the back-to-work scrap

It's my last weekend as a stay-home mum, and from next Monday onwards I'll be a working mum of two trying to balance my roles as an analyst, dairy farm (I'm still nursing No. 2), playmate, terrorizer and tear-wiper to No. 1, domestic maid to DH, church musician and still find the time to take my photos and scrap them. *phew* that's a handful!

So, to "celebrate" my going back to work, I created the following layout. It's a photo of DH and Ilias that I've always wanted to take, and there was such a sense of achievement as I finished the editing and all.

The papers from Fancy Pants' Hopscotch are so lovely! Even though it seemed to be made for a girl, I just love the distressed co-ordinating papers they have, with so much room for embellishments and just doing fun things with. I was surprised how the orange matched the desaturated tones of my photo so well.

This layout differed from the others in that, I used very little mediums and kept it very clean with lots of resting space. Initially I didn't go too crazy over the embellishments, in fact I was stuck at it for a while with only two sparse clusters in diagonal corners. As you can see, I went ballistics with the flowers and bling!

Some close-ups:

Love, love, love the shabby chic resins from Ingvild Bolme!

As usual, a sucker for Prima flowers. Can't get enough of those!

I'm currently working on a little surprise project for my DT assignment, and the inspiration came while I was in the toilet (yes, you heard right!). Keep your eyes peeled for more news in November!

ciao,

My first tutorial ever!

Being on the DT of the PaperHaus is so much fun - I get to do lots of new things which I never would have done otherwise. One of these is a step-by-step tutorial and I was frankly quite clueless about it. I opted for a photo-based post instead of a video post as I reckon I will most likely stumble over my words!

Here's the layout I've done:

It's a photo of my parents on their honeymoon. This year they celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary. and the layout is meant as a gift for them.

You can see how I put together this piece here.

Some close ups:

Hope you've enjoyed this as much as I had putting it together!

ciao,

and we're off!

It's been an exciting one month preparing for the Paperhaus mag blog's first set of assignments and on 1st Oct we are officially launched!

To start off, my talented teamie Linda came up with the sketch below for you guys to play along with. Check out the other samples by the rest of the DT. You girls rawk! Hope this will inspire some of you who are having a bit of a creative block :D

Meanwhile, have a great day!

we are FOUR!

Bernard and I have been married for four years (oh so fast!), and 2012 has been very interesting for us with adjustments to caring for two kids while juggling work, taking on new responsibilities at work, and facing new challenges in our marriage. We still have lots to work on, but we're getting there!

Anyway, what better occasion for a LO than a wedding anniversary? :D

I used this week's palette from the Colour Room. It's all pinks and polka dots and I have just the perfect picture to play along.

and this is my take on Palette #130:

It wasn't hard to find the shades of pink I want since I've just topped up my stash of mists from the LSS. I also bought a new box of color pencils from Faber-Castell and it proved to be a most useful and fun technique!

These fussy-cut flowers were neutral to begin with. I shaded on some pinks with my watercolor pencils, dabbed a little water with my brush and voila! lovely gradations of pinks! I brushed on some glam for that shine.

And since I was in a painting mood, why not alter these tea roses as well? 

This is how they came in the packaging:

And after some dabbing with left over mists on my craft sheet ....

 It was too fun to resist so I painted the leaves as well:

More pretty details:

That's all I have for now, ciao!