Treasured Memories

Je t'adore

2011-06-02T20:50:00.000+02:00

You might have noticed I've been missing for a few months here in Blogland. I've had some personal things to deal with, and these left me (in my mind) no room to scrap or blog. For a while there I was totally numb. At one point, I feared I would never be able to get back into my scrapping, but gradually, the longing for scrapping came back, and I'm hoping it's back to stay. I would like to thank Shazza, my "ARTastic design team Boss" for her patience and understanding. I don't know many people who would have reacted like you did, you're a sweetheart Shazza!!!

Speaking of ARTastic, our new challenge is up, and as always I'm hoping to see some familiar friendly faces between the participants! The inspiration for this month's challenge is the beautiful Edouard Manet painting "Argenteuil". The critiria are:
* Two people in the picture
* Used striped pp
* Use a boat somewhere on the LO

For my DT submission, I knew immidiately which picture I wanted to use ... one of my two oldest children with my daughter giving her older brother a look of total adoration. I've been in love with this picture forever and always will be.

Isn't that look something? Mind you, they were 4 and 5 years old in that picture ... now, almost 7 years later, we hardly see that look on either one of their faces anymore. But ooh, sweet memories :-)

The use of striped pp had me worried there for a while. I'm not used to using striped pp and I hardly have any in my stash. But once I had decided to not use it as a background but use it to create some feature elements, in this case the hearts, it all came together beautifully.

I actually used real sand on this LO, but later covered most of it with my papers. Still, the effect in real life hasn't been lost, it looks kinda neat! The background has been painted in different shades of blue and I added some tissue papers to create some texture as well. My main concern was to keep the focus on the picture, which is why I used a light music sheet paper as the background for the pic. Still, I couldn't resist adding a bold red title and some other fun elements. I'm quite happy with the result though.

**

I never posted last month's ARTastic challenge, nor did I post the LO I made for that challenge yet. This one is very dear to me, it features my grandmother who died about 3 weeks after this picture of her holding my youngest daughter Christina was taken.

My mom and I believe she held on just long enough to see the baby. Though she hadn't been sick and her death came as a surprise, we later on discovered she had lost the will to live after my granddad had died a year earlier. Seeing Christina seemed to have been the only thing she found worthwile enough to hang on just that little bit longer.

This was the firsts LO I made after my absence, and I kept it fairly simple to get the hang of it again. Still, it turned out just the way I wanted it to.

**

Since I'm back into my scrapping, it won't be long till I start visiting your blogs again. I've actually started reading some of my friends' blogs, but I'm sure you can imagine I have a lot of catching up to do! It's worth it though, I've missed reading all of your stories and seeing your beautitul work.
So, I'll be seeing you soon!

xxx Peggy

2011-02-13T21:26:00.008+01:00

I'm so behind!!! I still need to show you this month's challenge over at Artastic, and it's a beauty!!!! I picked out the painting myself, and of course I had to choose one of our very own Belgian painter, born right here in Antwerp, Pieter Paulus Rubens.

The criteria this month are:
The LO must be about you.
Add wings somewhere on the LO.
Use a mirror image or use the same image of you multiple times.

For my submission I made a double LO, mostly because I had all these beautiful Graphic45 papers I so wanted to use!

I've spent the last month or so trying to sort out and scanning old pictures of my childhood, an absurd number of pictures which will keep me busy for many months to come!!! Anyway, looking at these pictures reminded me once again I'm not getting any younger and more and more I find myself thinking back to those younger days. Like my journaling says, which on both pages are lyrics of the song "It's five o'clock" by Demis Roussos, I feel that time has passed me by to quickly. When did I lose track?? Sometimes I look in the mirror and still expect a young girl to stare back at me ... gives me quite a scare sometimes when my actual reflection appears LOL. The black and white picture is me when I was 16 years old, the other pics were taken a few months ago. I thought the contrast in pics would be a good way to remind myself I'm as young/old as I feel, not as I look.

I've actually been working in my art journal as well, but I'll keep that for my next post. In the meantime, I hope you'll all find some time to join are Artastic challenge, I would love to see you participate!

xxx Peggy

Happy New Year

2011-01-03T13:37:00.015+01:00

Happy New Year to all my blogging friends! May all of your wishes and hopes come true!
I started out the new year by scrapping. Next week hubby will be home, so I won't have much time to scrap then as we're planning to take out the kids and do some fun stuff. So, to make up for next week in advance, I've pretty much done nothing in the house these last few days but scrap LOL.

I'll start off by showing you my DT submission for this month's challenge over at Artastic. The inspiration came from Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party".

I didn't follow the painting this month, just the criteria, which are:

Scrap a celebration
Three or more people in the layout
Food somewhere in the layout

I decided to scrap a celebration of meeting/making new friends. Last summer, I got to meet my sweet online friends Jenneke and Jeanet, and we had a wonderful day shopping for scrap supplies, talking, laughing and just getting to know each other. I so enjoyed meeting them, and I wanted my page to reflect that happy feeling. So, I chose happy colours and a happy design.

My "happy" design turned out a bit childish ... Christina, my youngest daughter, who normally adores just about everything I make, asked if it was finished already LOL. She thought it to be "empty" and not exactly "true to my own style". She might be right, but I really do love it more and more each time I look at it. This page takes me back to a wonderful day and makes me smile ... and isn't that really all it's supposed to do?

It looks like a simple page, but it actually took quite some work. I outlined every little thing with my black marker, even my hambly embellies (flowers and butterflies), and in fact they do look rather pretty outlined like that. The white scallops took 3 coats of paint (!!!) before having the desired effect. The title was hand drawn and coloured in with regular markers. Still, all worth the effort to me.

Onto something else ... one of my favorite bloggers of all time is Julie Fei-Fan Balzer. Not only do I love her work, her blog is interesting to read as well and she often shares step by step instructions, which is always fun to watch. Last month, she wrote a few posts about art journaling in which she called out for people to join her in her resolution to "art journal every day". Now I thought long and hard about joining, because I've made resolutions to art journal before, and I always fail to keep it up. Still, I had decided for myself to start art journaling again in 2011, but what really persuaded me was her concept. You don't have to finish a page a day, it really doesn't matter how many pages a year you finish ... all Julie's suggesting is working in your art journal for 10 minutes a day. Start on a page, and add a little something every day... I like that idea! Over 200 people have signed up already, if you want to join as well, you can do so here.

Yesterday I started and completed my cover page. I'm using one of my children's old story books, just because I liked the size of it and it saved me a trip to the shops and kept my money in my pocket :-). The pages are kinda shiny, which worried me a bit, but once I gessoed over them, it worked like a charm! For my cover page, I was inspired by Marit and Lena. Both women are masters in collaging, something which doesn't come easy for me. I've tried before but all my attempts ended up in the bin. Yesterday, I tried again ... here's the result:

I so love the result! I decided not to try too hard, which seemed to have done the trick to finally be able to complete a page like this! I started out modestly ... the head and body don't belong to each other, but they easily could, which they are not supposed to I think. The collage isn't all that obvious, which is why I drew her legs, because even the legs I chose matched the rest of the girl perfectly LOL. I'm sure I'll get better at it if I keep trying, and I will, because it's just so much fun! Obviously this took me more than 10 minutes, but that's okay too. I'll just work in this journal whenever I feel like it, whenever I have some spare time. I'll be fun trying out new techniques in this book without being afraid if it will "match" the rest of the page. This book will be just for me and me only. Can you tell I'm excited about this??

I chose Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote to start off the new year: "To be yourself in world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment". I guess you could say this is my new year's resolution: to try and stay true to myself, but also trying to be the best version of myself. This could possibly include quitting smoking, losing weight, exercising more and so on, but not necessarily. I've tried all of those things before, without result, and I don't feel like setting myself up for failure this year round. I just want to do the best I can, to be the best version possible of who I am right now. That shouldn't be too hard now should it LOL.

I actually started working in this book last year, but I only made one spread about the first week of september (told you I never keep up with these things!!!). But, keeping in the spirit of this book being just for me and for trying out new things, I also did a page prompted by a challenge over at GPP Street Team. The prompt was to make a page just by using a credit card or something to smear out paint, no brushes allowed. I was so surprised by the result, it actually turned out pretty nice:

Haha, I don't know if you can tell, but I tried to make flowers in the foreground and a sky and two trees in the background. And I didn't decide on that untill after quite a few layers ... So this is just layer over layer over layer smeared out paint with an old credit card. Pretty amazing that you can actually make something recognizable that way, isn't it? I'm just leaving it like this in my journal, I don't feel the need to journal over it. I thought about it, which is why I hadn't posted it yet, but decided against it.

With the access paint of this page, I smeared paint all over the next page, just randomly, and yesterday I added a yellow surface. So now the page looks a little like this:

Not impressed??? Well neither am I at this point. But this is the background of my new art journal page. I have absolutely no idea what I'll be doing with it next, but I'm excited to find out LOL!

Have a wonderful first week of the New Year my friends!

xxx Peggy

Don't mess around with me

2010-12-29T22:36:00.011+01:00

The december challenge over at From Screen to Scrap was a beauty!! This month's inspiration came from the poster "The Nightmare before Christmas", and I was able to cover all 7 criteria yeah me!!

This is my youngest daughter Christina, showing me some attitude... I thought these pictures were just perfect for this challenge. I drew and painted most of the criteria, like the melon, the swirls, my Jack and the "scary" tree (which turned out more huggable than scary LOL). The fence was something I kept from a birthday cake (nothing's save from a scrapper!!!) and the web is stitched.

I've spent ages thinking about a suitable title. Whenever I looked at her expression, this Elvis song "Trouble" (out of the King Creole movie) came into my head. So finally I decided to use a line from this song: "Don't mess around with me". I've included the video for those of you who don't know the song ... this is the period in his life where he was rather yummy to look at, just saying...

I started this LO the moment it was posted on the FSTS site, and my embellies were drawn and painted and papers were chosen in a nick of time ... still, I was only able to finish the page yesterday! December has been hectic!!!! I'm just one of those people who need a lot of time to scrap in peace...

Today however I took the day off and scrapped and listened to music all day long!!! My friend Marit is having an everyday post this week filled with Top 2000 related layouts/art journal pages, and I decided to play along. There's still two days left, so if you feel like playing along, just visit her blog for the details and to look at the submissions up till now, they're all so gorgeous! I'll post mine tomorrow, when I have some daylight to take a pic.

So, untill tomorrow

xxx Peggy

Artastic December Challenge

2010-11-30T23:03:00.004+01:00

Another month has gone by ... I can't believe it's december already ... Christmas is just a few weeks away. Time sure flies! Another month, another challenge over at the Artastic blog, and this one sure is a challenge!!! I struggled with it a bit at first. We were to draw inspiration from Botticelli painting "The Mystical Nativity".

I know, it's a tough one!!! And if this wasn't hard enough, here are the criteria which you should try to work into your LO:

A stable (1 point)
Angel(s) (2 points)
Gold embossing (3 points)

It took me quite some time to get a clear image in my head of what I wanted to do, but once I did, it came together beautifully (whole page of the sneak peeks I showed you earlier)

The picture shows my 1 month old son (picture taken 11 years ago) and our German Shepherd Jenny, who passed away several years ago. She was extremely protective of my kids, and this picture means a lot to me. It really shows her wonderful and kind nature.

I painted a "brick structure" - which represents the stable - as the background. I first drew the outlines of the wall, covered the inside with gel medium, and put ordinary sand over it. After letting it dry completely, I painted over it with acrylic paints. The sand really gives it a "bricklike" texture. Here's a close up:

I copied the angel from an image by a very talented artist named DJ, you can find her blog here and here's the work I copied the angel from:

Isn't that just gorgeous!???!!! Thank you so much DJ for letting me use your image, I appreciate it.

The texture of the wings (and also the hair) was once again done with mere gel medium and a palette knife. I just smeared a lot of gel medium inside the drawn lines, and used the palette knife to create some distinct lines. Once it was dry, I gave it a ground colour and later on dry brushed over it with white acrylic paint. Because of the "lines", only the top is covered completely with white, still showing the underlying colour. This really is a wonderful technique to add some texture to a page, it looks fantastic, it really does, and it's so easy!!

And I used stamps on my LO!!! Yeah me!!! Those of you who have been reading my blog, know that although I love the look of stamps on a page, I myself am terrified of stamping. And stamping now reminded me of why again. The first stamp I used was the one on the left hand/bottom side of my picture. I placed it too much over the photo and it turned out too dark!! After my heart stopped racing at 200 beats a minute, I frantically began to dry brush gesso over it, to tone it down a bit. Thankfully, it kind of worked, though I'm still not too happy with the result. As if I hadn't done enough damage, I decided to use my new stamp (oh yes, I don't let my fear of stamps stop me from buying them LOL) on the right hand side of the picture. I inked up my stamp, more or less tried to position it where I wanted it to be, and ... it fell out of my hand, ink faced down!!!!!! Hence the smears on the top of my pic. Now my heart stopped beating alltogether!! After settling down from the shock, I gave it another try though, and I'm quite happy with that attempt. Will I be stamping again any time soon ... I think so, I'm kind of a stubborn girl :-)))

All in all, no matter how hard a challenge might seem at first, if you set your mind to it, you might just create something you really love. So why not give it a try??!! We all have some angels to scrap, don't we? I look forward to seeing you try... Be sure to visit the Artastic blog to see my fellow DT members' take on this challenge!

Christina scrapped!!!

I'll leave you with a LO my youngest daughter Christina made. She wanted to document her comfort blanket from when she was a toddler and how she used to be a thumbsucker...

She managed to use just about all of the bling I own on one single page LOL. As is typical for Christina, she asked me what I would do, and then did the entire thing her own way LOL. However, she did it all on her own, didn't ask for help once, and I think it turned out great! Not bad for an 8 year old, right???

Talk to you later
xxx Peggy

Sometimes it just "clicks"

2010-11-27T09:34:00.001+01:00

In my last post I showed you some pics of when I met some of my online friends. My favourite pics of that day would have to be the ones of Marit and me. I liked her the minute she started waving at me, still sitting in the car but recognizing me instantly. She got out of the car, gave me a big kiss, told me she first had to do something and shoved her bag in my hands and told me to hang on to it until she got back LOL. I guess that's the moment I fell in love ,-) It all felt so natural ... she didn't feel like someone I had just met, she felt like some long lost friend I finally got to meet again. And to me, the pictures that Jenneke took of us while we were standing outside having a smoke really show how well we connected. As soon as I saw these pictures, my hands started itching to make a LO. I don't think I've ever scrapped pictures this fast. I normally wait at least a few months, because I find that after some time, the pics that seemed great to me at first, aren't always the same pics I want to use to tell a story. I hope you like it Marit!

It's a simple LO, I know! I could have finished this one in half an hour if I hadn't stared at it all afternoon thinking I really should add some kind of technique, some kind of feature item to make it somewhat "special". However, my best friend Vicky, who spent the afternoon scrapping with me, told me not all LO's have to be difficult, and I guess she's right. So Marit, because it's a LO of you, I wanted to honour you and make it more of an artsy LO, but ... fate decided otherwise. I told you all once before that once I start scrapping, the outcome of the LO seems out of my control, and this one was no different.

I used Picknik to edit my pictures and give it this green/yellowish look which I totally love ... thanks Jenneke for recommending it, it's so easy to use and the results are stunning! I guess it's because the pics turned out so vibrant that I didn't feel like adding too much colour anymore.

Now, you might not see the resemblance right away, but I started out from this sketch for the Artful Delight November challenge:

Once I started playing with all of the different elements, they all changed place a bit, but they are still there. I used three photo's in stead of 6 blocks, placed the paper originally at the bottom on the left hand side, and used the shape of the round flower to make my title (which says "Sometimes it just clicks" btw - and oops, for the dutchies: I just noticed I miss a 't' ... ah well, too late to do anything about that now!!). I haven't worked with sketches all that much, so I don't know of this is "allowed" or not, but it seemed rather funny to me how you can start from one point and head over in an entire different direction. Still, the sketch really helped me create my take on the design, and I think I will begin to use sketches more often from now on.

Off to make another LO ... so glad my will to create is back again!!!

xxx Peggy

A sneak peek and some fun pics...

2010-11-24T11:57:00.008+01:00

Hi ladies,

I don't have anything new to show you yet. I did just finish my december LO for the new Artastic Challenge, but you'll have to wait another week or so to see that one. I'll show you just a little peek...

I used some cool techniques on this LO, so be sure to keep an eye out for my next post ;-)))

And just a little reminder, you still have some days left to enter our Artastic November Challenge, which you can find here. It's an easy one so why not give it a shot?!!!

Last Sunday, Marit, Jenneke, Vicky, Petra and I all met in Heesch for a fun day of shopping, talking, laughing, ... I wanted to share some pics with you.

Marit, me, Petra and Jenneke (pic taken by Vicky)

Marit and I shared quite a few laughs ... she's such a sweetheart!! (pics taken by Jenneke)

All of us, including my best friend Vicky, at the Chinese restaurant, the end of a perfect day!

Thanks ladies, I so enjoyed that day and I loved meeting all of you. I'm already looking forward to our next meeting!

xxx Peggy

I did it my way

2010-11-06T18:28:00.009+01:00

While I was looking for some inspiration when my mojo had gone AWOL, I decided to write down all of the November's challenges I could find, hoping one or two might trigger my creativity back into action. I wasn't disappointed.

The song used at "Scrapping with a Song" this week (challenge 29) is Bon Jovi's "It's My Life". One line in this song, "Like Frankie said: I did it my way", immediately put a vision in my head of another art journal page. This line just goes so well with the last art journal page I made, about having peace of mind. Doing things my way, what a wonderful way of telling myself to do my own thing, to stop doubting myself. That was the first step. My page began to become clearer in my head once I saw the challenge over at "A Million Memories". It's a sketch challenge, which is rather strange because I've been known not to be all that good when it comes to working with sketches. I guess you could say this sketch spoke to me:

Now I know the black parts should be where the pictures are placed, but they looked a bit like buildings to me. So, this is what I came up with:

I love love love this page. I'm new at art journaling, so I haven't really developed my own style yet, but I do like where it is going so far. I painted the sky colours, the buildings and the title with acrylic paints and used papers for everything else. The twist to the AMM challenge was to represent "The good old days". Well, to me, nothings says good old days like Frankie does ... I can still recall the Sundays when I was young, my dad playing his Elvis and Sinatra records ... whenever I hear those songs, it's like these Sundays come back to live in my mind, as if I can almost feel them, smell them even... Haha, no, I'm not losing it LOL, I'm just feeling a bit nostalgic at the moment. Just blame it on my trip down memory lane...

Okay, let's see if I can find some inspiration to actually work with some pictures next time around ;-)

Before I forget, INVITATION TO OUR DUTCH/BELGIAN FRIENDS: Jenneke, Jeanet, Marit, Petra and I are having a little get-together in "De Scrapbookwinkel" in Heesch on Sunday, the 21st of November. Some of us have met before, some of us haven't ... I'm so excited. It promises to be a fun day!! If you feel like joining us, consider yourselves invited!! The more, the merrier!! We'll be there around 11 o'clock or at least I'll try to be. I have a reputation not only for talking too much (yep, read your blog Marit :-)) but sadly for always being too late as well. However, my friend Vicky is joining me and contrary to me she likes being on time, so I might just get there on time this time... I can't wait to meet all of you!

xxx Peggy

Hello mojo!!!!

2010-11-03T09:55:00.006+01:00

Remember how I said in my last post that my mojo has been taking a very long vacation??? (Thanks btw for your kind words on that topic!!!) Well, she's back yeah!!! The very same evening I told you about my mojo being gone, I was looking at some of my friends' blogs, and I came accross Lucy's blog. She had posted a page featuring a drawn face ... the page turned out absolutely beautiful. You can find it here if you'd like to see it. It's way better than mine, but I thought I'd share it anyway LOL.

Turns out she took a FREE class over at the "Willowing and friends" ning site. I don't usually sign up for ning sites unless there's something truly interesting to be found there, but this time I didn't even think twice about it. I signed up and immediately started watching the tutorial video's for week 1 of the Art, Heart and healing class ... over two hours worth of totally interesting footage! Tam (Tamara Laport), the owner of the site and teacher of the class is absolutely lovely, bubbly even, and I wasn't bored for a single minute. After watching the video, I immediately took out my supplies and got started. I worked on my page till far after midnight and finished it the very next morning. Bye bye frustration, hello mojo!!!

For our first week, we had to make a "healing" journaling page ... first we had to write down all of our negative feelings on the left hand side of the page. Then we had to look at our notes, and try to find out where they were coming from, like a need to feel loved, a need to feel accepted as we are, etc... Some of my sentences were "I should lose weight", "I need to spend more time with the kids", "I should be more organized in my housework", and so on. I found most of these feelings went hand in hand with guilt, with me always trying to be better than I am and feeling guilty if I fail at this. Then we were to go over these sentences with gesso, symbolically erasing them, and after the background was finished we had to write down one sentence, a positive one this time, expressing how we could deal with all of this. Haha, now people who know me, who've talked to me or even read my blog, know by now it's impossible for me to say what I want to say in just one sentence LOL. That being said, writing down feelings doesn't come easily for me, so I turned to a few lines from a song ("I don't want to be" by Gavin DeGraw). This is what I came up with:

The words in the stars say: "I don't want to be anything other than what I've been trying to be lately. All I have to do is think of me and I have peace of mind". Actually, there were a few other lines in this song I would have liked to have used even more, but I really wanted to include the "Peace of mind", as that is what I am looking for, no more guilt, just some peace of mind, some reassurance that I am doing right by me and my family.

