A little ray of sunshine.

   It is sad to see those we love wither away. My Beloved has an aunt who lives life with the idea: every day is a gift.  Two years ago she was diagnosed with the silent killer within, an operation followed. She pulled through, but was oh so weak. Against all odds, she is still alive... for now. 

   She invited us to an afternoon on a playground and dinner at their house. Aunt and Uncle have kids, but no grandchildren. Auntie loves little kids and adores ours. So of course we went! The weather was holding, the sun shining, it turned out to be a great afternoon.

   Auntie was there, enjoying the kids, drinking in their laughter. 
Then my mom in law told me that the silent killer is back, this time in her liver. Auntie doesn't want to talk about it, because if she does, it is real. 

   It's not fair. Someone as sweet and loving as she is going away, permanently, we just don't know when. She should have been a grandmother, she would have been great. Instead, she has to make do with ours, the kids from the son of her sister. She enjoys every minute she spends with them.

   Because we can not visit often (she tires easily), I made 2 canvases of our kids. I hope they can be a little ray of sunshine in these tough times to come. May she gaze upon them often.

Morgan in Bo Bunny's Little Miss.






























Duncan in Bo Bunny's On the Go.

School picture

This was a relatively easy lay-out. The most difficult part being the cutting of the dress and foot of the dancer. Also, the letters "groep 1/2" took a bit of work with the inking and all.


Morgan saw both this lay-out and the "pretty girl" one. She thought they were wonderful! Happy girl with a big smile :D

The pink flowers were off-white, but that didn't go well with the page. So I grabbed my pink ink and ta-daaaa! 

 

A bit of brown distress ink never hurts. 

The doily has been inked in green and pink. Where would we be without ink?!

 

A jewel in the flower, because a brad just didn't cut it.

 

Morgan has had a wonderful teacher this year. The lady really knows her stuff and went along with Morgan's pace. As soon as she found out Morgan knew her letters and numbers, she gave her reading practice. Just one example out of many. 

I can only hope the teachers next year are as good.

Thanks for looking!

Pretty Girl

  Cricut Expression? Big Shot? Silhouette? Slice? Oh... if only! All of those are financially way out of my league, but I do so want one. Letters, swirls, I could do so much with it. 

  So I asked around what would be the wise move: a cutting machine, or a die cutter? Lots of opinions, good advice. In the midst of it, I thought: but I already have a machine. I have a Sizzix Sidekick. It's a small one, and I only have few dies, can't I do more with it?
It turns out: I CAN! Other brands are compatible, hurray!!!
Renewed happiness with my old machine. My wish for a cutting machine will still be there in a few years, it'll keep. Until then, my Sidekick will be what it is named: a Sidekick.

  This week I got Morgan's school pictures. Like last year, they were great and she looked fantastic. Time to find the Perfect Paper to scrap them. Searching through the stash of my favourite brand, I found nothing that went with that picture.

  No worries, today Morgan and I went off to Scrap4Fun to find the Perfect Paper. It's always good to be there, so many like-minded people with good ideas. Vera (the owner) helped me find the Perfect Paper, and we ended up with Prima Marketing. Nothing I'd ever used before, unknown territory. Should be fun!


  I also bought some new dies for my machine, 2 alphabets by Tim Holtz. Yay!


  During Duncan's nap, I got to work. I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

The flowers got an inked edge to match them with the rest of the edges. Then they got a bit of glitter glue to make them sparkle.

 

The letters I made with my new die cuts, Vintage Market by Tim Holtz. Then I inked them with distress ink, gave them a layer of Glossy Accents glue and sprinkled some glitter over them. 

The bit of lace used to be off-white, but didn't go with the rest of the colors. Nothing a little distress ink can't fix. So now it's green lace.

 

Morgan hasn't seen the result yet, but she picked most of the papers. She loved the dancing girl on it. 

I think she'll be happy with what she sees in the morning.

Thank you for looking!

 

My Flower Fairy

When I was done with "My First Blog", I knew I wanted to do another Lay Out inspired by that sketch. Again with a photo of our daughter Morgan in my In-Laws' back yard.

So I grabbed my Country Garden Collection and worked out this Lay Out.

The swirls on the left side are made by tracing the mold of the Vicky B chipboard swirl, then fussy cut them. Inking them was a bit tricky, because they kept flipping over. I ended up with a lot of distress ink on my hands :-)

The third swirl didn't fit completely, so I used the other piece on the right side.

The quote I found on www.thequotegarden.com . A treasury of quotes!

Thanks for looking.

Birthday Cards, a challenge.

Making cards IS a challenge for me.
Why? Because I have to send them away!!! I know that is the purpose of a card, I know... 

I hope my sister and a friend of ours will like their cards as much as I liked making them.  

Bonus is that I get to enter these card in a Card Challenge by Bo Bunny.  They posted a sketch on their blog.

Since I had 2 cards to make, one for a man, one for a lady, I thought: wouldn't it be nice to have them both inspired by this sketch? I went along with that thought, here are the results.

For this card I used the Sweet Tooth collection. My sister makes really really really great cakes, cupcakes and stuff like that. She and her boyfriend can COOK!!!

I made the swirl by tracking the mold of a used swirl in the Etcetera chipboard. The Cricut is way out of my league (financially) so things like these I have to fussy cut. 

The flowers I made with my Sizzix Sidekick. I made 6, used 4, so Morgan had 2 flowers to "play" with. She loved that! "I'm going to scrap for Aunt O. as well!"

The next card is for a dear friend of ours who celebrates his birthday this week. I used the Cambridge Collection for this card.

Even though I used the same sketch, this card had a totally different feeling about it. Very masculine.

Wishing them both a happy birthday!

Thank you for watching, let me know what you think :-)

Little Miss

During the spring of 2011 we spent our May Holidays at my In-Laws in Germany. They have a big house, a sizable garden (much larger than our postage stamp sized garden) and lots of time to play with the kids. Needless to say Beloved and me can relax a bit while Morgan and Duncan take turns at wearing down their grandparents.


When Bo Bunny released their new line Little Miss, I immediately knew which pictures I wanted to use.

It was a sunny day. Morgan wanted to wear her new dress and had her mind set on having her hair undone. Usually this mindset lasts about half an hour, then she asks for a pony tail or a braid. Not this day. She loved looking like a purple butterfly amidst the green grass and trees.

I grabbed my camera and let her pose under one of the apple trees. Fortunately, she loves having her picture taken (is even critical about what the result looks like). She's easy to direct. No idea how long that will last, so for now I treasure it.

She chose to touch the Buddha statue under the tree, wanted to give her rose. I don't know who blessed who a that moment, but I'm glad I could capture it.

My Sizzix machine helped me cut out the flowers. The green swirl is an exact copy of the pink one. Didn't have a green swirl, so I fussy cut it.

A bit of faux stitching, it was first time I tried to use that. I liked it, so maybe I'll use that more often.

Thanks for looking!

My first blog!

Looks like I did it, I have landed on blogspot.

Well, welcome to my scrapcorner where I'll be showing my scrapbook pages.

My favourite subjects of course are our children, Morgan and Duncan.

I love working with Bo Bunny papers, they're awesome.

This is the sketch they gave us to work with:

And this is how it turned out.

I used Country Garden for this Lay Out. I love the colours! So bright and happy.

A bit of doodling around the edges was just what it needed.