Megha Bytes - A Mini Album

It feels good and quite difficult to get back to blogging after more than a year!! It's been ages since I have visited my space, let alone posting here and the fact that the projects themselves take ages for me to get done doesn't help! One of my goals this year is to try and keep this blog alive.

My last post here was about Project Life 2013 which I completed successfully.  I continued doing ProjectLife in 2014 though I am 10 weeks short of finishing it. Throw in some crafty time with crocheting, cross-stitching, card making, DIY home decor, 2014 has been an awesome year for me with crafty craziness and lots of travel which means tons of pictures and tons of memories to be documented!

I wanted to share a mini album I gifted my daughter on her 6th birthday. Almost a year and half back, I came across this cute mini album and I knew I wanted to make one for my daughter. She is one of a kind, funny and silly at most times. Before I saw this album, I had only been enjoying her age at that moment and moving on.  I began saving her fun little chit-chats and put them together in what I believe will be a memorable album for all of us!.

I used Project Life mini album and Mayfield Edition Childhood mini kit along with my Studio Calico PL Cards and embellishments and rest from my stash.





Sharing a few of the inside pages

My little girl loved this album and was so happy to recollect all those memories. I am sure to do one for my little boy too as his list of words begin to expand!

PROJECT LIFE 2013

I discovered Project Life in 2012 and was totally drawn towards this amazing idea of documenting life that I got the Amber Edition without further ado. I scoured thro' the Internet for inspiration, ideas and tips to aide me in scrapbooking our days and memories. Greatly inspired and not wanting to let go of this scrapbook system, I joined the bandwagon and began working on it in Jan 2012 with the intention of documenting each week on a weekly basis. The going was fun until March 2012 when Life got busier and Project Life took a back seat for a few weeks until it finally stopped.

Fast forward to Jan 2013 and my foremost goal was to take up what I left out the previous year - to make Project Life work for me. As we stepped into 2013, I for sure did not want to lose our fun-filled family memories to the passage of time and what better way to capture and record them than with this wonderful experience of Project Life (PL) thanks to the brilliance of Becky Higgins.

Title Page:

I have been taking PL at a slow pace doing a monthly documentation. I maintain a daily journal to record the day's happenings, the kids' tidbits, my thoughts and notes. This has greatly helped me keep track of things that  otherwise might have failed to go into the album. With a toddler and an infant I am never short of moments to document. I feel blessed to be able to record them in this simple way and we already feel thrilled every time we look in to the completed months and revisit the wonderful memories.

I love scrapbooking, but feel quite overwhelmed with the 12*12 layouts.  However with the PL spreads, I can get creative with the 3*4 or 4*6 pockets as smaller individual layouts as needed. Apart from the journal cards from the Amber core kit (I am using the same album for this year), I use some of my own patterned papers and the last few month spreads have enjoyed the fab kits from my recent Studio Calico Project Life (love it!) subscription.

Scrapbooking and memory keeping go hand in hand so well in this system...double the pleasure double the fun!!:) I LOVE Project Life and am addicted to it!.  I wouldn't want to ramble on more about my love for PL and its impact on me. However I would love to share few of my PL spreads here.

Tinkerbell Birthday

This is a longgg pending post..yeah almost 3 months old:).. My daughter celebrated her birthday in Jan, and for her special day, we had a small party at home. I was guessing that she might want a Princess party, as she was(and is) quite crazy about Rapunzel and her hair (yeah..for her, girls should have long hair and short hair makes you a boy!). But then one day she told me that she wished to be a fairy like Tinkerbell (her new favorite). Who doesn't love fairies and so it was decided that we have a Tinkerbell theme for our little fairy.

I had so much fun preparing for this party. For the invite, I created open petal shaped cards using a template that I got online with the party theme colors of purple and green. 

For the decor, I planned a miniature fairy garden for the Pixie Hollow - the home of the fairies. Using one of our old broken shelf, hubby dear helped set the ground for the garden and planted a couple of mini plants. My mom loves to craft too and was a great help in setting up the decor. We enjoyed painting birdhouses for the fairy house. We made a mini pool and miniature paper chairs/tables too. I love the mini mushrooms that added a cute touch to the garden. Megha was greatly excited and helped with the painting of the wooden base and the birdhouse and also set up the stone paths.

