Scrapbooking Challenge #14

I'm in the middle of finishing challenge #13 but I thought I would post our next challenge today, in case I don't get to finish it today.

ETA: Finished the page, well almost, I just re-read the challenge and realized I didn't meet the criteria, it was supposed to be 5 images of equal size, oops!! Anyway, I'm just happy I got one done, here is mine for this week:



This week lift the following Creative Inspiration Copy Cat Wednesday, AND post your layout on their site (via Designer Digitals or however way you want!).

Have fun scrapping!

Circles!!

I did the challenge for this week - yippee!!! Here it is:

Happy Canada Day!

Today is Canada's 142nd birthday, and we have a day off to celebrate. Normally if we were teens we'd dawn our Canada T-Shirts, get drunk and party in the Market... but that is so 1996. Now we are responsible parents, who happen to be pregnant so now I'm too big to fit into my Canada T-Shirt, and I'll be drinking juice all day. It's the kids turn to party! We'll be heading to our friend's place this afternoon, and we're just hoping that the weather clears up as it's cloudy and rainy today. Seeing as it's 5:30 am right now (thanks to Gillian) I guess we still have hope that it will clear up by evening, but I doubt it, it's looking like the clouds are here to stay.

Ages ago, Beth and I were discussing how our digital scrapbooking has evolved over the 2 years that we've been doing it. After a number of tutorials and courses, mine has definitely gotten better. I'd say better supplies to more realistic drop shadows were the major improvements. I also suggested we post our very first digital pages and while Beth was a good girl and did it. I never did (or if I did, I don't recall doing it!). So here is the very first page I ever did... Yikes!

I say "yikes" for various reasons. 1. the bad attempt at creating "torn" paper 2. the terrible font used 3. no shadows to be seen, and 4. that frame - what was I thinking... But I still cherish the page, it's a photo of Abby and I walking down by the river in Wakefield in May 2007, I was 8 months pregnant with Gillian, kind of where I am today in this pregnancy.

To see all of my pages, just click on the link to the right... the whole history of my scrapbooking is there!

This week's Challenge #11 (?) is to do a page using circles. You can use circles for the photos or circles for embellishments. Have fun!

Layout Challenge #7

I can't believe I've completed the challenge for this week already! Just had this flash of inspiration!! Here it is:

I probably could have varied the photo a little more, but I decided to stick to this series I took of Gilly swinging on her birthday. Such a thoughtful pensive look...

Challenges, Swimming and Lightroom

I seem to be falling into a pattern of only updating my blog twice a week!! By the time I'm done downloading my photos and playing with them in Lightroom, I'm exhausted and can't muster the energy to update my blog!! So I'm falling behind!

I have managed to take a photo a day (pretty much) and try to complete the Photo challenge and layout challenge. This week's photo challenge was to pick a colour and photograph it. I choose Green, thinking with spring here, I'd have many green things to take photos of. I went for a walk down the Meech Creek valley hoping to get some nice shots of green things and this is what I got: BROWN!

Ok, maybe a little green here but that's pushing it!

I should have chosen vibrant brown as my colour! Luckily on Sunday I got this shot:

For the Layout challenge, Beth said it was to use brushes this week. My creative juices were not flowing last week, so it took me a while to get it done, but once I did one, I had to do another one. Here they are:

I picked up a tutorial of how to make custom brushes
from patterned paper, and so it was perfect timing.
The brushwork on this one are the flowers.


For this layout, the brushwork is the "dripped stains" on
the beige paper in behind the photo. I LOVE these brushes!

I will post the next challenges in another post later on.

For the rest of the weekend we had gymnastics and swimming. The girls started their first swimming lessons, Eric went with Gillian and I was to go with Abby, but as it turns out I signed Abby up for the Pre-School A lesson, which means the parents don't go in the pool with them. I wasn't sure how Abby would take it, but typical Abby, she just walked right in there without me and did the whole class with no worries at all! And I just sat there like a beached whale in a hideous maternity suite watching her... fun! I was so proud of her. It was so cute to see Gillian in the pool too, nervous at first, but getting into it by the end. I wish I could have taken photos.

And finally I'm trying to teach myself how to use Adobe Lightroom. It's a very fun program, and typical Adobe, has a million and one tools and techniques to make photos look fantastic! It allows me to do so many fun things at a click of a button! Mind you, I still love using photoshop, I just need to learn how to use the two together most efficiently! And then get to work!! Right now I'm spending so much time fiddling with the photos, I don't have enough mojo left to blog... so much to do so little time eh?

A layout I love...

I did this today and I'm so happy with how it turned out!


I did it for Tara and Kayleigh's Creative Inspiration Blog Wednesday challenge.

And then I did this one yesterday:

I love this picture because it's Gillian puckering up for a kiss, but it's her way of communicating to me to kiss the baby. She usually makes the smacking noise before you make contact with her, it's priceless!

I've really got my mojo going! It's fun!