Vintage Black/Gray: CCG Challenge 206

For this challenge at Color Combos Galore,  I selected a vintage photo taken in 1946 of my mother and her friends:

Montreal Friends, 1946

I love this photograph, because it captures a youthful, happy and hopeful moment in the lives of these young women. WW II is over, which must have been reason enough to be happy. The young women all have new secretarial jobs, their boyfriends are back home, and they have some money to wear fashionable outfits. There's a sense of being at the doorstep of wonderful new lives for these three friends.

The challenge required certain un-related elements to be brought together: wood element, a shelf, some kind of stripe, and a ledge effect.  The title had to be in capital letters.  Plus the specific colours of the challenge.  I was able to find a piece of Imaginesce pp in my stash which had most of the colours in it. 

Ledge made of chipboard, painted with pewter crackle paint.

I used Bingo tokens as my wood element and placed them on the ledge. (Thank you, Nancy!)

I enjoy the CCG challenges so much - I can never really plan what my project will look like! It always starts with utter chaos on my craft table (not my favourite part...I prefer order and stability!), but somehow it comes together if I give it a few days.  (Which is the fun part!)

TH film strip
transparency

I've included some journalling around the edges of this layout, which is a new technique for me.  Since I scrap at least partly for the family record, I've realized that it's important to include some basic details on the layouts.

Thanks so much for looking.  The link for the current CCG challenge is here.

Materials Used:
PP - Imaginesce, Audrey; G45 Curtain Call
TH Distress Ink, Black Soot; Crackle Paints Picket Fence, Pewter
TH Ideology Film Strip Ribbon
Bingo Tokens and chipboard from my stash

Back to the Garden: OUAS Challenge

This is my layout for the Aug. 15 challenge at Once Upon a Sketch.

The challenge was to incorporate two lines of a song into a layout based on the sketch.

I chose my photo by having it fall out of an album the other day.  It's a picture of me taken in the beautiful garden at Kripalu Center in Massachusetts some time ago when I was taking a course.
The gardens at Kripalu are among the most beautiful and peaceful that I know. The lyrics come from Joni Mitchell's song Woodstock.
Here are the lines that I included:

Well, maybe it's the time of year,
And maybe it's the time of man,
I don't know who I am, but life is for learning.
We are stardust, we are golden/And we got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.

It's an old song by now, the words branded into my consciousness a long time ago.  Nonetheless, they seem even more prophetic and meaningful to me as time goes on.  There was a line in the song about butterflies, too, so the Gabrielle papers seemed especially appropriate for this project.

Thanks so much for stopping by.  Take a moment if you can to leave a comment - I read and enjoy them all.

Special wishes to anyone affected by Irene recently.  Better days coming soon!


Bo Bunny papers, Gabrielle
Webster's Pages trim and  Journalling Tag

Rose/White Photo Tray

This was created as a gift for a dear  friend of mine who recently had a baby.

I used a 7Gypsies photo tray, painted white with Ranger Ink dabber paint.  I chose Webster's Pages patterned papers in soft tones of white, cream, and rose.  I used Prima blossoms in white, touched lightly with pink chalk ink.  
The large flower is made from wide white ribbon and a Gluber.
This was a happy project to work on;  I'll be making more of these since there are 6 babies that have arrived recently to friends and family!
Thanks for stopping by.  Wishing you a lovely day.

Little Toot: Gallery Fave!!

I am pleased and so honoured to say that this layout was chosen as one of the Gallery Faves on the Color Combos Galore Site  yesterday!!  Yay!!

Oceanside 1946

Here are the colours we had to use:

I have hundreds of beach photos - mostly because looking for the perfect beach is a hobby of mine!  But not one of my beach photos was right for this project.

I ended up choosing the photograph that you see here of my mother, taken in 1946.  (or did it choose me?)

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.-- Virginia Woolf

Sometimes scrapbooking is about more than preserving a moment.  I find that with my interest in vintage photos, scrapbooking can be a way of unravelling mysteries and making important discoveries about one's own life.  Here's the little story about my discovery.

Elements Selected and Arranged...Themselves?

We were required to use vellum and translucent elements. After that, the elements more or less selected and arranged themselves. (It's happened to me before, too - it's a little eerie!)  For some reason there just had to be a handwriting design in the background, some letter/post card embellishments, as well as a clear glass bottle.

