Scraps 'n Pics

About time!

2010-03-02T22:10:00.000-08:00

OK, I guess it's too late to say happy new year, in France anyway you're only "allowed" to say that in January! But anyway, I wish you all a happy one anyway. :-)

It's been a while, I actually hardly did any scrap these last 2-3 months, but I have two little layouts to share anyway, the only 2 I did. I hope to get back to it real soon!! I quite like these two layouts. I wanted to make nice pages of my kids for their dad. Crea'chooet had a challenge for a monochromatic layout, so I made the one of Naomi for that challenge and after that I tried to keep the same style for the other one. I love the red and the blue on the kraft paper, I love kraft paper!! I acan't really remember which brands of paper I used, all I can say is that I loooove these little dots on the layout of Naomi. I used glimmer mist on the flowers and lots of stuff I found in my ever-growing stash!

Yesterday we had a real sunny day, not hot yet but then again it *was* only March 2d! Spring is defenately coming! I hope...

Polaroids :-)

2009-12-06T03:08:00.000-08:00

Today a little layout with pictures transformed on rollip, I have spoken about this site in a previous post and was inspired to do a layout with the pictures by this blog from Nathalie! The website doesn't do polaroids at the moment, but they should be back soon! I quite like the result, the picture I took of the layout is not very good (taken with flash light) but anyway.

Aujourd'hui je vous montre ma dernière page avec des polaroids, faits sur le site rollip dont je parle dans ce post, la page a été inspirée par un post sur ce blog de Nathalie. Le site ne fait pas de polaroids pour l'instant, mais ça devrait revenir bientôt. La qualité d'image n'est pas superbe, j'ai du utilisé le flash, mais j'aime beaucoup la page! La voici:

je t'aime moi non plus

2009-11-29T01:54:00.000-08:00

J'ai deux petites réas à vous montrer aujourd'hui, tous les deux essais du Clean & Simple. J'avour tout de suite qu'en effet les pages sont simples, mais le coté Clean est surtout grâce à PSE qui m'a été bien utile pour enlever les taches d'encre :-O

La première, c'est "Je t'aime moi non plus" avec des photos de mes chats qui se battent, tout le temps! Mais toujours assez gentimment, je crois qu'ils ne se font pas mal. C'est plutot un jeu pour le petit, la grande doit en avoir ras-le-bol! Que du papier Bazzill, quelques brads, un skull (merci à Mikrado!), des peel-offs et un sticker de Kesi'Art, j'adore ses planches de stickers!! Ah oui, et un peu de Craft Robo pour le titre.

A layout about my fighting cats, who are more playing then really fighting. The title is difficult to translate, I'd say something like "I love you, neither do I" which is the title of a famous song here in France.

Puis une page pour le challenge "Sketch" du forum Tempor'elles , basée sur le sketch de Elle scrap. J'adore le C&S mais je trouve que c'est beaucoup plus dur que ça en a l'ai! Bref, pas 100% satisfaite du travail... Papier (tout petit peu!!) Dream Street paper et titre imprimé (c'est la première fois que je fais ça!)

A C&S layout about my son with his Halloween make-up after a day in the holiday center. Dream street papers and title printed with computer, my first time ever :)

C'est tout ce que j'ai à montrer, je ne scrappe pas énormément ces jours-ci. Merci d'avance pour vos commentaires!

That's all for now, I don't scrap much these days. More to come! Thanks for any comments!

Still haven't found what I am looking for

2009-11-11T01:19:00.000-08:00

One of my favourite songs by U2 is the challenge of the week at Scrapping the Music this week. Perfect! OK, I have to admit that I did this layout two years ago, well, it is one of my favourite songs isn't it? It is one of my (numerous) favourite layouts too, so all the more reason to give this one a second life!! So here we go:

The journaling is in French, it is all about my sons love for CARS and Flash McQueen and despite the fact that he had four little red cars by the name of Flash, (Lightning McQueen in English!), he was always looking for one because he never found one when he needed one!

PP: Crate paper, Bazill background, alphabet unknown and Cuttlebug.

Thanks for looking, please leave a comment! I love comments!

Just an ordinary Thursday... but happy anyway!

2009-10-08T09:34:00.000-07:00

That means work, dinner and off to bed! :-) Nothing planned, yay! Autumn starts to kick in, after weeks of good weather, sunshine and over 25°, which is not usual for me in October, being from Holland, it started to rain today... My laundry was still outside. Not happy about that! Nothing makes me happier than laundry drying outside. Well, almost nothing :) A lot of things actually! Had a good day at work, two of my quotations sold immediately which doesn't happen every day, so that made me happy. Scrapping makes me happy, I have two layouts to show you that I made a couple of weeks ago but that I didn't publish on my blog yet. Might actually throw some scrapping in between dinner and off to bed!

This first layout shows Alban in the swimming pool. This happy face makes me very happy too! Patterned paper by Cherry Arte and Jellybean (the frogs!!). No title, but didn't need one this time!

This second layout is featuring Naomi. The colors were very much inspired by her clothing. This picture was taken on a happy day, we were visiting Rocamadour (layouts already shown in previous posts!) with our friends Loïc and Rachel and the kids. Naomi was just taking a break from walking on this picture, isn't she cute? I *think* the papers were from Jellybean too, but I'm not sure. Stamp from Magnolia.

Strangely enough, this little strip of white on black polkadot makes me happy!

Coming home and being welcomed back by little Bugger (the little red cat) makes me happy too! Last weekend I took some pictures of Buggy and Scooby fighting (they still don't get along, Buggy loves Scooby but Scooby does not like Buggy), I'll have to upload them to show you in a new post. I'll leave it to this for today, thanks for stopping by and thanks for your comments!

A gagner!

2009-10-06T23:28:00.000-07:00

Sur le blog de la Compagnie des Elfes:

un superbe lot

de tampons

faites passer le message sur votre blog

le tirage au sort aura lieu samedi 10 octobre 2009

des tampons anniversaire, fait avec passion,

bisous, la vie est belle, juste pour le plaisir, toi ...

