A Family Tradition

The sketch that Cheri gave us over at Let's Scrap this week was amazing.  It holds so many pictures and if you still don't have enough room for all of them she even showed us how we could had an extra fold out section.  If you love doing sketches then you will love it over at Let's Scrap. All the ladies are so nice and encouraging  and you can win some great prizes too.  
Here is this weeks sketch

Here is the full layout I did.  If you want to have a closer look at the layouts just click on them.

and here it is with the extra fold out showing

      As soon as I saw the sketch I knew it would be perfect for some special family photo's I have.  Back in 1919 at the age of 3 my Father, Frank Harrison, had his picture take with his sister Lillian who was a year old.  He was wearing a beautiful Scottish outfit made from black velvet and it had square silver button on it.  It consisted of a vest, jacket, hat and real horse hair Sporron.  No one seems to know why the son of  2 immigrants from England would be wearing a Scottish outfit.  I have been researching my family tree for over 40 years and I have not come across any connection with Scotland.
     Over the years almost all of his descendents have had their picture taken in the outfit.  Most of them are 3 when it is done although there have been times that they are older for one reason or another.  Five of his 6 children, all 12 grandchildren and so far 4 of 5 of his great grandchildren over the age of 3 have had their picture taken.   There are also 6 great grandchildren who are not quite old enough to get their picture taken in the outfit, one of which is my Grandson Jacob.
     Cheri's great sketch made it possible for me not ony to get all of the pictures on one layout, it also gave me room to leave spots for the children waiting in the wings.  I decided to also add my Sister Rose and my Great Grandnephew Ben's pictures to the layout even though they missed having their pictures taken in the Scottish outfit.  That way all of my parents descendents are all in one layout.
     I hope you had a great weekend and Happy Scrapping.

My First Design Team Challenge

     Last Friday it was my turn to post a Design Team Challenge over at Let's Scrap. As you all know my favorite thing to scrapbook are heritage or vintage layouts.  I am very fortunate to have several pictures of my ancestors along with stories about them.  So when I do their layout I want to be able to include as many pictures and stories about them that I can without having to do several layouts.  Hidden journaling and or hidden pictures is what I need. 
     So my challenge was for the members of Let's Scrap to do a vintage layout with hidden journaling or photo's on it.
Here is my the layout I did as an example

     I tried a new technique for the layout.  It was wet distressing and I just love how I was able to wet the edges of the cream cardstock, squish and pinch the paper to where I liked it and then use my distress ink on it. I'll be using this technique again thats for sure.  I did figure out that I have been making way to many boy layouts.  I have no idea what to do with flowers and had an awful time trying to use them for embellishments.  Still don't like the way it turned out but only have them on with tape I can move so I can play around with  them a bit more.
     The little book in the bottom opens up to share the story about how my Great Aunt Eva came to be named from a character in the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin".  Also on that page as you can see the pocket holds extra pictures plus a very scaled down copy of Eva's birth registration.  On the right hand side both pictures lift up for hidden journaling.  The reason one of them is blank is that I have contacted Evs's Great Grandson to verify some information before I add it to the layout and haven't heard back from him yet. I also shared a layout I did a few months ago that has a cool steamer trunk on it that has hidden journaling and if you would like to see it you can go to this link .
     When I decided to do hidden journaling for my challenge I went searching on the internet to find some more examples or tutorials for them to use. I was really surprised to find there is very little out there. So I went to the next best source for information. Let’s Scrap member Michelle Van Wyk. Michelle is a scrapbook teacher and makes the most amazing layouts. She is such a sweet lady and always willing to help if she can. Michelle was nice enough to share with the members pictures of some of her layouts using hidden journaling and also some tips on using them.  She said it would be ok to share some of her layouts with my blogging friends incase they were looking for idea to. So here are a few of her layouts.

Aren't they fantastic.  I just love Michelle's layouts, she has such great ideas for them and I am always amazed at how many pictures, embellishments etc. that she can get onto a layout. If you would like to see more of Michelle's work check out her blog here.  If she didn't live so far away I would love to take her scrapbooking classes, but I think going from Canada to South Africa would be a bit of a stretch for a class LOL.  Thank you so much for all your help Michelle, you are an amazing friend.
     I also want to thank Kristel for helping me out with the film strip for my layout.  She was kind enough to make me one that I could cut out with my Cricut and Scal.  You should check out Kristel's blog because she has some amazing svg. files for scal and lots of great project ideas she is doing . You can find her here http://www.k%20andrewdesigns.blogspot.com/
     Thats all for now, I hope you are having a fantastic week and Happy Scrapping.

