LO for Oona's Uncles

These two were made for my brothers, Oona's uncles, who were both moving out of my parents' house and striking out on their own. I wanted them to have a memento of Oona, to remind them a little bit of home and family. It features snapshots of Oona's first few months.

{Credits: Shabby Princess Harvest Spice, Cottage Arts Hope and Sentiment Pack}

Oona's Second Album: PAGES 12-14

These are the first few days at home. Sleepless, still racked with pain, exhausted and overly worried about Oona.

Is she crying because she's hungry? Too hot? Too cold? Not swaddled enough or too tight? Did she poop or pee? Does she want to cuddle? Be sung to? Are we too noisy or too quiet? Is she in pain? Is her navel bothering her? Is her jaundice getting worse?

Hay, the insecurity of new parents!

Plus the added worry that her pedia wanted to see her immediately after the weekend was over. The usual was seven days, but we were scheduled to see him three days after coming home.

It was the rainy season and no sun was coming out long enough for her to absorb as much vitamins as she can to beat the jaundice in her system. We were putting her under fluorescent lamps night and day, but we were scared it wasn't enough. At first she was just newborn red, then before the weekend was over, her eyeballs were yellow.

I was sick scared and RF was better at managing the worry. I didn't know what to do.

I was so frustrated because I just wanted her to be okay. I wanted her to be a normal, happy baby. I wanted not to be worried sick that the doctors would need her back at the hospital. I wanted to be well and mobile enough and RF and I to be rested to take better care of her. I wanted to know everything before she even had to cry so heart-breakingly for anything.

I think, it was my most helpless time. I didn't want to lose her.

Oona's Second Album: TITLE PAGE

This album should have taken me less time because all I had to do was basically put in pictures and titling. However, because it was so easy to do, I ended up taking longer: I put in more photos and text, doubling the number of pages in the album and tweaking the second set of layouts to make them a little different from the first set.

I *heart* Photoshop!

I'll be posting all twenty-two pages (Yes! TWENTY-TWO!) in batches, as it's a little overwhelming and long to post them in one go! :D

{Credits: Shabby Princess Piece-A-Cake In the Groove Album}

Evolution of a Wanderer

I have always loved travelling.

There's that thing they say at home about people like me, that we probably have a mole on our feet that's why we can't stay in one place at any given time. Well, my feet are as mole-free as it can get, but I think my soul's feet are another matter.

For Weekend Wanderings, a blog to chronicle my wanderlust throughout the years, I made this graphic. I know it's a little simple than the other graphics I've been posting lately. But as of now, the blog's pretty new so my mind was more on writing for it than making a digiscrap layout.






I have yet to make a banner for the blog too, as I am still thinking about the whole look of the page. But to be sure, when I'm done, I'll post it here as well.




{credits: freedigitalscrapbooking.com andrea rascaglia frames; peppermintcreative.com miss mint tropical popsicle; designerdigitals.com katie pertiet quote challenge 32507, kellie mize ad challenge 100106}

Oona's First Nine Months! My First Album!

My name is Laya and I am a Scrapaholic. (Hellooo, Laya!)

This happened beacuse we just had way too much footage of Oona being the triggerhappy proud parents of this little girl. We hardly knew what to do with the batches of pictures we accumulated.

I was surfing through arts and crafts websites to see what I could see, when I came across digital scrapbooking.

When it came to photographs, I was a glue-and-scissors kind of girl and it never crossed my mind that I could do this digitally. I was calling myself all kinds of stoofid because I used to jazz up static pictures with graphics in my video editing days! Duh! Why didn't I think of that in the first place?! My creative mojo really IS on an all time low!

But where to start, where to start? I couldn't possibly be making ribbons, buttons and stuff from scratch! It would take me too long and I was stumped for design. (Really no mojo to speak of).

It was after beating myself up for running out of creative juice that the universe pointed me in the direction of ScrapFlair. Maybe the universe got sick of my self-pity because not only was it a free downloadable program, ScrapFlair had ready-made templates and elements that were included in the package!

Oh joy and happy days!

Additional freebies are downloadable on the site too. So as soon as I started figuring out the program, I was downloading as much stuff as I liked.

It helps that you join the online community as well even if as a non-member, you can still read through the posts under a lot of helpful topics. The forum posts are very helpful and informative. As a member though, you can post your own questions, ask help for your specific concerns regarding tips and tricks and post in your own gallery to get feedback. You also get an email newsletter with what's new at the site and new kits that the designers launched.

At this time however, I'm still building up my own collection of pages inspired by the Scrapflair designs to post in my gallery. So far, I managed to finish Oona's First 9 Months, an album of my pregnancy.

I'm glad everything (except layout templates) are in a format that's editable. I wanted greater elbow-room so I ended up using Adobe Photoshop to make my own layouts, to resize and add effects to the elements themselves.

Since I wanted to add a lot more stuff to the scrapbook I was making, I had to make some of my own "stickers", labels and other graphics.



I also mixed in other elements I downloaded from other design templates.

Using ScrapFlair is a great way to get started on digital scrapbooking. This was all I needed to get me out of the creative funk I was having. From then on, I was able to move on to other projects using other resources that the scrapbooking community selflessly share!

{Credits: Scrapbookflair Sweetie Pie Collection, Aqua Glass Collection,
Princess Collection; Digitalscrapbooking-free.com Heart Sentiments by Lisa W;
Freedigitalscrapbooking.com Child of Mine Set}

THE EVENT REMINDER

{Credits: Shabby Princess Sweet Serenity, Festival, Promise Collection,
CottageArtsHopeSentimentPak,
Free Digital Scrapbooking Delight In Life
and DigiKeepsakes Vivaldi Alpha}

As usual, I had to send reminders to everybody.

