Beauty and the Beast

Here's another layout I did for the Paper Secrets website. It was for the February Sketch Challenge. I got a little carried away with the black paint. I was going for a creepy vine effect, but I'm not sure it worked. Oh well. I love experimenting with paint, even when it doesn't quite work.

Here's the sketch:

And here's my LO:

Dinner at the Mandarin

We took Dad to the Mandarin when he visited in 2010. When he returned in 2011, he insisted on going again. For this layout, I tried out my new border punch. I might've gotten a little carried away with it. I also included some Chinese coins that my kids collected from the Mandarin years ago for Chinese New Year, and our fortunes.

Scrap Your Ass Off - Week 3

Here's the sketch:

And here's my layout. I used ribbon, buttons, bling (black rhinestones that didn't show up very well in the picture), photo corners, and stitching.

Wedding Day

I scrapped my parents' wedding day for the Paper Secrets vintage challenge. I know they aren't together anymore, and hope they don't mind. But I still enjoy looking back on these pictures. For the vintage requirements, I used lace, pearls, flowers, butterflies, buttons, and a timepiece.

Be Happy

Here's another beautiful picture of my niece. She's so photogenic! This is my first use of Webster's pages, I think. I love the paper, but I'm never sure what to do with it.

Cute Little Girl

I did a color challenge over at Paper Secrets that said to use black, white, red, and pink in a layout. Here's my adorable niece, Isabella. I was debating whether to make it a "pretty" layout, but in the end decided to have some fun with it.

Scrap Your Ass Off - Week 2

Here's the sketch:

And here's my layout. I scrapped this beautiful picture of my grandparents.

Scrap Your Ass Off - Week 1

I've joined the Scrap Your Ass Off challenge over at Paper Secrets. The way it works is that you complete a challenge each week to move on to the next round, and whoever is left at the end wins.

The first challenge is based on the following sketch, but I also had to use 4 of 8 products listed (I chose brads, flowers, buttons, and ribbon), and one of three techniques (I chose stamping). Here's the sketch:

And here's my take on it. I scrapped our family trip to the EX a couple years ago.

Love

These beautiful people are my in-laws, and they will have been together 50 years at the end of the year. I can only hope to be married to their amazing son for that long.

Happy

These special people make me so happy every day that they are in my life. Here's a candid moment (okay, maybe not so candid) taken on a family hike during a camping trip.

Special Moments

Some of my favorite childhood memories revolve around my Dad and I doing volksmarches in Germany. This picture was taken during one of those walks. It brings back so many memories!

Grad

Here are the official Grade 8 graduation pictures of my babies. I can't believe we're halfway through grade 9 already. They'll be driving before I know it. Yikes!

A Stitch in Time

My Dad sent me a whole bunch of retro and vintage pictures from when I was a baby, and even from when he was a baby! Perfect scrapbook material! Here's one of my sister and I when we were no more than 3 or 4 years old. I thought for sure somebody had made these overalls for us. Who on earth would BUY them? But I was wrong.

Christmas Memories

A lot happened over the holidays. Maddy attended her first Winter Semi-formal dance, we had Family Christmas at the end of November before my in-laws left for Florida, and we enjoyed a peaceful Christmas at home.

 

Every year I write a Family letter and enclosed it with the Christmas cards. I blurred it out for privacy.

Remembrance Day

Okay, I know this one's a little late. Here's my darling son all decked out in his Air Cadets uniform. Doesn't he look handsome? It was such a cold day, but he understood the importance of it and behaved accordingly, even after his limbs froze.

More Wedding Pictures

Hi folks! It's been quite awhile since I posted. I got laid off from my job in July, after 11 years with the company. I've spent every extra moment since then job hunting and taking side contracts to improve my skills and make some money. I'm pleased to say that I've finally secured employment with a great new company, and I'm beyond thrilled with the opportunity. Unfortunately, my scrapbooking has suffered these last few months, and it's been harder to jump back into it than I expected. Therefore, I'm taking it slowly and just working on photos that I want to scrap for now, rather than the challenges.

That said, here are some additions to my wedding album. The color theme of the entire album is red, white, and black, with cream, silver, and gold accents. With this first picture, I did lots of fussy cutting with the black and white flowered paper and pasted them onto the white background. I was going to raise the flowers, but the album's getting really full so it's time to do some flat layouts. :)

Hope

This LO was done for the Get Messy challenge at Crop Suey, Helen's Floral Masculine challenge at Scrapbook Challenges, The Bird is the Word Challenge that said to use "Hope" on a LO, and the Punky Scraps challenge that said to use tissue paper.

Love is Thicker than Blood

I chose this title because my son loves to remind me that his sister is only his half-sister, so he says he doesn't love her as much as he would if she were his blood. I beg to differ. I never thought I could love someone so much who wasn't blood, but I love my daughter as if I had carried her myself, and this page is a testament to that. I put a lot of love into it, and my daughter loves it too! I enclosed a personal message to her and tucked it into the envelope in the bottom left corner.

I did this LO for the Pick of the Week scraplift challenge on Scrapbook Challenges, and the July challenge at Berry71Bleu that required a pink and orange color pallette and hidden journalling.

Here's a little peek at the message I wrote for Maddy:

And here's a detail shot:

Wine Tour

I love it when Dad visits. We always do such interesting things. One of the things we did this year was a wine tour. I live in one of the best wine-producing regions in the world, yet I've never done this. I don't drink wine, but I developed a real appreciation for it on the tour, and I look forward to trying some new wines now that I understand them better.

I based this layout on a Let's Scrap sketch. Here's the sketch:

And here's my LO. I cut out pics from the brochures to use as embellishments:

Here are some close-up pictures:

ConGRADulations

Scrapbook Challenges is posting a Sketch-a-Day for July. Here's one of this week's sketches. I wanted to use slightly larger pictures, so I made it a two-pager.

Here's the sketch:

And here's my LO:

And then some close-ups: