My new baby

Merry Christmas everyone!! DH shocked my pants off with this little treat. He's not much of a shopper at all but we had to do a few last minute things on the 24th and while we were in town he took me into the Future Shop to buy me a Canon Rebel. I was pretty surprised. Of course, they were sold out...there and everywhere else in town. So he hit the boxing day sale and picked one up with an extra grip, battery, case & 16GB SD card. Now I need to learn how to use it and start saving my pennies for more lenses and a good flash :)

Scrapbook Trends!!

I am so excited to announce that I have my first publication with Scrapbook Trends. They picked up a layout called "Thankful for" featuring Upsy Daisy pattern papers. I'm not exactly sure when the it's due out but it's in a Stamping Idea Book! I've already packed the layout carefully, filled out the paperwork and popped it in the mail. It's all up to them now :)

Canadian Scrapbooker, Winter '08

If you haven't picked up the winter edition of Canadian Scrapbooker yet, you need to go get it! This issue is jam-packed with great layouts. I have a few layouts in this issue as does my sister Jocelyne.



Merry Christmas Grumpy Girl. We were trying to get a cute photo of Larissa in her little Santa hat but she was not very happy about it! She had just unwrapped her Christmas Eve present which was a bag full of Diego toys and she was anxious to get out to visit her cousins and show off her new toys. This was about the best we could get. I decided to scrap it anyways. The large red die cut was cut on the Cricut Expression and then I used a Signo White Uniball pen to add a little something to it.


I made Christmas chaos to show off our not-so-great-dark-cluttered Christmas photos. Our family is HUGE and our Christmas mornings have always been nothing short of chaotic. I wanted a nice clean design that would work with these busy photos.


KISS KISS. I made this layout for the Hambly DT call...well I didn't make the DT but the layout did get published so that made me quite happy. This is a photo of Larissa giving her cousin Keaton a quick little kiss....yes, kissing cousins. No worries though...it looks a lot more passionate in the photo than it really was. Plus Keaton took his arm and wiped his mouth right afterwards LOL. This layout was done with the very first Hambly screen print that I ever purchased... I loved it so much that I didn't want to glue it down so I just let it sit there for a long time (actually until the publishing request). I did have to glue it together before I popped it in the mail to Canadian Scrapbooker.

The sprit of the season....

Well Christmas is almost upon us and the crafting is slowing down a little. We are doing all kinds of things that keep me out of the scrap room....things like gingerbread houses, sight seeing for Christmas lights, visiting Santa at his 'house' in the mall and spending time with family (eating meat pies LOL) Here's a little recipe book that I started so I can keep our favourite holiday recipes inside...some of which include my super famous toasted coconut cream pie, peanut butter balls, reese peanut butter cup cookies, spider cookies and pudding cookies. The album is a little Basic Grey Chocolate Chip chipboard album.



Here's a little something that I have been making a lot of lately for gifts. It's a wooden box from the dollar store, painted and decorated and filled with homemade cards for all occassions.




And we musn't forget some actual scrapbooking... this layout features the Pink Paislee Tinsel Town collection. I just love this photo of little miss Jaedyn (my niece) and Larissa. For the title, I used Bazzill stitching templates and then used Stickles over my stitching (just like I did in the card in the last post). I glittered up the Fashion Script alphas as well....nothing is safe from my glitter obession these days. I just received a big box of Pink Paislee goodies from Paws on Scrapbooking so there will be more of this to come :)

51 cards in a day

I received a call last Sunday from a lady at our Church requesting that I make 50 plus 1 cards asap.... 50 nice cards and 1 super nice card...LOL. I made these Sunday and finished them up Monday evening. About half of them have the pattern paper backgrounds (using up scraps) and the blue ones are embossed with a Stampin' Up! stamp and white glitter embossing powder. The nativity images are stamped, coloured and then cut out...that's a lot of cutting in a short amount of time! The super-nice card (heehee) has some stitching on it using the Bazzill templates (Christmas) and then I added some Stickles over the top...what can I say...I'm on a glitter kit. I put some Glossy Accents on the snowman just to give him a little dimension. The snowman & heaven and nature sing stamps are by PSX Design and are OLD. I have them for years and years. It feels good to dig through my old stamps and use them.

