Saturday, February 14, 2009

St. Patty's

I was cleaning my Kalat Room, putting things I don't need in boxes, when I found these pictures in one of those photo boxes. These were posted in a magnetic album. I was able to rescue them in time before the fading process began. After scanning the pictures I cut and pasted them on scrapbook layouts.


These pictures were taken years ago in an apartment in Chicago. Christina was 5 months old. It was her first St. Patrick's Day celebration. We're not Irish, but hey, who says we can't celebrate the feast of St. Patrick? We went to the mall, walked around, and had lunch there. That's how we celebrated the day...uneventful!


I made Christina's outfit: her headband and her pretty green & white dress. I gave away most of Christina's clothes that didn't fit her anymore, but this is one I kept. One of her brown teddy bears is now the proud owner of this dress!





This is the first time I used the sewing machine to make stitches. It didn't go very well because the sheet was not flat. Next time I will glue the sheets together before stitching them; or the easiest thing to do perhaps is to just stitch one piece at a time and then glue them in place.


I used one of Becky Fleck's sketches to do this LO. I saw this in the March 2009 issue of Creating Keepsakes. Wow! using one of Becky's sketches really saved a lot of time!

Supplies used: white Thickers; background paper & journaling tag, DCWV Nana's Kids; flowers from Prima; bling from Darice; pink Ofray ribbon; Fiskars' sunburst punch; scrap papers from My Mind's Eye, Colorbox fluid chalks (green and brown).



Sunday, February 01, 2009

Stitch Me A Song

I get to be the February challenger for the Kaya! All Filipino scrapbookers...wherever on this wonderful planet you are... are invited to join this challenge.

February is love month [I just made that up, just 'cuz Valentine's Day is embedded somewhere in those 28 days]. So the challenge is all about making a loving layout about the thing, or people you love using a love song or two [3 is maximum]. Use any scrapbooking style you have but for this challenge, you have to use stitches! Real ones - hand- or machine- made. Because of this requirement, only traditional scrapbookers can join the challenge. But then, Lee suggested to have the digital scrapbookers join, too. I am also a digital scrapbooker so I don't want to disregard my fellow digi-scrappers. So, OK, digital scrapbookers, you, too can join the challenge!

The stitching technique might be a little intimidating, perhaps because they look so complex and too time consuming. Those were my thoughts when I saw super beautiful layouts using real stitches! So I challenged myself to make one and I love it! The technique I used is very simple. Perhaps using the sewing machine would have been simpler but I was too lazy to pull that out.

Here's how I did my stitches:

I used supplies that are pre-holed - like the journaling tags which I "unscrewed" from the wire that bound them together, and the canary yellow border with the tiny little holes in them.

I arranged my layout on black cardstock and took pictures so that I will know how to put them back together again. I glued just the tips of the first layers in place so that when I make the holes on the black cardstock, they won't be moving out of place. I found a 12" cube styrofoam cooler and used that as my table [I did my work on the floor while watching NCIS]. I punched the holes with a big safety pin, going through each hole of the journaling tags and through the black cardstock. Then I stitched away! It is really so easy and not so time-consuming. I finished this LO in one night. The longest part was planning the layout - it took me days and several headaches!

As for the picture, I placed one of the journaling tags on one edge and punched holes through the picture, through the journaling tag behind it, and through the black cardstock. Of course I glued two corners of the picture first so it won't move out of place.

The hardest one to do was the swirl with the string of pearls along its side. I have previously glued this swirl on 2 layers of white cardstock to give it some dimension. It wasn't my plan, during that time to sew the beads along side it, so boring holes through it was really, really painstakingly-slow. But it's all worth it!

My original title was Cherish by Kool and the Gang. But since I only chose a few lines from the song and I love the lyrics of It’s Easy for Me to Say sang by Clint Black and Linda Hartman Black, I wrote the entire lyrics on another journal tag. I opted to use "I Love You" for the title instead of "Easy for Me To Say". The real title probably would have been a better choice but I ran out of space and didn't have smaller fonts to use. TFS!