After a long Hiatus...

Hello all! It has been almost a year since my last post. I have fallen out of the Blog-o-sphere as it where, because I have been caught up in quite a frenzy of excitment. I have, since then,  gotten married, gone on my honeymoon to Hawaii AND bought a house! Below you will find a few pictures detailing those events

As far as our house goes, we have yet to move into it. The move is set for the end of January, but I did create this fabulous layout from yet another one of Scrapbooker's Bliss' contest pages

For this contest we were given the plain brown cardstock, the green striped paper, the blue paper, the dollies, the die cut, the brads dotting the flowers on the bicylce and the orange and polka dotted ribbon. The back of the paper is all decorated his cute little houses, so thats what gave me the idea to feature a picture of our new house, only I couldn't decided how I wanted to do it so I kept flipping the paper over and comparing different combinations, only to land with them in the sequence that they are, brown, green and blue...I though "Hey! Ground, Grass and Sky!" Thus, I created this layout with my house nestled right in there. My one friend looked at it and didn't even notice that the photograph was a photo, she saw it all as one which I thought was intersting.

One thing you should know about me...I buy 99% of my scrapbooking stuff on sale! I just feel wrong buying something full priced. For example, in this layout, all of the letters you see I bought at the Scrapbooking Carnival for literally a dollar a sheet,  I used some Bo Bunny rubons that I bought on sale and have had sitting around forever, and the cloud rubons I got in the sale section at Scrapbooker's Paradise for 80 cents! I glossy accented them to make them pop a  little.

The only thing I splurged on for this layout was that darned picket fence which I just had to have. It was almost $5 just for that embellishment! That is not something I generally do, but for some reason it spoke to me...plus I had a coupon for other things I was buying that day anyways so it was sort of justified!

One last exciting tibbit for this post...I was recently asked to be published in Canadian Scrapbooker Magazine! That is a far cry from where I was last time I posted! I don't mean to toot my own horn but I feel like I have come pretty far in my 2 years of scrapbooking! I have studied different techniques and tried to hone my own...I am pretty proud of myself! Unfortunatley I am not allowed to have the layout appear online anywhere until after it is published in the Spring issue that is coming up, but be assured I will post it as soon as possible. I used Graphic 45 Magic of Oz collection which was really out of my comfort zone! Be sure to look for it in the next issue!

Christmas Mini Album

So i'm back in school, going through the paces. I'm pretty overwhelmed as I predicted I would be. This is nothing compared to a week ago though! I was registered in 3 4oo-level courses and, to be honest, I was drowning. So, change of plans. My fiance and I discussed it and we decided I should drop the one class that was killer and take it in the Fall. Chances are that he will get approved for his masters and the Military will allow us to stay here for another 2 years, so I might as well spread out the courses a bit and relieve some of the stress thats been wearing on me. And if the military posts him elsewhere right away and doesn't approve the masters degree, then I will stay behind for a semester. I really hope this isn't the case, but if it is, at least I will be able to work almost full time for that extra couple months. Since I already have the client base built up in Calgary, I will have much more business if I stay here than if I move to Edmonton and try to start fresh there.

Today was only the second day of scrap booking that I have had time or energy for since the beginning of the semester. I have joined an adult swimming class and i'm busy doing that on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yes, its embarrasing, but I can hardly swim and I can definently not tread water, which I need to be able to do well if I would like to scuba diving on our honeymoon this time next year. Plus its a good way to get me active and help lose some of this holiday weight before the wedding!

Before Christmas I picked up a present shaped mini album from Little Yellow Bicycle. I also picked up a few of the coordinating papers and one sheet of cut outs. I also used My Mind's Eye Holiday Avenue - Sweet Dreams paper. This was my first crack at a mini album and I think it turned out alright! Obvious not as intricate as some of these i've seen on the internet made from paper bags and purses, but still! Here are some photos:

 The album cover. Fairly simple.

•  This is my future sister in love Elyssa and I skating on Christmas Eve.
• I love this naughty/nice embellishment. This pic is of Copper, my moms very cute, but very naughty puppy.

•  The Eadon's, my inlaws at our house on Christmas eve. We all sang Christmas carols and had a merry time!
• On the right I made a little pocket that says "Santa's Little Helpers" and the tags have pictures of Milo, my dog, and Bender and Theo my in-law's two dogs decorated with antlers.

•  Kye and his brothers skating
• Kye and his parents

•  I just had to use those pretty pins somehow. The Snowflakes are actually a ribbon I cute apart.
• Kye and his Dad on Christmas Morning.

