Want a future

The talented DorcasYHJ held a facebook group challenge on her Moments Recorded, asking for entries following the guidelines of 1) 4 patterned papers , 2) 3 brands and this was what I came up with.

I pulled out a piece of paper from my Prima ledger pack and recognised this as something from Pixie Glen (which incidentally I did a project with and I taught a class with it as well). I dug through my scraps bag and pulled out a K&Co, Kaisercraft, October afternoon and Pink Paislee to go with this layout.  I also pulled out my distress inks and mask and did a first cut in an hour in the night.  When I snapped the photo of the first cut, I realised that it did not have enough depth. In the morning, I worked on deepening the masked effects.

I think it quite paid off since I think this turned out to be a really striking layout.  I did not spend a lot of time putting it together but the longest time of inactivity was actually on the titling and journalling.  I spent a good 10-20 minutes staring at the layout! hahahhaa.... I need to work on my titling skill.

Photographs perfect

Decided one Sunday to bring Ms E & BbC exploring around our neighborhood. I've stayed here for more than 20 years and did not know that there were nooks, crannies and little pathways in our neighborhood.

We had a fun day, stopping for playground breaks and snack time. My reward? - a rare photo of the two of them holding hands strolling together. BbC's at the age where she doesn't want any hand holding.

World Happy Day

Some time jn Feb, Ms E joined daddy for his company fundraiser activity in Singapore's shopping belt to raise money for Operation Smile, a charity work by surgeons to correct cleft lips for children all around the world. It was a meaningful activity for her and she learned to pluck up her courage to speak to adults to ask them to donate towards the cause.

One photo was taken by BY's colleague and given to us, so I simply had to inmortalise the day she went for her first social cause. This MME paper was just perfect... ❤

Follow your heart .

Worn out

Ms E had these favourite shoes that she refused to let us throw out.  It was already biting her toes yet she loved them very much and kept wearing them.  We had originally bought them when they were on sale in Colettee thinking that it would come useful come year end Concert when she was in k1 (2011).  Who knows, the school closed at the end of 2010 and there was no concert for her to wear them.  She didn't forgo wearing them and tried to wear them on each and every occasion and only retired these end 2011 after the dad promised to buy her a new pair (yet to appear).

I had to take a pix of the worn out state of the shoes and immortalise them.  I can't recall her having loved anything so much, and probably not even Dorothy in Oz loved hers that much.

Because the shoes were black, shabby and yet sporting a round simple diamond, I decided to make a layout that would bring out the shoes (at least I hope I did).  The layout was done on black cardstock, which was a little challenging initially.  I didn't want to do the run of the mill super brights nor the black white type and decided to let the layout just flow.  I put the title in with black glittery foam Thickers (and I super love glittery fonts, if you haven't already discovered) and did my layering and distressing. 

The elements I put together were 1) about shoes 2) depicting young girl and 3) love to bind these two together.  I used the number washi tape cos ... well.... don't they look like shoe size tape? hehe.  Of course, I had to add in tulle... tulle is so girl.  I resisted the urge to make it all soft and flowery since I felt the focus should be all on the shoes.

  I had quite a bit of challenge trying to lay on black cardstock, but I enjoyed the process.  So this became my challenge that I set on the Moments Recorded Facebook group and it garnered many beautiful submissions.  If you have a black cardstock layout to share with me, please do!

Materials : Cardstock - American Crafts; Punch - Martha Stwart; Stamp - Teresa Collins Posh; Paper scraps - Webster Pages, Kaisercraft; Trims - lace , tulle, washi tape.

No No No!

These photos were taken during the mid autumn fest when BbC could toddle but cousin Joshua hadn't learn how to walk steadily yet.  He liked to give BbC random hugs and being the ever obedient boy, listened to his mama when she said, go give big sis a kiss.

Needless to say, small toddlers immensely dislike being squashed like a tomato so she would always yell loudly,  "No!No!No!!!!"  

My talented sis in law caught these on cam and I had to make it into a layout!  Did not get inspired until I saw these MME papers I had stashed somewhere and immediately set to work.  The layout is really simple but I think it speaks for itself.   I love how that coordinating trim edge from MmE just fits nicely flipped.

Materials : Sassafras  Lass paper, Vellum paper; Fiskar stamp edge punch; Bazill white cardstock; Michael's ribbon trim; My Little Shoebox chipboard alphas, Cosmo Cricket chipboard alphas. 

Passport to cross over

Last December, we wanted to bring BbC and Ms E to Malaysia for just a day trip to walk, browse and shop a little.  Of course, we thought that since it was about a half hour drive we just needed to get our directions, pack the bags and go.  When we arrived at the customs, we realised that 1) Ms E passport expired 6 months ago! and 2) we needed to bring Sofia's work permit if we were to bring her out of Singapore on trips.  Well, so we had to U turn and go back to make a new passport for Ms E.  That same afternoon, I snapped a few photos to submit for passport online (so efficient, yes?)

Anyhow, because it was her first passport that expired and had her cute little 1 month old baby photo, I couldn't bear to just toss it into the bin.  So guess what? It made its way into a layout :) yeap!

This is a different style from my usual layouts, and I wnated to include some portions of the actual passport into the layout.  Can you see where are the elements from the passport?


Materials : Papers - K&Co, Sassafras; Embellishments - Basic Grey, Girls' Paperie; Alphas - Thickers.

Ride

Do you remember this flower from this tutorial?  Here it is being used in a layout. 

Old School Bond

My cousin has a little girl about the same age as my firstborn, Miss E.  They were born two weeks apart, with Miss E being the older one.  The two girls spend a lot of their early growing years together as my cousins make effort to meet up every week so they would bond.  Of course, we all grew up as close cousins as well so we unconciously wanted the same thing for our children.

