scrappassion

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Buon Natale

Hauskaa Joulua

Merry Christmas

Joyeux Noel

Feliz Navidad

Frohe Weihnachten

Boas Festas

Soak Up The Sun

is the title of my layout as a Guest Design Team Member for Scrap Our Stash April Bring in the Sun Challenge.

The photo is of Franco and Andrea this past Christmas in Cathedral Cove in Coromandel, New Zealand.

 

Christmas in flip flops...

or should I say in "jandals" like they do in Kiwi Land? I don't know why I've had the dream or "obsession" of spending Christmas in flip flops for such a long time. Anyway this past Christmas when we went to New Zealand my dream came true.

This layout is one of my faves. Anna at Cocoa Daisy launched a fun challenge in January (deadline tomorrow so you still have time to play) where you have to paint over something. In my layout I sewed a piece of fabric on my paper and painted it with MM acrylic paints. I then found this red rubber flip flop which I painted with silver Dabber to mimic my silver sandals I have in the photo. I glued it on top of the flower that I made the other day with canvas and Tim's floral alteration dies and misted with Glimmer mists.

This photo makes me HAPPY!

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!

from New Zealand

MERRY CHRISTMAS

BUON NATALE

HAUSKAA JOULUA

2007 in review

I have finally finished the 2007 year in review album. I started it a year ago and got a couple of pages done, then I just "forgot" it amongst the other UFP which stands for unfinished projects.

I haven't been scrapbooking for weeks due to various reasons, mainly personal issues, but a couple of days ago I got the urge to start scrapbooking and this album appealed to me. I put it together in 2 days. I had some pages half done so I dug out the photos of 2007 that I had printed ages ago and started punching. I have a 2" x 2" (roughly 5,1 x 5,1cm) square punch which made this project relatively fast and easy to do. And I love grids so this is really one of my all time faves. I have also included pictures that take the space of two photos just to give some more interest and dimension to the pages. There are also squares of patterned papers and some embellishments. I've included the month in rub-ons and the year in Thickers.

All months but January have a list of things that happened during that particular month as journaling. Since Valentina's, Andrea's and my birthday all fall in January,  I just stamped Happy Birthday instead of writing the journaling.

So many memories. A year in review is a nice way to preserve memories. It can be done as 12" x 12" pages like this one or the one I made of 2008 (I confess I still have to write the journaling on that one) or as a minialbum like I made of the year 2009. Now I have to decide how I want to do the one of 2010.

 

Last tags

I'm finally done with Tim's Tags! It was a fun adventure, I learned so much... also about my frustration when I didn't have the right supplies but I learned also to make do with what I had. And I'm sooo happy I finished them all! I've been known to leave projects at halfway... *blush*

Here's Tim's #3 and this is mine. Had a fair amount of difficulties but loved the alcohol ink technique. I do own glossy cardstock, I know, I bought it last spring, but for the life of me I couldn't find it so I had to use glossy photopaper. It didn't get sticky like Tim warned, but I had some bleeding when I tried to enhance Santa Claus's beard with white dabber and the red alcohol ink changed it to pink °_° 

This is Tim's Tag #4 and here's mine. This one I like a lot. I didn't have all the things needed like the memory glass! When I bought the memory frames and the memory capsules I kinda forgot that I was supposed to buy also the memory glass, duh. But I cut a piece of thick cardboard and put it in the frame.

This is Tim's #8 and this is mine. Here too I had to improvise but the tag turned out ok at the end. My lamp post is so tiny that the key would have been too big so I hung a little ceramic angel ornament from a clock instead.

 

Here is a picture of all my 12 Tags of 2009.

 

Wow, now that all these tags are done, I can finally concentrate on other things like work... and some layouts...

Here are still a couple more pics of our Christmas.

This is the hazelnut cake with frosting, our chocolate frosting didn't turn out so we made a white sugar frosting instead. The cake was yummy!!

Picture of me (one of the few ones because I'm always behind the camera) taken by Andrea. I just love it with the soft lights of the candles and with the tree on the background.

    

On Boxing Day evening Franco, Andrea and I went to see A Christmas Carol. It was really funny!

So now that Christmas is over we can start waiting for New Year :)

  

Merry Christmas - Buon Natale - Hauskaa Joulua

Merry Christmas and all the best for 2010 to our friends all over the world.

 Helena, Franco and Andrea

 

Tim's Tags #9 and #10 + other Xmas stuff

I played this morning in my scraproom and finished other two of Tim's tags.

