Yay!! I'm in for another term as DT at Let's Scrap!!

Let's Scrap shared a status.

Yesterday

Our new Design Team at Let's Scrap!! Looking forward to seeing 4 months of inspiring work from them... Congrads everyone!!

We are happy to announce our new design team starting as per the 1st of January 2014:
Here are the names of the girls that will be rocking our sketches before you all rock them:

(in no particular order)

Susanna Granroth
Janet Musto
Jamie Arthur
Lori Johnson Apgar
Michelle Looi
Jen Leeflang
Hanne Sinkerud
Ezme Hartman
Ada Nicholls
Bridgie Myburgh

Congrats to all of them!

My Favourite Layouts from my DT Term (Sep to Dec 13)

All these sketches have been done using sketches from Let's Scrap.

 

This was my DT contribution for a Fussy Cut Challenge.  Just about everything on this page has been hand cut with a scissors.  What a super challenge!!

This my DT sketch contribution.  What is special about this layout is that I made the flowers I used here from my paper scraps.  And it is special as it is a layout of my darling mom.

And this was my DT contribution for a challenge to scrap ourselves.  I love the eclectic look of the shabby chic and lacey bows with the somewhat loud carnival patterned paper.

And this is my DT contribution to my tutorial of making a reconstructed page.  Love how it all came out - just perfect for my heritage of myself as a child.

My Single DT layouts

All these single layouts done between September and December 2013 with Let's Scrap Sketches.

My Design Team Double Layouts

All done between September to December 2013 with Let's Scrap sketches.

Reflection of my past term as DT member of Let's Scrap

I thought it would be good to reflect on my term as member of the Design Team of Let's Scrap, especially as this term draws to a close on 31 December 2013.

First of all:  my DT term is a big TICK off my scrapbooking goals for 2013.  Yes, I made a Design Team and what a lovely, happy experience it has been.  I made a total of 18 projects including 5 double pages in 4 months. For most scrappers, that might seem a little, but for a full-time working girl like me, I really am pleased with my output over this time.

So as I come to the end of this DT term, I thought it would be good to share my layouts in the next few posts that I have not yet put on my blog.

What a crazy 4 months it has been!!

Wow!!  Where has 2013 gone to!!  Time has gobbled up a whole year so quickly.... 12 months has just gone in a flash!  Especially these last 4 months - what a wonderful scrapbooking journey it has been!

My term as a design team member on Let's Scrap has been an amazing experience.

My stack of scrapbook layouts has just grown over the last 4 months and how thrilled am I to see how many 2 page layouts there are amongst them.  I am definitely a 1 pager girl, so have really challenged myself to turn in double page layouts for many of my DT submissions.  So this has been a wonderful growth experience for me.

I also had the fun task of putting together a tutorial which was so much fun.  I will put up my tutorial on making a reconstructed or altered page in a separate thread on my blog.

Besides my scrapbooking design contributions it has been wonderful to be part of such a lovely scrapbooking family.... and best of all gathered so many lovely scrapping friends along the way!  It has been a privilege and honour to be part of the international design team of one of the best and friendliest scrapbooking groups in the world!  I will share my Let's Scrap experiences over the next few posts.

I have loved every minute of my term with Let's Scrap.  Thanks to the admin ladies for choosing me!!

Refreshing my Blog Soon - in Progress

Sorry that my poor blog has taken a backseat of late, but I have had a computer problems with my laptop struggling to compute!!

Santa brought me a lovely new laptop for Christmas so I will be getting my blog back up to date and current soon!

MERRY CHRISTMAS !!!

Wishing all my family and friends a very Merry Christmas!!!

Let's Scrap sketch layout 9-25-13

This is my Design Team contribution for the weekly sketch 9-25-13 on Let's Scrap.

I have had these beautiful photos of our first home town in New Zealand (named by it's Maori name of Whakatane) for quite some time now.  When I saw this sketch I thought it was perfect to showcase these gorgeous photos.  The layout is more about the photos to be truthful but that is often why I do scrapbooking.  I do like photography and when I am fortunate enough to take really good photos, getting out a layout to bring out the best in them is very important to me.

Just a little bit of info about this beautiful little town on the east coast of central North island.

Welcome to Whakatane, New Zealand. The pacific jewel of the Bay of Plenty.

The main centre for the Eastern Bay of Plenty, Whakatane is one of the sunniest towns in New Zealand. Just off shore is White Island, a spectacular active volcano that can be visited by launch or helicopter. Whakatane is also known for its fishing – more yellow fin tuna are caught here than anywhere else in the country.

The name "Whakatane" commemorates an incident occurring after the arrival of the Mataatua. The men had gone ashore and the canoe began to drift. Wairaka, a young chieftainess, said “Kia Whakatane au i ahau” (“I will act like a man”), and commenced to paddle (which women were not allowed to do), and with the help of the other women saved the canoe.

Whakatane invites you to throw away your watch and soak up the special lure of the ocean, drink in the warmth of the sun, and marvel at the relaxed friendliness of the people as you discover all the little things that make Whakatane so exceptional.

We loved our 18 months in this wonderful town and that is why a piece of my heart will always be in Whakatane - and that is the story of my journal tags.

September 13 White with Pistachio Challenge

I haven't played for quite some time with a challenge from the White with 1 blog, but I just love the challenge for this month:

White with Pistachio Green

I am not generally a fan of green, but when I was digging through my stash of paper, I found I had heaps of green and surprise, surprise, various shades of Pistachio green.  Goodness!  I did not think I had soooo much green paper.  So when I laid them all out and saw how amazing they looked with the white cardstock, I just had to do a layout.  I had the perfect little photograph of my darling little Jessica to scrap ... and well here is the result.  And I must say, I absolutely adore how it came out!  I think I am fan of green papers now!

First DT Layout

Well, this is my first layout for the Design Team of Let's Scrap:

Loved the sketch we had to use.  I had this beautiful old photo of mom and dad's wedding.  I chose to do my favourite scrapbooking style of shabby chic.  I had a great fun making my own tags and playing with my scrap bag of lace.  I really love how it has turned out!!  It really wanted this page to be a special tribute to my parents.  

Whoop Whoop!! I am a Design Team member!!

Dream come true!!!  I have been chosen to be on the Design Team for Let's Scrap for the next period!!  I am sooooo excited.... Stunned, nervous, excited... and more.  I am really honoured to be part of the Design Team and already working on a number of projects.

Here is a link to the announcement:

http://letsscrap.ning.com/forum/topics/design-team-announcement-1

Let's Scrap Weekly Sketch

Hubby is on this way to South Africa 30 August 2013, and I was asked to do a page of the two of us for our great niece, Michaela - for her to remember us.  She will be lucky enough now to meet Edwin on his visit but I have no idea if I will ever meet this little cutie pie.  Sadly this is the heartache of immigration .... being so far away from family ....

So I did this page of hubby and myself.  I based the page on the Let's Scrap weekly sketch 8-21-13.  I need to put in a frame for Michaela, so had to keep the layout flat.  I decided to use a nice big photo of us and play around with a background of soft patterned patterns and flat embellishments.  I framed the photo with a frame of red paper to give the photo emphasis.

This is the sketch from my favourite Scrapbooking site Let's Scrap this week.  I loved the simplicity of it and used it for this layout.

And this is a photo our great niece Michaela, who will get the layout for her bedroom.

Another kiddy page

I found this super cute photo of my great niece, Tyla, starting Kindy School and couldn't resist scrapping it.  I loved the bright primary colours of photo.  I dug out some of my bright patterned papers and thought the white carstock would make the colours pop.

I based this layout on a sketch from Let's Scrap.

My Siblings

These are layouts of myself and my brothers.  These pages are part of my earlier scrapbooking days.  I am not quite sure when I did them, but probably sometime in 2006.  It is when I started out discovering my passion for scrapbooking ..... but I really love these pages.  I look back on them with fondness and love the retro feel to them.  I had very little scrapbooking experience then but I do remember that I spent days, no probably weeks, agonising over the layouts trying to get them to look good.  And it was while researching scrapbooking techniques that I discovered the wonderful effect of tea staining.  I used this technique to stain my journal sheets used here.

This first layout is of my youngest brother.

And this my page.

And this is the page of my eldest brother.

Let's Scrap Sketch Challenge

I just love this lovely photo of my great nieces Emma and Zoe.  I absolutely love the rich vibrant colours and couldn't resist scrapping it.  I decided on what I call a "soft grunge" look to the layout, but also wanted to keep it girly, so added the touch of floral patterned paper and matching paper flowers. I really like how it came out.

I based the layout on the weekly sketch of 7 August 2013 on the Let's Scrap group. 

 I just used the left side of sketch.

My kiddy layouts

I always envy those scrapbookers who have children to scrapbook.  Babies and little ones are perfect subjects for loads of photos and it is always fun to do layouts of these gorgeous little people.  I always wanted to be able to do kiddy pages, but not having children of our own has been a bit of a scrapbooking challenge.  Fortunately over the last few years, our nieces and nephews have started families of their own and this has opened up a new passion in my scrapbooking journey.  At last I could venture into the realm of doing fun kiddy pages and they have been an absolute delight to do.  I love the opportunity of playing with beautiful bright colours, young frivolous patterns and super cute embellishments. 

