Digital Scrapbooking

Tonight I made a scrapbook page featuring my youngest brother Ronnie who has passed away.  He would have been 61 in November.  I have just been thinking about him and missing him so I thought this would be a good day to make a page for him.  I hope you like it.  It features two of my favorite pictures of Ronnie...one with Hal and I...and the one with him holding a puppy.  What a sweet little kid he was.  And he grew up to be a sweet man too!

A Little Art

I have been planning to post this for a while but have just been busy.  First is a spread I did in my friend Karen's Traveling Art Journal.  She wanted black, white, and a little color and since she is giving it to her teenage granddaughter she wanted it to be kind of an advice book for her.  I love President Gordon B. Hinckley's Bs so I chose that for my theme.  I think I might have to get a new copy of his book to send along for her granddaughter when the swap is over.  The large bee is from SVGs by Bee .  The small bees are from SVGshop.com .  I made the word cutting files myself.  You can't see it very well in the scan but the pages, words, and the bee wings have lots of gold glittery goodness on them.  I used "Gleams" acrylic paints for that.  Love that stuff!  

My pages for Karen's Journal
(Click pictures for a larger view)

Second are the pages I made for Amy's Traveling Journal.  Her theme was things with wings.  I made a torn paper background from old book pages and sprayed it with walnut ink, then wiped it off and when dry sanded it to make it old looking.  Then I collaged a lot of different elements onto the pages to illustrate the theme. A lot of the pictures came from a couple of children's books I got at a garage sale for practically nothing because the covers and some pages are missing and others are torn. I rescued them the trash and have enjoyed using the illustrations in artwork.  I really like how these pages turned out.

For Amy's Wings Journal

Pat's Little Journal's theme was to use a Photo.  I made a page using one of my favorite pictures of my folks.  It was taken just a couple of months before Mom passed away  -  and Dad had just smooched her in public and made her blush.  After 62 years of marriage I think that is just about the sweetest thing ever.

Pat's Photo Journal

Next we have two of the little houses I made for Cathy's Door Swap.  The screen doors open and there is a retro (50s) scene inside with the women saying clever (albeit possibly rude) things.  I didn't scan the doors open as I didn't want the ladies who were to receive them to know what was coming.  But the swap is over now so I can tell.  In the first one the mother says, " That's right, Sweetheart,  goals and dreams are Satan's way of distracting you from making dinner."

Two of the houses I made for Cathy's Open Door Swap

In the second the housewife is cooking and it says "Another day in Paradise".  I just thought they were so cute.  I made four for the swap but only scanned the two as the outside was the same on all of them.  It is hard to see in the scan but the house is embossed (bricks) and it and the doors are sanded to make it look old.  The screen doors, trees and awnings were cut with my Silhouette....I made the awning and door files myself....and the screen is sandwiched between two cutouts so they look real when opened too.

I hope you enjoy seeing some of the things I have been doing.
~Connie

God Bless America

This is a repost of a friend's Facebook entry for today.  (Thanks Ernest) 
"A thought.  9/11 took place 8 months after this man took office, after more than a decade of many attacks, many warnings...but this man just shouldered the burden. Not one word of blame passed his lips. And when the machinery he set in motion brought down the figurehead after he was gone, he never asked for credit. Read his stirring words."

Lest We Forget...

by "Can We Just Say It?" The Daniel Crocker Free Page on Sunday, September 11, 2011 at 7:36a

...that a speech has a purpose, and that is to speak to and for us all; and should be delivered not to exalt the speaker, but those who hear it.

President George W. Bush at the National Cathedral, Washington, DC, September 14, 2001

We are here in the middle hour of our grief. So many have suffered so great a loss, and today we express our nation's sorrow.

We come before God to pray for the missing and the dead, and for those who loved them.

On Tuesday, our country was attacked with deliberate and massive cruelty. We have seen the images of fire and ashes and bent steel.

Now come the names, the list of casualties we are only beginning. They are the names of men and women who began their day at a desk or in an airport, busy with life. They are the names of people who faced death and in their last moments called home to say, be brave and I love you.

They are the names of passengers who defied their murderers and prevented the murder of others on the ground. They are the names of men and women who wore the uniform of the United States and died at their posts.

They are the names of rescuers -- the ones whom death found running up the stairs and into the fires to help others. We will read all these names. We will linger over them and learn their stories, and many Americans will weep.

