Bolster Layout for Butterfly Crafts Challenge #16

This is the layout I did for Butterfly Crafts Challenge #16. You have to scrap something about your quirks and idiosynscrasies. Things that you do that make you special, maybe a pet peeve or a fuuny habit. It can be weird or normal but basically anything that's you!

I decided to scrap on Adah's love for her bolster which we call it her 'Chou Chou'. It means smelly in chinese. She just grew so attached to it around the time she was 8 moonths old and will simply hold it around the house wherever she goes. (Thankfully she never asked to bring it out when we had to leave the house) At first, we thought she just loved to cuddle it but later on I discovered she was obsessed with twirling the little label on the side of her bolster cover. It happened when we ran out of covers during a period of stomach flu and vomiting. We were out of covers after washing them of her vomit and tears and I had to use one which came without the side label. She started fussing and crying and tried so hard to explain in her toddler language what she was looking for!

I sprayed the hearts cut out from KI lace cardstock with Glimmer Mist (shared half from Annissa and brought back from Singapore!) and had hidden journaling in the accordian sticker (with a moon picture) attached with a brad. I went easy on this LO and wanted the focus to be on the photos so I tried not to over-embellish the page and fill it up every where. Paper is from Sandylion which I bought off Taobao here in Shanghai at a super good deal!


It says: You have to hug your bolster with you since you were 8 months old. When you will younger, you will kick up a fuss and throw a tantrum if you can't have your bolster when you were sleepy. I had to buy a few spares just in case you threw up or dirtied them, but all you actually cared about was the feel of twilring the small label on the side of the bolster cover when you needed to fall asleep! I had to have covers specially sewn for you with a ribbon similar to the white one in the LO when the manufacturer stopped producing these covers and had to ravfe about how pretty the pink flowers were in order to get you to accept them!

Cards Designed for Simon Says Stamp

I have been on such a roll in the last fortnight! Since our return from Singapore, Adah was plunged into a full-day sumemr school program. Since the school has a no-nap policy, Adah was sent to bed around 7.30 pm every evening and she hardly argued about it because she was so exhausted by the end of the day. By the end of the first week, her enthusiasm for "summer school with no nap" weaned off and she was beginning to hanker for her "luxurious afternoon naps" and began whining for school to end. And I took advantage of the situation to train her to fall asleep on her own without having me to lie in with her. She hardly bargained as she ws so exhausted. By the second week, I also started Asher on sleeping on his own. He took some time to get adjusted and falls asleep later than his usual these days as he is constantly coming off his bed to "check on me", but he hardly protested or cried (which surprised me!!!) He probably picked up the cues from his sister and was pretty good with adjusting to fall asleep without Mummy by his side.

So all these freed me up and now that I dun fall asleep while lying in with the kids, I have more time in the nights to scrap! And I am so enjoying it. I finished almost an LO every night in the first week and over this past week, I came up with the following 5 sets of cards for my DT assignment with Simon Says Stamp after collecting my stamps from Singapore during my last trip. I am not going to start again on how my post keeps missing in Shanghai but I am so happy to hold my SB kits and new papers and stamps that I spent a few nights just going through them over and over again!

These are my cards to share! Will be putting up my new layouts soon also... ...

1) So Happy For You




2) I Have You in my Heart




3) Just Saying Hello




4) Sending Warm Wishes (Set of 4 Gift cards)


5) Just Saying Hello (Tri-fold card)

Ramblings....and a few toots!

I still can't access Blogger directly because blogsites and Youtube are still being blocked by the government here. Now with the Xinjiang riots, even facebook and google has been blocked! It really bewilders me to how much and the extent the government here can block...after all, the internet is almost non- exhuastive and the anoymous proxies and search engines available...

I am updating my blog via a proxy. It does not allow me to upload photos so I can't share some of the layouts I have been up to, playing with my new purchases from my last shopping spree in Singapore! But I really want to share some good news here. One of my layouts 'Motherhood' was chosen by our LSS (Made with Love) forum as the Layout of the Week #33. Another 'all of 2 months' was voted as the favourite layout over at Lotus Paperie and last, hopefully not least, my 'Fun in the Sun' layout was also chosen as the winning layout over at {Create}!

It is really exciting and thrilling to know that your layouts are appreciated and it does give me the motivation to continue to create. However, at some point, I was beginning to feel a little tired of scrapping for the sake of joining all these challenges. Not that I dun enjoy it, I really do but it can be so draining and meaningless, just churning LOs after LOs just to take part in these challenges. So now, I scrap sometimes for my own pleasure or when I am inspired and when mojo strikes or when one of the themes or challenge focus really strikes a chord in my heart like the one from Scrap Inspire Create which got me started on the 'Motherhood' layout. I wanna scrap to leave a momento for the kids, so I feel that they have to be meaningful...But but but...if any of you readers can access those blogs that I am talking about above, please pop over to take a look at mine and many even more talented works available...that was what got me started in the first place. I am totally amazed by the beautiful works that can be churned out from paper alone!