Happy Birthday Abby

Let's Scrap Sketches challenge 7-1-15 is to use this sketch...

My daughter and I are still catching up on her 2012 album, but at last making progress! Thanks are due to Let's Scrap for all their inspirational sketches!

Sketch 7-1-15 fits in nicely with a layout of photos of my grand daughter's 9th birthday party.  I picked up the bright pink top she was wearing and carried the pink over into the layout, so it is very bright! The lemon green hopefully breaks the pink a little. All the daisy flowers are from a punch that creates a border, and these are the bits that fall out. The lemon green squares are from a die. Here theme was "Hello Kitty" but was basically only picked up in the cake decoration by her mom. Instead of making a Hello Kitty layout, I decided to go with the flower theme to match those on the cake.

I entering this layout into the current Let's Scrap Sketches challenge 7-1-15.

Lowell's 2nd Birthday layout

UPDATE: This layout made Top 3 Pick at Let's Scrap for their challenge!


Let's Scrap Sketches challenge 5-15-15 is to use this sketch...

What a gorgeous sketch, and as I have been meaning to scrapbook Lowell's 2nd birthday in January, this sketch is perfect. My daughter Natasha backed the cake for Lowell as he loves cats.

I paper-pieced the Jack-in-the-box from a template in Marina du Plessis's first book (Creative Scrapbook Piecing), as the large embellishment on the left page, and used the balloon template for the right hand page.

Here is a close up of the Jack-in-the-Box

A special guest was Great Grandma Kleintjie Janse van Rensburg, seen here with Ethan and Lowell.

 

I am entering this layout into the current Let's Scrap Sketches challenge 5-15-15.

Our 3 Angels scrapbook page

Let's Scrap Sketches challenge 3-1-15 is to use this sketch...

I have used the left page of this double sketch to catch up on some scrapbooking.

Catch up? YES. My daughter and I are sooo far behind on her annual family scrapbook albums and are only now finishing off 2011! So this layout was used to make one more page for her album showing all three of their little angels (my grandkids). The main embellishment is a little hand-cut angel, with flat pearls and punched butterflies flowing from it. The wording was cut with my Slice machine using the shadow option of the Avian card.

Off to go and get some more 2011 pages completed!

Carnival Time

Let's Scrap has moved to a blog and their new address is http://letsscrapsketches.blogspot.com

They still put out a weekly sketch challenge, and I decided to play along this week. I haven't created a scrapbook page for a while now, so today I was on leave and thought 'hey, why not?" Here is the sketch they posted, and below is my take on the sketch. The photos were taken in August at a local school fair, of my grandsons having fun on the rides.

The popcorn, man-on-stilts, and the title were all cut with my Scan 'n Cut machine. I added puff-paint to the popcorn instead of the cut-out from the design as I thought it made it look 'more real'.

Margy

My Heritage Page was featured!

What a nice surprise when I opened the latest Scrap Affairs (Issue 25) yesterday! The "Dutch Heritage" scrapbooking layout that I sent a while ago, has been featured in the Scrapper Gallery pages (pg.31)! I could not post this layout on my blog earlier, because I had entered it into their competition, and although I did not win (boohoo) I am thrilled that this page has now been printed in their mag. So at last I can show you!! All the big flowers were hand made, the windmill was cut with my Cricut and chalked up, and the clogs I drew, cut out, and coloured in with Copics! There are also 2 little messages that do not show up on the layout as they are "hidden" behind each of the main photos. If you look carefully (zoom in) you will notice a small tag to the left of my grandfather, and to the right of my grandmother. When these are pulled out and opened, each has a little hand written story about what I personally remember about them. Hopefully my descendants will enjoy this bit of information. I get such a warm fuzzy feeling when I look at this layout and it brings back wonderful memories.

heritage {{{hugs}}}

Ethan's 1st Swim!

I managed to squeeze in some time today to do 1 scrapbook page for my eldest daughter's 2010 album, and another page for my youngest daughter's album. The photo was taken in February 2012 when my youngest grandson Ethan, had his first ever swim in my portapool. I would LOVE to know what he was thinking as this was the look I was given when I took this photo of him!

I am entering this layout into the Scrap Africa 'sketch' challenge. This is the sketch that must be used and I turned it around 90 degrees. I used my SLICE machine to cut all the swirls. A pity the photo does not show up the copper coloured paper to its best, because the 'real deal' is a stunning shiny copper colour.

