The Scrapgals Podcast

 Hey everyone!

Last Monday I was so happy to jump over my fear and be a guest on the Scrapgals podcast! Yay for being brave! Right?!

If you want to listen to the episode you'll have to register for the podcast and you can do so right here.

The episode is called Marie's dilemma and was prompted when I talked about having not scrapbooked in 3 years and being kind of lost as of where to start again.

After looking at all my already created albums/layouts, and after making some switches of some layouts that should live in different albums, I came up with the list of what I have, which is always a good starting point:

My Childhood (birth to 20 years old - right before I met my husband) | 2 albums full

Vancouver/Meeting my husband | Some layouts

Switzerland (1999 to 2010) | Some layouts

Travels (occurred while living in Switzerland + after kids) | 1 album full

Our wedding | Some layouts

Our honeymoon | Some layouts

My oldest daughter | 3 albums

My youngest daughter | 2 albums

Project Life/Day to day life | 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 (half the year)

Prague and Paris | some layouts (more than I thought)

From there, I decided to write down what I wanted to have in my library of memories, in other words, what I want to add to my collection:

Childhood

Teenage years - jobs, cars, brother, synchronized skating, Highschool - 3 schools, prom, graduation, summers with brother and friends 

Vancouver - friends, family, school, private classes, activities

Wedding - civil

Wedding - religious Guests, flowers, music, colors, invitation, menu, photograph, ceremony, reception

Honeymoon - Camping trip through USA

Honeymoon - Cruise

Honeymoon - Canada with the inlaws

Honeymoon - Canada with the friends

Travel - one layout per place visited

Switzerland - moving to... German classes, friends, outings with the boys, job

Bachelor degree in Canada (4 years)

Back to Switzerland (before having my baby)

Young mom - 2 babies away from home, expat life but not really

Travel after kids (take out of family album and gather as travel instead)

Moving to USA - life in USA (other than Project Life) - moves to Farmington, Avon, NC

Prague - special stories: house, villae, school, friends, concerts/dance, city, visits, special events and visits

Paris

Travel while living again in Europe (2016-2019)

Move to Cleveland/summer (2019)

Everyday life - Covid

Since the podcast appearance and talk with the two hosts (Tiffany and Tracie), I have much more clarity as you can see by my "want-to-do list" and with clarity comes Mojo and motivation! Woohoo! I have to say that I have had Tiffany watching over my shoulder and steering me in the right direction every day of the week! lol 

Here's the first layout I made and that will go into my Prague album:

    

Some comments in this layout: 

- I had so many photos that I had to use 2 pages. 

- Some photos didn't make it on the layout

- I liked playing with different size photos. I print at home and resize my photo with Photoshop.

- I was overwhelmed by the products because I haven't used any in a very long while! So I opened an armoire, grabbed a pile of stickers, chipboards, letters and just started! My intuition did the rest and knew how to guide me to the right products. I had been a 24/7 scrapbooker for 9 years after all. Can't really lose that experience it seems like!

- Starting with a white background is ALWAYS a good idea. It's a neutral canvas and you can always add more colors to it with embellishments and photos!

- When stuck, just continue. 

- Sometimes, more is more ;) Trust the process. And a story told is always better than one untold! <3 

Now a little bonus, coming directly from the podcast: 

I talked about a layout I made about my childhood. My neighborhood and the different places making it up. Here it is with some close-ups.

I've cut out my address in black paper with my Silhouette! 

I took these pictures one summer, when visiting my parents in Canada, I went back to my childhood neighborhood, 2 hours drive away!) and snapped pictures of my school, grandma's house, babysitter, etc... But you could do the same using Google Earth and screen shoting the different places of your childhood.

Stitching on a layout makes everything better!! Take your sewing machine out of the wardrobe and try it! :) 

The map was screenshotted from Google maps. You can see here the starting point.... A.

On the right page I added more photos of the street, the inside of the house, the backyard, the schoolyard... places where I played and hung out! I wrote the name of the place or street and added some childhood stories as the description of the photos. 

Hope this can inspire and motivate some of you to scrapbook, no matter how long you have been stuck! If I could, you can totally do it too. Assess what you have, find out what you want, and start!! :)

Have fun memory keeping!

Marie 

Canada Day Video Hop

Hey everyone!
Happy Canada day!

Happy to see you here.

Welcome to the Canada Day Video Hop where Canadian crafters and crafting companies have gotten together to celebrate!!


I’m joining a group of Crafty Canadian YouTubers and we’re celebrating this special day by featuring Canadian craft products and shops. A total of 13 shops and 2 Canadian papercraft magazines have generously sponsored today’s event and we’re giving away over $1000 in prizes!  

We have 25 individual gift certificates ranging from 25$ to 100$, a one-year subscription to Creative Scrapbooker Magazine, and a grand prize package worth 150$ from Scrapbook & Cards Today to give away.