Tam also showed us how to make a background. I wanted to keep it light and cheery, as it was supposed to be a positive page, though for some reason or another at first I wanted to use black and blue LOL. I think my art journal page will be a bit more "dramatic" though, I feel the need for drama LOL. The colours turned out to be a bit of a problem ... we were supposed to use water soluable wax crayons, but since I don't have any (but they're sooo on my wish list right now!!!), I used watercolour paints ... blending them wasn't that easy, and I do think when I see other people's work that wax crayons result in slightly brighter colouring, but still I'm happy with the result

Oh wow, I've talked too much again it seems ... anyway, if you want to learn how to draw those faces, which btw is surprisingly easy, this class is definitely something you should explore!!!

And now the downside to finding my mojo again ... I so want to create right now, but I have so much to do!!!! The kids are going away for the weekend and I have still a lot of organizing to do before they leave ... ah well, good thing I don't need much sleep LOL.

Talk to you later my friends.

Love xxx Peggy

November Artastic Challenge

2010-11-01T14:08:00.013+01:00

A new month, a new challenge over at the Artastic blog! I've had people tell me the previous one was a difficult one, well ... this one is really easy! November's inspiration comes from the painting 'The Beach' by Chris Wake.

To gain extra bonus points, you should try and incorporate following criteria into your design:

Either a sandcastle, a bucket and spade or a beach towel (1 pt)
A few seagulls (2 pts)
A family beach photo or similar (3 pts)

Here's my DT submission:

The picture features me as a two-year old walking the shore line with my dad and granddad. I used a quote I've used before on an art journal page but which I thought went perfectly with this picture ... "Every child needs a gentle hand, to guide them as they grow". Isn't that beautiful?

I've used a lot of different papers on this LO, something I don't do very often (because it just doesn't come easily to me), but I seemed to have no say in the matter this time. Do you ever have that feeling, as if you have absolutely no control over what you're making? Strange...

However, the LO just didn't come together until I added the seagulls and the beach embellies, they really finished off the page. I didn't have any of those embellies, so I drew all of them, and I'm really happy with the result.

I haven't seen many of my friends join in our challenges yet, but I'm hoping this will change this month. I'm sure we all have some beach pictures lying around waiting to be scrapped, right????

I myself haven't been scrapping much lately, I just haven't been in the mood. I've been waiting for my mojo to come back, desperately I might add, but so far in vain... I'm hoping this will change soon, I can't go on blogging just once a month now can I?????

So, hopefully I'll be talking to you again real soon!

Love xxx Peggy

addicted...

2010-10-11T13:02:00.012+02:00

If you're ever wondering if you're addicted to reading your fave blogs, try being without internet for a few weeks, you'll know for sure!!!! My computer died on me several weeks ago and the costs of having it repaired were too high, so I decided to buy a new one. Boy, living without a computer isn't easy LOL. I missed the contact with my online friends so much, so much more than I had imagined... I'll try and visit you all as soon as possible, sorry I missed out on so much of your posts! Catching up isn't done right away though ...

But first, high time to tell you about October's challenge over at the "Artastic" blog ... we have a beautiful painting as our inspiration this month, "A Summer Morning" by Rupert Bunny.

These are the criteria to keep in mind if you're considering entering this month:
Shades of pink, pink rose(s) and white bird(s).

Here's what I made:

These are my kids a few years back feeding the ducks while on holiday. We would go and feed them every day, and each day the kids would call out for Geoffrey. I haven't got a clue where they first heard that name (it's not a common name in Belgium), nor why they insisted their favourite duck was called Geoffrey, but they sure loved that duck! Their dad and I shared some laughs, because Geoffrey changed appearances each day, but the kids didn't seem to notice they were feeding a different "favourite" duck each day...

I hope to see some of my friends participate in this month's challenge! You have until the 28th of October, midnight, to enter.

Glad to be back!!! xxx Peggy

My weekly art journal... finally!!!

2010-09-09T08:51:00.001+02:00

Ever since I saw Marit's weekly art journal pages, I've wanted to start a journal like that myself. I just didn't quite know how to start. Marit was kind enough to write me an email given me some well needed advice, but still it took me some time to work up the nerve to get started on it. Last week, with the beginning of the new school year, I thought that was the perfect point in time to finally make my first page:

I started off by painting, misting and stamping, and later on added some pics and my journaling. The coloured papers on the left hand side are the papers I used to cover the kids' school books this year. I love being able to preserve little memorabilia like that now!

Now, I like it, I think it's not a bad page for a first timer, but there's definitely room for improvement. So, if any of you out there have some advice you'd like to share with me, please, bring it on, I would love to hear your suggestions!!! For example, I'm thinking the background on which I wrote my text is a bit too dark. I guess this is something I will have to take into account doing my next pages. If there are any other beginner's mistakes you can find on this page, please let me know!

I don't intend to use this many pics every time. It's just a coincidence that I took that many pics last week. That being said, if I do have pics, I will include them, because looking at this page, I realised that this was the exact thing I've always wanted to do ... make some sort of diary completed with pictures. What I've been doing so far with my scrapping is showcase pictures and sometimes add some words, which is working the other way around. In the future, I would love to do both. I would also love to add some personal things in the diary, something I haven't done on this page. So far, it's actually just a daily account of simple facts. I think writing more personal stuff will come in time, when I really get into the journaling, so I'm not too worried about that.

I've learned something about myself as well ... though I'm terrified of using stamps on my pages, when I do use stamps, my favourites are definitely the foam stamps used with an overload of paint, which results in this messy image:

I really love the look of that access of paint ... nice and puffy!

I've been suffering from really bad headaches lately, and this aweful cough I'm having right now doesn't help. Each cough just splits my head right open ... so I haven't been feeling up to doing a lot of scrapping. Let's hope today is different...

xxx Peggy

Some exciting news...

2010-08-31T14:37:00.003+02:00

I couldn't resist playing along with this month's From Screen To Scrap Challenge (and just managed to enter it within the deadline... some things never change LOL). Just take a look at this gorgeous poster for inspiration:

I immediately fell in love with the poster, so much so, that I decided to just copy it. I mean, the orange stripes, the green title, the goofy couple LOL, it was just too awesome too change it.

These are my mom and dad when my mom was pregnant with me back in december 1971. My dad was acting silly again, like I was able to witness myself for many times to come once I was born LOL. I decided to give the LO a humourous touch and add some silly journaling and a silly title. For one reason or another, I had "responsible young drivers" in my head (isn't it funny how the mind works sometimes?)... Hence the title. I love the LO, my parents love it (yes, even my dad), so thanks for another great challenge Shazz!

Now for my exciting news ... Shazza graciously offered me a DT position on her ARTastic Challenge Team, which I happily accepted. Those of you who follow my blog know already how much I love her challenges, and I do hope that by being on the team I will inspire some of you to play along.

This month's inspirations comes from a Frida Kahlo painting, "Self Portrait with Monkey":

Now, I have to admit, I'm not a huge fan of this painting, nor of the artist. I don't particularly like her work, but ... Shazza managed to draw inspiration from it and came up with rather easy criteria to win extra voting points:
1. A photo of you or your family member(s) with your pet(s)
2. Use shades of brown and orange
3. A single tropical flower or plant

Keeping these criteria in mind, following LO just made itself, and I'm totally in love with it!!

This is a picture of my husband Kurt and our German Shepherd Jenny, who passed away a little over 2 years ago now. Kurt and Jenny had a very special bond, which I think is truly visible in this picture.

I cut out the leaves and flowers from a piece of patterned fabric and hand stitched them to the page... this took me some time, but the result is so worth the effort, it looks awesome in real life! It doesn't exactly show in this picture, but I tried something different with my stitching this time.

This is a close up of my original stitching, which was pretty enough, but it thought it looked a bit too "clean".

So, I sanded the stitching ...

Again, it doesn't show well in this picture (and it's a bit blurry ... sorry!), but I assure you, it looks great in real life! It gives the stitching a kind of "dreamy" look, which went better with the feel of the page I was looking for. You should try it some time ... just make sure you don't sand too much, or you'll break the thread.

I used the same technique in one of my last year's LO's as well, which gives a clearer picture of the result:

Just click on the LO, and you'll see the effect of the sanding very clearly! I used a different type of thread here, which came apart more easily than the one in the "kind eyes" LO, this is why the result is slightly different...

So, I hope to see some of you play along this month, and if you do, don't forget to mention I sent you :-)))) You have until the 28th of September, midnight, to mail your entries to shazzaalleyes@hotmail.com.

Oh, and I almost forgot: thank you so much to all of you who took the time and made the effort to vote for the Tourette's advertisement, I so appreciate that! It didn't win, but it did help us gain some exposure for this syndrome, which is a good thing as well! So thank you my friends!

xxx Peggy

Please take the time to read this and give us some help!

2010-08-25T15:52:00.004+02:00

Hi ladies,

Currently, one of our Belgian papers is giving one non-profit organisation the chance to win free advertising space. A jury selected 24 advertisements and we all get to pick one favorite! One of the non-profit organisations selected is the one for people who suffer from Tourette Syndrome. One of my friends' (Vera) late son (Robin) suffered from this disorder, and she is calling out for help! I would love for as much of my online friends to take a minute and vote. Voting will be possible until August 27th midnight Belgian time.

Here's the link:

http://www.standaard.be/ugc/photospecial/detail.aspx?id=8104d9a7-fe66-4965-be7b-c69effe8d310

Please click on the top link ‘Standaard Solidariteitsprijs’. When you open the link you can see beneath our green and white advertisement a Thumb-up icon. Just click on the yellow words next to it ( STEM OP DEZE FOTO). That's all, no registration, just two clicks!

In the rare case that the link doesn’t work you can go to www.destandaard.be/solidariteitsprijs and click on the red banner with the words "Bekijk de advertenties en stem", next you open the advertisement that starts with the word ‘Tourette’ (green letters on a white background) and then proceed as mentioned above.

Vera prepared a little text giving more information about Tourette's. Please take a minute to read this...

Tourette Syndrome (TS) is a neurological disorder that affects 1 or 2 in every 100 persons. That’s a lot! There are mild cases and severe ones. Symptoms are in general at its worst in childhood and adolescence and tend to improve (but not disappear) in adulthood.
Symptoms are involuntary movements (for instance: shaking of the head, shoulder shrugging, eyeblinking, nose twitching, grimacing, etc.) + unwanted sounds and noises such as constant throat clearing, sniffing, hissing, but also shouting out nonsense words or loud ‘Hey!’s and ‘How!’s.

Most people think that Tourette's is about swearing, barking or the use of foul language. That’s because the media are always focusing on this aspect, it’s sensational. In fact, it’s a very, very rare symptom.

Children with TS are intelligent and also very sensitive. But they are often the victims of bullying, mockery, punishment and social isolation, because of their strange behavior, especially if they have no diagnose. And the diagnose is often missed by doctors, because they all think that you have to bark or swear in order to have Tourette’s, at least in Belgium that is the case. So in our country it is regarded as a conduct problem that requires a very strict home and school schedule with lots of reprimands and punishment. Dealing this way with TS, will unavoidably lead to depression, suicidal thoughts, desperation, worsening of ticks due to stress and finally a childhood ruined.
That’s what we are fighting against: to eliminate the myths and misunderstandings and teach the general public, med’s and teachers what Tourette’s really like, how to deal with it with respect and understanding, so these children can rely on the help, facilities or medication, that they are entitled to.

Thank you very much for reading this and for your vote! I appreciate your help!
Love xxx Peggy

Anything can be ...

2010-08-03T20:44:00.001+02:00

I immediately fell in love with this month's challenge over at the "ARTastic Challenge Blog". This site offers paintings as a monthly inspiration, so much fun!

This is the inspirational painting:

Isn't this the most gorgeous painting? Upon looking at it, I just couldn't help myself, I had to take out my paint brushes and try to capture that feeling of the painting. This is what I came up with:

I cut out some pics of my kids taken in Krete in 2004. They looked so cute sitting at the waterfront, all three of them peacefully next to each other ... aww such happy days!
As I couldn't really think of a place to put a title, but I still wanted it to look more like a scrapbook page rather than a mimicked painting, I searched for a poem to go with that feeling the painting gave me. And I just love this one from Shel Silverstein:

Listen to the mustn'ts, child.
Listen to the don'ts.
Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts.
Listen to the never haves,
then listen close to me...
Anything can happen, child.
Anything can be

Beautiful, isn't it? I made a little mistake writing down the poem, which really bummed me out at first!!! I forgot an entire line, which meant I had to write all the way up to the sun, which wasn't my original intention. I only wanted the text to be at the left hand side of the page. I still think that would have looked prettier, but no point in feeling unhappy about it, what's done is done... I also forgot the "close", but that was easily fixed (after having taken the picture though).

Is this a scrapbook LO, or is this an art journal page ... I have no idea? I can't tell anymore if this hobby of ours is about preserving pictures, telling a story, or just about bringing across a certain feeling ... But... does it matter, really?

Talk to you later!
xxx Peggy

From Screen To Scrap July 2010 Challenge

2010-07-28T10:32:00.002+02:00

First of all I would like to thank all of you who took the time and effort to leave a comment on my previous post. I have received so many wonderful, sweet, encouraging words from so many of you, and I want you to know I so appreciate it. Although I know I am doing this hobby for my liking and mine alone, it seems I do needed to be reminded of that fact. I am happy to say I am back to where I was when I first started scrapping, I'm having fun! Thank you ladies!

One of the comments I received was from my sweet friend Lucy, who said she had in fact seen a change in my style lately. She said this happens to all of us from time to time, as we all experiment and grow in our work. However, we can't expect everyone to like this change ... so true, don't you think? I thought about what she said, decided she was right and to just get over it! And it worked like a charm. I'm not the most confident of people, and I suppose I never will be, but her and your words opened my eyes. It's just silly and maybe a little arrogant as well to want to be liked by each and every one of you... She also thought my change in style might have something to do with me trying to do more multiple pic LO's, and again, I'm inclined to think she's right. Thanks Lucy, for taking the time to write me that mail, for being honest with me, for not being afraid to say what you think, and for doing it in the sweetest manner. Your words really helped me out!

However, I'm a stubborn girl LOL, so I decided to do a multiple pic LO again. Nothing like not succeeding right away for me to dig right in and try harder ... One of my favorite challenge sites at the moment is the "From Screen To Scrap"site. I love their challenges, they almost always inspire me, and Shazza, the owner of the site, is one of the sweetest ladies in blogland, so I like to enter her challenges for the sole purpose of making her happy :-)

This month's inspiration was this poster:

and this is my take on the challenge:

You see, the perfect challenge to do a multiple pic LO!! For extra points we had to use the colour teal and use metal (flower) on the LO ... check! However, I failed to put my title in a block ... sorry Shazza, I just couldn't make that one work!

I really liked that little bit of red in the original poster, and decided to make the journaling pop a bit ... it made a huge difference and totally livened up the LO.

I'm really happy with this LO, and this is so what I had in mind when I first started scrapping ... telling a story with pictures, all on one page, so that when you browse through an album, it doesn't get boring. Hey, I might even get back to doing double spreads again LOL!! Whatever I do, I'll remember I'm doing this for me...

Talk to you later ladies!
xxx Peggy

Let's get shabby challenge #13

2010-07-13T15:49:00.007+02:00

Last Friday I met two special blogging friends, Jeanet and Jenneke woohoo! I bet their ears are still hurting, I always talk so much, especially when I'm nervous. And I really was nervous, I really wanted them to like me, you know. But I shouldn't have been nervous at all, because just as I had imagined, these ladies are just lovely!!!! I so enjoyed their company, and I hope we'll all be meeting again real soon!

I just love this picture!!

If you read my previous post, you already know I had made an altered journal for the recent Let's Get Shabby challenge, but I forgot to make it a birthday-related project. So, I promised the ladies of LGS to make another entry, birthday-related this time. When I told Jeanet on Friday, she said she would try and enter as well. Well, I just visited Jeanet's blog, and she beat me to the punch, hers is already posted!!! And it's a beauty!!!! Jeanet, you'll be pleased to hear I managed to finish mine as well, and before the dead line this time (though I cut it close, I admit ...).

Recently, someone wrote me that my current work isn't nearly as good as that of several months ago. Actually, I feel ashamed in her place saying this to someone, because though I really do believe that she is entitled to express her opinion, I also do believe that every single one of us poors our heart into every LO we make, so it really can't be "bad", right?? Still, her words are lingering in my head, and my confidence has taken a blow.

So I'm feeling a bit nervous posting this new LO of mine, especially since I decided not to let her words keep me from trying something new... I had never tried a shabby LO before, and I have hardly ever used stamps. Did it turn out okay? I don't know ... I like it, but I liked my last work as well. My husband wasn't too excited about this LO, so he didn't exactly help restoring my confidence... Still, like I said, I like it, and really that's what matters, isn't it?

This is Chloë on her first birthday (almost 9 years ago!!!). The look on her face when we put that big pie in front of her was priceless, and she dug right in! She was covered from head to toe, so we had to give her a bath before she could even open up her presents ... ah, the memories!!!

I so had a hard time not painting this time!!! It seems like I've painted on every single LO I've made recently, and I do so love the look of paint on a LO. But this LO was rather busy as is (for me that is, I'm not used to using so many papers), so I decided against it this time. I'm also proud to say I finally used some of those stamps that have been lying around unused. I used 4 different stamps, two for the "1" and the frame, one for the crown, and foam alphabet stamps for the title. So I've got that criteria covered! Not sure if it really is a "shabby" LO though (might be a bit too "cheary" and childish), but ladies, I did try!!! I actually rather enjoyed this challenge, and I will be entering again!

Talk to you later!
xxx Peggy

Sometimes...

2010-07-05T22:29:00.003+02:00

I can be really really stupid. Like, for instance, I found out that I totally ignored the fact that the challenge for "Let's get Shabby" had to be birthday related. I made the diary which I showed in my previous post. Of course, it is a diary, so I could argue that I wrote all of my friends' birthdays in there, but somehow I don't think that will count LOL. So, I'll do my best to come up with something else. I don't have any idea yet, but it'll come to me, I'm sure.

Another stupid thing to do is make a LO for a challenge, and totally don't take any notice of the due date... that's what I did for the June "From Screen to Scrap" Challenge. For one reason or another I was sure I had until the end of the month to finish the LO ... NOT! Ah well, I don't mind. I never enter these challenges to win anyway, I hardly ever do. But they do help me to find some inspiration and they always push me to do things I would normally never think of. Like with this challenge ... the inspiration was this poster:

I loved this image so much, I decided to try and paint the exact same background. Of course, it didn't turn out exactly the same, but still, I really like the result. This was one of those times that the LO turned out exactly like I had envisioned it in my head.

My girls love it as well. I've already had my orders from Christina to make one just like it for her as well. So Shazza, if you're reading this, I'm so sorry I was too late, but I'm really happy with the result, so thank you! And I promise I'll try and find some time to enter this month's challenge, preferably on time this time...

Off to see if I can find some birthday-related stamps ...
xxx Peggy

Kreatorville Krafts July Sketch and Let's Get Shabby

2010-07-03T00:19:00.000+02:00

Another month, another Kreatorville Krafts sketch!

Lately I've loved making LO's using more than one picture, so I was really happy when I saw the KK July sketch:

Though I'm still not all that comfortable using sketches, this sketch spoke to me and the LO just seemed to make itself. Here's my take on it:

That's me when I was 17 months old (en 2 years old in the cut-out pic)... recognize the chubby cheeks LOL??? I guess my mom liked cute red raincoats in those days ... I chose the title because well, our belgian summers here are famous for their amount of rain. It seems usually we can't have more than two or three days of sun before a storm heads our way. This can't be said at this moment though, we've had almost tropical temperatures for quite a few days now. Today I only went out into the garden to go and cool off in our swimming pool ... just to go and hide back inside just as quickly! I'm not complaining though, as far as I'm concerned this weather may go on throughout the whole of the summer vacation!

Except for the red dotted pp, all the materials used came out of left-overs from previous KK kits. Make sure to head on over to the KK blog to see the other DT members' take on the sketch! And why not give it a try yourself! You have until the end of the month to post your LO based on the sketch (marked sketch #3) into our Flickr Group, I would love to see you there!

And just in case you hadn't heard yet ... Keandra is offering some of her previous kits (november through february) for 50% off. You can find all the details here... better hurry!

Let's Get Shabby

This wonderfully inspiring blog is turning 1, happy birthday to you all!!!! I can't believe it has been a year already. Ever since the blog's birth, I've been wanting to play along. However, shabby is something I'm not good at. Believe me, I've tried, desperately I might add, because I really love the shabby look, but ... it's just not for me, I just can't seem to be able to make it work. This month, their challenge is to use stamps. At first I thought I would have to give it a miss again ... those of you following my blog know by now I'm afraid of stamps. Silly, I know, but I just don't know how to incorporate them in a LO and I'm always afraid I'll screw up and will have to start all over again. Being afraid of them hasn't stopped me from bying them though, which means I have a nice collection of unused stamps here. So I thought ... why not give it a try this time??? I'd like to say I merely did this to show my courage, but in all honesty I must admit the awesome prize the ladies over at Let's Get Shabby are offering might have had something to do with it LOL. They are giving away a US$100 store credit for Purple Onions Designs ... they have the most beautiful stamps!!!!!

For their challenge, I decided to alter this little leather-like book:

into this:

I started out by painting over the black in several colours, and then added a Tim Holtz stamp. Then I figured, if I'm gonna use stamps, I might as well go all the way, and I decided to try if embossing it might work on that surface and over the paint ... and it worked. It actually turned out pretty cool. I have some close-ups to show you the effect:

It really gives a cool effect, it looks even better IRL! And it feels good as well, I can't stop rubbing over it with my fingers LOL. I'm so happy with this that I've promised myself to take out my stamps some more in the future!

Finally, I would like to thank all of you who took the time to visit my friend Vicky's blog. She was so happy to receive your comments. She's a little unsure about her scrapping (we all were in the beginning and I'm sure we still are at times...) and your words did her the world of good. Your visits made me feel glad once again to be part of this community.

