Too many curvas

One of the challenges for this month's power crop over at Skrap 'n Chat was to scrap about a "Royal Pain", anything that didn't work out the way you thought it would, something that causes you some physical pain or just a mishap.  I decided to scrap about our drive up to the ski resort, Farellones, in Chile.  It was so pretty but there were so many sharp curves that I was feeling dizzy for most of the trip.  Ugh, the beginning of my lovely motion sickness (though I've never been sick, just really not feeling well).

I used the kit "Jazzy Jeans" for this layout.  Though, looking at it now, I think there are some changes I'll be making.  It seems like I've not been super happy with the last couple of layouts I've done - I wonder why.  Hmmm...

Sketch It to Me Blog Hop coming up

I'm going to be participating in another blog hop organized by my friend, Amanda.  It will be happening at the beginning of June.  This time we've all been given the same sketch and we're going to be making two different projects based off that same sketch.  It'll be fun to see what everyone comes up with.  Hope you'll join us and play along!

Home

At both Skrap 'n Chat and Club CK, there's a challenge this week to scrapbook about your house.  Since it is at both places at the same time, I decided I needed to do the challenge.  So, here's my layout about our house in Kingston.

I used a Sketchy Thursdays sketch (for Scrapbook Circle) and Eva Kipler and Melissa Bennett's kit "Crazy Good"  and Libby Weifenbach's "Flower Templates" from Sweet Shoppe Designs.  Here's the sketch:

I'm not 100% convinced that I like the papers I used for it.  I'm going to sit on it for another couple days and see if it grows on me.  If not, I'll be using a different kit.  That's one of the beauties of digital scrapping - you can always change it if you don't like it!  

I redid it this morning and I think I like it better.  I don't know - what do you think?

Sundaes

After school today, we went over to one of K's friend's houses for a celebratory surprise for the ballet exam today.  Their mommy had gotten all the goodies to make ice cream sundaes, which neither of our kids had ever tried.  Well, it was a huge hit!  Both A and K were entranced by all the cool stuff that they were able to put on their ice cream and loved it!

Guess what will be the topic of a layout in the near future?  :D

Catching up

I've been MIA from here for a few days, not because I haven't been scrapping but because I haven't finished up a project!  lol

On Saturday, I celebrated (inter)National Scrapbooking Day with some new scrappy friends here in Jamaica.  I met Diana through Ella since she is an Ella Friend and this was the first time we actually scrapbooked together.  She has some friends that she scrapbooks with and after I suggested we do something for iNSD, a fantastic scrappy day came into being.  It was such a fun day spent with friendly and creative ladies and I had a great time.  I certainly hope we can do it again.  :)

Over the weekend, I took advantage of some of the iNSD sales for my digi scrapbooking.  Persnickety Prints was having a 25% off sale on 8x8, 8.5x11 and 12x12 prints so I took advantage of it by finally printing off my December Daily album and my Thankful album from last year.  I also bought a ton of print credits, which allowed me to get the sale prices and I can print off my pages once I have them all uploaded.  Awesome!!  I have to say that I am so very pleased with PP's customer service - Chari is always right there to answer any questions and help you out if you have any issues.  I recommend them wholeheartedly for your printing needs, whether it's digital scrapbook pages or just your 4x6 prints.  The quality is outstanding.  If you order 100+ photos from them, it's only $0.19 a print and you get professional quality print and very fast shipping.  I ordered my prints on Sunday, around 11:00 and by 2:00 that afternoon, they were shipped!

I also found a couple digi kits that were super cute from Sweet Shoppe Designs, my absolutely favourite digi scrapping store, so I picked them up.  I also found a template for a few different styles of banners.  I already had a template for one style but now I can use all kinds - woo hoo!

And I actually have been scrapping too.  On Saturday, I did five pages for A's baby album.  However, I still need to cut the titles out and print out the journalling for those pages.  I also have been working on a special project for D for our tenth anniversary.  I can't share any of those until later once I've given it to him.

Today was a big day for our little K Bear.  She has been preparing for the last few months for her exam for the Royal Academy of Dance.  She's been practicing a lot and has done really well with remembering her dances so I'm sure she did well.  She wasn't nervous at all and came out from the exam and was happy as a lark.  She said to me, "Mommy, I tried my best for everything!"  And that's all we ask of her.  We're so very proud of her.

Sweet & Perfect

I love these pictures of A's little features when he was a newborn but I wasn't sure how I'd put them together for a layout.  Then I found this really old paper that I had bought that was perfect for it.  I wanted to keep it very simple with just a bit of colour.

I made this flourish from my Bazzill stitching template.  I just used marker for the flourish and tiny black and white/clear gems to make it pop.  I love how it turned out.

I used ribbon from DCWV's  "Old World" kit and buttons from Basic Grey's "Periphery" set.  Those are the only thing of Basic Grey that I own - gasp!  I cut the title using my Cricut and the shadow is from vellum.  I chalked the flower grey with black along the edges.

Not so happy

I had such big plans for this photo.  I love this pic of the kids and me.  It was the first and only time that they've both fallen asleep with me while reading.  I found a layout of Jennifer Larson's ("Springtime" in CK's Stamping Tips & Tricks mag from last year) that I loved and thought would suit the photo so I decided to lift it.  I love this jungle paper so I chose it as the paper mat and took colours from it for the layout.  I wanted to do embellishment clustering like Jennifer did but what I had for embellies didn't work for me. So, I decided to cut out different critters from my Create A Critter cart.  This layout took me a really long time to finish and though I like it all right, I don't love it and I really wish I did.  I know you can't love 'em all but I really wanted something special for this picture.  Oh well, what to do?

Paradise

I did this layout for a challenge over at Skrap 'n Chat.  Karen asked us to take a photo and have both a colour and black and white copy of it.  You cut out the subject from the colour photo and then put it on top of the b&w copy.  I did it digitally so I made sure to have a big shadow on it.  If you do it traditionally, use pop dots or foam to adhere it to the b&w photo to give it dimension.  I absolutely love the effect and will be using it more often.  So very cool!

I used Katie Pertiet's "Alandia Tropics"digi kit.  I have gotten so much use out of that kit already and have hardly started scrapping our beach pics.

Making Your Own Stickpins

Since these are such the trend these days, I thought this tutorial that I found would be of interest to some of you.  I love this blog - she has such great ideas!

Here's the tutorial:  click here

4-Year-Old Princess

Last night, I did a Fast Scrap for Skrap 'n Chat's first day of their month-long crop.  We had an hour to scrap a layout with some kind of royal theme and include something fancy.  I had bought this digi kit from Julie Billingsley ("Storybook Princess") a while ago but hadn't used it yet.  So, this was the perfect time to break it open!

We don't refer to K as a princess much at all because we're just not much of a princess kind of family here.  However, since I wanted to scrap these birthday pictures of her, I thought it fit well.  I got this done in just under the hour and while I'm fairly happy with it, I feel there's something missing.  I'm going to go back and play a bit.  I feel there needs to be a little something else with the princess and the coach and something on the RH side, near the title.  I also think I need to move the journal block over a bit.  I know the point is to do it and be happy with it but this is only my second fast scrap and I'm a really slow scrapper.  The little details take me a long time.  

Online Crop All Month Long

Over at Skrap 'n Chat, the design team is hosting a whole month of online cropping fun!  Yep, starting today in honour of the Royal Wedding, there are going to be challenges, fast scraps and all kinds of fun happening.  Tonight starts is off with a Fast Skrap at 6 pm EST.  If you're interested in having fun with us, come on over.  You have to register and get approved and then you're in with us.  I'm so excited and can't wait!

First Hike and Sweethearts

These layouts have been sitting on my desk waiting for me to get the Cricut out to finish them up!

This first layout is for a challenge over at Skrap 'n Chat.  We needed to scrap about the outdoors and use at least one cute critter on the layout.  This was A's first hike, when we went to Las Siete Tazas with Kristin and Dean.  It was an absolutely gorgeous hike so it was easy to choose which pics to use.

