Scrapbook Layout Flip Through End of 2020

Hello everyone! We are getting so close to the end of the year. I cannot believe how quickly it went and so happy it did in a sense. But in another way I'm sorry that it did fly by. This year, I found my creative vein again and the blood was pumping through it quite a bit. I got back to scrapbooking, mixed media off the page projects, and art journaling. I hope you'll enjoy this flip through of the last few months.

For the Love of Crafting and Sharing: Blessed, grateful

Hi everyone. I'm so glad to be here to share my latest process video with you. I had to pull out all my Fall SCT Samplers and get some of them used up. They all worked together to create a gorgeous layout full of gratitude. I hope you enjoy it! To see it full screen, use the link below. Have a great weekend!

Scrapbooking Layout Process For the Love of Crafting and Sharing: Blessed, grateful

For the Love of Crafting and Sharing - using the Storyteller collection

 Hi everyone. I'm here today with a scrapbook layout process video that I've done in collaboration with the talented ladies at For the Love of Crafting and Sharing. 

For this particular layout, I used Vicki Boutin's Storyteller papers, and ephemera, especially the dies, because that's this month's theme. And I also added some Creative Embellishment small silver acrylic stars. I love the shine they give the layout. I started with a sketch that you'll see in the video and used it as inspiration.

I hope you enjoy the video and check out the ladies' links in the description box.

Until next time, stay safe and happy!

Happy Together - CTMH Brushed Collection

It's been hot, and that's reminded me to continue scrapbooking our cruise photos from last year. I had this beautiful collection from Close to My Heart called Brushed. It's a Bring-Back-My-Pack collection so it's only available for a short time. I decided to get scrapping with it and selected a few flowers I had on hand as well as some CTMH acrylic hearts and Julep accessories. I hope you like it. I'll have a process video linked below. You can purchase the collection from my website here until July 31, 2020: https://kikihalbert.closetomyheart.ca/ctmh/promotions/campaigns/2006-bbmp-brushed.aspx

Winning kit! Tiptoe through the tulips!

Hello everyone! It's been a busy month for me, with family illness, and work but I'm so glad to be back here. I've been busy keeping in the craft room as well.



I have so much older stash, collections from many years ago that I kept when we moved, and I needed the motivation to use them. So I put it to my YouTube lovelies and Facebook scrapbook community to vote on which kit to use.



Here's the first layout video using the winning kit. I hope you enjoy it. If you want to see what kits were up for the vote, look for the information box at the beginning of the video to link you to that video first.



Happy scrapping and have a great week!

New layout for Scrap the Boys challenge

Hi everyone. I've been having fun in the craft room and I finished a layout using some lovely items from Creative Embellishments that I won. The gorgeous acrylic mirror stars are the perfect addition to this layout. This month's challenge at Scrap the Boys is a colour challenge/mood board.

So I got to work with an older kit I had from Glitz Design and pulled this together:

I started off with a mixed media background using sprays and inks, as well as roller stamps to give lots of texture. Then I used the papers from the 6X6 pad I had, torn the edges for an edgy vibe, inked them up with distress ink in Faded Jeans, and went to work on placement of the embellishments. I love how it turned out. And the giant pebbles from Glitz Design are perfect too!

I hope you enjoy this layout!

New SCT Sampler layout - What fun!

I said it before on my video unboxing the SCT Sampler for June... I really didn't think I needed Vicki Boutin's Let's Wander collection, until I got the sampler. What fun papers! What fun embellishments! I had so much fun playing with it. I did a layout today and got out my Caran d'Ache watercolour crayons to create a background, and then chopped up one of the papers and did some stitching. Then I fussycut (Yes I said FUSSY CUT!!) the flowers out from one of the papers. This was so much fun to create. I also followed along with a Creative Embellishment challenge for June. Here's their mood board this month:

I loved the vine with cherry blossoms. I didn't have any chipboard for that exactly, but the chipboard that I used, and sprayed with Citron Color Shine spray added just the right touch to the layout I think.

I needed a bright pop of green to match one of the papers, and it did the job! Enjoy some of the closeups.

Scrap the Boys challenge for June - what a fun one!

Hi everyone. I'm here with my take on the mood board for the Scrap the Boys June challenge. Here's the mood board:

And here's my take on it:

I used Color Shine sprays on a black cardstock page to create my own galaxy effect, and threw in some stars made of bark by Prima, just for good measure. Hope you like it!

Relationship Goals and a New Challenge Jar

So glad you could be here with me today. I wanted to share a beautiful layout that I made of my inlaws when we last visited in October. Boy that seems so far away now, and it really is. But the feelings from these photos are just as fresh in my mind as ever. I didn't have the perfect background, and I didn't have the perfect lighting but it was the perfect moment to take these snapshots.

Snapshots. We all have them. Do you scrapbook them or think that they aren't worthy of a page. Because I did. And then I realized that I have boxes of snapshots with no story attached to them, and I needed to document them. So I started here.

If you want to see how I made this page, using the sketch I found at Cookin' Up Creations, then check out the process video below.

And be sure to subscribe to the channel to see how I'm going to be using my new Challenge Jar (which is really just a mug). I explain all about how that will work in this video below, where I create a homemade scrapbook kit.

Scrap the Boys May Challenge: Process Video

Hi everyone! I have a quick process video for you today. I recently found a great scrapbook challenge blog called Scrap the Boys. Here's their monthly challenge for May called Baby It's Hot Outside!

You can click on the image above to get to the challenge. And here's my take on the challenge this month:

I used some older Carta Bella papers from the Beach Boardwalk collection kit, and some chipboard from Creative Embellishments. Check out the process video below for a quick look at how to scraplift this layout from the sketch I used.

