Merry Christmas and Happy Scrapping

It is hard to believe that Christmas is just a week away. By this time next week, all the presents will be opened, the turkey cooked and eaten and, if tradition holds, we will all be in bed sound asleep as we will have had too many things to do and too little time to do them without sacrificing many hours of sleep.

I have a whole lot of scrapping stuff on my list for Santa. I have a brand new Cricut Personal Cutter coming from the money earned teaching scrapbooking, so I am really looking forward to getting some new cartridges for it and having time to just play and really learn what all the tricks are with this great little machine.





I have taken lots of photos this holiday season - first the annual tree hunt - we bagged a big one this year - nearly 10 feet tall!! I used one of last year's pictures of the tree hunt on our Christmas cards for all our family and friends.

Then decorating the tree; and our Christmas party at our house and finally it will be Christmas Day itself.


Here's hoping that everyone has a great Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous 2008!

Merry Christmas and Happy Scrapping.

I survived the 30-hour crop

Well, I survived the 30-hour plus crop - I arrived at 1:30 p.m. on the Friday (just a little eager to get going) - helped set up all the tables, etc. so that I could have a choice pick of location. (I don't like being somewhere that everyone has to move behind you and is always tripping over your stuff.)

I found a great spot and got set up - I was not quite as organized as I planned to be so ended up pretty much taking everything that I thought I could possibily need - just in case!

I remembered my camera this time! (What kind of scrapper forgets their camera - me - that is who! The last major retreat that I went to, I remembered dang near the entire house, but forgot my camera!! Had to get pictures from my pals to use for my scrapbook!!)

I tried to take a picture every hour on the hour for the main 30-hour crop - just to see the changes happening over time - completely empty at first and then as it filled up and then died down over the wee small hours of the night and filled back up again the morning. Most of the time I remembered, but sometimes I got so engrossed in my scrapping that I forgot... I did get some sleep at Maria's house - from about 4 a.m. until 7:30 a.m. - about normal for a serious crop! During that time, Dianna, the owner of Remember Me, very kindly kept up the hourly photos, and even added some extra of the die-hard scrappers who carried on all through the night!

The crop was not quite as productive as I would have liked, inasmuch as I am still working on the "Lost Pictures" and it entails a lot of undoing layouts or lifting layouts and redoing or inserting other pages - so very time consuming for not a lot of progress.

I really, really want to finish these pictures - so that I can carry on moving forward, instead of one step forward, two steps back.

So the crop was lots of fun - there is another one in April that I will probably sign up for - depending on whether or not I go to an 'away' retreat!

Now, back to my scrapbooks - got to get those photos finished - at the rate that I am taking new pictures, I will never catch up!

Happy Scrapping!

30 Hours of Scrappin'

This Friday is the start of the "30-hour Crop" at Remember Me in Coquitlam. This is for the seriously crazy scrappers!!! Thirty hours straight through and then if that is not enough - come back on the Sunday (after a little sleep) and crop from noon to five!!

I am packing up my stuff - getting all my photos ready to go so that I can really get some scrapbooking done!!

I want to have a really good look at what pages I want to get done, so that I can have the paper, embelishments, etc. already pulled from my stash to match the photos - check through all my Becky Higgins Sketches books to pick out potential layouts. This is serious scrapping!!

I am taking the Monday off to recover from all the scrapping - probably will need to catch up on a little sleep!

Scrap-aholics Anonymous might come knocking at my door after this weekend!

Triple 77-in-07

Well, what started out as wondering if I could complete 77 pages in 2007, will wrap up tonight at a potluck dinner at Remember Me, with my total reaching my personal goal of "Triple 77-in-07".

When the information was first posted as "Come join the 77-in-07 club" to see if you could reach that goal, I thought that there was no way that I would be able to do 'that many' pages. I have always been on the competitve side - not that this is a competition with anyone but yourself - but that works for me too.

