Very cute...photo!

This is a layout I made a while ago.It was during one mini-crop session we,the Heraklion based scrappers,held at my house,for the first time.It was great to get together and create,even though I usually end up watching what everybody else does and get inspired just as we're about to stop!My dear friend Melenia helped me a lot with this layout so I have to thank her once again!I'm not entirely happy with the title,but since I still don't have a small font alphabet stickers and the only alphas I do have are huge it's going to have to do for now.

Since it's an old picture of my mom I wanted to keep the theme kinda romantic and old fashioned.I'm not entirely sure if I succeeded,since this isn't my style at all,but it was my first effort trying something new and at the end of the day if you keep doing the same things over and over again you aren't making any progress!!





I hope you like it.

I'm an aunt!!

Yeah I know I should probably do a Merry Christmas post or something like that,but in this house,Jesus' birthday is secondary to my little nephew's:Sander!My sister finally gave birth on the 22nd of December to a healthy,huge (54cm and 4100gr) baby boy!I wish I could share a picture,cause he's really adorable,but I don't think my sister and brother in law would be very happy about that(they're kind of private) so you're just gonna have to take my word for it when I say:he's gorgeous!

As you all know I have been away for a few days to go to Thessaloniki for exams.So in case she gave birth while I was away I had to be prepared,so I made two cards before I went.Problem was,we had no idea what it was(I mean we knew it was a baby,but not if it was a boy or a girl).My sis thought it would be funny if they knew but none of the others did,so even though they knew pretty early on,they left us guessing till the very last day!So my cards had to be gender neutral!It was really tough to do that,so I came up with something "funny" to punish them both!

This is the card I made for my sis:




And this is the card I made for my brother in law.I have to say that he hates Winnie the Pooh,he told us he thinks he's gay because he constantly hugs Piglet and says "Oh bother"(of course he said that right after I had just bought a Winnie the Pooh paper pack to make their present baby mini album with).






In the comments I tell him how he should get used to it,since my sis will probably say that a lot with two men in the house(I had a baby girl version too,lol).

And this is the card I made today for my parents to send.As you can see,knowing the gender makes colour selection a lot easier!Also my sis loves giraffes,the whole room is decorated in them so it was easy to choose a theme.The little giraffe is a printable stamp I found online(sorry don't remember where) and the giraffe print cardstock I printed myself.The Welcome baby sentiment I bought a while back(as part of the mini album kit I still have to make) from Sfragidomania,I have to thank them once again,they did an excellent job!The ribbon I bought from a local craft store.




I hope you like them!!

"I feel it in my fingers...

...I feel it in my toes.Christmas is all around us,and so the feeling grows.".Have you seen this movie??I love it,it's probably one of my favorite Christmas movies(probably because even though it's a chick flick it's got some pretty funny scenes as well,I mean who didn't laugh when Hugh Grant busted a move as England's new Prime Minister?).And for those who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about,I'm reffering to the movie "Love Actually"...now go rent it and watch!



Okay with Christmas just around the corner and with me leaving in a couple of days for a week(yeah going to Thessaloniki,exams,yada,yada,yada,you know the drill) it was about time I started making my christmas cards.As most of you probably know I usually end up doing the same card over and over as many times I need it,just using different colours.But I loved all the different kinds of christmas cards some of my scrappers friends make every year so I decided to try it.Of course you can't change your whole personality by pushing a button so even though I tried different things,colours and themes for my cards the basic shape is the same.I decided I wanted to make triangular Christmas cards.We had gotten one a few years back and I loved how special it was,so I immediatelly then and there decided I'll make triangular cards as well some day,and the day has come!




Trying to make a triangle card isn't as easy as it sounds.Lucky for me I was able to find a template here (btw I loved the shaker card thingy,too bad I didn't have the supplies to make one,but some day ;)).As you see it has both the patterns for the base card and the shaker part of the card which is very usefull.It also has templates for triangle envelopes which I still have to make(but if it's a pain I might go for square ones ;)).So after having made a template out of cardstock it was easy to just trace around that one for all the other cards I made!And after that it was card making time!





I won't bore you with all the details on how I decided to make each card(and how many other ideas I had and tried that failed misserably,seriously,with all the paper I threw away I must have destroyed at least half a forest!) and I'm just gonna show you what I came up with.I'm not as happy with all of them(some I love,some I don't) but all in all it was fun making them!




I hope you like them!




P.S I have to thank my friends Eudokia and Lena.The first for giving me some of the patterned papers you see on some of the cards and the "Just for you" christmas ball cutout and the second for the two little sentiments on two of the cards.

It's not bragging if u can do it!

For this layout I used a sketch from scrapbooksetc.com (I used sketch # 36).In the back of my mind I had Irini's challenge(for her get creative blog) and I liked how the sketch in this layout somewhat had a cross like pattern(like our flag).The challenge was also to use the colours of our national flag(blue and white) and to use the word no,either in the title or the journaling.I did cheat a little(I don't know if it counts as cheating since,the challenge doesn't specifically express we have to use ONLY blue and white but that's how I understood it) but it was turning very very one note with only blue so I used the same shade of red as in the picture(at the end of the day,I love a good challenge but I have to make a good layout and showcase the photo as best possible,that's what's my first concern).

