Layout⎪ Bundle Of Joy

I have just realized I have totally forgotten to post these 2 layouts that I made for Studio Calico Sunday Sketch Challenge dated 21/April. Omg, this was featured on Studio Calico blog almost a month ago. I was jumping in joy when I received emails from Nicole Harper to join them for the Sketch Challenge. Check out the blog post here.

This is the first layout I made using Dawn Mcvey's card sketch in Spencer's gallery.

When I saw Dawn's card sketch, I am inspired to make a layout with circle photos and go crazy with circle embellishment. So I created a cut file by placing various sizes of circle vertically (by following the sketch). Then I added bits and bobs of papers, buttons, garlands, splatter, enamel dots and even a flair button. 

I am in love with the way Dawn embellished each circle with heart and stars. So I grabbed some cut-out stars from my previous layout and add some doodling with White gel pen. Added some stars, button and garland from Glitz Design to each of the circle. The overall layout turned out to be slightly different from the card sketch but i really love how the sketch inspire me to do something out of my comfort zone which is creating layout with circle photo. 

I have also tied twine into ribbons by following Dawn's embellishment on the card. This is such a quick and easy layout for me as I just cut the circles, back with various patterned papers and add bits and bobs and I am done. Easy peasy!

Somehow the white balance for the photos of this layout is out. It is way nicer in real!

Had so much fun embellishing each circle.

***

And here's the second layout using Geralyn Sy's sketch in her Spencer's gallery:

I love the way Geralyn made her layout with 2 patterned papers for the background and also the white splatter all over the bottom piece card stock. I flipped the sketch vertically and tucked layers of papers behind my photos to replace those tags that Geralyn used. 

I love the way Geralyn added white splatter all over the bottom piece of cardstock and this reminds me of starry sky. So I used my beloved Silhouette Cameo to cut a star background and used the negative part and splattered lots of white Mister Huey. I back my layout with a piece of white cardstock that I have already added some gesso and painted with mister huey to create a subtle mixed media background. Love me some gesso for most of my projects nowadays and it's so fun! I also cut out the misted arrows and place in between the two papers to create a barrier.

I kept the position of the embellishment on the bottom right unchanged and just added a circle and a misted arrow. I am deeply in love with the arrow mask that came in the Neverland scrapbook kit. It's so versatile to use as background or cut-out as embellishment. The possibilities of using this mask is endless.

p.s.: The red color mist splatter on the someday tag did look like blood stain, so I added some yellow splatter to disguise it. LoL.

Cutting out the misted arrows. Loving the tone-on-tone effect

Loving the watercolor background under the Star negative die cut

Which layout is your favorite? I prefer the star layout more than the circle one, because I hardly use color card stock for my projects. So this is definitely something different for me. And the watercolor background under the star die cut is insanely pretty! Thanks for looking. XoXo.

Layout⎪ 6x6 Paper Play *Citrus Twist Kits*

Hello there! Its been almost 2 weeks since I last blogged. No worries, I am still breathing and crafting although I have been crafting much lesser compared to the days Baby Ivan was here. Baby's first days can't wait and I would not want to miss those precious moment right?

I have two layouts up on Citrus Twist Kits blog today featuring the 6x6 paper pads that is included in the Project Life May kit. I love purchasing 6x6 pads although I don't make a lot of cards. I just love how this little paper pad has almost all the papers in a particular collections at a fraction of price. And most of the PL-ers know that the scaled-down patterns in the 6x6 pads are perfect to use for those little pockets in PL spreads.

I also love using 6x6 pads to create traditional 12x12 layouts and I have posted two of the examples on CTK blog. One is crazily vibrant and the other one is simply dreamy. Do check the blog out and hopefully you'll be inspired to use up some of the paper pads in your stash too!

With a 2 inch square punch and a 6x6 paper pad, I could make a busy-and-complicated looking layout under an hour. Awesome huh? I could go really crazy with the colors and embellishment as I am using a B&W photo. I think I am gonna scrap this photo again and again as this is one of the most important moment of my life.

Currently: In love with vellum pockets.

Am hoping I could have better hand writing ;)

The 'Notes' stamp is one of the CTK exclusive stamp. Too cute!

And this is the 2nd layout I created with the 6x6 pad & a Martha Stewart Hearts punch.