I started keeping track as of January 1, 2007 and found that, during my holidays right after the New Year, I had managed to do 25 pages in a few weeks - I knew that doing '77' would not be a hard task.

So, last night I finished my 231st page since January - I have completed the better part of five 12x12 albums!! At this rate I might even catch up to myself - though if I continue taking pictures at the rate that I have been, there is no worry about that!!

Along the way, I have also completed three 6x6 albums, cards and numerous other small projects like my samples for the classes I have been teaching this fall.

Through all these projects, I have tried out a number of new techniques and become proficient in others and therefore grown as a scrapbooker. One of the things I love about scrapbooking is the changing products that are available that push you to try new and different approaches so that your albums don't ended up looking the same.

I feel good about reaching my personal goal - on to "88-in-08" - I wonder how many pages I can do in the next year?

Upcoming November Classes

I have a number of classes coming up in the next couple of weeks.

On Sunday, November 18th, I will be teaching at Remember Me - a calendar class. In this 4-hour class you will finish an entire calendar just in time to give to a special person for Christmas. Each of the twelve layouts has different techniques and ideas so that you will learn quick and simple ideas for completing this great project.

Here are a couple of the layouts so that you can see what we will be doing:

On Monday, November 19th, I will be teaching a Christmas card class at Michael's in PoCo. Had a real blast the last time that I did this class - lot's of energy.

On Monday, November 26th, I will be teaching a laced accordian book class at Michael's - this one Christmas themed. There are two options for this class - the original 6-panel one or a bigger 2-panel one - your choice. This is what the 6-panel one looks like:

I am looking forward to teaching this classes - they should be lots of fun!

See you in the scrapbooking pages!

The Past Revised

Over the last few weeks I have been spending quite a bit of time thinking about the past. During the summer I finally broke down and signed onto Facebook - within a few weeks, I had been contacted by one of my old high school classmates - after almost 30 years. Very shortly there after a few more followed until we now have 12 out of the 29 who graduated.

This past weekend, six of us got together - some I had not seen since the last day of school in 1978!! The years have gone by and we have all matured and our lives have gone on. We met for lunch and in some ways nothing and everything had changed. You might not quite recognize the face, but the mannerisms and the speech patterns remained the same after all this time.

I wanted to find a way to show everyone both my family and also one of my favourite hobbies - scrapbooking, so I created a little introduction book to incorporate both loves.

Here are some pictures of my little book:

And here is a picture of the six of us:

Meeting everyone again after almost 30 years was a little nerve wracking and also exciting - we are full of plans to see each other again - and Facebook continues to make it easy to be in touch with our busy days.

One of the funny outcomes of the weekend and my little book is that one of my old school mates had never seen modern scrapbooking and is now making plans to take classes in Victoria! (Ah, I have converted another one!!!)

The saying of "no matter how much things change, they always stay the same" comes to mind - I feel that I was able to bring two parts of my life together - my friends of my youth together with my current love of scrapbooking - the past meets the present.

Circle Journal Journies

On Friday night I picked up the first of nine Circle Journals that I will working on in the coming months and it started me thinking of the journey that my Circle Journal will be taking.

You might want to know what a "Circle Journal" is - it is a small scrapbook (at least in our case) that you start, set a theme and then pass along to the next member of your Circle Journal group. Once you do the title page, and the first two-page layout, the rest of the scrapbook is in other people's hands, for them to make their contributions, while you are making yours in their Circle Journal.

There are ten people in our group - so each book will be added to by nine other people before we have our own book back in our hands at the end of April.

We now have a list of the themes for each of the books and they are as varied as the people participating in the journal group. Everything from "Amazing Teachers" to "Quirks" and a number of things in between.

My first journal is a truly amazing book with a fabulous presentation - the theme is "Where in the world" and it is all about where you would like to go, where you dream about going - anywhere in the world. The book comes complete in a matching decorated box to go with the first couple of pages for Africa.

