Crafty corkboard

This is probably one of the quickest crafty projects I've ever made.  I didn't check the time, but I'm pretty sure it took me less than half an hour to finish this.  And that already includes my OCD (hahah).  But kidding aside, this is very easy and a lot of fun to do.  All you need is a plain corkboard, paper/washi tape, and push pins.

I got the corkboard from our friendly naighborhood Japan Home (it seems they're popping up everywhere) store.  It's not that big, it measures less than 16" x 11", but it's sufficient for a few photos and post-it sized notes.  The paper tape I used here is wider that the wooden frame, and this is quite useful as I folded the tape over the edges to give is a more finished look.  Now be careful of splinters when you work on covering the wood.  The OC part of me wanted mitered corners, but this is not really necessary.  The pattern on the tape was small and dainty, that the breaks weren't really that obvious.  Now the push pins were a stroke of luck.  I bought them at NBS because I thought it was cool to have hooks on the push pin itself.  And it just so happened that the colors coordinated. 

When I bought all the three items, separately as it were, I hadn't planned on putting this project together.  But looking at these last night gave me an idea.  Now wasn't that serendipitous?

Page Remake: Nature Tripping

I wanted to do all the pages from our AL road trip in a series, but I still have a few more pages to go.  For this one, I was in a fussy cutting mood.  I had patterned paper scraps with these really pretty (and big!) blossoms that made me want to cut them out.  For the leaves, I embossed some off white cardstock and cut out the shapes as well to sort of balance out the bright colors.

Now, Mario is a picture taking kind of guy.  And he also loved to do goofy poses, hence the pic with him crawling in the dirt (he reminds me of Gollum, only happier :p).  And after a while he took a photo of me I looking tired (I actually was, in that bottom right picture).  And it's because I was wearing the wrong kind of footwear, not even shoes, just the kind of thing that you slip on.  So the hiking was a bit of struggle for me and I had blisters on my feet afterwards.  And I never wore those slip-ons again. :(

Journaling:  "Even though Rod & I had a tiring day (and night) with the wedding on May 27, we tried (well, I tried) to get up early and go along with what Mario had planned for us the next day.  Unfortunately, Rod couldn't come along as he was going to spend the day with Bryan and Sheryl (the newlyweds) and their other friends & family.  Mario and I headed to Oak Mountain Park.  The hiking was nice since we had great weather that day.  Also went to the lake to go pedal boating (not sure what it's really called :))and got to see a lot of ducks.  I found that the city of Birmingham, Alabama has the same feel as Baguio.  That made me a little homesick.  But I also had a nice and relaxing time. :)"

Materials: Patterned paper (K&Co), pen (Faber Castell), others - cardstock and rub-ons.

A Happy Kind of Tired

I have long been interested in digital scrapbooking, since grad school in fact, and have downloaded many many different kinds of digital kits and elements.  But I've only been able to try my hand at it recently, and although I've made a few attempts in the past few years, this is actually the first digital layout that I've ever completed.  I'm not quite sure that I'm comfortable scrapbooking like this, and to be honest, I still prefer to work with my hands, and in the end have something that you can actually touch.  But I think that this method has its own merits and is worth exploring.  Though given my own limitations, I probably won't completely convert to digital anytime soon (or maybe ever).  But we'll have to see, won't we?

One huge convenience is that you don't have to print out pictures.  And if you're like me, this entails selecting the photos I want to scrap (this takes me a long time, unfortunately), and then go to the photo lab to have them printed.  For now, I actually have plenty of pictures at home to scrap.  Blame it on my huge backlog!  But I can see that this potentially maybe a hassle because all the pictures I have from the past seven years are all digital and therefore will take a while to sort and file away, let alone find the ones that will go onto my scrapbook layout.  But I digress.

This is my entry for challenge #23 at the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog.  We're allowed to make digital entries now, so I decided to try it myself.  I made this layout using the Plentiful kit downloaded from ShabbyPrincess.com.

Page Remake: Quirky Photography

 

The real reason for our trip to AL in 2000 was that Rod was attending (and also singing at) his friends', Bryan and Sheryl's, wedding.  I on the other hand, just finished my preliminary exam (more like a thesis proposal defense) and simply needed a break.  If I remember, everybody encouraged me to do so, including my boss/adviser.  So there we went, and it was really very nice of the couple, whom I haven't met yet, to also invite me to the wedding.  I though I would mainly  be a spectator, because of all the wedding party, Rod was the only person I really knew.  But since it was mostly Filipinos there, it felt like one big family.

Now that long-winded intro has very little to do with the journaling in this layout, except that the pictures were taken at the reception.  We took many pictures and these were some of what I will call "outtakes".  Although this is on hindsight, as I thought they were legitimately serious photos when we were taking them.  For instance, that picture of me at our table looks like Rod was really taking a pic of the centerpiece and I just happened to be smiling in the background.  In the entry way of the reception hall, Rod took another picture of me that looks perfectly normal, except that there's a big plant behind me that it looked like I had this huge green head dress. :))  And then the picture of the cake table was just that, and  not all that good because the cake just looked washed out.  The blame is entirely on me, I'm really not much of a photographer. :P  I also included one piece of ephemera - my place card, which I actually kept because of some notes I wrote on the reverse side about a dance I saw at the reception.

Materials: Patterned paper (K&Co), pearl stickers & die cut chipboard accents (All About Scrapbooking), distress ink & ultra thick embossing enamel (Ranger), others: trim and DIY enamel dots (googley eyes painted nail polish); tools: pen (Dong-A), stamps (Inkadinkado & Creative Imaginations).