Rainbow challenge

My daughter and I are making up 'year' books for her family, but we are soooo far behind!  I have just made this page for the 2010 album (told you we were behind!), and just for fun I am entering it into a challenge on the  new South African scrapbooking blog called Scrap Africa. We had these photos of the kids splashing in the mud (the above-ground pool was not set up yet) in my very dry garden, but because they were such 'bland' photos I was not too sure what to do with them. Then the rainbow challenge was put out at ScrapAfrica, and after adding the rainbow (made from paper strips) with the expected pot-o-gold at the end of it, the whole page came alive. You all know this is not my normal standard of scrapbooking as this page is so simple, but yet it is still effective, and it looks great in her album! The kids loved it! (Apologies for the skew angled photo!)

Some scrapbooking pages

I actually found some time to do two layouts again. I have missed my scrapbooking, but somehow I get home after work, sit down in front of the TV with my dinner, and then 'lights out'!!! Caleb normally wakes me up by jumping onto me, and then I trundle round the house, switch off lights etc etc, and just fall into bed.  Anyway, the energy is back and here are two layouts I made for Lets Scrap competitions. The Christmas lights actually won the draw for that week (yippeee, can't wait for my prize!), and the one of my grandson has only just been entered.

This one I titled "Danville Lights" because the photos are of my daughter and her family visiting the Danville Christmas light display in 2010, in Pretoria. These lights are put up every year to raise funds for destitute families in the neighbourhood. The tree on the left was made from a template HERE, and the smaller tree was from a tutorial on Lets Scrap. I also used a sketch from Lets Scrap.

This was actually quite a fun page to make up. I used a template from Lets Scrap, and the challenge#125 requirements to 'use a song' as the title. John Lennon;s Beautiful Boy just fitted in with these photos of my grandson during his surgery to correct the protruding ears. I purposefully chose the background papers to match a clinical/medical environment with white, greens and blues.

My Moment-In-Time in Kenya

This is a LO I made for a competition at Fruitful Hands.  The competition is to purchase a kit (stunning contents!), then make up a LO with ONLY the kit items, for the theme Moments In Time. I found this a real hard challenge – being restricted to what I had in front of me, and made me really think out-of-the-box this time!!! My entry is about a visit to Kenya in 2006, and I thought the papers suited the giraffe “theme” I wanted to create. This was one of my personal “moments in time” that I will not forget. I used:

7gypsies papers – (gondola) - for the hills and giraffe, (canal) for the hills + flower, (marco) for the hills, bottom border, and flowers.

Plain cardstock – brown for background, green for photo backing, and beige for giraffe and journaling.

Celebr8 – this chipboard cutout was so perfect for the layout theme (colour and burnt edges) that I just stuck it on ‘as is’. I felt any colouring of the item would take away from it!

Buttons – used as the centres of the flowers.

String – made a bow

Lettering – never seen these before so were fun to use to create the word Kenya

Brads – placed top left of title

And last but definitely not least, my little giraffe (close-up photo below). I used the pattern on page 183 in Marina du Plessis’ first book “Creative Scrapbook Piecing”, chalked the edges, and used a white gel pen for highlights. Then I got a little stuck as I needed white and black paper for the muzzle and hooves! Light bulb moment – use the backing card for the Celebr8 piece which just happened to be black one side and white the other!

So hope you like this – I am very pleased with the end result (click on the pic for a larger view)

Clever Boy

Now that the wedding album of my SIL is completed, it's time to catch up on my daughter's 2010 year album! This 1-page layout is just of one of those FUN photos that were taken, this time of my grandson after he had made a caterpillar with a ZOOB set I bought for him. I used a LETS SCRAP sketch again for the layout. The circle background was made by photographing a few scattered ZOOB pieces on a white bedsheet. All the wording was cut with my SLICE, and the pinwheels were handmade.

Summer 1954

I love anything ‘vintage’, and as I had a shoebox full of old family photos, I thought it would be fun to make up a layout of my mom and I, on the beach in the UK in 1954! All of the albums my mom made up during that time, consisted of black paper backgrounds with writing done in white ink, and white lines drawn around the photos. So, this layout, using a sketch from Lets Scrap is meant to emulate her style.

