Pretty Little Studio | Pre-school

Hi everyone!

Soon I'll have to look for a new pre-school for Maya. If you don't know how it works here in the US, kids typically start pre-school at the age of 3 and the time table differ but Arielle and Maya were both attending pre-school 2 days a week for a full school calendar year. At 4 years old, there's another year of pre-school, this time, Arielle went to school 3 days a week. After that, at 5, kids enter the public (or private) school system and go to school full time, in Kindergarten.

Now that we are moving, Arielle will enter a new school in first grade. There's no choosing of a school. The house we live in tells us the school our kids will attend. For pre-school though, we get to choose. This process (that we haven't yet started) brought me to think that I hadn't make a page yet about Maya's first day of pre-school.  So now I did. And today you can find it on the Pretty little Studio blog:

Head over to the Pretty Little Studio Blog to read about my process and all the steps I followed to get to the final result. :)

Thanks for looking!

Marie

Entre Artistes | Scrapbooker of the year Part 4 of 4

Hi everyone!
This is the 4th and last post of my reveal of my creations I submitted to the Entre Artistes contest. If you missed part one, two and three, you might consider catching up with that first. :)

Entre Artistes Part 1
Entre Artistes Part 2

Entre Artistes Part 3

The fourth assignment was to make a mini-album. If I remember correctly, they wanted to see 5 pages. For the purpose of the contest, that's all I did. Afterwards, I continued adding more content to the album.

So my mini-album is about the love I have for my children and the idea was inspired by the fabulous Hands Free Mama. If you don't know her and her work, I highly recommend you go take a peak at her blog.

For the base of the album, I used some mini memory file folders that were very very hot at the moment. I had just taken a class given by Heidi at Big Picture Classes called The Art Of Observation and I thought that using these super cute and colorful and "just my style" file folders would be the best idea!! :)

Lots of layering on the front letting place to a more simple and clean look inside.
On the first page I wrote a letter to my daughters, explaining the not so glamorous sides of motherhood. I will not share the letter with you because my mom can't read it without crying and I wouldn't want to ruin her day today. ;)

On the second and third pages, I share a love letter I wrote to each of my girls, and where I write about why I love them. What they do that I love so much.

Here I used my Silhouette et some Washi Tape to layer under the negative space.

I've designed and cut out my large title with my Silhouette.

Some vellum and stitching.

And the last page is recording small precious moments that happen daily in our house.

There you go! :)

I might share with you later the remaining finished pages. 

In the meanwhile, thanks for coming by and don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions. :) 

Thanks again,

Merci :)

Entre Artistes | Scrapbooker of the year Part 3 of 4

Hi everyone!
This is the 3rd post of my reveal of my creations I submitted to the Entre Artistes contest. If you missed part one and two, you might consider catch up with that first. :)

Entre Artistes Part 1
Entre Artistes Part 2

The third assignment was to make a home decor piece that was creative.
I decided to make 2 silhouettes of my daughters and to mount them on a special background.
Here's the result:

One of the things I was doing before I started scrapbooking was called "Decoupage". It's french and it translates to "paper cuts". I learned the art in Switzerland. Here are some of my work of art on cards.

Anyway, to come back to these silhouettes, I started but working on the photos with Photoshop. I had to play with the contrast, and to cut out the silhouette of the girls. I then cut them out in a special black paper.

This is Arielle on her bike.

And this is some of the details of the background. It's a sheet of Dear Lizzy patterned paper with some stitching and some ink spraying from Heidi Swapp.

This is Maya on the carousel at Downtown Disney, Orlando.

And this is a detailed shot of the background. Again, Heidi Swapp's color magic spray in Cherry. On this one I stitched on the contour of the patterned paper.

I haven't hung them yet but I definitely will do so in my new house.

Thanks for looking and stay tuned for Part 4 in a couple of days! :)

Marie

Entre Artistes | Scrapbooker of the year Part 2 of 4

Hi everyone!

If you missed the first part of this series, you might want to start reading here to know what I'm talking about. :)

Ok, so today I'll share another layout. This time I had to make an auto-portrait. The page had to represent my style and talk about me. Here's what I made:

For these little squares, I'm almost shy to say that this was a cardstock that I had pull out of the trash can. I had been working on a layout and wasn't happy with my background…. I don't even remember what I used for the paint. Probably a simple watercolor kit for children.

Notice the stitching on a couple of the squares? I had stitched in a circle on the entire background. When I cut it apart, I made sure that small pieces of that stitching would show. I had also used some of the Heidi Swapp Color Magic golden spray. I love the effect of the brilliance.

On the squares I'm talking about small special facts about me.  The subjects include: traveling dreams, my biggest fear, my passion, my dreams, I'm happy when, I'm proud of myself when…, I'm sad when…, my wishes for my daughters.