So the journaling might leave some of you confused,since it's somewhat of an inside joke.We've been calling our brother Popeye for years,because one day when we were watching it(when he was little) he pronounced it really weird(very literally) and wondered why they called him Popeye(as it's actually pronounced) in Greek!It was so cute and it stuck with him,and both me and my sister have been calling him like that since then!He's even listed that way in my cell phone,lol!So I liked the whole nautical theme and it was working great both with the colours and the picture so I went with it!

I am terrible at remembering the names and brands of the products I've used,but if any of you really wants to know I'll make an effort to list them (I know I should anyway,but meh!)

I hope you like it!

When you be-leave!

Here comes the second post for today!I've made this layout for the get creative October 1st challenge.When I read about it I immediatelly got excited,because like I said in the previous post,autumn is my favorite time of the year!I love all those colours,the fallen leaves and the sound they make when you step on them etc.I feel really unlucky that I live in a part of the world where fall only lasts maybe a bit longer than a heartbeat but also doesn't have all those gorgeous colours I see in pictures/movies from around the world!

This is probably my most time consuming layout ever.I've put a lot of work and different techniques in it and I'm pretty happy with the result(even though when I see all the other layouts I get depressed...I'm such a beginner!).I started with the leaves.I didn't have leaves nor a leaf stamp so that left me with only one other option:The internet!Luckilly there were lots to chose from and I decided on a set from Creativity portal.I printed them out(and almost ruined the printer in the process) and cut them out.Then I painted over them with a medium thick layer of crackle paint.I did this as I wanted cracks that were visible but not too heavy!The really cool thing about crackle paint is that as it dries it kind of shrinks so the leaves already took a really nice,natural,curled up form.Then after they were all dry and ready(that means the next day) I painted them.I used distress ink in the mustard seed colour and also a red alcohol ink and using my ink blending tool it was done easy and mess-free.

After that I decided on the photos.None of the photos I had were really suitable for what I had in mind so I picked two of my favorite photographs from two of my favorite places:Australia and Africa.As I say in the layout itself it's a dream of mine to work and live there for a few years in the future,so it was perfect(since I already had the title in mind).After that it was just a matter of choosing the colours and deciding how to combine them.The letters were of black chipboard so I inked them in a purple colour and then heat embossed them with embossing powder (eggplant colour) and they turned out great(you don't get to see it in the pictures much but they actually have a shiny blue-ish tint over them in the light).I distressed the edges of my green paper I used for matting my photos quite a bit(the fact it was a lighter shade of green inside because it was of the core'dinations range was an added bonus).The strips of paper on the bottom right are from a paper pad my friend Melenia gave me for my birthday(thank you again so much!).

I hope you like it!

Thank you

I made this card for the Stamp Simply challenge.The challenge asks us to be inspired by mother nature and make a card inspired by one of the seasons.Fall is my favorite,so it was obvious I'd go in that direction!It's a pretty simple card,but I hope you'll like it!

Take a break

No not literally,don't worry I'm not going on another hiatus!I told you I was back and I'm planning to keep that promise(both to you and most importantly to myself).The title is simply the layout title I used for my latest layout.With this LO I'm taking part in the Scrapbooking in Greece 12th challenge.

A while ago my laptop died.This caused me much stress,because a. all the learning matter for my exams was on that hard disc,b. most of my photos(including the ones of stuff I've made) were on that hard disc and c. I had no money to get a new one.Fortunatelly the hard disc was salvaged(it turned out the mother board was the cullprint) and my parents got me a new laptop (awww, aren't they sweet??).So I had that previous laptop for a few good years and of course,since I'm not carefull at all wear and tear was showing.There were a few of the keys missing(which happened during an unfortunate attempt to clean them) and that's how I found out something really interesting:Laptop keys are replacable.Which means you can take them off and put new ones in their place.There are actually quite a few sites selling them online.Of course I never replaced mine(see reason c) and at the end that turned out to be a good thing(since my laptop died a few short months later).But it got me thinking...hmmm the laptop died...time for some key harvest methinks!

So I had all these laptop keys and I knew I wanted to use them with scrapbooking but I had no idea how!And then this challenge popped up and it was the perfect solution.The challenge asks us to use only one piece of paper.This means you're stuck with the big empty space of your backing material and you'll have to find a way to fill it because you aren't allowed to use any other form of paper.Since I suck at doodling and my sticker collection is quite limited,the laptop keys were a great solution.

It's a bit grey-ish but that was intentionall(since I wanted to simulate the computer/laptop environment).On a later thought it might have worked out better with a different colour cat(since you could let the cat be it's original colour while the rest of the picrure is black and white) but my cat is black and white anyway so...The 0101 on top is to simulate the binary code computers use and recognise(and later my brother told me it's the number 5,which is one of my favorite numbers for multiple reasons so yay!).I distressed the paper(and the number stickers while I was at it) quite a bit to add a bit of a lighter shade(and also illustrate what happened to aformentioned laptop,lol).I wanted to add a bit of journalling but unfortunatelly the background paper is a bit too dark so black doesn't work and neither does silver.So I left the comments out,it's pretty self explanatory anyway!

So if you've made it this far after my life story,I hope you like it ;)