I have been thinking really hard on what I wanted to include for my two-page contribution - I think that I will be putting in "Holland in Tulip Time" as my addition to the journal.

I have not thought about Holland in the springtime for many years - it is definately on my life 'to do' list. I am glad to have this opportunity to revisit this dream.

I am looking forward to the journey through other people's Circle Journals too and as each changeover time happens - the books will be more facinating to read.......

Classes for October & November

I can hardly believe that Thanksgiving is over (I have the turkey leftovers to prove it), and Halloween is coming up quickly - I guess that, very shortly, it will be downhill to Christmas!

So, here is my class schedule for the rest of October:

Monday, October 15th from 6:30 p.m. @ Michael's PoCo - Laced Accordian Book

(See description below for more information.)

Sunday, October 21st from 1 p.m. @ Remember Me - Pet Mini Album.

This is a great little project - just six panels that lace together with ribbon. The ones that we will be doing are themed for a pet, but you could just as easily do any other theme on your own for yourself or for a present (Christmas idea) - weddings, baby showers, Christmas, vacation, etc. The whole project completes in two hours!

Monday, October 22nd from 6:30 p.m. @ Michael's PoCo - Wedding Albums

Now that the wedding day is past, the presents unwrapped and the flowers are preserved - the photographer has just delivered the 400+ pictures taken of you in your wedding finery - what do you do with all of them? You want something to remember the day by - all the ups and maybe the downs - this is the scrapbooking class for you. Bring your photos, memorabilia and ideas and I will get you started on creating that one of a kind album for all your wedding photos.

Monday, October 29th from 6:30 p.m. @ Michael's PoCo - Christmas Cards

Come and get started on making your Christmas cards for this year. This class will show you some simple techniques to make a variety of unique Christmas cards using some basic supplies and embellishments. By the end of the class you will have made a selection of cards.

Sunday, November 18th from 1:00 p.m. @ Remember Me - Calendar

This is a great opportunity to make a truly unique Christmas present for someone special in your family - a one-of-a-kind calendar. In this class you will make a 8" x 8" calendar - all 12 months in one 4 hour class. You will need to bring 12 4x6 photos and the basics (paper cutter, adhesive (normal and glue dots), scissors, etc.) - all the rest will be provided in this fast paced, kitted class.

If you would like more information on the above classes, please send me a message and I will be happy to provide it to you. Samples of all class projects will be on display in the stores.

Happy Scrapping!

October Class Schedule

I can't believe that we are almost halfway through September - I have all my classes booked through to almost Christmas too!

Monday, October 1st from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. @ Michael's - Beginners Scrapbooking.

The first Monday of each month at Michael's is my beginner's class - bring 4 or 5 photos, some paper that co-ordinates with the photos (or wait until you get there), a paper cutter, some scrapbooking adhesive, scissors and a pencil. You will go home with a 2-page layout.... Great opportunity to step into a wonderful hobby.

Sunday, October 21st from 1 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. @ Remember Me - Pet Mini Album.

This is a great little project - just six panels that lace together with ribbon. The ones that we will be doing are themed for a pet, but you could just as easily do any other theme on your own for yourself or for a present (Christmas idea) - weddings, baby showers, Christmas, vacation, etc. The whole project completes in two hours!

I will update the October classes as time goes on.

Let me know if you come to one of my classes and you saw the information here!

Happy Scrapbooking!

My Upcoming Class Schedule for September

I will be teaching scrapbooking at two different places this fall - Remember Me Scrapbooking in Coquitlam and Michael's Arts & Crafts in Port Coquitlam.

Here is my class schedule for September:

Sunday, September 16th from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. @ Remember Me - Wedding Albums.

Now that the wedding day is past, the presents unwrapped and the flowers are wilted - the photographer has just delivered the 400+ pictures taken of you in your wedding finery - what do you do with all of them? You want something to remember the day by - all the ups and maybe the downs - this is the scrapbooking class for you. Bring your photos, memorabilia and ideas and I will get you started on creating that one of a kind album for all your wedding photos.

