New Kit: Happiness from Kaklei Designs

Made in gorgeous tones of greens, a beautiful set announcing the arouse of the first Spring, a perfect fit for any occasion. The kit includes: 12 gorgeous papers of 12x12 inches-JPG-300dpi and 54 unique, assorted elements at PNG-300dpi
Exclusive kit for DigiDesignResort

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Here's a layout I made using this kit:

This photo was taken when Andrea was only just beginning to walk by herself. We used take her to the University grounds (where both me and my husband graduated) so she can practice walking on the grass.

One proof that we are raising our daughter in the city... when we first took her here, I just realized it must have been the first time she saw grass :-/

"What is this stuff, mommy???"

Dulces Suenos

Self-imposed backlog update: 19 kits downloaded and MUST be used.

I still have that $5 gift certificate at Coolscrapsdigital from winning their Cool Motto Challenge for February and I haven't picked a kit yet. And how can you say no to blog train freebies???

Anyway, one of the kits I downloaded for free a while back is Bel Scrap's Dulces Suenos kit (linked to download, and she has several free kits on her blog as well). I love Isabel's kits because there is always a touch of fantasy in them. Some of the elements in the kit are not high resolution though (72dpi), but since I will not print anyway... or even if I do, I probably will not print in 12x12, lower resolution elements can work for me.

"Dulces Suenos" means "Good night" "Sweet Dreams" (corrected on 3/29 after checking our Dora book at home) in Spanish I think. My daughter and I hear it all the time when we watch Dora the Explorer. Here is the layout I made with this kit:

I think I overdid the bubbles. I just love the bubble element a lot!

This is a photo of Andrea during Trick or Treat last 2010. Yes... you read that right. During. She just turned 1-year-old and will not really be eating any of the candy but I just wanted to dress her up in a costume and bring her to the Trick or Treat at the office. She missed her nap time so...

The little pirate, sleeping.

Layout of the Day (LOTD) At Scrappity-Doo-Dah

My layout, Travel Hopefully, was chosen as Layout of the Day for March 26, 2012 at Scrappity-Doo-Dah!!

Spring Scene: Quick Page Freebie

I am participating in Coolscrapsdigital's Quick Page Challenge for March.

We were given this beautiful kit from Pmarie to work with:

I had so much fun working with this kit. The papers and elements are so pretty! Here's the quick page
I made. You can download this for your own personal use from the download link provided below.

Download here.

Another new kit by KakleiDesigns: The Habit of Hope

The Habit of Hope (S4H)

Practice hope. As hopefulness becomes a habit, you can achieve a permanently happy spirit.
Norman Vincent Peale
This gorgeous, soft pastels with an air of nostalgic and a twist of vintage fragrance includes 20 papers of 12x12 inches-JPG-300dpi and 90 unique assorted elements at 300dpi-PNG format.1 Capital, lower cases letters alpha.
Also in the bundle or separate items:
4 Gorgeous Quick pages of 12x12 inches-PNG-300dpi.
6 stunning clusters at PNG-300dpi.
10 divine word art at PNG-300dpi.
9 soft, sweet styles made in CS3.

All available at Kaklei Designs stores and on sale!

CSD

DDR

SDD

Here is a layout I made using this kit:

New Kit: Song of the Heart by AnnKa Studio

Song of the heart by AnnKa Studio

Song of the heart is a vintage, Heritage kit made in gorgeous green tones and stunning, unique textures and embellishments, a perfect fit for your daily memories.
The kit includes: 26 papers of 12x12 inches-JPG-300dpi and 91 unique assorted elements at 300dpi-PNG format.

available at:

CoolScrapsDigitals

DigiDesignResort

HeritageScraps

E-scapeandscrap

Here are two sample layouts I made with this kit:

That's Andrea and my niece Helaena playing on my grandmother's piano back in 2010. I think me and all of my cousins have photos on this same piano when we were kids. It's like tradition for all of my grandmother's grandkids to pose here :)

And here's another one of my grandmother and grandfather:

Drawing on Android

I can't draw. That much is fact. 

Case in point... I was drawing with my 2-year-old daughter a few weeks ago and she asked me to draw an apple. After drawing what I thought was a traditional-looking-toddler-book apple, I showed it to her and asked her what it is. She looked at me blankly. Only after I told her that it was an apple that she smiled at me and said "Apple, mommy!!!". She was probably only trying to make me feel better.

