Tagged - Sneaky peek

My wonderful new-found friend Lisa (if you don't know her, go check out her blog. Lisa is one of the funniest girls I've come across here and her stories always put a huge smile on my face!) tagged me in this fun little game of "let's see just how bad I can look in a photo"! The point is to grab your camera and take a photo at the exact second you realize you have been tagged... so here it is:


I know, out of focus and not exactly flattering (I like to think my nose isn't that huge in real life!!!!), but in a strange masochistic kind of way I actually like this picture LOL. Lisa used a very fun picture of herself for this game, and I wanted to follow her example, so I started making faces to the camera, sticking out my tongue ... etcetera. I actually needed some strange poses for my latest LO as well, and I was having a great time, so - call me crazy - I started laughing out loud, having a ball just taking pics of myself. That's when I took this pic, laughing so hard while trying to wink. It shows all my wrinkles, multiple chins and several other flaws, but I really don't care, I was having fun and I think it shows...

So now it is my turn. I tag April, Jane, Sasha, Arlene and Sharon, all people who I think enjoy a good laugh now and then and won't mind all too much making a fool of themselves... So come on my friends, let's see what you come up with, I can hardly wait!

The goofy pics I took were for my DT example over at Songbird Scraps. The new lyrics for the April challenge will be posted the day after tomorrow, and I have to say they are especially inspiring this month. Here's a peek of my LO:

Not much to be seen yet, but I can tell you this... I had lots of fun playing with paint on this one...
You also still have until tomorrow to post your last minute March entries if you want a chance to win that Fiskar's knife, so hurry!

Talk to you later my friends,
xxx Peggy

2nd March Challenge Songbird Scraps

The second lyrics for the March Challenge over at Songbird Scraps are up (actually, they have been up for a few days now, I'm sooooo far behind, sorry....):

Little Victories - Matt Nathanson

This time, I'll have no fear
I'll be standing strong and tall
Turn my back towards them all
And I'll be awful sometimes
Weakened to my knees
And I'll learn to get by
On the little victories
And if the world decides to catch up with me
It's a little victory.

The Book of Love - Peter Gabriel

The book of love has music in it In fact that's where music comes from Some of it is just transcendental Some of it is just really dumb But I I love it when you sing to me And you You can sing me anything.

If these lyrics are getting your creative juices flowing, and if you would like to win the Fiskars Knife that's up for grabs this month, head on over to the Songbird Scraps site and post your take on the challenge! You'll find some wonderful examples from our DT as well. Here's my LO for the challenge:


This picture was taken on our wedding day in 1998. I realise we look a bit orange in this pic LOL, I tried to change this in Photoshop but couldn't do much about it. This pic wasn't taken with a digital camera and has been developed the "old" way ... I scanned it, and this is how it came out! Anyway, we did have a nice tan that day, seeing as we had been in Crete for 10 days already before our wedding day, so the colour might be even more accurate than my memory is allowing it to be LOL.

I love this picture, always have, and I have been wanting to scrap this forever. I never had any inspiration though, until I saw those lyrics by Peter Gabriel, I thought they were perfect! Here we are lying on our bed in our hotelroom, which our Greek friends had covered with money and rose petals... this seems to be a Greek tradition to wish us love and prosperity throughout our married life ... sweet isn't it?

How to:
I started out by sanding the edges of the picture and adhering it to black cardstock.
I then layered my different papers. I used three different pp's on this LO:
* Basic Grey - Boxer - Vintage tee (box-1167) (background)
* Basic Grey - Offbeat - Light Hearted (ofb-1387) (blue paper)
* Sassafras Lass - Serendipity Collection - Woodland Whimsy - Rose Thicket
I googled "music sheets", and came across the "weading march", which seemed perfect for this LO, and used a small portion of it to slip between the pp's, just to add some extra interest.
I distressed all the papers with my scissors and inked the edges with Tim Holtz "vintage photo" distress ink.
After glueing everything to my white background (corrugated paper which I painted with white gesso), I added some embellies: I drew the birds on the branch and cut them out, I drew a heart on white cardstock and inked it with Tim Holtz "tattered Rose" and " Aged Mahogany" distress inks, and added wings made out of left-overs from the music sheet. I googled "book of love" - images - and couldn't believe my luck when I found this beautiful image of a book with a rose.
I then cut out the title out of white cardstock, added a little bit of vintage photo distress ink, outlined the alphas with a black marker, crumbled the edges a bit, and glued it to the page. Although it was looking almost finished, I still felt it needed something, so I stitched along the edges of the background pp. I chose white because I didn't want this stitching to be overwhelming, I wanted it to give the LO a soft finishing touch, to counter all that black.

