Pink Sketches #51 & #52

I know I am late in posting my take for Pink Sketches #51. I meant to upload and blog about it in Singapore but the cable in my mum's place suddenly died on us and on the last day of our stay there, it finally took hubby to get going to buy a new router and set up the wireless network for my sis. My mum is the happiest cos that meant that she need not move around wires that my sis had been dragging around everywhere when she wants to move around the apartment to do her school's project work.

So we came back to Shanghai, to a land where blog sites and facebook is blocked and I fell sick. Greedy me took Asher's leftovers and caught the flu bug from him. When I was young, I used to be around and about even when I was ill but now as I get older, I find myself becoming more of a whiny baby when I am ill. Plus being mum to two very active kids meant that you hardly get any rest as you still have to take care of them and attend to their needs! Sighs...

SO here's a quickie post compared to the previous long post. I'm going to sleep off that cold bug quickly once I am done here.

Sketch #51- Ur Cheeky-ness shows thru'


Sketch #52- Miserable
My gal's first halloween party in a new country, a new school and a new environment. We never celebrate Halloween in Singapore and all the treats and surprises did not make her any happier as she was missing home so badly. It was our first month in Shanghai.

Warning!!! Extremely LONGGGG Post!

I made this Family album to record memories of the apartment we lived in for almost 3 years in Shanghai. We would never have had a chance to live in such a lavish place on our own without the expat package! And I just wanted to record places around the apartment that the children spend most of their time in so that when they grow up later on, they will be able to remember this special time of their lives. Since this was about our home, I thought using this chipboard album shaped like a house was most apt!

I had a little ‘window’ added to the front page that opens up to this quote- Home is the sweetest type of heaven, added little flowers from Prima’s Bitty Bag and inked that flourish chipboard from Maya Road with Brilliance Cosmic Copper ink. I love how it looks like in real, sparkly and bright. That photo does not do justice to the color! I also cut out flowers from the BG doily lace paper and layered around the ‘window’ before adding the string of pearls for the border. Love the vintage, cottage look!



The first page of the album open up to our family photo which we took ourselves in the living room on the self-timer the day we arrived at the new home in Shanghai. I finally found a way to use the ‘Love’ transparency title from Prima here and added the bird for extra dimension.



The second page shows our gal doing her coloring at our dining table. Check out the chandeliers above her! They are cut out from my favourite Hamblys transparencies and I took that ‘popped up’ chandelier picture there that really hangs above our dining table! I know it looks pretty but in a regular apartment, I thought it looked tacky and over the board but I think most Chinese like to do up their homes this way. And I love how it blends in with the Hamblys here as I try to ‘re-do’ our dining area scene. I also stamped the edges of the album with flourishes. I loved trying out different techniques on my layouts and albums! Also hidden behind the photo of my gal is a tag with my hidden journaling.



The third and fourth pages of the album. I used mainly rub-ons and stickers here. It shows the glass windows in our living area which looks out to the spot where our gal waits for her school bus every morning with her daddy. You can’t see it from here but one of the photos also had the road name of the street we live on! The next page shows our boy standing against the height chart we put up and that corner doubles up as our punishment corner! I altered the bird sign that I had bought from a household store in Japan with ribbons and rub-ons and stuck it on top of the journaling card there.



The fifth and sixth pages of the album which shows pictures taken around our apartment. I simply layered it with Prima flowers, bird cages cut out from BG’s Porcelain’s papers, floral ribbons and the calendar tags there. I had stamped the flowers with the word ‘Blessings’.



The seventh and eighth pages of the album show our gal standing at the lobby of the private lift that brings us right to our doorstep and the kids at play in the bedroom. I stuck on a ruler sticker and highlighted the number 9 with another sticker to show the floor we lived at.





The last 2 pages of the album. I had stuck on the small flowers from Prima’s Bitty Bag collection to make it look like a roof. Loved how pretty they look here! It actually gives some dimension to the page. The last page shows the snow scene out of our back window when we experienced snow for the first time in our lives the first winter we were here. It was also the heaviest snowfall in Shanghai for 16 years and we were blessed to have such an experience even though it was freezing cold then.



The back cover of the album. I added the chipboard tree and used the acrylic characters to represent our basic family unit. I cut out our faces and stuck them onto the acrylic shapes and added the ‘clothes’ for us, using stickers and ribbons!

Here’s a final picture collage of some close- ups. I apologise for the really long post but I hope you guys have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed putting together this album and sharing it here! There is nothing intimidating about doing min-albums and they make fantastic Christmas gifts for family and friends! Just start early…*grins*



Supplies used:
Scenic Route House Chipboard Album
Basic Grey papers from Lemonade, Eva, Porcelain ranges
Maya Road Microfelt birds
Prima Transparencies
Maya Road Arcylic Family keychain
Jenni Bowlin Bingo cards, journaling tags and stickers

Pink Sketches #50

This layout is done using Pink Sketches #50. At first, I had several ideas on how to do this sketch- turn it into a Christmas themed, present top looking layout or turn it into a card sketch, etc etc. Then I went flipping through my papers and got to the new Websters Pages papers I had just got and they were calling out to me to use them!

