Velta

With Mother's Day coming up this Sunday I have made a tribute layout to my mum. My mum was born in Latvia and after being separated from her family during WW2, she eventually came to live in Australia as a displaced person after the war. This photo of her would have been taken in the mid 1920's. It was the only childhood photo she had.

I had a mostly difficult relationship with my mother, right up to when she unexpectedly and suddenly passed away almost 20 years ago. As a seven year old I was angry with her when she packed up our things and took me away from my father and I think I stayed angry for the next 34 years. I felt I was never good enough for her. I felt second best to my older sister, her boyfriends, her friends, her cultural interests.

As a teenager and adult, when ever I was up against life's struggles I would blame her. My upbringing was the reason my life was a mess and why I was depressed. My dysfunctional life was her fault!!

I have been able to find compassion and forgiveness in my heart since then and change my way of thinking. I know she did the best she could with what she knew and what she had. Mother's are human too and absolutely they make mistakes. She no doubt had her own feelings of loss and pain that she never had been able to deal with properly. I don't doubt that she wished that she would have done some things differently. I wish I had done some things differently. I am sure she always wanted the best for me.

I wouldn't be who I am today without her and I thank her for that.
Happy Mother's Day mum. Love you xx

I am joining in with two challenges:


More Than Words

and Scrap The Girls

I have used Pion Papers on my layout, Dusty Attic Chipboard and stencil and flowers from Petaloo and Wild Orchid Crafts. I photocopied onto cardstock an A4 sheet of Pansy flowers I have had in my stash for many years and then cut them all out.

Thank you for stopping by and Happy Mother's Day to all the other mothers out there!

Lest We Forget

For my next layout this month as soon as I saw the ARTastic Challenge Blog April challenge I knew I wanted to play along. The beautiful challenge picture is an ANZAC tribute artwork by Kenneth MacQueen called Wild Poppies and I was very inspired to get out my water colours and have a go with creating something a bit muted and with the required 'pops of red'. 

In 2012 we travelled to Europe and hired a car in France. For three weeks we drove around the beautiful French countryside and visited and stayed in many beautiful villages. A big part of this trip was to visit some of the memorials and cemeteries that are part of the Australian Remembrance trail. There was nothing more moving than Villers-Bretonneux and the Australian War Memorial where over 11,000 Australian soldiers 'missing in action' have their names inscribed on the walls. 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

    

Paw Prints On My Heart

This last week I worked on a layout which was very heartfelt for me. One of my FB friends, who I met through a Golden Retriever facebook page, lost her beautiful Golden Retriever, Willow last week. Vera posts the most beautiful photos every day of her two Golden Retrievers and Willow will be missed by many in the Golden Retriever community all over the world.

I have joined in with two challenges with my tribute to Willow. The April theme at Berrry71 Bleu is "Everything old is new again. It is all about old-world glamour." The mood board inspired me to use one of my all time favourite papers from Kaisercraft as my main background piece. I added some further vintage feel to my layout by inking and rubbing some texture paste on the Dusty Attic lighthouse before adding a crackle glaze. The anchor was given a rough patina finish with embossing powder. The shells have all been collected from walks on our local beach over the years.

The second challenge I am joining in with is with CSI Major Case file 227 . The clues I have included as my evidence are animals, flowers, wood effect paper, watercolours and a circular frame. 

I am putting this layout in a frame to give to my friend and on the back of the frame I have pasted the following poem which is my testimony.

Whenever you go to sleep I will run in your dreams

When your tears dry on your face it's because I've licked them

When Mardee suddenly turns it's because I said "come on let's play"

I will never leave you-I'm always just a thought away

I will be watching and waiting

I know you are doing the same

I leave you my love because my pawprint is on your heart

I am your dog-your Willow!

Willow 7/5/2005 to 2/4/2017 R.I.P

Together

For my second layout to celebrate my son and daughter in laws fifth wedding anniversary I have created a layout depicting their current status, which is living in New York City. Last Christmas we flew to New York to spend Christmas with them and we had a beautiful Christmas lunch in a Manhattan restaurant by the water and then walked back to their apartment through Greenwich Village and Washington Square Park.

For this layout I have joined in with the sketch challenge at Scrapping Clearly.

And here is my layout:

A Beautiful Day

I have created two layouts in honour of my son and daughter in laws fifth wedding anniversary. The first layout features one of the many beautiful photos taken at their wedding. I am entering this layout in the challenges at More Than Words challenge where the challenge is:

Word Inspiration - BEAUTIFUL

Creative Challenge - BUTTERFLY

And also the challenge at Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge to use chipboard and something old from my stash. 

And here is my layout:

I have used Websters Pages from my stash and chipboard from The Dusty Attic, Creative Embellishments and Fabscraps

Together Always

I find it hard to scrap photos of myself but on my birthday earlier this year I chose for my treat to go on a picnic so Cooper could spend the day with us too and I thought he looked so cute in these photos I would just have to go ahead and scrap them!

