LOAD213 Day 20 - Hidden Elements

For today's prompt, Lain asked me to make a page with a hidden element. I don't do this ALL the time but often enough that I was ready with several options at hand. And then we celebrated Christmas (I was doing these layouts for Lain in December) and each of us was given a special gift from Greg's Mom. They all came in pretty unique gift card envelopes which I immediately hoarded away for future use! Don't we all do this? No? It's just me then? Okay, I can live with that!!

Here's my layout. Can you spot where the hidden journaling is?

Ta da!!

Here's a closer look at that journaling card.

The gift card envelope had this great silver ribbon around it but I didn't have anything quite like it in my stash so I improvised. I laid down a piece of double sided tape in approximately the same width as the ribbon then, after exposing the sticky side, sprinkled it with silver glitter. To make sure it was stuck good and strong and I wasn't going to get glitter falling off into my page protector, I laid a piece of scrap paper over top and burnished the glitter with my bone folder. I swear to you, I can rub my finger over it and nothing comes off!

Additional silver accents and some contrasting dark blue pieces finish off this layout. 

What will you do with a hidden element today? 

Thanks for stopping by - have a great Wednesday.

A Practical Scrappers Feature Post - Are you Scrapping Yourself?

Hi there! I have a feature over on the Practical Scrappers blog today and I'm asking the question "Are you Scrapping Yourself?" I'd love for you to head over there and check out what this ...

and this ...

have to do with my answer.

If you'd like to come back and tell me which of my ME layouts was your favourite and become a follower, I will pick a random winner to send a little surprise. Not sure what it's going to be yet. Maybe 39 punched butterflies!! LOL! Just kidding, I've got quite the stash to pull from so it'll be good, I promise!! 

Marley is 8!

In fact, Marley has been 8 for a week now so I'm a bit behind in celebrating her. I did write a heartfelt Facebook status update on the day. That counts, right? LOL!

I have created two layouts so far to remember this birthday. The first one I want to show you is for a PageMaps contest. We were given this sketch

And here is my take on it.

I had a lot of fun with this, used papers from several different companies and some new ribbon that I received last week in the mail. A total surprise package! But more about that later.

Every year we measure the girls first thing in the morning on their birthday. We have been using the door jamb of what is now Paige and Christine's bedroom. I'll show you a close up of the door jamb below - someone (hmmm ... wonder who?) has "decorated" it with permanent ink. ... sigh. Kids! 

But I digress. I went back today and measured exactly how high up the wall her M8 mark is and you can see it above. 51.5" or 131cm for us supposedly metric Canadians. So tall!! Greg's overjoyed. She'll be able to ride ALL the rides at Disneyland in May.

A couple more close ups of the details.

The other layout I did was for the last day of LOAD212. I completely disregarded the prompt as I really wanted to get a jump on scrapping her birthday. Here it is.

And close ups of each page.

Since last year we went a bit over the top with her party (see here) we'd been telling her all year that this birthday would have to be low key. And it was. We had 10 of her friends over (including 2 boys! yikes!) to have pizza and watch a movie - Dolphin Tale - and then eat cupcakes. I really didn't do too much prep. Goody bags were simple - just white paper bags with their names stamped on them - and only a few items in them. There was no craft to organize or games for that matter. The birthday banner made for Paige last year (see here) got a new number on it and was hung in a new place but other than that, decorations were minimal (pretty much non-existent really!) But at the same time, we celebrated Marley in a way that made her feel special and allowed her to spend time with her friends. 

The title for this layout is super simple - her initials and her age.

I also included a copy of her birthday invitation.

Now for those family members that have hung in, here are some pictures from the day.

She was very serious about having her height measured!!

Remember the "decorations" I talked about? Yup. Here they are!

After the measuring it was time for gifts. Here she is opening the card I made. Inside was a Groupon for a horse back riding lesson. As you can see by her reaction below, she was pretty excited!

Aunt Moira, this one's for you. Marley loves her new book! Thank you!! It is a teeny bit advanced for her but we'll take it slowly.

Birthday pancakes!

After all the soccer games were over for the day (it was Sunday after all!) we headed over to Andrew's to celebrate with the Campbell cousins as well as the Nielsen cousins. It was also Jonina's Mom's birthday the following day so we had a joint cake.

Last but not least, here is a picture of my surprise prize. I participated in a card exchange for Valentine's Day with my ScrapHappy group (see the cards here) and won the prize. I had completely forgotten there was a prize involved and so hadn't checked the boards for awhile. Gotta love the surprise mail!!

I used the green velvet ribbon and the dark pink crochet trim on the top layout. LOVE IT!!

That's it. Thanks for stopping by!

Challenge layout

I haven't been showing you too many of my LOAD212 layouts but as this one is for several different challenges I figured I'd do a post on it.

