Monday, July 23, 2012

It's You

I'm trying to expand my participation in forum challenges and pretend like, you know, I have all the time in the world to indulge in scrapbooking...

Sadly not true, but I digress... so I am trying to explore other forums. Don't ask me why... I like tempting myself. The same way I always look at CT calls when I know I am dangerously approaching my limit especially when all the designers I currently CT for get inspired at the same time :)

Anyway, I couldn't resist the Lyrical Challenge at Go Digital Scrapbooking. The challenge is to go to Billboard.com, look up the top 10 on the chart on the day you were born, scrap a layout using the lyrics of one of the songs on the top 10. Even if I wasn't joining the challenge, I was still curious and I found out that "Babe" by Styx was at the top of the chart on my birth date!

And here is my layout:

Elements from: A Royal Wedding mini-kit by Created by Jill Scraps, Template from Eudora Designs
I only used part of the lyrics that I like.. the rest was saying something about leaving and I'm not about to leave this cutie behind anywhere ;)

Friday, July 20, 2012

Memories of grandpa

"Sometimes, you will never know the true value of a moment until it becomes a memory."

When I saw the quote for this month's Quote Challenge at Berry Sweet Scraps, one photo immediately came to mind.

Elements from: So Perfect kit by Delph Designs, Mask by Laurie Made Me
This was taken on New Year's Eve of 2006. My husband and I, recently married, just arrived in Manila after spending Christmas with his family. We spend New Year's Eve every year at my grandparents' house and we had this photo taken with Lolo (i.e. grandfather) then. I didn't know it at the time but this would be the last holiday we will spend with him, and the last photo I will ever have with him. He died 2 months after this photo was taken.

I still feel sad when I remember him. I still miss him a lot. One evening, about a month ago, Andrea and were looking at my layouts on my laptop like we usually do. Andrea likes looking at her photos. I have a few layouts with my grandparents' photos in them. When we saw one with Lolo's photo in it, she said, 

"That's Lolo! Mommy loves him!"

"Yes, sweetie. That is Lolo, and we love him."

Andrea was born a few years after he died, but she knows who he is from the photos I show her. She looked at the photo quietly for a few seconds and then in a soft voice, added,

"He loves you too mommy."

Silence. I didn't know what to say. Andrea looked at the photo quietly for a few more seconds and then as if some trance was broken, started clicking the arrow on my keyboard to navigate to the other photos with her usual cheerful chatter. 

Christmas in July: My 1st Christmas

So last week, Andrea came home with her school notebook, where her teacher provides us parent's with a weekly update of what our children are studying in school. According to the weekly update... for this week, they will be studying about babies... what babies do, what stuff babies use... and that they (Andrea's class) are not babies anymore...

Um... come again???

But... but... she IS still my baby!!! Waaaaahhh!!

*sniff* *sniff*

It seems only a few months ago that we were celebrating our first Christmas, and she was still so small.

Elements from: Country Christmas by Sunny Day Scraps, Royal Wedding Alpha by Trixie Scraps, Template by Scrapping with Liz
I just had an annoying realization about this photo... I gained more weight since then, and my husband, for some reason lost a lot of weight since then. How come????

I used Sunny Day Scraps' Country Christmas kit for this layout.


A cute Christmas kit in soft country colors that will go well with the family's Christmas photos. This kit has 40 elements (PNG), and 13 papers (JPEG), all done in 300 dpi to ensure print quality.

Available here:

Be sure to check out other Christmas kits by Sunny Day Scraps (images are linked):

Thursday, July 19, 2012

It's Christmas in July at Berry Sweet Scraps!

Should I start the Christmas shopping panic now??? Haha!

(But seriously, I should...)

Sunny Day Scraps has some Christmas kits to make fun Christmas layouts.

Elements from: Northpole kit by Sunny Day Scraps
I used Sunny Day Scraps' North Pole kit for this layout:


Experience the Christmas Magic at the North Pole! This is the perfect kit for those cute layouts of children/grandchildren.