As I was arranging all the elements, I decided to cut into the paper.  This is something I rarely do. On the occasions where I do cut,  I usually trace the lines first, think about it a lot, and cut slowly. 

This time, the cuts were made really fast - no lines, no dithering.  Cut 1.   Cut 2 -zip, zip.

Okay. Sea shell, bottle, letters.  Message in a Bottle, anyone?  And then it just came to me - floating up like a message in a bottle:

Even though she never talked about it, my mother really loved the beach.  She loved it as much in her day as I do in my time.  Doing this layout helped me realize it.  And  all of a sudden, my eternal quest for the perfect beach started to make more sense to me!  It's been passed on to me from my mother - like an invisible inheritance.

See what I mean? I so love the papers, embellishments and techniques of scrapbooking,  But I think that on some other level, it's really about understanding our present by understanding our past: 

Go back. Go back in time. Everyone's life is a chain of memories. In each chain there are shining links, happenings where this element of wonder...was very strong. Why don't you reach out and relive some of those memories? If you work at it, remembering the wonder can revive your ability to live life as it should be lived.-- Arthur Gordon

The new challenge is up at Color Combos Galore, effective last night.  The talent and creativity on this site is amazing. I never end up creating the project I had planned! If you're looking to boost your creativity, head on over and take a look.


Thanks for stopping by, and have a lovely weekend!

Joy Joy and Blog Candy Giveaway

The big day has finally arrived...we are grandparents!  Of course we are over-the-moon happy.  Mother and father and baby are doing very well.  The new grandparents are coping somehow (!)
Here's the card I made to celebrate the little one's arrival:

Too Beautiful to Use?
For this card, I used Webster's Pages.  Because the papers are so beautiful, initially I was afraid to cut them or to work with them. Instead, I was keeping my beautiful papers the same way I store my good tablecloth - wrapped up and placed on a high shelf until that special occasion. (I guess this could be called paper hoarding!)
My scrap friends at Scrap That!  advised me to  "Cut them!  You'll feel better. Some of the most beautiful embellishments you'll ever create will come from cutting them."
To all my lovely, creative friends - you were so right!  I do feel better, and now feel able to tackle more cards and using Webster's. 
Blog Candy Giveaway at Scrap That!
Heads up - there is a wonderful blog candy giveaway right now at Scrap That! blog. You could win a beautiful assortment of fabulous Prima papers and embellishments including Zva roses, Maya Road, and Glitz.  Just leave a comment on their blog here before August 19th. Couldn't be easier!


Meanwhile, we are getting used to the idea of being grandparents for the first time.
Have a wonderful weekend.  Thanks for stopping by!

Materials:
Webster's Pages Ladies and Gents
Center Panel - Prima Notecard Sweet Fairy Collection

Retro Summer Continues!

Friends 4Ever June 1946
This is a lovely vintage photo of my mother's friends at the end of June 1946.  Their high school years had just come to a conclusion and you can just see the joy and hallelujahs in their expressions.

The inspiration for this layout came from a sketch at October Afternoon.

Just 4 Embellishments
Because this is a group of young women tasting freedom at the end of their high school years, the lovely TH die-cut bird is sitting outside of her cage, about to take flight. Otherwise, I used only 4 embellishments: a fabric flower, a round sticker, a manila tag, and a telephone cut out. 

I am trying a "less is more" approach as I work my way through this Retro obsession of mine.  It's SO challenging for me to embrace empty space.  Choosing this highly patterned paper from the 5&Dime collection made it easy to omit extra embellishments.  


I love the October Afternoon papers.  The patterns and colours do recall days gone by, and the papers are a lovely weight to work with. Perfect for my Retro scrapping -  just going with it, and we'll see where it takes me.


Thanks for stopping by, and wishing you lots of spaciousness in your day!  Thanks so much for your encouraging comments - very much appreciated.

Materials List:

Paper:  October Afternoon 5&Dime Collection/ Circus Peanuts, Root Beer

Bird & Cage DieCut:  Tim Holtz Alterations

Chipboard Alphas: Thickers

5&Dime Shape Stickers, October Afternoon