Creating Kris

scrapbook layouts: Sept ‘08 & Oct ‘08

My “Family 2008″ has been the album I’ve been working towards completing lately. So that book was the one I had in mind while at a crop at the LSS in my “old” neighbourhood. It was awesome to be able to get out of the house for a few hours – with a huge credit given to my DH and my friend Adrian for helping me be as comfortable as possible for the all that travelling and sitting!

I managed to stay for a couple stretches of 1-2hours. Not great (especially when you have to pay for the whole day whether you can stay or not), but not bad considering I haven’t been to a crop there since the accident. My pain was tolerable for the first couple hours but then took a turn towards unbearable after lunch and I just needed to get home to my couch. I’d brought along a couple ice packs, but that only lasts so long…

Anyways, I’m very proud to say that I did manage to get a couple of layouts done at least! September 2008 and October 2008 were both done at the crop, and many of the papers in the layouts were bought right in the store. That’s one of my favourite parts of an in-store crop: being able to bring your photos right to the paper and pick out perfectly coordinating supplies.

Sept. 2008

Oct. 2008

Visit this page of my Scrappy Stampy Gallery to see the pages in more detail. Most of the papers and supplies used to create the pages were either purchased at the Scrapbox, or were from my stash of items (Stampin’ Up, Creative Memories).

Added to each of the layouts were a few “found objects” from the home! My hubby had these small black, orange, and clear rock chips out to do a craft with our son: a nightlight for the kids’ bathroom upstairs. There were some leftover and they were the perfect shades to adorn a tag with on my Halloween 2008 layout. Then there was a blue star lying around made of clear plastic (might’ve been from an earring or something!). That got tucked right into some white space in the September layout.

Just goes to show you that you can really think outside the box when it comes to supplies for embellishing your albums! Might not be the best thing if you’re very concerned about everything being photo-safe, but now that I’ve mostly switched from film photos to digital photos, I’ve been able to be less selective about what goes under the page protectors along with my pictures.

Hope you like seeing the layouts, and happy scrapping!

Digital Scrapbooking layouts: January & February ‘09

So I have been trying to get back into digital scrapbooking lately, especially as my ability to do traditional scrapbooking has diminished greatly over the past 2 years with my new disabilities. I’m much cozier curled up on the couch with a laptop on a little fold-out table than I am sitting up for hours on end like I used to do.

And this means I’ve also finally made a decision about my 2009 photos. Instead of continuing the Family albums I’ve been doing for about a decade, I’ll be switching over to doing digital layouts. I intend to keep the same format (chronological layouts; 1-2 for each month), but they’ll be done on the laptop and then maybe printed out later to go in an album. Maybe.

So to start off 2009 pics, here are the first two months and first two layouts. There really weren’t a lot of pics in those months (really, we were just hibernating and playing with new toys from Christmas and fall birthdays; everyone else in the family except me celebrates their bdays in November or December), so I’ll just have the 1-page layout for each month.

January:

February:

I’ve also finished the first layout for March as well but I’m working on a second layout for that month since there are more pictures. Then I’ll be caught up to 1 year ago! Not too shabby… the rest of ‘09 should go relatively quickly at this rate, especially since so many pics taken during that year were pics of the new house (which already has it’s own “Construction” album, now complete, and may also have a 2nd “Decorating” album as soon as we find out for sure we can stay here).

Even as I start scrapbooking family photos in digital format, there are a few themed albums on the go that will continue to need some tangible content. Both kids have their own birthday album and “School Days” album up to a certain point. So hopefully that means all those supplies I invested in won’t need to start gathering dust just yet!! My DD’s albums are almost full but since my DS is 6 years behind her, I have at least that many years before I could ever really say I was “done” scrapbooking for good… and really, even then I’m not sure if I’d ever be done forever!

happy scrapping!

New House Construction Album: 2nd part of layouts

* in case you missed it, the first part of the New House Construction album layouts were discussed in this entry.

My scrapbook of construction photos of our new home is now complete! The album covers 24 pages and the time span of July 2008 to April 2009 – from the time we started shopping to the time our house was built and we got the keys! I do have other photos that continue the story (our first days, weeks, months as new home-owners) but I’m thinking I’ll do another album for those.

So these layouts have all the pictures from our last couple months leading up to the completion of the house. We had two inspections before taking possession (that’d be why there’s a picture of my spouse and I wearing silly construction hats), so there was ample opportunity to go through and take lots of pictures of everything. I left out many of the “boring” but very essential pictures: such as pictures of little flaws that needed to be fixed. One of the perks of buying a brand new home is the warranty, but it only goes as far as you can show the problems were due to construction faults, etc.

I’m glad to have all of these photos of our house in (near) “mint” condition… before the kids got at it!! They have managed to flood a small room *each* (our son the laundry room and our daughter the kids’ bathroom), so it has definitely lost it’s shine a little. No matter; we are all in the process of making it a home, our home, and that involves a little destruction here and there I guess! It is also a good “Before” reference for visitors who will see our newly decorated home and paint jobs. Which, like I said, will be the subject of a whole other album! For those I’ll be waiting to make sure we indeed get to keep our house… Sadly, the resulting financial difficulties from my car accident and the disabilities that it caused may force us to sell this beautiful dream home. I hope I won’t be looking at these pictures with longing and regret though, but with fondness and nostalgica as the years go by and we build many memories here.

A couple fave layouts from this section of the album:

To see the layouts, visit this album OR if you’ve already seen the first batch and want to start off at the 2nd batch, you can skip right to this picture.

TFL!

Cards: Home & Birthday

I’m grateful that even if it’s somewhat difficult for our family right now to swing events, occasions, gifts, etc., I can always manage to create a personal hand-made card to send people the message that they are thought of and valued. We’ve always liked to do as much as we can to show our friends and family how much we care about them.

These two cards were created for the occasions of a Housewarming party and a birthday party for friends of ours. We didn’t even end up getting to the housewarming party – it took all our energy to prepare for it and do some shopping and then we were tired and had to go home and get the kids some dinner and send them to bed! And only my DH was able to go to the birthday party. But I can always be there in spirit through my creations…

Materials: Riding Hood Red cardstock base and ink, Close to Cocoa cardstock, Pirouette Pink cardstock, Chocolate Chip cardstock and ink, “Tagger’s Dozen” stamp set, Tag Punches (small and large – from Stampin’ Up), chocolate brown ribbon. The small flower stamp is actually from another set altogether, yet the petals look very similar to the flowers in the little box in the Tagger’s Dozen stamp – see this closeup!

Materials: I tried a really different colour combination for this one: Elegant Eggplant, Not Quite Navy, Tempting Turquoise and Black. The ribbon is Bashful Blue. Also included a lot of silver pen writing (wide pen from Martha Stewart, narrow pen from Creative Memories) and inked onto a star stamp (from Stampin’ Up). The “Happy Birthday” stamp is a single from Stampin’ Up. The inside of the card has a message written on cardstock edged with the notebook punch (SU) which is one of my faves!