Natur{elle}

We now have a tradition in our book club that when someone has a "big" Birthday like a 50, 60 or 70, then we each make a scrap page and put together an album. It's a wonderful souvenir as each page reflects the person who made it.

I so enjoyed doing this layout which was the title page ... can you tell she is an architect? ... and bilingual?

[Note : I don't normally post scrapbook pages as I feel I should keep photos private. So I have blurred the face for privacy.]

Here's the double page spread. I used the house & tree die cuts from Ellen Hutson, sentiment stamps from Mes P'tit Ciseaux, Mixed Typo text, Heart frame die & eucalyptus paper from Alexandra Renke.

A close up of each of the pages ...

Entering the SSS National Scrapbook Giveaway.

Birthday Tribute Board

I have finally finished (and delivered) my tribute board for my SIL's 50th Birthday. My brother had asked that we give something that shares something about her ... words, poem, song, etc. Well, nobody likes my singing, and I'm not that good with words, but I can play with paper, ink and stamps.

Even though we live so far away from each other (Canada to Mauritius), she has a special place in my heart. I may not know her as well as those who see her regularly, but these things inspired the tribute board :

• She mostly wears black and white, so I knew I wanted those as the main colours
• She had daisies in her wedding bouquet and loves nature so used flowers and leaves dies
• She is creative and has painted in the past, so I used watercolour
• She is fun and enjoys games and taught me the dice game
• She is a psychiatrist, good communicator and says, "Do you want to talk about it?", so I have used printed book pages on the background under the paint; word pattern paper and frame and the speech bubbles
• Family and love are very important to her ... and she is part of mine, so the framed heart
• I used the green acrylic jewels because she is a gem, and her engagement ring is an emerald
• The autumn maple leaf to symbolise Canada
• The guinea fowl feather because she loves guinea fowl and we went to a game reserve nearly every time the family came across to South Africa
• She loves to travel, so have the world map
• She and her family is musical with wonderful singers and players so stamped some notes
• A smooth stone  - again for nature, and she was the one who first shared special stones with me

[ I was inspired by Shari Carroll's Tribute Canvas. ]

Album Finished!

Whew! Finally finished the wedding album my friend asked me to do. I love making cards and layouts in the style that the receiver would like. She loves simple yet vintage look ... lots of lace, pearls and flourishes in creams, white. So I grabbed some white, cream and vanilla cardstock and went straight to my Silhouette. Cut out lots of scrolls, flourishes, roses, frames and words. Then I got script & flourish stamps, ribbons, lace, embossing powder and pearls and was ready to go.

 I can't share the pages with the photos, but here are some sneak peeks.

Loved the soft look of pearl embossing powder giving a tone on tone look.

I used vellum with the the Hero Arts medallion embossing folder, then fussy cut it and topped with Silhouette cut flourishes, lace and pearls.

I loved how this page turned out ... the Penny Black scroll border was the perfect touch at the bottom of the photo.

The next page I used a lot of different embossing folders and inlayed Silhouette die cuts.

More embossing, lace, Silhouette print and cuts ...

Silhouette cut wedding rings. This was a wonderful shimmer gold cardstock from Club Scrap.

For the page coming out of the church, confetti shaker tags!

The Silhouette does amazingly fine cuts.

The roses ... and great that you can vary the sizes.

Wonderful sentiment from Penny Black ... with vellum over to make it soft.

For the pictures under the rain and umbrellas.

Embossed paper and die cuts.

One of my absolutely favourite flourish stamps from Inkadinkado. So light and lovely.

And couldn't resist using the WPlus9 peonies.

Now I had better start my wedding album (even though I have been married for 26 years!)

Pages for Jane 1

We have a wonderful tradition in our book club. When you have your 60th Birthday, you get a scrapbook with a layout done by each member. We get together for a morning or two to bring it all together. This time it was for Jane, who missed the 60th birthday deadline as we only started after her milestone, so it was for her 75th.

As Jane loves flowers and gardening, we decided to go with a theme of flowers. I made a box for the album.

Here is the front cover

The first page ...

Lesley's page ...

This is one of the pages I made (I made a few extra as some of the members were away travelling).

And another ...

And a close up of the one side.

I'll be showing some more of the pages in the days to come.

I'll enter this one in the Colour Me Challenge : Subtle.

Christmas SPARKLE

One of my goals for this year is to get more pages scrapped. And the Pagemaps Gossamer Blue February Kit Sketch Challenge made this one SO MUCH FUN!

A touch of Brushed Pewter and Tarnished Brass Distress Stain added to some embossing paste smoothed over the Studio Calico chevron stencil gave great texture to the background. I didn't buy the "gold" Distress Stain, and I found by mixing the Brushed Pewter and Tarnished Brass I could get just the right colour for my layout. And it has a lovely shimmer to it.

Making splats of Brushed Pewter Distress Stains was fun! 

I put the washi tape on white card before mounting it on foam as it would look rather lumpy if I just stuck it over the embossing paste.

I used the Hero Arts silver ink to stamp the "Christmas". I had matt silver alpha stickers for the "sparkle", but it didn't pop enough, so I added Diamond Stickles.

I die cut the envelope from silver vellum; and the tag has some lovely gold and silver washi tape to peek out. Silver and gold buttons added the last touch.

Here is another angle ... trying to catch the sparkle. 

This is my book club - and we have been together for over 16 years!! And their friendship, support, laughter and fun are worth more than gold or silver.

Magenta Sketch

I have been eyeing the Magenta Sketch for awhile.

Here's my take on it (using 2 of Magenta papers . . . cutting the scrolls). Punched out circles from the actual name place settings and menus in addition to lots of blues and greens.

As I like double page spreads, I did a vertical take on the same layout moving it off-centre.