"North Pole" is a larget kit with 55 elements (in PNG) and 20 papers (in JPEG), all done at 300 dpi for good print resolution.

Available here:

Be sure to check out other Christmas kits by Sunny Day Scraps (images are linked):

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

New collaboration kit by Scrap from France: Summer Ending (with Freebie!)







The first collaboration kit from Scrap from France designers is here! Summer Ending is now available at Scrap from France. This kit contains:

  • 49 papers
  • 150 elements
  • 9 wordart
  • 4 masks
All done in 300dpi for maximum print quality.

This kit is currently on sale AND you can get it free if you spend 10Euros at Scrap From France.

Available here:

Now for your freebie... Mariscrap prepared a Quickpage from the Summer Ending kit for you!


Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Lovely

Another photo of my little girl at school...

Elements from: Southern Charm kit by Kim Cameron; Scraplifted from Deanna's "Dream" layout

According to her nanny, she asked Andrea to smile for a photo for mommy (me!) before she entered her classroom and Andrea turned and posed and gave her this beautiful smile. What I wouldn't give to have been there to see it personally... *sigh*

Monday, July 16, 2012

The Little Musician

My niece Helaena loves singing and dancing. And she loves performing for us too. This photo is of her while she was giving me her cover of the classic "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" accompanied by her "guitar".

Elements from Morning Song mini-kit by Mommy Me Time Scrapper, Sweet Melody kit by Maguette; Wordart by Monja of DDR
I made this layout as part of Digidesignresort's Wordart Challenge for July. This makes 5 out of the required 6 challenges to earn the mega kit for this month :)

Friday, July 13, 2012

Life is Beautiful

Elements from: Purity of Nature collaboration kit by Maguette Designs and Desclics; Best Days alpha by Connie Prince
The Photo Challenge for this month at Digidesignresort is to scrap a photo of a flower. Good thing I took a lot of photos at a park during our last trip to Baguio last summer. I was lucky to have seen that little lady bug on that flower... that lady bug was so small!

This makes 4 out of the 6 required challenges:

Thursday, July 12, 2012

I want to bite Daddy!

Isn't my friend's little boy adorable? This photo had me laughing when she first shared her photos with us:

Elements from: Something of You kit by Delph Designs; Wordart by BekahE Designs
I made this layout as part of Scrappity-Doo-Dah's Wordart Loving Challenge for July 1-15. I picked a kit specifically with purple elements because purple is my friend's favorite color. Even her clinic is painted purple *wink*.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Bad Mood

When I mentioned Andrea absorbing nuances of language and expressions, it also meant that she is getting more vocal about her feelings.

Elements from: Colors of Love kit by Stacy Carlson; Some elements from Splashtastic Summer kit by Sunny Day Scraps
This photo is from the same set when I took photos of her bandana skirt and the photos I used for my layout, Expressions. That's her "frustrated" look :)

I made this layout as part of Scrappity-Doo-Dah's Scraplift Challenge for July 1-15. We were asked to scraplift this beautiful layout from Dalis:

SDD Gallery link

Oh no!

Watching Andrea at play or going about her usual routine is becoming more and more entertaining as she is beginning to grasp the nuances of language and expressions of people around her (i.e. moi! haha!). Her expressions when she's surprised, or pretending to be angry... all me. It's so cute!

Ok so this one, I'm sure she didn't get from me. At least I hope not. I swear, I don't think I ever do this:

Elements from: Pink and Gray add-on by Neia Arantes
They arrived at school about an hour too early (aarrrgh!! Ok, so I have this issue with their school bus service and, and... long story. Bottomline, I don't have a choice and it irks me to no end) and the classrooms were still closed so they had to wait in the waiting area outside. 

I made this layout as part of Scrappity-Doo-Dah's Birdcage Challenge for July 1-15. The mini-kit provided to us for this period is by Neia Arantes:


I will have to admit that the arrow element threw me off a little. I had no idea how to use it so I just inserted it somewhere in my clusters :)

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Waiting for Mommy

Thanks to our nanny and my old Nokia N95 camera phone, I get daily pictures of Andrea from school :) I gave my old phone to Andrea when she started school so that her nanny can call me in case of emergencies. 

