Playing with Punches and Cutters

The weather outside may be frightful, but I am scrapping with Spring and Summer colors. I've been using my punches and cutting tools quite a bit lately and thought I would share a few projects.

Here is a card I made using my hexagon punch, some paper scraps, and some stamps from Heartfelt Creations.

I used the a Christmas corner punch from Kreaxions to make the corners on this card for my sister's birthday.

Here is a scrapbook page I made with our summer vacation photos. I used the same Christmas corner punch from Kreaxions to make the green doily. I also used my circle cutter.Look at the silly expression on my husband and son in the lower photo, scrapping these vacation photos makes me happy.

Here is another vacation page using my circle cutter and punches, using a sketch from Stuck?! 

Thanks for looking!

Over the Rainbow

We stayed at a remote location in the rainforest in Suriname. After an amazing stay, we took this little plane from the grass airstrip to the capital city of Paramribo. We saw breathtaking views from the plane windows, but I was surprised to see a rainbow and then a double rainbow out the airplane window.

I made the dot rainbow using modeling paste, a Tim Holtz template, and assorted mist to color the paste. I used this sketch from Let's Scrap and this is my entry into December challenge at Scrap and Play (red, green, and trees).

Thanks for looking!

Hanukkah Cards

I only make a few Hannukah cards each year since I only send them to immediate family. Sometimes I give them Hebrew school teachers also. Here's the first one I made this year:

 I used this sketch from Sketch-n-Scrap, the fall trees from the Cozy fall mood board at SWAT, and linking back to paper issues.

Thanks for looking!

Rainforest Birds

We saw many unique birds in the rainforest or Suriname, especially the Toucan. It's a wonder how they fly with those big beaks. Here's a page with the Toucan and a few other birds we saw along the Kabalebo River:

This is for the Turkey challenge at SWAT (T= Tropicana collection, U = Umber round letter stickers, R = red flowers, K = Kanban crafts stamps, E = Egret, Y=yellow beak on the toucan) and the Birds of a Feather link party at Paper Issues.

Thanks for looking!

Macaws

Some of the highlights of visiting the Amazon rainforest in Suriname were the birds, especially the Macaws. We saw them several times, but were only able to get these great photos of them on the last day, when we took one final boat ride up the Kabalebo River.

This is a lift of Jody Rogers for challenge 14 at Scrap & Play and I'm linking to Birds of a Feather at Paper Issues. 

Thanks for looking!

Seattle Space Needle

My husband recently had a business trip to Seattle and our younger son got to join join him and do a little sightseeing. Here is a page with photos from their visit to the Space Needle. I used this sketch from Stuck?! sketches.

Thanks for looking!

Jodensavanne

Jodensavanne was the site of the original Jewish community in Suriname. It dates back to the early 1600's and is located about 50 km south of the capital city of Paramaribo.  Most of the Jewish community had left this site and moved to Paramaribo by the beginning of the 19th century. I believe this is the oldest continually existing Jewish community in the Americas. For a bit on our journey to get to Jodensavanne, look at this post.

I used this sketch from Sketch-n-Scrap. This is also my entry in the Thankful challenge at Scrap & Play (T= tags, h=heartfelt creations paper, a = adhesive, n= numbers, k = kids (in photo), f= fussy cutting, u=uppercase letters, l= lowercase letters).

Thanks for looking!

Neon Colors

Neon colors are very popular with the boys these days. Zachary, who used to wear all dark blues and blacks, now wears plenty of neon colors. For Halloween, he used some neon props leftover from his Bar Mitzvah with a neon running shirt for his costume. We took a few quick photos before he headed off for school and then out with friends. For this layout, I used this sketch from Stuck?! sketches and had fun playing around with mists, templates, and mixing multiple colors of ink on a stamp.

While the bright supplies were still on my desk, I used them to make this birthday card. This is also my first attempt to use modeling paste, which is used  to create texture in the form of the larger hexagons. I used this card sketch from sketch-n-scrap. 

Team Party

This page is about my son's soccer team from last Spring. They had a new coach and won their flight. They learned how much difference a good coach can make and had a great time. This photo is from the team party at the end of the season.

I used this sketch from Stuck? sketches and am linking this up to Paper Issues for their fall link party. Even though this is about the Spring season, soccer is a fall sport and I used fall colors (and wood).

Thanks for looking!

