Merry Christmas everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! I sure did! Forgot all about my healthy pregnancy diet ( as if I ever stuck to it!) and ate lots of fruit salad, cakes, chocolate ice cream, native sweets, and huge platefuls of wonderful carbs!! Love it!

Oh this is the closest I got to a preggy pic - taken last December 23. I'm 23 pounds heavier and just a few days away from giving birth.



I want to thank everyone who dropped by here in my blog, sent emails, and texted me wishing me a Merry Christmas and praying for a safe delivery of a healthy baby girl. I appreciate it so much and if only I could have enough time to surf the net and visit everyone's blog now - I would. Right now though I am still cleaning up some cabinet space for the coming little baby, preparing my hospital bag, completing DT deadlines, and most of all spending quality time with Nicole so that she will not feel insecure when her baby sister comes.

I'm posting here a layout I made for Prima's Christmas Fancy line. It features a picture of my friend Isabel and her daughter.


I may not be able to blog again for a while so please forgive me if I'm not able to visit you in your blogs. I'll be giving birth on December 30 via c-section and I'll be breastfeeding her exclusively so I'm not really sure when I can get back to my normal schedule. With all that said... I should also wish you an advanced HAPPY NEW YEAR too!

God bless you all this coming new year.

I got my DT box from October Afternoon last week and so I got to spend my weekend playing with the new products. The papers, stickers, and the stamps are beautiful!!

This first layout features the "Weathervane" Line.


For this layout, I used the "Night Light" line. I cut patterns from the paper and attached it to the edges of the cardstock to create my own die-cut cardstock.


This last one was made with the "Good Cheer" line. This page is about how my little girl was bent on undressing our Christmas Tree. She would pull out the ornaments and use them as props for her Christmas Carols!

Badgirls and Graphic 45

Badgirls Kits featured Graphic 45 papers for the month of December. They are featuring the layouts of the BG designers using their beautiful vintage papers. If you can, please check out the Graphic 45 blog here.

Here are my layouts for the December Kit...

This is a project for my daughter for her to practice her ABC's and the words that go with the letters. The graphic 45 paper in the kit had blocks and I just cut them out. I used letter stickers for the missing letters, punched a hole on the corner of the blocks and secured everything with a ring clasp.

This one is about how creative and silly children can be. I painted the background with yellow paint and used the Graphic 45 tags to highlight the journaling.

This is a layout about my daughter's version of "Dressing Down". Well she does it literally. She opens her cabinet, takes down all the clothes, climbs inside the cabinet and poses. I put all the clothes back in - and then she does it all over again when I'm not looking!

This month's challenge is about what brings us peace. This page is about finding faith in one's self. I found peace when I found faith in myself and I wanted to impart this to my daughter who is at that stage where she is insecure and very unsure of herself.

I loved the embossed texture of the cardstock and wanted to bring out the patterns. I applied watermark ink on the areas I wanted to highlight and then layered gold and teal pigment powders with a soft brush on the embossed patterns.

12 Treats of Christmas

Here is something I made for Webster's Pages and for the Christmas Workshop at Badgirls Kits. This is an old box that I have altered to hold silver rolls of paper inside. For the 12 days leading to Christmas, I'll ask Nicole to pick one silver roll so she can see what her Christmas treat will be for the day.

If you want to get the instructions on how to make this, you can head on over to the forum at Badgirls. Here is the LINK.

Iris

Hi everyone! Hope you are all doing great. Just wanted to share a few layouts for Prima. And if you have not heard about it yet, Prima is having a design team call! So head on over to the blog to find out about the details. It's one great company to design for and they are so so generous with the product they give their team!


This is special to me. I'm five months pregnant in the pictures here and Nicole was starting to show signs of being jealous. So I made this layout for her, telling her that no matter what happens, I will always have time for "just us".


I used here a picture of Nicole taken during the Chrismas of 2006. Used the new Prima Christmas Fancies paper. You will notice that the line can be used even for non Christmas themed layouts.


This one is a layout of my friend's daughter - Julia. Made this one for the "fall" themed layouts for Prima.

2nd Christmas Workshop at Badgirls!!

It's that time of the year again! And Badgirls Kits has something really exciting and fun prepared for all of us scrappers this coming Christmas season. The Christmas Workshop is loaded with a lot of great classes and of course - really fantastic prizes!!

To help spread the news, Wendy will be giving out a
BLOG CANDY. We need help in spreading the news, and as a thank you we will draw one lucky winner who will get a 50$ gift certificate to the Bad Girls Store!! Just visit the link here to find out how you can participate.

You have until November 21st for this Blog Candy :)

Oh and here is a sneak peek of the class I will be teaching. It is something new that I think you will enjoy creating, and your little ones will enjoy going to every morning of the 12 days leading to Christmas!:)


Thank you :)

I have fallen in-love with the latest paper line of Webster's Pages "Hello Beautiful". Here is a layout of Nicole where I used the papers together with "Old World Cards" and the new trims.



Finally, here are the layouts I made for the November Kit of Badgirls.

SCRAPMAGIE

I am so honored to be a guest designer for Scrapmagie this month. The kit was huge! There were so many papers and a good amount of embellishments too. Thanks Marina for the beautiful kit. Here are a few of the layouts and a project I made for the kit club. If you have time, please do visit their site. The kits are beautiful!

My internet connection is finally fixed! So now I'm back to share some October Afternoon creations. The first one is of my daughter with her friend Ethan. The picture was taken by my friend and talented photographer Jeff Lopez.



This 2nd one is of my friend April's son David. Pictures were taken by her equally talented husband Lumeng Lim.

