2014 is upon us and rather than make a resolution I have chosen a word for the year - to focus on, mediate on, and reflect upon as I go about my daily life.  My word for the year is BELIEVE.  I have created a canvas wall hanging that will be a visual representation to me everyday of this.  I chose this word because I want to believe in positive outcomes, believe all things are possible, believe in dreams, and most importantly believe in myself.

Heritage

The whole reason I started scrapping in the first place was I had an idea to take some old family photos and use those in conjunction with a poem my aunt had written to create a family heritage album.  I love finding old photos and scrapping them.  This particular layout is a picture of my great great grandparents.  They lived in Norway.  I don't know a whole lot about them - yet.

I used the sketch from Swirlydoos Swirly Hues March challenge and most of the elements came from their March kit.  As part of the challenge you need to use a tutorial from their site and I actually used two.  One was a video tutorial on tissue paper flowers.  I had to make a couple of modifications as I didn't have all that was required.  I also used a tutorial on altering Petaloo flowers with Magical Micas (love that stuff) and glitter.

Enjoy Life

I received my Swirlydoos February Kit and as always the sketch that is provided is a great place to start.  When I first began scrapping many years ago, I knew nothing about digital and am not even sure it was that prevalent.  My Creative Memories Consultant encouraged cutting pictures into shapes.  I regret that a bit now, but I have tried to use my now limited digital and computer skills to salvage some older pictures.  Makes me wonder what new technological developments will occur in the next 10 - 20 years.

As a young child, I lived in South Dakota and our family vacations were always out to the Black Hills area.  These are some pics from one of those trips.  I wanted to do some braiding on this because my hair was long as a child and it seemed it was always put in a braid or pony tails.  I have given up on the braiding now, but the pony tail in my current life is here to stay.

Carnival

I have always wanted to go to Venice during Carnival, I just love the costumes.  The image was found on the web and I have been unable to refind to give proper credit, but I loved it as the colors worked so well with Bo Bunny's Snowfall Collection.  These papers were intimidating as they were completely gorgeous and I hated to start cutting into them, but nothing ventured nothing gained.

I used the sketch from Swirlydoos Swirly Hues January Challenge.  I also used a couple of tutorials from their site.  One was using a border punch to go around a circle from Miss Jan, this ended up getting a bit lost in the layout as I went embellishment crazy.  I also dyed some Diamond Dust as per Miss Angelica's instruction.  Not a big fan of the Diamond Dust personally (to many nicks and cuts to the fingers after playing), but I have quite a bit to use up, so why not.  I have to say I love how this turned out and do believe it may become wall art in my home.  Thanks for looking.

Swirly Hues - Port

Swirlydoos Kit Club has kicked off a new monthly contest known as Swirly Hues.  We are given a sketch and a color scheme and you let your imagination take over from there.

I was recently looking at some of Ncyankee's layouts of Portugal.  This made me pull out my own Portugal Album and immediately decided it needs to be redone - or at least some of my favorite photos deserved a little better presentation than I originally gave them. 

The first is my Swirly Hues entry.  This is a picture of me taken on a Cruise of the River Duoro in Oporto with a glass of Port in hand (a requirement for sure LOL).  Most of the time I spent in Portugal it was sunny and gorgeous the exception being this day - but it was still a highlight of the trip.

The second are evening shots in Evora.  We stayed outside the walled city but took a walk into its center for an evening, a wonderful experience and in case you are wondering there was more Port involved.

I love a challenge

It is always fun when a new month rolls around in the scrapbooking world.  It means new challenges and a chance to create something from nothing.  This weekend I completed a couple new layouts, both done for challenges.

The first was a Scrap your Pet Challenge at SBC.com.  Certainly one of my favorites as I have two gorgeous pups and tons of pictures of same.  This month I concentrated on the new guy, my little 4 month old Jasper.

As is fitting a pup he is into everything.  I loved this pic of him stuck in the box.  I took a few of the pieces that were left of that box once he was done with it, and I added it to this layout using Basic Grey's Out of Print line...love that paper.

The next layout was for the Round Robin Challenge at Swirlydoos.  Probably my favorite challenge and I always like to be the first out of the gate.  I get so much inspiration from these talented women and so many new ideas when I see what they do with my design.  QT is following me so I am excitedly waiting to see what she does.  It will no doubt be a fabulous LO, please stop by and check it out.

The picture was taken during a scrapbook camp in the gorgeous state of Colorado.  I swear if we would have left the door open the deer would have just walked right in.

Take care friends.

On your mark, get set, GO

I am totally clueless on this whole blogging thing, but thought I would try to figure it out anyway...sooooooo here we go.

As a way of introduction, I thought I would simply share a few of my more recent projects.

In 2008 I took a trip to London, and I am only now getting around to scrapping the pictures.  This is a picture that I took of the Diana and Dodi Memorial that can be found in Harrod's Department Store.  I primarily used elements from Swirlydoos August 'Poetry in Prose' Kit.

I do not normally do cards (strictly a layout kind of girl), but Paulien challenged us to do a card based on a Beggahuna sketch and this is what I came up with.  I sent it to my wonderful, sweet and amazing aunt who just celebrated her 81st Birthday.

Another layout from my trip to London.  One of the August Challenges hosted by Rae at Swirlydoos was to include weaving in a layout.  I used some of the Tim Holtz filmstrip Ribbon woven with some Glitz paper scraps.  Rae also challenged us to use some of our Prima Flocked Rub-ons (a challenge indeed).  I actually like the sticky side of these so I rubbed them on to Tim Holtz fragments so that I could display the side I like best.  The pics are street performers that I just happened upon while walking down the Thames.



This is a layout I did for the August Prima BAP.  Yet another from London.  I played a little bit with photo editing prior to printing these pics out.

So there you have it.  Thanks for looking and happy scrapping.