Queen of Cakes

I haven't blogged yet this year because, as some of you may know, my mother passed away unexpectedly on January 9. 

The May Challenge at Scrap the Boys is to celebrate your mother so I thought it was fitting to pay homage to all the birthday cakes my Mother made for her grandchildren - and some extra children - between 2002 & 2014. 

This picture shows my mother with Mathew on his 7th birthday in 2008. He recently asked me for a copy of this photograph to be printed & framed so he could display it in his bedroom.

For 12 years she made cakes for every grand childs birthday, whether there was 3, 6 or 8...and there was also a couple of extra children in there who maybe didn't appreciate how special they were to get a birthday cake made by 'Nan'. 

Mum only stopped making the cakes in 2014 due to the pain it was causing her hands. She'd pushed on for a few years; past back pain & ill health. In fact the only birthday she missed in those 12 years was when Novalee turned 4 in 2008, and that was because Mum was travelling back from Perth with my father after his chemo for his brain tumor. Even when Dad passed away in 2009 Mum still made the cakes.

I cried the day Mum told me that she wouldn't be doing the cakes anymore because I just appreciated it so damn much...💖

I created this layout using papers from the Cocoa Vanilla Happiness Collection. Mum loved butterflies so I knew straight away I wanted to use these papers for a layout dedicated to her.

YOU + ME

Almost ran out of time but slow & steady wins the race.

Here is my submission for the Scrap the Boys November challenge.

NEd says this is his absolute favourite pic from his Year 12 Ball last year.

The paper is from the Kaisercraft Bombay Sunset collection.

"The derivative of my love for you is zero, because my love for you is constant..."

Scrap the Boys - October Challenge

October gave us another great mood board from Scrap the Boys. Straight away I loved the colours. My concept came soon after & wasn't reliant on a certain picture this month, although I knew I would most likely choose a black & white photo.

Initially I didn't think I've have the time this month to create the layout I wanted to, as we're busy busy creating our class kits over at The Scrapbook House, and September onward is a really busy time in the school year, especially if you have children completing their final year. But when I remembered Retreat was coming up it made sense to devote the bulk of my time to creating my challenge submission

I had on hand the card stock discard from cutting the flowers for my Class Kit & I had this idea to create a highly textured background, using the card stock cuttings, channelling both the jellyfish on the mood board & the foliage on the mountain in the last little pic.

 I imagined a wavy 3D background with glitter, flowers & other embellishments weaving through the gaps like seaweed at the bottom of the ocean or reeds in a pond.

First night of the retreat though I went to bed a bit miserable as my vision was not progressing that well. I had managed to achieve the texture I wanted but the card stock took up more of the overall page than I had imagined. I decided the paint it first though before making a decision.  

A friend seated near me suggested I tear the ends off to bring it to a more visually pleasing size without losing the wildness of the piece. I didn't know at that stage if I could make it work, would have to start over, or abandon the idea altogether.

Then I thought of stencilling some texture paste using my gum leaf stencil that my daughter had previously used to create reeds on a mixed media canvas.  My patterned paper is Kaisercraft from the Havana Nights/Tropics Collection.

I got an early start the next morning. I had my coffee & thought about the ideas that had come to mind overnight. Then I started flicking my white Dylusions spray & the rest just fell into place pretty much as planned.  

The white Dylusions spray really softened the Vintage Rose Prima Metallique paint.  Adding some extra bits of the unpainted card stock off cuts also helped tie the patterned paper background of the page to the foreground textured card stock.

I added flicks of Blush Prima Metallique paint for a pop of colour.  After applying all the paint that I felt was needed I stuck my matted photo down. 

Using gel medium I applied white holographic glitter to sections of the stencilling & 3D card stock section but let's be honest - I had glitter everywhere for a day; hair, face, desk, the next layout I worked on....

When I originally planned my layout I knew that I had Thicker Words in the right shade of pink so the title was easy enough; the picture I used is from the portrait session I did for my Brother & Sister-In-Law upon the birth of their first child together, a son.

