A couple of layouts, one 8.5X11 and one 12X12 - both some fun everyday moments

Happy Sunday to all and thanks for stopping by my little blogworld :).  Well, it looks like we may have finally turned the corner and Spring may have actually sprung.  It rained, and rained on Friday, it was crazy windy yesterday and today we have the sun and a forecast high of 15 deg C!!!!  Wow!  It looks like we may be in the teens all week - happy dance :) :) ...

How have you been?  What has been going on in your part of the world? Or in your scraproom?.  I started using my Scraptastic February Counting Stars kit and am having lots of fun with it.  In the latter part of March, I had a cardmaking binge.  I dug out my Copics, stamped away, coloured away and then made a few simple cards.  It is so relaxing.  I will get a blogpost up about that soon.  In the meantime, I wanted to pop in a share two layouts with you today :

An 8.5X11 layout about my winter attire LOL : 

I swear I looked like that every single morning, from early January to as late as last week.  I am so done with the look.  But I do love that big wrap around scarf my great-nieces gave me for Christmas.  Our winter did start late but then was brutally cold!!!  In fact, we broke records almost daily, had the dubious honour of being the coldest place on earth a couple of times during January and had the coldest winter in the last 123 years !!!!  So to finally feel a little sunshine and warmth (well it is all relative LOL) is bliss!!

The supplies:  Everything on this page came from the kit.  I am loving the acrylic shapes we are now getting as part of the kit, as well as the exclusive pattern papers.  I made those little arrow "thingies" from a branding strip.  The only thing from my stash is the flair button which is very old!  It was part of a pack from Studio Calico.  The enamel dots may be from my stash as well.

The second layout for today is a throwback to 2006, during my backpacking trip.  I am in Paris this time, relaxing and having a fun afternoon with friends :

Paris turned out to be a little bit of a hub for me during the trip since I have great friends there and had a couple of teaching assignments throughout the year.  This was my last visit, for a week of teaching, in February 2006.  

The supplies:  Most of the product on this page comes from the Counting Stars kit but there are a few bits that were left from the previous kits - the Heidi Swapp glitter heart, the vellum "favourite moments" piece, the "lovely" sticker which comes from Shimelle's first collection.  The heart enamel dots are from my stash and the numbered strip on the side of the photo is from a branding strip.

So there you have it for today!!!  

My friends and family have been asking me create a place where they can see all of my layouts in one spot.  I have created a facebook page just for that.  You can find it here : https://www.facebook.com/lifescrapsbymoira.

I have created several albums  - by Scraptastic kit, by category (cards, PL spreads, 8.5X11 layouts) and also by theme or subject.  I will be adding more subjects as I go - one for each country for instance, one for the furkiddies, the garden ....  I would love for you to stop on by and to "like" if you so feel inclined.

Have a lovely day my friends.  Talk to you soon!  Hugs xox

First layout with the Either Way Scraptastic Kit (July 2014) - 12 X 12 travel related

Happy Thursday to all !  I hope you are having a fun and amazing day !  It is one of those cloudy, heavy, blah days here - feels like rain but so far, it has held off.  I am off on Thursdays and usually get a lot of the chores out of the way so that that my weekends are not all cleaning, cooking, washing etc....  but more garden fun, scrappy fun, tennis fun, photo fun and any other fun I can drum up!  How about you ?  How is your week shaping up?

I have broken into my July kit.  I must say that I was a little intimidated with this one at first... for just a bit.  The papers are so beautiful; the colour scheme is really right up my alley.  And with the touch of gold throughout, the kit felt a little regal. As I was sorting through my photos, I kept thinking they were not up to the standard of the kit LOL.  I felt I needed THE photo, just the perfect shot, the important photo .... you know the one that records that all important moment.  But truth be told, I don't actually have many of those photos (or those moments!!).  So, I just took the plunge and started.  And, I am sooooo loving this kit; truly!