To the children and parents and spouses and families and friends of the lost, we offer the deepest sympathy of the nation. And I assure you, you are not alone.

Just three days removed from these events, Americans do not yet have the distance of history, but our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.

War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder.

This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others; it will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing.

Our purpose as a nation is firm, yet our wounds as a people are recent and unhealed and lead us to pray. In many of our prayers this week, there's a searching and an honesty. At St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, on Tuesday, a woman said, "I pray to God to give us a sign that he's still here."

Others have prayed for the same, searching hospital to hospital, carrying pictures of those still missing.

God's signs are not always the ones we look for. We learn in tragedy that his purposes are not always our own, yet the prayers of private suffering, whether in our homes or in this great cathedral are known and heard and understood.

There are prayers that help us last through the day or endure the night. There are prayers of friends and strangers that give us strength for the journey, and there are prayers that yield our will to a will greater than our own.

This world He created is of moral design. Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance and love have no end, and the Lord of life holds all who die and all who mourn.

It is said that adversity introduces us to ourselves.
This is true of a nation as well. In this trial, we have been reminded and the world has seen that our fellow Americans are generous and kind, resourceful and brave.

We see our national character in rescuers working past exhaustion, in long lines of blood donors, in thousands of citizens who have asked to work and serve in any way possible. And we have seen our national character in eloquent acts of sacrifice. Inside the World Trade Center, one man who could have saved himself stayed until the end and at the side of his quadriplegic friend. A beloved priest died giving the last rites to a firefighter. Two office workers, finding a disabled stranger, carried her down 68 floors to safety.

A group of men drove through the night from Dallas to Washington to bring skin grafts for burned victims. In these acts and many others, Americans showed a deep commitment to one another and in an abiding love for our country.

Today, we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called, "the warm courage of national unity." This is a unity of every faith and every background. This has joined together political parties and both houses of Congress. It is evident in services of prayer and candlelight vigils and American flags, which are displayed in pride and waved in defiance. Our unity is a kinship of grief and a steadfast resolve to prevail against our enemies. And this unity against terror is now extending across the world.

America is a nation full of good fortune, with so much to be grateful for, but we are not spared from suffering. In every generation, the world has produced enemies of human freedom. They have attacked America because we are freedom's home and defender, and the commitment of our fathers is now the calling of our time.

On this national day of prayer and remembrance, we ask almighty God to watch over our nation and grant us patience and resolve in all that is to come. We pray that He will comfort and console those who now walk in sorrow. We thank Him for each life we now must mourn, and the promise of a life to come.

As we've been assured, neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth can separate us from God's love.

May He bless the souls of the departed. May He comfort our own. And may He always guide our country.

God bless America.

..."The time has passed when we can passively enjoy the freedoms and bounties that America has provided. 9/11 was a punctuated tragedy to bring home the message that good is under attack. From both without and within our gates. God gave us these freedoms and blessings, whether we maintain them or not is determined by if we remember Him and honor His will."  ~EB

Have You Forgotten?

9-1-1
Lest we Forget...
Ten years ago our beloved America was attacked as never before.  As we think back to that day, of where we were, of how we felt, of the shock and pain we felt for our country and for those who lost their lives we are reminded that we must never forget.  We must be strong for one another and to protect our country from without and within.  I remember the words of our President George W. Bush as he addressed the citizens of this great nation.  His remarks moved me then, and they still move me today.   Whatever your political persuasion, how can you not be moved by the compassion and conviction in his words:

Great harm has been done to us. We have suffered great loss. And in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment. Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom -- the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time -- now depends on us. Our nation, this generation will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage.

We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail...

Peace and freedom will prevail.

....I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people. The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

~George W. Bush September 2001

Halloween Giveaway

Win $100 worth of supplies from TheTwinery to make your own Halloween Treat Bags! 
http://www.thetwineryblog.com/2011/09/halloween-treat-bags-giveaway.html

They are in Halloween mode over at the Twinery!  Check out these adorable Halloween treat bags that they created using their awesome twine, muslin bags and Martha Stewart Craft Paints.  You'll love them and they are easy to make.  AND.... they are having a giveaway where you can WIN everything you need to make them!!

My First Scrapbook Layout

My 6 year old granddaughter helped me make this page. It is my first digital scrapbook page.

 Our princess picked all the paper and elements for it. I did the lettering and photo sizing. We did pretty good don't you think?