Here is one of the photos from last week, while she and Andrea was waiting for the school bus to pick them up from school and take them home.

Elements from: Delightful Summer Add-on by Designs by Brigit
Andrea was getting a little impatient and was asking her to call mommy to pick them up instead (errr... Mommy's office is about 45 minutes to 1 hour away from your school sweetie... Daddy would have been the better option).

I made this layout as part of Digital Scrapbooking Studio's Featured Designer Challenge for July 1-15. The Featured Designer for this period is Designs by Bridgit and she gave us this beautiful mini-kit to work with:


I am loving all that pink!

Starry Eyes

Sometimes, we get some amazing photos by accident.

Elements from: Bedtime Stories by Magical Reality Designs

Notice the "stars" in Andrea's eyes. No special effects there. Those are reflections of the camera's flash. My husband was practicing with the camera's settings again one morning and started taking pictures of Andrea who just woke up. If I didn't crop the photo, you would have seen me on the background, passed out in bed :)

I made this layout as part of Digidesign Resport's Theme Challenge for July. The challenge for this month is to use only a part of a photo in the layout. Since I only wanted to highlight the eyes, I cropped the rest of the photo out.

That's 3 out of the required 6 Cocktail Hour Challenges to win the kit for this month :)
  • Theme Challenge - DONE! (this post)
  • Scraplift Challenge - A Touch of History
  • Template Challenge - Expressions
  • Color Challenge
  • Wordart Challenge
  • Photo Challenge

Monday, July 9, 2012

A Touch of History

I had a very productive weekend! I was able to finish 5 challenge layouts! It was a little due to the fact that my daughter's homework for this week didn't require much effort from me so I didn't need to allot any of my time for that.

Anyway, here is one of the layouts I completed last weekend.

Elements from Vintage Birthday collaboration kit by Digital Scrapbooking CH designers
This is for Digidesignresort's Scraplift Challenge for July. We were given a gorgeous layout from bombalurina59 to scraplift:

DDR Gallery link
I used a photo I took at Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar. I just realize now that I never did get to make a dedicated post for our trip there. Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar is a resort located in the mountains of Bagac, Bataan. They took some old colonial buildings from around the country, and transported them brick by brick to this resort and rebuilt them. Amazing right?

The main attraction for me is the old University of the Philippines building that used to be located in Manila. This was before the University moved to it's sprawling campus in Diliman.


Once upon a time, my dear old alma mater only had one building. Now, the entire campus is the size of a small town :)

Here's a photo of some of the old houses there.


Some of the villas are available for overnight stay but the rates are a little steep considering there really isn't much to do in this resort in the evening and it's far from the city. When we were there last summer though, the dinner set-up is outside, in the "plaza" in front of an old hotel that used to be located in Manila.


details of the building
They also have this cultural show where some performers performed native dances from the Philippines but I think they only have this during the summer months when the resort get plenty of guests. There's also the beach but the beach in this area is not really that beautiful.

The resort offers day-tours where tour guides take tourists around the resort and shares the history of each building included in the tour. For more information, you can visit the resort's website here.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

New kit by Mariscrap: Framboisine (with Freebie!)




This gorgeous kit is full sweetness and delicious raspberries! Contains 70 elements (300 dpi) and 14 papers (3600 x 3600, 300 dpi).

Available here:

On sale until today at 35% off so hurry and grab this deal now!

There also albums (Quick Pages) and cluster sets available.

 Buy here.

Buy here.

Buy here.

This kit is also available as a bundle:

Buy here.
And now for the freebie. Here is a cluster sample for you, prepared by Mariscrap.



Here is a page I made using this kit for inspiration.


Andrea looks so small then... she's so big now. How time flies. In case you were wondering what the photo was about... I caught her in mid-sneeze *wink*. I am so thankful now that I didn't delete this photo then.

Friday, July 6, 2012

New kit by Scrapbrat Designs: Scarlet Dreams

A kit done in red and black motiff with green accents. This kit contains 61 elements in 300 dpi, and 12 3600x3600 papers in 300 dpi.

