How cute!

My  very first layout this year, 2013.  I have lots of projects planned, but had deadlines last week that had to be met.  And so I grabbed the chance to do something crafty this weekend.  Well, after I slept most of the day yesterday to get rid of a migraine :(  I finished this really really late last night (or really really early this morning).  This page is about my niece, Jillian, describing how cute and adorable she was when she was two years old.  She's still cute now (at six), but her cheeks and little fingers are chubby no more.

This is my entry for challenge #12 at the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog, based on a sketch by Kathleen Hernandez (click here to see her blog).  I hope it doesn't look too much like one of my entries for challenge #3.  It seems I'm not yet over my hexagon fixation and I needed to do some more.  And personally, I think this has a different feel - a bit sweet and girly.

A close up of the photo and the area around it.  All the hexagons were cut out of scraps of patterned paper from the handmade gifts I made over the holidays.  Flower punch outs and photo mat are also made from paper scraps.  It seems that for the past several layouts I've done, I haven't used any brand new paper (except for the card stock base).  And that's a good way to start the year, isn't it? :)

Materials:  Cardstock (Corona, Orange), patterned paper (Paper Reflections), adhesive ribbon (Shallow Grass), ink (Ranger, Bic), alphabet stickers (All About Scrapbooking), pearlescent pain (Liquid Pearls, Pebeo), flower punch (HBW), others - flower brad, gems, glitter glue.

Flower Power

At last, I finally found a bit of time to work on a couple of pages for challenge #4 on the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog.  I woke up with a migraine yesterday morning, so I spent most of the day sleeping it off,  and it wasn't until yesterday evening that the headache was gone.  With the weekend just about to  start (we had Saturday classes this week), I thought it would be nice to take a craft break, since I haven't really done anything since last Sunday.

So here is the first entry - a page about my niece, Jillian.  The pictures were taken during her younger sister's birthday party last year.  They had a "Tangled"-themed party, so all the girls had flowers in their hair.  These pictures made me really happy just by looking at them.  It took a while to come up with a title, but once I decided on "Flower Power", I just had to pile on the blooms.

Materials:  cardstock (All About Scrapbooking), patterned paper (K & Company), flowers (Prima, Yellow Violet House), sentiment (Hallmark), pen (Faber-Castell), leaves, flower trim, brads, and gem stickers (All About Scrapbooking), others - lace, charm, safety pin, transparency.

Happy Birthday Mini Album for Jillian

 A little over a month ago, my niece, Jillian, celebrated her 6th birthday.  I made her this mini-album as a gift.  It took a while to do, and I was only able to give it to her a week later.  I had planned on making an envelope mini-album and it was nearly done when I showed it to my sister (Jillian's mom) and she suggested that it might get damaged from the kids handling it.  That actually made sense, because I'm the eldest of five, and all four younger siblings are married with a total of 8 kids among them (I have 3 nephews and 5 nieces).  So there are a lot of little and grownup hands that will leaf through the pages.  So I took the pages and tags apart and reconstructed everything to fit into 6"x6" page protectors and bound them all in a sturdy (I hope!) album.  So on that particular Sunday lunch with the whole family, including my parents and grandmother (we are one big family), the album was passed around and we did a bit of reminiscing and a lot of laughing.  It took a lot of work, but it was certainly worth it.