Hugs
xxx Peggy

LO's, awards and a little request ...

2010-06-12T14:55:00.000+02:00

I've been sick. I guess it's no big surprise, one day we're running around in our bikinis playing water games to cool down, the next day we're pretty close to getting our winter coats back out of the closet ... it was bound to happen to one of us! This time around, I was the lucky winner :-( Good news is, I finally caught up on some sleep LOL. There's always a silver lining, right?!

I finished my last LO with the Kreatorville Krafts May kit. I made 6 LO's with this kit, and I still have so many supplies left! It amazes me every time!!

I decided to make a double spread about our new cars. I started out with the right page, probably because that's one featuring our brandnew car, and I was eager to scrap it LOL. It's the first "new" car we have ever owned, all of our previous cars were used cars.

To all of the skeptics out there who dislike Skoda (did anyone watch that programme on TV where this woman in serious financial troubles announced she wouldn't drive a Skoda, even is she was given one for free!!!), I'd like to say, "get over it!!!". It's a gorgeous car and it drives heavenly! I'm totally and utterly in love with it. It's also the most luxurious car we have ever owned. Well, I call it luxurious, but in reality it has options most of our friends already have had for years ... however, it's all new to us, so we're pretty excited. I wrote all of the things I love most about the car in the little hearts. Well, actually I'll have to add some, because I forgot one or two things. The things I love most about the car is the leather interior, our parking distance control (real useful!!!) and the GPS. Especially that last feature is worth it's money as far as I'm concerned! I don't have any sense of direction whatsoever!!!! I mean it, you wouldn't believe how many times I've been on the highway only to find out I was driving in the wrong direction!!! And then the panic kicks in!! Yes, I'm a panicker, always sure I won't be able to find my way home. My heart skips a few beats every time I find there is a detour of some sort, and those of you living in Belgium know this happens a lot!!!! So, no more panicking, oh what a relief!!!

Now, it had been a while since I had made a double spread, and I was having trouble coming up with a matching design for the left page. So I was thrilled to find that the June sketch over at Kreatorville Krafts was just perfect for my left page. Here's the sketch:

and here's what I did with it:

I pretty much followed the sketch, only replacing the embellie with a picture. The black car on top, the Volkswagen Sharan, was our previous car. We have always loved that car, and with three small children it met all of our needs. I was actually pretty sad to see it go. However, it had seen better times and it was high time to replace it, however much it hurt (both in our hearts and our wallet!!!).

The middle car is the new car my mom and dad bought last month, also a Skoda, but a slightly smaller model than we have. The bottom car, the blue Opel Corsa, was their previous car, and they generously offered to give it to us!!!!! How awesome is that! We went from having almost no car (because of the repairs) to two cars! Though I wouldn't go as far as to saying we needed two cars, I have to admit it's convenient to say the least. With all the hobbies, birthday parties to go to, etc... we often found ourselves having to cancel one thing or the other because we just couldn't get there.

I hope you'll be able to play along with us using the sketch this month. Just upload your LO using the sketch to our Flickr Group, you have until the end of the month. Please add "June sketch" to your title. I'm looking forward to seeing you there!

Onto some other happy things now. I received this award from my sweet friend Mirjam ...

I haven't know her for that long, we met during Marit's online workshop, but I'm so glad we found each other. She's a real sweetie, and she's got heaps of talent! She makes LO's as well as card, and all of her creations are stunning! Take a look at her blog if you have some spare time, I think you'll like it there!

On receiving this award, I'm supposed to tell you all a little bit about myself. However, I talk sooooo much, I think most of you know me pretty well by now! I'll share one little thing with you though ... though you wouldn't think so, I'm a pretty shy person. Even my friends don't always believe this to be true, because I don't always act shy, but believe me, I am! When I meet people for the first time, I'm terrified to even open my mouth!!! However, once someone starts talking to me, they have a hard time shutting me up LOL. Now I'm sure you'll believe that!
Thanks Mirjam for this beautiful award! I'd like to pass it on to Jenneke, Jeanet, Natalie, Loes and Petra.

And I would also like to thank Renee for giving me this award:

Thanks sweetie! I'm supposed to pass it on to twelve people (?!!!), so I decided for this award to choose those ladies who never fail to leave me a comment, who are always encouraging me with friendly words and who are always leaving me feeling loved from a distance ...: Jenneke, Marit, Mirjam, Petra, Vivian, Jocelyn, Julie, Natalie, Angèle, Loes, Staci and of course the lovely Jeanet.

Finally, do you remember me talking about my best friend Vicky in my previous post? She started scrapping a few weeks ago, and I think she's already more addicted than I am! I persuaded her to start her own blog, so she could have a place to keep all of her work so she could see her progress right from the beginning. And of course, also so she could meet all of you lovely ladies ... oh yes, I have been talking (a lot) about our little community, telling her how wonderful it is to be a part of it. She has just posted her very first scrap ever, and I know she would love for you to come and visit, and maybe leave her a little comment? We all started out this way, and do you remember how it felt, receiving those first ever comments, and seeing the list of followers grow??? So, if you feel like saying some inspiring words to a beginning scrapper, just click here. Thanks ladies, I appreciate it!

Until next time!
Love xxx Peggy

Monday, Monday

2010-05-31T07:51:00.007+02:00

Monday ... the beginning of yet another week. Time sure flies ... it's almost June already, the last month of school. After that, the kids will be home for two entire months! It seems like this school year has just begun, how can it be ending already??? I'm getting old so fast, and lately that fact has been hitting me hard. Is it because I'm going on 40 (well actually, I'll be 39 coming next January, but that's still pretty close to 40, right?)?? Is this what they have been talking about all along when talking about midlife crisis???? Because really, I actually never thought it would bother me all that much, numbers don't say that much to me. I always say I'm still waiting to grow up LOL. It seems to me that my mom at my age was much more of a grown-up than I am or ever will be. I have a home, children, a pet, bills to pay ... well, lots of responsibilities in life. So why do I still feel like a 20 year old??? However, lately my body has been telling me, not even all that subtle, that I am by no means a 20 year old! And time seems to be passing me by. I feel I should soak up every little detail of the moment, but I can't, it's all going too fast. It's like my brain isn't able to keep up with the pace. My beautiful children are growing up so fast, and I can't shake the feeling I'm not registering that fact consciously enough. They're growing up right in front of me, I should notice every little change they're going through, but I feel that I'm always one step behind. Am I not paying enough attention?

Okay, I have no idea where this came from!!! I was actually just going for a simple introduction to show you my latest work. Now there's proof of how disorganized my brain works, right? Just be grateful I didn't start on "the meaning of life" ... I can go on and on about that one LOL.

So let's just move on to showing you a LO I made with the Kreatorville Krafts May Kit. If you'd like to know more about how this LO came to be, check out my post over at KK!

This is my gorgeous red headed girl Chloë, who's 9 already ... again, where has the time gone??? In these pics she was almost 9 months old and she just learned how to sit up straight all by herself. This made her so happy, it opened up a whole new world for her, hence the title. I used my paints again to create this background. All of my May projects for KK have been painted on one way or the other. I can't seem to help it, right now, all images/ideas that pop up into my head include painting. I've noticed I've gone through several phases like this before, so I'm sure this will pass ... or will it???

I had so much fun painting, I actually (and finally) was able to finish another page for "One Year in The Life of an Art Journal". I'm so behind, but eager to get caught up. Prompt #3 (yes, prompt 3 ... told you I was behind!!!) was all about "The Unknown". This prompt could be interpreted in so many ways! Like for example wouldn't it be nice to know all there is to know about medicin, so that we could cure every disease possible?? Or wouldn't it be nice if I knew all there was to know about so many topics ... that way, I wouldn't lose every time I played Trivial Persuit LOL????? But the more I thought about it, the more it made me think of the future. Sometimes I think it would be nice to know things beforehand, that way maybe I would stop making some of the mistakes I make. However, thinking about it more, made me realize I don't think I would be very happy knowing the future, knowing all that's about to take place before it happens. What if I learned that I would survive all of my loved ones? Or the opposite, what if I learned that I had only so much time to live? Doesn't sound like much fun to me. And if we knew all there is to know, would we still have goals, and would we truly know happiness once we reached them??? I don't think I would handle knowing the future very well, so this way is fine by me.

Back to the journal page then, I guess it wasn't a big step to go from knowing the future to using the image of a fortune teller ...

I searched the net for images and combined some of them to draw in my art journal book. I used my watercolour paints to colour in the page and my black marker to finish it off.

The prompt also included using the stitching technique. It took me some time to figure out how to incorporate stitching into this page ... I didn't really think stitching on this page would look good somehow. Then the idea of adding beads to her head scarf popped into my head, and it actually ended up looking really cool!

I also used some stitching thread to "hold back" the curtains.

On this last image, you can see very clearly that I used some acrylic paint to dry brush some strokes over the entire page to soften up the image (I think you'll be able to see it clearly when you click on the entire page as well). The colours were pretty bright, and it kind of ruined the mystical effect I was going for. Going over the painting with a dry brush turned down the brightness and really pulled all of it together. If there's one colour you should have in your acrylic paint's collection, it's "Buff Titanium", even if it's for this purpose only!

I'll leave you with some pics of our weekend. The kids had their annual school festival this weekend, and it was fun seeing them perform.

Here's Yannis on the catwalk, modelling clothing they made themselves out of plastic bags and fabrics.

Chloë was part of a band playing on home made instruments ... really cute!

Christina took part in the circus performance. She's the one on the far right, standing on her hands. She did really well!

And I couldn't resist adding this picture ... makes me sick just looking at it. The kids loved it though!

Have a nice week my friends,
Love xxx Peggy

We stick together

2010-05-28T17:00:00.000+02:00

I always have trouble coming up with a blog title. I would love to be able to make it a witty one, a catchy one, hey, I'd settle for an interesting one ... but ... it's just not in me! So, I chose to use the title of this LO:

This is hubby and me in our younger years, not even 20 years old *sigh*. It seems like yesterday ... unfortunately the mirror tells me otherwise LOL! I used my beloved Kreatorville Krafts May kit to make this LO, except for the envelope, that was part of the January kit. That goreous pink frame can be purchased at Kean's etsy shop "Aptly Titled". To me, this splash of colour was just what this LO needed. I looooove the result!

The bird gave me inspiration for the title. Originally I had planned to use the other lyrics to the song as well, you know the "I'm sticking to my guy like a stamp to a letter" ... hence the envelope with the stamps (which I rather thought was clever LOL). However, I ran out of place to put it LOL, so I decided the "like birds of a feather" would have to do... so much for being clever, right :-)))

Last weekend, we had our first few consecutive days of good weather ... finally!!! I was actually getting a bit depressed, I mean, it's the end of May already, we should have seen plenty of sunshine by now!!! And to me, life is always sweeter when the sun is shining. Unfortunately, it didn't last very long, but we did have a nice weekend. We spent most of the weekend with my best friend Vicky and her hubby Bart.

Vicky and me

Kurt and Bart

And look what we're doing here ... that's right, we're scrapping!!! Not so much of a surprise that I'm scrapping, but Vicky is now officially a scrapper as well!!!! My best friend turned to the dark side whoahaaaaa!!!! She's loving it, and she actually cancelled a few appointments for next weekend to give her some free time to scrap ... sounds familiar LOL?????? I'm so excited we'll be sharing our hobby now!!

Even the kids were scrapping ... and yes, that is my son on the left there, scrapping as well!!! His dad is soooo proud (notice the sarcasm?? LOL). He actually did a pretty good job and he was able to finish his LO (which, if you know Yannis, actually is kind of a big deal!!!). He felt so proud and made me promise to put it on my blog, so here it is:

Not bad, right??? He's never been very good at crafting, cutting, glueing and that kind of stuff, so for him this really is quite something! Feeling pretty proud here (even if his dad isn't all that impressed LOL).

Talk to you later ladies, enjoy the weekend!
xxx Peggy

She calls me Pegs

2010-05-20T20:50:00.003+02:00

The Kreatorville Krafts May Kit has been revealed, just click on this link to see it's beauty!

My second LO with the kit is a little tribute to the kit's owner, Kean, who I've come to consider my friend. Isn't it wonderful how friendships can grow right here, online? And a friendship it is ... I find myself wishing her success in her business, worrying about her if I haven't heard from her in a few days, thinking about her family when I know one of them is feeling sick, and yes, even feeling proud - though it obviously has nothing to do with me - when I hear the boys are doing great at school. Strange ... just like in real life, sometimes you feel an immediate connection with some, and none whatsoever with others ... like I said, strange...

Anyway, here's my LO, created only with May kit products:

If you'd like to know more about the title, see the difference in this LO before and after the black outlining (one of my favorite "finishing touches techniques), and find out just how easy and quick it was to personalize the buttons, please visit my blog post over at Keatorville Krafts! Hope to see you there!

Love xxx Peggy

Natalie's giveaway

2010-05-14T14:11:00.002+02:00

Recently I found a blog which took my breath away. This lady makes the most incredible lay-outs, adds a tutorial once in a while (I ALWAYS love that!!) and on top of that, she's just lovely!! It's one of the most inspiring blogs I've found in some time now, and I thought that was worth mentioning, don't you think?

Aha, of course I'm not singing her praise merely because I'm such a nice person (*giggle*). Natalie is having a huge giveaway this month, and by blogging about it, I'm increasing my chances of winning. However, nothing I said is a lie ... go check out her blog, you won't be disappointed! Here's the link to Natalie's blog, and here's the link to go directly to the giveaway. Have fun ladies!

xxx Peggy

Thank you!!

2010-05-13T12:38:00.002+02:00

I'd like to thank all of you who took the time to leave me a comment on my previous post. I could feel the good vibes coming my way and you ladies touched my heart yet again. Sadly, all of the good vibes couldn't prevent my HD from being ruined beyond repair. Apparantly it is possible to retrieve the info on the HD, but that would have cost me around €900. Luckily, I had made backups of most of my pics, so the damage isn't too great. I did lose some pics, as I'm not organized enough to take regular backups, and I'm sad about that, but after checking what I did save, and apart from hours and hours of work I lost, the damage isn't too bad. Anyway, nothing else to share right now, I just wanted to let you know how much your comments meant to me, so from the heart, thank you!

Love xxx Peggy

Totally depressing ...

2010-05-09T09:08:00.003+02:00

Just last week, I read on a friend's blog that her computer had crashed and that she had lost her pics. I left a comment telling her how sorry I was, that I felt for her, because well, we all now how we feel about pictures, don't we!! Losing our pics is one of our worst nightmares!! Well ... my external hard drive fell to the floor yesterday, and I'm sure by now you can guess what's on that hard drive ... right, all of my pictures (and my music...). Obviously it doesn't work anymore, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this post, I just need to vent right now!!! The pc shop is closed tomorrow, so I'll have to wait until Tuesday to see if they can fix it. Telling you I'm not in the most uplifted state of mind right now isn't necessary I suppose... Of course I made back-ups, I'm not a total idiot, but desorganized as I am, it has been a while since my last back-up. I can't even begin to think about what exactly will be lost if they're not able to get it to work again. Keep your fingers crossed for me, okay??

Love xxx Peggy

Kreatorville Krafts May Sketch Challenge

2010-05-02T14:22:00.008+02:00

Starting this month, Keandra will be hosting a monthly sketch challenge over at Kreatorville Krafts, and she picked a beauty to start with:
This sketch was provided to us by Tiffany Sanders, and if you're a fan of sketches, I'd suggest you go and take a look at her blog, lots of sketches and LO's to go with them to be found there!

Those of you who know me, know I have a hard time using sketches. In the two years I've been scrapping, this was only my second attempt at using a sketch, and I suppose that's the reason I stuck so close to the sketch. I was surprised though how easy it was this time to work from this sketch, especially since there were flowers involved ... I'm so not a flower person LOL. However, my LO based on this sketch was started and finished in one day, something very rare for me!!! Here's what I made of it:

Though I did stay close to the sketch, I do feel I was able to make it my own by using my beloved paints. If you'd like to see what the other KK DT members made of it, just click here. It's striking isn't it, how we all used the same sketch and still stayed true to our own style?

For this LO I used the Kreatorville Krafts May Kit, which hasn't been revealed yet, so I guess you could say you're getting a sneak peek early this time :-)) Keandra included some lovely flowered patterned paper, perfect for cutting, but my favorite has to be the paper with the handbags, I just think they are so adorable!! And that Buzz and Bloom "catwalk lady" is just fabulous, I fell in love with her the moment I saw her.

This LO features my youngest daughter Christina. We had a little fotoshoot a few weeks ago, since I needed pictures of her in her communion clothes to put on the cards I'll be making. Most of the pics turned out fine, but I tell you, that girl truly believes she's a model LOL, she strikes one pose after the other, barely giving me time to focus. The facial expressions that go with the poses are ... hilarious at times! I'm told she got this "attitude" from me, so I won't say too much about it LOL. I guess the pics speek for themselves ... The journaling reads pretty much the same as what I said in this paragraph, so need to translate this time.

I hope me and my fellow KK DT members were able to convince you to give the sketch a try. Upload your take on the sketch to our Kreatorville / Aptly Titled Flickr Group to be in the running to win this:

You have until the end of the month ... oooh I can't wait to see your take on the sketch. I hope some of you will participate, it would be so much fun to see some of my friends joining us!

After all this spring cleaning the last few weeks, I was eager to back to scrapping, so I didn't just finish one LO yesterday, I finished two!!! Yes, pretty proud of myself here, can you tell LOL. Not bad for the world's slowest scrapper huh! The other LO I made was entirely created with Kreatorville Krafts April Kit supplies.

I guess again the pictures say it all, don't they?? The kids wanted me to paint their faces, no problem there ... until one of them, not sure who (did he/she take a beating for it haha???) decided it would be fun to paint mom and dad's faces ... Ah well, they were happy AND quiet for a few moments, so it was totally worth it LOL.

I'm into multiple pics pages lately ... I seem to go through phazes ... you know, at times I feel a LO isn't finished without stitching, then it's painting, ... and now it's multiple pics ... strange. I'm totally loving this LO. I like everything about it, the papers, the colours, the pics ... The banners were made out of flower petals (told you I'm not a flower person!!!), which goes to show that with a little imagination, you can use anything to your own liking. The Buzz and Bloom chipboard letters are one of the prettiest ones I've ever used ... when painted on, they actually look like would, not like chipboard at all... looks awesome!!!

I'll leave you with one more thing you might be interested in ... Keandra is giving her followers a chance to win this :

You know how much I love paints, so this is a prize to my liking!!!!!! All you have to do to be in the running for this prize, is follow the Kreatorville Krafts blog. Easy right!! There is a catch though ... the count has to reach 100 to be given out. If you're already a follower, you're automatically included to be eligible for the prize, if not ... head on over there and start following! Again, the count has to reach 100, so spread the word!

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday ladies ... it's raining again here in Belgium, it's a dark dark dark day here, perfect for creating!!! Too bad I still have some ceilings to wash :-(((( Ah, but I'll look at it from the bright side ... at least I was caught up with my ironing for a fraction of a second hahahahaha.

Love xxx Peggy

Kreatorville Krafts NSD giveaway

2010-05-01T20:23:00.003+02:00

Happy NSD you all!!! Did you visit Kreatorville Krafts yet today? If not, head on over there, there are some yummy scrappy things to be won. How about an incentive to click this link right here to find out just how you could get your hands on some of this ...

haha, bet you can't wait to click on that link now, right??!!
Talk to you later!
xxx Peggy

Bad Bad Blogger!!

2010-04-24T11:00:00.008+02:00

I'm such a bad blogger ... I really should commit myself to blogging at least once a week. I have waaaaayyyyy to much to say today, so brace yourselves!!

Before I show you what I have been doing these last few weeks, I wanted to ask you all something. Lately I have been getting Chinese/Japanese (???) comments on my blog posts. They come into my mail box showing no name, just question marks. When I click on them, a blog does open, but it's a blog with no entries ... do any of you know what that's about??

Kreatorville April Kit reveal

Okay, on to business ... The Kreatorville April Kit has been revealed, and it's absolutely gorgeous! This kit will lead you eather way ... fun, romantic, free style ... all is possible with this one. Click here to see the kit in all its glory. Click here to see the Aptly Titled embellies that go with the kit (I totally have a crush on that bunny!!!).

Kreatorville March Kit LO's

While the April Kit already has been revealed, I still have some March kit projects to show you ... told you I'm a bad blogger :-(((

All of the above LO's, as well as my first vintage LO, remember, the one showing my grandparents' wedding day, have been made exclusively with the Kreatorville March kit products. So that's a total of five LO's, and yes, believe it or not, I still have materials left!!

I should mention that my "Ice Skating Fun" LO was based on one of Leeann's designs, which you can see here. Thank you Leeann for the inspiration, though of course I wasn't able to capture your fun free style which I so admire. I'll get there someday though, I have faith LOL. Btw, Leeann is our April guest designer over at Kreatoroville Krafts ... couldn't be happier about that! Please go and take a look at all the gorgeous projects she made *sigh*...

A Year in the Life of an Art Journal

I also made my second art journal page for AYITLOAAJ (gosh that name!!!!), for which we had to use a masking technique and work around the word "hope". Here's my take on it:

I'm enjoying these art journal pages even more than I had imagined. I wish I had more time to work on them ... BUT, as soon as I saw the first sun creeping through, my yearly urge to clean house reappeared ... so, I've been cleaning like crazy, cleaning out cupboards, washing the ceilings, all in my very own desorganized way, which means I now have two rooms which are totally gorgeous up to the very last detail, and a total mess in the rooms I haven't been working in at all LOL. But, I'll get there, again, I have faith LOL. And as for my ironing, I'm sure you'll be surprised to hear I'm all caught up (hear that Marit haha) ... yeah me!!! LOL. Although that doesn't mean much, as of course the washing machine and dryer are full and a next bunch of laundry is patiently waiting, but ... I'm not stressing at all ... well, maybe just a little bit hehe. Still, it's rewarding. The house will remain a mess for the weekend, because the weather is wonderful today, and I'm going to tackle the remains of my garden ... not a pretty sight at the moment ... planning to change that over the weekend though. So I guess my love for art journal pages will have to wait.