Monday, September 17th from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. @ Michael's - Vacations Albums.

If you are like me, you have hundreds (or thousands) of photos from each and every trip you have taken. Take the time to preserve the memories for the years to come. This class will get you started on your vacation album. Bring your vacation photos and your basic supplies (paper cutter, scrapbooking adhesive, scissors and any papers you have) and you can start work on your ablum.

Monday, September 24th from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. @ Michael's - Thanksgiving greeting cards, dinner place cards and Halloween party invites.

In this class, you will be making a selection of Thanksgiving cards and dinner place cards for your Thanksgiving feast, along with simple invites to a Halloween Monster Mash. I will be teaching a number of techniques - stamping, embossing, brads, etc. in this class.

Check back for upcoming classes.

For more information on the classes and demos, please contact the stores directly.

Maybe I will see you in one of my classes!!

Mother of a 16-year-old

I can't believe that my eldest has turned 16!! I am sure that he was 3 only yesterday! Driving - there is a scary thought - he wants to get his Learners. I guess all we can do is arrange for driving lessons so that at least if he will be on the road, he will be as safe as he can be...

On Saturday, we took a number of his friends over to our friends house on Bowen Island for a beach birthday party - he says that it is his favourite place to be in the summer. The weather was not the best - but at least it did not rain and they were able to play in the ocean.

After lots of laughs and lots of food, we headed back to the mainland to drop off everyone and hit home. I dropped all the stuff off and headed right to bed - it is tiring being around 7 kids for a whole day of fun and not so much sun!

Of course, I have added to my 'photos to be scrapped' pile by another 100 or so. At this rate, I will never catch up to myself with all the photos I have waiting. I got some lovely pictures of the sunset on the west coast of Bowen - not the most colourful sunset I have ever seen, but quiet colours with a sailboat in the foreground.

I have also been asked to post some of my current layouts - I will add that to my list too.

Another weekend come and gone, the summer is almost over. I am sad that it has gone by so fast, but on the other hand, now that it will start getting darker and cooler in the evenings, there will be more time for scrapping!

Vacations Photos - The Results

Well, we made it back from our vacation - 3,500+ km later!! From here to Williams Lake, with side trips to Big Lake and Springhouse, a day trip to Barkerville. Then on to Summerland and finally to Fruitvale, with a day trip to Nelson, Castlegar and back to Fruitvale. All, in all, a whole lot of kilometers under our belts.

I have just finished loading all the photos on to my computer - actually managed to fill the memory on my 2 GB card for the first time - ended up with 652 photos from our vacation (not counting the ones that got deleted along the way). I am happy with most of them - can't imagine how many layouts I will need to do to do justice to even half that number of photos - but I learned a whole lot about my camera and also realized how much more I have to learn.

In the end, we captured the memories of our trip - the highs and the lows and now we just have to recover from all that travelling.

No matter how much I love getting away, I think that I love coming home more....


Here are some of my favourite pictures:


A close up of my son at the pool.









My hubby and friend, bracketed between the beach towels hanging on the line. They were watching some of the 'tame' deer roam through their property.






One of the close up macro shots that I wanted to get.



Interesting texture of the old wheel and the bright green foliage.

I was quite impressed by what the camera was able to capture in the fading light as dusk fell over Big Lake, BC. Not the best photo for clarity (I forgot my tripod), but the colours are amazing.







This is one of my all time favs - the glow of the fire with the marshmallows roasting - the camera was able to completely stop the motion of the fire and focus sharply at the same time.







I can hardly wait to start scrapping all of the hundreds of photos......

Vacation Photos

I have had my camera out a lot this vacation! Much to my eldest son's dismay - "Mom!! Turn that thing off!!!" Gotta capture all the fun!