Lain's prompt today was "So You Say it's Your Birthday" (and it really is Lain's birthday - hope it's a good one!!) which for some reason made me think of some of the cakes I've made for the girls over the years. I used this sketch from Elle's Studio Sketch Thursday challenge ...

... and came up with this.

This also has components on it for a couple of the Apron Strings Birthday month challenges - namely Day #9 (create a layout in less than an hour - this took me 53 minutes) and Day #11 (create a floral embellishment.)

Here is a close up of some of those floral embellishments. I used my Big Shot and the Fun Flowers die from Stampin' Up! The title was a last minute "aha!" moment. I was looking for a large 6 in all my letter stickers. When I saw the @ symbol the title just came together!

All the patterned papers are from American Crafts Celebration line and I love how this one has this embossed pattern of fabric swags or bunting. Seemed perfect for a party layout but a little goes a long way! To finish the grouping I added some more scraps and another flower.

Here's the third layered flower that I made.

Thanks for looking! Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Been too busy to post!

Sorry everyone, I've been neglecting this blog and visiting other people's blogs in favour of crafting my little butt off! What have I been crafting? Well, I'm still working on my Twelve layouts, as well, I had two Stampin' Up! group meeting this week in which we swap cards so I had to come up with two different designs and then make a total of 25 cards over 2 days. ('Cus you know I tend to do these things last minute!) What else ... LOAD has started (see blinkie in my side bar to find out what that is) and I am actually caught up. In fact, I'm sort of ahead of the game ... keep reading to have that one explained!

Here are quick pictures about my most recent layouts. For more detailed info please visit my Flickr Gallery. Thanks. Oh and to those of you who don't give a you-know-what about my scrapping ... I will endeavour to do better about taking regular life pictures and posting them too. I was looking through my January pictures and  was appalled at how few I had taken of life last month! Pathetic!!!

But I'm digressing ... back to the layout pictures ...

This was done using a sketch from Studio Calico (see below).

In my "to be sorted/scrapped" basket are a stack of team photos of both Marley and Paige (although, mostly Marley!) so this is me trying to get them scrapped!

This was also inspired by the Studio Calico sketch below but since this one actually used some Studio Calico products, this was the one I submitted to their Sunday Sketch challenge. (By the way, I just have to add that I actually WON a Studio Calico Sunday Sketch challenge for this layout. Yay me!) 

Aren't the apples so cute?

Next we have this one.

This one was a bit of a slog for me. I spent about 3 days fiddling with it but now I am pretty happy with it. Please check out the details on my Flickr Gallery - there are some subtle ones that you can't see from this picture. 

In Twelve Stacey encourages us to celebrate the every day things and I decided it was time for a layout about LC's blanket - Dee-tee. It's been such a part of her and we are slowly asking her to give it up. I wanted to have something for her to look back on when she's older so she can remember the love she had for her blanket.

Journalling reads: 

"Ah, Christine and her “Dee-tee” …

It’s a gorgeous cream coloured (when it’s clean!), satin backed, furry blanket. My dear friend Shalan gave it to her at birth and for the first few months it just sort of hung out in her crib. We started to encourage her to cuddle it at nap times and bed time – especially when we realized that she wasn’t going to take a soother. She’s the only one of our kids to suck her thumb! And oh, how she loves that thumb!!

When she started talking we realized she called her little blanket, her “dee-tee” and ever since, the name has stuck. She had to take Dee-tee everywhere! It’s been to Maui (and thrown up on – but that’s another story), to the PNE, to visit Santa, to the Fire Hall and to Granny Camp. Now she only gets Dee-tee at nap time and bed time. All other times of the day it lives above the fridge in the kitchen so there is no “sneaking a thumb suck” in the middle of the day."

And now for my LOAD212 layouts.

Day One's prompt was "You've got good taste" with the suggestion of scrapping a favourite restaurant, recipe or other food related memory. While going through my pictures I came across the Guinness is Good For You postcard (picked up in Ireland back in the late 90's)  and remembered the St. Patrick's Day feast I made last year. So, my totally simple, totally fast layout was done before I knew it. So fast in fact that I had time to scrap another very important food memory ...

... my Mum's shortbread recipe. This one took a bit longer but not much.

All in all, Day One was a huge success!

Onto Day Two and the prompt of "Favourite Photo".

During my sort of the aforementioned basket, I'd come across this picture of me and Marley from 2004. It has always been one of my favourite pictures of myself so I knew it would be perfect for this prompt. The layout took awhile though and I've realized I've forgotten a title. But it's done for now ... a title can be added later, right?

Why do I love this picture? I'll be honest, it's because I love how young and thin and happy I look. 

Life with one kid was SO easy!!! (comparatively!)

 I was running, I had been playing Ultimate. I had a great haircut. 

Sigh.

Anyway, there you have it . I have to put the kids to bed and then I will try and get some pictures up on my other blog showing off my cards but no promises!

Talk to you later.