Whew! Whirlwind Weekend!

Not! I'm essentially a boring person and I stayed in much of today, except to go to the library last night. LOL! Still, I managed to get a lot of scrapping done, to catch up for the lack of pages I've done over the past week (dratted work!) The one thing I'd been planning that I never got to do was to pick up some new board books so I can print out all the recent pages I've done. People at the office had been asking a lot about the accordion calendar I did and some are actually interested in hiring me to scrap for them. Wheeee! Let's hope I get enough time to work it out though!

OK, great purchases for this week:



I haven't used this kit by Kristen Rice yet, but just looking at the CT layouts at After5 already convinces me that this kit is going to be simply awesome to use! I love the color palette, so bright and funky and easy to use for both boys, girls and us oldies. LOL!



I learned belatedly about the Victoria bush fires coz I'm a late news reader. I think it's awesome that so many designers are working to be able to find ways to donate proceeds for some of their works to rehabilitate the devastated area. Although I only really wanted the kit, I was so pleasantly surprised by the lovely QPs, brag books, and what I need the most--the templates! This is a fabulous buy and all going to a good cause!



Does this kit not look like a cake to you? It looks so yummy and colorful and fun! Of all the designers at SPD, I have to say that Kasia is my absolute favorite. I don't buy all of her kits like I do some of my other fave designers (Catherine Designs comes to mind :D) but all of them are simply fantastic!

Next, some new layouts:



I was so inspired when I created this! The paper layout by Jen Caputo was simply fabulous and I had to scraplift it!



I seriously never expected that this page would make GSO. I wasn't very happy with how it turned out, but I didn't know how else to make it look better. And then my good web friend, Sheena, up and put it on GSO. How awesome is that?? Sometimes, the creations we ourselves can't seem to appreciate are the ones that strike inspiration for others. Thank you so much, Sheena, for appreciating my work and being such an awesome lady all around. Big hugs to ya! :)



Last one before I sign out: this layout of my not-so-little sister, Justine! Whew, where did all those years go? I remember when she was just 6 months old and she wouldn't sleep if we didn't carry her in our arms and rocked her to sleep. With some matching song and dance number if it was my brother, Neil, taking care of her! Now she's growing up to be a beautiful young lady. She needs to fill out her skin a bit, but that'll come in time. I sure miss when she was 4 or 5 and we picked out pretty stuff for her to wear, but I'm happy to have someone to teach the ropes of wearing make-up now! :D

More to come next post! I have so many fun layouts to share!

I got featured! W00t!!!

My layout got featured at the Sweet Gallery Standouts at Sweet Shoppe Blog! Woohoo!! I'm so over the moon, I haven't been featured at a GSO in like so long!!



And for my FOBTY for this week:

Your Word is "Love"

You see life as possibility to form deep connections with a few people. Relationships are the center of your world, and you always take time to bond with those you love. You are caring and giving. You enjoy helping those you love. And when it comes to romantic love, you feel passionately ... even in a very long term relationship.

What's Your Word?

Some new layouts... damn, DST is still slow...

This is just a quick layout update; I just want to put some of these up here on my blog with some random commentary.



This lulzy little layout is part of the book that I'm doing for my super cute nephew, Creed. I think his mom was testing out his costume for his 2nd birthday and the little boy just wasn't ready to face the camera. LOL.

I sent this layout to my colleagues at the office. Everyday, because our team has shrunk about 50%, we're all trying to be Supermen, trying to finish all the work all at once and try to make everyone happy, but the truth us that even super men need to sleep sometimes. I crashed and burned two days ago and was so cranky, people just couldn't work with me. I'd get migraines everyday because of the stress level, and the amount of work to be done just isn't getting reduced. It gets piled up more and more and I've started becoming a bottleneck for some project implementations. How I wish I were 2 years old and just worrying about not wanting to pose for the camera while wearing a superhero suit! :D



I whipped this one up about 30 minutes ago, after some action I ran ate up the history of my previous layout and flattened the image. That sucks, man. I hate those image-flattening actions. Grr. Anyway, this one features another super cute little boy in my life, Lex. Just look at his fat round cheeks and you'll fall in love!



And finally I have My Funny Valentine, which I created for the A5D Feb Mixers Challenge. There's an even cuter video of this posted by my friend, Lovely, on Facebook. Lex is just an adorable kid, and he's learned how to swim so fast, at 2 years old! :D

Okay, that's all for me. I gotta get back to work... conference calls at night, after office hours suck, but it's the life of a corporate slave. :p

GSO: A Reflection

When I look at GSO at boards and the GSO blog, I just normally skim the page, pick out layouts that have items I may be interested in (this is how I do my scrap-shopping), comment on a few and move on. I'm not much for journaling because I feel that it strains my eyes sometimes to try to read the text, especially if the fonts used are minuscule.

So, when I came across this layout by chickypow (I saw it at GSO blog, but I'm linking you to the OP at Scrapartist), I was like ummm yeah, why are there no pictures?, and just continued to scroll down for more pages that had elements and papers that catch my eye.

And then I backtracked. Why were there no pictures? There were frames, and the layout title was Our Family Photos but there were no pictures.

And then I read the journaling.

Let me just segue for a bit about this: I have to say that scrapping is a past time that has never really tugged at my heartstrings. I scrap because I like looking at pretty pictures and I like the creativity that goes towards it. The most that I'd feel when scrapping would be a twinge of nostalgia for a fun time with my nephew, or maybe get a bit tickled at a funny memory captured on camera.

But when I saw chickypow's layout, when I read the story behind it, I suddenly felt struck. This is exactly how I am feeling. It's exactly the source of my bitterness towards the current relationship I'm having, the reason why I am starting to feel that it has spiraled out of control and something dramatic must happen or I might end it.

It made me shed a tear.

This layout is a thing of beauty.