Unfinished Business

Oh no! It's past midnight and I'm still up. I just finished packing our bags for our much awaited trip to the North. We'll be going to Pangasinan, Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur, and Baguio too. It's gonna be a very long ride (approximately 10 hours by land!) Well here I am trying to catch my sleep while writing this post through my phone. Lol. As if that's gonna help me sleep! It was a pretty tiring day for me. I had to finish some business matters, packed for me, hubby and Marcie. Unfortunately, Mark had to report to work tonight but good thing his leave was approved for tomorrow until next week! Yey! After packing (which I hate coz it took me forever!), I baked more cookies to bring with us along the trip. I had to clean the kitchen afterwards and then did my final packing. I suddenly saw my unfinished LO which was supposed to be for the Kaya Challenge! Oops I didn't finish on time! I thought the deadline was tomorrow until I saw my email from the PS group. So sorry Bjay, I really tried to beat the deadline but I failed. :( Anyway, here's a peek at my unfinished layout:



Notice how my table is so messy too? Didn't have enough time to clean it up. So much to do but so little time! Oh well I guess I'll just post the finished product when I get back home from our trip. I will be absent for a while but if we're fortunate enough to have Wi-fi spots in the area, I'll try to update my blog and share some pics. :) Ta ta for now! Gracie

Banana Muffins and Recycled Projects

My mom brought home a couple of over ripe bananas yesterday which she got from my grandmas house. She said they would be perfect for baking banana muffins and asked me to bake some this afternoon. I added some oatmeal and chocolate chunks for added flavor and texture to the muffins. I also baked a loaf of banana bread using the same recipe but baked longer. I enjoyed taking photos of them as much as we enjoyed eating these yummy treats.

Hot and fresh from the oven:

2 dozens and a half:Let's have a close up:

A loaf of yummy goodness:

Want a slice?And if that wasn't enough, I also created some projects to go with the muffins. I made some altered projects and some cards using some recycled materials.

First was this altered can (it's an emptied chocolate wafer sticks container) which can be used as a gift container for these muffins. You can fit up to 4 muffins in the can. It can also be used as a container for trinkets or other goodies too.

Here's a closer look at the can:

Another recycled project which I also made on my previous post is the altered toilet paper roll. This one can be a gift card holder:

And last but not the least are these pair of cards (I had some left over pps from the can and the gc holder so I made some mini cards from them to maximize the use of the pp):
TFL! Have a yummy week ahead!

April Showers Bring in May Flowers

My has the weather here been weird lately! It's usually super hot in the morning and it suddenly rains so hard in the afternoon. While it's supposed to be summer time this time of the year, we've been getting a lot of rain for the past couple of days. Blame it on global warming. We sure need some earth lovin' nowadays. Speaking of earth lovin'... we just celebrated Earth Day 2 days ago and I did make some Earth Day projects that day but I haven't really gotten the chance to post them yet. I made some gift card holders made from recycled empty toilet paper rolls (you know that brown roll that holds the toilet paper). They're so fun and easy to make too. Maybe I'll post a tutorial here one of these days. I made 3 but I still need to embellish the remaining 2. Here's one of the finished gift card holders:

Altered Toilet Paper rollWill post the others when I'm done with them.

Then I also made this distressed card for Hero Arts challenge:
Lots of flowers huh? I guess April showers do bring in May flowers. lol.

Graduation mini album

We just attended a big graduation party last night. We had 10 graduates this year from my mother's side of the family! So they thought of just having one big party for all of them. One of this year's graduate is my nephew, JN (John Naciel). I made this mini album for my his graduation pics. It was also his birthday last April 3 so I gave this to him as a birthday/graduation gift.

Congrats to all the graduates of 2009!
TFL!

Beary Toots!

What a "beary" great way to start the week! Check this out...


I found out from LG and Maya this afternoon that I won the Beary Box Challenge #22! Yey!Thanks for the heads up girls. And many thanks to Beary Box for picking my layout. This made my day. :)

Finally sharing some layouts...

***(Warning: Layouts overload)***

I've finally gotten the chance to take photos of my finished layouts for April. Unfortunately my dad's CF card slot had a broken pin so I couldn't use his DSLR. I had to borrow my brother's digi cam instead. I can't believe how expensive Canon is charging just to fix one broken pin. They said it would cost Php11,000 (approximately $220!). Good thing a friend of mine told me about a place in Manila where they can fix it for a much cheaper price. We haven't brought it there yet but I'm hoping it will be fixed soon before we head off for our trip up North.

Anyway, here are a couple of layouts I wanted to share.

First was the LO from the Scrap Jam:

Ready, Set, Smile

(I just couldn't get the perfect lighting for the photo so sorry for the poor quality. Hopefully I could get a better shot next time.)