I scanned in 4 tiny black and white photographs, converted them to 246 colour, then using Photoshop CS2 I only coloured in the costumes, to create these unusual b/w photographs. The edges were torn and the photos mounted onto black cardstock, and white gel pen lines drawn on opposite corners. After trimming, these were mounted onto larger pieces of white cardstock which had already been embossed with a Cuttlebug border (Iron Works) on one side, traced with a glue pen, glittered, then cut out. The main background paper is plain black cardstock, with rectangles cut out of Fancy Pants (Rough & Tough) and some b/w paper from my stash. The little fence was cut out of FabScraps paper with the Cuttlebug, using a die from Seart Craft (Lace#53). All the seashells and starfish were cut and embossed out of white cardstock, using a Cuttlebug die (from the sea). The raised edges were traced with a COPIC pen (E25), then the whole image was distressed with Creamy Brown pastel chalk from Color Box. The sandcastle and bucket/spade were cut with the Cuttlebug die ‘at the beach’. The title boxes were cut out of white cardstock with the Cuttlebug ‘hearts & stamps’ set, then mounted onto smooth black card, and the writing was done with the white gel pen.

I fell in love with the vintage embellishment set designed by Rosey Posey ("seashore"). The chosen images were sized to fit, printed out three times on photographic paper to give that glossy feeling, and then just simply paper-pieced to create a 3D effect. The signboard image was embellished further by adding tiny ‘real’ shells I found at my local scrapbooking store! The bunting was probably the easiest to make in the whole layout, as I drew black triangles in Powerpoint, added white text and printed them on white card. When cutting out the triangles, a tiny white border was left around each black triangle.

 

I achieved what I set out to do – to re-create my mom’s artisitc flair, yet with a modern touch. Hope you like it!

 

Horse Whisperer

This is a LO of my sister (using Lets Scrap sketch 7-13-11), and incorporating 'stitching by pen' so am entering this in 2 Lets Scrap challenges. The circle is meant to represent the ring on the bridle, hence the 'leather straps' coming off it. Close ups of the paper-pieced horse from Marina du Plessis' first book, and the journalling can again be seen below. I think if you click on the image it will enlarge a little?

The horse was made by cutting a grey background and a white foreground. I then embossed the white piece with 'Entangle", one of the new Couture Creations folders now available in South Africa. The edges were shaded with brown chalk, and eye was drawn in. The hair amd hoof highlights were drawn in with a silver gel pen.

Materials used:
Bo Bunny paper "Shappy Press", MS vine punch, silver paper, all other paper from stash, Creations Couture embossing folder, silver gel pen, brown and rust coloured chalks, and lots of patience!
Would love your comments!

Bug Congress scrap pages

I've had these photos since 2008, and never spared a thought about scrapping a layout - until this week. I have no explanation, especially as I always buy any bug related items! So, for the Lets Scrap challenge 7-6-11 this week, I made up these 2 pages. I battled at first to decide on the photos to use, but once I got going with the journalling, it all sort of fell into place, and it was good to remember the event and the many international visitors I met. The leaf border was made with a MS punch, and all the papers - including the bug strips - came out of my stash. I added confetti butterflies and some bling stickers I've had for ages. I've added close ups of the journalling.

KonTiki Raft Challenge

I have so many Girl Guide photos and it's time I put them together into a scrapbook album! Here is the first set taken at the annual Scout Kontiki Raft Challenge in 1999.  The details of the weekend can be read in the journalling, and details of some of the knots used on the raft are also shown. Hope you enjoy the story as much as we enjoyed the weekend!

Mirror, mirror

My daughter took the most amazing photo of her son, and we made up a scrapbook page last Saturday. We kept it very simple, but I think it's this simplicity that just makes the photo POP! I used black and limegreen cardstock, silver holographic wrapping paper, a corner punch, and my new SLICE machine for the lettering. And that's all! Apologies for the slight glare on the silver paper, but I was unable to find any angle without it shining!

Then and Now

The next challenge (#95) at Let's Scrap was to make a page/s showing photos form 'then' and 'now'. Aha!! I remember I had this photo of my mother as a telephonist in Den Haag in 1950, with headphones on and an enormous phone book in front of her. This is the 'then' photo. For the 'now' photo I caught my own granddaughter playing with my cellphone! And voila ... a then and now story! Such fun. I wanted to capture the essence of the heydays with pastel pink and olive green, and as my granddaughter is wearing a pink jacket, it fitted in very well with the colour scheme. Wonder where we will be technology-wise when my granddaughter has children?

Tradition scrapping

I've been doing a little scrapbooking for a change, and decided to try one of the weekly challenges at Let's Scrap. Challenge #94 was to scrap a 'tradition', and use one of the Let's Scrap sketches. This is the first time - believe it or not! - that I have used sketch for a scrapbook layout, and goodness knows why I didn't try this before! I have had a tradition since 1980 of setting up the nativity set I made, before the Christmas tree is decorated, and I have been doing this now for 31 years! In fact, the grandchildren are now setting it up around my tree. So, here's my family tradition. I used this lovely star background paper, then some super matching Christmas paper from a set I bought.