Just a quick note to say hi. I want to thank all you wonderful people for dropping by my blog. My internet connection at home has been terrible for the past few days so I can't surf much. I just sneak in some computer time when I get a clear connection and then its gone again. I miss visiting your blogs and will hopefully have my internet problem fixed very very soon.

I have never really been excited about halloween... until I had a daughter of my own. Now I can't wait for trick or treat! I had so much fun last year with Nicole and she is looking forward to this year's celebration. The holidays will be busy so I thought of making a Halloween album in advance so that I just need to print the pictures and adhere it. "My Little Yellow Bicycle" sent me a complete line of their Frightful Collection, and I made this little book from their wonderful products. I'll post the entire album, when I have the pictures in it already. Thanks MYLYB!"



And here is a layout for Prima, using the Little Boo papers. I love this picture of Nicole. We were practicing "Scary Face" last year and this is the best that she could come up with. We have to try harder this year huh?:)



One more thing before I go... I was so honored and happy to have been invited by my friend Pia Lopez who designs for Daisy Bucket, to create a layout using Daisy Bucket products together with 7 of my scrapbook friends here from the Philippines. All 8 of us Filipina designers were featured in their Blog. Here is my creation. The picture was blurred because of the low light and because Nicole kept moving... and because I'm not a very good photographer at all!! LOL! But I loved that smile on her face. So I just enhanced it a bit, cut the image out, and recreated the play house by making one from paper.

October Kit at Badgirls

So who loves Pink Paislee, Rose Moka, and Basic Grey? Well I do!! And the October kit has those papers in them! I loved my kit and I was able to use a piece from everything inside the kit. Just sharing the layouts I made...



I was also tasked to do the lecture hall over at Badgirls for this month... not an easy task when you have a gallery full of the most beautiful pages ever seen. So I just thought of talking about the process I take when I create layouts for kits. It's really different when you create pages using stuff that you have versus creating from a kit where you want to maximize the use of the kit. If you want to read this simple entry of mine, please click HERE.

October Challenge at "Inspire Me"

I'm excited to be hosting the October Challenge for Webster's Pages "Inspire Me" site. Hope you can join me for this fun challenge. The idea is to scrap about a favorite or memorable object and embellish your page with cut-out patterns. You can check the details of the challenge HERE
The winner will get a Websters Pages collection pack of their choice! See you at the site!

Materials used for this layout: Webster's Pages papers; Prima Felt Gate, pebbles, flowers, and Say It In Crystals; Digital elements on photo from Primahybrid.com (designed by Trish Jones and Weeds and Wildflowers Design).

HAPPY TEACHER'S DAY!!

It's Teacher's Day on September 26 and I think we should all try to show some appreciation and love to all the wonderful teachers ... especially those who take that extra bit of time to help out our Children. My daughter has been blessed with two wonderful teachers who have been so very patient and kind with her. So along with a small gift for them, I also made two notebooks for Teacher Au and Teacher Factor. I hope they will like it.

This was made using scraps of cardstock (for the pages), a couple of Prima papers (the other one does not show here), Prima Glittered Transparency, Prima Flowers and Swirls. Of course bound using my new favorite tool - the Zutter Bind-It-All.

By the way, the first picture is also a sneak peek for the Badgirls kit for October! Loved this one. My favorite so far!

Iris

I love the new papers from Prima! It's so different from the previous release. This one has papers from the "Pulse" and "Makes Me Happy" line. Everything else is by Prima too.


And here is one layout I made for Scrap-N-Crop's September kit.

Using up your rub-ons...

If you love rub-ons then I'm sure that you have had the usual problem of ending up with some that stuck to the plastic backing already because it has not been used for a long time. Well, I have had that problem and I realized I had to start using my rub-ons soon. So for this PRIMA layout, I made a page with no patterned paper but just used all rub-ons to create the design. It sure was fun! You should try it too....

Multi-Layered Transparencies...

Here is another addiction of mine... transparencies!! I love that you can layer so many, yet keep the page from looking so heavy. This new paper release from WEBSTERS PAGES went so well with my Hambly, MME, and Making Memories transparencies...


An October Afternoon Album done in one afternoon...
I love the new chipboard album of OCTOBER AFTERNOON. It came with lined and scalloped pages. I simply adhered the pages over the patterned papers from the new "Hometown" line, added some embellishments, applied rub-ons over the journaling pages, and I was done!

REVEAL DAY AT BADGIRLS KITS....

"Monologue"
I love the fun and bright colors of the paper. The pattern from the "Everyday (HI)" line of American Crafts was also very useful in allowing me to record my daughter's monologue.
Additional materials: AC felt embellishments and Ribbon, Hambly Overlay, Shaped cardstock and AC paper (black polka), Junkitz mini felt flowers

"Swim"
I cut out the pattern from the AC paper to create waves. Journaling was written around the white border of the photo using the AC Slick Writer in purple.
Additional Materials: AC paper (green and white checkered), AC thickers, Jeni Bowlin Ticket
For the challenge this month, Dena suggested we lift a member's layout.
My inspiration for my layout was Elizabeth R's beautiful layout....

I was drawn to the photo, the way it took center stage, and the way it was so beautifully framed by her embellishments and well planned design. Elizabeth always makes beautiful pages and this one is no exception. It's probably my favorite so far among her gorgeous work.


"Silly Doctor"
My daughter finally got over her fear of doctors. Here she is trying to act like her pediatrician and ending up looking very silly.
Additional Materials: AC paper (flower and stripes), Creative Imagination Stickers (word strips)


"C.E.O. In Training"
I used the patterns from the AC paper to create paper clip and paper pin embellishments.
Additional Materials: AC paper (green scallop, flowers, and brown photo mat), Maya Road (sheer office tabs), Prima Flowers, Tim Holtz Grunge Elements, MM Mini Letter stickers, Stampers Anonymous (number ledger stamp)