Time Slips Away...

Time slips away so quickly and lives get so busy.  Blog posts become lower priority items and the next thing you know 2 years has gone by.  I rarely craft anymore which I really miss.  I basically get two weekends a year that I dig all my supplies out, load a choice selection in my car and head to my scrapbooking retreat 3 hours away from home.  I am far enough away that I can concentrate on being creative but close enough if anything major happens, I can be home relatively quickly.  If I didn't have these weekends, I think I would have gone insane long ago.

My next retreat is coming up soon and I am so looking forward to it.  I am already digging through supplies trying to figure out what I want to take and what I want to work on.  I don't tend to get much done but I am always happy with what I manage to get finished.

My last retreat was in November and I managed to get 4 layouts done.

This one is of my father doing a demonstration in the forge for Pioneer Days.  Using a lot of metal embellishments and twisted wire made sense for this layout.  It is also a cleaner layout than my usual style.

This next layout is more me - lots of layering, fussy cutting, flowers, die cuts and embellishments.  Basically, the more the merrier.

When we were home last, we did a session of family photos.  This one is of my mom, me and the kiddos - three generations.  There are three lady bugs incorporated into this layout.  When I was growing up there were always three wooden lady bug magnets on my mothers fridge.  It just seemed right to add them to this layout.

Every retreat, everyone is given the same paper to use in a challenge.  It is always fun to see how everyone does something different with the papers.  The next two layouts are made from that challenge paper.

Two very different styles of layout but both are "fan" pages and are using photos taken at ComicCon.

Hopefully, it will not be two years before I post again.  I have started bullet journalling but I am using it more for keeping track of my life than being creative...although, I can't resist every once in a while adding doodles, embellishments and some kind of over the top decoration.  In many ways I am hoping that it will lead back to more scrapbooking and card making.

Have a good Saturday.

A scrapbooking retreat....

Last month, I attend a scrapbooking retreat at the Timber House near Brighton.  I haven't been doing much the last year or so and I was hoping it would jump start me back into being creative.  It was a beautiful location.

Surprisingly, I did not get down to the beach until Sunday.  I arrived in the dark on Friday night (not really that late since the sun sets at 4:30 pm at this time of the year) and I worked until Sunday morning.  I basically took breaks to eat, sleep and do a bit of visiting.  Overall, it was a very productive weekend and was just the kick in the pants that I needed to get started again.

I worked mainly on layouts and playing with some multimedia techniques.

I have one more layout at I started but is not yet complete.  I figure I will get to it during my Christmas holidays.

Today, I am concentrating on designing and doing up my Christmas cards.  I am enjoying making them again but I forgot how long it takes.

Have a good Sunday.

Time for A Change

I haven't had a chance to do much crafting in the last few months.  The new job, although very interesting, is also very time consuming.  The learning curve is huge but that is to be expected with a new job.  I am hoping that as I get more of a handle on the job that I will carve out some time to dig back into crafting again.

I figured that a good place to start digging back in was to refresh my blog.  It was feeling a little dated and cluttered.  With Spring coming soon, a clean, fresh look was needed.  I have also been decluttering my drives and filing my photos away.  One of the gems that I found buried with in layers of folders are some old card sketches that I did back in 2011 and 2012.  I figured I would repost a few here.

Have a good Sunday.

Happy Halloween!

I have spent the last week making costumes.  Yesterday, my darling daughter wanted something like she would wear to dance.  I wanted something that covered her a bit more.  It all started with the hat she wanted to wear and we went from there.

Today, she wanted to out as CleoCATra.  We have spent the last week putting this together from an old table cloth and lots of materials from the Dollarstore.

My son couldn't seem to decide what he wanted...just that he wanted to wear a mask.  I don't like them wearing masks when they are out at night.  I found a half mask that I thought would work and would not obstruct his view.  Out of that mask came the idea of making a voodoo priest.  Thankfully, he liked the idea.

All in all, I like these better than the store bought ones.

Happy Halloween.

Art Journaling

After a very busy summer with the kiddos, I only have a few art journal pages to show for any remotely creative activities.  Most of the summer was spent exploring, lazing in the sun and just enjoying ourselves.

I currently have two art journals on the go.  One is a larger A4 format book and a smaller mixed media sketch book.  The first three are from the sketch book and the two pager was done in the A4 book.  In the art journals, I try to use up any scraps that I have left over from scrapbooking and I have a lot of left over scraps from over the years.  I just can't seem to throw anything away.

I also received my Foldio2 which I backed on Kickstarter.  It is a foldable light box that uses LED lights.  I really like it because I can fold it down quickly and easily.  It takes up very little storage space.  The only drawback is that it is a bit too small for photographing 12x12 layouts.  I have managed to gerry rig a solution to make it tall enough but it is wonderful for small objects.

It comes with various back drops but I find that I tend to use the white one the most.


For all the Canadians, Happy Thanksgiving.  Our turkey is in the oven and it smells wonderful.