Something about my passion for photography

I'm shutter happy, always have been.
Maybe because I couldn't walk up to the age of 5 (in case youjust stumble upon this and don't know me, I was born with a double hip dislocation and doctors insisted I wouldn't be able to walk, but my parents were the loving and stubborn kind: I had 9 operations up to the age of 8, and started walking aged 5, never stopped until the British NHS decided to give me a hip replacement in 2003, followed by other 4 operations which failed in fixing what they did in the first) but my passion for all things artsy, being that the visual or the performing arts started very, very early.
BUt we are talking pre-digital times (VERY pre digital!)
And thinking about photography as a career was something one couldn't do, unless money was flowing, which, though we were middle class, in my case was not really an option.
If you think about the money we spent in those days just to develop films...well...
But I got given a camera by one of my dad's brothers, who also gave me my first guitar, and taking photos was as important as breathing...though I lost LOTS of photos through my gipsy life, careless *friends* and my own irresponsibility, I still got the joy of my mum keeping some treasures.
Though my daughter was born before digital cameras were something one would have at hand, we documented her life pretty well, which took me into digi scrapping and where I am now...
I was so, so excited when I saw Liz's new kit...it was like made to measure...so don't be surprised if lots of pages start coming up with this kit...is just one of the most amazing kits I have seen in my years in digi-land.
Someone suggested I could start an *all about me* book with my LOs, and I may do just that.
Have a look at the Gotta Pixel gallery to see what the rest of the Sweeties have created, and have a look at Liz's store there too...she has always fascinated me with her kits (she is probably the one I should thank for me being where I am, as it was through a freebie of hers I arrived in the forums) because the material is so versatile that you can create amazing variety of styles...here is a quick peak at what the Sweeties have made.

you can get this kit HERE, there is also some AWESOME word art by just as awesome Danyale HERE, and a cool alpha HERE.

I'll be back soon!

Waiting for Spring...

..literally, as the weather isn't collaborating here in London.
That is also the title of SnickerDoodleDesignsByKaren's last kit, a gorgeous one, and there is a freebie QP in her blog, if you would like to have it, just click in her link, visit her blog.
Here are a couple of pages I made with it...





I have followed Karen to the DigiScrapsDrive store & forums, a great place to be if you like freebies, challenges, talent and great company,so, maybe I'll see you there?

You can find Waiting for Spring HERE and the word art HERE , or you can save some money by getting the BUNDLE

There is a SnickerDoodleDesignsByKaren's gallery @ the DigiScrapsDriveIn, so, if you are looking for more inspiration, there are some ladies there that can provide some really good one (inspiration!)

See you there!

To take my mind out of Chile's earthquake....

Fisherman of Dreams kit by Choubinette
I bought it a couple of days ago on the 1Euro sale, unfortunately I just saw it's gone back to the 3.90 Euros price.



The Enchanted World, freebie they had going on until yesterday, in lots of parts, by Ptitesouris,StarlightDesigns,Marta Designs, Dydige, Genedes, Choukette & Chouk77. This is mainly Chouck77 but some elements from the others.
All of them @ Digital Crea France

I got busy with these.
Not only it is scary the fact that the world is vertiginously going into natural disasters mode, that this thought of my not seeing the end of the world doesn't seem so real now, the fear for the state of affairs my child is inheriting....but also my brother lives in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, which is the very end of the south of America, and not so far from Chile...

700 deaths last time I looked (early this morning)
If we put it together with Haiti, Middle East devastation and...well, all other sad situations we have come to,live with lately...every little ache & pain of mine, every worry I can have for anything, anything at all feels dwarfed.
:(

Birthday Week 2: some scrapping

I'm having a weird week. apart from some health issues,I haven't been very inspired,but I'm determined to finish scrapping Sarita's birthday week's photos,so I thought I post some so it doesn't come all in one go...there are a lot in this post as it goes..I'm almost finished with it though, using the latest MOI's & Chriscrap kits, beautiful :)
This one is MartaDesign's kit Happy New Year plus bits of Chriscrap & Dilo, all @ Digital Crea France