We placed cutouts of Tinkerbell and her friends to go with the theme. Can you see that the vines make the letter "M" for my daughter's first letter?.. I made mini Tinkerbell dress party favor boxes filled with chocolates for the guests. Tink's dress was handmade and the wings were cut from vellum paper.

I got Tinkerbell themed party favor bags and filled them with assorted gifts that included wands, fairy wings, books, paints, toys, etc., for the kids.   

Our little fairy enjoying the attention and the cake:)

I loved making these decors and I should say that am really blessed as my then 2 month old son was sweet enough to grant mommy enough time to do them:). My little fairy had great fun and a wonderful birthday.

Thanks to blogging I am happy to be able to share and record these memories that I can look back and enjoy. 

P.S: The birthday decor still stays good on our wall (except for the popped up balloons:)) bringing back those fun moments I enjoyed prepping them as well as the celebrations on the special day. As for the pixie hollow, it now houses some plants that my daughter planted and enjoys watching them grow:)

 

Happy Valentine'S Day

Megha and I had a blast making Valentine cards for all her friends and classmates in school. "My Silly Valentine" stamp set from Lawn Fawn was perfect for cute little messages on the cards for the little ones.  We used a couple of other stamps from my stash for variety. The pattern paper was done using "Teeny Tiny backdrops", again from Lawn Fawn (love it!) While I stamped the images, Megha helped with the paper trimming and coloring of the images.  She added beauty to the cards by writing her friends' names and her name on each and everyone of them..which were quite a lot. Love her interest and enthusiasm, especially her joy in spreading love to people around her. We had a fun-filled afternoon at her school where the kids sang songs and gave gifts to each other.

Smile Forever!

Happy Halloween!!! Hope everyone had great fun trick or treating today. I sure had a good time this year dressing up my little girl.. She dressed up as a devil at her school's fall festival and at a get-together at our friend's place. Today being Halloween, she was bored of being a devil again and wanted a different costume. She finally became a fairy butterfly and I loved dressing her up:))..



I have been wanting to do a layout for quite sometime and the fabulous sketch by Heather Landry at the October Challenge at Scraptastic Club this month inspired me to come up with one.

I combined this with the October pinterest challenge at  CreatingKeepsakes which was to include gold in your layout.  I was able to find the perfect pictures of my girl to scrapbook and am happy with how the layout had turned..

Below is my take on Heather's sketch and my entry for the pinterest challenge..

LOVE makes LIFE Beautiful! - Mixed Media

Been ages since I blogged or even crafted to my heart's content!!!!
However, I have not lost touch with the crafting world for my interests have taken a turn towards Mixed Media. Thanks to Youtube and other crafters who provide great insight into the world of mixed media that I was naturally inspired to create one!.. I love Christy Tomilnson's work on Mixed media and her tutorials were a great source of learning and inspiration!.

Mixed media is all about having fun with no right or wrong way..and that suits me well:)..I loved playing with colors and stamps on my canvas and totally loved the outcome. I was able to complete my canvas (I had to do it at multiple sittings:)..) just in time for my hubby's birthday and I was happy that I could gift something handmade with love:)..

I have shared a few snapshots of my step-by-step process. 
Using modpodge, added some doilies and old paper onto the canvas. Stamped some images onto tissue paper to add some texture..loved the little lifts caused by the tissue (it is not visible in the photo though) on the canvas.

Painted the canvas using acrylic paints.. used bubblewraps to create the dotted design..adding such random stuff was sure fun:)

 My final canvas after a bunch of stamping, rub-ons, doodling, etc. I then added some thickers and hand-written notes for the title..Love makes Life beautiful. Fun..fun..fun is what I had when doing this..and the best part is that it need not be perfectly done..the final outcome always turns out just lovely:)..

Hope you liked my first ever mixed media project!

LOVE Mini Album!

Back home after a wonderful, but short vacation to India. (3 weeks is just not enough!)..
Just want to share a mini that I created before my trip. I had to resist myself from sharing this until the gift reached the intended hands!:)

The album carries photo inserts and tags for journaling on each page.

This photo mat opens up to some more photo inserts and also carries a pocket for tags.

An inside look of the card insert from the above picture - journal + photo mat.

This page has a small envelope from Vellum that carries an even smaller tag inside!..:)

Layered photo mat to carry more photos and/or journaling spots.

I had great fun creating this album and I hope you like it as much as I do.