Scrapping again!!

Posted on January 15, 2010 by daydesigns

Well, it’s been two weeks since I was able to reclaim the dining room as my scrapping room and I’ve scrapped a whole … wait for it … 2 layouts!!! Yikes! With an output like that I’ll probably finish Marley’s baby album by the time she retires!!! Getting back into the swing of things after the Christmas holiday hasn’t left much “play” time for me. Boo hoo! I’ve signed up for an all day crop in February so hopefully I can get caught up then. Or by then … or something!!

Anyway, without further ado, here are my two new LO’s. My Aunt had included a photo collage with her Christmas letter this year and it gave me the inspiration to play with the collage function in Picasa. I created a bunch of collages which I hope to scrap soon – these are the first 2. This December (2009) we had lovely cold temperatures with gorgeous sunshine but no snow. I wasn’t complaining but the girls were! December of 2008 we had record snowfalls around here and there were quite a few tears this year that they couldn’t go tobogganing over the holiday. Mostly on Marley’s part! I created one collage of Paige playing in the backyard and another of Marley making snow angels in the backyard and scrapped them both.

Here’s Paige – the photo of her asleep in her car seat was to remember how she was when we went tobogganing! NOT in love with the cold, deep snow at all!!!

 Here are some close ups of the details:

I found this pom-pom ribbon and applied some of it along a narrow blue ribbon at the botttom of the LO and cut off the individual pom-poms and glued them onto the tree. I like how it turned out. Gives it some great texture! Below is the collage of Paige.

And here is the LO of Marley’s Snow Angels. The pink polka dot paper is from a pack I won in a RAK from Deanne (thanks!!) which is not wintery or Christmassy at all but worked for this LO really well.  The snowflakes are acrylic ones from MAMBI that I thought were stickers but weren’t so now I’m just hoping and praying that the glue holds. I’ve already had to re-glue a few so …. fingers crossed they stick this time!
Some of the details:

And the collage of Marley …

Well, there you go.
Today I am thankful for …
… my Wii Fit and time to use it …
… a nice warm dry van to take Marley to school in (even though it’s only a few blocks away) when the winds blow and the rains pound down!…
… McDonald’s drive thru (because I didn’t feel like making lunch today).

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Card Packets

Posted on December 25, 2009 by daydesigns
Alright, as promised a LOOONG time ago, here are pics of the little project I did for my two Aunties. They are little packets containing 6 cards.
Cute, no?
I was trying to think of what to get for my Aunts and came across a picture in a scrapping mag of a package of homemade cards. Now, I have been trying to stay away from card making to focus on getting my girls baby albums done but I know my Aunts like to write and send cards so I took the plunge! It was fun and I can see myself doing more cards in the future but I will still focus on the layouts for now.
I took a piece of plain cardstock, figured out the dimensions, made the neccessary folds and then adhered a piece of (cut to size) patterned paper to it. the pictures don’t show it very well, but the inside folded over flap has also been attacked with a border punch. the edges were kind of raw looking so I got some coordinating grosgrain ribbon (at my new favourite scrapbook store in Surrey – Scrapbook City!!) and glued it around the edges. I also glued it around the middle to create the closure.
The pictures above and below show the cards that I included inside. They literally took me minutes to do! I have so many scraps of paper leftover from my Honeymoon Album and the few pages I’ve managed to do for Marley’s album that this seemed like the perfect project to use some of them up. I’m usually not very good at abstract designs – I LOVE order and symmetry!! – but I think I managed to be a bit “free” with a few of the cards.
Well, there you go. My first foray into card making. I’m pretty happy with the results. My friend Sandra (Stamper on the Shore) gave me a little pack of cards she made as a hostess gift last night and they are AWESOME! And in their own little gift bag thing. SO very cute. Make my little effort pale in comparison but it also gives me something to strive for!
Thanks for looking. Hope you’re all having a very good Christmas!!
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Miss my posts!