Award

It has been long time since I've received an award, and this one especially made me smile. The quote that goes with this award reads: "For bloggers who inspire others with their positivity and creativity". Now wouldn't that make you smile as well?

The first ones I would think about when seeing this quote would be my sweet friends Jenneke and Loes, but since they are the lovely ladies who gave me this award (thank you!!!!), I on my end am going to give this award to these fine ladies:

Marit
Leeann
Jeanet
Keandra
Glenda
Mandy

Of course if I could I really would make this a much longer list. There are so many wonderful ladies who are always able to put a smile on my face, or to whom I turn to when I'm in need of some inspiration, but I have to admit these have been on the top of my list for quite some time now. I'm sure most of you know them all, but if you don't, please take the time to visit their blogs (Jenneke's and Loes's as well!!) They all make such wonderful things, each in their own unique style. It will be worth your time, I promise!

I'm sure there was something else I wanted to tell you, but I can't think of it right now ... I'll save it for another post, hopefully a little sooner this time!!

Love xxx Peggy

KREATORVILLE KRAFTS GIVEAWAY

2010-04-19T10:30:00.004+02:00

We at Kreatorville Krafts have our very first sponsor!!! Buzz and Bloom is an innovative scrapbook manufacturer based in Australia, who received the Most Innovative at CHA 2009!! So of course we have to let you share in all the fun! We have two, yes two ways to win some Buzz and Bloom goodies!

This package is a mixture of acrylic and chipboard Buzz and Bloomin' goodness! All you have to do to be in the running for this gorgeous package is subscribe to the Kreatorville Krafts kit before April 21st (I'm a bit late announcing this, I know, I'm sorry!!). And if you're already a subscriber, of course you're automatically in the running!!

Remember girls, if you're living in Belgium or the Netherlands, we do have a way to split the costs, so we finally have a chance to get our hands on an American kit club without having to pay those huge shipping costs! Should you be interested, just send me an email, and I'll get back to you ASAP!

Now we at Kreatorville Krafts KNOW you would love to be a subscriber, but sometimes the budget just doesn't allow us to do as we want, so ... for those of you who want to but just can't right now, we have a second giveaway ... Just leave a comment, also before April 21st (again, sorry for the short notice!!!), on this post on the Kreatorville Krafts blog, and you'll be in the running to win this:

AND, for each person you bring over to follow the Kreatorville blog, you get another chance to win ... just make sure that person leaves a comment stating that you sent her.

And if this wasn't enough, there still is another way to get your hands on one of the Kreatorville kits ... Ali Edwards is holding her annual "Week in the Life" project starting today, and Kreatorville/Aptly Titled is one of the sponsors. Just click on the link to read what it's all about.

Well, that's it for now. I have some more March kit LO's to share with you, so I'll see you soon!
Love xxx Peggy

Kreatorville Kraft March Kit and then some...

2010-03-30T12:25:00.008+02:00

Hello ladies,

The Kreatorville Krafts March Kit has arrived, and it's a beauty! Head on over to the KK blog to see the full reveil!

Here's the first project I made using the march kit. I made my very first vintage LO, and though I'm not a vintage kind of girl , (I like it, don't get me wrong, I just don't seem to be able to create one myself) I'm pretty proud of this LO!

When I saw these papers, I just knew they would be perfect for the vintage picture I have from my grandparent's wedding day, and I was right. I so love the result, even though it's a simple LO as far as techniques and embellies are concerned. Keandra's papers and alphas made it easy to create the perfect feel for this page. Thanks Kean, for making me create out of my comfort zone!

When Kean shipped the march kit to me, she included some goodies for my girls ... did I tell you already what a sweetie she is ... yeah, I'm sure I did! Here are some pics of the girls playing with their new treasures, just look at those happy faces:

The bear goes swimming wearing his pearls and bathing cap, which actually is her glove LOL. Her resourcefulness and imagination always impresses me...

Bling Bling Bear ...

An original where to carry Baby Bear around ...

Thanks Kean, for making my babies happy!

Though the Kreatorville Krafts March Kit is up and running, I still have some February kit projects I haven't shown you yet. Again I went way out of my comfort zone and made two altered projects. Again, not too difficult to begin with for first attempts, but both projects make me happy looking at them, especially the altered quotes book.

My second project was turning this ...

... into this ...

And for those who don't recognize me, yes, that's me in that picture, some 20 years ago (big heardo and all...). My best friend didn't even recognize me ... she thinks I look "unapproachable" in this pic, and I think she was being polite LOL. I like it though, it reminds me of "slimmer and wrinkle-free" times LOL.

I've also been working on some art journal pages ... yes, I've been creative these last weeks! And those of you who know me a little by now, know that hasn't been good for my pile of ironing, which apparently, if one doesn't iron every now and then, steadily keeps on growing LOL. However, this has been a long post already, so I think I'll post those one of these days.

On a final note I would like to thank all of you who left me encouraging comments on my canvas painting in my previous post. I was really nervous about putting it here for everyone to see, and your sweet words did me the world of good!!!

Talk to you later ladies!
Love xxx Peggy

I love painting!

2010-03-21T16:32:00.005+01:00

Some of you already know I'm following Marit's workshop "Let it Loose". Sadly the workshop has ended, but since I'm behind on my projects (duh, what's new???), I still have some fun projects to look forward to. I'll share the ones I've already made in a minute, but first I want to show you something else I have been working on. Ever since starting Marit's workshop, I have been obsessed with painting and using different mediums ... so much so, that I decided to take a workshop doing just that, painting on canvas using different mediums. Here's the result, my very first canvas painting:

Oh, I soooo love the result. Obviously I had a lot of help on this one from my teacher ... she showed me step by step what to do, and even told me which colours to use. For instance I was surprised to hear you always have to start with dark colours on the first layers, working your way to the lighter colours ... This was such a fun workshop and I'm so hooked, I can't wait to start on another one and see if I can pull this off working on my own ... keep your fingers crossed!

The picture in the middle shows my three kids. I love this picture! I printed it out with my ordinary inkjet printer on ordinary paper, which lead to a happy mistake. Once placing the paper on the gel medium, the black and white image turned green! Apparently I should have used a laserprinter to preserve the original colours. However, the green turned out pretty cool, so I don't mind. I'll keep this in mind in case I want to keep the original colours though ...

Here are the projects I made for Marit's workshop:

For this project we were asked to use a mask together with misting or painting ... I chose painting. Though at first I didn't like the blocks of colour (I like colours that blend...), the page grew on me and now I love it.

For this project we had to make our background using spray painted tissue paper glued to the page with gel medium ... I didn't look forward to this one. I don't have a lot of spray paint colours, and since I had never done anything like this, I didn't know what to expect. However, once I finally started working on it, I fell in love with this technique. The picture really doesn't capture just how beautiful that background really is.

This is my abolute favorite page made as a result from Marit's workshop. We were told to alter the colours of a picture, changing the existing colours in the complementary colours. I would never ever have come up with anything like this on my own, and when I first read the prompt, I didn't have a clue how to start on this one. Marit's example was inspirational though, and going through my quotes and reading this one I used, I remembered I had just the right picture to use for this prompt. Don't you just love how this turned out?? Who would have thought changing the colours could create such an awesome effect?

You might be interested to know that, thanks to the huge success of her first online workshop "Let it Loose", Marit has decided to give it again, starting May 3rd. I have so enjoyed this workshop (well, I'm still enjoying it LOL), so I can honestly and without hesitation recommend it to all of you who feel the need to let it loose every now and then! Registration for her new workshop "A Creative Art Journey" starting May 7th is also open. Check out her blog for more info.

I have to start on dinner now, but you all know what I'm gonna do after that ... right, play with my paints again LOL!

Talk to you later ladies, enjoy the rest of the weekend!
xxx Peggy

2010-03-06T23:26:00.006+01:00

I can't believe it has been a month since I've blogged!!! I guess I didn't have all that much to say (yeah right, those who know we a little bit by now are shaking their heads in disbelief LOL).

I do have a lot to show you though. These last weeks I have been playing with the Kreatorville Krafts February kit, and I've been loving every minute of it. Following LO's have all been made exclusively with kit products, except for the painting materials and stitching threads.

Moments like these melt my heart: Yannis helping Chloë with her homework. I'm sure every mother would appreciate quite, peaceful, heartwarming moments like this ... these are the moments to remember!

I outlined some of the circles with a black marker and painted them with Making Memories Ticled Pink glitter paint, which is also included in the kit!

Pictures of us taken during our vacation last month. I myself am not in pictures very often, and when I am, more often than not I feel I look so bad in it that I can't resist the urge to push the "delete" button LOL. I WAS pleased with these pics of me/hubby and the kids though, so it deserved a pretty and happy LO!

I finally made another page for our wedding album ... we've been married for almost 12 years now and this is my third page LOL. I'm hoping to have it finished before Kurt retires ... For those who are wondering about that strange title ... I've explained it in my journaling.

"Has anyone ever had a less romantic first wedding dance? We had originally chosen "Keep on Loving You" by Reo Speedwagon, but there was no CD-player present. So, after having waited in vain for an appropriate song, we decided there and then to have our first dance to the next song that would be played ... and this was it ... "It's Now or Never". Not exactly our first choice, let this be known! Ah, let's take some comfort from the fact that we might have started out "wrong", but we're still going strong..."

The sad part was, I actually like most of the Elvis Presley songs. My parents were huge fans (they even had a huge pic of him in their bedroom!!!!) so I grew up with his songs. But ever since I can remember, I have hated "It's Now or Never" (I also hate "Love me Tender" btw). That man has sung so many gorgeous songs, so why oh why did they play that particular song LOL???? Ah well, we did have a good laugh out of it... Oh, and if you're wondering why there wasn't a CD-player present ... we were married in Crete, and there was a life band playing mostly Greek music ...

This is the only page I didn't use paint on LOL. I'm following Marit's art journal workshop at the moment, and I'm having a hard time switching from art journaling to scrapbooking ... I seem to feel the need to put paint on every LO I make now LOL. This definitely isn't my usual style, but I do like this page. I guess this mostly has to do with the pic of my two beautiful girls ... I just love that picture. I knew it would turn out great as soon as I took it! They can fight like you wouldn't believe (oh yes, punches are thrown back and forth ...), but there also the best of friends, and I think this pic truly shows how close they are, how much they love each other.

This has to be my favorite project made with the february kit! At first I didn't have a clue what to do with all the buttons, but once this idea popped inside my head, I just knew this would turn out to be a fun page. I've tried to represent her sparkling personality ... Christina was such a fun child, always laughing, never bad tempered, and she had the cutest giggle which made everyone around her smile. Though she does have a bad temper every now and again these days, she still has this sparkling personality which makes her loved by most people.

Though, like I said before, all LO's have been made with the february kit products, I still have supplies left to make a few other projects!!!

And remember, because I'm on the Kreatorville Krafts DT and I receive a monthly kit, there's still some room left in my package to include some kits for Belgian or Dutch ladies who might be interested in purchasing the kit, which makes the shipping costs fairly cheap! Should you be interested in the kit, just send me a mail to peggy.schenkels@telenet.be or to the boss lady Keandra to keandra@kreatorvillekraft.com.

I know this has been a picture heavy post, but I also wanted to take the time to thank Mirjam again for this gorgeous RAK she sent me for commenting on her 100th post. Look at all this yumminess she sent me!

And she also included a beautiful handmade card for me, which I thought was soooooo sweet, thanks Mirjam, you're a sweetie and I appreciate it!

Isn't it pretty?????

That was a long post, I know!!! Did you read all of it, really????? I promise I will blog a little sooner next time to avoid monster posts like this!! Talk to you later ladies!
xxx Peggy

A Year in the Life of an Art Journal Prompt #1

2010-02-07T17:11:00.003+01:00

Ever since finding Glenda's blog, I've been in love with her art journaling pages and I've been wanting to be able to create page like that myself. So, when I found the AYITLOAAJ blog, and I saw they had started fresh this new year, I decided it was high time to give it a try.

The first prompt was actually a great prompt for me... "What is holding you back". As I've seen on many of the other ladies' pages, we all kind of feel the same ... uncertain about our work, are we good enough, is what we make to be called art?? To tell you the truth, I still don't think what I do is worth to be called Art... all I know is that when I'm not creating I'm thinking about creating, and when I am creating, I'm having fun, I'm loving every minute of it! I guess that's what really matters. Here's my first page:

The prompt was to write what was holding us back and then to cover the words with paints or whatever, sort of to make them not matter anymore. Some said this was very therapeutic for them ... I have to admit it didn't do much for me. I still feel the same way, words covered or not. However, I liked the idea of it LOL.

Now, those of you who read my previous post know that I am following Marit's workshop "Let it loose" ... well, I guess it shows from this journal page that I'm still having trouble letting it loose! Although I tell myself on this page to let go, to break free, I just can't seem to stop wanting some kind of structure... my title still is in the middle ... if I add red paint to the bottom of the page, I want to see red paint on top as well, or I'll feel the page is out of balance, ... And I'm just not happy with the page until I've traced images with my black marker ... I need some sort of structure. I guess I still have a long way to go before I finally let loose...

This being said, I don't know if I want this to change, because, I really really love this page, it turned out exactly as I had pictured it in my mind. Jeanet, just like you, I'm wondering if I should say this about my own work, but it's how I feel, so I guess it's okay.

As this is my first art journal page ever, except for the one I made for Marit's workshop, but that one was different since it concentrated on the journaling ... I'm eager to hear what you think... be honest!

Thanks in advance ladies!
xxx Peggy

Guest designer and student

2010-02-04T20:44:00.009+01:00

From Screen to Scrap Feb. Guest Designer

I'm happy and proud to announce that I was asked to be the February guest designer over at "From Screen To Scrap". I've been following this challenge site for quite some time now, and I'm always inspired by their prompts and amazed by how many entries they get, and always so many so fast! Those of you who know me a bit better, know that the fact that I'm such a slow scrapper is the one thing I would like to be able to change, so when I see people finish LO's in a record time, I'm impressed!

Here's the inspiration poster for this month's challenge:

Now normally, every time I see their inspiration poster, images of a LO and pictures I want to use immediately pop into my head ... NOT this time though ... I was completely lost!! I don't have any "pirate" pictures, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what to make. I looked at the poster more closely, and noticed the bandana ... Now I DID have pictures of the kids wearing some sort of bandana. Going through these 2004 holiday pics, an idea started to grow to make a pirate's story from these pics. So that's what I did, I made a children's mini-album.

The journaling is in dutch, as I made this album for my kids. However, since it's a story, the journaling is important, so I'll give you the translation of each page:

"The Pirates of Crete"

"After thoroughly studying the treasure map, the courageous pirates start their quest."

"The adventure is tough ... Mountains have to be climbed, angry seas have to be crossed... But the little pirates don't give up!"

"The pirates are being attacked by the feared old mummies with their water guns, but our littlest pirate immediately counter-attacks, and she shows no mercy!"
(Little side note: I don't know if my mom will appreciate being called an "old mummy" but I thought it was kind of funny LOL)

"Finally arriving on their place of destination, the pirates zealously start digging."

"Exhausted from all that digging, the pirates decide to take a little break..."

"That nap did wonders! Now a little bite to eat, a drink and a dessert, and then back to work!"

"... And all of their hard work is rewarded: they find the treasure! Just look how proud and happy they are!".

This is actually the most fun I've had since I've started scrapping, I was so excited throughout the entire making of this album, and once I had worked out in my head what I wanted to achieve, the album seemed to make itself... This is what challenges are all about, making you think outside the box, making your imagination work, even if at first you don't have any clue as to what to make! So thanks for the inspiration Shazza, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to design for you!

I'm so hoping I will see some familiar faces participating with this challenge ... not only because I wish Shazza's site a lot of succes, but also because

I get to choose a winner this month!!!!!

who will win a choice of items from Keandra's etsy shop "Aptly Titled" for the amount of $15!! (thank you Kean for sponsoring!)

Here are some examples of Keandra's lovely work:
That's a cool prize, don't you think? So come on my friends, go visit FSTS, be inspired and create!!! You can find the FSTS February prompt here.

Marit's workshop "Let it Loose"

Now, from guest designer to student, keeping me with my two feet on the ground LOL. My sweet friend Marit (I know a lot of you know, love AND admire her) is giving her first ever online workshop "Let it Loose". Thanks to her first lesson, I made my very first art journal page ever. This lesson concentrated on the journaling part. I'm really happy with the result.

I used gesso and acrylic paints for this page, and I used a gel medium for the first time ... it worked very well, it doesn't show on the pic, but the title has a nice glossy shine to it ... I like it!
I had fun doing the journaling, though I had to add a few last minute lines due to too much words, which is why around the center the journaling is so close together ... you know me, I always have a lot to say LOL.

The prompt was to go and sit at our windows and describe what we see and let our thoughts and feelings flow ... I mostly talked about my neighbours and how I feel about them. For those of you who'd like to know more, here's the translation:

"Title = I see. I'm not really happy with the view of my front window ... I look directly upon the decrepit backside of my neighbours. During summer it looks like a small jungle, weeds then grow abundantly against the side of the wall. Last year our street was reconstructed, but not for the better ... we don't have a sidewalk anymore ... hard to understand, especially when you know that we live in between two schools which are only 50 meters apart. Parking also occurs right against our wall now, so more often than not I look straight at some car when I look outside my window. Looking to the left, I see Jean and Maria's house, two lovely elderly people. During winter we don't see each other all that much, but during summer, we regularly enjoy little chats. Next to them on the left is the house of an elderly couple as well, Elmer and Miriam. Elmer is a sculptor, his work is very popular and quite expensive. His wife is a very sweet beautiful woman. Though she's about 7O years old, she doesn't look a day over 60. About 30 years ago, Elmer got throat cancer, which made him lose his voice. He now speaks by pressing a little microphone against his throat, and the vibration of his vocal cords produces sounds/words. But most of all, I love looking to the right, then I see the house of my best friend. It feels nice having her so close to me ... love her!

There's still time to join us, registration is open until February 6th ... we're all having so much fun!

And in the meantime, my pile of ironing is doing a pretty good imitation of the "Mount Everest" ... that's right Jenneke, I still haven't started on it LOL, maybe tomorrow hahahahaha!

Love xxx Peggy

Kreatorville Krafts January Kit

2010-02-01T22:41:00.004+01:00

I've been so busy these last few months, I would love for things to slow down a bit. I'm eager to get caught up not only with my responsibilities but with my personal stuff as well, like reading my fav blogs. It seems that lately I've been running around aimlessly, just barely hanging on. I need to get organized, to find my balance. I've seen some people choose a word for 2010 ... balance, that's what my word would be for sure!

Because of my hectic schedule, I don't have all that much Kreatorville Krafts projects to show you yet, but I will be working with the kit some more this month.

I started my mini-album of our dog Vita. The pages are 12x6, I love working with that size, it's easier to fill - obviously - than a 12x12, and for some reason or another, I do find it easier as well to add embellies, which isn't that obvious, as you would think it would be harder seeing that there's less room, right?? Sometimes I don't even understand my own way of thinking, so why do I always expect my hubby to understand LOL??

Vita acts so crazy whenever we give her a bone. She first starts circling around it, throwing it in the air a few times, and then she just starts rolling around with it ... for quite a long time! You would think she would quietly lay down and start chewing, but no, after playing with it some, she disappears and comes back minutes later without the bone ... I think she's saving them for a rainy day :)))

A boy and his dog ... pure love, the title doesn't lie. As soon as I saw these papers in the Kreatorville Krafts January Kit, I knew I wanted to use them to scrap this picture. They go so very well with the colours and the mood of the pic.

I instantly fell in love with this checkered background paper and the beautiful alphas, which made me decide to make the big title one of the main features of the page. I had seen this done by others, and I have always like the look of it, but I had never done this before. And I guess it shows, I need some more practice, there's something not quite right with the page, though I still haven't figured out what it is exactly. However, I don't mind, I love this LO for the obvious reason that I love the pics. This is my 9-year-old daughter Chloë, and the pics really capture her personality ... sweet as in the top pic, and goofy and full of life as we go further down ... She's always able to make me laugh, she's the type of girl it's hard to get mad at, and if I am mad at times, it never lasts long.

If you'd like more detailed information about the materials used, just head over to my post over at Kreatorville Krafts. While you're there, you might want to check out the other DT's work ... some of it is posted already, but there's lots more to come, so keep your eyes open!

Okay, I'm off, I'm gonna work some more on my first page for "One Year in the Life of an Art Journal", and on my first art journal page for Marit's workshop ... ah, life is good!

Love xxx Peggy

Spending my birthday scrapping away

2010-01-17T15:11:00.008+01:00

Hi ladies, today is my birthday, and I'm doing what I love best aside from spending time with my family ... scrapping of course, or well at least I'm doing something scrapping related LOL. We did of course celebrate my birthday as well ... I was awakened this morning by gorgeous (ahum) singing by my wonderful kiddies (hubby luckily didn't join in LOL), followed by breakfast in bed! I received the most wonderful presents ... I already got a bycicle from hubby about a month ago, an electric blanket, a ring, a necklace and today I got three "Twilight" books ... isn't my hubby the absolute best?!!!!!

On Friday, my hubby's birthday by the way, we enjoyed a romantic day out over at a little town in Holland, and yesterday we took the kids to the cinema and to a chinese restaurant (which the kids looove). We went to see "Alvin and the Chipmunks 2", and I have to say I rather enjoyed it LOL. It certainly was good for a few laughs and was quite entertaining, compared to some of the kids' choices I've seen in the past!