Available here:

-oo0oo-

Here are a couple of layouts I made with this kit for inspiration.


I have to admit, I had a difficult time looking for photos to use with this kit. The color scheme calls for drama. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of photos with drama. So I simply picked photos where any of my little girls (um... I only have one daughter by the way, but I have a whole lot of nieces) are wearing red. 

The photo used in the layout above was taken during their birthday party. Their birthdays are only days apart so we decided to have one party for both of them.


This second layout was much harder... I had no idea how to present the layout considering I put a somewhat funny photo of Andrea there. I figured I could balance the drama of the layout and the funny photo with a funny quote so...

Anyway, it's Friday!!! I am so happy it's Friday. I am so behind on my layouts because it's a little busy at work and for some reason, traffic has been heavy so I get home a little later than usual. I hope I get to make-up for all my self-imposed backlog this weekend. I want to get on those challenges!

Happy weekend!

Expressions

It's the beginning of a new month, and that means new challenges! I have geek tendencies, so I prepared a list of all the challenges I want to join this month. In my initial list... I'm targetting to complete 23 challenges from my usual forums. But I also want to break into a couple of new forums so I'm hoping to find some extra time somewhere to participate in their challenges too. 

Anyway, here's my first layout for July:

Elements from "Fairy Grace" kit by Baby Cakes Scraps; Template by Silke of Papier Studio
So remember I showed you the photos of Andrea and Izzie wearing their matching bandana skirts? I didn't show you the off-takes. There were a lot. Andrea only posed for a few seconds and then wanted to go play but I made her stay. She wasn't too happy about staying and it showed on her face how unhappy she was. BUT... she stayed put ;)

I made this layout as part of Digidesignresort's Template Challenge for July. And again, for this month, the prize for completing all 6 Cocktail Hour Challenges is this kit:


The 6 challenges include this Template Challenge, a Photo Challenge, a Scraplift Challenge, a Theme Challenge, a WordArt Challenge and a Color Challenge. 

Oh by the way, I completed all challenges last month and got this kit as my participation prize:



How's that for motivation? Yey! Can't wait to use it :)

Scrap From France is having an opening SALE!!!


You can now get those kits you love from these designers at 35% off. Sale runs today and tomorrow so head on over to Scrap From France to check out all the amazing deals!

Homework No. 2 - The Ant

Last Friday, Andrea came home with her notebook and another homework. They will be studying about the letter "A" this week and they are being asked to bring an item that starts with the short sound of the letter "A" (i.e. like in a-nimal) for their Show-and-Tell last Monday. I immediately thought of "Apple". But then I realized that most of the kids will probably bring that. And then, I thought of "Ant". I initially considered catching a couple of black ants and putting them in a bottle for Andrea to bring to school until my husband told me the ants will probably be dead by Monday.

But... dead ants are still ants right???

All right fine, that idea was scrapped and I decided to make Andrea a toy ant from felt instead. 


Thank you Ant Smasher (i.e. Android game) for being our inspiration on ant physiological proportions. My husband was a little particular when it came to that.

"Don't you think the legs are too long? Can you make them shorter?"

"The body should be longer."

"Ants don't look like that."

"Where are the pincers? Ants don't smile, they have pincers."

Last time I involve you in the creative process of any of my projects, sweetie.

A closer look at the ant's mouth my husband insisted on:


We used orange felt, pipe cleaners, polyester stuffing and googly eyes. We didn't really have a pattern. I drew one on paper using the ant images on Ant Smasher as reference and then cut the pieces for the head, body and bottom. I didn't get to prepare a tutorial because I was doing trial and error for this version and then rushing to make sure it was ready by Sunday evening so that Andrea could take it to school last Monday. I'll try to make another one this weekend and document the steps for a proper tutorial.

In any case, Andrea was really happy with it. She plays Ant Smasher so she likes ants in general. And she was really excited to bring it to school. It's still in school now. They need it there for a week and she gets it back today, Friday.

I wonder what our homework will be for next week?