Love at First Sight!

The more I play with these, the more I love them!





















Just thought I'd share that. :-}

A Scrapalicious Peek

Have you seen Basic Grey's Capella collection? It's breath-takingly beautiful, and double sided too. I'm really looking forward to creating with Capella in my next Scrapalicious DT kit.It also includes some October Afternoon and a touch of Webster's Pages yumminess.

And hey - can you believe how gorgeous these Bloomers are?

The white letter stickers in this image are a bit hard to make out; they're Heidi Swapp Invisibles - ink them, paint them, they're so versatile and so much fun!

I've got a number of scrap-related things to catch up on that I've been meaning to post for a while, and I've been hoping now that school is almost out, I'll be back to a more timely posting schedule.

Thanks for checking in, and stay tuned! :-}

So Much To Do!

It seems that there is always so much to do in our household. A few weekends ago, the girls' dance recital took up the majority of a weekend. It was the first time I had to do hair and make up for one of their dance functions, and the girls were a bit apprehensive at first, but all in all I would say it went quite well.

The girls each took part in tap, jazz and ballet performances as well as the finale. They danced each number once on Saturday for the dress rehearsal. Then on Sunday they performed each dance twice, as there were two shows that day. By the end of the weekend they were exhausted and it was very quiet as they slept all the way home!

Above, Alicia is ready to go on stage for a ballet performance. At left is Vanessa at home just before we left for the first recital on Sunday morning. Listening to Evan's MP3 player has become an obsession of the girls lately!

Since this will be our first summer with a pool, all of the kids are quite excited about it. Here's Evan, up to his usual antics on the deck beside the pool. It;s still a bit cool to be in the water, but that doesn't seem to bother the kids! I have a feeling we are going to be spending a lot of time here this summer.


On the scrapbooking front, coming soon: a few more Scrapfest projects, my latest DT supplies for Scrapalicious and a peek into the Donna Downey class I took this past weekend. Thanks for checking in!

Edmonton 2010

So much happened recently that I don't even know where to start! The biggest event for us in May was a trip that Evan and I took to Edmonton to visit with family and friends for my Mom's 85th birthday. Evan felt very special traveling on his own with me and in addition to visiting, we saw a lot of the city.

Mom had a great time being the centre of attention, and after 85 years, doesn't she deserve it? She looks fantastic for 85, but then again, we think she looks as great as most at 65. Mom is in the early stages of Alzheimer's, but still, she socialized and felt special the whole time. Happy Birthday, Mom!

We didn't manage to get everyone into a photo at her lunch celebration, but at least we managed a partial group shot. All of the guests (excluding Evan) were present for her 80th birthday 5 years ago. Interestingly enough, it was the album I created for Mom's 80th that started me scrapbooking five years ago now.

Evan loved spending time with his cousins. Aeden is even more adorable than she was last year, if that's possible! (See a layout I made of her at age 1 year here). She latched onto Evan whenever he was around, and Evan thoroughly enjoyed being the older cousin to her, Jaren and Nathan. (See the boys here).

Outside of visiting family, Evan's biggest wish for our trip was to see West Edmonton Mall. We spent almost two days there, mostly in Galaxyland playing arcade games. Here we are playing 18 holes of mini golf with my friend Cathryn. Somehow, despite that I managed to get two hole-in-ones, Evan still won. :-}

We visited the house I grew up in, my childhood schools and church, and other places that I lived and worked. Here I am in front of my first apartment. It's a heritage building and is still standing despite that the surrounding buildings have been torn down and modern high-rise condos have been built.

We were lucky enough to visit Connie Nichol's home, where Evan had a blast with Ben and Marty. The boys got along like peas in a pod, so they had water fights and played while Connie and I had a lovely afternoon chat. Of course, no trip to Edmonton is complete without a stop at Treasured Memories!


In closing, here's a silly picture that, if I didn't take it myself, I wouldn't believe it. The owner of this car put an orange dot sticker in front of the zero on this plate, so that it says "Over .08"! Police must be suspicious of this driver just based on that plate! After taking this pic, I got as far away from the car as I could!

I still have projects and layouts for Scrapalicious to post, so once I'm caught up again from our trip, I'll get moving on that. Thanks for checking in!

National Scrapbook Day Fun!

How was your NSD weekend? Mine was an absolute blast! Lori, Jen and Sue came for the weekend and we chatted, scrapped and laughed into the wee hours of the morning. Sleep, as I always say, is over-rated, particularly on a scrapbook weekend, so we tried hard to keep it to a minimum.
Ann came by and joined us on Saturday too, and she definitely bumped up our productivity count my producing more layouts in a day than I did all weekend! Ann's gone digi lately, but we made her crave paper and she succumbed and created a layout using Sue's photos, since she didn't have any printed pics with her.

We really wanted Lee to join us, but she couldn't on short notice, so I'll have to plan better next time, right Lee! :-}

Slushy drinks abounded, and our Margaritaville had a good workout. Our resident bartender was relatively reserved this weekend, which we were happy with, as Stephen has been known to sneak by and refill glasses and the next thing you know, someone is dancing on the table! None of that this weekend, though!
I finished 3 pages during the crop, although I still have to journal. We took photos with each of our finished projects, so I will have more photos to post soon. You may also want to check out each of my scrapping friends blogs: Sue, Lori, Jen and Ann. Oh, and even though she didn't make it, check out Lee too.

I still have a mini-album and 2 layouts for Scrapalicious that I have to post, as well as my 3 pages from last weekend, so check back soon. See you then!

Happy National Scrapbook Day!

Can you believe it's May already? As this year flies by, I can't believe it's not still February! Do you ever feel completely behind on everything? I'm behind on mailing RAKs - they've been boxed and in my car for what seems like weeks, and I haven't been to the post office yet. I have so much to blog about, but no time to write. I'm behind on posting my Scrapfest projects, too. Here's one with lots of embellies - clear, cork, die cut and felt!
I love every single product on this page - the lace cardstock, the shimmer cardstock, the die cut title block, the butterfly wings that I trimmed in half and blinged up with rhinestones. All of this artsy.licious product is packaged at excellent prices at Scrapalicious, so if you can, get there and check it out.
As a mom, this is my first year dealing with dance costumes, putting the girls hair up in ballet buns and putting make up on them. After the time it took for me to master mascara and eyeliner on my own, putting it on a 7 year old is a whole other thing! It's such fun, though, and the girls enjoy it so much.

It's wonderful to watch them learn and grow into their own, sweet little beings. That's what this layout is all about.

Are you scrapping this NSD? I'm looking forward to spending time with Jen, Sue and Lori this weekend chatting, drinking tea with Bailey's and perhaps a few margaritas, taking photos and hopefully squeezing in a little productive scrapbooking!

Whatever you're up to this NSD, I hope it makes you smile. Wishing you peace, tons of creative energy and a wonderful National Scrapbook Day weekend!

Thoughtful People

This is my friend Jennifer of Life - Be Scrappy. We first met at a scrappy site online about five years ago, were on Just Cre8's DT together, and have cropped and road-tripped together a few times too. I was pleased when Jen recently featured my home on her blog, although a little surprised it was my powder room toilet that prompted an admiration post! :-P

Jen sat with me on Saturday night at Scrapfest, and she was bummed last week when I wrote a Scrapfest post and only mentioned the two gals I booked my crop table with. (shhh - I sort of pre-wrote part of that post before Scrapfest - sorry Jen!) Anyway, I thought I would make it up by showing off one of Jen's most stunning, prize-winning projects.

The album that Jen is holding above is one of the most stunning pieces of art that I've seen. Jen entered it in a Coca-Cola employee contest related to the Open Happiness campaign just before the Olympics and not only did she win, I'm sure she amazed the judges at how gorgeous this album is. If you haven't seen it in person, look here for some photos of it. Although you really need to see this in person (and hear the jingle playing in the background) to truly appreciate it, the photos give you an idea of the degree of detail and hours of work it took to make this album so beautiful. Jen won herself and her hubby a trip out to BC to see the Olympics, lucky gal! Well deserved.

In addition to being an incredibly talented scrapper, Jen is also so sweet and thoughtful. Jen received one of the first of the Peace canvases I gave away in my 29 Gifts project back in February, and she then dropped by my office in the middle of the afternoon with these flowers to thank me. Thanks so much, Jen!
On the topic of thoughtful people, my hubby, who you may have seen in a similar photo on a recent post, was just featured by Scrapscene. See the post here. Stephen seems a bit indifferent about his 5 minutes of fame, although I think he's pleased it was just a link and not the photo that made the news!


I have more Scrapfest projects for Scrapalicious to post later in the week, so see you then!

Denim Display Album for Scrapalicious

One of my favourite projects for the Scrapalicious booth at Scrapfest is this denim display book from Chatterbox. The album has denim covers, comes in a canvas bag, and a display stand is also available. I loved the idea of mucking up the covers with lots of paint, crackle paint and embellishments from the recent Chatterbox releases. I also used Rock Candy on the cork scallop trim at the top, which made it look a bit like worn leather.
I decided to create an engagement album for this couple that I shot engagement photos for a few years back. I left all of the journaling spots blank so that they can fill in their own sentiments and thoughts on each page. I'm not sure how soon I'll have an opportunity to give this to them, but I like it a lot and hope they will too. I thought a grungy, distressed style went well with the casual attire they wore for the shoot.
Since this album flips upward, I left most of the B sides blank, but I wanted to do something fun with them. I covered each back with alabaster artsy.licious lacquered paper, and sprayed each with a different colour of Maya Mist, then aged each page with ink and paint.
The pages are a wonderful, versatile size (approx. 5.5" square), and work really well with multiple, wallet-sized photos, a 4 x 6 photo, or a square photo. If you are local, drop by Scrapalicious and take a look. The photos really don't do this album justice. The photo at left is also one of my favourite pictures from that shoot. It was Thanksgiving Monday, the leaves had just turned beautifully, and the air was so very positive and optimistic.


You can view the album in its entirety in the slide presentation below. Click on the window to view at full size.

You can also see posts about this engagement shoot, the wedding photos I took at their beach wedding (where I was not the official wedding photographer), as well as a wedding mini-album I made for them in previous posts.

A page I made with a wedding photo was also published in Canadian Scrapbooker magazine. You can read about it here.

I'll be posting more from the Scrapalicious booth at Scrapfest soon, so check back.

artsy.licious Title Pages for Scrapalicious

I had a fantastic time at Scrapfest this year!

It was the first time I stayed overnight and cropped. I also took a class from Cathie Allen, so it was really a packed couple of days. I think Sue, Nancy and I had more fun than humanly possible! And if you are a scrapper and you haven't heard yet about my huge wipe-out during the scavenger hunt, I'd be surprised! :-) The Scrapalicious booth was hopping all weekend with great make 'n takes and these beautiful artsy.licious papers.

When I received a stunning DT kit of Chatterbox papers and embellishments, I looked at the brown, red, blue and green and realized how beautifully they would match the American Crafts albums that I just bought for my Library of Memories. I couldn't resist making my album title pages using these papers in a monochromatic way. Starting from the top, I used brown for my Things We Do album.

For each page, I selected a meaningful photo for the focal photo. On the Things page, the photo depicts my hubby and kids playing cards with my cousins' kids in our favourite Montreal hangout - Tim Horton's. The blue Places We Go page highlights places, both near and far, that are meaningful to us. The large photo is taken from Whistler mountain during an airshow. See the three planes in the upper right of the photo?! (Much easier in person!)

Our home, the place we go most often, is pictured right below the title. For the green People We Love, the photo is of Stephen's grandmother's 85th birthday, which we celebrated in our former backyard with most of Stephen's family. And the red We are Family album will house pages with photos of all 5 of us. Since I am usually behind the camera, I was surprised that I was able to find enough family of 5 photos to fill this page! :-}


The upper right photos is the first "family of 5" photo we ever took. It was taken at Easter, right after the girls were born, and is the first of hopefully very many more of all of us together.

If you didn't have a chance to get to Scrapfest, stop by Scrapalicious and see these beautiful papers. The artsy.licious line includes stunning flocked, embossed, glittered and many other beautiful papers, either individually or in multipacks.

I will have more of the Scrapfest projects I created for Scrapalicious to post soon.

RAK Haul!

For those of you still waiting for RAKs from me, here's a peek at the haul you will be sharing. Stamp sets, punches, ribbon, ink and all kinds of embellishments! I have the goodies separated and boxed and just need to get out to the post office to get them off to you. Thanks for your patience as I get everything together.

Scrapalicious sneak peeks for Scrapfest

If you're at Scrapfest this weekend, come by the Scrapalicious booth and see the beautiful artsy.licious lines from Chatterbox. These lace, embossed, flocked and glittered papers are truly gorgeous! For my denim album, I Maya Mist-ed ivory glossy embossed papers various colours and just love the result!
There are soooo many embellishments to choose from. Ranging from transparent, cork, chipboard, paper, brads, frames and mattes, felt, borders, journaling boxes, titles - you name it, it's available from Chatterbox. I love the butterfly wings I created for my daughters here by halving a butterfly.
Chatterbox's mini-albums come in a variety of colours and have embossed pages to match the cover. I had a ton of fun creating an album of our top ten favourite photos. It was a quick and easy album to make, as the embossed pages look decorative all on their own. This would make an awesome grandparent's brag book!
Scrapalicious is also featuring beautiful textured papers by Shizen Designs. The green floral paper here is truly beautiful. I want more of it so I can get into some hand-cutting! :-} The couple in the photo released butterflies at their wedding, so I thought the butterfly embellies worked well.

All together, I created two mini-albums, 7 pages and a canvas for Scrapfest, and I'll post them all sometime soon. I still have a few more pages roughed out that I'm hoping to finish at the crop this weekend.

If you're heading to Scrapfest, I hope we'll have a chance to visit. Either way, have a great weekend and I hope you manage to fit in some scrapping! Cheers!

LOM Category Drawers and More!

Whew! So much to say, so little time!

This is always such a busy time of year for our family. The school routine and activities keep us hopping all week, weekends have been beautiful for getting outside, at the office we're non-stop right now - and I'm up late packing for Scrapfest this weekend (yahoo!) and getting RAKs ready to be mailed.

In the midst of everything, I've been managing to stay reasonably caught up (believe it or not!) in my LOM class. I found awesome 6-up albums at Wal-Mart for my Storage Binders, and the above photo is a peek at my category drawers. These drawer units were a cast off after many years of use at the office, and since they are index card sized, they're perfect for storing 4 x 6 photos. I just covered the well-worn fronts with patterned paper. The drawer in the photo is my Us/People drawer. Since I only have 2 drawers, I've put Us/People together and Places/Things together. I feel so organized! :-}

I've been taking quite a few Project 365 photos - maybe not one every day, but at least 7 every week - however they are not even uploaded from my camera yet. I'm hoping I'll have a chance to post some soon. I found another sweet photo connection to an old photo of the girls, so I'm hoping to get that posted next. I also got a lovely shot of all 3 kids on Easter Sunday at their Grandma and Grandpa's.

I've been so busy, I've barely had time to be excited about Scrapfest! I'm really looking forward to seeing so many of my scrapping friends there. If you're going, drop me a line and we'll try to meet up. I'll be cropping with Sue and Nancy, and hopefully being reasonably productive, and not just socializing, right Sue? :-} I'm also in Cathie Allen's Faux Leather Album class on Saturday afternoon, so if you are too, let me know. It's such a beautiful project. You can join me, Janice, Patti and Elia in having the rowdiest table! :-}

I'm also planning a quick trip to Edmonton for my Mom's 85th birthday (85 - can you believe it!) in mid-May. So Edmonton friends, touch base and we'll make the most of my short visit. Of course, a trip to Treasured Memories (if you want to meet me there, let me know!), a meal at Earls and a visit to my beloved Olive Garden (non-existent out here) are definitely in the plans!

I'll be checking in again once Scrapfest is over. I can start posting the projects I've been keeping under wraps until the show. I can't wait! Stay tuned. :-}

To Clip or not To Clip?

If you're wondering whether a Clip It Up is a great purchase, my answer is a resounding "yes"! My sweet hubby bought mine at Scrapalicious for my birthday in 2008. I'll admit, I couldn't find the right spot to put it in our former house, but since I didn't have a dedicated scrapbook room then, getting it up and running was harder. Now almost all of my alphas are stored on it. It's so easy to spin it and locate my beloved Thickers or Heidi Swapp chipboard alphas or MM tiny type (yes, I have a few of each of those)! It holds so much product, and I love seeing what I have at a glance. It makes me feel so organized, and it fits so perfectly on an art cart that I made in college.

On the topic of clips, I had a little clip done to my hair now that the warmer weather is here. My shorter do is so much fun, easy to care for and dries so much more quickly. Time is such a rare commodity at our house, I have to save every minute that I can. Like it?


For those of you waiting for RAKs from me, I sorted all of the goodies this weekend and will be getting boxes into the mail for you this week. If I'll be seeing you shortly at Scrapfest, and you're willing to wait, please let me know and we can hook up there, rather than worrying about shipping.

Speaking of Scrapfest, I'm so excited to be attending the crop there for the first time. I've attended in past years, but this is the first time I'll be staying overnight and cropping there. I'll be with Sue and looking forward to meeting Nancy too. If I haven't been posting layouts lately, it's because I'm a busy bee at home working on Scrapalicious projects for Scrapfest that I can't reveal until that weekend. So yes, I'm still scrapping. I'll have new projects to add to my blog coming up soon.

Peace in my Scrapbook Room

I love altering clocks! My latest project is this clock for my scrapbook room. In keeping with my OLW for 2010, peace, I wanted peace to be the theme for this clock. When I saw this clock in the store, I loved that I could alter both the inside and the outside of it. I can't wait to see it hanging in my scraproom.

The sentiment says "grow in peace and love". I absolutely adore BG's Wilma chipboard alphas, don't you?

When I was designing for Just Cre8 before the kit club folded, I wrote an Altered Clock tutorial for their blog. Unfortunately those links don't work anymore, so perhaps when I get a chance I will re-post the instructions in a future blog post. Altering a clock is so much fun, and they make such memorable, personal gifts.

You can see some of my previous clock projects here, here and here.

The draw date has come and going for this RAK, and since I haven't had a moment to spare to draw a winner, I'm going to send something out to each of you! Please be patient with me, though; your goodies will be in the mail sometime soon!

LOM Clipboard

I'm still caught up in my LOM class, believe it or not! Here's my clipboard, which - OK, I'll admit it - I received when I first took this class in 2007, finally done! Back then, I chose the papers to use for this project, and I still love them! I also used them a while ago in this layout of my Grannie, which I cherish so very much.
The papers are from a Wild Asparagus release by My Mind's Eye. I used Thickers for the title, and lots of Tim Holtz crackle paint on the clip. Now that it's finally finished, (you can see my hubby re-attaching the clip here)
:-P I'm so happy with it. Now it's time to get some pages scrapped!

Wrapping Up Round One

I had a wonderful month of giving away 29 gifts in 29 days. So many members of 29gifts.org say that after a first round, they are so fired up that they start Round Two immediately. Whew! I'm too busy scrambling to get caught up now to try that right away, but I do know I'll be doing it again sometime!

Thanks so much to all of you who sent notes of thanks, e-mails, PMs, and even flowers! I appreciate it so much, but additionally, I appreciated the chance to brighten your day just a little, and to share my OLW for 2010, peace.

The papers I used for this project were oldies but goodies from 2004. Sue answered correctly that the manufacturer was Creative Memories, but no one knew that the Pink Passion paper collection was from their Jumpstart January product line. It's sweet, isn't it?

Since Sue was first to come up with the paper's maker, I have an extra RAK for her, but guess what? Everyone wins! I have a little something going out to each of you who posted a comment on this post before March 5th. Congrats to all! I hope to have your RAKs in the mail later this week (but please be patient with me; I'm a bit behind right now!)

Giving 29 Gifts in 29 Days is a concept that anyone can undertake at any time. For more information, I encourage you to visit 29gifts.org.

Another Year...

. . . and another RAK!

Not only did our girls' 7th birthday just fly by, but my blog turned 3 years old yesterday too. Wasn't that fast? Plus my blog just passed its 15,000th view! Wow, thanks so much to all of you for spending time here. I appreciate it so much! Since I'm late in having RAKs for each of those events, how about I just give out one big one?

Remember this post when I mentioned that after sorting all of my scrap supplies, I wanted to give some stuff away? Well, the time has come! Tell me what scrap supply you originally thought wasn't all that interesting, and now you can't live without it. Maybe you thought glimmer mists were passé, but now you don't make a layout without them? Or perhaps you didn't see yourself using bling, but now you love it! Leave a comment by March 14th, and I'll include your name in a draw for a kit of scrappy goodies I've put together.

Better yet, become a follower of my blog, and I'll throw in an extra entry! :-}

Oh, and I haven't forgotten this RAK! Details are coming soon. Have a great week!

Photo Connections

I'm so happy with my progress to date in the Library of Memories class I'm taking with Stacy Julian. I've never really felt tied to chronological scrapping, so I'm already on board there. Stacey's photo triage process, though, has really helped me to get (most of) my photos from a mess to organized!!
All the photos that friends and family took at our wedding. Sorted. Those Sears portraits and kids' school pictures. Filed. Most of our digital files, too. I still have old prints to sort, but the latest 5 years are done! I'll get photos of my system up soon, (once I've had a chance to take some!)
Here's a really simple example of a photo connection I found while filing photos. When Evan made his Swiss Chalet for Social Studies at age 6, the girls were only 3 years old. We were in our previous house (and yes, I actually miss that wallpaper!) See how young Evan looks? Now the girls are in grade 1.

They're at a different school than Evan was for grade 1, and we live in a different house, but they are studying the same curriculum, learning about the foundation of our community (ironically, it seems to include many fast food restaurants!) They're studying in French, just like Evan did. I realize how much alike they are in appearance, although Vanessa is miles ahead of both her siblings when it comes to missing teeth for her age!

This connection is so much fun, and I am looking forward to creating a layout about all three of our kids and their collective experience with this project, which they all loved doing. I've seen much more complex connections too, including ones that link my kids' childhood experiences to my own. Places - for example my aunt and uncles' homes in Montreal. Activities - like camping. Music. Outdoor play. So much more. It makes scrapbooking so much fun.

I'm still planning to do annual chronological highlights albums about our household each year. But other than that, chronology definitely doesn't live in my scraproom!