I finally got a chance to view the photos yesterday on a screen larger than my camera and I was pleased with most of them. I have been really happy how my new camera is working with some of the night shots that I managed to get of the amazing moon rises we have been experiencing.

We visited Barkerville and spent the afternoon wandering through all the old buildings - and, of course, sampling some of the baked goods from the little bakery operating in the town. I made sure to take some of the close up, macro-type shots of some of the more interesting textures from around the town. Most turned out OK, but I can see that I still need to learn more about my camera.

We are now at my brother-in-laws in the Kootenays - more chances to get more photos!

Vacation Time!

It is almost vacation time again!! We will be hitting the road on Saturday morning - heading into the interior to visit family and friends. My new camera will be right there beside me - hoping to capture some great photos of wildlife and fun.

I will try to remember to include some of the interesting 'art' type photos, along with the family ones too. You know - the close up photos of interesting objects along the way - not just the kids standing in front of the sign, the kids standing in front of the car, the kids standing in front of [insert object name]!

We will be visiting places that we have been before, but I want to try to make sure we don't end up with the very same type of photos we had before. I like to keep my scrapbooks interesting, so I want to start with my photos!

Scrapbooking Classes

Upcoming scrapbooking classes that I will be teaching:

On Tuesday evenings in August, from 6:30 - 8:30 at Michael's in Port Coquitlam, I will be teaching either Beginner Tips & Techniques or Laced Accordian Books. Check with the store to see which one on which night.

On August 19th at 11:00 a.m at Michael's, I will be teaching a 1-hour kids scrapbooking class. I just finished the prototype last night and I am really pleased with how it turned out. This is a small cardstock album that kids can easily make to keep their own pictures in, using rings to do the binding. The class only covers having six pages, but you could add a few more.

Starting in September, I will also be teaching at Remember Me (my favourite local scrapbooking store). Dates, times and topics to be finalized. Please talk to the ladies at the store to see all the upcoming classes.

I will add to this information, once I have more things finalized.

Lost Photos Found - The Next Step

Well, now that I have gotten over the shock of finding so many pictures that had been misplaced, I have started to add them into my scrapbooks.

This is definately one of the times that I think that the pocket albums have it over the CM albums - but I love the CM albums!

I have lifted a couple of my pages - thank goodness for "Undo" - if you don't have a bottle of this magic 'potion' you should definately invest in it. I have been able to lift photos, stickers - as a matter of fact, whole pages with little to no damage to any of the elements - and the stickers are still usable afterwards!!

So far, I have done about 25 pages of the missing pictures and I am not even 1/3 of the way through all of them. The 30+ envelopes of pictures covered many different events.

I am off to "77-in-07" tonight, so I will be able to log another whole batch of pages!!

Lost Photos Found

My dear hubby happened to mention the other day "Did you know that there is a box of photos in the wardrobe downstairs?".

Now, I knew that I had photos for certain events that I could not find in the box of photos that I had at hand, but I thought it was only one or two different things. I dug out the box that he mentioned, only to find probably 30+ envelopes of photos!! I had thought that I was almost caught up on all my film-based photos - almost ready to step into the digital-age photos! I think that I will have to insert a whole new album in the middle of my other albums to accommodate all the extra pictures. These box of photos must have been moved around due to a flood that we had a couple of years ago and ended up in a wardrobe downstairs - that is the only explanation that I can think of as to their location.

I have spent the better part of the last week organizing all these 'found' photos. As my albums are chronological, it will mean a great deal of work to insert the pictures in fairly close proximity to their original order. Luckily, I had left some room for the ones that I knew I was missing - but as I underestimated the amount - not enough room!! This is the time that I sort of wish that I used pocket albums instead of Creative Memories albums. I wouldn't change for the world as I love the albums, but it would make this job a whole lot easier.

One good thing - I had thought that I was not a very good mom for my second son as I hardly had any pictures of him - typical of the second child I know, but as I often (even before becoming a scrapbooker) had a camera in hand - odd for me. Now I know what happened - most of the pictures feature my youngest as a toddler - he will be happier now and not accuse me of loving his brother more than him.