This is Tim's tag # 9  and this is my take. Very similar to that of Tim's. I just substituted the metal numbers to metal letters and didn't make the metal poinsettia - I thought my tag was already pretty full. This is another tag I didn't like so much when I started but which ended up as one of my favorites.

Here is Tim's tag # 10 and this is mine:

I had a lot of difficulties with this one, mainly with the metal sheet which I didn't have so I used aluminum foil but it didn't adhere very well and tended to rip. But I'm happy this one is done too and I've learned so many new techniques, wow!

Here's a picture of our tree upstairs. This year it was trimmed by Andrea since Valentina is in London. It's all blue and silver whereas the tree downstairs is all red and gold.

And here are the oatmeal cookies I always bake for Christmas. You can't get oatmeal in Italy, at least I haven't found it so I bring the oatmeal from Finland or some of my friends bring it over.

We're ready for Christmas!!! 

  

Two more sleeps

I've created other three tags. Who knows, I might even get them all done...

This is Tim's # 7 and this is mine (second attempt):

On the first one, the golden embossed writing got all smeared and so I had to make another one. On this one I used by mistake the smooth side of the tag and honestly didn't like at all how the Distress Inks blended. Too smooth. I used the stickles and stamps I had which are not the same Tim used. But I'm pretty happy with this tag.

This is Tim's # 6 and this is mine. 

At the beginning I was not enthusiastic about this tag: I don't have the plain grungboard nor Tim's spruce or vintage car stamps so I used a grungeboard shape for the tree (cut it on the bottom to make the stump) and used a car image on a wrapping paper which I put on chipboard and embossed with black(dabbed on different parts of the car with distress embossing ink). I embossed the tree with Distress Ink Pine Needles and Peeled Paint and then used white Liquid Pearls for the snow since I didn't have the Fluffy stuff. I'm very pleased how the tag turned out at the end.

And here is Tim's tag # 5 and here is mine:

Oops, forgot to put the ribbon. I used some vintage images of St. Nicholas and used what I had but I'm not really happy with this tag. I think my white embossing powder sucks :(

Onto other things. Here's a photo of the coconut cookies which Andrea was supposed to make but then he didn't feel like it. "If you want to do them, Mom, you can." Thanks, babe!

I started craving artichokes today, so I cooked some ready for Christmas Eve. Valentina is going to kill me when she sees this photo. She loves artichokes and I very rarely make them. And now she's not at home I did...

And last but not least, broccoli and sausages which I will do with pasta tonight for supper.

  

  

Christmas countdown and more...

It's been awhile...

Many things have happened, good things, bad things, many changes but I'm on track once again.

I'll start with showing other 2 of Tim's tags. These are numbers 11 and 12. I'm planning on doing them all, but I won't be stressing over them. "No stress" has been my motto for a long time and it really applies to scrapbooking (if I stress, it's not fun anymore hence it has lost all its purpose of being a healthy creative outlet) AND especially to Christmas. I decided long ago that I want to enjoy the Christmas time and not be cranky and tired and ruin the festivities for the whole family so I usually plan everything ahead of time and try to cook and bake beforehand and freeze everything so I won't be in the kitchen for hours on end during Christmas. The same with the trimming the tree (this year Andrea and I had a really early start at the end of November), making and sending the Christmas cards and hunting for Christmas presents. What gets done, gets done. What doesn't, there's always another year:)

So here we go with the tags.

This is Tim's number 11 and here is mine:

 I used Little Yellow Bicycle's fabric buttons instead of making my own, and I don't have plain grungeboard so I used the reindeer shaped grungeboard, stamped some random stamp on it with Distress Embossing ink and used black embossing powder. I also didn't have any Christmas rub-ons so I embossed a Happy Holidays stamp with white embossing powder.

This is Tim's number 12 and here is mine. This is probably my favorite tag of all. I just love those grungepaper roses. Yummy!!

 

I have perfect pearls but no Distress re-inkers so I used Glimmer mists. Worked just fine for me. I also didn't have Tim's adage ticket so I used one that I downloaded somewhere (can't remember it now).

I'm working on a couple more right now and will show them when they are ready.

Now a photo of some of the Christmas cards I made this year: thanks Martha for the sample!

Here are a couple of photos of our tree downstairs (still have to get some good pics of the tree upstairs and have to change my 50mm lens to a zoom lens to get the whole tree!)

  

And yesterday's Christmas baking. Actually there is another cake and brownies too.

This hazelnut cake needs a chocolate frosting but we'll do it tomorrow.

  This is a gingerbread cake. Yummy! I tasted the dough :))