I was nervous because less than half of the people we'd invited had RSVP'd and most of those were regrets. What in the world were we to do with 100 pax worth of food?! So using the photo from the first draft, I flipped the layout to come up with this. I was sure the others had forgotten that the event was nearly upon us.

Thinking up witticisms like in the godparent invite was a challenge though. So I ended up with something a little ordinary compared to the first salvo.

Sigh.

Anyhoo, the good news is that most of whom I sent this to responded. I even posted this as an event on Facebook just to cover all the bases.

Father's Day

{Credits: Designer Digitals Quote Challenge 1/06/08 Anna Aspnes;
Web Challenge 1/07/07 Mindy Terasawa and
CottageArtsHopeSentimentPak}

For the devoted Daddy. Coming straight from a perpetual night shift, RF would bring our newborn to the rooftop of our building for sunning duties. Oona had a bad case of jaundice and we were trying to beat it with sun. (Unfortunately, it was the stormy season so Oona still ended up in the hospital.)

RF would also be always be singing to Oona (more than I would be) and I often found them asleep together, surrounded by pillows. I think he almost always sings himself to sleep sooner than Oona and the baby would fall asleep to his snoring. Hehe!

Will You Be My Fairy Oddparent?

{Credits: Shabby Princess Sweet Serenity, Festival, Promise Collection,
CottageArtsHopeSentimentPak, Free Digital Scrapbooking Delight In Life
and DigiKeepsakes Vivaldi Alpha}

The invitation for Oona's Godparents. Since they're all beloved oddballs, we christened them Oona's Fairy Oddparents (yes, a few are fairy gay and most are gayer than the rest!). I know, I went scrap-crazy over this.

{Credits: Designer Digitals AVictoria-webchallenge-mar23,
and Free Digital Scrapbooking Delight In Life}

This was the first draft, using a different set. I know it's also cute and so HAPPY, what with Oona's laugh and the summery feel of the colors...but the whimsical theme kinda won out. It was more in keeping with being a kid. This one is a little bit too grown-up, I guess.

I still want to use this layout for something though. It's too happy to pass up.

Sweet Sixteen

{Credits: Designer Digitals KPertiet_Web111807, mterasawa-web10608}

I made this for my sister, Diday. I was rummaging through old files and came across these pictures, thought forever lost. She's now turning 18 in December, so as this was two years ago, it was a trip down memory lane.

My First DigiScrap Print

{Credits: Designer Digitals Katie Pertiet Scrap Pink, Cottage Arts Hope Sentiment Pack, Shabby Princess Sweet Serenity; Done in Adobe Photoshop CS}


For Our Firstborn

I hope for you a life
of much joy and blessings,
to have all the love you need,
to be able to nurture your gifts,
to be blessed with good health
in order to be all you are meant to be.

For Urduja Isabella G. Florendo
Born on Aug. 15, 2007
Wednesday, 4:56AM

Triggerhappy

What to do with a bazillion photos of your first-born?

We're new parents, so like the tourists in a new country, Mr. F and I can't get enough of clicking away at Oona's every moment.

With today's technology, taking pictures are easy, hence the tendency to having an avalanche of captured moments. You can only look at so much later on and the rest are stuffed in a computer file folder marked: DO NOT DELETE ON PAIN OF DEATH.

You can't possibly print everything. (So very expensive, as I found out) and unfortunately, you can't bear to throw the excess away, no matter how identical six or sixty pictures would look to the next sixty.

Because you would know THE DIFFERENCE.

It would feel almost like a betrayal, casting aside the frozen memory of your little one like it was nothing.

I'm a parent now, so sue me for the drama!

So, what to do, what to do?

In the old days, there were the usual Kodak or Agfa prints and those free cardboard albums. Then Mom would religiously transfer them to nicer plastic bound albums with plastic sleeves. Or if it were a special occasion on celluloid, the big fancy albums with self-adhesive acetate and cardboard pages would be the trophy of the day.


In even older days, the photo albums were bound pages with white-edged photographs neatly arranged by the lady of the house. Handmade albums, usually with ribbons and other whimsy, were elegant in heavy paper and memories were a lot more formal in presentation. Photographs of course were a lot more expensive in our grandparents' age hence the special care in the preservation and presentation of what amounts to a family heirloom. Maybe a lock of hair or a leaf pinned to a photo, a scrap of cloth imbued with memories stirred by a touch. Albums in those days were more scrapbooks, bits and pieces of lives put together to tell a story to the next generation. They had more personality than the plastic, ready-made albums in vogue nowadays.

You can tell where I'm going with this, can you?

So the next best thing if you can't keep your trigger-finger away from the shutter button would be to scrap them all together!

*applause!*applause!*

This blog started that way. Bazillion photos. Little Cash. Lots of Photoshop and Scrapping time. Today's technology in the time-honored tradition of creating your own albums and giving them a little bit of digital personality and pizzaz.

More bang for my buck too since I can scrap together as much photos as I can, arrange it on a nice page with the elements of my choosing and have the whole shebang printed. Ten photos on a page with all the trimmings? So very nice.

And I don't have to feel like such a traitor for trashing anything!

Parental guilt GONE...totally scrapped to oblivion!

{Credits: Shabby Princess Piece-A-Cake In The Groove Album}