•  The pocket on the left opens up, as you'll see below

•  These pictures are of Milo on Christmas morning, look very unhappy about the ribbon decorating him.

February Contest Kit

School is approaching so quickly! Yipe! First day of classes tomorrow!

I must admit I have taken full advantage of my holidays since Christmas. I have gotten a metric ton of scrapbooking done and have managed to read the first four books of the Harry Potter Series for the second time. Well, I'm 3/4 of the way through Goblet of Fire, but still, I have been MaxRelaxin' these last few weeks and loving it!

I have been working on this month's contest kit for two days now. I always squeeze some extra creative juices for these pages (that sounds disgusting actually). Here is a picture of the supplies we recieved:

I must say I was super excited with this whole color pallet. The limey green really takes me out of my comfort zone, which is why I love these kits. Plus I had asked for the new BasicGrey line Marjolaine (which I still can't pronouce, try as I might), and it has similar color schemes to the October Afternoon contest paper we were provided with. Turns out though, I didn't use anything from that line! I hardly added anything, really.

I used the green ribbon as petals on the flowers on the left. The other ribbon outlines my button heart. I used those super gaudy gems to frame the photo. I matted everything on a cute die cut from the So Sophie line by My Mind's eye.

Since I mentioned the new BasicGrey line before, i'll also post some pages I made from it here.

 I sure got busy using that stuff! I still have 3 other stacks/collection packs that I haven't delved into yet. I acquired them on my wonderful boxing-week shopping spree. I will update soon with pictures from those soon! Bye for now!

Harvest Memories

So I have been very good at finishing all of the projects I had envisioned for my Christmas Holidays. I wanted to finish my 2011 Calendar. Done. I set out to scrap all my Halloween pictures. Finished. And lastly I wanted to do my Thanksgiving pictures. Just finished! That one was easy because many of my photos from this Thanksgiving didn't turn out well so I only had 4 or 5 decent photos. I was very busy cooking and being a good host!
I had Scrapbookers Bliss specially order in the paper I used. They had a few loose sheets of BasicGrey's line Papyrus and I fell in love with it. They, ever so kindly offered to order the kit in for me. I'm so glad they did because it is PERFECT for Thanksgiving. Such beautiful fall colors and awesome patterns from 60's themed flowers to pears.
Here are a few of the layout I did:

SO cute, right?

Anyways, I was on Scrapbooker's Bliss' website earlier today and they recently posted pictures of the contest kits that we submitted 4 months ago or so. I was looking through them and couldn't help but notice how terrible my layout was compared to everyone elses. Now, I'm not fishing for compliments here or anything. It was horrible. However! I can, with confidence, say that I have much improved. I quite like the layouts I have been churning out the last few months.

Its so nice to be able to scrapbook at least twice a week. I know this won't last for long. The winter semester is fast approaching and I have such courses as Intermediate Qualitative Research Methods to look forward to. Heres the kicker. That one isn't a requirement for my degree. The first research methods class I took was. I am taking this one as an option! I needed a 400 level course because the other one I was registered in was cancelled due to low admission. I suspect that this semester will not be nearly as exciting as last. Last semester was hard, don't get me wrong. I did more work last semester than I ever have in my life. But the courses were fun! Sociology of Violence, Soci of Youth Crime, Criminal Justice System... these are my bag, baby. But this semester I have this to look forward to: Canadian Animation (don't ask me why), Soci of Ethnic Relations, Intermediate Qualitative Research Methods, Western Religions and a seminar in Sociology of Families. I have already taken courses on ethnic relations and on families. So nothing new there. Ah well. After this semester I will have 3 courses left and then I will have a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology. Yay!

Well I am going to try and finish one more page before bed. Or maybe I will go have a bowl of maple walnut ice cream and read Harry Potter for a bit (my dad bought be the whole set for Christmas and I would like to finish them again before i'm back to school and too busy reading about Canadian Animation). Night!

Howl-o-ween

Sorry its been a while since my last post! My life hit overdrive for a few weeks there. I was swamped with finals. I'm taking quite a few 400 level courses at University so they were pretty intense. I actually only had two exams, but the kicker was the other 3 term papers plus 2 class presentations.

The days leading up to Chirstmas are the busiest time of year for me as a dog groomer too. I worked a week straight right up to Christmas trying to cram everyone in before the 25th. I literally didn't get any scrapbooking done for weeks. This is bad. Scrapping is my stress release.