étiquette cuir, encreur versamark,

boutons transparents, libellules,

fleurs et brads

pas belle la vie ???

Et ben, moi je dis TRES BELLE! :-) Bonne chance!

3 pages en 3 heures, l'atelier de Safo!

2009-09-28T10:12:00.000-07:00

Mon premier atelier lors du crop (voir post avant, d'hier) était avec Safo. Et voilà le challenge était de faire 3 pages en 3 heures avec les thèmes patouille, freestyle et couture! Pas évident, en seulement 3 heures avec une 'prof' qui chronomètrait à la minute près! ;-) Mais, j'ai pu les finir tous les 3 et je suis assez contente du résultat. En plus! ;-)

La première montre mon fils et mon petit chat. Le fond de la page a été fait avec des pages de livre déchirée, des tampons et du glimmer mist (j'adore!) de Tattered Angels. La voici:

Ensuite la page Freestyle avec un beau papier d'Onirie (drôle de rêve) et une photo de ma copine Rachel et moi, l'été dernier à Rocamadour.
Et pour finir la page couture. Vous remarquerez que je ne suis pas très douée en couture, c'est difficile d'aller tout droit!! :-D La photo est de Naomi, qui revenait tout juste de chez le coiffeur, d'où le titre! Alphabets sur ces 2 dernières page sont de Kési'Art.

J'ai encore des choses à montrer, des layouts faits avant le crop, les minis fait pendant le crop... mais ça va devoir attendre car j'ai un faim de loup! Bon appétit, merci de vos visites et merci d'avance pour vos commentaires!

Polaroid! Et CROP!

2009-09-27T02:51:00.000-07:00

Just un petit message pour partager ce site que je viens de trouver: Rollip! Génial, ce site permet de créer des "polaroids" à partir de tes propres photos, et c'est hyper facile en plus. Un example de ce que j'ai fait:

J'ai trouvé ce site via Scrapastuces, et je sens que je vais bien m'amuser avec!!!

Hier, je suis allée au crop de Padicréa, le journée a été trop chouette!! J'ai fait des ateliers avec Safo, avec Mélanie Lagarde et avec Brigitte de la Compagnie des Elfes, 9 heures de "cours" et ça s'est passé trop vite! Une fois pas coutûme, j'ai pu finir les trois pages proposées par Safo dans le temps (!! d'habitude j'amène mes projets à moitié finis à la maison!) et j'ai quasiment fini le mini proposé par Mélanie (il me reste plus que quelques stickers à ajouter!). Le mini proposé par Brigitte était absolument génial et m'a permis de (enfin!) faire connaissance avec les encres à alcool, que j'ai immédiatement adoptés( lis: achetés)! Je n'ai pas pu finir ce mini dans le temps, car tous les pages et papiers devaient secher et ça prenait trop de temps. Par contre, je n'ai pas encore photographié mes réas donc les photos sont à venir!

Je fais un petit coucou à Céline de Créachooet', Sandrine de Montauban, Caroline de Padicréa et toutes les autres femmes fort sympatiques dont je ne me souviens pas le nom :-O Si jamais elles passent par ici... C'est sur, l'année prochaine je me réinscris!!

St Cirq Lapopie

2009-09-20T00:36:00.000-07:00

Another challenge, a layout based on a sketch, which you can find here. It's another layout with pictures of our region, when our friends Rachel and Loïc came to visit us during summer, we transformed ourselves into tourists :-) St Cirq Lapopie is a beautiful little town about an hour drive from our house.

Paper are from Basic Grey.

Today is lazy Sunday, at least that's what I hope it will be! This will involve some scrapping, because I have yet another layout waiting on my table to be finished!! Can't stop anymore. But for now, this is all...

Thanks for looking, and thanks for your comments!

Rainy weekend

2009-09-18T23:47:00.000-07:00

It started raining just half an hour before our weekend officially started, so depressing :-( Apparently it will stop raining after the weekend, Tuesday or something. Well, might just be THE opportunity to scrap some more, I have lots of pictures to scrap (we are just after the summer holidays aren't we?) and really feel like scrapping! Here are two layouts I did recently, for challenges.

The first was made for the september challenge on classyscrapper. We had to use a Classypak, a technique that was new to us (I used dry embossing, something I hadn't tried before but it's so simple and looks neat!) and at least 3 items that have been sitting in our stash for at least 6 months (I used brads, flowers and a chipboard crown). The pictures were taken in Rocamadour when we visited that town with our friends Rachel and Loïc and their kids. Rocamadour is so beautiful! The paper is 7gypsies.

The second was made for the sketch challenge on 52 sketches...52 weeks. I just discovered this site this week and as I really liked the sketch, I decided to participate. The layout shows Rachel and me, the title is really cheezy but I quite like the result! Papers are Porcelain from Basic Grey.

Look how both layouts have a hand made "flower" in them, I just tried out this technique and really love how these flowers turn out and obviously match the layout. You might just see a lot more of them in future layouts!

That's all for now, you might see a lot more after the rainy weekend! Thanks for stopping by and thank you for your comments!

Birthday boy, pictures and some layouts

2009-09-13T03:13:00.000-07:00

I totally feel like scrapping again, after a couple of months of very low mojo! Last week I went to the first 'class' of a local scrapbook association, it was good fun and nice to scrap with others again! I'll definately go more often, even though our mutual time tables here might not allow me to go each time. AND Saturday two weeks from now I go to a huge crop where I'll take 3 classes and hopefully have a lot of scrap fun.

September means back to school, in France it does anyway. I tradionally take pictures of my kids on the first day of school, easy to compare each year! Here they are for 2009:

Yesterday we celebrated Albans birthday with a couple of his friends from school (and other), this involved a lot of shouting and screaming, a lot of running and climbing, a lot of playing, a lot of presents and a lot of candy! And of course this also involved a birthday cake with 5 candles:

I also did a little scrap these last days. I suddenly had this feeling that I needed to scrap some more of the kids first years, as I started scrapping only in 2005, I mostly scrap recent pictures and the first years are really missing from their albums. So I tried to make up a little ;-)

This first one is about my little girls' second birthday. This feels weird to show her 2d birthday in the same post as his 5th! She's 7 now. Cute pictures!

This one is with pictures made during my son's first year. It is also the first layout I do without any patterned paper, I just realise this :-O Love these pictures!!

And finally this wonderful picture of Naomi with Snowwhite and her prince, Naomi is very proud of this picture and for me it was the opportunity to use this paper that I once bought and didn't think I'd ever use ;-) That happens!

I have one more layout that is almost finished and I need to finish the layout I started during the scrap class, so I'll have more to show soon! Thanks for looking!

As promised!

2009-09-05T02:31:00.000-07:00

After two days of rain, cold and work (perfect combination, not!), summer is back, the sun is out and temperatures are slowly rising again! Besides that it's Saturday, which is always a good thing :-) This last week I registered for a crop in a small town not far from my house, near Padirac/Rocamadour, at the association Padicréa, I'll go one day at the end of the month and I'm all happy about this! What's more, when I registered I learned about a scrapbook association in my town, huge surprise, a good one! I hope to be able to join them (depends on our mutual time tables here! We'll have a busy year with tennis, aquagym and maybe scrap! And work of course!).

As promised I'll show you the layouts I made over this summer, because I'm desperately behind on my blog!

Hard to see, but this is Alban being lazy in the garden. My take on C&S :-D

And here's Naomi being a real girl, also in our garden!

Both the kids at the Figeac fair.

Alban's new shoes, the picture was taken by Alban himself, he was really happy with the spiderman shoes! These shoes are as we speak ALMOST ready for the garbage can :-O

My little girl after eating cherries.

Alban on the same Fair in Figeac, he was having so much fun on his motorcycle!!
Alban again, blowing a Dandelion (?)Naomi who's happy with spring!

And last but not least a layout about Scooby (the bigger one!) who does so NOT like our new kitten Buggy, that we took in our house in July at the age of 7 weeks.

I'm sorry, but I have NO CLUE which papers I used for which layout with which embellishments etc! Sorry! That's all for now, thank you for your comments!

Holiday is over...

2009-09-01T22:28:00.000-07:00

Time to get back to normal occupations such as updating my blog and participating in Scrap challenges! And back to scrapping... even though I did do some scrap in the past months! Yep, I have lots of layouts to show you, but for today I'll just stick to this one layout that I did for the OLW challenge! The "Word up" is Beauty and with a real beauty in the house, this one was not difficult ;-)

I just love these pictures of Naomi, taken last July just before she had a haircut! The title is "Pure Beauty".

I'll be back SOON to show my other layouts! Thanks for looking and Please leave me a comment is you stopped by! :-)

Layouts

2009-06-06T04:51:00.001-07:00

Oh my, I just discovered that is really has been a LONG time since I blogged, shame on me! The beautiful weather makes that I spend a lot more time in the garden (doing nothing) then in the house scrapping or blogging. So basically since mid-april I only did 2 layouts! Which I'll show you now ;-)

Well, if the blogger would hurry up oploading my pictures that is.... slow internet connection! Grr.

This first is about my kids making a delicious cake with sand and water, the layout was made for a challenge on classyscrapper.

This second one shows my little Nagawika with his huge smile, this picture is photographically spoken quite bad but I LOVE it!

Well, even writing a little about scrap makes me feel like doing a layout! And as the weather is REALLY bad today (such a bugger for a Saturday, after a week of sunshine at work!!), I might actually go for it! More to come, soon I hope! Thanks for stopping by!

Nagawika

2009-04-13T02:33:00.001-07:00

I'm way behind and a real bad blogger! My scrapmojo or whatever you like to call it is GONE, and has trouble coming back! I think some challenges are in order :) I did do this page of my son, who did an indians and cowboy show with his school. We had a great evening watching the kids dance, listening to their cute songs, one of which was called Nagawika, eating (all parents took some food to share) and socialising :) Here's the layout:

This was before the same cute little Nagawika decided the layout desperately needed some drawing on it :-O

And some pictures of the event, I'm sorry for the bad quality, the lighting was horrible :

Thanks for looking!

Spring!

2009-03-15T09:23:00.000-07:00

I know we're only the 15th of March, and that technically spoken we are therefore in WINTER, but it almost feels like summer to me! Temperatures are up, the sky is BLUE, birds are singing, flowers are starting to show their beautiful colors, I spent the whole day in the garden and boy I'm happy!

About my blogs, I don't have enough time to keep up with 2 different blogs for photography and scrapbooking, I hardly have time to take pictures and to scrapbook :-O So I decided that the 2 go very well together, that's why I changed the name of this blog from Scraps 'n Pieces to Scraps 'n Pics and I'll show both on here!

POTD! Let's start with some pictures! It's about time because I haven't done a POTD since February 14th... and it is so much fun to do!

The first one is of Scooby, who's thrilled with spring!

The following are some action shots of my kids, while they were playing rugby with their dad. I really like how I took these 2 at exactly the right moment! (40 others were a lot less action!)

SCRAP

I completely forgot to post the following layout on my blog, so better late then never! I made this one for a sketch challenge on Classygirls 52 week sketch callenge blog!

The next one is for this same challenge blog, showing the "rugby game" from yesterday (see also pics above!):

That's about it for today! Thanks for looking and please don't hesitate to leave a comment! :-)

After a beautiful week, it's about time to blog again!

