Multiphoto and PaperPlay

When I was on holidays early this month, I got this idea of using photos with big white border held by oversized brads. When I finally got to make a layout based on the idea, my Studio Calico kit arrived, with a very colourful Scenic Route paper & I knew I had to use it straight away or never!

The bold brads get a bit lost against the paper, but I still like the effect against the white background. (Sorry for the dark photo.)

Besides the advantage of being able to see the important events of a month at a glance, I find refreshing to make multiphoto layouts, as my usual ones are mostly single photo ones.


* Patterned paper: Garden Grove - Scenic Route
* Fonts: GH Halda Normal and Adobe Caslon Pro (title), Jellyka, St-Andrew's Queen
* Brads: unknown (journaling)

Here's my PaperPlay Challenge entry, Kate set the challenge:

Dimension" Make your project as 3D as possible!



I bought some small canvases @ Tesco's with the idea of having a little artsy afternoon with my daughter and her friends. This is a prototype a project I'll planning to give them. I'll give them a big letter with their initial and take a photo of each one and let them loose with paint and brushes.

Good idea? Or a dangerous idea? I am having visions of having the kitchen full of paint spashes on the floor and walls...

Hybrid Alien in Scrapbook Inspirations!

I nearly fell of my chair when Rosie Waddicor emailed me a month ago asking if they could feature my blog in the "Blog love" column. Could they? Yessss, pleeease! :-)

So if you have the current SI, August edition, check on page 13, bottom right corner. We're there yipeee!!!

That's it for today, as I forgot to take a photo of my latest layout. See you tomorrow.

Edited to add:

I just visited the other two blogs in the same column. OMG, I'm definitely not worthy of their company, they're brilliant! Check them out: Here's Looking at me Kid, and Ink on my fingers.

Do you like challenges?

When I started scrapping, I hardly ever did any, but now I think it helps to give a bost to my creativity. You can either follow the brief literaly or go on your own direction. Here's a couple of examples.

The theme was to go with this week's PaperPlay Challenge (my turn this week). But the style was inspired by a challenge @ DesignerDigitals. What I came up with is not even digital, but you can see where I got the inspiration from.

I painted my own papers, I stamped, I punched and cut paper out. Completely outside my general style - I enjoyed the "messiness" - since Celine Navarro's class I am much more willing to get painty and dirty.


* Paint: Anita's All Purpose Craft Paint
* Stamps: Hero Arts (alpha), Autumn Leaves (botanical)
* Butterfly punches: Martha Stewart

The next one used a sketch by Jenn Olson in the Studio Calico blog. I tend to follow the sketch closely. After all, it was the design that appealed to me and I want to keep it. This layout was no exception.



At the bits and pieces are from the Studio Calico kits.

* Patterned Paper: Lost for Words - Sassafras
* Chipboard Stickers: Basic Grey
* Tickets: En Route - SEI
* Font: GF Halda Normal

Britney and Burgers, oh, come on!

Britney Spears and hamburgers in my daughter's top 10 favourite things?! Either I don't know her as well as I thought or she did write down the first things that came in her mind.

I would have thought that Ms Miley Cyrus would make a second appearance in the list (she got the favourite actor spot) or perhaps Rihanna, but I don't remember her ever mentioning Britney.

And for the record, her favourite food is chocolate, or chocolate ice-cream, or any chocolate biscuit, or maybe our current fave, raspberry crumble. Or shepperd's pie, if you want to stick to savoury food. But she's not even that into fast food (unlike her younger brother), so where did the burger come from?

She also surprised me by her book choice. Her Mother's Face by Roddy Doyle is a subdued and melancolic book, I thought she was going to choose one of these books full of fairies, glitter, girls and fashion. But it must have struck a chord...

I wrote my comments on the back, where I also glued her handwritten list, and the date (which I stamped wrong in the front). I would have used her original list, but I know it would upset her, as I told her not to worry about spelling mistakes, 'cause I wasn't going to use the list.


This layout was made for PaperPlay Challenges earlier this month.

* Patterned Paper: Pink Paislee - Fascinating
* Alpha sticker: Making Memories - Passport
* Ribbon: from a Brazilian haberdashery
* Flowers: Handmade with paper scraps, tulle, acrylic paint and Studio Calico stamp;
Making Memories (black & while small button at the centre of the flower)
* Font: RomanScrD

I'm back

My first post of the month! Holidays and real life got in the way.

This one is a late one for PaperPlay:
Favourite chocolate/candy. Let your favourite nibble inspire your creation.


* Patterned Paper: Cosmo Cricket - Early Bird
* Alpha Stickers: Jenni Bowlin Studio - Black Ledger
* Journaling tab: Jenni Bowlin Studio
* Felt Garland: unkown
* Crochet flower: Ger from Little Snippets

And this one is another for my month-by-month compilation.


* Patterned Paper: Cosmo Cricket - Snorkel
*Button: Making Memories
* Ribbon: KI Memories - Love, Else
* Stamp: Studio Calico - April kit
*Fonts: VNI-HLThuphap (title) Lucida Sans Unicode (journaling)

These ones make me happy

My son has this happy, sweet personality, I hope he will never change.

* Patterned Paper: Pink Paislee - Enchanting (woodgrain), Pink Paislee Fetching (circles), Basic Grey - Mellow (stripes)
* Chipboard Letters: Pink Paislee - Fetching
* Digital Elements: Ali Edwards @ Designer Digitals (journaling block), Paislee Press @ Oscraps (pattern on photo)
* other: masking tape

The layout above was made mostly with the leftover from Celine Navarro's class, here's the canvas I made in her class, finally managed to finish it. I'm going to display it in my craft room.


I don't use rubons much, so I tried to use the ones that came in the class kit as much as I could.


The "e" in the top of the stamp was in the wrong way, which mislead me, don't blame my lousy stamping! :-)

Childhood Memories

Not much scrapbooking done here, I am afraid - I have a couple of half-finished projects plus some ideas but just can't find the time to do work on them.

In the meantime, I'll post another project which I would like to add a couple of pages per month. Childhood memories - my intention is to write random memories, one per page, get between 15 to 30 pages done and them bind it and read it to my children. I am not a story teller, so my children don't know much about how I lived, this is a way to leave a legacy to my kids, the legacy of my earliest memories.

I went for a different format from the usual 12x12. A long 6x12 format will keep it easy to carry and leaf through. The idea is to have it simple in design, flat pages with the same off-white background, keeping the style similar and the same font.

So far I've done a cover page and the introduction.

Here's the cover:


While I was browsing through my photos, I found this very casual photo. What makes it special is that has my childhood home and all the people that lived there, my paternal grandparents, my parents, my brother and I. I've no idea who took the photo.


This page looks very boring, I might add something to it.

The journaling reads:

"Minhas memórias,

I thought I'll tell you two something about my childhood memories.

Since I'm not much of a storyteller, I am not sure if you get to hear about them if I don't write this down.

Besides, I don't really have many interesting, funny stories - what I have are snippets of information, things you might like to know about my early life.

You will see how different my life was from the life you have now. And some similarities too, I hope.

Like you two, we were two children, older girl, younger boy, three years between them. And despite all the differences between me and my girl and my brother and my boy, I can see that some parallels too. The more serious and intense girl and the more relaxed and happy-go-lucky boy.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I fell I am going to enjoy writing this.

I'll write mostly in English, but I'll mix some sentences in Portuguese, and maybe the odd word in Japanese, to add a bit of colour to my story.

Com muito amor, (with lots of love)

Mamãe"