Here's one taken at the Mid-Autumn festival where the two were delighted to see each other after a long break. 

This was made from papers from Pink Paislee's Old School and Butterfly Garden.  The trims are from Prima, including the wire that I twined and twirl.  The cage, large tag and bird are recycled cardboard from 7 Gypsies' shadow box, cut by the Tim Holtz Sizzix Dies.  I just love sparkly and glittery stuff so I had to paint my chipboard bird with pinkish glitter.   That little "old school" strip was from that little extra bit that always comes with the 12x12 paper.  Recycled it into the title as I thought yes, this is really old school kind of bonding!

Girls have all the fun yes?

Thru Thick & Thin

BY & I have been married for 10 years, so I was trying to sift through my photos for us together.  Thanks to the many computer crashes, we don't have much! So I took one that we took at the start of the year when I got my iphone 4.  The photo had been deliberately made old and retro by an app and I thought it would be perfect for a 10 yr layout.

Combined with my interest in creating "dirty" layout (which had June laughing at me for liking dirty layouts), I did this vintagey, retroey, non fluffy layout.

I'm not a frequent user of rub-ons, but on this one I applied two different types to get the contrasting letters in the same height.  I also managed to get a number of rub-ons on my fingertips... haha!

I like that imperfect look. 

Materials : Papers - DCVW cardstock, K&Co patterned paper; Washi Tape; October Afternoon rub on letters; CatsLifePress stamp; Maya mists; Tattered Angels glimmer screens.

Made by love

I always wanted to do "just one more" for the two girls. When I saw how this photo turn out, I could not help but feel that they were made by love. Of course, love that the papa mama had for each other. And with that love, we produced them.

With this layout, I was inspired the moment I saw the Kaisercraft Le Chateau papers. It was also no coincidence that I fell in love with the stamps and felt that there were so much possibilties in the birdcage and chandeliers (though one sang of day, the other made you think of nightfall). I did stamping, misting, layering and basically made it all my own.

See the Sea Shells by the Sea Shore

Today I really felt like going for a long holiday. Maybe because I had been looking at my ever evolving list of To-do at work, so images of the sea/ shade of ruffling palms, and the smell of salt drifted into mind. Need not be too far away but just some quiet time with the girls at the sea would be good.

So I dug out this layout I did a couple of months back that I nearly threw away when I thought it was too complicated.

Well, I am glad I did not. Or rather, glad that June asked me not to.

Misting, stamping with the mask, sewing, paper tearing, staining, ruffling; I think I tried it all on this layout.

I did machine stitching on the alphas so they would stay down. I also corner punched the E so it would be rounded like the rest of the layout. Torn paper strip below the flags to perk it up, like it was flying and fluttering, and to give it a rough flagpole look.





 



School's out, where to go?

At Gracefields at the end of each school year, the parents would be asked to tick which photo we wanted to order. I always ordered just the one for the class, thinking that I'd order the full package once she reaches K2 (her final year). Who would have known that the Teck Whye branch could only afford her two years, in Nursery 1 and Nursery 2, before closing down for good due to land lease issues. As it is, her current kindy is next to where Gracefields was located and she frequently asked about her teachers and classmates as she passes by everyday. The Gracefields compound is now a niche korean kindy.

As time pass by, I thought I should get her school photos and classmates names properly documented before we all forgot. So pulling together all the elements, I made a layout with the photos serving as focus and also as pockets, to store the memories.

 I did some masking with Tim Holtz mask and recipe for home made mist. Can you see the slide in cards behind the photos? Those are from the leftover of the back of the shaped paper, and I had them punched, edged with Distress ink, eyelet reinforced and tied with ribbon.

Butterflies. One prima butterfly altered by me because I need some beautiful green.  I think it's my secret favourite color, after which is red yellow blue green purple pink you get the idea.

 Prima pebble! I have another one right at the top of the page. Charissa gave them to me for christmas and I thought they were some magic pebbles until I realised they were just paper based.

Close up of the tag I stamped with the Unity stamp $5 kit and machine sewn. I like the bit where one corner got chomped off by real on the sewing machine. Made it look more authentic!

Materials : DCVW Papers - speciality diecut Spring, Gradeschool stack, cardstock. MLS + K&Co scraps on butterflies. Ranger Stickles. Prima pebbles. Scrapbook Adhesives foam tape. Making Memories silver swirl. Unity Stamp. Martha Steward Classic Butterfly Punch. Distress ink.

My pretty pink princesses

I wanted to scraplog this photo before it got lost in the sea of photos on my comp, so when I saw the MLS MARCH SKETCH CHALLENGE I told myself to give it a go!

My comp chose this moment to "pass on" so I can't download the accurate ones taken on my ixus. Here's the one taken on iPhone. The background is a yellow green and the centre title is the MLS green text, but it doesn't quite show.

Here it is. A photo of the love between these two always makes fo great photos. Big Sis E likes to help little Sis C, and so here E is holding C's hand as C takes her wobbly steps in delight.

Ugh - iPhone doesn't allow me to post photo!

(update - posting from comp as it has revived!)

Ed's sketch for March

I decided to use my MLS scraps to give the Ed's sketch a go as I wanted to see if I could use it to create the torn paper look I wanted to achieve.  Here's my take on Ed's sketch.

Materials : My Little Shoebox papers, glitter alphas and tiny alphas; K & CO papers and tag; DCVW Cardstock; Unity Stamps; Inkadinako Stamps; Fiskars Stamps; Adironack Dimensonal paint; Kaisercraft acrylic paint; Ranger stickles; Martha Stewart Butterfly punch; Colorbox Cateye's inks; Maya road mist and plastic flower. Mini peg from Daiso.