2009-02-28T23:17:00.001-08:00

We have had the most beautiful week here, weather-wise! Spring is in the air!! Temperatures went up to 18°, the sky was blue, so nice after what feels like a long winter! Well, today it's raining again, but I'm sure spring will be back soon! :-)

A layout I made earlier this week! Personally, I like it a lot! I love the picture of my little girl! After an article in "Histoires de Pages" about mixing papers from different collections and different manufacturers, leading to mixing colors and textures, I made this:

I used Cherry Arte, Bazzill, Sassafras Lass, Hambly and one more whose manufacturer I forgot... Plus brads, chipboard with stickles, flowers, a felt heart and even some heat embossing, something I rarely do.

TFL

One Little Word - mama is having Fun

2009-02-17T02:26:00.000-08:00

I have FINALLY created a layout for the newest challenge on the One Little Word challenge blog. I've been wanting to participate for ages, and finally did it! I have to say, I am totally, utterly intimidated by the incredible talent on that blog, so jumping in with a layout is not necessarily easy, for me, but I did it and I kind of love my creation.

I had these pictures of my son who was willing to do some kind of photoshoot with mom (me!), I have my new camera for about 2 months now and was so happy he wanted me to do the photos! I have to add that normally he says something like "I'm really annoyed with you taking all these photos" :-) Yes, he's 4! So in order to scrap these pictures, I wanted something else but "Alban on a photoshoot" or something similar, I wanted it more to be about ME liking to take photos. So what better word to use than the Word Up "FUN"? Here we go:

I used paper from Love Elsie, Bazzill and Pink Paisley Vintage Moon. And Bubble plastic, ordinary staples, buttons from I-don't-know-who, some rubber like feltish stuff, no idea what it is called, Autumn leaves stamp, American Craft Thickers, Pink Paisley letter stickers, Paint dabbers and a piece of cardboard that I ripped of one of the last moving boxes still around! It is actually a hanging layout, but I had to crop most of the background because the picture is taken against a glass door and I just realised the glass is really dirty! :-O

TFL

A valentine inspired challenge

2009-02-15T07:54:00.000-08:00

But not a classic valentine challenge, not necessary to use red :-P I did this layout for the February challenge on Classyscrapper, I rejoined the kit club so felt it was right again to do the monthly challenges! The challenge was to use at least 3 hearts, one of the following words: kiss, hug, sweet and another I forgot, in the title, and to use paper from a past classy kit. I used basic Grey, don't remember which month (and year!) they're from. the title is My Sweetheart. I'm actually not really satisfied with this layout, but after procastrinating for at least a week I didn't even want to look at the papers anymore, so I let it be. :-) TFL

Crescendo and a Happy Dance!

2009-02-04T12:44:00.000-08:00

Wednesday today, a day off work! Today was so cool, the weather was beautiful, blue skies and lots of sun. The thermometer even showed 15°C!!! Wow, and it is only February!!

Two layouts to show you. The first one is one of my personal all-time favorites, I like the photos, the paper, the colors... Hope you like it too! :-) I used Bazzill, Basic Grey, Cosmo Cricket (the mat), a hambly transparents (love it!), flowers (prima and unknown). that reminds me, this one too (see my last post) was for the use your stash flower challenge on classyscrapper. (and the second one too!)

This other layout is one I love too. It's my little girl doing a happy dance at the playground, love this picture! I used Bazzill, Rouge de Garance and WeRmemory papers and rub-ons, flowers from Prima and Chatterbox, American Craft thickers, and loads of little thingies from unknown sources.

Thanks for looking!

Celebrate Friendship!

2009-01-30T23:39:00.001-08:00

For christmas, we went to our former region to spend the holidays with family. We had a chance to go see our friends while over there, it was great to see eachother again! Luckily I didn't forget to ask someone to take a picture of Rachel and me, because I don't have many pictures of us (if any) and don't have many pictures of myself in general! And a great friendship is important to scrap!

This week, the use your stash challenge on classyscrapper is to use flowers, so I did (13)! Here's the result:

Thanks for looking! More to come soon, because the flowers are VERY inspiring! :-)

Scrapjacked!

2009-01-24T05:57:00.000-08:00

I am REALLY gonna try to blog more often! Really! The weather is pretty bad over here, rain, rain, rain, storm and rain. Oh, and did I mention Rain?!? It’s so annoying, I can’t wait for spring to start!

So, as we are pretty much confined to staying home, due to the weather. Which is totally fine by me, I really felt like scrapping today and decided to do a blog challenge. After going through the different challenges in my favourites folder, I decided for the scrapjack challenge, because that the current challenges, based on a photo wall from Kristina Contes, inspired me to scrap pictures of Naomi who had a friend over to play this last Wednesday.

The layout completely does NOT look like the a.m. photo wall, which is clean and stylish, but it is inspired from it!! The papers used are American Craft, a tiny little Hambly transparent and Love, Elsie. Besides that, I used paint and pens, and I believe that is all, no embellishments.

I also found some time to start on my ATC holder!!! I mean to make a full ATC holder for the year 2009, a little like the 365 days project (that most scrappers seem to know), but it will be just about the kids and not necessarily every day. Ok, it was supposed to be every day, but toward the 10th of January I have decided that that is not possible for me! ;-) So I meant to start this ATC project like a week into the new year (so that I'd have a couple of picture to start with), and I am already behind :-O So this morning I made the tab saying "January" and I printed out the photos, 9 on one 4x6" photosheet (that's why I couldn't start on the 1st!) , 18 in total (so far)! I'll show pictures once I have done like at least a week!

Thanks for looking and don't forget the comment! ;-)

Weekend!!

2009-01-23T09:14:00.000-08:00

Oh I'm glad it's Friday. Even gladder (can you say that?) that it is Friday evening!! The week has been quite busy, so busy that I have not yet had a chance to post my latest layout, even though I finished it last Sunday!! Here it is, the title is Autumn Colors.

The title was actually meant to be in the right upper corner, but I cut the words out with my Craft Robot, got them through the Xyron X thing and then they were so incredibly sticky (I know that it is supposed to be, but it was actually annoying!!) and I tried my best to stick them on right (didn't do a great job) and at the end I noticed I took the wrong corner :-O Oh well, this will work too.