I have used the mood board at Maja Design for my inspiration for the colours and the mood board at The Dusty Attic for the design.

Naturally all the papers on my layout are from Maja Design and chipboard pieces are all from Dusty Attic. Most of the flowers I have made myself and seeing I haven't made my own flowers for ages and ages so it took me a couple of tries until I was satisfied with them.  I also tested my patience by fussy cutting all those little flowers.

Noel

My eldest son and his wife are currently living in Manhattan NY and my husband and I flew over for Christmas to spend it with them last year. Christmas in New York is like no other and it was so nice to have a 'cold' Christmas instead of the one they were experiencing in our home city of Melbourne, which turned out to be the hottest Christmas Day in 18 years!!! (36c/97f) 

With my Christmas layout I have used the theme at Challenge Yourself and used red on my layout and stamping, as well as using a photo with me in it and I have used the February 15th sketch at  Stuck?! Sketches. 

My layout has been created from all 'old stuff' in my stash.

Background paper: Websters
Fussy cut Poinsettias : Kaisercraft paper and stamped with a Kaisercraft script stamp and gold ink
Flowers: Orchid Crafts

Cooper & Riley

Here is my entry this month for  CSI Major Case File No. 223

This photo is one of my favourites of Cooper and his big sister Riley. On Friday nights we usually have fish 'n chips for tea from our local take away. It's a night off cooking for me and I like to really relax and take my plate upstairs to bed with an alcoholic beverage and watch trashy TV shows whilst I eat my dinner. These were the faces that used to look up at me in bed whilst I was eating! Sadly Riley is no longer with us but I still see Cooper's face there every Friday night except now it is level with the bed!!! 

All 5 colours from the scheme were used and I used the sketch for inspiration

My evidence used was:

*stripes
* speech bubbles
*food
* animals
*something loopy and scallops
 *distressing

My Testimony :

* Topic Document something about a meal

I was thrilled when I saw that Photo Play Paper Co not only released a new collection of dog themed papers but also coincidently they had named their collection 'Cooper and friends'. Well, that is my little Cooper on the left of the photo and I have cut out a Cooper from the paper collection so you can see the similarities!! LOL

Dreams

This layout was inspired by the February Moodboard at The Creative Studio. I took my inspiration from the beautiful wintery colours to create a layout featuring the beautiful seaside village of Polperro in Cornwall, UK where we stayed in 2015.

I have used the following products on my layout:

Paper: Pion papers
Chipboard: Creative Embellishments and Dusty Attic
Paints: Faber Castell, Prima
Mists: Tattered Angels
Flowers: 49andMarket and Wild Orchard Crafts
Stencils: Dusty Attic and Prima
Shells: from my local beach
Meat netting: from my friend Magi

The mood board at Maja Design this month was right up my alley with these beautiful colours and theme.  

And here is my entry

I like scrapping photos from our trips and these are from one of our trips to Paris, the city of love!

I used papers from the Vintage Spring and Summertime collections. The flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts and the chipboard is from Wycinanka, Dusty Attic and Scrapmatts. 

I made the lace doily matt for the Rose photo by just cutting up bits of lace and arranging them in a round/ovalish shape. 

Thank you for stopping by.

Celebrate

I am such a slow scrapper (always indecisive about everything on my layouts) so I have just made it in time for the  CSI - Color Stories Inspiration Case File 222

And here's my layout:

I have added the following journaling to the back of my layout:

We arrived in New York the day after the Blizzard, January 2016. We decided the first place we must visit, whilst there was all this beautiful snow on the ground, was Central Park. We had a lovely stroll around the park and the snowscape was absolutely beautiful and not one we get to see very often.
We were stopping every few minutes to take photos.

It was a fabulous surprise to come around a corner and see these beautiful Chinese ladies dressed in their beautiful red cheongsam doing a fashion shoot for the Chinese New year.

All 5 colours from the scheme were used.

My evidence used was:

* snowflakes
* jewels/ pearls
*stamps
* flowers/ leaves
* glitter

My Testimony used was:

* document something about winter

*inspiration word: fashion

What A Beautiful Day

We had a wonderful Christmas and New Year visiting our son and daughter in law in New York. It was lovely to spend some time with them in this fabulous festive city and even got to see some snow before we had to leave and come back home. 

I was inspired by Maja Design Mood Board with these beautiful colours and the pink Roses reminded me of the time we were in Lyon during the Rose festival. 

                         

I am also entering this into the challenge at Challenge Yourself where the theme this month is "What A Wonderful World".  We love travelling around the world to explore new places and the lyrics to this song remind me of our visit to beautiful Lyon.  Although I do a lot of research when choosing which places to visit, I had somehow missed reading about the Rose festival that is held in Lyon every year. What a pleasant surprise when we arrived in Lyon at our hotel which overlooked this beautiful square with it's fountain adorned with Roses. The scent in the air was pure magic!!!

I see trees of green

red roses too

I see them bloom

for me and you

And I think to myself,

what a wonderful world.