn't have a computer, and there were no scrap booking magazines (unlike now). My sole source of inspiration was Creative Memories (& yes, it is ok to mention the words). Now, here I am with a scrapbook magazine addiction, overwhelmed by all the diferent styles and trying desperatley hard to make a page meaningful - by how it looks - that what it's really about has been lost.

Time to make amends. I LOVE this class. I knew it was the right thing for me to do and I will succeed.

Liquid Applique as a Lamb!

I made these wiper (as in windshield wiper I guess) cards last week.
They are a set of four - although only two (so far) have made it up to have their pictures taken - and rather hurriedly at that - Easter is next weekend after all and these cards need to travel half way round the world!

I had only previously thought of Liquid Applique in terms of winter and snow - until last week when I had "a moment". We had fun with the card club girls creating these - playing with the LA - one poor lamb had his wool in rows instead of curls and swirls - to which I commented how it looked like an old ladies perm!!!

The other Easter card I manage to make is this little chick all "egg cited" about his extra large egg!












The kids made their teachers Easter cards today and loved using the LA to make their lambs - Spencer was fascinated watching as it bubbled and puffed up!

Another blank

this is another blank - still no picture to complete it. I have to confess that this is a complete scraplift from a Maggie Holmes layout published in Memory Makers January 2008 edition (pp86). Right down to the subject - "sometimes I wish.........."


At the moment I am having too much fun pulling photos from all their hiding places and organising them Stacy style.
Tomorrow sees the beginning of week two in the Library of Memories classroom - with a chat on Saturday morning - can't wait for that.
I've printed all the photos from 2007 that I would like to scrapbook and I'm working through 2006 - I'm just about ready to hit Costco with the next installment. The girls up there are getting to know me!

The best thing so far? I finally bought myself a kitchen timer - (ok, so it's a nice sleek, black KitchenAid one!!)and I set it for 15 minutes to get me through a task. Right now I know it takes 8 minutes to flat iron my hair (Time left over!) and 10 minutes to put orders in bags and staple the orer form to the front! This little timer is so much fun! Focused on the task at hand for just 15 minutes - stuff is getting done! (And I'm not stopping off at the computer to daydream for half an hour!)

Scrapbook Saturday this weekend - and it's a 9am until midnight session. Better get organised for that one then....

All About Me - Life List

This is a layout I put together for the All About Me girls - as you can see - I still haven't put the pictures onto mine.
The chocolate (CTMH) brown cardstock is meant for a collage of pictures to represent a persons Life List. The note book paper is plain colonial white (CTMH) cardstock stamped with journalling jots and some flourishes from the doodle aplphabet.
You can see Tammi's version here

It's a rare sight

well, here in my house anyway. I haven't printed a single picture in over two years (can you believe that!) Since joining the digital revolution it's become all to easy to enjoy the instant gratification of downloading those JPEGs, enjoying the images on the computer screen, then moving on.

This little pile of 309 photographs represents January to June of last year. I'm working on the folder for the October to December 2007 and then that's another six months of pictures I'll be taking to the printers.

Tomorrow, begins the rest of my scrapbooking life. Tomorrow 12 weeks of Library of Memories classes starts over at Big Picture Scrapbooking.
It's going to help me organize ALL my photo's and memorabillia so that I can use them in different ways and make connections with them that would not happen with chronological scrapbooking. It's what I've been waiting for since I read Big Picture.

You know, Ali (Edwards) has been inspired by Stacy, Cathy (Zielske) too. If it works for them it has to work for me!
Time to breathe and enjoy this hobby again without the constraints of chronological scrapbooking.

Two more from the pile. This one is from (nearly) three years ago. There are so many pictures of our visits to the train museum - I think I'll have to make a mini "places we go" album just for this place. I've actually stopped taking pictures of us over there instead opting for close ups of the wheels, tracks, engines and anything else the smells even faintly of "railroad"!
This next one is from Spencer's very first day going to pre-school. The colours on the side of the school are just gorgeous - and there's loads of trees too - which are showing there best fall colours as we return to school each year.


I also just noticed that both of these pages use a paper from the CTMH "It's A Guy Thing" pack. This paper pack is SO much better in the hand than it appears in the Idea Book. The spot & the stripe in the 2nd one are not CTMH though - but I love how it all works together.

Big sigh...the house is cleaned of red marker and we're at the end of a week long school break. Finally I've had five minutes to take pictures of some of the recent stuff I've been working on.
Now the question is, should I just post one at a time - or give you it all in one big long blog rush.....
Here's one that I kept going back to over the last few weeks, painting some more chipboard adding and moving bits around. I love playing with the re-inkers and create a shade paint! The pearl base was just perfect for this layout.

