Multiplying the Love

Have you seen the latest news that has gotten me all tingling with excitement?


Yes, Made With Love is opening a store in Jarkarta come June.


Can't wait for the sneaks!

Last week I was here:








Followed by:















Not sure if I have recovered!

Miss Spoken

Daddy's phone rings.
E: Who's calling you Dad?
D: It's grandpa.
E: Why grandpa call you?
D: To tell me something.
E: What grandpa to tell you what grandpa what grandpa to tell you something …
Me: What did grandpa tell you?
E: Not me - Daddy!
Laughter all round.
E: What's so funny?

Morning Has Broken

I count it a blessing to be greeted by this each morning, right from my front door.

I did this for Made With Love but have yet to post here.

As we usher the Christmas season with our traditional family dinner, I wanted to remind myself of the reason behind the celebration.

Layout assembled on a Hambly, which explains the background visible through the transparent page.

Sizzix dies used:
657362 (Flower #2 with bonus embossing folder) and 657492 (Tattered pinecone)

I just love using a die in different ways. The tattered pinecone die makes a great rose if you "wind" the cardstock tightly.

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/32756507@N08/6704494531/][img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7142/6704494531_d5d7938b76.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/32756507@N08/6704494531/]IMG_9356s[/url] by [url=http://www.flickr.com/people/32756507@N08/]fishystop[/url], on Flickr

Brilliant! That's my girl!

Love mists but can't afford to get messy? Me too.  Instead of misting, I painted the colours onto my layout.  While I usually like the vibrant colours of the Maya Mists, I needed a more muted palette for this layout. So I brushed the colours on the *back* of the sheer paper.
Full strength colour viewed from back:
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/32756507@N08/6890837436/][img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7071/6890837436_08e9e6bf33.jpg[/img][/url]

Full strength colour viewed from back:
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/32756507@N08/6890837444/][img]http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6217/6890837444_b583485310_n.jpg[/img][/url]

Softened colour viewed from front:
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/32756507@N08/6890837430/][img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7224/6890837430_51451c0a97.jpg[/img][/url]

Other details:
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/32756507@N08/6890837426/][img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7099/6890837426_280afedc58.jpg[/img][/url]

Maya Road products used:
Kraft Mini Tickets
Maya Mists in Cherry metallic, Blue Raspberry metallic
Trinket pins
Clear stamp sheet - Eureka

Mind the Gab (continuing the Miss Spoken series)

E: You still headache?
Me: Yes (battling my migraine for several days actually)
E: Is it the aircon blowing at your forehead?

Me: Ouch!
E: Never mind your headache okay? I love you!

Me, now

My Big Red just became better

Many of my scrapbooking friends know how much I looooovvvveeee my 3M Adhesive Transfer Gun aka Advanced Tape Glider (ATG) which I nicknamed Big Red. One thing that bugs me is how sometimes the tape slips off the roller. I read a tip to put a cardboard "shim" over the spool. Well, I like to see how much tape I have left in case I need to pack an extra when I scrap away from home. So ...

With 2 plastic items, I have modified Big Red to be a better and meaner tape dispenser!

First item is the leftover core from the tape. Next, a thick piece of clear plastic - mine was from a recycled report cover, but a flat portion of packaging plastic would work too. I trimmed it roughly into a circle slightly larger than the spool holder and made a hole in the centre the size of the core.

Don't mind the sticky gunk still left on the core, it helps to keep everything in place.

Just fit the clear plastic over the tape spool and pop the core on top. It will click slightly.

Another thing to do often is to clear the take-up spool so that everything rolls smoothly.

I mean, rip off that paper tape, leaving a short 4-6" tail like below:

Then reattach the free end on the take-up spool. I put a bit of adhesive (yeah, some of the sticky gunk will do) and start rolling away.

Here's the set-up:

And another showing the perrrfect alignment.

Gotta love my Big Red!

My special day made ultra special by these:

Made by my darling girls!

Concentrating hard to spell correctly.

Drawing a cake and insisting on putting 46 candles on it. After losing count many times over, she numbered each candle as she went along.

Scalloped cream of "vaneenaa".

All done!

The rectangles with words inside? She said they are messages. Must be screenshots!

 So blessed!

Riding the fun times - and two ideas to share

Did the September schools hols just fly by in the blink of an eye? All too soon it is back to school again.  The little one and I did manage to catch some fun times in a little corner of Singapore where, to her delight and mine, she could sit on vintage carousel horses and I feast my eyes on these nostalgic eye-candy:

Here's the layout that I did to capture that idyllic afternoon.  There are two specific ideas that I want to highlight and I hope they will inspire you to look at scrapbooking tools and products in new way.

