Fight for your right

Sadly, this is another last minute post.  I just wanted to make an entry for Challenge #8 at the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog.  The past two weeks have been super hectic and I just finished my grades when I started on this layout.  This is actually a remake of a page from my old US scrapbook.  I wish I could've done more with it, but it's nearly midnight and it had to be posted.  Oh well...

Here's the original sketch by Melissa Bonifacio:

Journaling:  "You've gotta FIGHT FOR YOU RIGHT Grad school gets too stressful at times...  TO PARTY!!!"  (lyrics from the Beastie Boys' "Fight For Your Right")

Materials:  Cardstock (Venice by Veco Paper Corporation), patterned paper (All About Scrapbooking), ink - (Dong-A My Gel Pen in Black Blue) others - assorted paper scraps for arrow punch outs.  Tool: EK Success Paper Shapers.

PS. [10 hrs later] After I had uploaded the layout, I wasn't quite satisfied with how it turned out.  It appears that 30-something minutes is just not enough to work on it.  I actually had the pictures ready for some time.  And since the sketch looked like it would be fun to do, I was planning on doing a more elaborate page this time.  But alas, I've had to deal with deadlines and so I was swamped with work for the past two weeks.  So I decided to add a little more to it after I posted it.  I just added a couple more punched out arrows and some bling (All About Scrapbooking).  So technically, this one pictured below is NOT MY ENTRY, since I finished it after the deadline.  But I did have fun putting the bling on where I had to cut the gem stickers individually and stick them down on the page according to a design in my head.  I've been wanting to do that for a long time now, but never got around to doing it 'til now.

Radiant

The fourth and last entry to Challenge #7 of the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog.  Another layout in which I didn't do much.  The papers from the Magical line from All About Scrapbooking are perhaps my most favorite 8"x8" patterned paper set.  But what I found is that when it was time to work with them, I felt a bit constricted by the design.  The papers are really beautiful, but I guess I couldn't do much with them except add pictures, the title and some journaling.  Which should be good if I wanted to do pages quickly, but I guess that is just not my style.  I usually like to add a little bit more to my pages, do something more creative and involved.  But maybe it was also because I was trying to beat the deadline (again!) that left me with the feeling that I hadn't done enough.  It looks a little bare to me, to be honest.  Oh well, at least I got to scrap some more pictures.  Can't wait to NOT CRAM the next challenge. ;-)

The journaling on the bottom of the page says, "Even when you're frowning, your light still shines through.  Jillian, age 5, 10 December 2011".

Materials:  Patterned paper (All About Scrapbooking), die-cut sentiment (K & Company), glitter glue (Leeho), metallic gel pen (All About Scrapbooking), others - fabric flowers, die-cut oval frame, gem stickers, gold ribbon.

Groom Aglow

You don't often find a groom being described as "glowing".  The bride, yes, but the groom... well, not really.  But that was exactly what my brother, Paul, looked like in these pictures taken as he was getting ready for the wedding.  After the stress of all the wedding preps, here you see him spending some time with family and his close friends, even joking and goofing around. Seeing all the hard work he and Ica put into this day, I'm glad to see that they were able to enjoy it.

Another very simple layout, as the design of the paper can definitely stand on its own.  All I did to add to is was stamp the title and some subtle designs as a background for the pictures.  I have very dreadful stamping skills and I obviously need to practice some more.  I don't know if it's the white ink that's not compatible with the smooth-ish paper.  But I'm really not blaming the equipment, it's all on me.  :P

This is my third entry for Challenge #7 (sketch by Kathleen Hernandez) on the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog.  Please check out my other entries on my blog and leave a comment.  Thanks!

Materials:  Patterned paper (All About Scrapbooking), ink (Tsukineko), stamps (Crafty Secrets, Creative Imaginations, and Pink Paislee).

The Ring Bearer's Speech

A really simple layout about my nephew, Jonas, who was the ring bearer at my brother's wedding.  As most people in our family (the older ones especially) are bit shy about public speaking, the task fell on this little boy's shoulders.  Well, not-so-little anymore, as he proved to be very capable and quite the charmer as he certainly engaged his audience with his heartfelt speech. 

There really was no need to do much as the patterned paper was great by itself.  I only added the pictures, some journaling and the title.  The journaling consists of snippets from Jonas' speech handwritten on the swirls in the dark blue sky, around the sun's rays and right along the blades of grass.

This is my second entry to Challenge #7 on the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog.  I had four pages planned, but have so far been able to fully finish two.  With about 2-1/2 hrs to go 'til midnight, we'll just have to see how this goes.  It's getting harder and harder to sneak in my scrappy time when we're already well into the school year.   Sigh!

Materials:  Patterned paper, die-cut shape (label) and metallic gel pens (All About Scrapbooking - Magical), others - square brads, metallic paper for matting.

Enchanting

This time around, when I looked at the sketch for Challenge #7 at the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog when October began, I had some ideas on what I wanted to do.  It was such a versatile sketch by Kathleen Hernandez, that I thought there was so much room to be creative.

