An Epic Life

Good morning and welcome to my blog. Today I have a layout done with this month's Limited Edition Kit from My Creative Scrapbook Kit Club. This month's kit featured the gorgeous Lavender Frost Collection from Prima.

Meet Meet Mervyne Greene, my former father-in-law. Now well into his eighties he has led an extraordinary life. Having fought in two wars (consequently being shot in one of them) he is a well travelled man. After the army he settled into civilian life where he raised his four children with a disciplined hand. He lost his wife to cancer at the age of 33 and was left to raise his four children alone. He later remarried and added two more children to his brood. He has a very dry and somewhat warped sense of humor and we are forever bound to each other by our love and grief over the loss of the same man, his son James who we lost at the age of 42 to cancer. He now battles yet another insidious enemy Alzheimer's Disease.This page is for his granddaughter Jessie who has a deep and profound bound with her grandfather.

I used the gorgeous stamp set that came with the kit and stamped some white cardstock with embossing ink. I then heat embossed two frames with Ginger from Blue Fern Studios to get that old goldy look to it and then fussy cut the frames out. I used several layers of different papers to back my photo.

I inked my background with Iced Spruce Distress Oxide Ink from Tim Holtz. I then used a lace stencil from Finnibar to add some texture with molding paste. I went over the masked areas with my ink pad directly to get a darker pigment of ink. A little stamping with black Archival Ink and I was done.

I used some Art Stones for some extra texture on the page.

I used the Prima blooms that came with the kit. I just loved the little flower spray! I also love that Prima now includes little vellum sheets with their flower packs which you can easily use on your project. All the blooms in the kit are matched to the paper making embellishing your page a breeze!

I printed out my title and backed it with some leftover paper from the bottom of one of the pages. I also stamped a few goldy leaves with the stamp set that came in the kit. I love this photo. I see so many things in his face I could go on forever. It saddens me to see such a larger than life person succumb to this horrible illness. I can only pray for him and take comfort in the fact that his legacy will live on in his granddaughter.

Hope you are having a great day and I hope to see you soon with some great news!!

All the best! :)

Believe in the Magic of Christmas

I am a paper junkie it's true. I have an addiction to pretty papers and my overflowing scrapbook shelves can attest to this! I promised myself no more until I started using more of my stash. And then I saw the gorgeous new papers from Karola Witczak. I folded like a deck of cards at a casino poker game. I gave in. I bought Christmas Stories and amd Dear Diary from Mintay Papers. Although Christmas is over I had to share my first creaton with the Christmas Stories line.

 You know my daughter Jessie. If you don't you will. She lives closet to me so I often get more photos of her than anyone. This photo is old tho. Taken in 2012 this is Jessie with her beloved pitbull Rufus. I am making her a special album for her Birthday this year  commemorating Rufus and their time together. Sadly she had to put Rufus down in 2015.

 My flower cluster.

 This copper plate from Tim Holtz was how I decided to title this piece. I really wanted the focal point to be the photo and not too many blooms or Alphas.

 I had a blast fussy cutting these papers! I find fussy cutting so relaxing it's like therapy for me. I popped in a movie and went at it. I love how an entire sheet on the back of the cover page in these papers is dedicated to fussy cutting elements. I even cut extra and popped them up with foam dots to give it a 3D look. I used a TCW stencil and some snowflake paste to add a background to the page. I tried to keep it relatively simple and let the photo and the papers speak for themselves.

That's it for today just a quickie!  I'll be back tomorrow with something new. I hope!

All the best! :)

With You

My youngest daughter Jessie is a true dog whisperer. Her love of dogs and cats and birds lol goes far beyond the norm. She makes unique connections with almost every animal she has met. She had adopted a pitbull or rescued is a better term from a bad situation. She loved this dog beyond words. Rufus was quite the character. Never would you find a more timid dog who gave back as much love as you gave him. Sadly Jessie had to put Rufus down and has felt the loss since that day almost 2 years ago. I've decided to make Jess an album mostly of Rufus but also of my two labs whom she also adored and who we also lost. This is one of my favorite pics of Jess and Roo.

 The papers from the November kit from My Creative Scrapbook Kit Club were a perfect match. I have fallen in love with Georgia Blues from Prima and think i'll be using these papers over and over again!

I wanted to keep the layout simple mostly because these papers are too gorgeous to clutter up! I did some background coloring a little stenciling and heat embossing to get my desired effect.

I used a Prima die to cut a doily for my backing as well as a few pieces from the paper line. I didn't want to use too much as the gorgeous Dusty Attic frame would cover most of it. I primed the frame with Gesso then painted it using Art Alchemy Opal Magic paint in Blue-Gold. I then brushed it lightly with some Artisan Powder in a clay color then as a final touch covered it with Crackle Accents to get that "old" look. I really like how it turned out.

I didn't want the page to be too bulky so I fussy cut some elements to frame the photo and used just a few matching flowers from the Georgia Blues line to finish it off.

I used a piece from the Emphemera pack as my title. "With You" says it all and was the perfect finish. I expect to have quite a few layouts in this album so keeping it to a minimum with embellishments is a must but oh so hard to do!

Well that's it for me today. It is a very bad pain day so I must keep sitting to a minimum. I hope you like my project and plan on seeing you soon! One of my New Year's Resolutions was to do more layouts without feeling guilty about spending time in my scrap room! Let's see how I do over the next few months!

All the best! :)