The weather is HORRIBLE here, it is raining raining! Richard just called, he picked up the children from school and is still not home, because the river fled and traffic is *hell*. Luckily for me I'm safe on my "mountain" - not very high but high enough to keep the water away!!

The two peas blog challenge for today is "what are your scrapping plans for this Weekend". Looks like a very easy one to answer, but it actually isn't because basically I scrap when I have a moment and that is not always to be foreseen. But I do hope to scrap!!

Have a good weekend all, and thanks for comments!

Classy use your Stash challenge!

2009-01-18T04:24:00.000-08:00

On the Classyscrapper message board, a new series of challenges just started, a Use you stash challenge. For this week, the item to be used was Chipboard. I actuallyd don't really drown in the Chipboard but I did have enough to make a nice layout about my son riding his bike while wearing the "rollerskates" from his sister. These and all the security equipment happen to be pink, which made me use a little pink in the layout, a thing I don't usually do when putting together layouts of my son.

PP Cherry Arte (from quite a while ago), American Craft Thickers and arrows, one Tim Holtz grungeboard, prima flowers and other unknown! Sketch by Tiare Smith.

And for the TwoPeas challenge:

Challenge for today~ What would you do if you knew you wouldn't fail?

This is a hard one! First of all I don't know whether answers should be scraprelated or not, so I'll answer both ways! Scraprelated that would be send in layouts for publications. It's not that I don't send them in because I'm afraid to fail, I just don't bother because I *know* I'll fail :-D

And not scraprelated, I honestly don't know. I don't "don't do" things because I might fail, I'm in general not afraid to fail. But one thing is driving alone (with the kids) all the way to Holland (12 km / about 800 miles), not because I'm afraid of having an accident or something but because I'm afraid that halfway up there, I'll be so fed up with driving (and tired of it) that I would have to abandon :-O

I won't wait this long for a new post this time, my next layout is almost finished :-)

Thanks for looking and thank you for comments!

A new layout and my scrapcorner!

2009-01-10T08:32:00.000-08:00

Let's start this post with my newest layout! It's called favorite model, it's about Naomi modelling for her mom who has a new camera. The layout is made from a sketch from the Sketch-a-Day club that I joined this year for the second time, because the sketches are great and the ladies on the forum have really become my friends! I really love these photos and I found the paper to go perfectly with her clothes (blue basically!!): Vintage Moon collection from Pink Paisley. Some flowers, some ribbon and some paper from Love Elsie and hop... it's easy with a sketch ;-) And 3 months after moving into my new house, it is about time to show you where I scrap! It a corner of our study and with a little help from Ikea, all my stuff found a place in it! I really love how it turned out:
My glass desk with Ikea kitchen accessories on the wall to put lots of stuff and therefore leaving my table quite cleanish!

When I am at my table, my scrap wall is just on my right hand with my cabinet that I love, my shelves with albums and magazines and my embellishment drawers. A closer look on the next picture:
I'll also give you a little peek into some of the drawers: my alphabets, my stamps and my cuttlebug dies. Don't worry, the others are full too :-)

And finally another important "detail" of my scrap area, the paper! Seen like this it actually doesn't seem to be a lot, but I think it can keep me scrapping for two years or so... More then enough for me, but hey, there's always room for some more! I stole this idea from Pascallle, who uses the same plastic "thing" to store paper in (I'm sorry, the English word doesn't pop in mind!!)

Well, thanks for taking the tour in my scrapcorner and for commenting on my blog posts and/or layouts! Thanks for looking!

First layout of the year!

2009-01-04T04:16:00.000-08:00

After my first mini-album, here's my first layout for 2009! I love this picture of my 2 smiling kids in sunny and flowery Figeac, they look quite happy! When I first started to put this layout together, I wasn't too sure that i was going to like the result, because I gave "mixing papers from different manufacturers" a try and it wasn't easy. I used Sassafras Lass (background), My minds Eye, Hambly and Daisybucket for this, plus We R memory keepers for the photo mat. But I admit that I actually quite like the result, it looks so sunny! Cf. the title Soleil !, which means sun! in English.I guess I needed a little sunshine, we do have sunshine actually but it is soooo cold. Some stamps (autumn leaves and Hero Arts), flowers (Prima, who else?), letters (American Craft Thickers) and a journaling spot from Heidi Swapp.

Today's blog challenge on TwoPeas is

Challenge for today~ I love the weekends because......

Easy one! I love the weekends because during the weekend, you can do whatever you feel like! Like now, it is 1.30 pm, the kids are still in their pyjamas,simply because they like it, I blog, because I like that, I just organized my scrapcorner, which I always do just after finishing a layout, because I actually enjoy organizing my scrapcorner. I'll probably play monopoly with the kids (Junior edition!), which I enjoy (and they too), then I'll go out a little to take some pictures, as I'm learning how to use my camera and also have to have a picture for POTD, my son might come with me on his bike. Well, to make a long story short, I love the weekend because that's the little time we have for doing things we WANT to do. Tomorrow, work starts again, after 10 days holidays.....

Thanks for looking and please don't hesitate to leave a comment, I love comments!!

First bind-it-all binded (??) mini album!

2009-01-02T09:46:00.000-08:00

OK, the binding of this album is not perfect, I have to figure out how to get the most of the bind it all, but I quite like it anyway. I will not show you all pages of my mini album, because that will take me ages to upload, but here are just a few pages. The mini album is made with pictures from my kids taken since we live here in the SW, I made it thinking I might give it to their grand parents (that we "left behind") but I'm actually not sure anymore ;-)
Title of the album is Belle et le Beau, based on "Beauty and the Beast" but changed into "Beauty and the Gorgeous". Sounds a lot better in French ;-)

Thanks for looking, and I loooove comments!

31/12, time for some resolutions!

2008-12-31T01:16:00.000-08:00

Just this once I will post the same post on this blog as on my photography blog, mostly because it's long and it is both scrapbooking and photography related! 2008 is almost behind us, we’re going into 2009 and guess what, I still haven’t met any extra terrestrials :-O The “new” millennium definitely doesn’t live up to the expectations!