So today I'm just enjoying the peace and quiet. We were planning on going out, but my husband is taking our son to watch a soccer match this evening, and they have to leave quite early ... did I just say my hubby is the best ????? LOL. Anyway, I don't mind, there's no punishment in staying at home and scrap the day away, is there? At least today I have an excuse not to do any kind of work around the house LOL.

The Creative Therapy / ARTastic Challenge Blog

I have been scrapping during this last week as well, so I do have some projects to share with you. For my first LO, I started out with pictures I love ... Chloë's very first pictures, taken only minutes after she was born. However, the quality of the pics isn't that great, nor are they really "pretty" pics ... so how do you scrap pics like that??... well, experiment of course!!!! I saw several of my friends had entered the challenge over at The Creative Type, and I knew instantly I had found my experiment! For this challenge, we had to use newspaper, something I had never done before. I used newspaper as a background and to make the flowers and the leaves.

In creating this LO, I was also inspired by a challenge over at the ARTastic Challenge Blog, which you can find here. The floral painting inspired me to use these bold colours, which really liven up this boring colours of the pictures, and to use flowers ... something I hardly ever do!!!

Part of the text on the background newspaper reads: "Kleur je dag", which means "Colour your day". I was so tickled when I found this text LOL, funny how little things can make you happy, right? And even the image of the camera came out of a newspaper ... how about that??? In the framed stamps I added her date and hour of birth, weight and height.

I don't know if you've noticed, but I love addding cut out pics lately. I just love that pic of Yannis holding up his hands like that, just happy because he's little sister has finally been born...

Here are some close-ups of the flowers, they turned out so pretty! I made the flowers using one of Julie's tutorials, which you can find here.

Aptly Titled

For my next project I used one of Keandra's gorgeous Aptly Titles. I find they always add that extra special touch to a project.

For this LO I mainly used images I received on christmas cards ... aren't they cute? I especially love that santa putting the star on the tree LOL. My husband thought this LO to be a little too busy (so you can image what he thought about the first one I showed you!!!), but I like it. I have a hard time adding embellies to my LO's, but I think this border works though.
The frame around the blue CS is doodled, and really added a finishing touch to the whole page.

The forgotten LO

While browsing through my LO's, I found this LO which I made with the Kreatorville Krafts November Kit, but which I, for one reason or another, never shared it with you.

This picture of Chloë was taken in June of last year, when she was 8 years old!! Look at that pose!!! Luckily it was a one time thing, I've asked her to do it again, but she hasn't been able to LOL, which is a good thing I think. She's looking way over 8 in this pic!!!! I'll have to start getting used to the idea of her growing up ...

Time to start on dinner and after that I plan on ending my birthday by visiting some of your blogs and scrap a little ... LIFE IS GOOD!!!

PS. Glenda, I went and bought my journal yesterday, so I can finally start on my art journal. I'm soooooo nervous and excited at the same time, this is going to be a fun journey!!!!

Love xxx Peggy

Finally...

2010-01-10T13:17:00.009+01:00

... I have some projects to show you! After not having been able to scrap for so long, it felt soooooo good to be scrapping again. It's funny how much I missed it. Because I spent all of my free time scrapping lately, I haven't been able to read any of your blogs yet, and I've missed you all so much. I'll visit you all real soon, I promise!

Kreatorville Krafts December Kit

The first projects I want to show you are the ones I made with the Kreatorville Krafts December kit. I loved the kit as soon as I laid my eyes on it, and I have to tell you, that felling just grew stronger and stronger when I got to work with it! I challenged myself to work only with kit products, both because I love challenges AND to show you just how much you can do with it. And this kit made it easy for me to live up to the challenge! Apart from inks, paints and stitching materials, I used nothing but kit products on my kreations! Here's what I made:

Don't you just love Kean's reindeer on this page??? I find her embellies to be the PERFECT embellies to make a plain LO into a WOW-page!!

For my next project, I wanted to kreate a mini album, again using nothing but the kit. Now this was a double challenge for me, as I'm not used to making mini's. I've only ever started one before (it's still not finished LOL), so I really was out of my comfort zone ... However, again, the pages just seemed to build themselves. Kean's choice in papers coordinate perfectly, the embellishments are just gorgeous and perfect for any kind of project, and what's more, it's just FUN to work with!!!

That bird was just too pretty to be buried inside of an album, it screamed to be used on a cover!!

Journaling left page: 12/6/2009: Sinterklaas just visited this morning, but that didn't stop us from putting up our christmas tree in the afternoon :)

Journaling right page: Just like last year I couldn't get Yannis to come and help us, just like his dad ... However, the girls were super enthousiastic. They hung up all of the ornaments all by themselves.

In addition to the Cosmo Cricket Ornament Fashions papers, filled with gorgeous embellishments, Keandra always includes papers in her kit that are perfect to cut out, like the swirls you can see on the left page!

Journaling right page: 21/17/2009: Enjoying the first snow by taking a beautiful evening walk straight after school. Daddy's always up for a good snowball fight :)

Aren't those colours beautiful together? And I had never worked with rubons before, but I so love the look of it!

Journaling left page: 12/21/2009: the girls had fun for hours making christmas decorations.

Again I found the perfect shapes in the paterned papers to cut out to use as embellies!

These have to be my favorite pages of the mini. I just love the blue, brown and red together and when I first cut out that blue paper I had no idea it would turn out so pretty in the end!

Journaling right page: 12/20/2009: it continues to snow, and of course the fun isn't complete without a proper snowball fight

Journaling: Poor Chloë ... Yannis really let Chloë have it! There even was snow trapped between her eyes and her glasses! But the pictures turned out great, didn't they LOL?

Again I was thrilled to be able to cut out the pp and get some perfect embellies coordinating with the rest of the page. I added that present because of the "gift" my son gave his sister in this pictures... And of course I just had to add the "to/from" gift tag here LOL.

This is the last page of my mini so far, but I still have to add some pages. I'm hopeful they will be finished soon.

Be sure to visit the Kreatorville Krafts blog to see what the other members of our team made with the december kit ... so much loveliness!!!

A little reminder ... most of us in Europe know how hard it is to buy American kits because of the huge shipping costs. We at Kreatorville Krafts are trying to find a way to get them here cheaper for potential European customers. However, to do that, we have to find some interested European parties, we need a certain number to be able to distribute them cheaply. So, if any of you living in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, anywhere in Europe, are interested, please let me know. You can either leave me a comment or contact me at peggy.schenkels@telenet.be. I'll keep you updated on our progress.

December guest designer for The Next Step

Another project I want to share with you is something I made as the december guest designer over at The Next Step. I am sorry to say the lovely ladies over at The Next Step have decided to discontinue their blog. Although I understand it takes a lot of time running a blog, I have to admit I'm sorry to see the end of it. I for one loved reading it. I learned so much from them, and I would like to thank Lucy, Bethany and Gayle for the time they spent putting the blog together all these months. Good luck in your future projects ladies!

For my guest spot, they asked me to do a tutorial on painting techniques. I decided to make the cover of my "book of me" album:

You can find my tutorial with step-by-step instructions here. I hope you'll go and take the time to visit the tutorial, you'll see just how easy it is to create a painted background, even if you (like me) no nothing about painting or painting materials LOL.

I'll leave you on a happy note ... I was published again in scrapstreet with my "Lucky" LO. If you'd like to see the article, click here.

I'll talk to you later my friends, I'm looking forward to visiting all of your blogs again, it has been wayyyyyy too long!

Love xxx Peggy

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!

2010-01-01T23:12:00.004+01:00

My friends, I want to wish you all the very best for the new year ... plenty of love, friendship, good health and everything else you might wish for, is my wish for all of you!!!

Due to family obligations, I haven't been able to blog, visits blogs or create in about a month now, and I'm so looking forward to school starting again and finally having some long overdue Me-Time!!! I'll be visiting your blogs real soon, you can count on that, I've so missed you.

I have a few projects to show you, but again lack of time is preventing me to do a proper blog post. So, instead, I'll leave you showing you the cards I sent all of my friends, wishing you a

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
MAY ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE

Love xxx Peggy

I think I should explain...

2009-12-24T15:29:00.002+01:00

I've been getting some remarks about the Kreatorville Kraft kits, which makes me think I need to explain something ... this is not my kit, it's Keandra's. I guess I talk about it as if it's my kit, but that's just because I have been on the team since the very beginning. I'm proud of this kit as if it's my own, but it's not LOL.

For those of you who don't know Keandra, you are missing out on one sweet lady, here's the link to her blog. She's the owner of the Kreatorville Kraft Kit Club, and she's all American, so to answer one of your questions, yes of course this kit is open to US residents!!! In fact, this kit is available to be shipped internationally.

I've also been made aware the info about where to buy the kit is hard to find on the Kreatorville Krafts blog, so while waiting for that to change, I'll give you the necessary info:

You can contact Keandra, telling her which kit you would like to buy (which month) and specifying which title and embellie you would like (you get to choose one of each) at this address:

keandra@kreatorvillekraft.com

Price:

$37.50 for a one time kit

$32.50 for a six month subscription

I guess the confusion started as well when I started speaking in dutch ... this was only to tell the Belgian and Dutch people that they could order the kits as well if they so wanted... it seemed to me this would be easier to explain in dutch.

If you have any more questions, you can either contact Keandra at above mentioned address or me at peggy.schenkels@telenet.be.

Talk to you later ladies, I've received a last minute invitation for me and my kids for a lovely christmas dinner (my husband's working the night shift tonight) over at my best friend's house, so I have to get ready!!!!
xxx Peggy

Kreatorville Krafts December Kit Reveal!!!

2009-12-24T09:35:00.009+01:00

I can't believe it has almost been a month since I've blogged, and what's worse, it has been almost just as long since I've visited your blogs!!! I miss reading your stories and seeing your beautiful work, and I hope life will get less busy soon so I can get back to spending some Me-Time!!! I haven't forgotten about you all, and I'll pay you a visit as soon as I can find the time!

I do have some exciting news: The Kreatorville Kraft December Kit is available ladies, and it's a beauty!!!!! Don't miss this one my friends, this is the yumminess you'll receive on ordering the kit:

And of course you'll also get your choice out of these awesome handmade titles:

and if that isn't enough, you'll also have a chance to choose between one of these awesome embellies. If you're looking to add that wow-factor to your pages, Keandra's embellies will definitely do the trick!!!

You can find more details about the kit and some gorgeous DT examples on the Kreatorville Kraft blog, just click here! You don't wanna miss this kit my friends!!! And I almost forgot, Keandra has got a little treat for you ... ANYONE WHO SUBSCRIBES TO THE KIT BETWEEN NOW AND NEW YEAR'S EVE (DEC 31ST), WILL BE IN THE RUNNING TO RECEIVE THAT KIT FREE!!!

I'll be back later to show you one of my latest projects, but for now I'll leave you wishing you all a

Very Merry Christmas

The next part of the text here is meant for my dutch speaking friends who might be interested in purchasing the Kreatorville Krafts kits ... don't worry my english speaking friends, no secrets, it's just easier for me to write it in dutch!!

Hallo dames, als je net bent als ik, heb je al eens een paar keer geïnformeerd naar de prijzen van Amerikaanse en/of Australische kits en weten jullie ook dat de prijs om deze naar hier te verschepen bijna even hoog is als de prijs van de kit zelf. Keandra en ik zijn aan het uitzoeken of we de kits op een goedkopere manier aan jullie kunnen aanbieden. Eén van die manieren zou zijn om er een paar tegelijkertijd naar mij te zenden, en ik zend ze dan afzonderlijk door naar jullie. Hiervoor moeten we echter op zijn minst 5 geïnteresseerden vinden binnen België of Nederland. Mocht één van jullie geïnteresseerd zijn in de aankoop van de kits, kan je me mailen op volgend adres: peggy.schenkels@telenet.be.

Zalig kerstfeest dames!

xxx Peggy

Kreatorville Kraft November Kit projects

2009-12-01T11:43:00.006+01:00

Hi ladies,

First of all I would like to thank everyone who took the time to leave me a comment on my previous post. I did me the world of good knowing that you all care and wish me well. I'm happy to report I'm feeling back to my old self again, so much so that it amazes me how quickly a person can recover from surgery these days ... Of course, it does have its downsides ... I have to start doing the work around the house (which hubby took care of till now...) and the ironing (which my mom took care of) again, not exactly jumping up and down about that!!! It does however also mean I can get back to my scrapping, and boy did I miss that!!! I've discovered I'm seriously addicted, now why that should come as a surprise, I have no idea, but it did. It's hard not being able to do something you love ...

Okay, so I would like to show you some more LO's I finished with the Kreatorville Kraft November Kit. This one you've already seen:

Here are two more I haven't shared with you yet:

This gorgeous guy is my husband. This pic was taken quite a few years ago (in Crete), but though obviously he has aged he still looks pretty much the same now ... lucky me right LOL?!!! It took me some time to find the right title for this LO, because every time I looked at this pic, all i could think was "yummy" LOL, which I didn't think was the greatest title ever. But upon hearing the song "my man is a sweet man, ...", I knew I had found my title/journaling! Apart from the embroidery floss and inks, I only used kit products for this LO.

This LO is about my youngest daughter Christina doing so well with her reading. She's ahead of her age as far as her reading skills are concerned, which of course makes me proud but releaved as well. My friend's kids have a reading disability, and the amount of work spent on that problem is enormous, so I'm thankful that for my kids it all goes so easily...

The journaling reads:
"Christina is in the first grade now (10/18/2008), and with learning how to read a whole new world is opening up for her. Just a few months into the first grade, she has already obtained her AVI level 5 ... we're so proud!"

Again, apart from the spray paints and embroidery floss, all products used in this LO are from the November Kit. I tell you, this kit seems to give and give and give ... I still have plenty of material left to make additional LO's, so there's still more to come!

I already told you Christina made the Kreatorville Krafts design team as well, and here's her very first LO (8x8) with the November Kit:

The title on this LO was made by Keandra (and reads "A walk with Vita", which is our dog), and is an example of what can be bought in her etsy shop, go and check it out!
I know, it looks like something I could have made, but I swear I had absolutely nothing to say about this LO (though I tried LOL, believe me, I tried ...). She had seen me working with the spray paint and of course wanted to try this herself. She had seen me cutting out the little dear and mushrooms, so she copied that as well ... I don't mind though, it's fun to see how she takes some of my ideas and makes them her own. The thing that's most remarkable to me though is that I didn't do one thing to help, not one! She even did the stitching all on her own, even putting the thread in the eye of the needle ... This girl amazes me. She's my youngest, but you wouldn't think so when watching her...

Of course being their mom I think all of my kids have unique qualities LOL. Take Chloë for example, she turned nine on the twentieth this month, the same day I had my surgery. Because of the surgery, we had to cancel all of her birthday plans, like the traditional "birthday breakfast in bed", the choosing what to eat for dinner and the family birthday party, which had been scheduled for the day after the surgery... She didn't mind though, she didn't want to have her party without me there. She even waited with opening her presents. Normally she got to open them on the morning of her birthday, but she took them with her to the hospital, so I would be present when she opened them ... how wonderful is that for a nine-year-old! This year she didn't want a "kids-party", she wanted to go climbing with her dad, just the two of them. I'll leave you with a pic of her goofing around. Good thing I wasn't there, my heart would have stopped LOL.

Till next time,
Love xxx Peggy

I'm back!!!!

2009-11-23T17:45:00.002+01:00

Well, I haven't been gone for that long, and most of you probably haven't missed me yet, but to me it feels like forever. Let me tell you what happened. I had been feeling pretty bad the last few weeks, thinking I was battling a cold that didn't want to break out in full. On Thursday evening, I started feeling crappy again, and in ten minutes time, my belly was hurting so bad tears were running down my face, I just couldn't help it. I told hubby I wanted to lay down a bit, but before making it to the couch, I collapsed! I started rolling over the ground, crawling on the couch, rolling over again, trying to find a position that wouldn't hurt so much, any position I could find ... but there wasn't any to give me some relieve! I moaned, I cried, I screamed, I scared the crap out of my husband and kids. To tell you the truth, I was pretty scared myself. My belly, my stomach, my back, my throat, everything hurt, but the scariest part was that I could hardly breathe. By that time, my hubby had already called the doctor and asked him to come over, but it soon became obvious I wouldn't be able to wait that long. So he tried to get me to move to get me to the emergency, but he couldn't persuade me to move ... at all! He told the kids to go and get my best friend/neighbour, and both of them tried to get me to stand up, but I just kept rolling over the ground, not responding when talked to. I guess by that time hubby was getting quite desperate, because he called 911. The ambulance came quite quickly, I think they were at our place in a matter of minutes, but they weren't allowed to give me anything for the pain, what's that about!!!!???!!! They had to call for back-up, and it took them about 15 minutes to get to me I suppose, all this time leaving me crawling, rolling, gasping for air! But when they finally arrived ... aah, heaven!!! Thank goodness for drugs LOL. The pain stopped immediately, I tell you, they gave me one hell of a wonderdrug! Anyway, to cut a very long story short, I was diagnosed with gallbladder stones. These stones cause paines I wouldn't wish on anyone, not even my worst enemy ... well, maybe ... no, really, not anyone LOL. I gave birth to three kids, without the help of any drugs, and that felt like a breeze compared to this pain! Anyway, they were removed the very next day, and I was able to come home from hospital as early as yesterday! Amazing really when you think of it, isn't it?

I still tire easily, and I have trouble sitting up, that's still pretty painful, but Kurt, my husband, is being a real sweetie and he's doing absolutely everything around the house. He's doing the dishes as we speak. This event has really shown me what wonderful friends and family and what an awesome husband I have, I feel so blessed right now, I can't even put it into words. I've received help from everyone, everyone went out of their way to make it easy for me, my hubby and my kids, and I'm feeling beyond grateful. And I have to say this: Kean, Jenneke, thank you so much for inquiring after me and for worrying about me, you touched my heart (again) and I love you both!

Well, that's all for today, I'm feeling tired again from sitting in the same position, but I'll try and visit some of your blogs later tonight. Glenda, I did receive your comments, I just didn't see them before today) I'll be back tomorrow (or the day after, depends on how I feel ...) to show you some LO's I made with the fabulous Kreatorville Krafts November Kit. If you haven't seen the kit yet, click here. You'll want to have this kit, I promise!

Talk to you later ladies,
Love xxx Peggy

Kreatorville Kraft November Kit sneak peek

2009-11-13T09:53:00.003+01:00

My introduction over at Kreatorville Krafts is up!!! Click here to go and check it out... Keandra had some wonderful things to say about me ... I'm still blushing ... I love you too sweetie!!! She asked us to introduce ourselves not by means of an interview, like most sites do, but ... being creative as she is, she asked us to do this on a LO. She had given all the Kreators a sketch to work with ... now let me tell you, if I've learned anything from this experience, it's that I'm not a sketchy kind of girl!!!! I struggled so hard with this, and the LO shown below is actually my third version! Yep, I chucked two LO's (perfectly good papers aaargh) in the bin. But ... I'm really quite pleased with this one.

Normally I have a clear vision in my head of what I want the end result to look like. It doesn't always end up like that, but the vision is usually there LOL. However, with this LO, there was no vision ... I just played around, adding stuff, not really knowing what I was going for. I was all ready to add my own journaling when I asked my family to help me out and say some things that would describe me. My girls said the sweetest things (they're still at that age where they adore me...), but my hubby and son started fooling around, saying all those things I'm not, like skinny, great cook, etc... or highlighting my weaknesses (scrapping addict, internet addict, ...) I was a bit annoyed at first to tell you the truth, but my sense of humour won and pretty soon we were all joking around. This gave me the idea to not take the journaling as serious as I had originally planned. To read the journaling, please click on the image ... you might learn a thing or two you didn't know about me yet, and it might even put a smile on your face...

Now I've been talking a lot about the Kreatorville Krafts November Kit, so it's high time to give you a little sneak peek ... This is one of the LO's I made with the kit.

The only things I used on this LO that weren't in the kit are my embroidery floss, paints and inks. All of the papers, embellies and alphas came with the kit. I'm telling you, this kit is awesome, perfect for girls' LO's, boys' LO's, artistic LO's, clean LO's ... everyone will be able to make something out of this kit! Mark your calendars ladies, the kit will be revealed on the 21st of this month. Don't wait until then to visit the site though, Kean has some RAK's she wants to give away ... Here's the link again.

I made this LO for my best friend. She's been going through some difficult times lately, and when I saw the "One day you will" (by Lady Antebellum) on my friend Lisa's blog, I instantly knew I wanted to use them to make a LO for my friend. You should be able to read the lyrics by clicking on the image.

So, this is turning out to be a huge post again, but I did also want to tell you about a wonderful internet friend of mine, Marit (I'm sure most of you are familiar with her awesome work) who has started a new venture. She will be teaching on line workshops in the future, and because of her blogiversary you have a chance to win some RAKs, but also a spot in her very first workshop!!! Go and leave her some love and you might just be the lucky winner!

I've also received a blog award, you know the one where you have to answer some questions using just one word, but if you've made it this far I'm not gonna try your patience any longer, I'll leave that one for next time!

Love xxx Peggy

KREATORVILLE KRAFTS...

2009-11-09T21:40:00.005+01:00

... has gone live!!!!! My sweet friend Keandra, aka the boss lady, tells you all about her awesome new kit club and etsy shop here ... go check it out and give her some love!!! Starting up a new business is a big deal, and she can use all the support we have to give.

I do have a more selfish reason to direct you to the Kreatorville Krafts site ... I already told you I would be creating for her, but I haven't mentioned yet that my youngest daughter Christina will be creating for her as well !!! She's one of the kid kreators (oh yes, we have kid kreators ... how unique is that!!!!), and Keandra (bless her!) just dedicated an entire post to her and her first LO for Kreatorville Krafts. If you want to see the entire LO ... click here! Haha, just trying to make you curious enough to go and visit the Kreatorville Krafts blog. Still, Christina (who's tucked in and sleeping like a baby already) would never forgive me if I didn't put at least some pics on my own blog, so I will give you some sneak peeks just to make my girl happy and to hopefully get you curious enough to click here (well, if you haven't found the link by now ... I give up!!!)