Posted on December 11, 2009 by daydesigns

I have been insanely busy this week and really miss posting my thoughts. It’s cathartic somehow! We are throwing our 3rd Annual Christmas Open House here tomorrow and I’ve been in panic mode all week trying to get the house cleaned, decluttered and decorated in time. Right now I’m totally procrastinating!! I’ve got a load of LC’s laundry sitting next to me waiting to be folded, a load of the girls laundry waiting to be unloaded from the dryer and a load of our laundry wating to go INTO the dryer. Plus about 3 loads waiting their turn on the floor of the laundry room to be cleaned. Sigh. When will someone invent self-cleaning, self-ironing, self-folding clothes?!

So what’s been happening lately …
The girls have been loving the Advent Calendar and I think have got over their disappointment that every day’s box doesn’t contain chocolates. We’ve done some fun things like make shortbread …

… make sugar cookies …

(as you can see, the Quality Assurance Test was a success!)

… and make a sign for the back of the calendar.

I decided to put the girls’ hand prints onto the back to commemorate them as they are now so years from now we’ll remember just how little they once were. Sometimes that’s hard to remember, especially when I have to buy them new winter boots and they look so BIG!! I swear, Marley’s looked big enough to fit me!!! Sigh.

As much as I want time to speed up so they can be more independent (and less reliant on me for every little thing!) it really sucks that time goes by so fast. Just yesterday Marley was starting preschool and now Paige is earing those clothes!! LC is crawling! Yup, you heard it here first. She started truly crawling yesterday. Our life as we knew it is over!!!

Well, I must stop procrastinating and get back to work. Enjoy the photos. I’ve had to dismantle my scrap room and turn it back into it’s original purpose – ie. the dining room! – for the party so there will be no scrapping posts from me for awhile. Bummer. I miss my paper already!! I’ve really got to find a better place to set up. Maybe my bedroom?

Well, when I started this post it was around 2:00 in the afternoon … it’s now 10:30PM. I’ve folded laundry, cleaned, decorated, fed children, wrapped presents, and had an enjoyable evening at my brothers. I’m wiped so I’m heading to bed as soon as I hit “Publish Post”. I got to give one of my Aunts her Christmas gift tonight and I did remember to take pictures of it beforehand to post later. She is heading to Glasgow tomorrow to spend Christmas with my other Aunt so I will not post the pics until after Christmas. Just in case she reads this! Wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise!! My Aunt really liked the gift and my sister-in-law couldn’t believe I made it so I think it’s pretty good! Kind of funny, ‘cus it took me no time at all to do! Lol!!

Today I am thankful for …
… girls who realize that a heartfelt apology goes much farther than a pouting fit …
… baby smiles …
… family.

Good night all!

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The Advent Calendar … finally!

Posted on December 1, 2009 by daydesigns
As promised, here are pics of the Advent calendar I’ve been working hard on for the past couple weeks. It didn’t start off as a Challenge entry but BASB is having a challenge that fits it so I’m going to enter it.
What the heck, eh?!
 Marley and Paige watched the creation of the boxes but I hid everything away once I was ready to add the numbers and the embellishments. It was driving them crazy wondering what I was making but the reaction this morning was worth it. They love it! I think it turned out pretty well too. There are still some kinks to work out and I’m sure over the years (because I do plan to use it FOREVER!!) I’ll be fixing it and tweeking it as needed.

Here are close ups of the drawer embellishments. I managed to find a pack of Christmas paper so big that each drawer has a unique paper pattern. No repeats! Some of the “handles” are hotglued on (they are all buttons on top of buttons) and some are glued on with big fat glue dots. We’ll see which method survives the longest!!

And here are a couple close ups of the contents. Not all have chocolate in them because I wanted this to be about more than just a candy grab for the girls. So below is a drawer that has letter shaped postits (P for Paige and M for Marley!)
And finally, here are some pictures of Marley opening the first drawer and the calendar in situ beside the other two cheapo calendars that Greg bought before I had a chance to tell him about my project plans. The girls are going to be flying high every day this month!! Sigh!
PS – I just have to add that today I am VERY thankful for sunshine! November here was pretty dreary and rainy but December is starting off with sunshine and crispness and I love it! I got to walk not only Marley to kindergarten but Paige to preschool too. So very thankful!

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Day 7 and new challenge entry … finally!

Posted on November 22, 2009 by daydesigns

I finished the page below in about 15 minutes! It was magical how it all came together really.