In total there are over 1000$ in prizes!

You will find my 3 projects on my You Tube channel.
Here are some sneak peeks.

Digital image by justmedigitalstamps.com

Stamps by Penguin Palace

Digital image by Angie Blom

After you’ve finished watching my video, please leave a comment for your chance to win, and then click on the link in the description below for the next person in the hop. The more you comment, the higher your chances of winning. (Please indicate if you are in Canada or elsewhere as a few prizes are restricted to Canadian addresses only.) All of the giveaway details are on Emily’s blog. If you get lost along the way, please head to Emily’s blog for the full list of participants:

Comments close at 11:59pm EST on July 17, 2020 and all winners will be announced on Monday, July 20, 2020.

Enjoy the celebration and Happy Canada Day!! ;)

Marie

12 years old

Hi everyone!

We celebrated another birthday with another festive cake. 

Although Arielle turned 12, there seemed to be no age limit for mommy's cakes! 

She wished a cake with flowers on it, an elephant, a giraffe and so on.... I had to draw the line somewhere. 

I wasn't as organized and ahead of time this year as per the Covid 19! So the same morning I was shopping for favors and balloons. Thankfully I found some that were matching the cake and the flowers that my husband had brought from Costco the evening before. ouf!

That morning I also made a card. Thanks to already colored images, I just had to refresh the colors and add the penguin, bird and cake! Turned out perfectly fine!

For the cake, I made some fondant flowers with the kids during the week.  I made an elephant and a very modern rainbow (that kind of rainbow is to be found in every paper collection these days!) + the rainbow is the symbol that says everything is going to be ok right now. I thought it was working well.

Here are some details:

The #2 candle was recycled from Maya's 2 years old cake! And went through 4 moves - 2 overseas!

Got some matching balloons. Thankful for a party store 10 minutes away from the house! Yay for being back in the US! Try this in Paris...

Voilà! 2 friends came over. It was small, contended and perfect!! I still have nightmares from the golden birthday party in prague!! LOL 

I am a card maker

Hi crafty friends,
It’s been awhile. And another move for me, this time from Paris to Cleveland Ohio.
In the past 4 years, with 3 moves under my belt, my carrier as a scrapbooker has taken a turn! I had just arrived in Prague when Pretty Little Studio asked me for a Christmas Collection. It was my 2nd Christmas collection in 2 years and my 4th collection for them. (You can find all my collections here) At the same time I was on The Citrus Twist kits design team and on the Get it scrapped design team and in some teaching ventures for them as well. I might venture to say that this was a bit much! So I ended my term with CTK and decided that I was done with designing collections. I had to breathe. My scrapbooking mojo kinda left me while I was adjusting to the new chapter of my life, in czech. 😖 2years later we unexpectedly moved to Paris. I had a beautiful scraproom but could never settle in there! Another big adjustment and so little time and space. So I decided to follow my crafty BFF into her endeavor: card making. That was more portable than scrapbooking. I bough myself some Bristol paper and a lot of zig markers and I was good to go, on the corner of the table in the living room. Since then we moved once more, to the US this time. We should be here for a longer time. I do have my own office here too but it hasn’t been yet a year that we are here and I haven’t picked up scrapbooking back just yet. I’ve been making cards though! Lots of cards. Growing my stamp and tools collection and having fun pouring my soul and passion on these small scale projects. Here are some of my favorite cards I’ve made in the past two years:

Of course, I have made way more than just these. If you want to see more you can check my Instagram account @mpcapistran or on Facebook @PrettyPleaseByMariePierre

Now that I’ve straightened things out here, I’ll make sure to post my cards here as well because even though they aren’t scrapbooking pages, they are pieces of art and I’m sure you crafty friends will be interested in these too. 😊

Talk to you soon!!

Marie

Color combo challenge

Hi everyone!!
It’s been a while!!
Last time I showed up here I was living in Paris. I am now in my new home near Cleveland Ohio. How fast things can change, right?!
It’s been tough to stay creative in the past year! I have to admit that 10 months in Paris weren’t nearly enough to empty all the boxes and put stuff away and get a good creating environment. So I did had my studio space, but I just didn’t go in there. Instead, I stayed in the dining and living area where the light was so much better and I colored stamps and made cards! That became my creative outlet. I’m not saying that I won’t get back to scrapbooking, in fact, I’m setting up my studio as we speak, but I now have a new cord to my bow. And I love it!!
Here’s the latest card I created, using a mood board as jumping point! I loved working this way.
Here’s the mood board. Visit her on Instagram!!

I used the gorgeous stamps from Hello Bluebird and watercolor for coloring. Lots of fussy cutting and dimension added with 3D foam squares. :)

Thanks for looking!! 

Marie