Quick word or 2

It has been days since I last got the chance to do some blogging. And the worst of all is that I won't even have time today, since I have a workshop at work that will take the whole day.

So between work and doing stuff around the house and going to the gym and scrapbooking (luckily I have time for that) I have not been able to blog, but I do have tons to tell and share. Hopefully I will get to it tomorrow.

I am making the chistmas gifts for our office. I am making calanders for 2009 for each client. There are 34 that needs to be done. I picked up all the calanders last night and have collected all the paper and adhesives. All that is left to do is to start assembling them. I doubt it will take me that long. The sample I made was like 20 minutes, not even, so I doubt it will take hours!

But before I can do that I first need to finish the invite I am making for my husband for our romantic getaway. You do not even know anout that yet, but unfortunately I do not have enough time for all the details. But basically, we are going away on a romantic weekend, next weekend. He does not yet know where we are going. I am making an invite out of a chipboard album, with an itinerary and what we are going to do and information about the places we are staying at. The chipboard album has been bought and openeined. The paper to cover the album has been cut and some has been stuck down. The wording and pictures have all been printed. So all that is left to do is the assembling of the album.

I have also not been able to do my Stories in Hand Project. Which is a bti depressing! But I have been following and have been keeping track and keeping everyday's instructions and downloads together. So that once I have enough time, I will just be able to print everything and do all the instructions.

There is so much more to tell and show that I did over the weekend, but unfortunately it will have to wait, sorry :-(

The last thing I have to say before I REALLY need to go is that I have exactly 3 weeks left at the office before it is holiday!

Have a nice day!

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Every morning I open my blog and the very first thing I see is the Cool Cats and the Cutest Kitten. Are they not just the cutest???

I love cats - especially kittens. There is nothing cuter than a kitten playing or sleeping or doing what kittens do best. I just adore them! I can not get it around my head how people can hurt such gorgeous creatures. For that matter I can not get over how anyone can harm ANY animal!

I had a terrible ride home yesterday afternoon due to the fact that I had tons to do before I could go home. But finally after about 2 hours after I left the office I arrived home. My darling husband had by then started dinner. While we waited for it to get ready we went for a nice walk in the neighbourhood. And boy was that fun. We actually had time to talk without any interruptions. It is strange how you live together and spent every day together but never really get to talk and discuss things.

When we arrived back home we had supper while watching one of our famous local soapies called 7de Laan. After that I whatched So You Think You Can Dance and we ended the night with CSI Miami. I of course did not make it through the whole episode and therefore do not know what happened, but luckily for me I can watch the rerun on Sunday.

The weather is still very depressing, with rain and mist. Which is REALLy not nice, but oh well.

When I arrived at the office this morning I received my Stories In Hand Project: Day 3 notes.

I want to try and make some time tonight to start printing and assembling my book. The only problem is that I do not have a mini album. But I guess it is not the end of the world. I might just go and see if I can find you during lunch.

Have a nice day!

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Stories in Hand Day 2

Kenneth Tang said, "We write because we're human. And we have stories to tell. Stories of love, of romance, of heroic struggles. We write because deep within us we must tell our stories, lest they (and the memory of "us") be lost to the winds of time. We write because we want to leave a legacy, a memory , in order that others may know that we had passed this way, and that we had lived. Thus we write as a witness to our lives - for ourselves and for prosperity."

According to Jessica Sprague, today we will start diving into the stomach of this project.

Jessica Sprague compiled lists of "sparks" for our memory in the form of a questionaire. The prompts are divided into categories that fit the tabs of the binder.

All we are allowed to do today is however print these "sparks" and bind them. Later in the week we will be given assignments and exercise with these "sparks", which are designed in such a way that we get the most form the prompt questions.

The second part of today's class is about Stories to Tell Checklist. This will give us the opportunity to store the stories we have in our head on paper until we are able to convert it into an actual story to tell.

I am very excited, I actually need to force myself not to jump ahead and start answering all the questions. They say that those who wait will be rewarded, so I guess I will just have to wait.

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Stories in Hand Day 1

I registered on JessicaSprague.com for Stories in Hand.