Great Time At Stag and Doe

I have been really busy this week and only have time for a quick post but I  wanted to share a couple of picture with my family and friends that were taken last night at my Son Jason's Stag and Doe. 

Jason and Amy make such a beautiful couple and in 8 short weeks they will become man and wife.

and here is my oldest Son Andrew and his beautiful girlfriend Katie. 

I hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend and I hope to have a big post tomorrow showing you the layout I did for my first challenge on Let's Scrap.  Until then Happy Scrapping.                                             

Cosmo Cricket Card

     Hi all, I am finally feeling better from my tooth problem but seem to have got far behind on my scrapping.  On Friday I am doing my first Design Team Challenge over at Let's Scrap and I still don't have my layout done for it.  I'm also helping out with the Stag and Doe for my Son Jason and his bride-to-be Amy which happens on Saturday.  So I am a bit stressed at the moment.  Hopefully once both those events happen I will have a chance to get caught up on my Scrapping and breath a little easier.
     I did make a card from Kimmy's sketch at Let's Scrap.  They are also having a Cosmo Cricket Contest in the group so to kill two birds with one stone I used the Cosmo paper for the card.  Here is Kimmy's Sketch.

and here is my card

      I have been wanting to do the Tea Bag Folding technique for a long time but was having trouble finding paper that had a repeat pattern.  Cosmo Crickets's Delovey line was perfect for it. 
     Well I have to get back to my challenge layout.  Hope you are all having a great week and Happy Scrapping.

Like Father, Like Son

Sorry that I haven't been on much this week but besides having had a busy week I have also been having some problems with an abcessed tooth.  I'm a big baby when it comes to dental work and had to go into have things done two days in a row.  I'm still not 100% but am feeling better then I did.

I did want to share this layout I did for a Let's Scrap Challenge.  Tammy had asked us to do a layout showing a time line.  I had some pictures I have been wanting to scrap for a while now and the challenge was perfect for it.  Of course I used one of Cheri's fantastic sketches to do the layout. On the left are pictures I took of my oldest son on his first New Years Eve, back in 1986.  On the right are pictures of his son, my Grandson Jacob, on his first New Years Ever in 2010.  The layout is actually much brighter then it shows in the picture of it.  I didn't have much in the way of New Years embellishments so ended up using stickers which I'm not totally happy with but they will have to do.  The banner is actually gold Christmas Tree ribbon I had that I turned upside down.  I was thrilled with how will it worked.

Hope you all had a fantastic weekend and until next time, Happy Scrapping.

White Rock

I just love Cheri's sketch this week over at Let's Scrap. 

I have been wanting to scrap some of the beach pictures I took when we went out to White Rock, British Columbia last year.  This weeks sketch was perfect for those pictures. 

I used a new product I got a while back called Sand Glue made by Mudpuddles. I put it on the bottom of all the letters in my title.  It went on fairly easily, glued itself to the letters and dried hard.  I just love how it worked.  I had quit a few extra pictures of the beach but didn't really want to do another layout so created a pocket to put them and some hidden journalling in.  I had gathered some shells when I was was on the beach in White Rock but they were to big for the layout so I used some much smaller ones that I had on a necklace, they worked perfectly.

I was also able to use the layout for a ink challenge that my friend Denise has going on in the group Sketches4you so I was thrilled about that.

Hope all of you are having a great week and Happy Scrapping.

Echoes Of The Past

As you all know I was recently accepted as a Design Team Member over at Let’s Scrap. Anyone interested in becoming a DT member was asked to submit a layout using this fabulous sketch that was made by Cheri O’Neill the owner of the group.

The sketch was perfect for a layout I wanted to do for my heritage album. Because I always do two page layouts for this album I decided to just mirror the sketch. Here is my layout.

