I've been scrappin...

I had a happy Sunday, doin' some scrappin' just for me! Feels like ages since I last did that. I LOVE Vicki Boutin - everypage she does inspires me - some I love so much I have to just scraplift entirely.
Like this page - Vicki's original is in the current issue of Scrapbooks etc



This one just happened and came together so quickly (a feat in itself for me!!) It's the first time I've used this paper pack the colours work so well with the photographs - I can't stop looking at it.



Here's a card I made the other day - a basic stick the papers down, a bit of stamping & it's done, kind of card. No techniques to report. So simple and quick to put together. Haven't done one of those in a while either!













Then there was just one more tri-fold card - my friends daugther is just as horse mad as my own Grade 5 girl.

















Only just remembered to take these pictures before sealing it in an envelope.

Butterfly Tri Fold Card

I don't like to start each every post with "it's been a while" - you know how it is - life gets busy and you just have to do what you can to make it through. It would probably help if I was a little more organised - but I find that it's easier for me to do what needs to be done on the day it's due!
Now the art class has finished for the season that's one less thing to do (& note to self for next term - spend the summer working on the projects!)

I'm still loving my Library of Memories class. I posted the KAGS title page to the class gallery and was so happy when I sw that Stacy Julian herself had posted a comment on it! (picture me doing my happy dance!)

Here's another version of the tri-fold card. I love how pretty this one is.



I've made so many of these and supervised the making of many more - I still think it's a real simple card to make and the possibilities are endless!





















I'll be in trouble though - this one should have been in the mail a while ago!

(Photo) Freedom

Still working my way through my Library of Memories class - but man am I enjoying it. This is the greatest evidence so far.
My photos are sorted, they are slowly being tri-aged into the category drawers and I was able to pull together the pictures I needed for the title page to my "All About Us" album very quickly.
Getting the job done is now becoming far more important than agonizing for hours over just one page.
This little baby came together in just over an hour - like a breath of fresh air.
I'm finding my Photo Freedom.

New storage.

I got this Making Memories Embellishment Centre from Michaels the other day. With a 50% off coupon and $$$ in gift cards it was time to buy this cubby - for small change!

Still playing with it, moving stuff around - and of course it prompted a bit of a spring clean too.

I was surfing over at Jennifer Johner's blog the other day - snooping through her studio pictures and loved how she had this big wire basket filled with ribbon so I copied........ - love these wire baskets from Superstore - I also use them to store all my CTMH Acrylic Stamps.

Sneak Peak

One of the cards for the April card clubbers.
That's all you're getting for now. Not even an inside shot!

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.