This is for the weekly Trifecta challenge over at Design Dollies. This week the challenges were to use the colours red and grey, 7 – 10 flowers and their sketch. I had come across this picture of Greg and I the other day when I was searching for something completely different – isn’t that always the way! It was taken at Lynn Canyon in North Vancouver by my cousin Crawford when he visited back in 2005. I originally thought it was pre-Marley but Greg reminded me how we were all worried about Marley and our nephew Matthew getting too close to the water. Anyway, as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to scrap a layout but originally I thought I’d use blue to pick up on the blue shirts. Then I put it on a piece of red cardstock and loved how it looked so … the rest is history as they say. It really just was magical and I’m totally happy with the result!! Hope you like it too.

Here are some closeups of the details:

I also got a start on my advent calendar … it is proving a bit more challenging than I had thought but I will keep plugging away at it and post pics as soon as it’s done.
Today I am thankful for …
… late night chats with my husband …
… little girls that are now big girls – Paige spent her first night without a Pullup and was completely dry! Yay!!
… coffee (LC was up a LOT last night!!)
Have a wonderful Sunday everyone!
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More pages for Marley’s Scrapbook

Posted on November 14, 2009 by daydesigns
I managed to get the next two pages of Marley’s Scrapbook done this morning. I’ve been having printing headaches which have held up the process. It may just be time to invest in a photo printer! Now I can see that the photo paper I’ve bought doesn’t photograph very well. Hmm … live and learn!
As the title indicates, these are pictures of all the people to came to visit us in the hospital after Marley was born. She was the first grandchild on Greg’s side (4th on my side!) and I was the first out of my university friends to have a baby so Marley got lots of visitors! She’s still one of the “popular girls”!!
To see close up s of some of the details, check out my Picasa Web album here.
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Marley’s Baby Scrapbook

Posted on November 8, 2009 by daydesigns

I’ve just started scrapping an album for Marley and given that it can take me a week to do one page, it could take me a heck of a long time to document her 5 (almost 6) years of life!! Here’s hoping I get it done to my satisfaction in a timely manner. We need our dining room table occasionally!!

This first page was started as a challenge entry but life got in the way of the challenge deadline so …. the important thing is that the page got finished. One down ….

The challenge was the Striped Challenge at Design Dollies. Marley picked out the main striped paper and once she did, the idea of entering the challenge and then the rest of the striped paper and other stripey elements just sort of fell into place. The layout actually came together quite quickly but … well, life is crazy and sometimes deadlines become a little “soft”. 🙂
Here are a couple of close ups of the details.
 
The next two pages took me some time to finish. Here they are:

Sorry about all the carpet in the shots. I had it all cropped in Picasa but for some reason the crop didn’t translate when I imported it into my Blog. Hmmm … blogging stuff to learn I guess.

So I had the base laid out and knew which pictures I wanted to include (I’d worked it out during one of the more boring sections of my construction detailing class at BCIT!!!) but while the layout of some of them came easy, the littler ones had me stumped for awhile. My printer screwed up so not all of them had a white border that I could easily use to mount them. I could have reprinted them but I’d already fought several times with my printer so … I finally got the idea of mounting some onto a bit of brown cardstock which had the added bonus of tying the two pages together more. Then the journalling and the embellishments had me stratching my head again. I’m still getting the hang of journalling. I could say so much! How to condense it onto little bits of paper is my problem!! Also, what do I really want to be recorded for all eternity?! Hopefully when Marley looks at this 20+ years from now my scribbles make sense!!

Here are some close ups of the journalling and embellishments:

I have to give a big shout out to my friend Sandra (Stamper on the ‘Shore) for the butterflies. I won those in her Blog Candy contest a little while ago and they are awesome! Thanks Sandra!! Marley also loved picking out which ones went onto this layout. (BTW Sandra’s having another Blog Candy giveaway which you should check out here.)
Well, that’s all I have done so far. As I get more pages completed I’ll post them. Shall we start a pool on when the whole album will be finished? 2015?! LOL!
Posted in challenges, layout, Marley's Baby scrapbook, Scrapbook | 4 Comments