My first layout is a scraplift of a layout by Tracy Banks (mercytiara on You Tube and a member of the Scraptastic Design Team).  She made her layout for the Bingo challenge during the 4th anniversary celebrations.  She mentioned that the L shape was one of her go-to designs and I just loved her layout.  So, to lessen the "awe" factor of this kit, I went with a scraplift of her lovely layout.  And I am so pleased with the outcome, This design will definitely become one of my go-to's as well.  I also find that I am enjoying scrapping 4X4 photos a lot recently.

My layout :

Since this is my first layout with this kit, there is very little from my own add-on, or from my stash.  Everything is from the kit except for :

• The October afternoon Mini Market alphas in mint and cream for part of the title
• The woodgrain photo mat and scalloped circle in the top RH cluster are from the 6X6 Simple Stories Good Day Sunshine paper pad
• The cork stars are from a previous kit (the May kit maybe?)

The scraplift is pretty much integral except that I journaled to the right of the photo as opposed to the top part of the L,  where Tracy had added speech bubbles for her journaling. 

The story:  This is one of those really great travel stories - well actually a story of how kind people can be.  In Feb. 2006, I was into the eighth month of my backpacking trip and was travelling with a friend in Porgugal.  We had spent a fantastic week in Porto and were on the train going back Lisbon.  We arrived at the Fatima station, and since my friend's uncle is a priest, he asked if we could get off there and visit for a bit, take photos for his uncle and go onto to Lisbon the next day.  So on the spur of the moment, we got off the train!!  Well, little did we know, the Fatima train station is 30+ km from the town of Fatima.  So there we were, in a station, in the middle of nowhere - there was a restaurant, a bar, a tourist office and a very long line of taxis just waiting to charge 50 euros or more to take unsuspecting tourists to the town LOL.  Well my friend, who is a little "hot blooded" was ranting, raving and using quite colourful language (in Canadian French).  I was laughing, which wasn't helping matters.  All of a sudden, we heard a French (from France) accent say "Eh les canadiens!!  Etes-vous perdus" (Hey are you Canadians lost?); hence the title of my layout.  This gentleman (Luis) had just returned from a work trip and was on the same train as us.  His wife (Marie-France)  was picking him up and they lived in a nearby town called Tomar.  To make a long story short, they took us to lunch, took us sightseeing in Tomar and absolutely insisted that we stay with them until we could go on our way the next day.  We went to the market, I cooked dinner, my friend bought some wine and we had a more than lovely evening.  They told us about a lovely fishing village called Nazare, so the next morning instead of getting back on the train for Lisbon, Luis and Marie-France took us to the bus station and we boarded the bus for Nazare where we spent another absolutely lovely week !!!

There is just a little bit of journaling on the front of the layout - I journaled the whole story on the back :)

Hmmm you know what?  The photo itself may be just one of my newfound friends, not the "life-changing, worthy" one I was searching for when I first looked at this kit; but boy the story sure is!

Thanks for joining me today and I'll be back on the weekend with the second layout!  Hugs xoxo

Layout in response to Kittyscrapper's 30th birthday

Hi there again !  It is so lovely to be on vacation and have time to scrap everyday.  Today, they are forecasting thundershowers for a good part of the day so I may just have a indoors day - scrapping and reading with a touch of Netflix at some point :).  Hope you are having a wonderful day, wherever you are and whatever you are doing.

Our You Tube friend Nancy Sinclair (Kittyscrapper on You Tube) turned 30 this month!!! Woot woot... happy birthday again Nancy.  She had a hat party for her birthday; everyone who went to the party had to wear a hat.  She posted some great photos.  I can't wait to see the layouts she will create with those photos.

Nancy has a challenge going on for her birthday!  The theme, you may have guessed, is 30!

The twist is that on a layout, we have to include 30 repetitions of one type of item (like my friend Ronisuescrapper did 30 stars, Ohsnapgonzo put 30 strips of washi tape ...).  The challenge is open until the 30th of July and there is also a bonus entry for a 4 X 6 card that is to be mailed to Nancy containing some words of wisdom regarding turning 30.  Go on over to You Tube to check out her video for the challenge and then search out the responses - they are all great.

