scrappassion

New Year 2010 - it's almost here!

 

 

Happy New Year! Buon Anno! Onnellista Uutta Vuotta! Hronia pollà!

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 :)) 

Guest Designer for The Studio

Yippee!

I have been chosen to be January's Guest Designer for The Studio, a fabulous challenge blog. 

These are my pages for November challenges:

And this is the layout which the DT chose as The Studio Pick :

 

Thank you Amanda and thank you girls of the Design Team!! I'm extremely happy about this!!!! 

Tim's Tags #1 and #2

I'm really proud of myself: I have done 2 of Tim's tags and what's best: I AM ENJOYING IT! No stress, no pressure, I'm just doing them for myself trying to learn new techniques and make do when I don't have all the supplies Tim uses.  ( I admit I'm filling a cart in an online store with all the things I do NOT have).

I have to admit that I started the first one thinking I was gonna waltz through it. Tim's step-by-step tutorial and the photos are so clear and detailed that I thought "It's a piece of cake". Hmm, note to self: Tim is Tim for a reason. It was NOT as easy as it seemed and my tags are kinda poor cousins of those of Tim's but I'm happy the same.

This is Day 1 tag. Here you can see Tim's and this is mine:

 I didn't have the Snowman so I used a Santa and since I didn't have plain grungeboard (how can I NOT have plain grungeboard? That's beyond me!!)  I used plain chipboard. Didn't have the Picket Fence Stickle for the icicles so I used Rock Candy Stickles but my icicles look more like snot °_° Here's a close up:

But like I said I'm happy with my tag.

Day 2 was much more to my liking. Here's the original and here is mine:

I used Distress Ink Peeled Paint instead of Pine needles hence the olive green tone. I also used a different frame, swirls and saying and as I didn't have Old linen Distress powder I used Tea dye. I had loads of fun splashing the perfect pearls on the tag until I noticed that I had splashed also my pants: they are now my painting pants :) (Tim warned about covering up everything you didn't want to get "pearly"). 

And then to the metal rose which is AWESOME. It also took an AWESOME amount of time and twisting and turning but I have to say mine is almost as pretty as Tim's.  Here's a close up (my close-ups suck)

 

Now onto Day 3. No, I have to work first :(

Mac forever

I'm on my new Mac!!

I had asked a MacBook for Christmas from my hubby but last Friday when I woke up, my pc was under a major virus attack (34 of them!!) and couldn't cope anymore. I called Daniele (my Mac expert) to my rescue and so we went to the Apple store and bought my Christmas present in advance.

I LOVE THIS!! I'm still learning (like how to retrieve a post accidentally deleted with the touch of my wrist on the track pad!!) and I'm yet to install Photoshop so for now I can't post new photos since I don't know how to resize them without PS.

I'll show the last layouts I made for the Cocoa Daisy online crop which was in mid November.

In this one we had to take inspiration from an ad. This is my interpretation.

I used a crumpled plastic bag to create the splashed background.

This challenge was called Flower Power and we had to use naturally flowers in our layouts.

Here's my sweet baby Kristina when she was 2 years old. Once again I cut the flowers from a patterned paper (BG Sugared) and added some Prima flowers, buttons and bling.

The last challenge I participated in was a challenge with black, red and white. This is what I came up with.

Valentina used to model for a hair stylist. That's why she has changed her hair style and color so many times in the last couple of years.