a quickpage set to share

Has anyone seen New Moon yet?

Hehe... I know. Many of you might be shouting 'Enough already!' A week ago I might have too because I'm so not a fan of vampire stories. I didn't read the famous series and never wanted to either. But the other day Twilight was on HBO and I've heard so much about it from Angie aka IkeaGoddess's blog, so I decided to give it a try. Boy, I was having goosebumps and feeling the butterflies in my stomach the whole movie. Now I understand what the fuss is all about.

Well, let's just say the film didn't turn me into a vampire fan but it did make me want to scrap butterflies. LOL! So instead I took out an old picture of me and my guy (whose skin might not be sparkling like Edward Cullen but definitely has a heart of gold) and started scrapping. Here's the result:

(Please click on image for bigger view)

Credits:
'If you're lost, you can look and you will find me, time after time. If you fall I will catch you, I'll be waiting, time after time.'
From Time after Time by Cyndi Lauper
All papers and elements from All I Need Is Love kit by Dunia Designs
An Easy Way 4 template also by Dunia Designs

I'm very satisfied with how it turned out. The title, the picture, the colors, etc. say it all. But I still could't get the butterflies out of my mind....

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Enters the Bronze Earth kit by Rozie.

Rozie was hosting the November Color Challenge at DSC. To participate, you can either use the kit she's sharing in the thread to make something like layouts or quickpages to share, or work with the color swatch given to create a new mini kit of your own. I fell in love with the colors and the papers (and the butterflies too) from Bronze Earth right from the start!

Once I saw the papers in the kit, the wheel started turning in my head. Immediately I planned to make a quickpage set out of them. But, as usual, there were many other things going on in life at the same time (I'm sure you can all relate to that), and I thought the challenge would last the whole month (It's called 'November' color challenge, isn't it?), so I took my sweet time and didn't check the thread for a few days.


Yes, you guessed it right, I missed the train. LOL! I went back to the forum later but the challenge was closed already. So I PM'ed Rozie to ask for advice. She's such a nice and generous lady. She told me to go ahead and share the quickpages anyway, she would even give me the points for participating in the challenge eventhough I missed the deadline. Thank you so much, Rozie! (Why don't we go take a look at Rozie's stuff at DSC a little?)


So here it is, my Bronze Earth Quickpage Set. You may click on the image to download from 4shared or here if you prefer mediafire. Choose wisely where you want to download because it's 66mb. And please do take a few seconds to leave me comments. Thank you. :)

(I'm sorry the file is so big but I guess it's normal for 3 QPs. If anyone doesn't want all or prefer to download one by one, please send me an email to bkkpom at gmail dot com and I'll re-upload them then send you the links. Or if there's a lot of requests I'll just post the links in a new entry later.)


For my sample layouts using the quickpages below, I use the pictures of my friend PaMam's kids as a birthday gift for her and her boy Sinat. (Hope you like them ja!)

All papers and elements from Designs by Rozie's Bronze Earth kit

All papers and elements from Designs by Rozie's Bronze Earth kit, wordart by TaylorMade Designs

All papers and elements from Designs by Rozie's Bronze Earth kit, wordart by MagDesign


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Let's finish by addressing my lovely blog visitors who left such sweet comments.

Lisa: Of course I'm gonna keep mentioning you in my posts! Can't help it girl. LOL! Thank you for sharing your lovely Chocolate Comfort kit. I made a layout for it.

All papers and elements from Aprilisa's part in Chocolate Comfort kit


Dunia and Paula: I'm so happy you're here! You're my inspirations.

DigiFree and CBH: Thanks for always dropping by. I appreciate that.

Lime, Mörjike, and Heather: Thank you so much for 'following' me! I'm putting together a little exclusive gift for you gals. Please just wait a bit more. :)

And... from here I'll just point you to my friend Rachelle's blog. She's having a RAK going. Hurry up if you're interested in getting her Christmas kit for free!

Take care!

Layouts for Dunia Designs + a template freebie

First of all, let me tell you what a fabulous thing a few extra hours of sleep can do to your body and sanity. :)

Another tidbit of my life: I keep the most bizaar hours. I usually work all through the night when it's nice and quiet, wake my son up at dawn to get him ready for school, then go to bed until 11 o'clock (or noon if I'm that lazy.) So there's only 3 to 5 hours of sleep each day for me. Last night I was so exhausted that I decided to sleep a few more hours and, boy, it makes all the difference. Now I feel so energized - almost like a sugar high.

