Behind Those Walls

As part of my daily posting and the last post in March, thought I'd let you all in a secret. Well, not many people know but there are things about me that are behind those walls and not even the people I work with everyday know them. I'm sure we all have those that we don't bother to talk about because they are not related to anything we do in everyday life or maybe because, not all people we deal with can relate to them. Like blogging for example, none of my family do it.

Behind those walls, I am:
1. Called these alliases: NancyLee in my scrapworld; Leenanz @my photo/social networking world; Little one by mom Iris; Honey Ko by my honey; Kevin's wife to most of Parksville!
2. I speak Filipino, Pampango, English, Spanish, count in Cantonese!
3. I love photography, washi tapes, pretty papers and fresh flowers.
4. You can find me on facebook, instagram, flickr, blogger and some scrapbooking sites.
5. I hoard, I squint, I smile a lot, I burp like an islander!
6. I am a Filipino-Canadian, pretending to be an Argentinian in other life.

There you have it! Just a few things about me. It's been a journey doing this daily blogging in March and what record breaking since I started this blog in 2008! Hope we'll all have an April full of good stories to cherish. And to those who sent me some lovin', thank you so much! Hugs!

Blessed

Wow! Another month passed us by again. Don't know about you but as the month draws to a close, I find myself pondering a lot of what had happened, what could I have made differently to have made things better? But well, we can only do so much.

 As I was working on Shimelle's next Starting Point challenge, I thought of using 3 photos that I printed on a cardstock that were meant to go into my PL. Unfortunately, I had no more spot for them but I couldn't put them together on this layout so as I turned everything around over and over again, I came up with a theme, "Blessed". Boy didn't that make my choice easier?

I also had this pp stamped with my SC stamp that I was dying to use and everything just fell into the right places as soon as I chose my photo!

I also added some heart cut-outs from a wrapper of chocolates that my honey gave, to remember this day that he took this photo of me... and used a doily from another restaurant we went to on that particular week.

Voila! I love how it turned out. I wanted to show all patterned papers I used up so one photo was perfect. And glad I used a dark background to hide my journaling because it ended up so sentimental as I was writing down my thoughts on life in general....

Lesson I learned? 1. "count your blessings", especially, at times when you feel the emptiness...2. scrapbook it! I find it so therapeutic when you put your thoughts into art, however you want it: paint, draw, journal, etc. Trust me, it helps!

Project Life: Week 9

First of all, I'd like to thank Shimelle for not just her inspiration but for having picked my take on her Starting Point again as one of her faves; and for all the feedback I received on my layouts, for your time and your nice thoughts. For someone who considers herself always a novice on scrapbooking, your time and thoughts are very well appreciated, and will always serve as my motivation to be the best novice scrapbooker I can be. Thank you so much! One of the best things about this hobby, you gain nice friends from the distance...

Moving on, like I mentioned on my previous post, I am sharing my Project Life, week 9 here...

I was able to record as much of the Leap day on the 29th and made a Life Capsule.

Whoever finds this cannot open the envelope until the next Leap Year!

Most of the journaling is kept inside, and one page made simple. Still working on the

photos for my March PL and I'm afraid it won't get done before April kicks in. Oh well...

Time to get shopping at SC so will see you again. Happy crafting!



Sketch of the Week

As promised, I just wanted to share my page that I made this weekend based on Shimelle's sketch. It started out with 2 photos of my last year's cherry blossoms but it didnt' feel right to put them both horizontally. One of the photos was taken in portrait and I panicked because I'm not good at turning sketches around. After laying the photos, I had another challenge. I had these 3 patterned papers of flowers that I wanted to use for my theme but I didn't know how to put them together. Until finally I thought, hmmm, why not turn the embellishments on the sketch as my photos and just cut these patterned papers as the photos on the sketch? And here's the result....

I used a combination of old and new SC kit again with the new Dear Lizzy pretty chipboard embellishments.

I kept the page as simple as possible and I wanted to see everything spring on my page: the colors, the photos of cherry blossoms, the new spring embellishments. Thank you to my honey who actually adviced me to keep it as simple, the way it is... It just makes me smile as much as it does, whenever I pass by this tree on my way to work. And thank you to this sketch challenge that it did challenge me to think outside the box and to finally do something with my spring photos. I guess it also helped that the weather is just as beautiful that I got so inspired to do this page. I have it displayed on our mantel now as part of the celebration...

I love spring: it's my favorite time of the year! How about you?

Playing Along

Another scrapbooking weekend after that escape I made for taking photos yesterday. And of course, it's always inspiring whenever I start with Shimelle's Starting Point. For some reason, I get the mojo back and I don't stop until I loose the day's light and then, my honey starts closing the blinds for our tv viewing. So, I did not only one but two challenges, and a catch-up on my Project Life. Wow! that's a record break for me. However, as I go through my Project Life photos, I didn't realize that I needed to print a lot and now I am stuck with Week 10. I hope to get caught up by the end of this week because, you know why? It's April almost! Man! where did time go? Anyho, here's the challenge for this week and my starting point below.