La Boca

La Boca is a colorful neighborhood in Buenos Aires filled with little artist shops and markets. We enjoyed exploring and did a little shopping, mostly buying soccer jerseys for the boys. It was rainy when we were there, which is why we aren't in any of the photos, but we still enjoyed it.

I used this sketch from sketch-n-scrap.

Thanks for looking!

Making my own flowers

I recently learned how to make paper flowers using these heartfelt creations stamps. Making them is a good form of relaxation on a stressful day.  I made this card for one of my scrapbooking friends.

It is my entry into the primary colors drill at S.W.A.T.

Thanks for looking!

Buenos Aires

Here are some photos of the Buenos Aires skyline at different times of the day. The top one was taken from our hotel room and the lower ones were taken from the neighborhood immediately surrounding our hotel.

I did this for the Labor Day challenge at Paper Secrets (L=letters; A= arrow; B=Buenos Aires, Basic Grey, brad; O= October afternoon enamel heart; R=red).

Thanks for looking!

Stories from Suriname

We traveled to Suriname last summer. For those of you who don't know, Suriname is a small country in the Northern part of South America. It is mostly rainforest and the capital city is called Paramaribo (accent on the "mar"). Although mostly we went to see the sites, traveling around a remote country can be an experience in itself, which is documented in this layout.

The journaling reads:We needed to cross the Paramaribo river to get to Jodensavanne. The bridge had been hit by a boat (years ago) and was replaced by this "ferry". The ferry had limited hours, long lunch breaks, and a driver who went when he wanted. It was odd fully loaded with 3 cars plus people. It seems there are no real plans to fix the bridge.

This is the first of many layouts from our Suriname trip. I used this sketch from sketch-n-scrap. I'm also linking this up to Anything Goes at Paper Issues. 

Thanks for looking!

Destination Run

My son always wanted to do a community run at a destination and he loves trail runs. We were going out to San Francisco to visit my sister and this mountain run in Marin seemed like the perfect opportunity. He was so excited for it and he did amazing, finishing 4th overall and obviously 1st in his age group since almost everyone else was an adult. The trail was really steep, you can see him heading up the switchbacks in the first couple photos before he disappeared out of sight. He says the trail was even steeper past that point,but I don't know since I was only a spectator.

I love everything about this layout. Obviously this was a special day for us and a great memory, but also I used almost all new products that I got ta a scrapbook convention last week. Playing with new products and fun photos brought back some of the joy of scrapbooking. The paper and stamps are from Heartfelt Creations, I used this sketch from Stuck? sketches, and I am linking this up for anything goes at Paper Issues.

Thanks for looking!

Tilt-a-Whirl

I finally finished the Thailand album, so I thought it was time to scrap something whimsy and fun. I had these photos of my son on the Tilt-a-Whirl at 2 different amusement parks that I had taken with my phone. I used this sketch from Stuck? sketches for this page.

Thanks for looking!

Everyone wins!

Anyone who knows us, knows that our whole family runs - some of us a bit faster than others. We did a community race this past Spring and all of us won or placed in our age group. It was a hilly 5K course with mulch on much of the trail so it was not an easy course - except for Zachary, every race is easy for Zachary!
Here is my layout about this race:

The layout design is based on an inspiration challenge over at Memorable Seasons and I would like to link this up to the Admit one challenge at Paper Issues. This layout meets the challenge about a winning achievement and also uses Fancy Pants product, although just the stickers across the bottom.

Thanks for looking!

Uruguay

This summer my husband had a business trip to Buenos Aires and I was able to go along. It is a beautiful city with great restaurants. While we were there, we took a ferry over to Colonia, a small Portuguese influenced coastal town in Uruguay with beautiful colorful buildings. Here are a couple of pages I made of our day in Uruguay.

Both pages use products from Fancy Pants As You Wish collection and the first one is based on a Pagemaps sketch. They were created for Memorable Seasons. I recently discovered the Paper Issues blog with an opportunity to link up projects using Fancy Pants products and tickets, so I thought I would share these 2.

Thanks for looking!

Hill Tribe Villages

I'm trying to finish up the album of our trip to Thailand.
We took a tour  of the Hill tribe Villages in the North. It should have been very interesting, but our guide didn't know anything. Unusual, because the other guides we had in Thailand were very good. These photos were taken in different villages, but I don't even know the names of the villages or what is special about each tribe, that's why the page has no journaling. I used this sketch from sketch-n-scrap and the Carte Postale collection from Basic Grey.