As opposed to the previous vibrant layout, this layout is more on the muted, dreamy side to match with my wedding photo. This is one of my favorite photos of myself during my big day. The photo is so simple, yet meaningful, so I didn't want the layout to be overwhelmed with embellishments.

The Dear Lizzy thickers look so yummilicious with its sugar frosting ;)

Running out of white thread. So I have been stitching with pale yellow thread for my recent projects.

I have more layouts and projects that I can't wait to share with y'all here. Stay tuned! XoXo....

National Scrapbooking Day & Giveaway Winner!

It's National Scrapbooking Day and do you stay in your scrap desk and have fun making stuffs? Sadly, I did not. I am trying very hard to juggling between a newborn and cleaning up the huge mess in my Singapore home. FYI, I was away from my home for 2 months since I was required to bed rest for 3 weeks and confined (it's a must for Chinese to have a 30 days of confinement) at my parent's place back in Kuala Lumpur. God knows how much I miss my home in Singapore, especially my scrap desk! And there are boxes of scrappy stuff waiting for me in Singapore while I was away!

I am gonna finish up with this blog post, attend to my baby and start working on my Project Life spreads & Citrus Twist assignments.

Firstly, I would like to post the winner of the Mother's Day blog hop:

Congrats, Michelle Looi from Scraposition! Kindly email me at waisam.ho@gmail.com so that I could post the prezzies to you. And by the way, do drop by Michelle's blog to check out her awesome projects. I am always in awe of her ways of using mists and paints. And would love to thank all ladies for leaving comments + following me on my blog & instagram. You all are super awesome!

And secondly, I want to thank the awesome Instagram friends that I have met. Me & Baby Ivan has received plenty of gifts from these awesome ladies that I met via Instagram, and I have not even met them in person. This is one of the happy mail that I received this week, that makes me and Ivan happy Mommy, happy baby. Super love those cute onesies with cute french bull dog (me think is a french bull dog ;)). And I finished eating the Dove chocolates in a day. Yum!!! How thoughtful are Rebecca & Abby who sent me this lovely parcel all the way from US. Thanks a bunch!

And I would love to include a photo of Ivan smiling in his dream. Too cute to not post this! It just made me super happy looking at his smile even after he has been making fuss for hours. Nothing beats a baby smile right?

And I would like to end this post with a photo of my little family which was taken yesterday. I am so glad that I still have only 1 more kg to go for losing all my baby weight and super happy that I am finally home after 2 months. P.S. my house is still in huge mess as you could see from the picture. Hubster never bother to clean up the house while I was away. Thank god that I have a weekly helper who at least comes and cleans the house once a week.

Just something random from this picture. I am a little pissed that my shoe size still remains the same throughout my pregnancy.  According to old wives' tale our feet will grow bigger after getting pregnant & giving birth. Noooo such thing for me. I am complaining here because I am very petite and am wearing shoes US size 34 (UK Size 3). Yes, and there are times size 34 shoes are a tad too big for me. And most of the time I need to get shoes from kids department. No fun at all ;) 

Enough of my random rants. Thanks for dropping by my blog, XoXo.

Blog Hop⎪Mommy's Day

Hello beautiful people! This is the second time I am joining another bloghop and a little giveaway here!

A few of my scrappy friends in Singapore thought it would be fun to do a mini bloghop together to get to know even more scrappers and bloggers. And for me, being a new mom this year I just want to have lots of crafty fun to celebrate my very first Mother's Day! So of course, I am definitely in on this great idea!

And since Mother's Day is drawing near, we thought we would have a Mom's Day theme for our first mini bloghop together. Sharing with you a layout of me and my mum, which is heavily inspired by my mum's hobby - sewing and quilting. I would love to wish all the mothers (including myself) Happy Mother's Day!

The title of the layout is inspired by this cute advert by Kikki.K

Here's my layout for my beloved mom. I added lots of machine-stitching in this layout to create the quilting feeling. The flowery prints in Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm collection is just perfect for the title! I love this pic of me and my mum which was taken during my wedding. Do you think I do look a lot like my mum? 

'Love you more'  & 'Lucky me' are just the perfect sentiments for the layout.

Playing around with different Thickers to create the long title. I have used 5 types of Thickers here.