Keandra told me to let her be, to let her do her own thing (yeah, she knows me quite good by now) ... so I did, but I couldn't resist giving her some advice every now and then. She listened, I can say that much ... she listened as I gave her some options, and then she did her own thing LOL. She didn't like the circles on the sketch, so she wanted to make flowers ... so I showed her a few ways to make the flowers. I asked her if she wanted them clean or distressed, inked or not. So she asked me to show her the difference. I made one flower of each, she chose to distress and ink, tossed my example in the bin and started on her own flowers ... without asking me once to show it to her again. I asked her if she didn't think the flowers were too close together (because, well, I thought they were...), she said no, and that was the end of it LOL. Same thing with the journaling ... she was a bit unsure about writing english directly on the paper, so I suggested she'd use strips. She wanted red, not the colour I would have chosen, but again red it was supposed to be LOL. I told her she would get more contrast by inking the strips, and again she asked me to show her the difference. I was pushing her a bit to use black, but again ... red was what she had in mind, and red it was gonna be. She did like the inked strips better, so without thinking about the extra work, she started inking. Oh, and see that part of her name ... she stitched the entire thing! She even puts the floss into the eye of the needle herself! I'm so proud of her ... she's so wonderful to scrap with ... she listenes when I explain different techniques to her, but she has her own mind as well, and wants things done her way. She has a vision in her mind and she stays true to it ... I can direct her in a certain direction, but only if she lets me ... how wonderful strong minded is that for a seven year old. Oh, I should mention ... Christina takes after my side of the family LOL. I should also mention (for the sake of keeping the peace in my family and not let jealousy take over ...) that Chloë as well is working really hard on her LO (though she's not on the team) ... she's actually stitching the entire sketch LOL. That girl shouldn't be scrapping, she should be embroidering LOL. Her birthday's coming up, and I'm planning on buying her her own little embroidery piece ... she'll love that!

Keep checking the Kreatorville Krafts blog ladies, there's much more awesomeness on the way (and Christina would be stoked if she were to get some comments .... begging here ladies, put a smile on my baby's face ... please?) LOL.

Love to you and yours
xxx Peggy

I am me - FP Challenge Prompt 12

2009-11-01T14:33:00.005+01:00

This month's challenge over at Forward Progress is about letting go and free ourselves from the expectations of others.

This was a difficult challenge for me. It kept lingering in my mind, and the more I thought about it, the more I knew I'm not there yet ... I'm not free from the expectations of others. My life is filled with expectations ... I expect a lot from my family, my friends, myself, and I know they have certain expectations from me. I really don't know how to go through life without expectations, so why would I expect others to expect nothing from me? The only sense I could make out of this, the only thing I've learned through the years, is to not let it bother me all that much if I don't live up to someone's expectations. With me, what you see is what you get. Expect all from me that you want, but if I can't live up to your expectations, that's your problem, not mine...

So here's my take on the challenge. It's a 9x9 page, the first page for my BOM album.

I had problems putting this into words for a LO, but when I found this "Ralph Waldo Emerson" quote, it knew instantly it said all I wanted to say:

"All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I looked someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I and only I could answer. It took me a while and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself."

This album will be all about me (as the name says duh LOL), about my random thoughts and feelings. I'm thinking most of them will be inspired by song lyrics or quotes, as I've never been any good in just putting my thoughts on paper. I've tried started a journal several times, but I've failed miserably each time. I need to be inspired first LOL.

Obviously this is a very plain LO, but I love it, the pic just doesn't do it justice. In future, I'm hoping this album will have the look of an art journal, but for this particular assignment, I wanted the LO to reflect me ... plain and simple, no frills, true to my "what you see is what you get" theme.

I'm hoping some of you will find the time to play along with us this month, you still have two more weeks to submit your entry. Even if you haven't "progressed" in a certain area, you might, like me, find that that's okay too. Life is about evolving, we can't expect to have everything sorted out right now, right? If ever...

Love xxx Peggy

FROM SCREEN 2 SCRAP October Challenge

2009-10-28T15:43:00.007+01:00

I managed to enter one challenge this month, though just in time...
I made the following LO for the "From Screen 2 Scrap" October Challenge, which was a beauty, and I had just the perfect pics! There were quite a few criteria to follow, but I managed to do them all (feeling pretty proud of myself right now LOL).

The translation of the title is "Careful", and the red dymo letters say: "Hold on tight" and "Use your hands and feet".

Journaling:
This picture tells it like it is!
Christina is perfectly happy at the bottom of the ropes. She has always been the kinda scared one.
Yannis would love to join Chloë at the top, but his careful nature spots too many dangers.
Chloë on the other hand ... Chloë doesn't see any danger. From the moment she could walk, she was climbing on every little thing (and I do mean every little thing), and that hasn't changed. This means I'm never at ease when we go to the playground. It seems I spend most of my time shouting for her to be careful, to hold on tight, because you see ... not only does she always climb to the highest point possible, she does this in a way that makes your heart just plain stop. She jumps from one rope to the other, letting go of both hands and feet at the same time... have fun baby girl, but please, be careful!

I didn't get any pics of her letting go of both hands and feet, because frankly, I was too busy holding my breath. To give you an idea of what it looks like when she does that, I added the image of the monkey... scary right?!!

I painted the background with watercolour paints on plain white cardstock. I like painting on watercolour paper better, but since I only wanted to create a background it didn't matter all that much that the paint dried to quickly for the colours to blend in nicely.
I handmade the title (with an ordinary yellow marker), and I stitched the red ropes which were out of the picture (inspired by the pyramid as part of the challenge - you gotta love those challenges, they provide so much inspiration!).

For me, this really is the perfect scrapbookpage, though it might not be as "beautiful" as some of the creations found on the net ... you know what I mean right, I'm not saying this page isn't beautiful, because I do think it is LOL, but it doesn't have that WOW factor. However, this is why I started scrapbooking, to tell a story made prettier with pictures, not the other way around. I'm so in love with this page. This is how I want my art journal to look like, if I ever have the nerve to start on one LOL.

Thanks for looking ladies, and thanks for your comments, I hardly say this often enough, but I do so appreciate all of you taking the time to do so!

Love xxx Peggy

KREATORVILLE KRAFTS

2009-10-26T09:58:00.007+01:00

I have some exciting news, my very good friend Keandra, aka Kiwi the kreator, has started her very own kit club, KREATORVILLE KRAFTS, and I'm proud to be one of her designers!!!

Her first kit will be revealed and available for sale on November 21st. Now this kit isn't just like any other kit ... Keandra's kits will always include her handmade painted or glittered titles and embellishments! Those of you who know Keandra, know that she ALWAYS has the best titles and embellies on her LO's ... just check out her blog to see some of her awesome creations! And keep checking my blog and the other ladies' blogs in our team as well ... we'll be posting kit creations regularly!

If you are interested in putting our November kit (pics will be available shortly) on reserve, please email Keandra or Taj (our design team coordinator) at:
keandra@kreatorvillekraft.com
tajkorekreator@kreatorvillekraft.com
The kits cost $37.50 plus shipping for a one time purchase or $32.50 plus shipping for a 6 month subscription. Trust me, with the handmade titles and embellies, you won't be disappointed!
The Kreatorville Krafts blog will go live in a few days, so keep your eyes open! We'll have great prizes for people subscribing to the blog and/or kit!

Next to the kit club, this amazing lady has also started her very own etsy shop, Aptly Titled, where you can buy her titles and embellies seperately.
If you should buy a kit AND items from the etsy store, you can save on the shipping costs ... smart right! So go check out those titles ladies, I promise you, it'll be worth your time!

So, high time to show you some LO's I made with Keandra's titles.

This is my son Yannis, standing in the corner (his "time out") for the first time. We don't put him in the corner anymore, but he does still needs his time out's every now and then ...
Journaling: "On seeing this picture I was a bit shocked at how early on we put Yannis in the corner after having been naughty ... he was soooo young! I remember how surprised we were of him actually staying in the corner after we put him there ... We had expected him to just walk out when he decided he'd had enough. Yet, up until today, he still stays put until we give him permission to come out. It has proven to be an effective punishment though... usually he feels he's been accused unjustly, and he does need that time out to cool down before he's willing to listen to what we have to say"

Like I said in the journaling, i was really surprised at how young he was when we first started doing this, in this pic he's only about 18 months old. I do remember why though, he had hit his baby sister, Chloë, who was 3 months old at the time, on the head with this toys. I guess with Yannis it was all about having to grow up a bit too quickly ... he was only 2,5 years old when his second baby sister was born ... yes yes, you can do the math, I had three children in a period of 2,5 years time ... all I can say is, we had fun LOL.

I inked the wings with Ranger distress inks and covered them with glossy accents ... ah how I love the look of glossy accents!!!!!

Here's Yannis again, showing him at all ages from 0 to 5. I looooooove this LO, and it all came together so nicely. I actually worked around Keandra's title for this LO. Because of the multiple pics, and to show of that gorgeous yellow title, I decided to print the pics in black and white. I recently found the best tutorial ever for altering pics into black and white on Kimi's blog. You can find the tutorial here. Let me tell you, those pics are gorgeous in real life, Kimi knows what she's talking about. Of course, it takes a little more time than just simply pushing the "convert to black and white" button, but it's worth the effort, trust me on this! Anyway, I chose the colour of my cardstock to go with the title, and decided to use a red thread for the leaves to add some contrast. Now the red didn't show on the green cardstock, so I used some masking tape to fix that problem. Turned out pretty neat huh? I used Coordinations cardstock, so I put some chipboard numbers underneath the CS and started sanding away, which left the outline of the numbers on the CS ... I swear, I so love that CS. I then stitched around the outline, just to give it some extra dimension. After stitching the leaves, I decided the CS could do with some more sanding, leaving a "smear" here and there, but I unintentionally hit some of my sewing thread. I was all panicky at first (if you knew me, you'd know how panicky I can get when things don't go my way LOL), but ... I decided to sand on the rest of the thread as well, which gave it this really neat worn look ... gotta love happy mistakes (right Sharon?). That's about it I guess, expect for the yellow stitched frame ... I didn't think the LO looked finished, and again in coordination with the yellow title I stitched the yellow frame ... amazing how things can come together so quickly when you focus on one feature of the LO! And what better feature than Keandra's titles????

This is the first and probably last LO I have made in half an hour! I guess it shows too, but I don't mind, I love it. I love the look of it, the way all of the colours contrast, the doodled flowers and ... haha there's nothing more ... still, I love it!!! Chloë, who is featured on this LO, didn't like it, she thinks the LO is too plain. I blame it on her youth LOL, she doesn't like anything that isn't stuffed with goodies. I on the other hand love it ... did I say that already LOL??? I guess I'm saying it so often because this is the first LO I made after having lost my mojo (remember my previous post) ... The title says "summer freckles", which reminds me ... I should also mention that Keandra can also do custom titles... just mail her and she'll let you know the cost and extra time involved. She can ship up to 20 single or double word titles or graffiti letters in one flat envelope for a flat rate ($ 0.80).

Thanks for making it all down here ladies, you're the best!
Love xxx Peggy

yeah!

2009-10-13T14:40:00.003+02:00

One of my LO's (the symbol of Paris) got published in Scrapstreet.com Magazine. You can find it here.
Hihi, this probably is one of my shortest posts ever, but I just had to share ...

Love xxx Peggy

Forward Progress Prompt 11

2009-10-08T07:57:00.004+02:00

Hi my sweet blogging friends!

First of all I'd like to thank everyone who sent a little mojo my way, I'm glad to say it helped! I've made 4 LO's in one week ... I think that must be a personal record LOL. I've been totally neglecting all other responsibilities, I've just been scrapping every day ... how wonderful to be able to create again.

As it happens I can only share one LO with you today, you'll have to wait just a little bit longer for the other 3. I made those for a very special occasion, something I'm really excited about and I can't wait to tell you all about it. Later, I promise ...

I made this LO for the current challenge over at Forward Progress. Not many people have entered this challenge yet, and I was so hoping some of you would decide to play along this month! We have a beautiful prize for the winner, and even without the prize, the challenges over at FP are really worthwile. Each and every challenge I've done for FP has made me think about my life, my decisions, my relationship with others ... and made me understand a few things about myself in the process as well.

This time around the prompt is this:

I have always felt that me, as a person and as intense as i am, left an immediate and definitive mark on where I have been and whom I have met. but do I? am I profound? am I in my lines? or do I blur them? This month's prompt is about touching people's lives ... it's not who you touch but how ...

Here's my take on the challenge:

This really was a difficult one for me! I'm a bit (understatement of the year!!!) insecure, and to say that I touch people's lives ... Well, do I really, I wonder? The only persons I could really think of, of course, were my children. But then again, they touched my life as well, they changed me completely, they changed the way I feel about things, how I think, how I love, they changed the way I look upon life itself. I didn't really know how to put this into words, so I used the lyrics to a Martina McBride song, "In my daughter's eyes".

I used to think a lot about my place here in this world. When I was younger, I really wanted to matter, to make a difference in the world. I never did of course, which made me wonder about the meaning of it all. All of this changed when I had my children. I didn't have to look for a purpose, for "the meaning of life" anymore, I had all the purpose I needed and still need. The only thing that matters to me now is creating a warm, loving and safe home for my children, giving them a good start in life, teaching them to be good and strong. I guess I still want to matter, but now in my own little world, I don't feel the need to matter in the whole world anymore. I guess to me the meaning of life is just being happy, and trying my best to make sure that the ones I love are happy as well.

Lyrics:

In my daughter's eyes I am a hero
I am strong and wise and I know no fear
But the truth is plain to see
She was sent to rescue me
I see who I wanna be
In my daughter's eyes

In my daughter's eyes everyone is equal
Darkness turns to light and the
World is at peace
This miracle God gave to me gives me
Strength when I am weak
I find reason to believe
In my daughter's eyes

And when she wraps her hand
Around my finger
Oh it puts a smile in my heart
Everything becomes a little clearer
I realize what life is all about

It's hangin' on when your heart
Has had enough
It's giving more when you feel like giving up
I've seen the light
It's in my daugter's eyes

In my daughter's eyes I can see the future
A reflection of who I am and what will be
Though she'll grow and someday leave
Maybe raise a family
When I'm gone I hope you see how happy
She made me
For I'll be there
In my daughter's eyes

This song says exactly what I want to say, how I feel. I'm sure I touch their lives in a profound way, but really it is a two way thing!

As soon as I saw this picture, I knew I would use it with these lyrics... The LO came to be surprisingly easy. Normally I can't decide on anything when starting a LO, it takes me forever to decide on the slightest detail. However, this LO just seemed to make itself, though I ran across some problems along the way ...

I knew I wanted to use glimmer mist for this LO, to create just the right feel to it. Since I only have one colour of glimmer mist, the choice was easy LOL! I also knew immediately that I wanted to use my "new" stamps (I've had them for several months now LOL). Those of you who follow my blog regularly, know my fear of stamping directly on a page. I'm so proud of myself for finally doing it LOL! I even used my sparkly embossing powder ... talk about taking a risk huh LOL!!! The stamped images were pretty even without the embossing, but with the embossing, wow, they came to life!

And then the problems began ... my sewing machine didn't want to cooperate at all on this one. The stitches were uneven, it got stuck several times, started stitching without a thread leaving just holes in the page ... ah well, it doesn't show all that much, still I didn't get the effect I was after. I had planned on only stitching, but because of this bad look, I added some ink on the edges of the page ... big mistake!!!! It was horrible!! At this point, I had already glued down my alphas, wrote down the journaling, so I just didn't want to start all over again. So I decided to paint over it, using some mesh as a mask. It still didn't give the look I was after when starting this LO, but as it turns out I still love it! I think my daughter will love this one one day ...

Be sure to check out the Forward Challenge site, you won't be disappointed. You still have about a week to enter the current challenge!
Love xxx Peggy

Forward Progress Challenge #11

2009-09-20T11:14:00.004+02:00

Hi my scrapping friends, just a little post to let you know that the new challenge over at Forward Progress is up, and it's a beauty! If this one doesn't get you thinking, I don't know what will... It may seem a difficult challenge at first, but don't discard it, it has the potential of creating a really powerful LO! If you feel you have come to a point to take your scrapping to another level, Forward Progress is the place to be!

I hope you will check it out, Lisa and Jocelyn both made beautiful LO's that are sure to inspire you, and this month there's not one but two prizes to be won, so do try to play along!

My LO will go up at the beginning of the new month ... I don't have any sneek peaks to show you though, my mojo's still on holiday :-( I do have the LO worked out in my head, now all I need is a little push to create ... thank god for deadlines LOL.

I also want to thank every single one of you who left a comment on Christina's LO (previous post), you've all made her so happy and proud and I so love you for that!

xxx Peggy

Christina's entry for TAAFOMFT

2009-09-13T12:49:00.003+02:00

This is Christina's (my 7-year old) entry for the TAAFOMFT challenge.
Her favorite food without a doubt are "smoskes", which literally means "making a mess". It consists of putting as much vegetables between two slices of bread ... yummie!!!!

To my great pleasure, Christina really is interested in scrapping. Chloë sometimes scraps along with us, but she's too impatient to really finish a page. Christina however loves it, and I'm sure she'll keep on doing it. The only problem is she doesn't allow any help. She reluctantly listens to suggestions I make, and then she does it her way anyway. I see improvement though, she's stealing with her eyes I guess. And she's just like me, very careful with her stuff, every stamp and brush is cleaned right after use LOL, unlike her big sister, who thinks the fairies will come to clean everything up LOL.

Anyway, this is her entry ... I'm sorry to say mine will be finished too late. I had a huge problem with this challenge, I don't have any particular fav food, I love all of it LOL, especially if it's bad for the figure ... sounds familiar????

I haven't had time to scrap lately. I've just finished painting my son's room, and I'm still working on arranging all of his stuff into his new bedroom. I did have some time to scrap, but I just wasn't in the mood ... I don't know what's wrong with me!!!!! Ah well, I'm sure this won't last long, and in the meantime I'm having fun catching up on all of your blogs.

Talk to you later my friends.
xxx Peggy

If I could turn back time

2009-09-05T10:47:00.003+02:00

Forward Progress Challenge

It feels sooooo good to be back and finally have some me-time again. After being MIA for almost a month, I've finally been able to sit down again and just scrap ... I wouldn't have thought I would miss it that much. I've had some wonderful times with my family, just being together, enjoying each other's company and relaxing, but I've come to enjoy my own special time as well. I'll be visiting all of your blogs as soon as possible, how I've missed reading my favorite blogs in the morning, slowly sipping my first cup of coffee....

First things first now, the new challenge over at Forward Progress is all about forgiveness. How can we move forward in life if we have not forgiven (someone, something, ourselves, ...) for something in the past?

Here's my take on the challenge:

Journaling:

"I would give a lot to see you just one more time. I would tell you how much I love you, and how much I miss you.

You never asked for much, but I was too occupied with myself to even give you the little you asked.
You've always been there for me, and I'm so sorry I wasn't always there for you."

This LO is about me and my grandmother. She passed away 7 years ago. During the last years of her life, I was too preoccupied with my own life, my own new little family, to give her the attention she needed and more than that deserved. She died very sudden when my youngest daughter was just 3 weeks old. I had just had 3 children over a period of 2,5 years, and I used this as an excuse not to visit all that much. I didn't call her up all that often either, because she was getting deaf, and a lot of our telephone conversations ended up with her hanging up in tears, frustrated because she couldn't understand what I was saying. So I didn't call her that often, telling myself this would only upset her ...

I now wish I had made more of an effort to go and visit her once in a while. My grandfather had passed away just the year before, and it had left her without a purpose in life. First she brought up my mom, when I was born she took care of me when my parents had to go to work, and at the end, she took care of my grandfather, who had had a stroke a few years before he passed away, and he wasn't able to walk nor talk anymore. I should have realised how alone and useless she felt at the end, but I didn't. I was to caught up in my own life to even notice I think.

Why is it we don't see things clearly until it's too late? Why is it we don't know just what we have until it is gone? I wish I had done things differently, but I didn't, and I've been living with this guilt ever since she died.

Although I had thought this LO would turn out a very "dark" one, I changed my mind while looking for pics of her and me. I remembered how much fun she was, and how much she loved me. I wanted to ask for forgiveness, but I think in her eyes I don't need to be forgiven. I think she was hurt by my lack of attention, but I don't think she was angry about it, I think she understood and accepted it as part of life. That's the sort of person she was, and that's how I wanted her to look on my LO, fun and loving, just like she was.

I do hope you will find the time to play with us. You still have time until the 14th to submit your work. Our Forward Progress blog has a new look, a new DT and starting this month, we have sponsors. This month's sponsor is Scrapadilly Products. I would love to see some of my friends come join us!

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Glad to be back!

Around the middle of August we took a short vacation here in Belgium in Centerparcs, a bungalow park ... the kids participated in lots of activities and of course the main thing we did was visit the waterpark. Here are some of my favorite pics.

My hubby ... oh yes, he's bad LOL

Just some random pics of my beautiful girls

Me and my hubby (acting silly again)

Playing games with the whole family ...
ah, such cosy times!

Chloë getting ready to climb the "high ropes"

The "high ropes". I still can't believe she did this ... twice!

"Catch me if you can!"

My son's favorite place to hang out.

Still finding joy in the little things.
I love the look on their faces here...

Our boy turned 10 on August 24th, that's right, we now officially have a teenager in our house! I can't believe it, where has my baby boy gone, it seems like only yesterday when I first brought that tiny bundle of joy home *sigh*.

