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

Hi, this is Jillian. I'm working from hell. Please eave a message and I'll call you back.

Ugh. This is seriously what it feels like working from home today!!

I had a very bad cold since yesterday (it's almost gone now, replaced by a grating cough. I'm going through the motions of the flu virus) and I had actually obtained a medical certificate to rest at home, but because my team is flooded with work, I agreed to just work from home while I recover.

Bad decision.

It's a little over 3pm and I'd just finished my lunch. I can't step away from my office laptop because my boss goes nuts if I'm not around when he needs my input. I'm hogging the two phone lines in our house because I have three meetings tot attend all at the same time every other hour. One of my teammates has a document to write that he wants me to write, but our boss wanted it yesterday. There's a portal to be created to facilitate approvals, but the admin is an idiot and doesn't know how to do it. I have about 60 projects active in my portfolio, each of them screaming for my attention...

How does one not drown from the sheer amount of corporate BS? Really, I should have just told my boss that I'll be working from hell. I can't imagine what it will be like when we implement the 1-day-of-the-week-working-from-home scheme.

But anyway, I still managed a few layouts and picked up 2 shiny new kits from Cinnamon Designs. Nathy has recently moved to A5D, which is like my favoritest place to shop ever, and the moving in sale is too much for me to resist. :p

I was jealous of all those pretty, neutral-colored layouts made out of the Sweet and Warm kit so I got that and the Melon Passion. There are matching freebie samplers/add-ons in Nathy's blog so go check it out!



And then, I finished 1 layout for A5D's Lift with a Twist Challenge, and I wanted to start on a new album to give my evil little nephew, Creed, on his 3rd birthday:



This was the one for the A5D scraplift layout. My source/inspiration layout is this pretty page by Hanazana. Isn't her work awesome? I love how fresh the page looks and that's what I tried to capture in my lift. I think the cheeky look on my brother's face got that one down to pat. :D

My other layout is one of the sweetest pictures I've seen. It's my brother and his son, Creed. Because I live in a different country, I very rarely see them, and seeing them together is adorable! They really look so much alike. I didn't really think my brother was much with kids, but when Creed came along, he's really mellowed a lot.



I'm planning to complete the 8-page Maya Road 7x5 album by March. I may need to prioritize my V-Day gift to my boyfriend first! LOL

SSD Output

I'm trying to pick up on the SSD Challenges again, since I shop on their page so much. I've done a couple of layouts, but only 1 for a valid challenge. As the Feb challenges roll out, I'll probably work up a bit more. I'm also trying to get into doing some at A5D, and hopefully that'll cut down on some of my scrapbooking supplies cost. :p



This is a scraplift I did for the Feb TOTM challenge. I used Atomic Bounce by Melissa Bennett as the primary kit for the layout. Recently, I've liked doing monochrome or duotone photos and that's what I did again, with some selective coloring of our vodka medley drink. The photos are of my friend, Lovely, and myself goofing off while having a drink at The Clinic. The drink wasn't so spectacular, but I was able to finish one off, and also my vodka pineapple drink.



Here's another set using duotone photos of myself and my little brother, Lex. It's so much fun playing with him and taking photos because of the faces he makes. LOL. This one uses Eva Kipler's Getting Fresh. I love the fruity color palette! It's perfect for fun pictures such as these.

Apart from this, I picked up a couple of kits from Flergs. She's having an anniversary sale at Scrapbook Graphics, and you really ought to pick up some of her kits. She's an awesome designer! I got myself 17 Cherry Lane, which is a collab with Tangie Baxter, and Victorian Strawberry, a collab with Kate Winiecki.

Can't wait to play with these goodies!

A few recent layouts

Just to start off and christen my new blog, I wanted to post a few of my more recent layouts. Most of these have already been uploaded to DST in the last few days.


This was one of the drafts that I created for the invitation of my brother's birthday party. He has a big bash every year and like half the population of Singapore comes down to our house to see him. LOL. This year, because of the chaos that ensued in his first party, my stepmom is hosting his birthday at a restaurant.

Anyway, to keep up with the child-like theme of the party, I used Lorie & Kitty's Valentine kit, Blooming Sweethearts (available at SBG & OScraps). I couldn't find any photo of Lex that I really wanted to use so just to showcase the layout, I picked out one from our New Year reunion. The whole thing, layout and photo and all, was subsequently changed for printing coz my stepmom wanted a Disney-themed party.


This is the last layout I posted on DST and the photos were taken after our New Year family reunion. My mom had brought party masks for picture taking and us being the usual camwhores, greedily took over. LOL

I wanted to give a magical, kind of mysterious feel to these pictures, so I opted for a monochrome palette. I added the rose as a touch of color to the layout. This would be the first black and white layout I've done and I think I kind of really like the effect, but only for certain photos. I don't think all of my photos would suit this kind of effect, but for this specific set, it makes the pictures very striking. You can click on the photo to go to DST, where I've listed out the digi resources used for this layout.

And now, that's all for me. I'm going to take a rest this weekend. I'm out of my usual funk since yesterday. I'm supposed to go out to pick up some scrapbook materials and chocolate giveaway for a Valentine's project that I'm working on, but nothing doing. Hmm. Hope I'll be in a better mood tomorrow for work. Ugh.