Upsy Daisy Designs - the details

I am really excited to be the Guest Designer for Upsy Daisy Designs this month. I had the pleasure of working with their Spirit and Hot Chocolate lines. Here are a few close ups of the work and if you want to see the real deal you can check it out here.

My Creative Scrapbook - December kit reveal

Today is reveal day for My Creative Scrapbook!! If you have a moment, go take a peek at the Design Team's gallery.

Here are the layouts that I did with the yummy Limited Edition Kits. The first two are from My Minds Eye and the next three are Cosmo Cricket.

I did a lot of glitter work on these layouts and if you are interested in any of the glittery techniques I've used check out this glitter tutorial at MCS.















These are the altered projects that I made with the Limited Edition Kits

Creative Scrappers

Here is a layout that I had a blast doing for Creative Scrappers as their Guest Designer this week. I really loved this sketch.




p.s. I have a slight obsession with Bazzill's white cardstock in orange peel texture. I could happily do every layout on this cardstock!

Cre8tive Idol @ Just Cre8

I entered the Cre8tive Idol contest at Justcre8.com. I had a lot of fun with all the entries and even scored a 4th place spot which I am happy with. The contest was organized really well and the challenges were a blast and really pushed my creativity! Here's what I came up with for my 5 entries.

Challenge #5 was Here Comes the Bride: You had to create a layout with Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue and you layout could not in any way, shapre or form have anything to do with a wedding.

There's a super hero in my closet:

At first I had a really hard time getting past the title of this challenge and doing something non-wedding. Even though we were specially told not to do a wedding l/o my instinct was to keep reaching for wedding photos LOL. I had to think about this one for a couple days. Well during that couple of days something really cute happened that I thought would work perfectly for this challenge.


My daughter recently learned how to open her closet door and has been discovering all kinds of little surprises in there. She came to me and said 'pssst..mama, there's a super hero in my closet' Well I laughed. I went with her to check out this closet superhero and there on the top shelf at the back of the closet was Batgirl Barbie. Her Auntie had purchased the Batgirl Barbie for her when she was born and I had tucked it away for when she was old enough to enjoy it.


So, for the challenge:
Something old: I used two old Batgirl comic strips on the layout
Something new: Batgirl Barbie present - a new toy to my daughter
Something borrowed: the Batgirl Barbie key chain which I borrowed from my daughter to put on the layout but trust me, when she sees it she'll want it back!
Something blue: I matted the photos and the star burst in blue.

To make the starburst I just cut the yellow star freehand and then matted it in blue and added some pen lines. I did this because it reminded of the images you see in comic books.

Journaling reads: Larissa, when you were a tiny baby, Auntie Jocelyne bought you your first Barbie, Batgirl Barbie. Well, you were too young to play with it so we put it away in your closet. The other day (@ age 3.75) you came to me and said 'pssst, mama, there's a superhero in my closet!' It was so cute and now you have Batgirl Barbie to play with. November '08





Challenge #4 was to create a Christmas gift. I came up with this star book. If you would like to learn how to make this star book, I am teaching an on-line class at Paws on Scrapbooking on Wednesday, Nov 26. You can use up some of that stash you have since you use your own supplies for this class. Sign up Here










Challenge #3 This challenge was to be inspired by an advertisement that was posted and here's what I came up with.




Challenge #2 - Create a rebus on your layout. Ok, so I didn't even know what a rebus was...well, I knew what one was but I didn't know what it was called :) Putting the picture of the pie in the title instead of the word PIE is a rebus. Plus I also did U R for 'you are' which is also a rebus. I hand drew the pie and coloured it in with markers and put it on a pop dot for dimension.


Challenge #1 - Use a famous slogan as your title. Play Laugh Grow is the slogan for Fisher Price.