Well now that Christmas is past I have some time to let my creative juices flow again and get some of those Halloween photos scrapbooked! I decided to go with two similar lines for my Halloween photots. The first was by Bo Bunny of course. Everything they come out with is genius. Their line is called Whoo-ligans. The second line is by We R Memory Keepers and its called Heebie Jeebies.

I had lots of fun coming up with creative layouts to use the awesome die cuts and I was particularly challenged because I had so few embellishments. I didn't buy them close to Halloween so they are all gone for the most part by now. I did pick up one pack from Micheals that had some ghosts, candy corn and a few bats but thats about it. I had one sheet of stickers left over from last year that I got at the dollar store as well. I was able to find 2 different ribbons, one pumpkins and one bats so I used those as well. For the most part though, I relied on paper to set the Hallo-weenie mood.  Here are some photos of the pages I have done so far.

For the record, these were SO much fun to do.


I am way behind on posting some of the other stuff ive been working on as well. Just before my crazy busy Christmas I was able to finish up my 2011 calendar that I scrapbooked by BasicGrey. It was Uber simple to complete. It was good for days when I had very little creative genius. BasicGrey pretty much tells you how to lay out your calendar pages so it was really straight forward. Here are a few of my favorite months:

I found that the key with this calendar was to lay on thick the glossy accents and stickles. I went kind of crazy with them but they really make the embellishments stand out and add interest to the pages that would otherwise appear a little bland.

Lastly, I competed yet another contest page from Scrapbookers Bliss. This month was actually pretty easy for "the sisters" and I because Bliss chose to make the kit from Bo Bunny's Olivia and we all have the paper and embellishments for Olivia (and probable every Bo Bunny line ever created!) I didn't take a picture of what we were provided with but its pretty easy to tell.

We were provided with the blue paper, the salmon colored back paper, one of those brads and the ticket stubs. I flipped the stubs over because on the other side they said "place" "date" and "time" or something of the sort. I used glitter mist on them and cheated and used the coordinating letters for Olivia plus some other paper from that line. My Fiance complained that its too girly to feature him. I think its cute though!

Well thats all I have for now. I will most likely update soon as I am planning to scrap my little buns off these next couple days.

November Contest Page

So the time has come for me to post my completed contest page for November. This month's kit was, predictably, Christmas themed, which I think i'm okay with. I was only unhappy with the sports themed one because I literally had no sport-related photos that I could scrapbook. I do have some from last Christmas that I could have use but I decided to go another direction and use a very old photo of my sister and I on Christmas morning in 1988. I was one and a half year old and Sara was 9.
Here are the materials that we were provided with. The only difference is that I accidently got a white flower in my kit and I included it as snow at the bottom of the tree. The flower isn't in this photo though.

This is how I used the materials:

I made the green ribbon into the Christmas Tree, the pink ribbon for the M and The gold Christmas tree trim I made into an ornament on the tree and also cut small stars out of it to put on the top of the cut out christmas trees. I used some glossy accents (because I am now glossing the crap out of everything, its an obsession) and some Stickles to jazz it up a bit.

I had fun with this kit and actually got it finished in one sitting. Last month's sat on my desk for quite a few days and I changed and added things here and there. I hope I win one soon! I think i've been improving quite a bit.

I have just discovered this awesome webiste called ScrapJazz. I just became a member and have started uploading some of my layouts to that sight. Its a great place to find new ideas if your looking for layout inspiration which I often am, seeing as I am pretty new to this. Check it out!

Rosario Beach

I'm in love! This happens every so often. I will be shopping at a Scrapbooking store (in the sale section, unless I have a coupon, of course) and I will come across a line that I just fall in love with. The last one was by Crate Paper, the Brook Collection. I just wanted to scrap every thing with that stuff. Heres one page I did with this collection

In case you haven't noticed, I kind of LOVE teal! So much so, that Teal and Purple are my wedding colors!
So I was in Scrpabooker's Paradise the other day, which rarely happenes because their prices are marked up so much and because I love the personal service I get at Scrapbookers Bliss, but anway I was in their sale section and I came across this line by My Mind's Eye called So Sophie. It is beautiful and has some teal in it! Yay!
I have caught quite a bad cold and I got up at 5:45 this morning to cram for a big midterm I had today, but I managed to scrap three pages tonight and did them all with this line. Here are some photos

I hate being sick. The only good part about it is that I have an excuse to sit around in my pjs all day and Scrapbook. Uggh. I'm off to bed, i'm pooped!