I love love love the blue paper that I had used as the background and while working on the LO, I had already decided that I want to minimise the usage of ribbons and flowers on the layout since it's going to be about my boy. So I had to work around on using papers or embellishment for the two srips intersecting each other.

In the end, I turned the sketch 90 degrees anti clockwise and used the window cut out and chipboard streetlamp to form the vertical strip and lots of cut outs and layering for the horizontal portion. Overall, I like how it turned out and that's why I love using Kelli's sketches for my layouts. She leaves you with enough room to further explore on your own, and her sketches do not get too overly complicated.

That's Asher at 18+ months. He just grew up before my eyes, my little boy...

Got Food? for Scrap Inspire Create October Challenge/ Pink Sketches #43

Here is the layout for my first DT assignment with Scrap Inspire Create October Challenge. The challenge: to use felts, fabrics and ribbons on your layout or altered project. I was so excited that I completed the layout within 2 days of receiving the assignment from Jasmin! Lols.

I had also used Sketch #43 from Pink Sketches for the layout. I had submitted this layout to apply to be part of their DT team also because I simply loved how everything turned out in the end! I had used the striped paper from Scenic Route as the background and mounted on the red paper with foam squares for a layered look. I distressed and rolled up the edges of the paper where I cut out and I think my layout ended up looking like a table mat, though the concept only came to me to model the LO like one in the midst of doing it. It's strange how and when mojo can strike you. Its like you never wanted to walk the path but you decided to anyway, and you found something that you had been looking for along the way...

The pictures in the layout actuall show Adah having her first meal. I was such an inexperienced mum then and I didn't know what to prepare for her to wean her off milk and start on solids, so I made carrot puree. I hadn't realised that you need a blender to make it into puree so I thought if I cook it really long enough and mash it with a spoon, it will turn all squishy like baby food. It didn't turn out that way, and sometimes I wonder if Adah's difficult eating habits when she was younger had to do with my inexperience and ambitious experimenting which turned out otherwise!

I had used a piece of fabric to matt the top photo cos I thought the background stripes looked pretty and I could still show more of it through the 'peek-a-boo' fabric, If you look closely, I had used cloth stickers for the chef's hat and menu. For felt, I cut up my Prima Felt Matties which was meant to be used as a matt and added to them some felt stickers from Chatterbox as $embellishments. My ribbon is not that obvious but its that 'apple' strip at the right had side of the layout.

Adah ate lots of apple sauce/ puree when she was younger. She loved it and wanted it with her main meals almost all the time...I always like to use embellishments which remind me of the kids on my LO when its about them. My favourite part on the LO has got to be the vintage looking characters that I cut out from a postcard that I found amongst my stash! Lols...they were hidden away for so long that I almost forgot about them!

Please do visit SIC's blog and submit your challenges for a chance to win a RAK from Timi. It's her birthday month, so 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY Gal!' And if you want more inspo, check out what the rest of the DT members have came up with, I'm sure you will be impressed!

More Toots!!!

I am typing this at 6 am in the morning at Osaka. We have been here 3 days now, and I am too happy for words that I can access Blogger, Facebook and other blocked sites freely without having to go through anoymous proxies which sometimes block out half the contents anyway! Anyone noticed I changed my blogskin? Whoo hoo!!! So happy that even my blogskin looks so 'scrappy' now! The hubster says I am so addicted that I get withdrawal syndromes if I do not cut or paste or play paper for even a day...LOLs

It had been a terrible rainy day yesterday and we took a train out to Kyoto to check out the mountains and geishas but we ended up seeing nothing. How do you pacify two kids who have been dying to see monkeys, check out maps, manipulate an umbrella and a map in one hand and push a stroller in the other? SO we just gave up and made our way back to Osaka early...

Anyway, I just wanna share here that I have made it to the Design Team of Pink Sketches! My heart was just thumping away when I saw the e-mail header from Kellie and as I read the lines on the Monday afternoon just before we were supposed to fly here, it really made my day. And nothing could ruin it even with two bawling kids who were fighting to sit next to me on the plane!

I definitely was smiling through the day! I always loved sketches and I dunno how Kellie does it but the sketches that she comes out with weekly is fantastic! For me, I like to use sketches a lot as I am too lazy to think up of new layouts all the time. I just wanna 'head butt' into my stash and bring out all the embellishments once I am ready to scrap, and I like a ready sketch so I can just focus on embellishing and layering!I am a lazy scrapper I guess!