I rememeber I had just stocked up on the brand new Heidi Swapp products. :) I wasn't cheap on the layering. ;)  And the fine golden lines are a foil that I sticked to some lines I had made with a glue roller pen. Same thing for the golden dots.

I wanted to make something that hadn't yet been seen. And so I began to form my style… :) I can't say that this is very innovative, but for me it was all new and different than what I was used to create.

I still love the small watercolor pieces.

Thanks for looking!
Stay tunes for the rest.

Marie

Entre Artistes | Scrapbooker of the year Part 1 of 4

Hi everyone!

Today I have something old(er) to share with you. I couldn't share it before because of publication rights but now I am free to do so. :)

First, let me back up a little.
Last year, I participated in a contest held by The Great Celine Navarro and Karine Cazenave. Together they are Entre Artistes. It's a very well known company in France. The contest was called

"Scrapbooker of the year 2013"

And there where given assignments that we had to submit. There was a mini album, a home decor project and 3 layouts with given constraints.

No, I didn't win, but I finished second. It was a very proud moment for me. :)

Part of my creations were published in the Entre Artiste's magazine. One page was published here, on my blog.
And starting today, I'd like to show you what I have sent for submission.

One of the assignments was to make a layout using only navy blue, pale yellow, pale pink and aqua.
Here's my layout using some very very old Stampin'UP! patterned paper because I didn't have any of the brand new stuff in my stash at that moment. Since then, I carry some navy blue papers. ;)

It's fun (even for me) to reminisce pages I made over a year ago. :) With all the sewing, the embroidery (Amy Tangerine hadn't launched her templates yet, or at least I wasn't aware of it), the layering of small elements, the ink droplets and sequins. It makes for a fun page to look at. :)

I'll show you the other projects in the upcoming days and weeks. Stay tuned. :)

Marie

Pretty Little Studio | Finding a new house

Hi everyone!

As you know if you follow along here or on any social media (Instagram, Facebook) I am in the process of moving to a new home. We are going from Connecticut, to North Carolina. Moving is at the same time exciting, and tiring. It's nice to know we can start fresh again and make a new house feel like home, and chafe de decoration, and adjust things that weren't quite working until now, but at the same time it can be stressful and sad. We sure are sad to leave some good friends behind, and the proximity to my family in Canada, and a house and neighborhood we love.

(our new house in Charlotte - photo from Instagram)

This being said, I just came back from a trip to Charlotte. While my parents were taking care of the kids here, in Connecticut, I was over there with my husband, meeting with an interior designer and with the men who's going to get us new floors and with a contractor for our new bathroom. We also went hunting for new furniture pieces. That's the fun part, right?!

Today on the Pretty Little Studio blog, I'm sharing a page I made about the house hunting process. I thought it would be good for my soul to document the ups and downs of the process of finding the perfect new place for my family. Here it is:

For the making of this page, I used the new Marigold collection from Pretty Little Studio. I just love the colors of this collection and all the little bits and pieces and embellishments that come in the collection. Paired with gold, they make for a pretty happy page. That's just what I needed at the moment! :)

Talking about Pretty little Studio, I decided not to renew my position on the Design Team. Because of the upcoming move, I'll be without a scrap room for a while and after that I'll be trying to adjust to a new life with my little girls so I think it was smart (not fun though) to say goodbye to this company I loved working with.  I still have 5 pages to come with the Pretty Little Studio products before I definitely move on. Some cute pages to come through out July and August! Stay tuned!! :)

Thanks for coming by today! It's greatly appreciated.

And a very nice day. :)

Marie

Pretty Little Studio | Journaling Cards

Hi everyone! 

If you're like me, you love Journaling Cards!!

Who doesn't? That you are doing Project life or not, you can find many ways to use journaling cards on your layouts. Did you know that Pretty Little Studio had TONS of FABULOUS Journaling Cards to choose from??! You should go check it out.

But first, I'd like to show you with journaling cards. 

Usually, when I think doing a baby Project Life album, I think about my babies. I started Maya's Project Life baby album with Ruby Rock it's collection. (You can see it here.) And I did Arielle's project Life baby album for a project I'll talk about later, when I'll be allowed to talk about it. But why not make a Project Life style baby album about ME???!! Right?! 

Yeah, that's right! When I first learned about Project life, I wasn't expecting to use it as I use it now (actually, I'm quite behind on that right now), but I had seen the potential of that system to tuck in all these baby pictures I have for which I don't really have a story. Here's the beginning of this album which is FINALLY seeing the light of day. :)

It's a double spread. You can see the details of my journaling cards right here:

I added quite a bit of details and played with stitching and die cuts and sequins. And every single thing you see here is from Pretty Little Studio. And I'm quite happy with he result. :)

Talk to you soon!!

Marie