Here are some of my recent layouts.  (Aplogies for the photographs - still grappling with the best way to photograph my layouts)

My beautiful Parents

Just keeping the focus on my beautiful parents.....

These lovely old photos of them on their wedding are just too beautiful for words.  These were taken in 1947, when digital photos and photoshop did not even exist in the imagination.  They were taken by a huge clumbsy camera of that era, yet the quality and colour is outstanding.  I just have to admire them, because they are a work of art.  I wish I could knew the photographer, but whoever he is, he is a master photographer and surely loved his craft to have produced these beautiful photographs.

I thought to share them first here on my blog.  I plan to scrapbook them shortly as the next chapter of my heritage album.

Some of my favourite layouts

Just been looking through my scrapbooking albums and wanted to share some of my favourite layouts I have done recently. 

These layouts are of the two important people in my life, my husband and my darling mom back in South Africa.

Let's start at the very beginning

Our very existence comes about by means of our parents who conceived us and bring us into the world.

And so it is appropriate that I start my heritage album with my parents... my beautiful, gracious mother, Freda Catherine Jones and my handsome, sporty father, Dudley Leo Rogers.

And the day they got married on 1 November 1947, is the day my family started.

I wanted to keep my layout clean and simple with just a little bit of shabby chic lace and a small cluster of flower embellishments.  I really wanted to showcase these lovely photos of my young parents and did not want to crowd my layout with too much distracting embellishments.  Had to restrain myself somewhat ... but I really love this page.

Update on "My Heritage"Page

I have just set up a new page on my blog called "My Heritage". I thought this might be a good place to keep my Heritage Scrapbooking layouts together.  These layouts are very special to me, so I wanted to keep them together in one place on my blog.  So feel free to check on this page from time to time.

Update on my BW2 June challenge

Oh, how awesome!  Just checked the Black With Two blog and saw that I was the winner of the June layout challenge.  Loved doing this challenge and it is even special because I got to do this wedding layout of us.  And thanks to my hubby for photographing the page - you did a great job!  Now you've got yourself a job as my layout photographer LOL!

Black with 2 July Challenge

Time for a Black with 2 challenge.  The June challenge was Dominant Black with sugared pinks and Mocha Browns. 

I just love using pink on my layouts and the colour combination with brown is just perfect for my Shabby Chic Layouts.  I found this lovely wedding photo of hubby and I amongst my mom's photos when I took them over from her and it was perfect to scrap for this challenge.

I really love this wedding photo of us ... it is both serious and happy.  Two extreme emotions really, but then getting married is really quite a huge and serious step in two peoples' lives.  It is also a happy celebration of two lives becoming one.  I also see nervousness and apprehension in our eyes of the unknown that lies ahead in our lives, but there is also a dreamy look of young love about the photo. 

Getting married is a journey into the unknown, it requires a lot of hard work and sacrifice.  But it can be a journey filled with lots of happiness and joy and unforgettable experiences.

We have been married for almost 29 years and yes, there have been the tears, the arguments and hard times... but my overwhelming memories of the time Edwin and I have spent together over these last 29 years has been of an amazing, exciting and joyous life together.  We have lived a great life together so far and had a wonderous and successful marriage.

Guess that is why this photo is so special to me... it was taken at the start of our life together on 18 August 1984 .... our Chapter One you could say......29 years later we are still writing our book of life.

Scrapbook Challenge

Amongs all the excitement and activity of buying our first house here and packing up to move, I have tried to keep busy with my scrapbooking.

Let's Scrap had a really great challenge recently where we were asked to create a layout using only one piece of white card stock and black ink and black pen.  We were allowed to use another colour (limited use) but the idea of the challenge was to create a background on the white card stock and not use coloured or patterned paper except to mat the photo.

Ohweeeee!  That was a super challenge for me as I so like to use a lot of paper and do the layering thing.  But once I grabbed the black pen and started drawing and doodling on the white card stock it was such fun.  For my layout I decided to stick to the black and white colours with just a splash of red ribbon and little red hearts for colour pop.  This colour scheme was just perfect for a 30 year photo of the two of us on hubby's 21st birthday celebration. 

And for me, it brought me extra luck... and I was the winner of lucky draw for the challenge.  So that was great for me.... first time I have won a challenge at Let's Scrap.

But for me, this is just a special layout.  Hubby and I, 30 years ago, special moment, special memory.  And I would never ever have thought to do a layout like this and I just love it!! It has to be one of favourite layouts I have ever done!