Je t'adore

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

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

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:

1. Scrap a celebration
2. Three or more people in the layout
3. 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

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

Sometimes it just "clicks"

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

November Artastic Challenge

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:

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

Some exciting news...

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

Anything can be ...

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

Kreatorville Krafts May Sketch Challenge

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