I have not really been able to get my mind around what it is about. But as far as I can see it is like keeping a journal regarding the past, present and future. It is about gathering information.

I downloaded SIH Project Day 1: Cover and Tabs. Jessica Sprague gave us the cover of the album (6x6) as well as the different Tabbed Dividers - there are 3 main dividers (Roots, Family and Self) and some Sub-Tabs for the Family section (Spouse and Child). Since we do not have human children just as yet I decided that I will still print the Child Tabs, but the stories will just be about our baby - Zorro the cat!

The Stories in Hand system have been divided into three sections, hence the three main dividers we had to print.
1. Roots - this is the sections that is about my grandparents, parents and my childhood.
2. Family - this section deals with dating, marriage, children and grandchildren. There are 2 sub-sections. The first sub-section will contain stories about you and your spouse, the secons section will contain a section for stories about each of the children (and in my case, my cat).
3. Self - this section has prompts about myself as I am today - hobbies, habits, influences, etc.

I am so excited about this SIH Project. It will be the very first time I am doing something like this. Unfortunately, I will not be able to it as we receive the information and downloads, since things are just WAY to hectic at the moment. I will however try and keep the blog up to date about what I am suppose to do. But in my own time I will make the Stories in Hand Booklet.

Some quotes used in the SIH Project:

• In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know who we are and where we have come from - Alex Haley (Roots Tab)
• We are one big family of people, trying to make our way through the unfolding puzzle of life - Sara Paddison (Family Tab)
• My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way - Ernest Hemmingway (Self Tab)

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I am not impressed with the fact that it is Monday since it means that another week has started. A week filled with lots of meetings and work, and not much time for scrapbooking. But looking at the upside - it is one week closer to holiday and christmas!

The bad side of this Monday is that it has been raining non-stop for the past three days. Which is good for the garden, but not so good for travelling to work.

We had a full weekend.

On Friday afternoon I went to scrapbooking class. The class was taught by Anna-Karra and she showed us how to do embossing. It was great fun, and we all REALLY enjoyed it. Now all I need is a heat gun and LOTS of embossing powers. But I guess, all in good time!

On Saturday I went for a sort of mini makeover. I decided to cut my hair sort and do some highlights. It looks nice and it is a lot lighter than the long hair.

On Saturday night we had my husbands year end function. It was held at the Sun Dome - there were 2400 guests. We had artists like Kabelo, Loyisa, Kurt Darren, Karen Zoid, Dawid Kau and Dr. Victor and the Rustarebels perform. It was really nice. It was very casual - there were no seating plan, you could sit where you want to; it was an open buffet with fun food like hamburgers, hot dogs, wraps, vetkoeke and chip&dip; for desert there were donuts and ice-cream carts with a variety of ice-cream lollies in. The only unfortunate thing was the raining. But otherwise it was great fun, with lots of dancing and partying.

Yesterday it was all rainy and misty so we got stuck in bed the WHOLE day watching Charmed Season 5 & 6. What fun!!!

And that was my weekend! Hopefully the week is not too busy for me to do some scrapbooking.

Have a nice day!

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Look at what I did

I scrapbooked a picture that I enlarged on canvas. And oh boy, was that fun. And in the end it turned out really great. I am really impressed with myself and so happy about it.

It took us the whole of Saturday to do. But now it is finished and just waiting to be framed. For the moment I am going to leave it as is, but in due time I will have it framed.

I took pictures of the various stages mainly for this blog.

Stages of the Canvas

The very first thing I did was to get a backing board that is big enough to take the canvas. After a long search I found one. It had to be 84 x 114 cm, in order for the canvas and the paper to fit, but we also had to leave enough space for the frame.

I used We R Memory Keepers - Precious Metal - Coppered Out range for the layout (that is now if you can call this a layout...).

I covered the edge of the backing board with 3 different patterns from the range.

We gave the canvas a 2 cm white edge (from the canvas) which I then inked with creamy brown. Once that was done we taped it to the backing board (I used a whole role of purple turtle that I had bought the morning before class).