I was going to "torture" Nancy and include 30 butterflies on my layout LOL (Nancy is over the whole butterfly thing) but then decided on hexagons.  Actually with what I brought with me  to scrap with on vacation, if not butterflies or circles (which I love but wanted to be a little more daring), then it was hexagons.

Then the choice of photo:  I don't watch TV, I watch You Tube and Netflix.  So often, when I get home from work, or after a day's chores on weekends, I love to sit and relax with a cocktail or a glass of wine and reward myself with a couple of You Tube process videos.  Nancy's videos are quite dangerous when consuming any type of beverage - she just cracks me up so I started sending her comments about my poor laptop, jumper and occasionally kitty, getting splashed with whatver I was drinking at the moment.  And that started a banter back and forth LOL.

So here you go Nancy :

Now, there are in fact 60 hexagons on this page.  The die cut to the right of the photo took up the required 30 all at once LOL, so I decided to double the pleasure, and therefore double the well-wishes to Nancy ! :)

As far as the page design goes, this one is way out of my comfort zone.  I have never used white as a background.  This is so not how this layout started in my head - I think my hands just took off.  I took some inspiration from Monica (Scrapsaturdays), when she talked about just using a whole package of ephemera on a layout, a little from Irit's (Irit Landgraf) latest layout (I am sorry Irit, you probably don't recognise that at all LOL) and little of Nancy's personality - bright, colourful, bold and fab!!!

Everything on this layout came from the June Scraptastic kit, except for the gold thickers which I took from the July kit!

Well there you have it!  Once again, thanks for stopping by and I'll be back soon.  Hugs xoxo 

Fun day in Segovia - layout scraplifted from Kitty Scrapper (Nancy Sinclair)

Happy Thursday everyone :) .  Hope this finds you well and happy.  We are having rain, rain  and more rain this week although the temperatures are finally climbing a little (16 deg. C today LOL).  

I have a pretty good schedule this week.  I am off today, and since it is raining, I got the chores out of the way early so I could scrap the rest of the day away.  I do work tomorrow, but hopefully only a half day because I have a crop with my local scrap buddies tomorrow evening.  Then, Saturday is NSD ... yay !  I plan to scrap all day, check in with Big Picture Classes and Two Peas, but more importantly, with our Facebook groups and my You Tube friends!  What are your NSD plans ?  I would love to know, and see your projects.

Speaking of projects, on to today's layout.  I borrowed this page design from Nancy (Kitty Scrapper on You Tube), more specifically her Process Video No. 61 called "Pull the damn lever".  She had me in stitches, as usual LOL.  I have done a few layouts in this type of style recently and am really enjoying it.  I think I am even getting the hang of the small clusters.  What do you think ?

I mixed a few different textures this time :  patterned paper, washi tape, cork, wood veneer, mist and gems.  I am happy with the outcome.

Here is the full layout :

Sorry, the picture quality is not great.  I used some vellum on this layout, something I don't do very often as I never know how to put it on, where, or how to stick it down LOL.  But it worked this time and I may start using it more.  You never know, I may even graduate to those lovely transparencies in my stash, yup the ones that keep staring at me.  Oh you have some of those too?  Let's try then and use them on a layout on NSD shall we?

The supplies :

• The background patterned paper is from My Mind's Eye The Sweetest Thing (again from the lovely RAK I got from Sue Hiles (shiles728 on You Tube).
• For layering I used an Stampin' Up scrap (the purple and cream paper), as well as the 6 X 6 paper pad from My Mind's Eye Indie Chic saffron.
• I used two alphas on this one : The  Thickers are Cecily in gold, and the October Afternoon are  Daily Flash Bonfire.
• The washi is also from the October Afternoon Daily Flash collection
• The wood veneer is from Studio Calico
• Finally, I used two mists :  Tattered Angels Coffee Shop and Mister Huey's Custard

Well, there you have it.  Thanks for stopping by today and I will be back on the weekend with some of my NSD projects. See you then :)