First, a twist on a favourite product - the washi tape. I got my inspiration for the background from the many pictures and products (if you're on Pinterest or something similar, you would have seen lots too) of anything OMBRE. My take on it is using washi tapes in varying shades of turquoise, four different patterns in fact, and laying them horizontally from dark to light tones.

Then pulling the colours from the carousel horses, I used a sheet of Prima Zephyr 6x6 paper and cut the oval out so that it forms a frame for my photo. To add some sparkle across the page, I glued down rhinestones in varying sizes randomly.  There really is no rule to the placement - I literally scattered the rhinestones from above the paper and glued them down exactly where they happened to land.

Now let me share a technique that might motivate you to use your embossing folders in new ways.  The oval mat which I coloured in Glimmer Glam Tide Pool and Organic Garden is actually embossed with TWO different embossing folders - Sizzix Elegant Wreath (657086) and Flower Clusters (657255). You just need the very innovative Embossing Diffuser (I used Oval #1 in 657945).

If you are choosing folders to use, it helps if one is more "open" if the other is relatively "busy" as, in my case, the "busy" pattern of Flower Clusters is superimposed on the "open" area of the Elegant Wreath.

But really, any two embossing folders will do. Here I paired the same Flower Clusters with Rays (656650).

The picture below shows the placement of the oval plates on each embossing folder before you run the cardstock and embossing folders through the machine.

I hope you have a chance to try this technique. Do share your creations in the MWL gallery! Have a great week!

Mary had a little …

E making up silly songs in the back seat:

Mary had a little calf its skin is black and white
A little chick with rainbow feathers
A little piggy …

Mind the Gab

Recent conversations with E.

E: Mommy can we go to the park at three o'clock?
Me: No, it's too hot at three. Better at four.
E: Is it still hot at four-fifteen?
Me: A little.
E: Okay, then we'll go at four-sixteen.

E: When I came home on the bus that day the construction was blocking the way. They were pouring glue on the road!
Me: Oh, did they use scissors?
E: No Mommy! You're so funny!

Through the Years

My in-laws will be celebrating their wedding anniversary soon.  Well into their eighties, theirs exemplify the greatest love story that spanned decades and continents.  It is a long and beautiful romance and I wish them many more years of endearing stories! 

Since this is a heavily-embellished layout, I used a canvas board for better support. And it takes the various mists and paints very well.  The slight texture also gave it some "tooth" to grab the stickles, glitter and german glass.

I just picked all sorts of mediums to play with and ended up with about twenty bottles of mists, stickles, dimensional pearls, reinkers.  And that's excluding the Glossy Accent, Beacons and matte mediums for adhesives!  So let me try to list them here: Dylusions sprays in Lemon Zest, Squeezed Orange, Fresh Lime; Distress reinkers in Scattered Straw; Adirondack Dimensional Pearls in Lettuce, Butterscotch and Bottle; Stickles in Gold, Cinnamon, Sequins, Orange Peel; Distress Stain in Mustard Seed, Shabby Shutters and Tumbled Glass; Perfect Pearls in Plum, Blush and Interference Violet; ColorBox reinkers in Pink and Green; Archival Ink in Black.

My favourite corner began with a juxtaposition of metal, pearls and wood.  After looking at the random items on my scrap desk, I decided to add paper raffia and hemp twine from a previous project to the mix as well. So now I have a good reason not to tidy up between projects - you never know whether a piece of this-and-that will end up as a perfect touch for the next project!

Family ... we have a lot in common ... such as our love for jigsaw puzzles.
Here is a layout for MWL capturing a precious moment we shared, fixing puzzles after Sunday dinner.

The photos alternate with clear sheets embossed with Sizzix folder (657490 Love Print) and coloured on the reverse using Dimensional Pearls (Red Pepper, Butterscotch, Lettuce and Bottle) and Stickles (Lime Green and Orange Peel) - using mostly my fingers LOL!  The front was inked with Staz-On (Jet Black and Timber Brown).

I loaded the background with a riot of colours by spraying with Dylusions Ink Spray (Fresh Lime, Vibrant Turquoise, Squeezed Orange and Lemon Zest) as well as inking with the new Spring Seasonal Distress (Peacock Feathers).  A few knick-knacks from my stash of embellishments and I'm done!

I loved getting my hands messy - except when I washed my hands in a hurry and arrived at work looking like this: