Adventures are the Best

A little while ago friend asked me to make a 'congratulations on your wedding day'-type card for an old friend of hers, after seeing some of my mixed media canvases.

I let it all out. I love giving 'enjoy your adventure'-type messages to newlyweds, much more than the regular (might I say boring?) 'congrats'.

So, on a theme - in that the creation was also an adventure - I made this:

I gotta say, I liked it so much I didn't really want to give it away. But you gotta, you know. If you don't make something you don't wanna give away it's not worth giving.

I lost count of the layers on this. I used mists, inks, paints, chalks, stamps, stencils, stickers, paper, heat embossing... it really was an adventure through my art supplies.

I liked the theme so much I continued it for a wedding we went to not long after:

I hope all the newlyweds appreciate the message.

Speaking of adventuring, we're off to Paris today to meet up with my parents and show them around this new favourite city of mine. Adventures are the best!

Wedding Scrapbooking pt. 2

Told you there'd be more :-)

And it's almost finished. Such a joy to make, I will miss it when it's completed. But that's the joy of scrapbooking - it's there to be looked at any time.

Wedding Scrapbooking pt. 1

I made a push lately to finish our wedding album - the scrapbook version. It's almost done - a year and a half later! But I realised I'd not shared a great deal of it on here.

It's really coming together.

There's more to come... soon!

Stealing Moments

That is how I am getting back into scrapping: snatching an hour here, 30 minutes there... I was getting too caught up about needing a large-ish time slot in order to get around to doing anything. 

I realise my blog posts are still sounding a bit subdued; however, the response I got from the last post, and being able to read everyone’s blogs again, has certainly put me on the path to being cheered me up.

Anyway, I stole a few moments to get a quick layout together. Using a kit from GottaCraft, a special photo from our engagement shoot, a selection of bits from Gauche Alchemy, a sprinkling of my Crate Random win, and just a smattering of paint, I created this in not much time at all:

 

And into the album it goes. 

In other, though not so different, news, it’s been a restless, uncomfortable start to the week, despite the beautiful sunshine bringing the conviction that May is finally deciding to show its face. Anyone got any tips on sort of centering oneself after what feels like a rough kind of month?

Far, Far Away

I've been away for a while... yup. Lost a lotta contact. Missed a lotta happenings. Feels like a lot longer than 3 weeks since I've blogged, but it's that. It's been a good month since I've been able to make anything, that's for sure. Something snapped, I guess. In the househunt time condensed and my craft room gathered dust. I'd like to say that in this time we've gotten ourselves a nice little property, but it's not the case. Not yet. A standard has been set, though.

I'm gonna get back on the blogging horse, and visit all of you and see what I've been missing. I hope you'll all come back and visit me, too. I've missed this contact.

Anyway... deep breath...limber up (stretch, stretch)... what have I actually managed to scrape together these last few weeks?

Well...

...a wedding invitation order took up a lot of my time:

But that's OK because I made someone very happy.

There is an unconventional colour challenge this month at XOXO:

For which I used pink and orange. All the time I was thinking 'yeuch' but then I remembered fruit salad penny sweets and embraced the challenge - and I was really happy, in the end. There's a bit of Washi tape in there, some fabric ribbon, lace and other fabric - all from Gauche Alchemy. There's a bit of Crate Paper's Random stuff in there too.

Oh, I got my hair cut:

Yeah, that made me feel goooooood.

I've also been playing around with my camera, trying to learn a thing or two about its manual settings...

OK, work in progress - but I'll get there.

And I went to a gig - another time, another story... but I took my camera:

That was one awesome night. I will come back with the story another time because I'm gonna scrap it. Like, ASAP.


All righty, I think that feels OK - I'm blogging again. I'll go warm down now. Hope to see you all on the rounds again! Thanks for stopping by to say hello again!

The Handmade Wedding

You've all seen by now all the handmade things the wedding brought along - now it's time to scrap about it all!

The sketch this week at Scrapbook Challenges made me so happy about sketches and scrapbooking. It was one of those moments when you've been waiting to scrap a certain idea or certain photos for a long time, and one day the answer just pops up.

The sketch looks like this:

And after I put my page together it looked like this:

Scrapbook Challenges sketch #285

What I used for this page: Doodlebug Love Potion patterned paper, Echo Park Style Essentials Upscale Black Quatrefoil and Grey Dots & Stripes patterned paper, Echo Park Happy Days patterned papers & alpha stickers, Rayher wooden hearts and bobbins, Toga chipboard alphas.

Quite to my surprise, I'm building up our wedding album pretty quickly. And it's looking pretty sweet.

Get over to Scrapbook Challenges for this sketch, and all of the March Madness going on this month. As ever, you could win something for your participation!

The Official Duties of a Bridesmaid

I mentioned here that I certainly asked a lot of my bridesmaids. But even though they had a lot of official duties on the day, I think they enjoyed getting ready with me in the morning. I enjoyed it too, at least until the timing got a little tight.

This double-page layout, made from the sketch below, shows snapshots of us doing our hair and make up on that special day.

