Vintage Montreal Style

Hello Lovely Blog Friends

Here in Toronto these days we are so lucky to be having bright sunshine and the clearest blue skies outside of Taos, New Mexico - in November, no less!  

(I seem to remember creating this l/o for a challenge some time ago at OUAS... but I missed the deadline.)  Since we're having such glorious weather,  I thought I would post this summery vintage layout:

"Oh, never mind the fashion.  When one has a style of one's own, it is twenty times better."

The two photos are of my mother and her friends in Lafayette Park in Montreal on a sunny June day. The year is 1946. They are celebrating the end of school and the beginnings of new jobs, new lives right around the corner.

Montreal women (and men, too) are known for their sense of style. I just love their darling outfits and clutch handbags - which you can see in the photo on the left. The Webster's Pages summer handbag motif was perfect for this layout. I added white eyelets and did some lacing with satin ribbon, which I finished in a twisted rose.

I used tiny classic roses and slid this Summer Land poem (Glitz Layer) under the chartreuse chiffon flower.

Dusty Attic frames are painted with white crackle paint.

Looking at these pictures makes me want to go outside and take a walk in the park!
Hope that everyone can enjoy some lighthearted time with good friends this weekend or spend time outdoors.


Thanks so much for stopping by today.

Materials List:
Patterned Paper: Webster's Pages, Pink Paislee
Book Page: Glitz
Chipboard Frames: Dusty Attic
Spellbinders Dies
Journalling Cards: Prima
Flowers: Prima, Recollections

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!

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