Both of my brothers are left-handed, and both are graphics artists. My uncle, also left-handed, works as an animator for Sony Animations and paints on an iPad. My mom, also left-handed, draws really well too. My husband, though right-handed, took 5 minutes to paint a lake scene using my daughter's cheap water color set. 

And I'm right-handed... and can't draw a decent apple. And I am developing an inferiority complex while looking at my friends' drawings on DrawSomething!!!

Anyway, I recently got an Android phone (which Andrea calls "Mommy's toy) and was downloading APKs which I thought Andrea might like to play with. This includes coloring and drawing APKs. One of this is Sketch N Paint. And what do you know??? Their brushes makes this APK easy to use! I particularly love their "Ribbon" brush. It's so... um... swirly!!!

Here are a couple of my drawings that turned out well.

My first try

Using different brushes to give texture.

Yey!!! I can draw!!! Granted those are the only 2 that turned out well... haha.

Baby Dear

There's this cute little poem in one of Andrea's books. I decided to use it for the layout I submitted to Digital Design Resort's Use It All Mini Challenge for March.

Cute poem right?

Anyway, for the challenge, we were given this kit to work with:

The challenge is to use all the elements in the mini-kit.

Great Stand Out!

My "Girls Forever" layout was picked as one of the Great Stand Outs for March 10-19 at Coolscrapsdigital!!!

Crochet Project: Mushroom/Cactus/Sundae Hat

I was working on a sewing tutorial yesterday... you know taking pictures and documenting my steps and all that. In the end though, the end result did not quite look the way I wanted it to so I'm going to do over and hopefully, have that ready by next week.

Here's a preview of my supposed-tutorial:

Scrap fabric, and batting.

But I did manage to finish my daughter's crocheted mushroom hat last night! Although, from where I'm looking, it doesn't look very much like a  mushroom *sigh*.

Here it is anyway:

I think it kinda looks like this type of cactus:

Photo credit

And the Jollibee character representing their Sundae too!

4th from left. Photo credit.

 And of course, taking photos of the hat on her head was hard! We had a LOT of this:

I don't want to wear a hat right now mommy!!!

...and some of this:

Why are you doing this to me mommy?

...until finally, FINALLY! A couple of these before I went crazy:

I tried to prepare a pattern and will post the pattern tomorrow.

Linking up to the following parties:

Craft-O-Maniac Monday at Craft-O-Maniac | A Round Tuit at Creating My Way to Success | Just Something I Whipped Up at The Girl Creative | Motivate Me Monday at Keeping it Simple | Craftastic Monday at Sew Can Do | Inspire Me Monday at Singing Three Little Birds | Market Yourself Monday at Sumo's Sweet Stuff |

The Quest for Sleep

I spent a sleepless night last Friday night. No reason, just too many thoughts running through my head. It was around 4AM when I finally felt drowsy enough for sleep. The following morning, I decided to pick up my copy of "Our Daily Bread" which I have been neglecting to read daily for about a month now. I decided to check what the message was for March 16. And what do you know, it was about sleep.

I realized how true that was. I neglected to call on the only One who could have calmed my troubled mind and given me peace. I guess I needed to be reminded.

I used elements from Coolscrapsdigital's Bella Donne tribute kit. Almost all the elements are from Kaklei Designs, except for the sheep element. The sheep element is from Scrap Angie.

Still Scrappin to the Music: Superstar!

This isn't an official entry to any challenge, but I got this idea last weekend and thought it was so adorable so I decided to make a layout for it anyway.

Superstar!

This is Andrea, decked out in mommy's sunglasses, necklace and bag. She would be wearing my high heels if I let her. The lyrics are from Lady Gaga's "Born this Way" single.

I used elements from Divine Digital's March Blog Train called "Tinseltown Glamour. I used elements from the following designers'c contributions to the Blog Train:

• Aimee Harrison
• Myriad Graphics
• Scrappin Wright
• Rose Made Designs
• Snips and Snails

Mommy and Andi

I finished quite a number of layouts over the weekend and the past few evenings. The Studio has a new featured designer for March 16-31, Digilicious Designs. For the Featured Designer Challenge for March 16-31, Digilicious Designs provided this mini-kit:

The challenge is to create a layout using only the elements from this sampler kit. Here's my layout:

I used photos from our recent trip to the Manila Ocean Park. There have been several additions since the last time we visited (a few years ago)... and the Park has incurred several environmental violations regarding their use of animals for their attractions, which is sad. They already lost their WWF accreditation, which was highly publicized when they first opened their gates to the public in 2008.