I love this one...I used Marta Designs part of the freebie Enchanted World @Digital Crea. The photo I took with flash whilst Sarita was asleep, then worked it in DSA's photolab

this photo came out too blurred, so I put a filter to rescue...it would have been a great pic.
The fame is from Cardamome, the flowers & foliage & paper from various kits from DigitalCrea, and the side doodles are from marvelous Rosemarie @ Pixel Scrapbooking, I'm quiet sure the download would still be active, her freebies are amazing.

for this one I used another kit I bought on the dollar sale @ GottaPixel, this time from Captivated Visions called Happy Being Me. Love this kit, but unfortunately I only bought the elements pack, would love to get my hands in the papers, but gonna have to be on a sale. The alpha is from a kit from JulieMarieDesigns called A Mother's Love.


these two were made with stuff from Gotta Pixel too.
The first one is from Simply Scraps, called Sweetly Sinful I love that cluster frame, but I used it in a different way and added more stuff to the cluster...amazing kit, this one, there is not even a quarter of all in this page, and I payed a dollar!
The next one is from JulieMarieDesigns @ GottaPixel,but I couldn't find the link. I buy only at the dollar sales, so it is possible that the kit isn't for sale, though both DC &GP will take them out for a while and then put them back full price,but I'm always watching for sales...



I recently joined a group called Digital Scrapbooking Freebies,is a Yahoo group that Melinda, Lovemyzombie @ Serif/DaisyTrail/YouTube recommended. For those who use DSA, Melinda has tutorials in YT that are wonderful, easy to follow and will get you creating in no time...
This group though, the first 3/4 days I thought I was wasting my time. The way it works one gets the emails with the links to freebies and a preview, in theory easier than Digifree, but I really didn't like anything at first. I have so much stuff alreeady that downloading things that are not my style is a waste of time...but then I found Scraps by Jessica
The link provided in the group was for something I didn't fancy, but I caught a glimpse of a cute felt monkey, and then downloaded all her felts, including this kit which is called Spring into Happiness...beautiful.

I bought this kit, Wise Owl, by RedJu @ Digital Crea, because it has the plastic clouds...then I found myself lacking inspiration...
the letters I made with DSA, I can see myself never buying or downloading an alpha again, but then again, there are designers who make amazing stuff, which I have no idea how to...here is a link to the kits preview, but I couldn't find it in DC, I bought it for a Euro, so probably it was taken out of sale...
http://redjuscrap.blogspot.com/2009/09/digital-crea-birthday-sale-1-euro-kit.html


this one was a frustrated attempt to use more brushes...but the program was misbehaving so I gave up...the stiches came up nicely though LOL

with these I'm gonna try print at home, but will come back, probably later, with the last, which, of course, are always the best! :)

Birthday Week: 1.Re-learning my French.

My daughter, Sarita, was 14 last friday.
Amazing, don't really know where time went,but wherever it went, it turned my baby into a fine young lady.
I can complain much about her being untidy, or throwing her shoes, bag, coat and general accessories like a trail in her walking into the house, but she really makes me proud in what matters.
It was the half term holiday, so we have celebrations every day, starting by her best friend Lauren's visit from last weekend.
She was our next door neighbor, but had to move away outside London after her mum died in 2007,so this was an amazing surprise to Sarita.
As a birthday present I gave her an Ice Skating course for the 5 days of the holiday. She used to do classes at the Sobell Centre, but we had to stop as they change payment method, and it was impossible for me to get the money of the whole term together up front, and I didn't like the woman who owns the group much.
Sarita had mentioned to me that she would like to go back to study* before her skates did not fit her anymore* , so I found out about this other place.
She was happy and I was too as I did not have to drive her this time, so the week started pretty eventful.
I tried to keep as shutter happy as I could all week.
As I'm spending a lot of time in bed, in an effort to save health an energy for the things that matter: think cooking and keeping our lives moderately organized, this is not always an easy task, but I've got some good shots,which will speak loudly than I can about the fun we had.

In the mean time, I was confronted with the need to re learn my French via Yahoo's Babel Fish (as my French teacher from my secondary school maybe a bit difficult to contact!)....why?
Ok, let me explain:
If I had to choose one store, and one store only to carry on scrapping the rest of my life, I wouldn't doubt a minute, my answer would be Digital Crea France.
Not only do they create in my most loved styles, but also they make it possible for people like me (read skint-peniless-broke) to be able to shop often with very regular sales of full kits for 1 Euro, and their permanent collection of products categorized Retiring Soon, all kits are 1.50 Euros. They also have the best freebies,constantly.