But as I was going through my stash for stuff I could use, I came across this set of 8"x8" papers called Magical from All About Scrapbooking and most of the designs included celestial bodies nestled in one corner.  The designs simply lent themselves to the sketch, that it seemed the sketch was made with these papers in mind!  I already took out some pictures that would fit right in with the theme.  And since I still have a bunch of pictures from my brother's wedding last year, I used those again.  But this time, these are pictures of some of the cutest people in the entourage - my nieces and nephew.

This layout is all about my niece, Jasmine, looking all calm and peaceful right before the wedding, in the midst of everyone rushing around her.  Since the paper already had a beautiful design to it, I didn't want to add too much.  I did add die-cut and punched out flowers to hide some things that didn't go with the overall design/color scheme.  I actually rotated the paper 90 degrees clockwise to get the sphere (I think it's the moon) where I want it, so I can position the picture at the lower left corner.  As a result, there were awkwardly positioned birds near the bottom of the page that had to be covered up.  Same goes with the bright green stars that came with the paper.  And since the left side of the picture was adorned with artificial poinsettias that were part of the church's Christmas decor (it was a December wedding), I had to cover those as well.

Journaling:  "In the hustle and bustle that comes with getting ready for a much anticipated wedding, here you are - all CALM and SERENE.  How I wish that we could all take a moment to stand back and happily watch as life unfolds, like you do."

Materials:  Patterned paper (All About Scrapbooking, K&Company, Corona), die-cut glitter flowers, gem brads, gem stickers, metallic gel pen (All About Scrapbooking), others - pearl stickers; tools - flower and leaf punches (Carl & HBW).

Celebrating World Card Making Day

Sunday afternoon marked the first time we'll be celebrating World Card Making Day.We had been anticipating this day for quite some time and the preps I did took me well into the wee hours of Sunday morning.  I had planned on each kid making three cards in all - a Halloween card, a Christmas card, and an anything-goes card, where the kids can use it for any occasion they want.  I made a sample for each and prepared six kits per card (expecting four kids and one adult, plus one for me to demo).  It probably took me much longer to look up ideas and inspiration than to work on the kits, but it was all worth getting only about three hours of sleep.

 The sample cards.  It took a while to decide what cards we would make, 

but in the end, the prime consideration was that they should be something the kids

 would enjoy doing - nothing too complicated, but something that we'd all be proud of.

Took a pic of all the kits I prepared the night (up until the early morning) before.  

There seems to be a lot (18 kits in all), but compared to the first ever project we did, 

this actually look less time and effort to prep.

The Halloween card sample up close.  I admit, the color isn't all that Halloween-y, 

but I really like how this turned out.  The patterned paper is pretty but a little bit eerie.  

 

A really simple Christmas card (sample).  I cut all the patterned paper strips, 

which were all double sided, so the kids can choose which design they would like to use.

The sample I prepared for the anything-goes card, which is basically an all-occasion card 

that the kids can turn into any kind of card they want.  I made this one 

with a stamped sentiment that says "thinking of you".

 

The fruits of our labor.  I like to keep the design simple enough so the kids can easily follow, 

but I also love it when they put their own twist to it (like the one on top).

Our anything-goes cards:  there's a birthday card, a "thinking of you" card, 

a "Happy New Year" card, and one that says "happy everything!"

Jessica with all the cards that she made.  

In the end, the afternoon went very quickly.  Both the kids and the adults had a great time.  It's a great way to spend an afternoon seeing the kids smile, along with the awesome feeling that they've accomplished something.  Hope you had a fun and fruitful World Card Making Day!

Happy World Card Making Day!

I didn't know that this particular holiday was celebrated until I came across this newsletter from Creating Keepsakes about their countdown to said holiday several days ago.  I told my sister that we can do a Crafty Kids weekend with card making.  We actually get to make cards with the kids tomorrow, but I should be doing preps today.  And all I've done so far is look up ideas online and browse old card making magazines here at home.  I've listed some ideas of my own and done some sketches already.  But as far as getting all the elements that will go on the cards (and based on my list, there will be lots :-b) ready, nothing has been done.  I need a swift kick in the you-know-where to get me going I think. - 5:03PM, 10/06/2012 (Philippine time is GMT+8... so when I get stuff done, hopefully it will still be World Card Making Day somewhere!)

And so... 6-1/2 hours later.  I've only finished one card, as well as six kits for the kids to make it.  It's a Christmas card and I can't say that I designed it because I've seen different versions of it before.  But it has to be kid-friendly and I thought that it would be fun to do.

 

Two more cards to go!  11:47PM, 10/06/2012

Such a looooong day

It's only a little past four in the afternoon and I'm already exhausted.  So very tired that once I get home, I will probably just go to bed and sleep until it's time to get up for work tomorrow.  You see, I've had five classes since 9:30am up until this afternoon, breaking only for a 10 min lunch because I was still grading papers during my lunch period.  Sigh.  All the stress and exhaustion comes from yesterday's suspension of classes.  As I couldn't afford to miss those meetings (our quarterly exam is scheduled for next week), I scheduled makeup classes for those two sections whose classes were affected.  And it just so happens that the available time that they had was today - so that's a total of five classes for me today.  Whew!  Well, at the end of the day, I finished everything that I needed to do.

