Grandma's holiday scrapbooks from my childhood

I was so delighted to pull out some of Grandma's old holiday books last night. Naturally I scanned them in at the first opportunity and uploaded them on to my Facebook page. I feel better knowing that they're "safe" in cyber space and free from moths, fires, floods and burglars. I'm terrified of losing any of my precious photos or mementos from the past. Reading through my books made me feel incredibly grateful that Grandma took the time and care to make them for me, my sister and cousins over the years to remember our annual Christmas visits to Melbourne. We travelled all the way from Darwin so we usually didn't see her more often than once a year. She's gone now but I think of her often and know she had a strong impact on my life. She is probably the one who influenced me to be a collector of articles, pictures and stories, years before I found scrapbooking. I wonder if she would be a scrapbooker today, in the way that I am?

Tissue paper flowers... I love recyling anything around the house to make pretty embellishments and found a better way of making tissue paper flowers, a little more sophisticated than my Mothers Day effort. With thanks to Philippa at Zestblog.

Tasmin and Angus playing together

I'm so happy to see the babies playing together! Angus, the baby, is fascinated by anything Tasmin is interested in and crawls over to see what she's up to. He's just started crawling, progressing from creeping, this month, which is an exciting development. His baby days are starting to come to an end now. Tasmin tolerates him but isn't really into sharing just yet. "It's mine!" she often reminds him. It's ironic the way she copies the Stingy character from Lazy Town, not getting the subtle lesson on sharing and team work.

What I'm up to at the moment:

1. I am really discovering the world of blogs. Where have they been all my life? You find one, and that leads to another and another... I've had many too-late nights this week. It's addictive, isn't it? The last one I looked at was Ali Edwards' great page, full of great inspirations and techniques. Note to self... remember to try toothbrush paint flicking and magazine masking with acrylics.

2. I'm interested in paper piecing at the moment, which is very popular again, and I'm experimenting with some different techniques. I bought a quilling tool that I'm experimenting with ... less than $3!... and can't wait to finish a pretty little card with quilled flowers on it. I found the inspiration in this month's issue of Scrapbooking Memories magazine.

Wow, I had to show off my new scrap space. Well, the shelves and desk were built last year but as I've been learning and doing more scrapbooking and accumulating more stuff, well... the piles of stuff just grew and grew and it started to look terrible. And I hate working amongst chaos. I mean, I don't really mind when I'm in the middle of a project, but I like to feel every little thing has a home to go somewhere when I'm finished. So my darling husband put up two new shelves and I stayed up all Friday night reorganising and this is the result. I'm very proud. Though as a friend commented when she say it, It looks as though you live IN Ikea...

Kathie Link class - Webster's pages

I had such fun creating these new pages yesterday in Kathie Link's class as Seriously Scrapbooking. This is the first scrapbooking class I've taken (other than the Creative Memories workshop I tried last year which really got me started on scrapbooking). What a new concept - cutting out images from patterned papers to create scenes. I've seen Kathie's work in Scrapbooking Memories magazine but it all looked a bit complicated. It really pays to do a class as it gets you thinking about the techniques and having a go raises your confidence. I bought a little tool which distresses the edge of the paper - it's actually a thread cutter. It was purple, luckily, my fave colour LOL ;-).

I looked at some more of kathie's work on her blog http://kathielink.blogspot.com/ which is really worth a visit. Now it's got me thinking very differently about how I'm going to tackle the babies' albums. Initially I'd thought I'd try and cram as many photos in as I could. But.. as there will be 60 pages in each album, won't it be MUCH more fun to focus on one or two photos per page instead. And have more fun doing the scrapbooking. Thanks Kathie! I am one happy customer.

Mothers Day 2009

Mothers Day was actually back in May but I felt inspired to do this page for Mum as we've just had Fathers Day. I actually did a similar layout for her and copied it so I could have one for my album. This is the first page I have completed for my 2009 album and I know it's a bit late but you have to start somewhere!

I love using recyled leftovers and the mesh is leftover from florist bouquets I'd been given - yep, I keep everything, even when I have no idea what I'll need it for! - the paper flower is made from a strip of tissue paper (also recyled) and the music sheet is a copy of the one I keep using lately, that I'd bought second hand in an op shop. I love combining text and music on my layouts. And I'm also crazy about doodling so that's appearing on everything at the moment.

Here's a very very cool trick I discovered by accident. We only uploaded Photoshop Elements 7.0 a month or so ago so I'm still getting used to the new features. I had been using version 2.0 so was quite behind. I scanned the page in two parts on my little scanner and found a great feature called 'photomerge' and the program put my page back together again, perfectly. Wow. I thought I'd be fiddling for half and hour to do it manually. Love Photoshop.

Eight cards in three days!!!

It's a quick card when you have your lovely child's drawings to make it with!

Happy Fathers Day Keith

Fathers Day Cards

Gee I had a ball making this card. It uses all my new rubber stamps - the owl (Inkadinkado), the harlequin and Eiffel Tower (Tim Holtz) and the funky man (unknown brand) with lots of TH inks on a manila folder card.

Fathers Day 2009

I bought a pack of 100 manila folders very cheaply - for the price of a single greeting card! - and distressed with my favourite Tim Holtz distress inks. It's a fairy with a wooden leg - one of Dad's favourite sayings when I was a child! I used some printed paper with fairies on it; the words are printed on the computer, stuck on leftover card and mounted on foam squares.

Marian and Keith's 50th Golden Wedding Anniversary

I used Kraft cardstock for the card and distressed it with my Tim Holtz distress inks. The middle is a circle of sheet music, the anniversary message is recycled from an old card, the bird is an Inkadinkado stamp and the 50 a Making Memories foam stamp. I used acrylic paint to paint 50 underneath as a shadow.

Happy Engagement to Noni and Mike

This was such a fun card as the party theme was "vintage cocktail" so I printed an internet image of a little red cocktail dress and stamped it with the chandelier image (Tim Holtz) and repeated the stamp at the top of the music paper circle (the sheet music was found in an op shop). I added some words mounted on foam "She was positively radiant"...the inside of the card is a photo of our mothers as young teens in the fifties with words added to the top for a fun effect "gorgeous man so.. purple". I love to be random!