Thanks for looking!

New Members contest - Prize!!!

The scrapbook forums at Memorable Seasons  would like to get a few new members on the forums, friendly people who like to scrap and chat.  

They are offering a prize to one new member. This is open to new members  or lurkers who currently have less than 10 posts. Come over to Memorable Seasons and sign up in the forums. New members should check in on this thread or introduce themselves in the welcome section of the forum. At the end of July, the winner will be chosen among new members who have at least 20 new forum posts and 2 new layouts in the gallery. 

Hope to see you there!

Where we went

As you may have read in previous posts, we were fortunate enough to have enough frequent flyer miles to travel to Thailand over Christmas break. Our flight routing took us through Germany and Denmark where we had time to stop and look around. We also traveled into Myanmar while we were  staying in Chiang Rai. This page documents our routing and will be the first page in our Thailand album. I used one photo from t each country and calculated the total miles flown.

 This is also my entry to the Number challenge found here, another one of the sketch-n-scrap birthday bash challenges. 

Thanks for looking!

Family

My nephew Nathan became a Bar Mitzvah this past weekend. He really did a wonderful job on the service and we were all very proud of him. The reception was a little more casual. They gave away these bright hats as props and we I used my iPhone to take this fun photo of my children with their grandparents. At times like this, I really appreciate having a camera in my phone. They had a photo booth at the reception where we got this fun photo strip of my husband and me.

This page is my entry to the Sketch-n-Scrap birthday bash challenge to use confetti on a layout. The challenge can be found here. My confetti is made of enamel dots and stars, dimensional paint, stickles, and stamps. This page is also my entry to the Scrap and Play challenge 2 to use items for the word flowers (F- family, L - lattice template, O - orange paint and mist, W - washi tape white cardstock, , E - enamel dots, R - rhinestones, S - stamps, stars). Linking this up to Birds of a feather at Paper Issues for a layout about family.

Thanks for looking!

School Pages

Here are a couple of school-themed pages using Simple Stories Smarty Pants collection.

This page is of my son's number from the school show. The photos taken on stage were dark so I just used posed photos in their costumes. This is a lift of Jennifer Haggerty as part of the Sketch-n-Scrap birthday bash challenges. You can find her layout and challenge here.

This next page is part of the album that I am making for Benjamin's teacher. Obviously, it's the first day of school.  I also did it for one of the Sketch-n-Scrap birthday bash challenges, this one is to use pre-made cards and can be found here. I used 3 4x6 cards, one of which I cut down and 1 3x4 card.

Thanks for looking.

Wat Po

After returning from our trip to Thailand, I bought lots of gold-colored scrapbooking supplies since we saw many gold Buddhas and other Gold things there. I have since learned that there are man y shades of gold, most of which never seem to match my photos. Adding to that the huge number of photos we took and I am finding this trip very difficult to scrap. These pages are my attempt to capture Wat Po, one of the highlights in Bangkok.  It is the locations of the giant reclining Gold Buddha and many other Gold Buddhas. The Reclining Buddha was very difficult to photograph since it is so huge and the building around it is not really much bigger than it. As a result, I took photos at all different angles and hopefully we can piece the pictures together in our mind.

This first page was done for the Drill #30 challenge at S.W.A.T. (F- flower, L - Liquid Pearls, O - oversize photos, W- Washi tape, E - Echo Park pp, R - red flower centers).  

The final page shows some of the other smaller gold Buddhas around the complex. I used the April 1 challenge from Paper Secrets (J - Jenni Bowlin rub-on and sequin, O - Ombre Collection (paper used for journaling), K - Karen Foster spiral brads, E - Echo Park pp, S - Stickles). 

Thanks for looking!

Traveling without leaving the House

For my husband's birthday, Zachary and I created a Tour of Europe Dinner. This is the second time we did something like this, so it wasn't a huge surprise, but it is great fun. Zachary made a menu on the computer and all these little flags and he helped with the cooking.  In case you are interested in the menu, we had wine from France, Gravlax (smoked salmon) from Denmark, Belgian Endive salad, a cheese plate representing France, Netherlands, and Spain with crackers from Greece and peas for England.  The main dish was a home-made pizza representing Italy with dark chocolate fondue (Switzerland) for dessert.  Here is my layout about the dinner, you can see Zachary being the waiter with his French hand-towel. I used the paper-clip to attach the actual menu to the back of the page.