Here he is, enjoying his "breakfast in bed", a tradition we started a few years back, and one they insist on having every year since then. I know, I know, not the healthiest breakfast ever, but it's not like he eats like this every day...

Yannis is very interested in everything that has to do with the world wars, so as a surprise his dad took him to visit the trenches and musea. He loved it!

The first day of school. I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, while my kids were finishing their breakfast. All of a sudden they shouted: "take your time momma, we'll do the dishes!!". Ah, they can be such little angels sometimes... oh and yes, that is my ironing board you can see on the left ... Typical me, a whole summer vacation to get things in order, and still I have to iron their favorite clothes in the morning right before school starts ... will I ever learn??????

And then it was time to leave for their first day of school. They were so excited, they didn't even want to take the time to pose for our annual pic :-( Ah well, this will do ...

And of course as school starts, mom's got to do some homework as well ... take a look at mine:

For the girls I bought some paper to cover their schoolbooks, but for Yannis I thought it would be a great idea to use the sport's section of the paper, and of course I plastified it as well ... it turned out pretty cool, don't you think?

Feewwww, that was a long post! I'll try to update my blog more regularly in the future.
I'll drop by your blogs and leave you some love as soon as possible!

xxx Peggy

Thinking happy thoughts - SATU and My favorite Things

2009-08-14T17:27:00.003+02:00

After my earlier grim LO and posts, I decided I wanted to make some LO's that make me happy, and both following LO's do just that!

These are a Few of my Favorite Things

This first one I made for the challenge over at "These are a Few of my Favorite Things". While going through the other ladies' entries, I noticed that some of them were planning on making an album out of the LO's created for this challenge site. I thought this was a splendid idea, and decided to make one as well. All my LO's for this challenge site will be 6x12 LO's, a wonderful size to scrap on!

For this LO I used cardboard for the background, a foam flower stamp (with gesso), and a small flower punch ... that's it. A very simple LO, but I love looking at it. The title reads: "for you mama" and the words in black just say "My favorite flowers". Though actually strictly speaking tulips are my favorite flowers, the wild flowers picked just for me by my children are the world's most beautiful bouquet in my eyes.

Scrapping across the Universe

Well, I guess it's obvious I like the look of those stamped flowers huh?! I wanted to create a fresh and cute LO for the challenge over at "Scrapping Across the Universe", nothing too fancy, so I went with a very simple background again.

This is a very old pic of me and my husband from early in the beginning of our relationship ... almost 20 years ago!!! Ah, we look so young *sigh*. And it really was love at first sight for the both of us ...

I drew the birds after finding the images on the net by googling "love birds" ... aren't they the cutest? I used that hearts' T-shirt of Chloë's again, I so love those bright colours. I found some pages out of a book titled "Flirting for the camera" (which you can read just on top of the pic), which I thought suited this pic perfectly. The leaves I cut out and painted a little while ago, but never used them ... I added them now just to add a little extra colour to the LO. Again a very simple LO to make.

I think I might be too late for both challenges ... we'll see, I get mixed up with dates sometimes because of the time difference, but that's okay, I made these just for me. Like I said, they make me happy just by looking at them, and that was my main purpose here.

Love xxx Peggy

The abitlity to change lives

2009-08-09T12:07:00.004+02:00

There is something I would like to share with you. As a reaction to my last LO "Swallow", my sweet friend Jocelyn sent me the following comment:

"Wow....Peggy this one had to be a difficult one to do!!!!! What a sad experience.....and the impact it has held on you to this day!!!! Actions by those that we cared about at one time, can be so strong in our lives....and I wish for RESOLUTION....ACCEPTANCE....for you to be able to move on!!!!! It is not acceptance of their behavior...but acceptance of control in your life!!!! Do Not allow them to still hold a dark place in your heart.....you are in control and you have much more room for POSITIVE people who can fill you with LOVE!!!! The stitching of the title is awesome....the real pain...exudes from this LO!!!! I adore you...I support you.....I hold you close!!!! Sending you friendship and love across the seas to enrich you and your beautiful family!!!! "

Some of you commented that making this LO must have been therapeutic ... well, actually, it didn't help much. I liked making it though, the dark side of me really liked making this LO. I enjoyed making the page as grim as I knew how to, and drawing the skulls and putting them over their images, well, I must admit that just gave me an evil thrill and it actually put a smile on my face. So with making this LO, I didn't come any closer to accepting the situation, nor did I get rid of the hatred I feel. I actually felt pleasure making this LO, a fact that scares me a bit, but then again, not all that much ... I know I have this side to me, but I also know I have a warm and caring side to me as well ... a side which I reserve for people who I feel that deserve it.

However, I'll get to the point I want to make today before I start scaring everyone off LOL. Not the making of the LO, but he comments I have received have been therapeutic, more than I had imagined them to be. And especially the one from Jocelyn made me stop and think. I do have to take control, no one but me can let go of that hatred. Especially the sentence where she said I was allowing them to hold a dark place in my heart got to me ... I AM allowing them to still matter, I AM giving them the power to feel something I don't want to feel ... I had never looked at it that way, and it's definitely another way to look at things, this really opens a door for change, not of the situation itself, but a change to how I have to deal with this. I have been brooding too much about the how's and why's, which come to think of it really isn't all that important ... it is what it is, and I have to let it go and move on. Of course reading this comment hasn't gotten rid of the hate in my heart ... but it has given me hope that I just might overcome this, a way out of this negative spiral ... I realise know that it's up to me to change how I feel ... I've been acting like a victim in this whole situation, and realising that it's time to let go is a huge step in the right direction for me. Letting go will be the next ... this won't be easy, my emotions often get the better of me, but I will try to take control!

Thank you so much Jocelyn, you are a true friend. You gave me the following award the other day, and in accepting it I should list 10 things I love about blogging.

I hope you don't mind, but I'm just going to give you one thing I love about blogging, because all the other things are fun but obvious, like finding inspiration and so on ... we all feel this way about blogging, otherwise we wouldn't do it as often. And I knew up front it was going to be this way, anyone who spends some time on the internet, even before starting their own blog, knows this.

However, the one thing that surprised me and makes me want to come back for more and more, is the friendship I feel in the comments I receive. I really feel people care, and in return, I care for them. Some of your stories make me laugh, others make me cry, and some even make me lose some sleep worrying everything will be okay ... which is amazing in itself isn't it, caring so much for people you haven't even met in real life? And once in awhile, a comment like the one Jocelyn wrote to me has the ability to change lives ... now this would have to be the one thing I like best about blogging. Thank you so much my sweet friend, I can honestly say I love you!

Have you ever received a comment that changed your life, or that made you think about the path your taking? If so, please grab this award, leave me a link and share your story with me/us. I would love to hear how blogging has affected you!

Love xxx Peggy

Guest Gutter Girl

2009-08-08T11:37:00.004+02:00

I was asked to be the guest designer over at Gutter Girlz, I'm so excited, check it out here, I even got my very own post!!!! However, I did have to think long and hard about this challenge, ... nothing immediately came to mind. And then, suddenly everything just fell into place. I even used all the prompts that were given: I used part of the lyrics (Maneater) - I adjusted them a little bit- as a background, used "swallow" as the title, and I splattered white paint onto the brown background paper. Oh, and I machine stitched my title, what do you think?? I don't think it's a look that would work on every LO, but I do like the look of it on this one!

Most LO's are made out of love, this one was created out of pure hate. I don't like to admit this, but I hate those people in the pic with all of my heart. This is why I didn't want to create a "beautiful" LO, I really wanted this LO to reflect my feelings towards these people. It's also why I changed their heads into skulls ... I still can't make a LO with their image on it.

The beautiful baby in the middle of the pic is my daughter Chloë, and the skulls are her ex-godparents, my husband's brother and his wife. A few years ago, we had an argument, and right there and then my BIL announced we should look for other godparents, because they didn't want anything to do with us anymore. My girl, about 4 or 5 at the time, was shattered. She had bad dreams and a fear of being left by me as well for many months to follow.

I'm not a vindictive person, you have to do a lot to make me stay mad at you, but don't ever touch my babies!!! Like I said before, I don't like to admit I hate those people, I don't like to hate anyone, it eats me up inside. I wish the day would come I would feel nothing when I think about them, but unfortunately, that day hasn't come yet. Hence the "hate-stitching" at the left of the page.

The journaling reads: "The mere thought that these people are on all our important photographs is not pleasant, but the fact that our sweet daughter wears their name is almost too hard to swallow".

That's why I made a copy of our marriage certificate/book (don't know the English word for this) where also our children are listed, and added the silver circle around Chloë's full name (just so you understand what that little book is doing on the LO).

Anyway, that's the background of the LO. I do hope you like it, despite the dark message it brings.

Xxx Peggy

Life has been good to me - Forward Progress Challenge

2009-08-04T09:16:00.002+02:00

I'm warning you up front ... if you don't have a lot of time, save this post for later. If you feel you're up for it, grab a cup of coffee before you start reading ... I guess you all know how much I like to hear myself speak, well, I have outdone myself this time...

Let me start by saying that I decided to quit my position as a DT over at Songbird Scraps. I had been on their team for 6 months, but was having a hard time coming up with good LO's, the lyrics just didn't speak to me anymore. I want my scrapping to be more than just displaying pretty pictures, I want to tell a story, my story, my family's story ... There are so many challenge sites to be found on the net who provide subjects perfect for my goal ... unfortunately, for me, Songbirds Scraps wasn't one of them. However, don't let this keep you from entering their challenges, that's the good thing about the diversity of the challenge sites, there's always one perfect for you, and in your case, that perfect one just might be Songbird Scraps! And with the right lyrics and the right pictures, who knows, I might play along myself some time!

Anyway, I'm telling you this for a reason. I was asked to join the DT (for a 3 month term) of the perfect challenge site, a site I have been following for so long now: Forward Progress. I'm sooooo excited ... yeah me!!! I did think twice before accepting, because their challenges aren't always easy ... some require some real soul searching. Like I said, I had been following this site for the longest time, but had never entered one of their challenges for this very reason. So I asked myself: "Would I be able to open up, to share my inner thoughts and most private feelings for the world to see?". The answer was yes. In fact, I think that's the easy part. The hardest part for me is getting them on paper, because it means I have to be honest with myself. I consider myself to be an honest person, I try not to lie, ever. Not even to spare someone's feelings. If for example I don't like your new haircut, I won't say I like it. I won't say I don't like it either ... see, it's not that I don't care about your feelings LOL. Of course my best friends all know this about me, so this doesn't really work ... if I don't comment on their new haircut, they know I don't like it LOL, so much for not hurting their feelings huh?!!! LOL. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that I try to be honest in relation to other people, but I have been known to lie to myself ... quite often actually. And don't we all at one point or another? So the real question was: "Would I be able to stay true to myself?" The best answer I could come up with this time was: "I'll try my best". And that's what I intend to do. I'll try to make LO's that share a little bit about me, one step at a time, the good and the bad.

The new challenge doesn't go up until the 15th, so you still have time to start creating for this month's challenge. The prompt is easy enough, or at least, it can be as easy as you want it to, and it can be interpreted in so many ways:

Taking Stock...Assessing my personal well being. How can we expect to have forward progress if we are not looking after our state of well being. peace within ourselves.. I have goals...dreams...aspirations...but how do I expect to reach those if i don't have "stock" in myself. This means evaluating your present position. Are you happy? Probably. Could you say you are even if aren't? Are we honest with our present self? If you could put a monetary number on how much one share of stock in yourself would cost, what would it be? Are you worth it?

I do hope my little introduction here has inspired some of you to participate in our challenges., I would love to see all of my friends join us! Ellen, the owner of the site, is dedicated to make this site into a huge success, and so am I and my fellow DT members ... I don't think further introductions are necessary when I say that the fabulous Lisa and the gorgeous Jocelyn are on the team as well ... And let's not forget Sasha ... now there's a girl with a story to tell! I still can't believe what awesome company I'm finding myself in!

Enough chit chat, here's my very first LO as a member of Forward Progress:

Journaling left page:

When I think about where I am at this point in my life, I can only come to the conclusion that I have everything I have ever wanted ... my family. Although in my childhood dreams I definitely was a mom, but never a SAHM, I now can't imagine nor ever wish for another life. Maybe this fact, the fact that I'm a SAHM, is the reason that I still have so many plans for our house, our home, the place where I am at most of my time. Nothing in my house is 100% the way I want it to be. Still, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, I love my home and my life in it. But then, sometimes from one minute to the other, I get frustrated because the bathroom isn't big enough, or the electricity is playing up again... How can a person go from intense happiness to utter dissatisfaction in just a moment's time? But then I turn on the TV and watch a documentary about homeless people, or poor people in Africa or other poor countries, and I am reminded once again, for a minute anyway, how good life has been to me. Still, I don't think it's so unusual for a person to want more, I think we all do from time to time, it's in our nature. What would we be without our dreams, without goals in our lives?

Journaling right page:

Yes, 3 different kind of bricks. The exterior of our home definitely leaves room for improvement. However, this ugly exterior houses a safe haven for our family. It's our own cozy little place, where we are building our own happy memories.

Our bathroom ("the little white room") definitely could do with a make-over... but ... it provides us with everything we need: water, just by turning the tap ... what a luxury!

Yes, there are way to many weeds in our garden, and we so need to replace our fences. But, when our kids are playing here, and the garden is filled with laughter, this garden feels like paradise!

I know, I know, a lot of journaling on these pages, but for me it was very therapeutic to write it down. I can feel very dissatisfied at times, and sometimes I need a little reminder of what's really important in life, and just how blessed I am ... something I forget sometimes!

How to:

I started out by using glimmer mist on the left page (sooooo love glimmer mist, I'll be buying lots more of that I tell you!!!) and acrylic paints on the right page.

And what do you know, I used my sewing machine again for the frame!! I'm telling you, those girls over at The Next Step really get under my skin with their wonderful techniques!

The images on the left are images I found on the net, the images on the right are actual pictures of my home.

I drew a bare tree on a piece of cereals' packaging and inked them with my distress inks.

The title is chipboard which I inked and embossed (loooooove the look of embossing - so glad I finally bought me a heat gun and some embossing powders ... it's a whole new world LOL!!)

I wanted the tree on the right to be very bright, I wanted to create a big contrast with the bare tree on the left. However, I didn't have any green acrylic paint, so to create the leaves, I used the oil pastels I have bought recently (another thing Lucy from The Next Step inspired me to buy!). I was so pleasantly surprised, it's very easy to use and the colours are gorgeous in real life, I'll so be using these again on my pages! And to give it some extra "oemph" I added some really bright flowers.

A very simple LO to make, but I love the result. For once it came out exactly as I had planned in my head ... a first I think! Keandra commented on one of my last LO's that she was shocked because that LO was so different for me ... well my friend, I guess you'll be even more shocked now! I think this looks nothing like I've ever done before and Keandra, I'll tell you a little secret ... you'll be even more shocked when you see my next one (can't share it just yet, but I will soon... ). I have no idea why my LO's keep changing so much. Do I get bored with one look, or does the look simply change because I tend to try new techniques a lot? I don't know, but I do know I like the fact that a lot of my pages look different and I hope this won't change any time soon.

And if my post isn't long enough already, I still want to share the following. Christina loves to draw, and she's always giving them to me as presents... Look at what she drew for me the other day, I so love this:

It reads: For mama ... The best scrapper ever ... 1st place
The little guy says: And the winner is Peggy and he's standing on the "sjuri block" (that's how she wrote it LOL, isn't that cute?)
In her eyes I'm the best, isn't that sweet? And did you notice how skinny she drew me LOL ... that girl sure loves her mama haha. I'll treasure this image of her of me, I know this perfect image won't last for long anymore...

Well, I hope I haven't bored you too much, and I do apologize for assuming that you all have the time to read such a lenghty post. For those of you that have made it all the way down, know that I'm extremely grateful to have such dedicated friends who put up with my talkative nature LOL. Oh, and thanks to all of you who took the time to leave Chloë a comment on her LO, please know that all of you made a little girl very happy!

Oh, and remember, try to play along with Forward Progress!!
Love xxx Peggy

Aussie Scrapjacked July Challenge

2009-08-01T02:33:00.004+02:00

This is a very important post for my 8-year old daughter Chloë ... she entered her very first challenge!

Her little sis Christina made a LO a while back for Aussie Scrapjack, and received a lot of comments from you lovely ladies, and each and every comment put a huge smile on her face. This smile got even more enthousiastic when she received a package from Australia with gorgeous kiddie scrap stuff (and some flowers I wanted to steal but she won't let me!!! LOL)

Anyway, Chloë of course was disappointed she hadn't finished her LO (though she had started on one), and was determined to play along this month. She had finished it a couple of weeks ago, but I had forgotten all about it. Luckily I found it today, the last day to enter - pfewww - I would have been in trouble otherwise!!!

Here it is:

Chloë is the one on the right, and the girl on the left is her best friend.
Her journaling: You are my very best friend. I met you in the second grade. We were friends from the very first day.

It came out pretty close to the LO she had to lift, so I think she did a great job. Can you tell she wasn't allowed to use one of her sister's flowers either?? And I don't have any, and she didn't feel like making one herself (though I did offer to teach her ... aaah kids!!!!), so she simply drew one LOL.

Up till now, I haven't allowed my girls to use any of my good stuff, because they tend to start drawing on the pages and stick everything to the page without thinking about it first. I don't understand why a page has to be finished within the hour, do you??? But, seeing as they both pretty much followed the example they had to lift, I guess I might let them use a few (selected) things ... I'll let you know how that works out LOL!

Here's Chloë working on her LO.

My friends, I'll hope you'll do me favour and write a little comment for my sweet girl. I want to see that same proud smile on her face as well! Thanks in advance, you're the best!

Love xxx Peggy

True Love

2009-07-24T00:18:00.006+02:00

Hello again,

It has been raining all day today, so I had some time to make another LO.

As soon as I saw the challenge over at Kiddie Lit, I knew I wanted to make a LO of my daughter Chloë and her stuffed doggie "Woefie". She's had it since the day she was born, and she loves him to death. Were Chloë goes, Woefie goes.

The challenge was to create a LO based on the children's book
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams:
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." "Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt." "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?" "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Isn't this a wonderful story?? I so love this, and this passage screams "Woefie" ... he's lost most of his stuffing, has been "operated on" more times than I can count, his eyes turned completely white after I put him in the washing machine one time ... he looks terrible, but to Chloë he's the most beautiful doggie of all times.

Here's my take on the challenge:

The title reads: "True Love" and the journaling reads: To Chloë Woefie is as real as the love she feels for him.

We had to incorporate some soft texture onto our LO to reflect the texture of the rabbit in the story, so I used Chloë's old T-shirt to make the heart balloons.

I will also be submitting this LO for the stitching challenge over at "The Next Step". Since the lovely ladies at "The Next Step" started their challenge site, I've tried to incorporate their monthly techniques in at least one of my LO's of that month. And boy was this a challenge for me. I don't ever use my sewing machine. My grandmother left me her sewing machine after she died more than 7 years ago, but I haven't used it since. Well, that's not exactly true, I did try stitching on a 8x8 LO once, and though it looked okay, it wasn't a huge success. But it really looks gorgeous on this page, and I think I have to thank Lucy for this, thank you so much for your awesome tips on machine stitching, it worked like a charm!

I started out by stitching the threads for the balloons, and added the hearts later on. What do you think, not bad for a first time sewing machine stitcher huh!! I'm feeling mighty proud of myself today LOL. Mind you, I haven't looked at the other entries yet, so it's quite possible mine looks totally worthless next to the others, but I so love the look of it. After the hearts I stitched the frame. If you look closely, you'll see that the first time I went around the edges, I stitched an almost perfectly straight line ... I really had to force myself to make some swirls the second time around ... I'm still having a hard time "making some sort of a mess... ". But I did it, and again ... feeling mighty proud of myself for that LOL.

I know this is a really simple LO, and I tried adding a few things, but I kept putting them away. I love it the way it is, not every LO has to be filled completely, right?

Okay, enough chatting for one day. Let me know what you think!

Love xxx Peggy

Songbird Scraps LO and I was tagged!

2009-07-23T09:40:00.002+02:00

It's time for the second challenge of the month over at Songbird Scraps. Here are the lyrics which hopefully will provide you with some inspiration.

Queen - Crazy Little Thing Called Love
This thing called love, I just can't handle it
This thing called love, I must get around it
I ain't ready
Crazy little thing called love
This thing called love, It cries like a baby
In a cradle all night
It swings, it jives
It shakes all over like a jellyfish
I kinda like it
Crazy little thing called love
There goes my baby
She knows how to rock 'n' roll
She drives me crazy
She gives me hot and cold fever
Then she leaves me in a cool, cool, sweat

Alphaville - Forever Young
Let's dance in style, let's dance for a while
Heaven can wait, we're only watching the skies
Hoping for the best but expecting the worst
Are you going to drop the bomb or not
Let us die young or let us live forever
We don't have the power but we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip
The music's for the sad men
Can you imagine when this race is won
Turn our golden faces into the sun
Praising our leaders, we're getting in tune
The music's played by the madmen

I was inspired by a line in the second lyrics: "this race is won". I used pics of my son winning the gold medal in a race between several schools in our district. I used a lot of black inking on this LO, I inked every piece of paper and even the edges of the pics.

I used his medal as the center of one of the flowers, and the ribbon of his medal as the stems.

For the title work, I drew white and black lines to highlight the title and to create a shadow effect. This is really pretty in real life!

And I wanted to show you this one last thing. I punched the holes for a stitched frame around the whole of my LO, but while stitching, I left open some of the holes. I first saw this done by Jenneke (thanks for the inspiration Jenneke!!!!), and I looooove the look of this. I promise you, it's even better in real life!