Looking back at the year 2008, even though some great things happened such as moving to this beautiful area in the South West of France, 2008 has been the worst year of my life with loosing my sweet mother in May. I’m glad to go into a new year, even though that won’t change a thing!
It’s time for some resolutions, of course. OK, there is still the goal of loosing the few kilos I have too much, I still blame it on my son although he’s 4 now and I really should start blaming it on myself ;-) But this year I only set “creative” goals, skill developing goals! Here we go!

Photography – I just bought myself a Nikon D60 DSLR (Reflex) camera and my first goal would definitely be to learn to get the best use out of it, using manual (or at least semi-manual) mode! In order to achieve this, I read a lot (I love reading) but I do realise that practice will be the best way to get there. I therefore plan on doing the POTD challenge on Two Peas Photography (cf. post before), which will “force” me to practice every day! At the same time, I hope to learn how to use Photoshop Elements to get the most of my pictures!
Scrapbooking – Last years goal was to make 104 layouts in the year (2 a week!) but I didn’t make it, I came to a (sad) total of 63!!! But, having moved houses and having had all my scrapbook things in a box for 3 months, I am not surprised about that! For 2009, I set my goal on a little less, because I hope to spend time on Photography too ;-) Up till yesterday I thought I’d set my goal on 1,5 layouts a week average, for a total of 78, but this morning I revised my goal and I’ll put my scrapbook thicker on 52 layouts because I also plan on making quite some mini-albums (Richard gave me the bind it all for Christmas!!!). I plan on doing a challenge a week (which means a layout a week) on some of my favourite challenge blogs!
Scrapbook related – ATC holder! I bought myself an ATC holder earlier this year, it is still in the box. I plan on filling the holder with ATCs (surprise) that show my children in 2009. I basically plan on taking one picture a day of them (at least), either the two together or only one of them, and on the ATCs I want to document their year. I’m not setting the goal of making one ATC a day, I’ll probably do loads of them every once in a while ;-) but I really am gonna try to keep up with this!

Well, that would be about it. I do have to clean my house once in a while, and I do have a job to go to!!! Having said that, I do realise that these goals might be a little optimistic, because it does involve daily photography and daily blogging :-O but I’ll try!! See you next year!!

Christmas

2008-12-30T06:27:00.000-08:00

Let's start with a layout!

We took this picture of the kids in front of our tree (barely visible!) for some of our christmas cards. Quality could have been better, but we were in a hurry!! :-) I made this quick layout with the picture, craft cardstock (I love that color!!), a lot of felt, a Autumn leaves stamp and the eternal prima flowers! I didn't give it a title, just a little journaling that this picture was used for some christmas cards!

In 2008, I had set the goal for myself to create 104 layouts, which is 2 per week ;-), but I got to 63 and will MAYBE be able to create one more, but not 41!!! I blame that on us moving houses and most of my stuff being in a box for 3 months! I'll set a more realistic goal next year, even though in 2007 I did make it to 104 layouts, I guess 1.5 per week, on average of course, will be OK. So that would be 78 (please correct me if I'm wrong!) layouts, and I also plan on making mini albums, as Richard offered me a bind-it-all for Christmas, a little machine that binds books made from just pieces of paper/cardboard etc.

I offered myself for Christmas a new camera, a DSLR or Reflex camera! Nikon D60 with 2 lenses. I have created a website for this: Linnao's Photography, which sounds quite professional but which is NOT, I'm an amateur trying to learn how to use the thing ;-) But that is a lot of fun. On Two Peas Photography , I not only find tons of useful information, but I also decided to do the POTD challenge, POTS meaning Photo (or Picture?) of the Day. So I'll try to keep up and post (at least) one picture each day on my blog! It will be fun to see the progress after a year! Or at least, so I hope :-)

Again on Two Peas, this time on the Scrapping board, I sometimes do the blog challenge, which for today is "why is creativity important?". Well, I can't say WHY creativity IS important, but I can say why it is important to me. I've only been creative since a couple of years (2 or 3) and it is important to me simply because I enjoy it and because I really like that when you're creative, or try to be ;-), you have a lasting reminder of it, something that not only you but also the people you know can enjoy.

I wish you all a happy new year, a nice celebration tomorrow night and please know that I am very happy with comments!!!

My take on a Scrapjacked challenge

2008-12-21T05:18:00.000-08:00

I felt like doing a challenge from a blog this weekend, I love these!! I was very inspired by the scrapjack challenge, that you can find here . I usually don't do layouts with many many pictures on it, BUT I was very tempted by this one as I took lots of pictures last week, when we had snow, but didn't want to use them for several layouts because they all looked quite the same :-).

The layout is quite simple. I used kraft cardstock, white cardstock, grungeboard alphabet (NEIGE) painted white with stickles (Ranger), a flower, felt (both with stickles again), a paperclip from who knows who and my favorite white pen.

The snow is all gone, we have gorgeous weather this weekend with sun and blue skies! I defenately prefer :-) Only 2 more work days and I'll be off for 12 days, gotta love christmas!!!

Thanks for stopping by and for your comments!

Winter's here...

2008-12-14T07:04:00.000-08:00

What a surprise this morning to wake up and find this:

Beautiful, on a Sunday :-) I sure hope that during the week we won't have any snow (because I like driving and I like snow, but I don't like driving in the snow), but in the weekend it is truely beautiful!