You see that little squirrel, leaves and the acorns?  Those are from my stash from way, way back.  I got those years ago from Creative Memories in an outdoors sticker pack.  Wow, I can't believe I actually used something from that long ago.  But it was just right for this layout.  I just stuck them on black cardstock and fussy cut around them.    The tree is from the Create a Critter cart and I cut the title using SCAL.

The idea for the pleated and then stitched ribbon came from a layout I saw in the gallery at Club CK.  I loved how it looked so I had to lift that idea.  Thank you to SierraScrapper27 and her layout called "Birthday Reunion page 2".

This layout was so fun to do.  This is one of my favourite pics of A and K so I knew I wanted a special page for it.  I pulled the colours from the pic and went from there.  That's how I choose most of the colours for my layouts.  I used textured purple paper, teal glittered paper and white cardstock to mat the photo so it wasn't absorbed by the busy butterfly patterned paper.  I added the ribbon as a border.  And then I realized that I could make this layout work for another challenge over at Skrap 'n Chat, to use bling on your layout.  So, I added the flower stickers which have gems, the glittered brads and some liquid pearls on the butterflies' flight paths.  I am really happy with the final product.

I did the title using SCAL and my Cricut.  I love that program - the best thing about my Cricut.

On Top of the World

I did this layout for this week's issue challenge.  Erika challenged us to use two or more of the following elements:

Circles

Clouds

Colour Scheme:

  - green, blue, brown

  - pink, green, grey, yellow

  - light grey, dark grey, orange, blue

  - purple, peach, pink, black

  - pink, turquoise, green, red

  - aqua, turquoise, teal

Flowers

Butterflies

Banners

and one or more of the following techniques:
Stitching
Misting
Painting
Using only one border punch
Hand journalling
Hand doodling

I decided to use these pictures at Lakes Miscanti and Miniques in the Chilean Altiplano and do the colour scheme of dark grey, light grey, blue and orange.  I wanted to reflect the feeling we had when we were there so I used clouds and butterflies and that's why I chose the title I did.  I loved this rosette flower so I just had to use it.  I included a bit of stitching (underneath the picture of the kids) and I used one border punch.

I didn't have any room for a journal spot so I decided to journal along the edges of the paper.  I used a real variety of digi supplies.  The rosette is from the kit "Little Buckaroo" from Miss Mint; the scalloped border is from Julie Billingsley; the stitches are a brush from Jessica Sprague; the ribbon, the clouds and the blue paper are from "Good Night Mr. Moon" from Kristin Cronin-Barrow; and the grey papers are "Perfectly Kraft" from Jenn Barrette.  The font is "Hey Gorgeous".

More baby pages done!

I've finally gotten back into the scrapping groove after a week's hiatus.  I got January 2011 done - 15 pages of our visits with B, H, I and R and Nana and Papa.

These three layouts are for A's baby book.  I wasn't sure where to go with this one at first with the patterned paper.  However, I decided to just mat the photos and added a few little brads and left it at that.  I didn't want to overdo it.

This layout combines two challenges.  One was a sketch challenge from a Page Maps sketch.  And the other was a Mad Libs challenge, both over at Club CK.  I was given the colours of yellow, blue and black, I had to use stitching and flowers and use the word "street" on my layout.  I had these pics of a trip to the zoo that I thought would work well for the challenge.  The toughest part was trying to work the word into my title.  No matter what I thought of, I couldn't think of how to work street in.  But I used calle, the Spanish word for street, and it worked well since we were at a zoo in Chile.

The paper is much more yellow in real life, not sure why it's so washed out.  I did blue and yellow zig zag stitching near the title and at the bottom.  I chalked the flowers and edged them in black chalk.  I had blue and white glittery brads that I thought would be perfect in the bubble borders.  So, I chalked the white ones yellow and voilà!  The centres of the yellow flowers are little black gems and I used a thin black mat around the photos.  This was a super fun challenge!

I did this layout because I wanted to try out the Smooch Spritz that I won as a prize from CK back in the fall.  I really don't like the look of mist on the backgrounds so I wanted to try it out in different ways.  I misted white cardstock and used it as a mat to the focal photo and then cut my title out of it also.  I really like how that turned out but I cannot believe how much of it I used for one thing.  It's cool but I'm not yet convinced it's worth spending my scrappy money on.