I am off to scrapping at Remember Me this evening for their 'Free-4-All' Friday night crop - maybe I can get a few layouts done....

New Digital Camera

I have recently purchased a new digital camera. I looked at a number of different models - DSLR or Fixed Lens - Super-Zoom or Standard. There are so many makes and models it was very hard to decide.

After thinking about it for a while, I decided that as I normally put a large zoom lens on my SLR-type cameras and very seldom change them, I might as well choose a good fixed lens type that had the zoom capabilities that I was interested in. (I like being able to stand back and use the zoom to get the close-ups without having the camera stuck in someone's face.)

I looked at all the major players in the super-zoom class of fixed lens cameras: Olympus, Canon, Panasonic and Fujifilm.

One of the things that I decided right off the bat was that I did not want to be tied to a battery pack - I would rather carry extra batteries if my rechargeables ran out than end up with a dead battery pack just at the start of a photo shoot. This ruled out the Panasonic models.

The Olympus at the biggest zoom - 18x, 10 pixels, image stabilization and top ISO of 800.
The Canon S3 IS had a zoom of about 16x, 6.0 pixels, image stabilization and top ISO also of 800.
The Fujifilm S6000fd/S6500fd - 10.75x zoom, 6.0 pixels, and the best ISO of the three at 3,200 (this model does not have IS, but with the useable ISO speed of up to 3,200 - this stops almost any motion and gives a sharp picture).

One of the best resources I found for making my decision was the DPReview website - this is an independent testing organization for digital photography. I was able to review all the makes/models that I was interested in to get reviews that were not tied to commission. This was a big help.

I checked with a number of different retails, but the best help from the most knowledgeable sales person was Oliver at PhotoExpress in Maple Ridge (besides being a great scrapbooking store). He is very familiar with all the current market models. He has used and tested all of the ones that I was looking at buying.

I ended up with the Fujifilm S6000fd and have been very happily playing with all the bells and whistles on this model. As it happens, my last digital camera was also a Fujifilm - this did not particularily sway my decision as I was completely ready to change brands.

I am looking forward to scrapbooking with the new pictures that I will be taking on my new camera!

Happy snapping!

"77 in 07" Club

Last night was the monthly meeting of the "77 in 07" Club at Remember Me.

When the club was announced, I had originally thought that doing 77 pages in 2007 seemed like an awful lot of pages to get done. So, just because I like to keep track of things, I decided to take note of all the pages that I had done from January 1, 2007 onward.

When I noticed that I had already done 26 pages by the middle of January - I decided to join - just for the added challenge of seeing how many pages I could complete. I have now done well over 100 pages (not counting the eighty 6 x 6 pages done) - I will go for 'double-77' and see if I can get to that next mark!

Happy scrapping!

Hatzic Lake Crop 2007

Well, we had another great crop brought to us by Michelle Dixon at Scrapping Away. The Camp Luther facilities were just like I remembered from last year. The food was fabulous again! Maria & Adelaide - you were missed this year.

Here is a picture of the people at my table. In the back row: Kathy (CM), Ann-Marie & me. In the front row - new pals: Chris, Cosette & Jackie.

I got 20 pages done this weekend - I have now completed 106 pages since January 1, 2007 - and I thought that doing "77 in 07" would be difficult!!

Here are some of the layouts that I did this past weekend:

I am exhausted from this weekend - I've got to remember to start booking off the Monday's after a retreat just to catch up with my sleep!

I could keep on scrappin'
or I could go to bed,
but then what would I do
with all these layouts in my head?
~Author Unknown, "My Addiction"

Happy scrapping!

My Scrapping Buddies

Welcome to my first blog. This blog is a great place for all my scrapping buddies to share information and comments on any projects that they are currently working on.

We can share pictures of our latest pages!!

Hope you are having a great day!

Brenda