I have been a little bit active on the creative side these last weeks, mostly in cardmaking, which is a first for me because I never make cards and basically don't really know how to make them. But I tried my new Cuttlebug embossing and cutting folders and I found some sketches here and I managed to make some! A little overview:

I have also made a few new layouts. The first is featuring Naomi and "her" ScoobyDoo. The colors of her clothes (well, pyjama's) were very hard to scrap, because I don't really like to use purple, but the result was quite OK:

And as I really love these pictures, I wanted to scrap them again on another color combination. I therefore printed them out in Sepia to get rid of the purple and made a layout that I framed to put in Naomi's room:

I looooove the picture in the next layout, even though a photographer would probably say it is not a very good picture :-) My little girl looks sooooo big, so grown up! Well, on the biggest of the picture that is, in the other ones she looks just like a 6 years old :-)

And after all these Naomi layouts I obviously HAD TO do an Alban one. Maïté gave me these cute pictures she took during the summer holidays, and I was eager to scrap them, but I honestly am not sure about the result. A little too simple but I have no idea what to add...

That's about it for now! Thanks for stopping by and PLEASE leave a comment to show me you were here! :-)

Autumn is cool...

2008-11-10T13:31:00.000-08:00

when it is 20°C and sunny, that is! We are enjoying a long weekend (Tuesday 11 is a bank holiday and we all got Monday off too!!) and the beautiful weather allows us to spend a lot of time outside, in the garden where Richard is cutting trees, in the playground/parc with the kids, life is nice! :)

Well, that is if you don't count the ENORMOUS spider I just killed. The biggest ever! Well, not litterally of course, but really, it was HUGE. And totally invading my scrapcorner :( With a little help from Richard, who handed me the anti-spider bombing material (...) I managed to get rid of it, and right now I am carefully looking around because my mom always used to tell me that they come in pairs... So I tremble.

Therefore, just a quick post to show you my latest creations:

This layout is featuring Naomi on a poney. She is so happy when she ride a "horse". I made this one for a stamping challenge, we had to use a stamp and brown ink. I stamped the cute Magnolia girl, with regards to my happy horseback riding girl. PP Cosmo Cricket and Cherry Arte, letters American Craft Thickers.

And this one is about Naomi in the "pool of balls" or whatever you might call it in English. Can't remember who made the PP and am too afraid to go search to my paper stock, in case spider-man (or woman) is hiding in there... you know, the other half of the pair.

Thanks for stopping by and for leaving a comment!

It's November, that's for sure...

2008-11-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

It has been raining all day, almost non stop. A definate sign of November :( This morning, I planned on going to the market, I love the market, but the rain got me hesitating. I finally decided to go, with a big umbrella, and ran into my brother-in-law who invited me for lunch. Okay, why not? We ate at 4 pm :D But never mind that, we had a fun afternoon.

I totally forgot to post pictures of the first snow of the year, which was last week while it was still October, not normal at all ;-) The pictures were taken in the garden where we actually had just a little snow, where I work there was quite a lot, but well, still don't take my camera to work! OK, don't laugh!

Next I'll show you two of the three layouts I made so far this weekend. Only two, because I didn' manage to get a decent picture of the third ;) I really DO NOT like the third, so I'm not even sure I'll show it!

The first is a layout showing Alban on some kind of play-thing in the playground in Figeac. He was really concentrated on what he was doing, I love how he sticks out his tongue when he's concentrated. Too cute. I used WeRMemory Keepers paper, a diecut flower border (don't know who made it), Cherry Arte rub-ons and Ranger paintdabber.

The second layout also features Alban, with a picture taken that same day in the same playground, actually on the same "play-thing". I looooove this picture and quite like the result of the layout, even though it is still a "can do better" layout. Well, I hope I can do better ;), on day...
Prima PP (the cut-out flowers), Bazill CS and ribbon from my stack.

That's it for today! Thanks for your comments!

Back online!

2008-10-30T08:02:00.000-07:00

After being without an internet connection for some 10 days, due to the moving, I'm back! The last 10 days were exhausting! Kind of what I expected, knowing we had to unpack 150 boxes, put the furniture in place and live (=work, eat, clean) at the same time! But we did it, and although not everything is really finished, we are settled in! It's a great house, I love it! I tried to take a couple of pictures, but after the good weather we had since beginning september, autumn finally arrived and the light is BAD for pictures!

Let's start with the truck with our furniture and boxes, it was HUGE:

yep, 70m3 is a lot!

Next, two pictures to show the colors we chose for the living room. Don't mind the mess on the table, they come with moving in!! :

I had received a publicity from La Redoute with this color scheme for walls/curtains, so I copied them and ordered from their competition :-D I quite like the chocolate brown, cream/whitish walls with the anis-green curtains, I'll have to scrap these colors too ;-) I'll ask coordinating table cloths from the Pere Noel, to finish it!

The kids both have a room for themselves plus one room they share to play in. That room is a mess no matter what I do or say! So no pictures of that one for now ;-) Their bedrooms are finished furnishing but the decorating still has to be done, they have loads of little posters and images to put on their walls, but that is no priority! Just to give you an idea:

I don't thing it is really necessary which room belongs to which child!?

The kids are on holiday this week. Luckily Richard is still at home so I didn't have a problem for the daycare. This morning they left to visit the grand parents for 4 days, 4 looooong days (for me that is!) but I'm here because I have a job to go to. But well, I'll go for christmas!

I hope to be able to get quite some scrapping done, I have picked out some challenges I want to do, have a couple of pictures I want to scrap badly and I need to inaugurate my new scrap corner. I don't have pictures yet, but will publish these soon!

Thanks for stopping by!

We got our house!

2008-10-19T00:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning, we officially became owners of our house! Yay!!! I'm happy ;-)

In the end of the morning, we went to our house, to take a look at it in empty state, and it was quite OK, in good state! We met the former owners there so that they could explain the functioning of certain things, like the heating, and we had a little champagne to celebrate the event! The kids met our new neighbours who have a little girl (4 yo) and immediately made friends, and went to play. They are happy too! :-)

After lunch, Richard attacked the wall paper in the living room, because we decided to change that before our furniture arrives on Tuesday (yay!!!) and I went shopping for food and for curtain rails. Mission not entirely accomplished, but we are not in a hurry! Today Richard will return to the house and he can start putting the paper on, I am sooooo curious to know what it's gonna look like! Myself I will go to the house to take pictures, which I hope to publish here tonight! I took a couple yesterday, please note the blue sky :-D

Good mailday!