To add some dimension and texture to the layout, I included orange ribbon, five small brass-coloured brads, 3 tiny buttons, a hemp photo wrap and a dark brown hemp border around the paper block and on either side of the ribbon.

Keeping track

I have never kept track of how many layouts I do before but I started this year.  At Club CK, one of my friends started a challenge in January called the Layout Lottery.  She got us to estimate how many layouts we'd do in three months and then post that number.  You have to share your layout in the gallery and on that particular thread and then keep a running total.  She totalled everyone's estimates and from there randomly chose winners based on the layout number in the thread.

To the beginning of April, I had finished 116 layouts!  Yes, that's incredible for me!  Granted, I included my monthly collages and a mini-album in there but still, that's a lot of scrapping!!  This month, I've slowed right down and have only added 14 more to the total but I'm back on track and will be posting more shortly.  I've decided to keep track here on my blog too!

So, who's with me?  It really is neat to see how many pages you actually do in a certain amount of time.  :)

Our weekend at the beach

We just got back from a fabulous few days at the beach.  For Mom's last few days here, we decided to go to Negril to chill out on the beach.  We stayed at the Westender Inn, which was outside of town but was so relaxing and just plain awesome.  The service there is second to none and we highly recommend it to anyone thinking of coming to Jamaica and not wanting the cookie-cutter all-inclusive resort experience.

There is a small, rocky beach at the Westender and right beside it is this very cool sea pool.  K loved it there!

Our first night in Negril, we had supper by the sea at our hotel.  Mom and D enjoyed lobster with garlic butter - this is the place for seafood in Jamaica!   Here's our first sunset:

The next day, we went to Cosmo's, a restaurant on the 7-Mile Beach and hung out there for the day.  The turquoise water here is just absolutely stunning.  Here are D, K and A enjoying the warm water.

The next evening, we went to the Push Cart restaurant, which is right on the sea and you get the pretty sunset over the water.  Everyone was very happy with the food, especially K with her multi-coloured  pasta.  Here's D's Conch Curry:

After we watched the sun set at Push Cart, we went back to the Westender for their Sunday night bonfire, which was fantastic!  Here's a picture of the full moon:

And D got some fantastic bonfire pictures:

 K and A dancing by the bonfire:

The next day, we took a glass-bottom boat ride out to the reef.  Here are pics of the Sargeant-Major fish when K and A were feeding them some bread crumbs.  They came up to the surface in droves!

You can head over to our family blog to see a slideshow of the whole weekend.

More First Food Layouts

After doing the layout of A's first taste of avocado last week, I just had to finish up the rest of the pictures of him eating.

This layout is actually for K's scrapbook.  She absolutely had to help feed him so we got some shots of that.  The patterned paper is from a stack (of course I can't remember which one since I separated them long ago) and the solids are from DCWV stacks.  Since the background looked a bit grungy, I sanded each of the strips of cardstock, as well as the journalling spot, and I love the look.  I used my new border punch for the big scallops - love that punch!

I was looking through the gallery at Club CK the other day.  You can do a search by number of photos and I love that!  It helps me so much to be able to look through the layouts that have the same number of pictures that I have to work with.  I found a layout that I loved and I used it as inspiration.  This is what I came up with:

These are my two favourite pictures of A when he had solids for the first time.  I just think they're too cute!  I wanted to record the details on one of the layouts and this design allowed for that.  I never write directly on my layout but I thought I'd give it a try.  I'm not sure that I like it so I still may put down a block of solid cardstock and journal on to it.

Here's my friend, Devra's, layout that I scraplifted:

I love this kit from My Mind's Eye.  It's the Abbey Road "Stomp" kit and it is just too cute!

I love all the pictures, of course, but the top left one is a favourite because I love seeing A's chubby little foot and his toes all curled up!  So, I had to direct attention to that pic.  :)

I put the small circles in the top right corner and did a tiny bit of stitching.  I wanted something there, but I wanted it to be subtle so this worked for what I wanted to accomplish.

I hadn't yet included the date on any of the layouts, so I added this little tag with the exact date A had his first solids.