being good

ok. definitely had no scrap shopping plans for yesterday. my only agenda was to attend a workshop (well, it wasn't really a workshop... it was more like a talk!) on photographing people by jay alonzo, sponsored by Filipinas Heritage Library and the Ayala Malls. It was a good talk, er, workshop, BTW. Definitely worth my 2+ hours - considering i am a neophyte in photography.

so... i got to chatting with mia the other night and before i knew it, i was making plans with her to check out a couple of LSS that have just unpacked new (and yummy, i might add) goodies!! oh to be in scrapbook heaven!

we dropped by Vivian's store first and how fun is it that she's offering 5-25% discounts on her wares! yay!!! well, like i said, i was being good and these were the only items i checked out of her store :D

then we dealt with terrible traffic and directions (oh the things we would do for the love of this craft, uhm, more like love of shopping, lol!) to Mitch's store. these were my new finds + a few items i got last weekend (thanks to the husband!)

i would've been extra good had it not been for mia telling me about some of the stuff she got which i absolutely also had to have, hehehe!!!

oh and lookie here. mia just came from HK and she got me this adooooooorable doll! :) thanks, mia! i had fun shopping and chatting with you yesterday!

bad girls

Bad girls, bad girls
Whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do
When they come for you

HEHE. I just received the latest Bad Girls newsletter and saw myself in there! *wink!*

This month we are heading far, far away (well, to most of us :p) and looking to Philippines saying hello to our May Bad Girl Christine Villacarlos! Christine is 38 and lives with her husband of nine years, Gerard, and their two children Nikki (8) and Ian (5). She claims she's a true Bad Girl because she "subs to the 'best-est', 'bad-est' kit club in town =)" - oh yeah - and her nick should be a testament to Bad Girl as well, being pink_lemonade and we all know what the deal is with pink and Bad Girls eh? :p

Alright - let's start with the most pressing question for the moment being: Why call yourself pink_lemonade??
Nothing really special to that name - I just love how it sounds.. and of course, I love drinking pink lemonade =)

Okay, so what do you do?
I am a Dietitian by profession but for some reason, I ended up working in the hotel industry. I was in the hotel food and beverage department for about 12 years but because I wanted to be closer to home and have more time with the kids, I switched gears and decided to try out the education sector. I got quite a surprise - I found out (too late!) that teaching could be just as demanding as being a hotelier! But I do enjoy what I do. I have been teaching Restaurant Operations to college students who are in the Hotel and Restaurant program for 4 years now.

That sounds very interesting and it's nice that you do something you enjoy :) So what about the other thing you obviously enjoy to do - scrapbooking - how did you find this hobby?
In high school, I fell in love with my classmates' scrapbooks and resolved to make my own. We would just glue down photos and all sorts of ephemera, mostly non-archival, I think. This was at a time when kraft albums were all the rage among high school girls in Manila. I took a break when I started preparing for my wedding (in the late 90s) and then decided to take it up again when my kids' photos started piling up sometime in 2006, especially after I saw gorgeous archival-safe products in the market.

So cool! And Bad Girls? How did you find us?
I chanced upon Bad Girls when Iris Babao-Uy announced she made the Design Team and then I signed up for the Bad Girls Academy. I couldn't stay away from Wendy's gorgeous kits so I took a sub not long after that.

Neat - I am glad you found us!! And Iris and Wendy are such enablers!! :D So what sizes do you scrap and what do you do with your pages?
I do mostly 12x12s. I used to be so anal about slipping them into page protectors and putting them in albums right away, but since I now tend to get more pages done in one sitting, I end up letting my pages gather dust before I do anything else with them, LOL! I am now loving the MM post-bound album for its space-saving feature but I do have my fair share of D-ring album types which I also love.

Teehee. Sounds like excellent album choices by the way :) So how do you start a page - what do you do?
I try to match the moods of my photos with my papers or vice versa. Sometimes, I use a sketch as a guide or I start working with a challenge in mind.

And describe your perfect day of scrapping..
I'd say it would be perfect if I didn't have to go to work!! HAHA! Of course, it would even be more ideal if I had lots of inspiration and all the supplies I'd need to work with.

Hehe the latter is so true - wouldn't be lovely to know exactly what you want to do and have everything you need to do it all the time?? So..do you have other hobbies?
Uhm, does scrap shopping count???

Maybe...
I also love stamping and making cards.

So tell us - how is scrapbooking in the Philippines??
Judging by the size of scrapbooking in the US, the community of scrapbookers in the Philippines is still relatively small, but it is gradually increasing. When I started scrapping, there were only a couple of stores offering scrap materials for sale, but now I am happy to announce that we have several stores to get goodies and scrap fixes from! I actually get more done when I scrap on my own, but I try to attend mini crops from time to time.

Neat! So - anything you want to tell the Bad Girls out there?
Be yourself, play by your own rules - but be respectful of others. And don't be afraid to cut up those papers! HAHA!! I used to be so scared to do anything with my pretty papers until I realized they look so much better with photos and in albums!

Haha excellent advices!! Thank you so much for being with us today Christine!! And thank you for sharing these two lovely layouts featuring previous Bad Girl kits!!

better late than never

i've been slacking as far as my YITL cards are concerned, ha! so i sat down and got to work.

here are what i came up with:
week 17 - lucky




















week 18 - passion




















week 19 - patience





















week 20 - believe




week 21 - wish


a friend had a baby shower recently but i wasn't able to join in on the fun so i decided to make a card for her to apologize for being absent =) (perfect excuse to make another card, right? haha!)

a messy affair

i didn't think i was going to be able to submit a page for this challenge... as i was so challenged by the theme! LOL! I can't think of any serious life challenge that I am currently dealing with (and I hope that I never come face to face with it in the future) and the trivial ones that I do battle with are just that, trivial. I would check the entries every time an announcement about a new post was made and every single time, I lost hope that I was going to be able to make something as spectacular as the ones already posted. I speak about the type of challenge as well as the fab pages posted.

Not wanting to cop out on yet another KAYA challenge again though (yes, I couldn't do the digital kaya challenge, sorry), I just simply opted for the road less travelled... yes, I decided on a more light-hearted fare. as they say, a challenge is still a challenge, right? whoever said it had to be about anything serious? hahaha

I was going to add this quote, but I couldn't find a "space" for it, hahaha:
"If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?" - Laurence Peter



Journaling: i am such a pack rat i can never bring myself to purge my stuff. ack! i hope to have the courage to just LET GO especially since I so love the clutter-free lifestyle. PS. this mess is my maid's doing though =)

Materials Used: kraft cardstock, Hambly screen print, punchinella, staple wires, fontwerks and ma vinci stamps, stazon ink, zig pen, Jenni Bowlin label sticker

sunday goody sunday

what do you know? cargo forwarders deliver on sundays!! heehee.

I was chilling out on a hot Sunday afternoon (this was sometime in april, see, but i didn't have time to post :o) when Nikki buzzed me to say I had a package. a package? on a sunday? i immediately jumped out of bed to check. and there it was, my much-awaited b box.

of course i quickly emptied the contents and inspected each goodie. i was none too happy to discover i was missing several items :( i was so disappointed i somehow lost steam.

but anyways, here's my latest loot, minus a few items here and there :(
stacked and loose papers, coasters, a couple more minis to add to my empty mini album collection! and - yikes, can you tell there's about $50 worth of hambly transparencies in here? methinks i may have bought more than i needed!

spent a small fortune on these babies. oh, but i think they're well worth it!