Scrapbook Challenges sketch #284

Here's the sketch, up this week on Scrapbook Challenges:

The single pages:

Elements used: Echo Park's Happy Days, Crate's Emma's Shoppe and Cosmo Cricket's Early Bird

Elements used: Prima flowers, Gauche Alchemy stamps

Just want to say thank you again to the polka dot princesses who were so amazing on the day!

Wow! Your Parents Really...

When I mentioned here that I didn’t have any resolutions this year as such, but that I did want to scrap more, a very specific part of this wish was to scrap our wedding photos. I can tell you that there won’t be any disappointment or self-flagellation on this front if January is anything to go by – here’s another layout, inspired by this week’s sketch from Scrapbook Challenges. This one’s about my mum and dad at the wedding, and has a frivolous side to it, whilst still remaining stylish and in theme with the rest of the wedding album.

At some point in the build-up to the wedding, my parents were sort of/almost dictating which songs we should have in our playlist. You would think I would have either freaked out, or cottoned on. But evidently I was too distracted. So when the first of their requested songs came on in the evening, and they picked up their feet and started jiving – yes, jiving – my jaw hit the ground like Sebastien the Crab’s in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. When we finally got them off the dance floor they admitted they’d been having secret lessons in the build-up to the wedding. In fact, they went to such lengths to hide the lessons from my brother, who lives at home right now, that they told him they were going out to marriage counselling!

They really got on board with the whole 50s-ish theme – and they loved it. AND they looked incredible. This fact was not missed by anyone – one of our friends said to me, in that voice that sounds surprised because it’s generally unexpected that such a possibility could exist, ‘Wow, your parents really have style!’… and so the title for this layout was born.

The sketch – yet another great one from Scrapbook Challenges:

this is one of THREE different takes on the sketch on offer this week

 And my interpretation:

Scrapbook Challenges sketch #280

Our Brilliant Stars

When we were planning our wedding, we knew from an early stage that more than mere observers, we wanted people to be involved in the wedding. So in our intricate detailing of how our day was going to pan out, we included a lot of people, and from those people, we asked for quite a lot of things.

I’m sure it’s fairly normal to ask family members to help out – all of my family decorated the venue for us on the day, my mum made all the cakes the day before, and his close family hosted welcome drinks for guests the night before – and when it comes to the bridesmaids and groomsmen, there are pre-set, etiquette-driven, certain particular tasks that fall into what you would call the ‘normal’, ‘standard’ or ‘to be expected’ category. But what we asked of our bridesmaids and groomsmen went beyond the norm – then again, our whole day did, too.

We assigned certain responsibilities to each of them, such as asking one of the boys in braces to be the music monitor; we got the polka dot princesses to manage the quiz during dinner by collecting and marking the answer sheets; they all ushered the tables into the ceremony room for our own personal ceremony after dinner; and they each invented and asked vows to the bride and groom to make sure we were going to look after each other. They did a lot more besides this – an awful lot. For that we are eternally grateful, and so touched by the distance they went for us.

It’s for this reason I wanted to make this layout a fairly uncomplicated page: to show off the simple fact that we are so thankful for these friends and what they shared with us on our wedding day; they really were superstars. The true meaning of friendship came out on that day and we will not forget the feeling of immense pride and joy at having these people present at our wedding.

It’s another Scrapbook Challenges sketch – up this week on the forum – in fact, I designed this one myself (except Brynn, SC Queen Bee, jazzed it up and made it look all snazzy like that):

it didn't look this good when I handed it in

The double-page version looks like this:

i tried smooshing it all onto one page, but it's better on two

And a rare double-pager from me looked like this:

Scrapbook Challenges sketch #279

Using only Bazzill cardstock and MME Quite Contrary patterned paper, a few snips of Happy Days paper, alphas and journaling cards, some Happy Days and For the Record stickers, AC Thickers and Bitty Grunge stamps from Tim Holtz to get the circles into the layout, I created a panorama of what I hope is love, gratitude, awe, respect and happiness.

they really were superstars!

Thanks, you lot, for helping to make our wedding day so awesome. We will not forget. x x x

Guest Creative Scrapper

And so for the exciting news!

Kristine at Creative Scrappers contacted me last year to see if I wanted to be a guest on their blog... and of course I said yes. Why would I say no when the blog is just about my favourite source of sketch and layout inspiration?

You can read my guest post on the Creative Scrappers blog but I'll show you what I made with sketch #192 here:

Creative Scrappers sketch #192

Our first engagement photoshoot was uncomfortable for me. I am not great at posing and really needed to be directed more strongly. Out of 500 photos there were about 50 I liked, and about 30 made it into the final collection. Which all makes me more happy that we got this one - full of attitude, looking totally comfortable and acting quite the poseurs.

rockabilly say yes!

The page is a memory of our discussion about props: he had his hat, I had my handbag... and then at the last minute I said 'Bring your guitar!'.

me and him, in object form

Echo Park collections make up the majority of this layout - I seem to have kept scraps from Life is Good and For the Record which match well with Happy Days. You'll also find some Lily Bee, Crate and Jenni Bowlin in there. Credit also has to go to Basic Grey for their postal stamp... don't you just love the black on black of the heat embossed postmark?