Next is a LO I made for Mystical Scrapbooks for their sketch challenge:

No Frowns Allowed
(Note: for this LO I used a minimalist approach, 1 cardstock and one double-sided PP only! I used both sides of the PP so I was able to stretch my limited supplies a bit.)

Third LO is for Beary Box Sketch #22:

Fun Time

Ok wait, I just noticed I've been "krafty" with the 3 layouts. All were done on Kraft CS. I'm loving the kraft look right now and it goes so well with a lot of PPs. So now let's move on to the more colorful layouts. No more kraft this time. lol. These two were given as gifts to two birthday girls. The frames I got were 12X10 so I had to crop the 12x12 paper to make it fit the frame.

Anika
Iya

A closer look at the flowers. These were all cut from a Crate paper PP. All that snipping and cutting took forever but it was all worth it! Whew!

Those last 3 LOs were all finished in 1 day! Yipee! That's the most number of LOs I've ever done in a day. I'm a slow scrapper so being able to finish 3 in a day is a big progress for me already. lol.

Oh and one more thing... Have you been to the TSYS blog lately? I've got a big sale announcement for the Pre-NSD Yard Sale. Go ahead and stock up on those scrap goodies just in time for National Scrapbooking Day.

TFL!

Pebbles Inc. April Giveaway

Pebbles Inc. is having a special drawing to receive a set of each of their chalks... 6 sets! Wow that's a lot of chalk. It would be fun to try these fun and colorful products. If you wanna chance to win, just leave a comment on their blog HERE. :)

Blog Candy Winners at TSYS!

I have announced the lucky winners for my blog candy. To see who the lucky ladies are click HERE.
Thanks to everyone who joined and do watch out for the BIG Pre-NSD (National Scrapbooking Day) SALE!

Miss Stamp a lot!

Been stamping a lot the past few days. The first Hero Arts challenge I ever joined was to stamp on something other than paper. I was thinking of a new way to stamp and I remembered reading something from a magazine way back which talked about faux wax seals using hot glue. I had some colored glue sticks on hand so I gave it a try. At first I was afraid, I was petrified (lol... don't be shy to sing along)... to use the stamps on hot glue for it might melt the clear stamps. But then I tried it. The technique is to dab the stamp with some ink first before setting it on the blob of hot glue. I waited for the hot glue to cool down a little bit (about 20-25 seconds) before actually stamping it, but make sure it doesn't cool completely or you won't be able to get the image stamped correctly. When it was cooled, I cut the image to its shape. I also stamped the sentiment on hot glue and highlighted the words with white paint.
I also stamped on acetate which was first colored with alcohol inks for my other non-paper element. Here's a closer look at the stamped flowers (the bottom flower is the one stamped on acetate and the top flower is the one stamped on hot glue):
For the second card, I stamped on acetate again. This time the whole card itself is an acetate, embellished with acetate flowers. This was based on Card Postioning System's Sketch 110.
And last but not the least... my take on Card Patterns sketch #9:
The sentiment "Just for You" is from the Hero Arts All Occasion Stamp set which I stamped on a KI Memories chipboard sticker. Sorry for the poor photos. I only scanned them since the CF card slot on the camera broke. Huhuhu. :'(

Oh and just a reminder, you still have until Wednesday, April 15, midnight to join my blog candy here and to avail of the 10% discount from my TSYS shop. Hope everyone will have a great new week ahead!

xoxo

"Hoppy" Easter!

I'm back! Took a short blog break there for some quiet time during the Holy Week. Hope everyone is having some "hoppy Easter fun". I'd like to share a couple of projects I made last week. These were from the Scrap Jam I attended last April 4-5 at Clarkfield. It's been a while since I've been to one and it was surely fun! Lot's of freebies, shopping and food too! I was also happy to have met new faces and also the other scrappers (who I already met before) from here and Manila. It was an overnight affair but I had to go home coz I couldn't leave my little girl alone at night. But I did come back the next day for the jam's part 2. We made 3 cards, 1 LO at 2 mini albums. I love the new things I learned especially those cute and easy to make minis.

Here are the cards:



Will post the layout as soon as I get a good photo of it. And the mini albums when I'm done with them (we only made the base album).

And I'm so happy I got my first ever collection of Hero Arts stamps too! I've been playing with them all week long. I'll surely get some more once I get to save enough money for more stamps. lol.

Thanks to ate Marisa and Yoyin for another great event. Props to Teena and Romely for helping out too.

New Blog

I'm inviting everyone to view my new blog... The Scrap Yard Shop Blog. RAKs are waiting to be given away so drop by now! :) (Blog RAK is for Philippine residents only at this time).