Along with the canvas I printed the other pictures that the wedding photographer took of me and my husband with the umbrella. They were all printed in sepia (3 jumbo size prints and 2 A5 sized prints). Each one of these pictures were done seperately. The 3 jumbo pictures I matted 3 times (thin cream boarder, thick pattern boarder and another thin dark brown boarder). Each of the boarders along with the picture was distressed before the next layer was matted.

Picture number 1.

Picture number 2.

Picture number 3.

For the 2 A5 pictures, a different techniques were used.

The first one I matted three times (distressing the picture and each of the papers). The middle layer of paper was cut thicker than the others. The reason for this is I added some chipboard frames to 2 of the corners. The chipboard was originally cream colour. I then gave the chipboard one coat of brown paint (that way the cream is still showing through and it gets a distressed look). The last step was to glaze the chipboard with diamond glaze.

The second A5 picure was a bit more complicated - trust us to once again try and do the impossible...

The picture was matted on a large piece of brown paper.

We then decided on three different pattern papers. Each of these were the length (or whith) of the picture and about 10 cm wide. They were then rolled up like cigarettes such that each of the rolls were 1 cm wide. We battle a bit with them, since the paper is very thick - the thinner the paper the easier the rolling is. Our rolls were also a bit long, the paper piercers got stuck more than once...

Once all the rolls were rolled they were placed all around the picture and stuck down with LOTS of tape.

The last thing I added to this picture you will see is a little chipboard word. This word is made my Dooh-Dah and it says Moment. I thought is was very appropriate since it was a special moment. The only thing I did to the word was ink the edges with brown ink and glaze the actually word.

The next thing that was done was of course the title.

Originally I wanted to do the Title with chipboard, but I could not find a nice font that was big enough. I found stickers for the walls by Making Memories in the end. But they did not work very nicely, since they are peel-offs and therefore did not stick to paper. So we stuck them to foamsheets to give them more dimension with tobo-glue. They were then painted with brown paint, inked/distressed with cream. But they still looked very bland, and boring. So we stamped a pattern on each letter with an acrylic stamp in a different colour brown - which then looked better. Afterwards I glazed them, but then another speed bump was hit since the ink from the stamps decided to run. So now you can not see the pattern of the stamp, but you do have 2 different colour browns. I am a bit disappointed, but it still looks nice.

To give the piece some character I added more chipboard shapes.

The one chipboard shape is in the top left hand corner. I took different sizes of the same pattern and made a "flower". The chipboard was also painted and then glazed. In the centre I added another Dooh-Dah chipboard word, Love, since that is what it is - our love for one another.

The second chipboard shape a once again took the same shape and just reversed the one. Instead of painting these shapes I covered them with paper and distressed the edges. These were placed in the middle of the right hand side of the canvas.

After all the above was done - this is what the final product turned out to look like.

It really turned out wonderfully. And the best part is that it looks stunning in the entrance hall!

This is definitely something I will do again. I am already thinking of the next canvas I want to do. I might not do it as big, maybe smaller. But we will see and I'll keep you up to date.

Happy Scrapping!!!!!!!!!!

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First attempt at Scrapbooking outside the box - an Exploding Box

For the very first time ever I did some scrapbooking out of the box. And I really enjoyed it. I never thought that it culd be so much fun.

At first I thought an exploding box would be very difficult to make, but I was ecstatic to find that these are actually very easy. I decided to blog about the steps I used to make the box (since I do not have much to do at work, and the stuff I want to blog I do not have pictures of with me).

The supplies I used:

• 3 pieces of double sided paper (one 12" square, one 11-1/2" square and one 11" square). I used 2 pieces of cardstock and one piece of double sided pattern paper.
• A co-ordinating cardstock measuring 5-1/8" square for the lid.
• Ribbon, rub-ons, embellishments and photos of your choice.

