OK, I lied.

I scrapped anyway. :p



For the DST Color Play Challenge, using the journal prompt: Celebrate your name.

I couldn't resist it; I think I'm in another comic book junkie fix! LOL

Geeks unite!!!

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!

One Week Review

Ooooh I was just so lazy to post over this past week, and work sorta ate me up LOL. BUT!! I have the most awesome thing happen to me last weekend:

TRACIE STROUD INVITED ME TO BE PART OF HER CT!!!!

W00T!! I'm so excited! It's my first CT ever and, boy am I ever so glad it's with her coz her products are just awesome! It matches with the recent colorful layouts that I love making!

I think I can't get enough of colorful layouts these days, so even those kits by designers who use more muted colors or use textures instead of patterns on their papers, I still manage to squeeze in a bit of color. Here's what I've been up to in terms of scrapping this week, beginning with my first CT layout for Tracie:


Featuring Koykoy, Jay's daughter. It was fun scrapping this, love the fun pose she has and those super cute heart-shaped sunnies!

Here's something using a recent SPD kit that I purchased, Spring has Come by Kasia:


Another one using the same kit, featuring the cutest little boy in the world, my nephew, Creed!

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.

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!

It's Sweet Shoppe Designs' Anniversary Sale and I've blown a hole in my pocket.

Oh yes, I totally have. About the end of last year, I've told myself that I'm done shopping at Sweet Shoppe Designs, not for any bad reason about it--I think that store is super and all the designs are just awesome. It's just that between October (when I got into digis-scrapping) and December, I've spent the equivalent of a full month of my salary on that store. -_-;; Talk about over-spending.

But!!!

It's the sale and I couldn't help it! Dani Mogstad (the most awesome designer ever ever ever) has two gorgeous kits that I just had to have. Not to mention the couple of kits by Eva Kipler, Zoe Pearn and Misty Cato, plus the hybrid templates from Heather Roselli... oh the list just goes on and on. I admit it: I'm an SSD addict. Even more so than I'm addicted to A5D and SPD.

Here's a couple of my latest purchases to enable you. Go and get it now! :p



This kit is way too awesome. I love the colors and the groovy papers! It's a good thing I'm not done with my Valentine projects yet so I still have a few pages to scrap with this kit.



I'm so putting my little chocolate baggies to give away in these cute little packages! Awesome design and I love the colors of the kits used for these bags. (Incidentally, I bought the chocolate themed kit as well LOL!)



Penny Springmann's resources are always must-haves on my list. Even though I have tons of overlays from many other designers, I always end up using hers for aging my papers and photos. Amazing stuff, you gotta grab this one coz the combo pack is only available for a week!

I had a couple more items to get after this. In all, I got about 10 kits, 3 hybrid projects and 2 more templates/overlays. I just go overboard when shopping at this place. :D

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.