I don't find it easy to scrap pics of my son ... typical boys' LO's are difficult I think, which for me is kind of strange, because I never make typical girly LO's anyway ... you'd think I'd have less problems with this. However, I do, so if anyone knows some tips to create really cool boys' LO's, please let me know!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Now onto some other fun things: The one and only Jocelyn, yep, the one we all love and adore, tagged me with this award a while ago:

I'm supposed to share 10 things with you that you probably don't know yet, so here goes:

I am an only child, a fact I'm not too thrilled about. I used to wish for a brother or sister for christmas, and I'm still not all that happy my wish was never granted.

Unlike Jocelyn, I don't mind standing in line all that much, though I am one impatient lady. The thing I hate about it though is that I always seem to be standing in the wrong line, mine always seems to be moving the slowest, or even not at all. I mean it, if you see me standing in line, don't go standing behind me LOL.

I'm shy, very much so. I know, I've shared this info before and for you who follow my blog this isn't a new thing, but it is something that even people who know me don't suspect of me (I'm great at hiding it, I have a big mouth), so it should be on this list.

I didn't get to have a best friend until I was over my thirties. I used to feel jealous whenever I saw an episode of "Friends" or "Sex and the City", I felt I was missing out by not having friends like that! I never thought I would experience such a friendship, you know, where you can tell each other every little detail of your thoughts and feelings. I know have not one but two best friends, and I love them dearly. There is nothing I wouldn't do for them, and I know they feel the same way.

I'm a cocooner. Even on the rare occasion that the kids aren't home, I don't mind it one bit if we don't go out. I love just hanging on the couch with my hubby, enjoying the peace and quiet and each other.

Though I am an only child, I don't value material things all that much. Of course there are things I would love to have and having more money sure would make my life easier, but there are other things in life I value more.

I fall asleep on the couch almost every night, and only go to bed if I wake up in the middle of the night. This habit came to be because I hate going to bed in winter time, I can't stand those cold sheets. Luckily I have my hubby to keep me warm, he's one of those people who never get cold..., but whenever I go to sleep before he does, you'll find me (snoring) on the couch.

I'm a bad loser LOL. This is something my parents never could get out of me. I still don't like to lose, though I'm able to hide this fact a bit better than I used to when I was younger. My son is the same way, and I now see it's not an endearing quality. I do so understand how he feels though.

I love to sing, especially when I'm driving. As soon as I get in the car, I put on the radio or my favorite CD and I start singing along. Although this must drive my hubby crazy (I didn't say I was a good singer!!!), he has never once made a remark about this. Love seems to be not only blind but deaf as well LOL.

I talk too much, but I guess that won't come as a surprise to any of you LOL.

Now I would love to learn some new things about the following people, so consider yourselves tagged!
Keandra
Maryangella
Jenneke
April
Mandy
Come on my friends, tell us some things that might surprise us and grab that award!

Well, that's it for now ... I still have a mini-album and an altered project to share, but I have to sort out my pics first, so I'll leave that for another time.
As always my friends, thank you so much for your sweet and encouraging comments, I so appreciate them and I love to read them. I feel so lucky to have met you all through this wonderful hobby of ours!

mwa xxx Peggy

Jodi's giveaway

2009-07-16T22:48:00.004+02:00

Go and check out Jodi's blog. She has opened her own Etsy Shop selling her handmade embellishments, and they are gorgeous!!! She wants our help to get the word out, and in return for this, she will draw out TEN lucky winners who will each receive a box of goodies from her shop!!

Here are my favorite embellies, which can be found here: www.sweetvintage78.etsy.com

We were only supposed to give three favorites, but I couldn't make my mind up between the chipboard buttons and the doilies... LOL.

If you haven't visited Jodi's blog before, take some time out to look at her gorgeous work, I'm sure you'll love her blog as much as I do!

You have until the 31st of July to spread the word and be eligible to win.
Good luck to you all!

xxx Peggy

Brace yourselves - extremely long post!

2009-07-07T10:52:00.000+02:00

Good morning ladies,

Phewww, I finally have some time to just sit down and write on my blog. I have been so busy lately, and though much of it has been all about fun, spending time with my kids and having friends over for BBQ's ... a girl still needs some time of her own, don't you think?

Still, this being said, I still have so much cleaning and ironing to go through, so after having updated my blog, that's what I'll be doing. I'm so far behind on my housework ... now, I'm never really caught up, I'll never receive the housewife of the year award, but this time I have let things go far even for my standards LOL. We've had some incredible weather these last few weeks, tropical heat even for Belgian standards (close to 30 degrees Celsius), and it was just too hot to do anything but relaxing and swimming. Just to let you know how hot it was, we had to drag the kids out of the pool in the evenings every night between 9 and 11 pm. If you know what the Belgian weather is like, you know how rare this is! Some pics of the first summer fun:

Our little paradise (still under construction haha, but it'll do for now!)

My girls having fun together

My son (on the right) and his two best friends

The tropical heat is gone now, and the temperature has dropped to 20 degrees max. Although this is more comfortable if you're planning to stand behind an ironing board, I do hope summer will be back soon. We've had such bad summers these last few years, and I do hope this one will be so much better. We got off to a good start anyway.

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On to some scrapping news then. The new challenge is up at Songbird Scraps. We have our own Ning site now, be sure to check it out. You can click on the badge in the right column if you'd like to join in in the fun. These were the first of this month's lyrics:

Mint Car - The Cure The sun is up
I'm so happy I could scream
And there's nowhere else in the world I'd rather be
And here with you it's perfect
It's all I ever wanted, oh
Almost can't believe that it's for real

I really don't think it gets any better than this
Vanilla smile and a gorgeous strawberry kiss!
Birds sing; we swing
Clouds shift by and everything is like a dream
It's everything I wished...

99 Luftalloons (English Translation) 99 red balloons.
floating in the summer sky.
Panic bells, it's red alert.
There's something here from somewhere else.
The war machine springs to life.
Opens up one eager eye.
Focusing it on the sky.
Where 99 red balloons go by.
99 dreams I have had.
In every one a red balloon.
It's all over and I'm standing pretty.
In this dust that was a city.
If I could find a souvenier.
Just to prove the world was here.
And here is a red balloon
I think of you and let it go.

I was inspired by the first lyrics and this is what I came up with:

I had very little time to work on this one, and it didn't come out exactly as I had hoped, though it does look better IRL. I do like the page though, especially those flowers give a gorgeous effect IRL. That bottom pic isn't the best pic ever, but it means so much to me, as it's the first pic I took of my three kids together (and my hubby even managed a smile, which is rare ... he hates having his picture taken!), which is why I wanted it to stand out a bit. I did think about scrapping the two top pics, which were taken only minutes after Christina was born, seperately, because I love them soooo much, but that bottom pic just wasn't good enough to be scrapped on its own I think.

I used:
* Basic Grey - Granola - Vanilla Bean (background paper).
* Basic Grey - Lilykate - Chocolate (brown paper)
* Basic Grey - Oh Baby - Marigold (yellow paper)
* Little Yellow Bicycle - Vita Bella Collection - Green Floral
* Scalloped strip from one of the Sassafras papers
* Core'dinations cardstock - Vintage collection, canvas texture (purplish cardstock)
* American Crafts Thickers - Subway white

I distressed all the papers with my scissors and inked them with Ranger distress inks and layered the papers. I made the flowers out of plain white cardstock, inked them and distressed the edges and sewed the stems. The pics as well as the cardstock has been sanded, but that's much more obvious IRL. Not much more to tell about the how-to's of this LO.

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I still have to thank some people. First of all, I would like to thank the gorgeous Julie for that awesome RAK she sent me. She's giving away another one, and if I were you, I'd play along! She is so generous and her RAK's are filled with gorgeous goodies. Go check it out if you haven't already!

I also want the thank the wonderful ladies of "The Next Step" for my prize RAK, I love all of it and can't wait to find some time to start experimenting with the glimmer mist and the fabrics you sent me. And thanks for the continued inspiration. Lucy, your new tutorial on the bobbin stitching is awesome, just what I wanted to know, thanks!

Also a big thank you to the ladies from "Aussie Scrap Jack" for the package you sent Christina. She was absolutely thrilled with "her very own" goodies, and she has lots of ideas already to start creating. This was a very nice gesture of you, and I want you to know how much I appreciate it!

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Finally, the fabulous, sweet, incredibly talented Jenneke gave me these awards some time ago, thanks a lot girlfriend!!!

I'm supposed to pass these along to five other bloggers, and I picked these wonderful ladies:

Jocelyn - I noticed you already have the second award on your blog, but I couldn't find the first one, so that one's for you my rockin' friend. I guess you know by now how much I value our online friendship. You keep inspiring me, not only because of your work, but also with your continued positive attitude towards life and people. You're one sweet lady Jocelyn, and I love you!

Lisa - I first noticed your blog because of the hilarious stories you tell, but it didn't take me long to figure out that there's so much more to you than funny stories. You brighten my day with every post and comment, and I thank you for that my sweet friend. You're the best!
PS. Did I frighten you off with my long and depressing email?? It's been so long since I've heard from you :-(

Keandra - I love you girl!!! I'm always so excited to see you've made a new entry in your blog, because then I know I'm in for a treat. Not only do you make some of the best LO's around (I adore your work!!!!), but you share so much of your personal life on your blog that I sometimes feel like I know you personally. You make me laugh, you make me cry, you make me feel proud of your boys, and with those pics of your food you put on your blog, a lot of the times you make me want to come over for dinner LOL. I feel this is a true friendship, and I want you to know how fortunate I feel to have met you, even though it's a cyberspace friendship!

Maryangella - we haven't known each other that long, but already you're at the top of my favorite people's list. You're sweet, you never fail to leave a sweet and encouraging comment, and you're work rocks!!!!! I sure hope this is the beginning of a new friendship.

Kim - I love your blog! I love the combination of scrap stuff and personal stuff, and the way you challenge us with every-day questions. You always leave us with something to think about a little bit more.
PS. Did you read the comment in which I said I would love to play along with you and Lisa in the challenges you're doing? Still don't know how it works though, could you let me know?

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On a last note, I do want to tell you about a huge coincidence. You know how I always say scrapbooking isn't all that popular in Belgium, or maybe it is but just not that many have a blog. Anyway, about a year ago, new people moved into the house next door. We said our hellos and goodbyes, but we never really talked before. This might be hard to believe for some of you who follow my blog and who know how much I like to talk and leave huge comments, but I'm actually a very shy person. Once someone starts talking to me, I talk right back and the shyness disappears, but I'm still afraid (this was a huge problem in my childhood) to make the first move. I had thought about welcoming these people into our neighbourhood, you know, like you see in the movies, with a piece of pie and everything LOL, but I couldn't bring myself to do this.
This week, we started talking. Well actually, Britt, my "new" neighbour, started talking to me. She's a really nice person, and I'm so looking forward to getting to know her a little bit better. And now here's the coincidence: she likes scrapping!!!! She's the first person I've met in my circle of friends who even knows what scrapbooking is!!!! And she's living right next door!!!! How about that huh! I'm so hoping we can get together sometime and scrap, I don't have a scrap buddy, so that would be sooo great!

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Thanks for working your way through this long post. It had been much too long since I had posted anything, I really have to do it more and make the posts a bit shorter. But I really wanted to include everything right now, this way I can make a fresh start.

Hugs
xxx Peggy

Glimmer Mist

2009-07-03T13:53:00.002+02:00

Recently I received a bottle of glimmer mist in a RAK sent to me by the lovely ladies of "The Next Step". I was so excited to try this out for the first time, and though I still have to practice a bit, I can't wait to use it on one of my LO's.

Which leads me to the following:
Tattered Angels are running a competition to celebrate their new LOOK!!

In order to be in the running to win some of these divine, brand new, not yet released Winter 2009 glimmer mist colours, all you have to do is .... load up a pic of the new look glimmermist colours, and the phrase:

Glimmer Mist is the same great product with a Fabulous NEW Look!

Next, send and email of your link to: liz@mytatteredangels.com and your name will be entered in the draw to WIN some glimmery goodness!!

Give it a go ladies!
xxx Peggy

Gutter Girlz/Ad This and Songbird Scraps

2009-06-17T13:14:00.006+02:00

GUTTER GIRLZ / AD THIS CHALLENGES

I should be outside... the sun is shining, I really should mow the lawn and pull out some (very stubborn) weeds, but ... I don't feel like it hehe. I've been longing for some sun for days now, and now that she's finally paying us a long overdue visit (which is predicted not to last very long), I'm here, behind my pc, looking at your beautiful blogs and feeling a need, an urge to scrap. Sounds familiar to anyone???

This is the LO I made yesterday, and I did manage to do some cleaning as well, so I'm feeling incredibly proud of myself today LOL.

After the rather "childish" LO I made previously (a style which I like as well, don't get me wrong!), I really wanted to create something funky, and what better sites to visit when you want funkyness than Gutter Girlz and Ad This!

The Prompt #25 over at Gutter Girlz was the song "Bitch" by Meredith Brooks and the specified technique was "black". I think I got that covered.

For the challenge over at Ad This we had to use 5 diffferent mediums. I used distress inks (1), black acrylic paint (2), black felt (3), ribbon (4) and puffy stickers by Making Memories (5) ... got those covered as well!

I was also inspired by the latest technique over at The Next Step, which is to alter your patterned paper. However, as I started out with plain white cardstock, I don't think I can enter this one for their challenge. I you haven't visited their blog yet, go and check it out. The wonderful ladies over there highlight a new technique every month, and update the blog weekly with new tips and variations on that technique. I love that site!

Usually distress inks are used to give a distressed look (doh!!!) to the pages, but since I don't own any funky-coloured paints, and I didn't feel like mixing them up, I decided to find out if the distress inks would work for a funky look as well ... and I think it worked surprisingly well! I started out by printing and cutting out different words to be used as masks and reverse masks. I used following distress inks all over the page: Broken China, Fired Brick, Mustard Seed and Peeled Paint. The black shade visible around the word "Saint" is due to the ink of my printer, so watch out for that. In this case it worked out fine because I wanted a lot of black on my LO, but I can imagine in other circumstances I wouldn't have been at all happy with this unexpected effect! However, this didn't happen with the words "mother" and "lover" ... I have no idea why not?? Oh yes, I also randomly applied some masking tape over the page, just to add some extra visual interest.

I immediately knew which papers I wanted to use, which is rare for me. Usually I spend hours contemplating what papers and other embellies to use, but this LO just seemed to make itself. I didn't think, I just grabbed what I wanted and adhered it to the page. Anyway, I tore the papers, inked the edges with black soot distress ink and curled their edges. I then used mesh as a mask for my black acrylic paint around the edges of the background. After that, all I needed to do was add my pics and some embellies and stitch on the ribbons. That's it really, I don't think I've ever completed a LO so quickly before.

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2ND JUNE SONGBIRD SCRAPS CHALLENGE

The new songs are up over at Songbird Scraps. I do hope you'll join us this month. This is my DT example:

This is a song about how releaved we are that our kids have switched over from children's songs (although that period of time certainly had it's charm as well) to "regular" songs. This LO features my youngest daughter Christina who's constantly singing along with the songs on her mp3, and who shares my kind of music, thank goodness. My other two children favor their father's music and let me tell you, my music and his are not compatible LOL!!!!!!!!!!

Again I was inpired by "The Next Step" to alter my pp ... I drew and coloured the stars, and also coloured parts of the journaling. Thanks for that tip Bethany, it made a huge difference to the overall look of the page!!!
To mimic CD's I simply cut out some circles and painted them with silver dabber paint by Ranger.

Okay, does it show that I'm home alone (my husband's at work), that my kids are playing by themselves and that I desperately want someone to talk to LOL???????? Still, I'm not finished talking ... I want to share a funny story with you:
Remember that post in which I told you we planned on going to the "Efteling" (a theme park), and we turned back home because of a traffic jam ... well, two days laters we got up real early and this time arrived at that same theme park even before opening time. Anyway, we were standing in line waiting to go on our first attraction of the day, when Chloë said: "oh, if I had fairy godparents (she's a big fan of "Fairly Odd Parents") I'd wish it was our turn already" ... and then she put up her finger and added "oh yes ... and world peace of course" ... haha, this cracked me up.

Talk to you later my sweet friends
Big hugs xxx Peggy

Kiddie Lit / Scrap the Girls

2009-06-14T17:03:00.007+02:00

Hello my sweet friends, I hope you had a wonderful weekend. I had a marvellous lazy Sunday afternoon. It hadn't stopped raining all day, all the excuse I needed to spend my entire day scrapping ... this is what I came up with:

This LO was inspired by 2 challenges. The first challenge over at Kiddie Lit stated we had to use green, use the word "giving", use a tree/leaves image and doodle. For the challenge over at Scrap the Girls we had to create a "scene" LO. I thought both challenges went well together. You have until the end of the month to participate in either challenge should you be interested...

I found out one thing while doing this LO, I'm not good at layering embellies! I have several embellies here (sent to me by my friend Julie, thanks again!) that would work so well on this LO, but I just couldn't find a suitable place for them. Something I'll definitely have to work on, as I do like the look of clustered embellies!

This is one of those photos I would have thrown away if it had not been for my scrapping. The picture is out of focus ... I was sitting down when Christina came to give me some flowers she picked, and I shot this picture upwards ... as a result (and because I absolutely know nothing about photography...) the flowers show up crystal clear, but Christina's face is all blurry. For the purpose of this LO however this picture is just perfect! I did edit the picture in Picnik to give it that aged look.

Well, that's it, nothing more to tell. I've come to the conclusion that I'm leading a pretty boring life LOL. It's ironic really, now that I've finally decided for myself to share more personal stuff here on my blog, nothing worthwile telling about is happening... Oh I could tell you I'm getting depressed with our weather here, and that I wish summer would finally arrive, but I want to leave you all on a happy note, not whining about things I can't change anyway.

So, on a happy note, it's high time to do some cleaning ... haha, not really happy about that, but I'll make the best of it. I'm gonna put on some happy music and dance the day away, mopping's so much more fun when shaking that booty LOL.

Big kisses xxx Peggy

All good news + New Song Bird Scraps Challenge

2009-06-06T10:21:00.010+02:00

My sweet friends, first of all I would like to thank all of you who left those wonderful comments for my daughter Christina. She too says "thanks"! She was sooo excited and proud when she read the things you wrote to her, and she can't wait to start on her next LO! The people over at Aussie Scrap Jack have generously said they would send her a little something ... you should have seen her little face when I told her about that!

Other good news, I won my sweet friend Julie's RAK give-away ... lots of yummy stuff AND some handmade cards, original Julie's haha, superexcited about that!!!!! I so want to see some of her work IRL, you know, I'm sure it will even look better than on pics.

I also won a doorprize (you know, a prize you win just by commenting) over at OLW when they were celebrating their 2nd anniversary! Pretty excited about that too.

And this news I'm most excited about, because for the very first time I won a prize with one of my LO's!!!! This is the one (haha, just had to post this one one more time):

I entered this LO for the "painting using stamps as a guide" technique challenge over at "The Next Step" and I won ... well not exactly for using their technique ... since I don't own any stamps that could be used for this challenge, I drew ... but well, they said because they thought my entry was ... wow! Isn't that the best reaction ever haha!!!! They actually gave away four prizes, so you might want to participate in their next challenge as well!!!!! Go and check it out.

I also found some tutorials I would like to share ... as soon as I figure out how to put them on my blog :-( Technology is a wonderful thing, if you know how to use it!!!! So, if anyone knows how to do this, let me know, I could use the help.

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The June Challenge over at Song Bird Scraps is up! Take a look and see if this month's lyrics can inspire you ...

Lullaby - Matt Costa

Don't you cry, no don't you cry

Sing this lullaby to yourself

Cause when I arrive dear it won't be that long

No it won't seem like anytime that I've been gone

It ain't the first time it won't be the last

Won't you remember these words to help the time pass?

So when you're so lonely lying in bed

Night's closed it's eyes but you can't rest your head

Everyone's sleeping all through the house

You wish you could dream but forgot to somehow

Sing this lullaby to yourself

When You Dream - Barenaked Ladies

With life just begun, my sleeping new son

Has eyes that roll back in his head

They flutter and dart, he slows down his heart

And pictures a world past his bed

Its hard to believe

As I watch you breathe

Your mind drifts and weaves

When you dream, What do you dream about?

Do you dream about Music or mathematics

Or planets too far for the eye?

Do you dream about Jesus or quantum mechanics

Or angels who sing lullabies?

I was inspired by "my sleeping new son" in the second lyrics, and this is my DT example, I hope it will inspire you to give this challenge a try:

I always loved seeing my babies asleep with their daddy like that.
This wasn't an easy pic to scrap ... I wanted a soft look but I also wanted bold colours. Like I said before, I find it much easier to scrap without a definite look in my head. Anyway, I like the result, especially that hobby rope I stitched on to create a frame is really pretty IRL.

Does it show I have become addicted to paint on my LO's??? It's such an easy solution when the look of the LO isn't quite right yet.

Talk to you later!
Love you mwa mwa xxxx Peggy

Awesome give-away

2009-06-06T10:17:00.003+02:00

I completely forgot to tell you about this amazing give-away by Jenneke.
Just click here to see what she offers as a prize! She'll be choosing a winner today, so hurry!! Hurry!! What are you waiting for, go!! GO!!!!

Aussie Scrapjacked Young Scrapper

2009-05-31T22:42:00.005+02:00

Hi my friends,

This post is a very special one for Christina, my youngest daughter. She decided to play along with the Aussie Scrapjacked Challenge for young scrappers, which was to jack a LO by the wonderful Ruby Bisson. Here's her entry:

Not bad for a 7-year old huh? She did it all by herself. All my suggestions were politely listened too and then discarded LOL, and I couldn't be more proud of her!
Notice that gorgeous concentrated look on her face:

Now I know that she would loooooove to receive some comments, so if you would have a minute to write a little something, I would be so grateful! Thanks!

Love xxx Peggy