Instructions:

1. Mark the 12" square every 4" in every direction to create 9 squares. Score the 4" squares. I marked mine in pencil with a ruler, and then used a scoring tool to make the score lines.
2. Mark the 11-1/2" square every 3-1/8" in each direction in order to create 9 equally sized squares.
3. Mark the 11" square every 3-1/6" in each direction in order to create 9 squares. I bend them back and forth at the score lines so that they move really easily.
4. Cut the corners from all three pieces of cardstock. Set aside these corner pieces to use as matting and embellishments later.
5. Decorate the four fold-outs on all three layers, plus the very centre square on the smallest one. I placed wallet sized pictures on the largest and medium sized fold-outs and rub-ons on the smallest fold-out. I cut a photo to fit the centre square of the smallest fold-out, I then made a "worm" which I placed under then centre pictures. This way it is always raised.
6. Using glue or foam squares for dimension, adhere the smallest centre square to the medium centre square. Then adhere the medium centre square to the largest centre square.




7. 

Creating the lid

1. Score the 5-1/8" square lid at 7/8" on all sides. Also score diagonally in each of the four corners.
2. Fold sides up along the four edges. Take a corner and fold it in along the diagonal line. use double sided tape to hold the two sides of the diagonal together, add then another piece to hold it against the edge of the lid.
3. Repeat for all corners to create a lid for the box.
4. Finally, embellish the lid of your box with flowers, ribbon, stickers, paper scrapb, or whatever you want. Fold up the sides of the box and put the lid on the box.

And finally this is what it looked like from the outside

And the inside

This was so much fun!

Happy scrapping!

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Can you believe it???

We have had trouble with Imagine magazines, which have not been arriving on time at our local scrapbook shop. Then we found out that they will no longer be printing them. They are now only destributing digital copies. These copies you can not buy at a shop, you need to buy them online. Now I am not a big fan of digital magazines. What is the point, I like to have a hard copy in my hand which I can page through.

But none the less. This morning a friend of mine receives the following email after she askes them what is happening to the refunds. Since what ever you do not sell of the previous issue they refund with the next issue.

Congratulations!!!

I am pleased to inform you that you are succeeding with flying colours!!!

…That is if you are actually trying to be a regularly reappearing thorn in my side. Whilst reading your e-mail I had to change my shirt due to the excessive bleeding from the constant chafing and scratching caused to my side.

Anyways… Back to business at hand…

I will have to search for all your previous e-mails (…and read them all again!) to figure out exactly what should be done regarding your company, since I have not heard from you in a while and was hoping you would just fade away like a good pair of jeans. I will then discuss the situation with our investors and get back to you with a proposal to solve the matter as soon as humanly possible.

Please note: There is no need to lodge a formal complaint against me regarding this objectionable response to your seemingly innocent request for assistance. I can assure you as one of the owners of the company I view this in a very serious light and have already started preliminary disciplinary action against myself pending further investigation. On behalf of everyone at Studio J Media I would like to apologize for any anxiety you may have suffered due to what looks like a totally unnecessary attack upon your person.
Have a great day!
Managing Director Studio J

I do not know, but to me this sounds very rude and totally unacceptable. I can actually not believe that he had the audacity to send this to a client. I will definitely not buy a magazine from them again, no matter how good it is.

Can you believe that???

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Spoilt

I am probably the luckiest girl and have the best husband ever!

I got spoilt rotten on Friday!

I arrived home to a huge bunch of flowers (40 roses), 2 vases (since I complained the last time that I do not have enough space for all the flowers) and






2 teddy bears. The reddy bears are the best - they are called aroma-bears. They each have a bean bag in their tummy which you place in the microwave. After 30 seconds when you take them out and place them back in the bears' tummy, they are nice and warm and smell all aromany.






(This is the Bear)



















(And the bunny - is he not just the quitest?!?!?!?!)

Zorro came over to have a look at what all the fuss was about, but after he saw that there was nothing for him he was not really impressed with the lot - look at the face...






After putting the bears away and placing the flowers in water, he took me supper at a seafood place (Cape Town Fish Market) in the mall and we then went to the movies. We went to watch High School Musical 3. What an excellent movie. It was really great and I really enjoyed it. I honestly think my husband would have preferred an action movie. But what I love about him is the fact that he did not complain once about the movie.






I reckon you do not get a better husband than that. That is exactly why I love him to bits!

ILY

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