I used this sketch from Paper Secrets and the following items for the challenge: T- toothpicks, U- Uniball, L - Letters, I - ink, P- paperclip, papers, S - stitching.

Thanks for looking!

Earth Day

Happy Earth Day everyone! I am going to walk to my errands today, but before that, I thought I would make some cards. Can you believe it's almost Mother's Day? Once again, I used the Basic Grey Spice Market collection, it is so flexible for everything Spring. I used this card sketch from Sketch-n-Scrap.

Thanks for looking!

The Wise Children

Passover started last Monday evening. We hosted both Seders, big family dinners which occur on the first 2 evenings of the holiday. One of the readings in the Seder is about the 4 types of children, one of which is "The Wise Child."  The Wise Child loves Passover and asks lots of questions about the holiday to learn as much as possible. In addition to asking questions and participating in the discussions, my children also helped with all the cleaning and cooking.

I always feel like my son Zachary is "the wise child," but this year he did even more. My husband was out of town the days prior to Passover, and Zachary helped me with every aspect of cleaning the house, getting ready for Passover, and cooking. Of course, he especially helped with making desserts. During the Seder, he had an extra book with commentary and brought in additional discussion items from time to time. My husband and I were particularly proud of him.

For this layout, I used this sketch from Sketch-n-Scrap.

Although Benjamin helped with a lot of things, he was most proud and thrilled with these Chocolate-Coconut Meringue cookies that he made for the second Seder.

For this layout, I used this sketch from ScrapMuch? and Drill #29 from S.W.A.T. (second row: brads, stamp, 3 pictures, number die-cuts). Both pages use Basic Grey's Spice Market collection.

Linking this up to Birds of a feather at Paper Issues for a layout about family.

Thanks for looking!

Triangles, Triangles, Triangles

Purim is a Jewish holiday that is celebrated about a month before Passover, so it was in March this year. The kids have gotten too big to really enjoy the Purim carnival, and none of us are really into dressing in costumes, so the only part of Purim that we really enjoy these days is making Hamantaschen, the traditional triangle-shaped cookie. I had always learned that they were shaped to match Haman's hat, but this year my children informed me that they are actually supposed to shaped like Haman's ears. For those of you not familiar with the Purim story, it is the book of Esther, and Haman is the bad guy.

We made Hamantaschen every year when I was growing up, and it's a tradition that I wanted to pass on to my children. When they were diagnosed with celiac a few years ago and couldn't eat wheat, it was hard to find a flour that rolled well and tasted good, but we have made Hamantaschen almost every year anyway. This year, we used Pamela's Artisinal Gluten-free flour and they not only rolled well, they tasted delicious even to the one member of the family who can eat gluten (me). So, it was a huge success.

I made 2 scrapbook pages, one for each boy's scrapbook. On each page, I documented the actual flour that we used (so we don't forget) and his favorite flavors. Since the cookies have a triangular shape, I used lots of triangle shapes on my pages, using Echo Park's Ombre collection for the background. I also made little Hamantaschen embellishements by punching a circle from kraft cardstock, filling it with dimensional paint, folding the edges into a triangle, and inking the edges to simulate baking.

Here's Zachary's page, which use this sketch from Sketch-n-Scrap.

Benjamin's page is quite similar and I used this sketch from Sketch-n-Scrap. I found this site very recently and really like their sketches.

Thanks for looking!

Passover Cards

Passover is next week. While I am busy cleaning and planning the menu (or at least thinking about cleaning and planning the menu), I decided to make a few cards. Passover isn't generally a card-sending holiday, but I like to send a few, particularly to my sister in San Francisco who we won't see during the holiday. I usually use Jewish-themed scrapbooking products for my Passover cards, but this year I decided to use regular products in Spring colors and just add Passover sentiments.

This first card is my favorite, it uses the beautiful Basic Grey Spice Market collection (which I won) and this sketch from sketch-n-scrap. The sentiment is the same in both Hebrew and English and we say it at the end of the Passover Seder (dinner) every year.

I also used a well-known phrase from the Seder as the sentiment on this second card.  It's the first line of the 4 questions which are traditionally asked by the youngest child. Of course that will be Benjamin at our house. I received the papers in this card from Virginia (buttonscrapper) at scrapjazz.