This one is from the same paper pack (CTMH's Good Times) it uses from the right hand page of Classical Look from Imagine also next months Create & Take.


Not only is the paper pack the same for both of these - I just noticed I random stamped the sweet leaf cardstock with the Star Struck stamp set in both too!

A different kind of art......

take a look at this
I think the toilet seat portrait gives you a BIG clue as to the perpertrator - and believe me this is NOT all of the damage either.
It's taken me two days to find the Red Permanent Marker that created this artwork and roughly two days for the perp and the rest of his family to clean it up. Thank goodness for Magic Erasers is all I can say!

I have been very busy not cleaning - creating my own kind of art - just haven't gotten around to taking pic's and posting. The day will come.

Cards for February

These easy to make criss cross cards have a love & romance theme running throught them - a valentine, an anniversary card, an appreciaiton card for a friend.
These simple, non fussy cards were a big hit last night. Everyone went home with some great cards to add to their collection.

All the cards have a coloured random stamped background when you remove the insert.

All materials used were from Close To My Heart. Colours are Black & Cranberry, Blush, Bamboo and Twilight. The paper is from Serendipity. Stamp sets are Soul Mates, Make It Count, Friendship Word Puzzle & February Word Puzzle.

Creative somethings!

Last nights project a mini scrapbook page - perfect for a valentines picture!

An all CTMH product production!! Textured Cardstock in Barn Red, Silhouette Paper, Soul Mates Word Puzzle stamp set Red Sparkles and ribbon and a large black MyAccessoires concho. The black heart & words are heat embossed (yep even CTMH black embossing powder!)Red heart is stamped on the reverse side of the Barn Red textured cardstock.

A couple more Spencer pages finished.

Hard to believe these pictures are nearly three years old already. Taken during our first Spring & Summer here in Canada!

Creative Mess!

I've been sick the last few days...some bug I caught from my little guy. Even the box of goodies that arrived from CZ wasn't enough to inspire me (away from the sick sofa where Spencer & I have been watching back to back movies!)

In between movies and naps I read and read the read some more Photo Freedom the new Stacy Julian book - I am inspired, filled with creative passion ready to go tackle my own personal journal to a Library of Memories.

I also read Cathy Zielske's Clean & Simple part 2 - love it. I love her slice of life style of scrapbooking. This is where I want to go.

Late this afternoon, filled with a good dose of Motrin I managed to make it down the 5 stairs to my basement scraproom. I was met by this mess:
Lets take a closer look at that shall we?









How can anyONE make that much mess....when they haven't been in the room for like 5 days?!
I am a messy scrapper, that much is true. When I'm in full swing I just pull stuff out and pile it on top of ...the pile. Very rarely do I clean up when I'm finished. I'm a clean up before I begin again kind of girl.

This particular pile is also overloaded by that bumper pile of goodies from my winnings as well as a rather substantial delivery of CTMH products too.

All the new arrivals just got carted downstairs and dumped right in the first available spot.
I haven't sniffed a brand new acrylic stamp set, opened a new package of patterned paper and re-stacked it (have to do this, always!) or even tried out that new Versamat.

Lots to catch up on then..............

Get a load of this....

Look what I got today! WOW.
Yep my prize WINNINGS from last week. What a great stash. Did I tell you Cathy (yeah, like BFF!!) also put a copy of her own book in there too? She signed it....











ok, I admit, I asked her to!
I was not expecting this huge pile of goodies - but I sure will enjoy them...(might just have to display them at look at them for a while).

Most importantly the main prize was this.
The new, long awaited book from Stacy Julian. Can't wait to get started & implementing the LOM into my scrapbooking life!

A little something.....

I needed to create somehting quick to go in the mail with a package - so I came up with this. I put some Colonial White cardstock on the back for my message. I think this has to go down as being the fastest thing I've ever created - from no inspiration to finished in about 20 minutes flat!

Sweet Leaf and Blush textured cardstocks, Just blooms Big Pinks, Sweet Leaf Sassy Strand and a Bubblegum (coloured not flavoured) button.

Looking at it now I guess I could have pulled the sassy strand down a bit to the bottom left corner...too late now!

It's me!

Go HERE . The crazy, lucky person who won that book ....is ME!
How much of a silly happy dance am I doing right now?!
Thank you Cathy Z for having this book up for grabs...and for making me the WINNER!
I've just sent her a gushy email thanking her and probably saying far too much - but hey - it's not every day you're a WINNER!
Not only am I getting a copy of Stacy's new book - but also some scrapbook goodies too! I'm the WINNER!
Ok, have to go calm down now..let's have a cup of tea.