Makeover #1: Arabella's Room

As promised, here is the first room transformation in our new home. Arabella's room just had to be the first room painted because she was SOOOO excited to have a "purple" room. Just ask her and she will tell you lol. A friend of mine made an offer I couldn't resist...he'd paint it for free if I bought the paint! Now how could I say no to that!!! So after a lot of prep work (the previous owner must have had a love for posters because there were a gazzillion thumb tac holes in the wall...EVERYWHERE!) here is Arabella's room makeover.

BEFORE: Pink and Black

AFTER: Purple and white

We still have to put up the curtains and I am waiting for her new bedding that I have ordered. There is a picture of it below. I tried to find something that had purple as well as green and aqua in it so that her old nursery decor fit in as well. Her bedroom set was a gift from her Aunt and used to belong to her cousin. I just love the sleigh bed! And do you remember that chandelier I mentioned so long ago that I was going to paint white? Well I thought it would look ADORABLE in her room. I was thinking of maybe finding some purple, green and aqua beads as well to string through it to add a bit of playfulness.

I will update this post with more pictures once I get the bedding and curtains. Thanks for stopping by!

The Paper Mixing Bowl February 2013 Recipe

Well, it certainly has been a long time since I scrapped anything....I think actually it was at the end of November when I went to Memories Manor with some of my scrappy friends. A lot has happened between then and now...we flew to Thompson, Manitoba for a week at Christmas, packed up our entire house, moved to a new house, started the unpacking process and also started a basement renovation. Needless to say life has been a little hectic! I was determined to fit in this month's challenge though since I missed January's and I just really miss scrapbooking! I'm positive I spent more time searching for boxes with my scrapbook supplies than I did actually creating this layout, but it was fun and I love how it turned out. Here's this month's recipe for Red Velvet Cake:

...here's my inspiration (how can you not love them!)...

...and here's what I came up with!

The background paper is from the Lost & Found collection by My Mind's Eye. For the utensils, I spilled something on some plain white paper and then layered it to mimic pages in a book. I put a positive spin on a bill I recently received by scrapping it into the page...I loved that the postage mark was red. I handcut the hearts for this page and would have loved to add little baby blue rhinestones to them but I didn't have any. So instead I adorned a few bobby pins with buttons and then skewered a few of the hearts with them. I think they turned out pretty cute!

I used two pairs of photos taken of my Hubby and daughter making silly faces together on one of the airplanes during our trip to Thompson. This also filled the multi-photo component. Although I chose not to do any journalling on this page I did incorporate the journalling prompt "two"  into my title. The baby blue that ended up on this page orginiated from the chipboard letters that I found in one of the boxes of scrapbooking supplies. I received a Costco scrapbook kit for my birthday over a year ago and haven't used a single thing from it. But I loved the size of these letters so I decided to make them work. I also loved the colour scheme this month because it meant I could use the red and brown sparkley Thickers I was regifted from a scrappy friend. She has had them for years and hated them so I took them off her hands because I thought they were FABULOUS! So thanks to Veronica for helping me out with this months challenge!

That's it for today! I'm hoping to blog the renovation projects at our new house as we complete them. I also want to take photos of all of the scrapbook layouts I did at my Memories Manor retreat. First I have to find them all! I'll see what I can get to over the next week and hopefully get back to posting a bit more regularly on my blog. Thanks for stopping by!

The Paper Mixing Bowl December 2012 Recipe and Some Exciting News!

Hello everyone! Sorry it has been so long but it has been a very hectic month. I apologize for the late post and for the even later November Recipe post. I was a little overwhelmed this month with a big change for us...we are moving! In the matter of a few weeks we bought a home then listed and sold ours. It sounds simple but boy was it chaotic! We weren't quite ready to list our house, just had a few things to paint like the entire main floor and upper hallway, plus declutter the entire place. But we found a place we loved that had the potential for me to eventually run my business out of so we put in an offer and the next thing I knew I was up everynight till 1am painting and cleaning so we could list and sell our house as well. It is all still very surreal! I can't believe that in less than 2 months I will be packing up our family and all of our memories and moving into a whole new chapter of our life. Exciting but scary and overwhelming all at the same time! But enough about the big move, here's what you came here to see.

The Recipe:

And here's my take:

This picture is actually taken on my daughter's birthday which falls right before Christmas. My husband and I were out at his work Christmas party and my sister, brother-in-law and godparents were babysitting for the evening. This picture was taken of my godfather reading Arabella her bedtime story. This photo is quite special to me as it was taken shortly before we found out that he had cancer. Thankfully, after a rough few months, he is now cancer free, but this photo will always be one I cherish.

The background paper is by My Mind's Eye and I used several Cuttlebug dies to create the snowflakes.

I created the journalling card by cutting the shape of a tag, then punching a whole in the top. I stamped the bottom and distressed the edges, then added a few more snowflakes. The other tags I hand stamped with ornaments from the gel-a-tins collection. 

Thanks for stopping by! I hope to add several more layouts including the November Paper Mixing bowl Recipe over the next few days as I have time to upload them. I hope you all have a happy Sunday!



Little Miracle

My sister asked me if I could make a baby layout as a gift for her friend who recently had a little baby girl. She wanted it to match the nursery which had a lot of nature elements especially birds and was painted in a soft lavender colour with brown accents. This is what I came up with:

I used a piece of cardboard (actually from a Pampers box...how fitting!) covered in burlap for the background. The branches I cut by hand from brown cardstock and the leaves are actually a flower die for the Cuttlebug that I trimmed up to make leaves. I originally had the title in a white cloud at the top right corner of the page but I just wasn't loving it. Then I thought it would be cute to hang a banner from the bottom tree branch. The word "little" I printed off from my laptop and then used a single hole punch to carefully punch out each letter, gluing them altogether to create a caterpillar body.  For the face I used a Cuttlebug die for a butterfly which I then trimmed the body and wings off of leaving the cute little head. All of the birds I cut freehand and then used a snowflake Cuttlebug die for the feet and the wings of a bumblebee die for their beaks.

My sister had given me the lyrics to Lee Ann Womack's "I hope you dance" which she wanted me to incorporate into the page. I printed them off on kraft cardstock, cut each into a strip, inked the edges and finished it off with a button at the end of each line. I love how the little thread bows turned out on the first and last button. Also, if you look closely in the leaves below you will notice that a "caterpillar" ate a few of the leaves. The paper moved when I was cutting this group of leaves with the flower die and it got cut up by an adjacent flower but I thought it looked like little nibble lines. This is the leaf that inspired me to add a few caterpillars to the page.

My sister loved it and ended up framing it with a white frame. Here's the final product before it was wrapped!



Thanks for stopping by!