Back to my roots with art journaling on a scrapbook layout!

It's been a while since I pulled out texture paste, and glass bead gel. It's been forever since I used roller stamps and just randomly stamped around a page mark making. And it FELT SO GOOD! I know that being back to this style of scrapbooking and creativity is right for me, because it speaks to my heart.

I can't wait for you to see my latest creation here:

If you want to create beautiful pages, watch my process and learn new techniques, then start now by subscribing to my YouTube channel so that you don't miss any new projects.

A Masculine Layout with Feminine Touches? YES!

It's been a beautiful weekend here in the Pacific Northwest. Hot and sunny! I hope you enjoyed yours! My husband and I celebrated 15 years of marriage this week, and he bought me some lovely gifts to be used in my craft room. I cannot wait until my new project case arrives. I'll be able to craft more freely, being able to bring incomplete projects from one room to the next, so that I can finish them while watching TV or when I want to be in the dining room instead of isolated from my family. It's been a wonderful stress reliever, being able to get into doing something creative, while this pandemic rolls on. It's given me stress relief, my own space away when I feel overwhelmed, and just a place to be me, on my own. Once in a while we need that, right?

I know that very soon, I'm going to throw art journaling back into the mix as well, because it gives me a voice. Scrapbooking is wonderful, don't get me wrong! But I find it hard to journal out emotions on pretty pages about events that have nothing to do with how I am feeling in THIS moment. That needs another outlet; enter art journaling. When I did art journaling in the past, it was an act of pure creativity, abandoning perfection and an idea of what the end product should look like. And I could just sit, and add layer after layer, being mindful, and work through emotions in my own head, in my own space. That's how titles for pages would often come out. Something random would pop into my head, and end up on the page. Now that I'm reading about Morning Pages, I realize that I had been doing them in my own way in the past as art journal pages.

Now though, I'm scrapbooking again because I have so many memories to get down on pages. After my mother died almost two and a half years ago, I realized that there were so many of her pictures that I had seen, but I didn't know the story behind them. And there was no journaling. My mother had been a bit of a scrapbooker in her single days but decorated her pages, and not done any storytelling. And I inherited these pages, and that changed how I look at scrapbooking. Originally I had viewed it as another beautiful form of creative expression, art really. Now I see them as so much more. A legacy. Someone will read these once I'm gone. I need to tell the story. So you will definitely see a transformation in my pages in the near future. I will still do artsy pages believe me. I have too many beautiful embellishments to use. 

Which takes me to my latest layout. Here's a masculine layout with feminine touches. Who says that scrapbooking the boys and men in our lives has to be snips and snails and puppy dog tails? It can be an eclectic mix of metals and woods, along side flowers and flourishes. Want to see what I mean? Here's the process video for you. I hope you enjoy it and if you do, please subscribe and share it with friends.

So check in with me next post to see a storytelling page and see if you think I'm on the right track.

The West Coast life is giving me creative vibes!

Hello everyone! It's so great to be back on my blog again. I've really missed being about to chat with you all about my creative life. A lot has happened since I posted last. I'm living on the West Coast now with my husband, dog and two cats. How did that happen? Well I took an early retirement from my job, and got to purging what we didn't need in our townhouse, bought a new vehicle and drove across the country. What an amazing trip that was! I fully intend on scrapbooking some of the photos we took very soon and get to making that album.

We've been here now for a little less than four years, and it's been the best move possible for us. It brought us closer to both our parents. My mother moved out here about 3 years before we did. And of course, my husband Paul was missing the Pacific Northwest life and his parents. I'm so thrilled that we finally got to move here for his sake. I know that he missed his family dearly, and until I took my retirement, we really had no plans to move out here due to our finances and being stuck in the day-to-day.

What have this move and these four years taught me? Hold onto your dreams. Heck, have a dream! I realized that in terms of where I wanted our family to be in the near future, five years, ten years down the road...I didn't have any clue! Now if I had given it some serious thought after we got married, and we sat down to discuss our family plans, we probably would have been out here much sooner. That in itself has taught me that you need to take time to actually dream. Don't just daydream when it's convenient, but actually make time to dream, and work toward that dream. It's also taught me that no dream is too big. Honestly. I would never have thought that we could make a move almost five thousand kilometres away.

So now I dream a little more. I still have to try and make time for it. And I have to silence my inner critic who thinks it's silly to dream. We all have one, right? Now to set those dreams into motion, I have to set some goals. Ugh. I really hate that word. It sounds like work. But goals aren't work. Not really. They are just this abstract thing you want to accomplish, but they themselves don't mean any work. What did someone say about goals and plans? That if you don't create a plan, with tasks (work), then it's just a dream? That is not going to be my life any more. I am going to give myself work, even if it's difficult, to reach for my dream.

Here I am again, on my blog, starting on the plan. I'm back sharing some of my latest scrapbook layouts, perhaps some art journal pages, and more creative works. What's my dream? Honestly, I'm still working on nailing it down. Right now it's a lot like a feeling, a yearning. I know that it feels right when I get back to creating. So for now I'm going to say that I'm dreaming about being more free to create.

I've ventured into different ways to explore that creativity, including a new YouTube channel. And the videos will be primarily scrapbook and art journal process videos. But I'll be back here regularly posting updates on my creative life, twists and turns it might take, and give my creativity another voice by sharing it with you.

I'd love to hear your opinion on my latest videos as I get started out on YouTube, and would love it if you'd subscribe or share them. Thanks for sticking around and I look forward to your comments.

I'll see you again soon with a creative update. In the meantime, stay safe and healthy (look for a blog post on the current pandemic soon)!