And now for a long overdue post.  I got some happy mail about two weeks ago.  It wasn't really a surprise as I've been long awaiting its arrival.  I was actually selected as a favorite at the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog for the month of August.  Now they do not normally give prizes to the favorites, just to the randomly drawn monthly winner.  But in this case, one of the lovely ladies at the blog volunteered to give out a prize for the August favorite.  I was so very lucky :-)

So anyway, the mail was due to arrive on Sept. 19 and when I got home from work, there it was!  Was so excited to see what was inside, and as much as I tried to refrain from opening the package right away, I couldn't resist peeking.  I took a quick picture of the bag of goodies, and proceeded to inspect each and every item.  They're all so pretty!!!  Thank you Ms. Ces de Guzman!  Check out her blog to here see the really fun and creative layouts/projects she makes.

As soon as I saw all the goodies I couldn't wait to get started on a project.  But alas, the end of the second quarter beckons with piles and piles of papers to grade!  So I truly hope that this weekend I will get a chance to use these awesome embellishments on a layout or two (hopefully more).  Seeing this picture again has cheered me up some actually :-)

Crafty Kids Project #3: Birthday Card for Lola

Last Sunday, my grandmother celebrated her 86th birthday.  The week before that, we rounded up the kids (great grandkids, actually) to make a birthday card for her.  "Lola" is Tagalog for grandma, and interestingly enough, great grandchild translates to "apo sa tuhod".  Which literally means grandchild at the knee (yes, the body part), while great great grandchild is "apo sa talampakan" - grandchild at the sole (as in the bottom of the feet).  Odd, isn't it?  I wonder how those terms came about.  But I digress, so back to the kids making a card.

Actually, I recently purchased this flower-shaped mini album (made up of 5 foam pages and bound with a ball  chain) for this particular occasion, so the kids can each have a page for their greetings.  But instead of letting them loose and do whatever they want with their page, in the end my sister and I wanted to make a unified mini.  As I was browsing Scrapbuck.com (please check them out - they have a lot of great stuff at a very reasonable price) a couple of weeks ago, I saw some really cute animal wall art.  And this has inspired me to have on each page, a particular animal with a its own sentiment.  Here's what I came up with:

• Bird:  "A little bird told me it's your BIRTHDAY!" (cover page)
• Chicken:  "How egg-citing!"
• Hippopotamus:  "Hip-hippo-ray!"
• Bee:  "Bee happy!"
• Cat:  "Have a purr-fect day!"

To prep for this project, I stamped the sentiments on white cardstock, sketched out and cut all the shapes  for each paper pieced animal, and finally, left out the colored markers and stickers so the kids can decorate the pages however they wish.  And so here they are with the pages they made.

  

This is a little more effort on the kids' part as when they got their kits, they had no idea how to arrange the pieces to make up their animal of choice.  Fortunately, I still had my original sketch of the different animals and what they were supposed to say, so we just passed that around until everyone was able to finish their page.  Then they wrote/drew their personal greetings on the back of their page.  And by the way, my sister stepped up to make the hippo page, since nobody wanted to do it.  The kids were probably intimated by the number of pieces (10) or got confused because it's pink.  In any case, we all had fun.  It's all in the googly eyes, I think. :-) 

Materials:  Mini album and stickers (All About Scrapbooking), magnetic alphabet stamps (Making Memories), ink (Studio G), border die cuts (Papemelroti), others - colored markers and googly eyes.

Crafty Kids Project #2: My Little Sketch Book

The pictures took a while because everyone was busy this September.  So this post is late as our Crafty Kids weekend took place two weeks ago (on Sept. 16).  No matter, this was a fun and easy project to do.  Didn't take too much time and effort to prep either.  The most labor intensive part of the preps was probably wrapping the sketch books in colored paper.  The strips of solid white and patterned paper were easy to cut. And I've punched out the top note shapes a while ago when I was just getting rid of small pieces of scraps.  The monograms were mostly hand cut by me, except for "D" and "S", which I got from a sticker set that I used in a couple of projects already.

Here are pictures of the kids working on decorating their own sketch book.  They just had to stick the strips and cut outs onto a solid colored paper base.  As a finishing touch, we stamped "My Little Sketch Book" next to their monogram.  It was actually surprising how fast they all worked compared to our first project in August, a scrapbook page about their name (click here to see the entry).  I suppose they couldn't wait to start doodling/sketching away, which they did right away actually. ;-)

Materials:  Sketch book (A1), colored paper (SoFun), patterned paper (All About Scrapbooking, DCWV), magnetic stamp (Making Memories), ink (Studio G), around the page puncher (Martha Stewart Crafts), others - colored pens, assorted paper scraps.