Last but not least was choosing flowers & I happened to have Prima Crystals in a complementary shade.

Wild One

I instantly fell in love with the colours on the mood board for the August challenge over at Scrap the Girls. 

And I knew exactly which pictures I wanted to choose from & this month I was spot on (for a change lol).

When my niece was approaching her 1st birthday my SIL wanted to do a cake smash & use the pictures for the birthday party invites.

I've never done a cake smash (also never had a baby shower...fyi) but I'm always more than happy to take photos. So we set about getting organised & the cake smash gave my SIL the opportunity to have a test run with making the birthday cake. 

My SIL had chosen a ladybug theme for the party & this included a costume for my niece to wear. 

On the day everything was going great. It took my niece a little while to understand that she was allowed to touch the cake but that was fine with me as I snapped off a heap of amazing photos of her. 

Memories to treasure. 

Then she got into the cake...

Can I just say that nowhere during the planning stages did ANYone pipe up with a thought about what a RED ladybug cake might look like once it got smashed by an almost 1 year old....

It was like a scene from The Walking Dead.

It certainly hadn't occurred to ME...I've never done a cake smash before! LOL

So the picture I chose for this layout is before things got really really gross, because I promised my SIL the other ones would never see the light of day...EVER...

And all I can think of when I see the pictures from that day is the meme of the baby covered in blue...goo...pulling a cranky face & the caption "BRING ME ANOTHER SMURF!!"

Priceless...

A Simple Love.....

As soon as I saw the July Challenge Board for Scrap the Girls I had a very distinct idea about the page I wanted to create & the photo I would use. However when I put the two together, in the early planning stages, they didn't seem to quite go. I mean I could have gone with it anyway - I do see lots of amazing layouts that don't necessarily have colour matched pics & backgrounds - but I quickly realised that a photo, from the album of portraits I'm currently working on, would go beautifully. So that's what I ended up using.

This photo of my eldest daughter Lyssa holding her youngest sister & sibling is very special to me. It has always reminded me of a black & white photo of my father holding my brother.  There are not many photos of us as children so when you throw in the presence of my Father, this picture is rare....

I started my page by laying down clear Gesso on my chosen shade of bazzill card stock. When that was dry I applied Nuvo Mousse in Black Ash using a Ranger Harlequin stencil. When the black had dried I selected areas to add some more stencilling using transparent texture paste; to create both texture & resist without adding more colour. 

The next step was to add white Dylusion spray. I have a feeling I'm not using the right medium for this dribbling/spattering technique but we work with what he have so I dried & reapplied until I was happy with the results. Then I added Dylusion spray in Pillar Box Red using the same technique.

While all that was drying I cut cardboard scraps to the right size to fit behind my photo in order the lift it off the page. I have a pad of Day of the Dead paper I picked up from Spotlight last year & I selected a cute pattern in a similar black ash colour that has happy little skulls all over it. It's a faint pattern so as not to overpower the photo or any other elements of the layout. 

At this stage I prepared a couple of elements that I didn't end up using; a couple of homemade skull embellishments cut from paper from the same pack, a playing card...etc

I let the layout sit for a couple of days while I wrestled mentally with how the layout currently looked & the end vision I had for it.  It looked fine as it was in a minimalist way but I wanted to take it to the 'next level' without ruining it, to complete it the way I had planned.

Next came the art stones. As soon as I applied the gel medium where I needed it I remembered I had wanted to stamp on the background first...😬 

...so...art stones...

The items I had picked out for a title were not going to work either although I realise now I forgot to check my stack of thickers... 😕

Anyways; Prima flowers, feathers, pearls, vellum embellishments from Cocoa Vanilla Studio's More than Words collection, puffy stickers from the Zella Teal collection & finally a dusting of pearl shimmer powder over the whole layout & voila!

I have to say I love this mood board so much that I will use it again focusing on a slightly different colour scheme & the original photo this board  first brought to mind.