I was trying to explain to my 7-year-old niece why we are not watching the penguin and sea lion shows... but in spite of my simple pitch about cruelty to animals, I don't think she understood. She asked to go specifically for the penguins and sea lions. We ended up watching the sea lion show, but skipped the penguin show.

It was also my first time to sea the Jellies section. And I think they are my new favorite things to photograph. With the play of lights in the aquariums, the whole scene looks surreal. It was a little challenging though, since flash was not allowed.

Here are some photos of the jellyfish aquariums:

Scrappin to the Music: Beautiful In My Eyes

WARNING:

Probably the cheesiest, sappiest layout I have made to date ;)

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There's a challenge going on over at Scrappity-Doo-Dah called 'Scrappin to the Music'. For the month of March, the challenge is to create a layout where the theme is a song that has been on your mind lately. It was a fortunate coincidence that when I first saw the challenge last week, I was just listening to one of my all-time favorite songs on the radio on my way to the office.

"Beautiful In My Eyes"

Do you know this song? I love it! First heard it at my 18th birthday party when the DJ played it. Though I was still single at the time, and will remain single for quite a few more years after that by choice (I Kissed Dating Good-bye was a really, REALLY popular book for young Christians around that time), I couldn't get the song out of my head. I was thinking that when the time comes, that was the life I want to have.

And though there still aren't any lines upon my face (thank you, Olay! -totally unpaid for advertising), I think my husband and I are on our way there.

And my husband will probably kill me if he finds out I posted this photo online, haha. This photo was from our engagement shoot before we got married. He tried several times to beg off and kept asking me why we needed an engagement shoot. We both aren't the... errr... you can say we aren't the "romantic" type (we don't celebrate Valentine's Day remember?). I just told him our photographer offered to give us the out-of-town photo shoot session for free. FREE. Out-of-town. How could I have turned that down???

New Kit by Kaklei Designs: Fine Day to Start

Kaklei Designs just launched it's new store in Scrappity-Doo-Dah. And to celebrate the opening, Kaklei Designs released it's new kit, Fine Day to Start.

I love the colors and elements in this kit! The combination of soft colors, feminine and nostalgic elements makes it perfect for scrapbooking family memories. 

Here's my layout I made from this kit:

That's Andrea at 8 months old. This was the only time daddy agreed to set up his camera and all his photography doo-dah's for a photo shoot. If I had the time, I will get into photography just so we can make use of all the stuff he bought but never really used *sigh*.

All this scrapbooking is making me nostalgic. My baby looks so small then. And she's so big now. And about to start summer play school in less than a month and then toddler school in June *sniff*.

Kaklei Designs Big Opening at Scrappity-Doo-Dah

Kaklei Designs is now available on Scrappity-Doo-Dah! Here's more from Karen:

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Big Opening at my new store at Scrappity Doo Dah!
1 new amazing exclusive kit, 2 gorgeous new exclusive CU products, and everything 35% off
HERE

A Fine day to Start (S4H) kit (Exclusive of Scrap-pity-Doo-Dah)

This is a fine day to start...
And yes it is, a family kit to enjoy in daily memories, made in beautiful soft green, emerald, violet tones with a crispy vintage, retro style. It will bloom you away!
The kit includes 22 gorgeous papers at 300dpi of 12x12 inches-JPG format and 74 assorted, unique elements at 300dpi-PNG format.

CU Bella Spring paper pack

An amazing commercial, S4H, Personal use pack of unique papers made with florals designs, Spring unique patterns and textures.
They are ready to use and easy to re color. The set includes 9 papers of 12x12 inches-JPG-300dpi. Exclusive for SDD.

Pinky CU Paper set

An amazing commercial, S4H, Personal use pack of unique papers made in Pink, ready to use and easy to re color. The set includes 9 papers of 12x12 inches-JPG-300dpi.

All HERE