A Sparkling Good Time (Scrapbook page)

The CSI (Color, Stories and Inspiration) scrapbooking challenge site had a beautiful color palette this week for us to work with.

I loved this challenge! Such cute colors! I have used them all in this layout of my step daughter Tracey with her husband and eldest son. She normally dresses very informal, so to see her all ‘glammed up’ was a delight that had to be photographed!

It was also a good excuse to use glitter paper that I had in a drawer but never use.

Evidence: Butterfly, glitter, flowers, stars, a swirl and a tiny brad.

My testimony is adding glitter to my journaling.

The WordArt is from Bethany’s Elegant WordArt

Thank you for looking,

God bless and...... keep scrapping!

Lisca

Granada

Hello peeps,

Thank you for stopping by. 

Today a bit more about our life here in Andalucia, Spain. Last weekend Gray and I were invited by a friend in Granada (our nearest city) to spend the weekend there. Although it is only an hour’s drive from where we live, we have only been a couple of times. Granada is beautiful.

Our friend lives in the old part, called the Albaicin. This is her street. (No cars as it's very narrow)

 She has a terrace on the roof where we had breakfast every morning. There is a beautiful view of the Alhambra, the famous palace from the time of the last sultan. (We visited the Alhambra a few years ago and it is stunningly beautiful.)

 This building, in the same style as the Alhambra, we just found by walking around. I don't think it has a name. It's just a building hidden away in a little side street but it's very old and very beautiful. Granada is full of surprises...

On Sunday night our friend also had a surprise in stall for us and she took us to a club where we had lessons in salsa dancing! Great fun! 

I hope all of you have had a good weekend too. That's it for now.

God bless and..... keep scrapping!

Lisca

Cave house bedroom

Hi everybody!
A while ago I blogged about painting my bathroom door and about the old chest that I painted in the same colour. I used Annie Sloan's chalk paint (recommended by my daughter-in-law Filipa) and absolutely loved it! So easy to use and it goes a long way as I haven't even used half a tin! (The colour is called 'duck egg').
Here are some before and after photos:

The chest was dark burgundy red and the door bright green! Now it looks much nicer....

The paint looks uneven in the picture but I think that is the shimmer of the waxing. Perhaps I didn't do that as well as I should.... it's not that visible in real life so I'm happy with the result.
I apologise for the bad quality of the last two photos. They're off my phone and were sent across with very few pixels. Must remember that in future....

Thanks for looking, God bless and......

Keep scrapping!

Lisca

Visitors in Spain

Hi everybody, long time no see! I’ve had my friend Paula and her hubby from the UK staying with us and  we have been busy showing them around. I would like to show you all what we showed them.

 Such as the fiesta in a neighbouring village. It was a roman catholic festival (the Spanish are mainly roman catholic, we go to an evangelical church but we are in the minority). 

 There was a mass with flamenco type music, then they processed the statue of the virgin around the village singing and dancing in her honor. Very colourful.  After that there were free drinks and snacks. Everybody danced. My husband and I did an English folk dance to paso doble music! Great fun! Locals kept coming up to us to make sure we had drinks and food. So sweet. We all enjoyed it.

 Everything here is different to urban life in the UK so even a trip to the market is an event. This is Paula posing with the melons.

We have an excellent ice cream parlour in town that makes their own ice cream with natural ingredients. Yumm! That had to be sampled of course. (They even make ice cream cakes!)

 We visited our neighbours’ vegetable plot and came away with broad beans, fresh peas and two huge lettuces!

Thank you for stopping by and reading about our life here in Spain.

Hasta luego! God bless and.... keep scrapping!

Lisca

Scrapbook page: "No Smoking Please"

I strive to do at least one scrapbook layout per week. To get the creative juices flowing I follow the CSI challenge (Color, Stories and Inspiration). They have a new 'case file' every week and this week it was this:

Here is my solution of the case: “No Smoking Please”. I enjoyed this one immensely as the colours are beautiful.

Scheme: The Merlot of the flowers is exactly the colour of the wine in front of me. Champagne ivory is found in the lace and the book page. (No I Have no champagne in front of me...lol) Of course there is black and white in my page and the icebucket grey is found in the vellum almost at the bottom of the ‘stack’.

Evidence: flowers, book page, metal, and cord.

Testimony: Four interesting things about my topic.

 I wrote:

“4 Reasons why smoking is bad for you:

1 – It is known to cause different types of cancer (not just lung cancer)

2 – Leads to formation of wrinkles and premature aging.

3 – Makes you more at risk of suffering from a heart attack and stroke.

4 – Can make you blind (age related macular degeneration)”.

On the back I wrote:

“This is a photo of myself when I was young. Probably in 1969. Smoking was fashionable back then. We knew no better.

But when I started nurses training I stopped smoking and since then I have never touched a cigarette again!”

I've used a lot of recycled stuff here. The black 

(wrinkled) background paper is the wrapper of an 

orange. I had to place my photo strategically so the 

brand name wasn't visible....The die cuts are cut from 

packaging too. ('Waste not, want not' they say.)

That's all for tonight,

God bless

and...... keep scrapping!

Lisca

.

Concertina booklets

Hi everybody,

Yesterday I did the craft workshop again in our village. We made these cute little concertina booklets. Aren’t they lovely? They are so easy to make that the girls actually made two each. Here are some of them:

I learnt how to make these years ago, but I’m sure there will be a YouTube tutorial somewhere if you want to make some too.

The girls were Patricia, Manoli, Jessica, Elizabeth and Maria. Next week we are going to make many more so we can sell them at a ‘Fun Day’ the week after and get some money for materials.

