Scrapbook Challenges Blog Hop

Welcome to the January Scrapbook Challenges Blog Hop! This January we're celebrating more than a new Design Team - there's also the small matter of having moved away from Ning to our very own site. This makes for easier interaction between us all, which means more inspiration for members!

If you're on the Hop, you should have joined me from the talented Anna's blog. Before moving on to the Blog Hop sketch, I'll tell you a little bit about me. I'm a recently married freelance editor living in the inspiring and interesting city of Brussels, Belgium with my dog and my husband. I'm a little bit punk, a little bit rock n roll, and I like to push myself to achieve new techniques and methods. I've been scrapbooking for about five years, but it's only really in the last couple of years that I would venture to call myself an artist. It can take a while to get started and then to keep up with the online community, but I've found that eventually you find your rhythm.

Anyway, onto the customary sketch. SC challenges you to make a layout based on this sketch and upload it to the Forum for the chance to win a prize:

Or the double-page version:

For my take on this sketch, I squished up the two pages into one:

capturing our arrival in London this Christmas

yes - that is a cell phone circuit board under the title!

And now the moment you've been waiting for: the prizes!

1. For completing a layout based on the above sketch and uploading it to the Hop On section in the Forum, you stand to win this pretty prize:

2. For leaving a comment on every blog of the DT, including the start and the end points, you could win this following amazing prize:

3. One new member who joins between 13 and 15 January will be selected at random to win the following sweet prize:

4. Finally, I have a RAK to offer to two lucky readers:

a whole bunch of interesting bits and pieces

To be selected at random for the RAK, you'll have to tell me in your comment on which date I got married. You'll find it here on my blog. Hint: it wasn't this year :-)

So, leave me a comment and then move on to the next blog on the Hop: the amazingly gifted new DT member Livy!

Aim for 2012

Although I learned from setting resolutions in 2011 that that's just not the way I roll, I do have one aim for 2012 that I would really like to stick to.

For my birthday last year my parents gave me a sweet little bridge camera - a Canon PowerShot SX130 IS. I have slowly been getting to know it, but now I would like to ramp up relations and become an accomplished user.

I started off the year well. Just before getting on the Eurostar back to Brussels, I snuck this shot at St Pancras Station in London:

using the 'miniaturise' function

I am not often pleased with my own photography work, but I really like this one. I was just standing there waiting in the queue, staring at this exact shot, when I realised I should turn my eyes into a camera lens.

I've added a new page on my blog which will be dedicated to those photos of mine with which I'm particularly proud or happy: let me know what you think so far.

What are your aims for 2012?

For A Little Girl

Today I'm going to share a project that I worked on in fits and starts last year, in between wedding planning and decoration making. The trouble with projects like this one - and I'm sure you've had the same - is that although the idea forms early on, say, with a new collection (Crate’s Emma’s Shoppe, in this case), the execution of it is slow and spread out, and even worse, the date on which it can be made public is far away because it’s a gift being made well in advance.

Emma's Shoppe was made for little girls

I gave this mini-album to my best friend’s daughter as she turned two. It’s empty, ready for mummy and daddy to fill with cute pics and tales of their princess. Of course Emma’s Shoppe was perfect for this. 

I chose the gatefold design to take advantage of the husband's binding services

I loved making this album - even though I find it almost impossible to pre-make albums. All my pages and minis are designed around the photos, so whenever I sat down to work on this project, even though the concept was there, all my ideas went aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! and ran away. It took me ages to get over that, and to get over the feeling that I was somehow leaving it unfinished.

this reminded me of my books when i was a little girl

I'm sure she doesn't need a book to tell her this!

You wanna know the best part about this project? Better than the thought that went into it, how beautiful it is, or how the little girl will be fascinated by the different layers and pages? Better than all this is the fact that my husband has a binder at work. One day he looked at what I was making, and knew what I wanted to do with it. He knew what a Bind-it-All was before I even had to explain and - get this - offered to bind the album for me! So one day in November he was seen entering the office with a cute floral stack of papers, taking them to the binder, punching them and binding them together for me!

a gatefold with varied layers makes for an interesting book for a little girl

I took many more pictures - because I loved the paper collection and what I did with it. But I also hope to see the princess soon and see what she and her parents have done with it :-).

One and Only One

There is only one....

....the 'one' challenge at True XOXO Girls, that is. Get on over there this month for you will not be disappointed! There are a few new girls to welcome as they bring their unique creative styles to the blog this year. There are some stunning, beautiful layouts there - and they are all inspiring in their different ways. Some girls chose a 'one love' theme, others a 'one manufacturer', others still a 'one of each' idea. I opted for one colour because I've wanted something all white of my own for a while.

all white?

It didn't come out how I was expecting. And I can tell you, those people who make monochrome layouts make it look easy, because this was DIFFICULT. And I think it shows - I'm not really too happy with it, although I can't seem to put my finger on why? Any help, anyone?

But don't let me put you off. This really is a challenging challenge - if you're looking for a kickstart this new year, you need look no further. Don't forget, there's a prize to be won!

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!