The upside-down 'i' in the word 'pick' is a happy accident.

My love for sequins again.... These sequins are from my mum's stash. 

In conjunction with this hop, I am also throwing in a mini giveaway here.


Various embellishments (buttons, die cuts, sequins, chipboards and paper clips) from Crate Paper Maggie Holmes, Smash, Teresa Collins and October Afternoon.

To have a chance at winning this little stash of goodies, do the following, each option gives you an additional chance in the final prize draw: (Note: International bloggers are welcomed too!)
1) Leave a comment and tell me how are you going to celebrate Mother's Say this year
2) Follow me on this blog. Look to your left and find "Join Me". Click to follow my blog, and leave a comment
3) Follow me on instagram (if you have an acct): happiescrappie and leave another comment. 

Giveaway closes on 1 May 2013, 20:00 / 8pm (Singapore Time). 

Do check out my other friends' Mother's Day crafty inspiration and stand to win goodies from their blogs too! 

Here's the four of us. Do pop by all and leave comments so that we can get to know you better too. (:

• Cassandra Chen
• Genevive Rulona
• Juanna Sia
• WaiSam Ho —>I am here!

Project Life⎪ Week 16

I have been trying my best to keep my Project Life up to date so that I don't get too stressed out catching up. So I recently start editing and printing photos, start cutting papers on Saturday night, which is a day before my week ends (My PL weeks start from Monday to Sunday). I would leave a card or two blank so that if there is any photos for Sunday, I will just print it and add to the spreads.

Here's week 16 that I used a lot of Cosmo Cricket Summer Love. Loving the ombre prints, sun-bleached patterns and a bit of nostalgia. Perfect for my overloading baby photos ;)

I actually enjoy looking at my baby's photos more after I put them on my PL pages. Ethan feels that its funny before I slotting all the photos and card into the pockets. It looks like baby Ivan is having a lot of baseball cards or ATC cards.

When I was pulling papers for this spread, I didn't have any particular color schemes that I wanted on mind. But Cosmo Cricket Summer Love is so very me, blue-pink-yellow with a hint of cream color background. 

just another simple page that I cut papers, glue photos and add a little bit of embellishments and enamel dots here and there. Arrows and banners have became one of my favorite embellishment on PL or layouts.

A very simple title card for the week. I was having hard time putting all the embellishment and papers to make this simple title card. I just didn't have any mojo for doing this week spread.

My favorite  card with favorite photo of the week. My baby is now 3 weeks old!

Was making a layout for Mother's day, inspired by mum's hobby - Sewing and quilting. 

That's all for this week PL spreads. Thanks for looking, XoXo.

Layout⎪ Out Of Sight.... *Citrus Twist Kits*

I have always loved this quote, out of sight, never out of mind. There are so many dogs that came into my life and left after weeks or months of fostering. And there are even some left us after days of fostering because of sickness or better still, being adopted. While I was fairly active in running a non-profit dog shelter with a bunch of fellow rescuers back in Kuala Lumpur, I even helped fostering 4 dogs at one time. Okay, fast forward this is a layout dedicated for my number 21 foster doggies - Sasha who came into our lives before Christmas last year. The rescue group in Singapore spent a few nights capturing her as they found her to have a really huge maggot wound around her neck. Thank god she was still surviving although she was in deep pain. 

Sasha is the sweetest girl ever as I have always fond of having a girl dog more than a boy dog. She is young, playful and energetic. She is always very very protective as she knows that I have spent all day at my craft table, she never allow my weekly helper to get stuff from my table. How sweet she is right? I have fostered her for almost 3 months and even thought of adopting her. Talk about *foster failures* here. I have no choice but to send her back to the rescue group (that's where she came from) when my gynae wanted me to bed rest for 3 weeks to avoid having a premmies. 

So I didn't really get to say goodbye to her before I went back to KL for bed rest. God knows I was all weepy and teary all the way from Singapore back to KL. I decided to dedicate a layout for this sweet girl who brought 3-months sunshine to my life. 

I made a layout follow by a Citrus Twist Kits sketch. I hope this pretty sketch would inspire you to play with papers and glue, and even some mist or splatters.

I love this sketch so much and decided to flip in vertically. So I placed strips of papers and die cut vertically on a piece of white card stock, and the arrows are now moved to the bottom right of the layout. Loving those cute splatters too, so I use my Inktense black pencils to add some water and splatter with a big wet brush.

Using Citrus Twist Kit April Main Kit, PL Kit and Embellies Kit. I  didn't use a lot of patterned papers here, and instead I use a lot of die cuts from the Maggie Holmes ephemera pack. Again, you will never believe that I made this layout before I went into labour ward. Scrapping or crafting really helps me in easing the awful contraction pain. This girly layout does look perfect for a sweet girl like Sasha. But the  photo looks a little sad. That was her napping near the front door to protect us and making everything is fine.

In love with this thickers and gosh, finally I got to stitch over thickers and chipboard. Mum's sewing machine is way durable n heavy duty than my mini portable machine.

The day by day stamp is from the PL kit. I stamped from Monday to Sunday to indicate I actually miss her everyday.

Ribbons and pink are a girly layout's best elements.

Cut out the fabric polaroid frame and layer over the photos.

Thanks for looking and reading story about Sasha. I hope this post inspire you to do something with the sketch too. XoXo. 

Project Life⎪ Week 15 with a Baby Theme

Hello hello! I completed this baby themed spread last Sunday, even before Week 15 had ended. See, I am kinda efficient to glue things down onto papers nowadays. 

I had no intention to make the spreads look very baby-themed and I am not too sure how it ended up so babyish too. Maybe its the colors and the cute whale stamp from Kelly Purkey make the spread looks extra cute and fun. I love stamping and I went crazy stamp for this week spread. And yes, this page is free of stitching, because I was too lazy to switch on mum's sewing machine.

Baby pictures overload. The Come Sail Away stamp by Kelly Purkey is so apt when I have a photo f Ivan sleeping on his Captain Quack mattress (bottom right pocket). A little *nudity* on the bottom left pocket here. Sorry baby Ivan ;P

This week title card is placed on the right page simply because I want it to be a vertical 4x6. I found some clipboard papers from the Dear Lizzy 5th & Frolic line and was very very determined to add it to my spread. So I placed the two clipboards side by side, one for mounting Ivan's passport photo and one for the base of my title card. His passport photo just cracks me up whenever I look at it as the boy in the photo is so-not-him! We were having hard time to get his passport photograph too as he was sleeping when we reached the immigration office. So after we spent a good 20 minutes waking him up, he started screaming hysterically in the office then we gotta try our very best to calm a frustrated boy in order to get a good photo. 

If you have been noticing me using a lot of sequins recently, its not because I am obsessed with them. I used them a lot recently because I have sent most of my scrap supplies back to Singapore and sequins are what I left for adding final touches to my projects. And I do think sequins work like mist & splatter, they work like a charm in filling up those too-blank space too. 

It's already Week 16 now. How has your project life coming along? Are you up to date or are you catching up? Do share your blog link in the comment with me so that I could drop by and check out your pages too! Thanks for looking, XoXo.

Layout⎪ "I Do"

I can't believe i have never made anything for our wedding pictures. I have never scrapped a single layout / projects for any of our pre-wedding, actual day and wedding lunch photos. Make me sound like such a lousy scrapbooker that never document the most important of my life.

I finally printed one of the photos from my actual day. Love love love this photo from my awesome photographer Paul Kong. This layout is for Studio Calico Sketch Challenge. And here's the sketch from Shanna Noel's gallery:

And here's my take for the sketch in using Studio Calico February and March Kit:

I followed everything in the sketch, i.e. the spilt-page look to feature two patterned papers, the position of the banners and also title. My journalling was all in the speech bubbles and I went crazy with embellishment again for this layout..

I painted the red chipboard button with white paint to tone it down, so that it will match the muted pink color background more.

I think this is my first time placing a title vertically. Notice the white wood veneer next to the title? I was too lazy to grab my white paint, so I colored them with my white uniball gel pen instead n it works like a charm ;)

Went crazy adding embellishing each speech bubble.

Chong Hwa is the name of our high school. Have I told ya Ethan was my high school classmate since year 1997. That means we have known each other for more than 15 years and counting. omg, how time flies!

 Just wanted to share a quick layout that I made and off to upload it to Studio Calico & Two Peas gallery now. Thanks for looking, XoXo.