So today I have been cutting out about 100 card board squares in preparation of the next workshop....

Bye for now,

God bless and.... keep scrapping!

Lisca

Mother's Day in Spain

Hello everybody,

Hope you all had a good weekend. Here is some more about my life here in Spain.

Yesterday (Sunday) it was Mother’s Day in most of continental Europe, and the men in our church said they’d cook us ladies a meal. Of course this being Spain it would be paella. I’ve blogged about this before: paella is THE party food here.

We had a laugh as I’m not sure they knew what they were doing..... They certainly had a laugh when I sneaked round with the camera!

 We were served at the table, our drinks poured (where is the wine?). Afterwards they served us coffee and cake and then together did the washing up! Isn’t that great. We could stay at the table and chat while the men did the washing up! 

They scrubbed the large paella pan clean and here it is drying in the sun next to the gas burner.

That's it for today.

God bless and..... keep scrapping!

Lisca

Mother's Day: Scrapbook page for my mum

Hi everybody, welcome to my blog!

I love doing the scrapbook challenge that Debbi Tehrani & co think up every week at CSI:Color, Stories, Inspiration. Come and play with us, it's great fun! (http://csicolorstoriesinspiration.ning.com/)

As its Mother’s Day today in most of Continental Europe, I thought I’d scrap another photo of mother for the Case File 120. 

Here she is in the picture with my younger sister Anneke.

I struggled with this challenge. The colours did not come together and the vellum that looked so beautiful, now seems ‘dirty’. But, I solved it somehow.

The colours are all there: The blue, the white and the salmon pink, no problem. The bright green is in a little heart at the bottom and the kraft brown is the frame of the photo.

Evidence: Textured paper, mixed media background and gesso. Also raindrop shapes, scribbles (the stamp top right) and the fun bit of placing something upside down. (the button and the scribble stamp)

Testimony: I’ve made a vellum holder for my journaling.

My journaling:

 “As it’s Mother’s Day this is in honour of my lovely mum Anny (here with my sister Anneke). In the photo they are both all prettied up for my parents’ 60^th wedding anniversary in 2010.

My mum is from a strong and tough generation. She was 16 when the Second World War broke out and The Netherlands were occupied by the Germans. How hard that must have been to spend her teenage years in hardship and deprivation, and suffering real hunger that last winter of ‘44/’45.

Mum is very intelligent, a real ‘wise old bird’. If she would have had the opportunity to study, she would have had a university education, but again that was not her destiny. She decided (with my dad of course) to be a ‘stay-at-home-mum’ for me and my sister which we both appreciate and we grew up in a stable and loving environment.

I’m proud of my mum. She is independent, in spite of her deteriorating eye sight and mobility. She still uses her computer (with special software and huge screen for the partially sighted), and travels to Spain and the UK to visit her daughters. Of course she doesn’t like us living so far away but she optimistically says: You’re only a phone call away. In fact, I Skype her every weekend and we have long chats.

Next month she will be 90 years old and my sister and I are looking forward to spoiling her for her birthday.”

Mum doesn’t know I’m doing this page so it will be a surprise for her when she reads my blog.... I love you mum! xxx

Thank you for stopping by. 

God bless and..... keep on scrapping!

Lisca

Yellow paper roses

Hi peeps,

A while ago I wrote that I started a craft workshop here in the village. Twelve ladies turn up every Monday evening at 5 pm. They wanted to learn to do paper flowers with a flat back so they could stick them on a large cross for the local festival.

I looked around the internet and found a tutorial by SreeCrafts on YouTube which I found useful and away we went. Every Monday we had fun with paper, scissors and glue until we had enough flowers.

The idea was to cover the large cross for the local festival on the 3rd of May. 
Under the direction of a lady called Paqui, we stuck the roses onto the cross

 and we made four giant roses to lay on the floor. It's difficult to describe so here are some photos.

I think the result is stunning! The shape on the floor was made by 'plucking' pine cones and cutting up herbs from the field. The bowl in the foreground has now been filled with fruit. There are antique objects all around. All in all an interesting display. The idea is that for several days (1-4 May) the public come and look at these crosses. Well, I think ours is pretty spectacular. Don't you?

Thank you for stopping by,

God bless and..... keep scrapping!

Lisca

Scrapbook page: Lacemaker

Case file 365-5 Lacemaker

Here is my solution to Case file 365-5. All the colours are there, even the grey which you can find in a small strip under the scalloped edge or in my grey hair....

The evidence are stripes (in the embellishments), flowers (the lace), buttons, paint, scallops (right hand border), string (the thread on the bobbin).

As testimony I could say that there is a ring (faux stitching) around my journaling which is hidden under the photo.

1 - My mother is a lacemaker, but she has Macular Degeneration and is slowly going blind. When I showed an interest in lacemaking, she promptly gave me all her stuff and books. I went on several courses to learn and I’m enjoying it very much. When we moved to Spain, a friend’s mother had also stopped lacemaking and I received another lot of cushions, pins, bobbins, cotton and lots of patterns. I do miss the  little group we had in Clevedon and of course the teacher (Merryl). 

2 – The stylised yellow lace flower was made by my mum

3 – The bobbins I’m using in the photo have a ‘fat’ bottom. These are continental European bobbins but the one that I have stuck on my page is an English bobbin which is much thinner . In fact it is so slim that it needs some weights at the bottom. That’s what the beads are for. I have beaded this one myself.

That's it for today, thanks for stopping by.

God bless and....Keep scrapping!