ok. i may have gone overboard buying ink pads and such, you think? uh actually, i think i need more colors!!! especially the copics!!! aaaah. when will this ever end!? *wink!*

gotta have some hardware for my so-called studio =)


decided not to invest in so many this time around since I've started getting kits in the mail, but here are a few more to add to my junk! :o

had to get new storage systems for my ever burgeoning pile of 12x12s

a few more scrap-related stuff

here's something Bad Girls are so addicted to. Can't wait to start on these!

yes. i still get a few stray foodie mags here and there but i've finally decided to let go of a couple of subs. if they're a dollar an issue, it's still a waste if i don't even flip a single page!

it's a tag! (again)

In answer to Marian's tag, here are some trivia about me:
1. apparently, i grind my teeth in my sleep
2. i need to wear a mouth brace for about 3 months to re-align my teeth (refer to #1 above)
3. I haven't scrapped a 12x12 LO in 8 days!
4. I've been telling DH that I curbed my scrap shopping, but just this past week, I spent $*toot*!
5. I sort out and file my credit card receipts based on my credit card statements
6. I arrange my DVDs and CDs alphabetically :o

Please consider yourself TAGGED after reading this post, in case you are so inclined to document trivia about yourself :)

Here are the rules:
1) Link back to the person who tagged you.
2) Post these rules on yout blog.
3) Share six unimportant things about yourself.
4) Tag 6 other people :p

quite a surprise

because i don't usually venture out to the north, my dear friend Babette graciously offered to pick up a few things for me from mitch's store. after several months of vacillating between buying AC D-ring albums and not buying, I eventually caved! who could resist such names as raspberry and blueberry? so i got me a couple of those! thanks for picking these up for me, Babette!

so, the both of us tried to arrange a pick up point and i decided to just drop by her studio on a monday afternoon. leave it to Babette to lovingly wrap up my goodies =) what a welcome treat! and yes, a surprise was waiting for me. really very unexpected! Babette's migrating to Canada by the end of this month and she gifted me with this lovely page:

Thanks for taking the time to make this for me. I know we've discussed your impending departure for about a year now, but I still can't believe that it's finally happening! I will definitely miss having a scrapping, shopping, chat buddy like you! :( I really hope you change your mind about visiting!

trying to get the feeling again

hehe. yes. i used to be a manilow fan, but now i quote the song title in reference to scrapping. lol! =)

this particular DDD challenge isn't due until the 1st of june but i decided to work on it already coz it's different from the previous challenges. this time, we're supposed to come up with any mini book. sounds like fun, huh? yea, especially because i am doubly challenged by minis.

so yesterday, i sat in front of my scrap table and started to pick out photos and papers from my pile of junk. then i set to work. glad to know i am starting to get a whiff of my missing mojo.

a spark

yes. i've officially lost it. my mojo. i haven't worked on a page in ages! ack!!

new kits coming in aren't quite helping, unfortunately.

uh, today being the 18th means i'm 35 pages short of my 1 page a day goal. i desperately need to catch up! so, just to initiate something, i tried working on DDD challenges 13 (to scrap something ugly - nothing should coordinate, yikes!) and 14 to scrap a page in honor of Mother's Day using a relevant quote.

I chose to do Challenge 14 first, as I have already missed the deadline for Challenge 13 while I was away vacationing :)
Here's what I came up with using Bad Girls' April kit


and this here's for the UGLY challenge. this was tough. how do you make a page intentionally ugly (and I mean this knowing i don't scrap exceptional pages, hahaha!!) so... i simply opted to use papers i have no particular love for and photos I wouldn't otherwise think of scrapping. most of my photos suck - and the ones i used here are really way up there in terms of poor quality. so yucky papers and icky photos - i think that sounds like the perfect ugly combination, huh?

Happy belated Mother's Day

Here are a few cards I made in honor of special mothers in my life :)







Obviously I played with watermarks last night, thanks to Marissa for her awesome tutorial! =) (there's still a lot to learn though, I'm just trying to get the hang of it, haha!!) hint, hint to the PS experts!