I'll be using this technique again

A big thanks to Kristine for asking me to be part of the Creative Scrappers scene! If you haven't heard of them already, you should go check them out now. They are really very, very good.

Hold On Tight

Well I hope everyone enjoyed the SC Blog Hop - there were certainly a lot of you hopping around and leaving comments! More Scrapbook Challenges today - I have sketch #278 to share with you.

Participating in the weekly sketch challenges can earn you the title of Pick of the Week or even win you a prize. Most importantly, the sketch itself and the layouts made by the DT can go a long way to nudging you out of a creative rut or giving you the confidence to try something new.

If you've been hanging around here for a while, you'll remember my horror story about my wedding hair. I won't go over that again (if only to avoid the pain of recounting it) - at least not entirely. But now I've made a layout about it, it's kind of hard not to retell this aspect of the wedding day.

I think my hair and make-up girl fainted when she heard the driver of the caddy say 'since we're running late, we'll have to take the big roads' - big roads being the inner city ring, which dips up and down and in and out of tunnels, and is two, three and sometimes four lanes wide. She assured me the style would hold (what else could she say?) but I think it was the major disruption to traffic flow caused by the beer festival that saved my curls: after we got off the ring, every road we turned down was blocked, leading us onto progressively smaller and slower roads. Going slower meant less wind, and less wind meant precious moments more of preserving my carefully curled wedding hair.

The photographers followed behind us in the car and sneaked this shot of me and my mum holding on for dear life:

Scrapbook Challenges sketch #278

I used Echo Park's Happy Days collection primarily for this layout, but you'll find some Crate (Restoration), Lily Bee (This & That), Melody Ross and American Crafts in there as well.

love that AC ribbon

This is the sketch - create to your heart's content and upload to the SC gallery - but always remember to hold on to your hair!

Just a Note

Well, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We certainly did.

I have a little story to tell today. It's about the time when I got married, and I forgot to bring my vows with me to the ceremony.

I had been thinking about what to say for months, rewriting, deleting, starting again... I never thought I would have such trouble. I've always been able to express myself in writing - much better than in speaking. Anyway, I was planning to write them out by hand and take them with me. But in the rush of things (you can read about my veil incident here) I clean forgot. It's not like I'd committed them to memory or anything - I needed those vows!

I remembered just in time to quickly scribble from memory a few of the things I wanted to say. But for the most part I was so mad at myself, and felt like I was doing the husband an injustice, that I rushed through them and failed to make the moment what it should have been. At least, that's how it felt, but he will say otherwise.

So to make things up to him, I have now written out the vows in full. I popped them in an envelope and gave them to him on Christmas morning. I also gave him this:

music, cake, love - our wedding in a nutshell

It's a Tagxedo representation of my vows, rendered in the wedding colours and framed for posterity. He loved it (of course!).

Tagxedo makes you feel clever

I'm still annoyed that the one time I really truly needed to express how I felt, I fell down. But it could've been worse, and it certainly doesn't mean that I don't feel what I tried to say I felt. This print, though, makes me feel a lot better. It's added the full stop to my sentence, the vow saga is now over, and I feel complete.

And on that note, I'll announce here that I'm going to take a little break from blogging - just a week or so while everyone recovers from Christmas. See you in the New Year!

Give a Girl the Right Shoes...

...and she can conquer the world. 

(Marilyn Monroe)

A long, long time ago, I started a blog. On my blog I wrote my first post. And in that post I wrote a poem about shoes. I've blown away the dust, so you can read it here.

Fast-forward to 2011, and things have changed somewhat. A wedding on the horizon produced the necessity for both the bride- and groom-to-be to buy shoes. Usually, when it comes to weddings, no expense is spared; but we are sensible people, and know our limits. We also knew what we wanted from our respective wedding shoes.

So, while he secretly broke in his shoes by wearing them around the office, I secretly practised teetering around in mine at home.

Creative Scrappers sketch #187

Mine were grey felt with a scottie dog patched onto one; his were black and white and shiny. They certainly produced a lot of 'ooohs' and 'aaahs' on the day.

and dance we did

On that special day, it wasn't just about a girl and her shoes - it was about a boy and his, too. And you know what? We both knew we'd chosen the right shoes, and we both felt that we could conquer the world.

The Wedding of Awesomeness: Part Five

I got a great write up on Gauche Alchemy's blog - go check out our wedding being famous!

getting married on the same day as the National Beer Festival... priceless

New Paper

I got a delivery at the end of last week. It was a very exciting delivery, because it embodied at least three things in one.

It satisfied the need to impulse buy that sometimes befalls all of us; it pulled together lots of papers I'd been looking for for a while; and it appealed to the part of my brain interested in wallpaper patterns. In short, it was perfect.

And what did it look like? It was this:

And with it, I did this:

bliss indeed

It makes me so happy to look at it and remember the feeling of the first day of our honeymoon - euphoria, triumph, love, satisfied exhaustion, excitement, anticipation... and more, so much more.

I can spot 3 Gauche Alchemy goodies in this shot

And I suppose it makes me a little sad, too - so brief, that first day, and soon the honeymoon was over, and life began again. But memories are there for enjoying, and that is what this page does.