This third card uses a similar design to the first one, but I used Graphic 45 French Country collection following the April color scheme from Scrapmuch?

Thanks for looking!

Exciting News

I'm very excited to be Guest Design Team member for the month of April at Memorable Seasons. I got the pleasure of working with the Bazzill Worldwide collection. Although this collection is actually quite flexible, I think it's perfect for scrapping old European cities. Luckily, we stopped in Frankfurt for a day on the way to Thailand and in Copenhagen for a few hours on the way back. Here are my layouts of our day in Frankfurt:

It was a few days before Christmas, so we got to enjoy the Frankfurt Christmas market. The market looked very much like the Christmas market we saw in Paris a month earlier, except for the German looking buildings in the background. I guess they must have these markets in many European cities. We even found a stand with gluten free cookies for the boys. 

Our stop in Copenhagen was really early New Year's morning. The city was still asleep and hadn't been cleaned up from the previous night's festivities. Despite this, we could show the boys what a beautiful city it is. We finally found a restaurant serving breakfast so we could get away from the cold temperatures for a few minutes. However, the dollar is so weak in Scandinavia that all we could afford was coffee and hot chocolate. 

Thanks for looking!

Golden Triangle

We visited Thailand over winter break and I'm slowly but surely tackling all the photos from the trip. Since the country has Gold statues everywhere, I bought lots of gold paper and embellishments for scrapping the trip. These photos are from an area in the north of Thailand where Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos come together. This area is called "The Golden Triangle." We actually had the opportunity to visit Myanmar, but not Laos. Even though there is no gold in the photos, I thought it would be good to scrap in shades of gold. The journaling was printed onto gold vellum.

I generally make 2 page layouts for vacations since we take so many photos. I used this sketch from S.W.A.T. for the left side and then just added a lot more photos to make a companion page.

Thanks for looking.

Selfies from Disney

My parents took the boys to Disney World over President's weekend. I asked my Dad to take some photos for me and I told Zachary to take some photos with his iPhone. Between that, I figured I would have enough to scrap. My Dad may have taken pictures, but he never sent them to me, and Zachary took mostly selfies of the 2 boys together. At least I have this one photo with my Mom in it and everyone is smiling.

I used this sketch from ScrapMuch? This page will go in Zachary's album and I have 2 more photos to make a Disney page for Benjamin.

Thanks for looking!

Scrapbook for the Teacher

I am one of the class Mom's for Benjamin's 4th grade class this year. Since it is the teacher's first year teaching, we thought it would be nice to give her a scrapbook documenting her first year of teaching. I have been collecting photos from other Moms and we will eventually have all the kids write something in the scrapbook. However, right now I'm just doing pages from the fall. Halloween is the biggest day of the year at our school so it will cover multiple pages. Here is a 2 page layout that will go in her album.

I recently discovered a new sketch site called ScrapMuch? I used one of their March sketches for the right side of this layout and then just did a mirror image to make it a 2-pager. I like the sketches and also tutorials on this site, so I will definitely be back.

Thanks for looking.

Sushi Chef

Benjamin's favorite food is sushi. It's not particularly the raw fish as much as the seaweed, the sticky rice, and some of the things they put inside, with mango being his favorite. When we were in Amsterdam last month, we went into one of those novel gadget stores and ended up getting this rice cube maker. It's a little plastic gadget which you can use to make these beautiful rice cubes. We added bits of cucumber, tofu, mango, caviar, and smoked salmon. Benjamin made most of these beautiful rice cubes and the whole family enjoyed eating them.

I used this sketch from Sketch-n-scrap and the Japanese themed Graphic 45 Bird Song collection.  Thanks for looking.

Welcome to my blog!

This is my first post, so I guess I am welcoming myself as I don't have any followers yet. I also hope that I will soon be welcoming Spring, but meanwhile I have been scrapping some photos I took from this bitterly cold and snowy winter we had. Most of the winter was too cold to fuss with the SLR outside, but I did manage to take some fun photos with my iPhone.

This layout shows my older son, Zachary, playing around in the snow after we finished clearing it off the driveway and onto these 4 foot heaps. This particular storm was cold, but not nearly as cold as some of the others, so the boys could play outside a bit after we finished shoveling.

I used the March sketch from scrapbook circle.