As the name implies, I try to copy exactly the same layout as Shimelle's then take it as my own for the rest of it. I used my SC new kit from March and some Amy Tan's embellishments. Come to think of it, it's almost time to shop again. This March flew by like a speed bullet!

I was almost happy with the result and thought of just doing an insert for the journal but nah! Here's the almost finished page....lots of block cut-up papers and not a single flowery embellish. Hmmm....

And here's my actual finished page. I thought it's now complete after I did a bit of journaling here.

I now have an "almost" completed album of our holiday photos by just playing along at Shimelle's challenges since I started last year. I couldn't stop flipping the pages today, and I feel so happy to see my pretty photos and papers compiled in an album. What a difference!? I can't wait to share them with my family in the Philippines and maybe do a post once it's done.I also wanted to share a finished page of another Starting Point challenge that I started here.

Tomorrow, I will post my page for Shimelle's Sketch comeback. Meanwhile, hope you are having a great start to the week! And for those who took the time to visit here, thank you so much. Let me know what you think....

Christmas Crafting with Shimelle



Thank you Mr. Purolator....

Yup! Mr. Purolator is the man...

He knocks on the front door when it's sunny,

leaves the box undeer the shed in the garage when it's rainy,

he comes around the midmonth to deliver....

 this happy box!

I can't wait to play with this kit....

Waht's in your mailbox?

For the Love of Wonkiness!

You Are Here by NancyLee at StudioCalico.com

No worries folks, it's just a terminology that I am borrowing for the sake of art here. So this morning, I got so inspired and got down working on what else but Ms. Shimelle's Starting Points challenge. After fighting the battle of what photos win my heart, and what papers to add or use, and of course going thru my stack of boxes, I finally gathered a few that would go together:

I wanted to use that white paper and misted it with Mr. Huey's Bonnie Blue and then white then the blue again with cut out clouds on top of each color...

I used same clouds as embellishments here...

Then stamped, finished it off with lots and lots of happy stickers

from ms Amy Tan's AC collection.

Voila! My finished product in half day!  

Hope your Sunday is more fun than mine...



Starting Points at Shimelle's

Not sure about your side of the world but today was such a weird, maybe one of my not so good days. Could it have something to do with the gloomy weather? Where did the sun go? Just one

of those days that I found myself trying so hard to count the good things out of the bad ones. So here I ended up doing some changes on my blog at last and another post of five good things to share with you today. If you haven't seen my flickr post lately, I got inspired by another Shimelle challenge on the weekend called "Starting Points". And it's just a nice feeling when you see your work featured by someone as respectable!

Thank you Ms. Laine. If you want to play along, this fun challenge is on until Saturday.

Thanks to all the birthday wishes. It was a very quiet day on my honey's birthday. We decided to stay

home and just relax after a long weekend party with friends and family on Labor day. We did some

skyping with family back home for a change and it was really touching to see my mom on the screen,

 while we showed her around the house with my honey on tow, holding the laptop.

September is usually our month of celebration together so I also try to catch up on scrapping some wedding photos when I can. I'm using up my boxes of SC pps and Mr. Huey mists. I was also seriously considering on making some major changes on the look of my blog, any suggestions? It's also in September when I came up with this blog 2 years ago. One major thing that bugs me is loading a photo as part of the blog title. I haven't really figured out how to cut the height in half so it doesn't take much space.

LSNED update: day eleven, Sunday off. List of things I wanted to get done which I did. So far, I haven't got any single photo on my album yet but lessons are learned everyday....

Have you noticed? Fall leaves are starting to cover the ground. As much as I want the sunny days to stay, I guess there's no stopping those leaves to dry. Even the garden is showing it's last bloom but my honey still insisted on planting some winter veggies to replace our dried peas. The weather is getting cooler, in fact, I am wearing a sweater right now when two nights ago, I couldn't even sit where I am now for an hour because of the heat! Oh well, fall it is. I can't wait for pumpkin patch again and holloween costumes. Till then....

Have a great day!



Weekend Scrappy Challenge Continues....

Wow! That set a record indeed!

I had never ever scrapped that much in my entire life-

from start to finish! Seriously.

I usually start with something but maybe leave a page not journaled or missing something. But this challenge was so inspiring and maybe because I wanted to scrap some of the beautiful memories we had on our holiday in the Philippines together.

And I mentioned before that I really wanted to use up my kits from Studio Calico and get inspired by the sketchbook classes I took from Ms. Kelly Purkey

Big thanks to you but most specially to Ms. Shimelle Laine- I owe you big time!

To finish off (or maybe I will go back and scrap more),

here are a few of my favorites and hope you'll enjoy them.

Thanks for looking....