These are pictures of my Great Grandparents William Eli Edwin Thomas and Mary Permilla Lavina Howey on my Mother’s side of the family. Also in the picture are my Grandfather, William Justice Thomas who is the youngest boy in the picture and his brother Samuel Eli. They had such interesting names back then, didn’t they? The pictures would have been taken around 1894.
I was thrilled when I found some lace in my stash that had several designs on it, one of which looked just like a banner. So I carefully cut it apart to use on the layout. The lace was originally white but I wanted it more of a cream color. Eila Sandberg, a friend, I met in another group was kind enough to explain how I could dye it with tea bags and water. Thanks Eila.
I made the flowers out of ribbon and used some of the Easy Brad Maker brads for the centre’s. On the green ones I placed pearls which I changed the color to cream using some glimmer powder. On the gold ones I cut out tiny clocks from Graphics 45 paper and then put one of the brad maker clear crystals over them. The fabric feathers were just from the dollar store. The lace butterfly was from an old broach that I took the back off of. Most of the paper used was card stock but there is some Basic Grey Cappella mixed in there to. I used my sissors to distress the edge of the cream cardstock and lots of Antique Linen Distress ink to distress all the papers.
I belong to a Heritage Scrapbooking site and my friend Karen Moore from that group mentioned that she was using a key on each of her heritage layouts so there would be some continuity through out the album. I thought this sounded like a great idea. The first heritage page I did had, had a key, butterflies, a ticket stub and clocks on it. I couldn’t decide which of these I wanted to repeat throughout my album so I decided to use all four. I don’t use them all on every page but do make sure to use some of them. As you can see on this one I used the key, butterfly and the clock.
I hope you enjoyed seeing the layout and Happy Scrapping.

A New Layout and Tag

I have a couple of things to share with you today.  The first is a layout I made using a sketch Fia shared with us over at Sketch4you .  Here is the sketch

and here is my layout.

If you have been a follower for very long you might remember that I did a layout using this picture before.  That one went into an album I gave to my daughter-in-law to be.  So I have been wanting to make one for me.  My son Jason really doesn't like to have his picture taken and will normally make all sorts of faces, anything but smile.  I love his smile in this photo taken at the Prom in 2007 as he gets a kiss from his now fiance.  He was expecting the person to take picture so didn't have time to make any faces LOLHe better get some smiling classes going soon as he will have lots of smiling to do come October when he and Amy get married.
I did the layout for 4 challenges all of which were at Sketches4you.  First was for Fia's sketch challenge, 2nd was for Denise's Ink challenge, 3rd was for Staceys stash challenge and lastly because I used 3 different challenges on one layout I was able to enter it into a 4th challenge that Stacy has.  This one is called "You aint't getting off so Easy challenge"
I also made a tag for Denise's Ink challenge.  You had to use ink in a couple of different ways on a project.
I inked the tag with worn lipstick and broken china distress inks. Then stamped the sentiment and butterflies with archival ink. I then sprayed the whole tag with irridesent gold glimmer mist. I stamped the butterflies again on a plain tag, put a CTMH window charm on part of them then cut it around the circle and then glued it down on the image. So part of it is plain colored and kind of looks magnified. I then used Tim Holtz hardware to attach a cherish charm.
Here's what it looks like.

Must Be My Lucky Day

This morning I found out I had won not one but two prize draws. 
The first one was from Danielle over at her blog A Day In The Life Of A Coffee Addict. She was cleaning out her stash and decided to divide it up and give it away to 3 lucky followers
The second prize was from Stacy.  She is a Design Team Member over at Sketches4You and she had a brad challenge going on in her group Stacy's Weekly Scrap Challenge. There are lots of great challenges at Sketches4you so you should pop over and join the group.
Hmm they say good things come in three's, I wonder if I should go buy a lottery ticket, LOL

Caro's Gift Certificate Giveaway

One of the nicest people I've met on the net is Carolina (Caro).  I first met her through the group Let's Scrap but since then I have become a follower of her great scrapping blog which she calls the Scrapping Nomad.  She is such a sweet lady and is always there to answer any questions I might have. 

She is on a family vacation right now but they will all be moving shortly because of her husbands work.  She lives in Libya (North Africa) now and is moving a couple of continents away to Trinidad & Tobago which are Caribbean Islands. I've lived in my little home town almost my whole life and raised my family in the same house for the past 25 years.  I can't imagine packing up to move across town let alone across the world. 

So while Caro is relaxing in the sun on her vacation she has been thinking about having a giveaway on her blog.  She has decided to giveaway a $25.00 gift certificate to Crafty Steals.  So don't miss out on the chance to win this great giveaway.  Hop right over to Caro's site, the Scrapping Nomad and see what you need to do to enter.