All in all, not a difficult LO to make but I just love how it turned out! A good start to finally start on my wedding album maybe ... about time, seeing as we have been married for over 10 years now LOL! I'm finding it hard to scrap my wedding pictures, there seems to be more stress involved to get them just right, you know what I mean?

One more thing: I add this how-to's for all of the scrappers out there who sometimes get overwhelmed by all the beautiful LO's posted on the various blogging sites. I wish people would do this more often. To me, it's sometimes so difficult to tell how these wonderful creations are made, I wouldn't have a clue as to where to start ... I'm hoping this will start a trend LOL... Is this useful to anyone, should I keep adding them, or is it just annoying to read it all? I would love to hear your opinions on this matter!!!!!!

TFL and talk to you later!
xxx Peggy

Project 365 pages (8x8)

Journal page January 8th & 9th



For the background of these pages, I started out with plain white paper on which I stamped some Tim Holtz Swirls in a light colour distress ink. By later adding other colours of distress inks, the swirls grew darker, which gives a really cool effect.
I then used several distress inks to give my journaling paper an aged look, distressed the edges with my scissors, added my pics, and that was it. These were really quick pages, which I'll have to do more of if I ever want to get caught up with this project.

Journaling 8th:
For a very long time I haven't been able to take many pics of Yannis. Everytime me and my camera got near him, he looked or turned away. He really hated me always wanting to take his picture. About a year ago I started scrapping, and he began to wonder why I made so many LO's of the girls and so little of him. I guess that when I explained to him that this was because I didn't have all that many pics of him since he refused to be photographed, he decided to change his ways. Now he's yelling all the time: "Mom, take my picture" ... a new model in the making!

Journaling 9th:
This unlikely combination was thought up when I went to visit bonny (my grandmother) unexpectedly. Of course she insisted on giving me something warm to eat, and she gathered together some of the things she had lying about...
Fish-sticks, mashed potatoes, pees and a scrambled egg, at first sight un unlikely combination, but it's really very tasty! That tasty, that I am now making that same combination for my kids, and they too find it yummy!


Journal page January 11th


For the background of this page I again started out with a plain white paper on which I stamped red dots. I made the title with foam stamps and black acrylic paint.
A very simple page which possibly needs some more dressing up, so I'll be using this background again for another day in my journal, but adding some extra paints or something like that. I don't think all of the project pages have to be all that difficult, I kinda like this simple one too...

No journaling on this one, everything is said on the bill (lower picture) I received ... my girl being accepted to finish her term in the tumbling group, which means they feel she has improved since the beginning of September and that they see potential in her ... this deserves a bravo, don't you think?


Journal page January 12th: Morning ritual


It seems like I'm going from simple to even more simple as we go along LOL. For this one, I simply drew a frame with different colouring pens. I still like it, though my preference goes out to other styles.

Journaling:
Unlike me, Kurt really has a bad mood in the mornings, and he's better left alone until after he has smoked his first cigarette and has had his first cup of coffee...


Journal page March 2nd


I decided to go ahead and do the pages of March, trying to keep this month caught up, while doing the previous ones in between ... a good plan, but it's not working, so far I've only done one LOL. I've got a lot of ideas, lots of pictures, but I just can't seem to find the time ... ah well, I'm not panicking yet ... should I LOL???
I had the most fun doing this page, and this is definitely something I'll be trying again. I've been looking at art journal pages on several gorgeous blogs, and I would love to be able to just let go and create similar pages ... I think this page went well for my first try, I'm really happy with it and I can't wait to take out my paints, brushes and get started again.

Journaling:
High time to do something about my weight!!!
Today I went to the gym for the first time. My mom couldn't go anymore due to the medicine she's taking now after her mastectomy, and she signed over her gym card to me. I would never have started this (expensive) hobby myself, out of fear of not being able to keep at it. However, it was a gift, so I feel I should embrace this opportunity, especially after having been on the scales this morning... It was a lot more fun than I had expected.

That's it for now, I'm hoping to make some more journal pages tomorrow, I'm planning to take a day off from housework and spend the whole day scrapping ... sounds good doesn't it!!

Thanks for looking!
xxx Peggy

Dream Girls Challenge LO

I wasn't too happy about my previous LO (I would like to thank my blogging friends who tried to convince me otherwise!!) and it left me a bit scared to start a new one. I did start several times, but chucked them in the bin time and time again. But, I finally made a LO I like again. I was inspired by a challenge over at Dream Girls. They showed one of the most beautiful ads I have ever seen to inspire us, and I used it's gorgeous design, almost copied it in fact. In turned out to be a very simple LO, but I love it (I'm so glad I can say this again about one of my works!!). This picture features the daughter of my husband's sister, doesn't she have the most beautiful smile?