Why am I wasting my (and your) time on such a common knowledge? I don't know! But that's exactly my point! When you're that high you feel like you can do anything just for the sake of it!!! LOL!

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Alright, here's what I really wanna talk about. I told you in this post how happy I was when Dúnia asked me to be her guest CT for October and November. Now that we're close to the end of November, I can speak for certain that the happiness I felt then can never be compared to what I'm feeling now. I've learned a whole lot from Dúnia herself and her wonderful designs, and also from the creativity of all her CT members (and fellow guests - of course!)

If you're looking for some inspiration for a new layout, I would recommend going to Dunia Designs' gallery and browse through the pages her CT created. (Here at ZZS - you'll find store CT's LOs in there as well, or you may go to Dúnia's blog and follow her CT's links.) They have such different styles, techniques, and perspectives that sometimes you wouldn't be able to tell at all that these 2 layouts were made from the same kit (or even - in some cases - the same template!) No wonder their layouts made it to several forums' Gallery Standouts and the fabulous GSO blog itself so often.

At first I was (ummm, actually still am) intimidated as hell to be among such talents. But, as I said earlier somewhere in the blog, I believe if you want to be better at something, you have to learn from the best. They are the best - no doubt - and I am so lucky to have this great opportunity. Thank you so much Dunia and all you ladies!

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Now, after shamelessly posting such a love letter in public :) I think I'd better show you the pages I made from Dunia's kits that I haven't shown here earlier. I'll start with the most recent one.

I scrapped this page for my husband's little niece, Deandré. (Actually Dee is my hubby's grand niece! Her mother, Monica, is the daughter of my husband's brother Peter. That makes my son Neill Dee's uncle!!!) She is cute as a button and just celebrated her 3rd birthday on November 17th. So, Happy Birthday Deandré!

(A little toot for myself, if I may, this layout was mentioned in ScrapMatters's Gallery Standouts too! Woohoo!)

(Please click on image to see larger one.)

All papers and elements are from Dunia Design's brand-new Christmas is Coming kit (available at DSB- NDISB - ZZ) and the template's from Bunch of Templates 2 set (DSB- NDISB - ZZ.)

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The next one I also used one of the templates in Bunch of Templates 2 with this fun kit Smells Like Teen Spirit (DSB - NDISB - ZZ.) Although you would see that there's no "teens" in the LO at all. LOL!

Of all the pages I've made so far, this one is definitely among my favorites. It's clean, simple, and carrying a very true and personal message. I can look at it all day long.

(Please click on image to see larger one.)

Journaling Reads:
Then or now, past or present, here or there, when or where, how or why,
We know we would always be safe in your arms.

Credits: All from Dunia Design's Smells Like Teen Spirit kit and Bunch of Template 2

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I've got another layout for Smells Like Teen Spirit, a completely different one than the first. :) This one is for Bruno, the heaviest, wettest, smelliest, friendliest yet also probably the loneliest bull terrier of my sister-in-law in South Africa. Please do click on the image to read the journaling. You just have to read it to get the page. :)

(Please click on image to see larger one.)

Credits: All from Dunia Design's Smells Like Teen Spirit kit

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This last one is pretty special, cos it's the only page that I managed to finish while on vacation in South Africa. (It's not that easy to make yourself sit down and scrap for hours when you're always too busy resting, chatting, partying, and sightseeing the whole time. LOL!) I use Dunia's An Easy Way 3 template with her super cute All I Need Is Love kit (DSB - NDISB - ZZ.)


The pictures in this layout are of my son Neill and his close friends Prima and Sinat, at one of their playdates, having fun with fingerpaint.

(Please click on image to see larger one.)

Journaling reads:
We made fingerpaint from scratch, using equal amount of flour, salt, and water, with a few drops of food colorings.Prima, Sinat, and Neill had a great time mixing all the colors together and making fun art with their own fingers.

Credits: All from Dunia Design's All I Need Is You kit

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Whewww, long one again, huh? Just a few more small stuff to go through.

1. By now I've learned to accept that I'm inclined to write long posts. That's why I changed the blog settings so that it only shows 3 posts in a page (instead of 7 as before) so it takes less time to open this blog. (My internet connection can be so sloooooowwww.) Do you like it better?