2008-10-14T09:17:00.000-07:00

Just an ordinary Tuesday, lightened up by GREAT mail! A couple of weeks ago, two to be exact, I 'altered' a journal for a journaling challenge on classyscrappers, hosted by Adriann, who has this wonderful blog, check it out! And just for doing the challenge, for participating, she sent a wonderful little RAK to everybody! I received it today, that was really quick for mail from the US! It was a cute little kit with flowers, ribbons etc, thank you Adriann! This is the journal I made:

When picking up the kids from school, I was able to also pick up my curtains that I ordered. The package was quite heavy, glad to be home with it, but OMG, I love my curtains :-) Our house is going to be so beautiful ;-) Only 5 more days to go!!

D-6, we're getting there!

2008-10-13T05:17:00.000-07:00

Only 6 more days to go!! I just suddenly realised that i have loads to do for the move: change of address at the post office, cards with our new address for family and friends and change address at official things such as health insurance... Get a telephone number! :-O Didn't think of that one before!!! And soon after the telephone number, get internet!!! Sometimes I hear horror stories of people without a connexion for like 4 to 8 weeks, can you imagine that?!? I can't, I'm lost without Internet!!!

So yesterday I blogged about the beautiful weather here, to make things more true for readers, here are some pictures! They're not the best ever, but at least they show the blue sky, that's what the pictures are all about anyway!

Have a good Monday!

Weekend occupations and blog challenge

2008-10-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

It's the end of a BEAUTIFUL weekend, can't believe we actually had 30° in October! (Celsius!) We didn't do too much, just walk around, play in the garden and the playground, we had a beer in town on a sunny terrace and that's it!

No, not really, as we will have our new house NEXT WEEK, we ordered curtains, an oven and a dishwasher! :-) This all took me quite some time, because the colors of the curtains, as well as the measures of course, had to be Right, the oven and dishwasher had to be ordered for the lowest price possible ;-) so it took me quite some surfing! But it's all going to arrive soon, can't wait!!!! 6 more days and we'll have our house!

I once in a while do a blog challenge from Two Peas :

Challenge for today~ Are you good at remembering dates on pictures? Or do you have to write it all down...

I'm a mess with dates, from really old pictures (well, everything is relative, if you're 35, you don't really have really old pictures...) I don't even really remember the year... But luckily for me, Digital photography was invented and all my pictures have the date in their memory :-) Except for the ones from before-digital, and for these I just don't have the date... Too bad.

That's all for now, wish you all a good week!

It's getting better already...

2008-10-11T01:49:00.001-07:00

Even though the blog "look" is not perfect yet, there are some improvements, thanks to the wonderful lessons of Kimberly Brimhall from SisTV! I made the banner myself!!!! OK, not perfect yet, but I am proud :) I have tried to insert a nice background, but lost my columns in the process, so I gave up on that. I also still have to make my list of blog links to blogs that I like, I need to give category labels to my posts, I would like to make diaporama of my scrapbookpages that I like most (well, not gonna put the ugly ones here for everyone to see, am I?) etc. etc. etc. Enough to keep me busy for a while!

A slight problem *might* be that I'll probably be without an Internet connexion for a while. Moving houses means disconnect to the world! :O ONLY ONE WEEK TO GO AND WE'LL BE THE PROUD OWNERS OF A BEAUTIFUL HOUSE!!! We are soooo impatient! Alban mostly because he will finally be able to play with Buzz Lightyear, who's been in a box since the end of August, I know, aweful mistake in planning! Me because we will finally have ALL our stuff again, can't believe how much I miss my clothes, my furniture, my mugs :) and of course my scrap stuff! It's gonna be so much fun, but also so much work, to unpack the boxes and give everything its little place in our new home! Scooby won't know what's happening, moving again! But she'll get used to it and certainly won't be sorry to NEVER see our 8 neighbour cats again :)

I'll leave it to that today, I'll try to work some more on the blog this weekend. No new pictures of layouts to show at the moment :(

Welcome on my NEW blog!

2008-10-07T07:43:00.000-07:00

Totally doesn't look good, my blog, doesn't it? Well, I'm taking this class from SiSTV all about making your blog beautiful, fun and readable, so keep looking over the next days/weeks for improvements, like a new banner (personalized, please!), a beautiful background and... I don't know what else yet, the class just started yesterday :-)

Today's homework was making a post about what I want blogging to be for me. Ideally it would be a funny, goodlooking blog with lots of news, scrapbooking, stories about books, films, TVshows, gossip, politics (???) or anything else that crosses my mind, and then really ideally I would publish my blog as a book and make LOTS of money :-) One can dream! Although I doubt that in the current crisis period, people will spend their money on my blog book...
To look a little out of the ideal situation, I basically want this blog to be my communication to the world, whether that is to family and friends who are now 1100 km north from me (I moved!), my neighbour (who I haven't met yet!) or curious blog-spotters on the other side of the Atlantic. We'll move into a new home in 2 weeks time, what better way to share this but on a blog?!? Lots of pictures to share! When we move in, I'll finally get all my scrapstuff back (it's in storage) and I will have lots to show!! That's what my blog is for! The kids are growing up, which means a lot of funny, moving and happy anecdotes.

So, check back often!

A little update on Autumn in the South of France, love it! 26°C, blue sky (OK, a couple of clouds, little white ones) but chilly evenings and mornings. The funny thing is that the trees do think it is fall, and nature shows its beautiful colors everywhere, a lot of RED, bright red that I do have to take some pictures of! (silly me, don't take my camera to work!!) But despite natures colors, we still feel like in summer, which is kind of a strange feeling. But believe me, I'll get used to it! I'll end this post with a couple of pictures, one to show the beautiful blue sky, picture taken 8 days ago, and one showing the kids, as always :-)

Thanks for stopping by!