How to:
I started out with a white piece of cardstock and inked it in several colours of distress inks (old paper, scattered straw, peeled paint, dried marigold, vintage photo and black soot).
I cut two pieces of pp's (both Basic Grey), inked their edges with vintage photo distress ink, made some holes in one (I love that look) and glued them to the page. I also added a beautiful velvet ribbon (Trim & Lace by Webster's Pages).
I found a beautiful quote by Louisa May Alcott which I thought was perfect for this picture:
"Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them and try to follow where they lead." I printed this out on plain white paper, crumbled it and again used distress inks to give it an aged kind of dirty look. One of the twists of the challenge was to use a safety pin, so I used that to attach the quote to the page. While typing over this quote, I noticed the "d" in "and" was missing... this has been corrected now.
I printed the title, and again used several colours of distress ink. The second twist of the challenge was to use something out of the scrap aisle, so I used my stapler to attach the title to my page.
To give it some extra detail and a finishing touch, I added some black felt and stitched flowerbeads over them. I ended by rubbing my black soot distress ink pad over the edges of the page to create some stripes and smudges.

Thanks for looking and a big hug for those of you taking the time to leave me a comment, I always look forward to and appreciate them!
xxx Peggy

Song Bird Scraps March Challenge

Every-day-life has been keeping me busy and has gotten totally in the way of my scrapping life, don't you just hate it when that happens! Anyway, it's Saturday, the kids are couching in front of the TV, which is a shame, because it's a nice day today here, they should be playing outside, but I'm fine with it, because it's giving me some well needed me-time.

I finally started the (long overdue) battle against my (over)weight, and I joined a gym. To get some results, I have to go three times a week, which I have done this last week. Unfortunately, I hadn't realised how time-consuming this would be. I'm struggling to get everything done around the house and to keep the kids happy, and there hasn't been any time left to do the things I love, like scrapping, surfing the net and commenting on my friends' LO's, and I miss it! But I'm just like that, once a change comes along, it takes me a while to get into a new routine, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually.

Anyway, exercising and doing something about my weight is too important and it has to be dealt with, I've postponed this for too long already. And I'm getting some early results already, so I'm happy about that.

Enough wined, it's high time I showed you my LO for the Song Bird Scraps. Check out the lyrics for the March Challenge and try to play along!


It's kind of strange, because this LO turned out exactly like I had envisioned it in my head, but I don't like it all that much, I think it's one of my least favorite I have done so far. Normally I start without a clear picture in my head, I just work on it as I go along, and usually I'm pretty happy with the result, so this is kind of worrying to me. It has actually refrained me from trying another LO, I've kind of lost my confidence and I'm trying hard to overcome this.

Anyway, I'll tell you a bit more about this LO.

I cut the photos to a square size, outlined the edges with a black marker, and matted them on a piece of black cardstock.

For the background I wanted a big pink heart, but with some texture. I think crackle paint would have looked great, but since I don't have that, I glued tissue paper to some light cardboard (cereals' packaging) and painted over it with watercolour paint. I glued it to the background paper and added some black stitches just for fun.

I searched for an image of cupid on the net, printed it out and cut it out with my scissors and cutting knife.

For the little hearts I used plain cardboard from cereals' packaging again, which I covered (twice) with blue stickles.

I then added the title, which I wrote on white cardstock, coloured in with regular colouring markers and cut out with scissors and a craft knife, together with the lyrics from the Song Bird Scraps March Challenge, which I thought were perfect for this picture. After 18 years of being together with my husband, I still feel it's alright!

It still looked a bit unfinished to me, so I glued pink hobby rope around the outer edges and stitched around them with black yarn. This is the same 3D-stitching technique I used on my previous LO. Though it adds the perfect finishing touch to a LO (it really is a pretty frame), I think in this case the pink is a bit too overwhelming. I'm still thinking about cutting it off and adhering the then smaller LO on plain black cardstock, what do you think? Let me know, please, I so would appreciate your thoughts about this!

Well, that's it as far as this LO is concerned. I did finally work on some pages for my project 365. I'm so far behind on that project, but I so desperately want to keep doing this. So this time I've been working on the pages of this week in stead of those of ... don't laugh ... January (told you I was soooooo far behind LOL), and I'm hoping to be able to post them tomorrow.

Finally I wanted to thank Lynn and Aimee for checking up on me, it's a nice feeling to know you're being missed, thanks my friends!

xxx
Peggy