2. Thank you so much, Lisa, for being the first to sign up to 'follow' me! I put it there just to see what's gonna happen and I intended to do something special for the first few followers. So please wait and see, sweetie. :)

3. A little freebie for you. Thank you for sticking with me through this long post. Since this post is pretty much all about me guesting for Dunia Designs, I decided to turn the first layout I made for Dúnia into a template freebie.

(A little toot for myself again, hehe. That one also earned a spot in DST's GSO that day!)

The template is available in PSD, XCF (GIMP format), and PNG files. You may click on image to download it from 4shared (Mediafire doesn't want to play with me today, so I'm not gonna waste my time.) Just please leave me some love if you can spare a few more seconds. That's all I ask. :) Thanks and enjoy!

A long blog post and a freebie

Wow... A full month without updating the blog at all, can you believe it?

This isn't easy. You know when you stop doing something for quite a period of time, you can get so rusty and lazy and awkward and intimidated and everything that it's just quite hard to start again? Oh...you're not like that? Sorry. Maybe it's just me. :) I'm a kind of person who often buys a new diary, diligently writes in it for a whole week, then leaves it to gather dust for eternity afterwards. So now you know why maintaining a blog is quite a challenge for me.

Anyway, I'm back!!!! Actually I've been back in Bangkok for 2 weeks now. But let me tell you, those were the two ultimately chaotic weeks of my life, physically and emotionally, that I had to put the blog (and scrapbooking) on back burner while I tried to sort everything out. Anyway, again, I'm back!!!! And I already have a lot to blog about today, so I'd better start now.

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Let's start with an award! Last week, my friend the fabulous scrapper Lisa of Aprilisa Designs, who's been so nice and kind and an inspiration to me, left a comment here that she had an Honest Scrap award for me to pick up from her blog. I was so overjoyed!

Then I found out that the awardees (is that a word?) are expected to blog about things others don't know about themselves. Lisa herself created a wonderful layout detailing hers. I was so impressed by it that I decided to follow her lead and scrap mine as well.

However, as I said earlier, things were hard and I didn't feel much artistic for a while so I kept waiting for something to motivate me more. Turns out there were two things: Dunia's oh-so-cute-and-versatile kit Stand by Me (available at DSB - NDISB - ZZ) and the Coffee Cup challenge at Digital Scrap Cafe where you have to scrap a layout that includes each of the items listed in the coffee cup..

So here it is: my attempt to kill 3 birds with one layout um.. stone......hehehe)

(click on it to see bigger image and read my 10 facts)

Credits: Everything from Stand by Me kit by Dunia Acauan
Inspired by Aprilisa

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At DSC forum, I found another great challenge and a great freebie. Michele Stone Designz is in the Spotlight at DSC from 1st - 15th of November and she's hosting a challenge as well as giving us the amazing Holly Jolly Christmas add-on kit to play with.

As soon as I saw the kit, my mind automatically went to this photograph of my own Santa, who's also celebrating his birthday today. (Nov. 15) I don't know if I should tell you his age but if you're good with math you would already have some idea from the above layout. LOL!

Happy Birthday, baby. You're the best husband and father we could ever hope for.

(click on it to see bigger image)

Credits: Everything from Holly Jolly Christmas add-on kit by Michele Stone Designz
Except All I Want wordart by me :)

Journaling reads:
Working for the UN, Chris hardly gets to be home for Christmas. This year he is stationed in Lebanon. Alone and so far, far away from his wife and sons. What would I do then? - He asks himself. Well, he still has that old Santa costume from 2007 that he wore to a Christmas party in Liberia. So maybe he would put it on again and bring presents to the kids. They'll be his family for the day.

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Before this blogpost draws to a close I just want to give a shoutout to my friend Rachelle of Rachness Designs. She's now super busy being a bridesmaid and in charge of all arts and craft stuff of her friend's wedding. Yet she finds time to create all those uniquely cute CU products, write tutorials about how to work with them, and even give away CU freebies regularly! What a superwoman she is!?!

So no matter if you are an aspiring designer or just a recreational scrapper, do visit her blog. I assure you, the tutorials are awesome! They have a lot of details and so informative, even for a GIMP user like me! I was also thoroughly entertained reading about her life as well as seeing all her hybrid craft. I can't wait to see the stuff she's designing for the wedding!

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After such a long absence from the blog, it's only appropriate for me to end this post with a leeeeetle freebie. So please enjoy this wordart I made for the Christmas layout.



You may download from either 4shared or mediafire, just please don't forget to leave a comment or two here. I love 'em, you know. :)