But lately I have been experiencing problems in the downloads, and I know I am not alone on this as a few other women I know had the same, which told me it wasn't my Mac.
I wont explain the whole thing, suffice to say that in some kits, as many as 5 or 6 elements did not come through.
As I said, long story, but I at certain point started making note of the exact name of the files which did not come through and mail Digital Crea's Service to Client.
I got very promptly an email from Amelie, DC's creator, with a gift of 1 Euro to spend in the store. Nice of her, but at the time I wanted was the files which did not come through. Still, I didn't say anything else, after all, the store is amazing, right?

But after another couple of times and an experience in which wonderful Karen from SnickerdoodleDEsignsByKaren ended up sending me two files from her St Paddy's kit which had the same problem, by email, I thought I could ask Digital Crea to do the same...

What followed was also a long story, one in which I had to refresh my French but, re-reading what I had written...ermmm, I cringed, decided then to ask another of my favorite people in the scrap world for help.
Rosemarie Pixel, as she is known in CyberSpace, is in French Canada, none better than her to use the correct language and reflect the intention my message had.
(Thanks so much Rosemarie! you are the best!)
My message then went out in beautiful, proper French.
But I was then faced with a reply email...and what would you know..there is an online translator for which one doesn't even need to download software (the Google Translator is free, but needs the download), Gotta love these Yahoo guys...

Anyway, to make the story short: some of my favorite designers just went up a notch in my charts, plus they have gained a loyal client for life.
All of them were great, sent me the missing elements and one of them even had pity on me and answered me in English! LOL
So, here is my account of monday, first day of Sarita's birthday week, scrapped with the latest kits I bought from these marvelous girls, Moi, Chriscraps & Dilo.
They all have kits in the retiring soon for 1.50 Euros per full kit, Digital Crea just had a 1 Euro sale this week gone, but if you keep an eye you ll get marvelous freebies(they have a wonderful one at the moment!) every 3 days average, plus the sales are very frequent.


Chriscrap - kit So Funky


Chriscrap- kit Respire


again, Chriscrap, I used stuff from Croque Ta Vie and Crazy Day


here the designer is MOI, the kit GoGoGo this is a kit I never get tired of using!


again, designer MOI, kit GoGoGo


another amazing kit by MOI: My Black & White Paradise


in this one for the background & papers I used a kit I got free through Digifree almost 2 years ago from Peppermint Creative, a store I don't like buying because they are expensive even at Scrapblog.com, but the marvelous WordArt is by Karen


for this LO I used Dilo's Love Me, which I couldn't wait to buy, love her, love and love her a bit more!


again, same kit, Dilo's Love Me

Well, hope all this info is helpful, I ll be coming back with more photos (LOs', of course!) from last week.
Have a great week!

Copyright or Copy, All Right?...

I know I haven't been around much, not even doing a lot of scrapping, so I apologyse, but my health has not been the best this past week and I have been wrestling with new kind of pain (or extreme discomfort, as the UK's welfare reviewists like to call it), which makes it impossible to do any kind of anything.

This post today was inspired by a wonderful lady I came across whilst browsing someone else's Scrapblogs and the decided to follow her WordPress blog.
Her name is Leslie Sigal Javorek, but some of you may have come across her as IconDoIt, as she gives out freebies which make beautiful embellishments for scrapping.
This morning one of the first things I got in my inbox was her post about the Copyright thing and this is an issue which has been in my mind a lot lately.
I suggest you read her post, to understand better what I'm talking about (she is a delight to read too).
In there she talks about how Copyrights can be restricting creativity, how many wonderful pieces have spanned of other authors,and particularly of Don Quixote de la Mancha, Miguel d Cervantes' great work.
This touched me especially because my father would quote Cervantes a lot in educating us. She also posted this video by Nina Paley, one of the artist at the Question Copyright.org , the site yo go to get more knowledgeable about the subject.


I have mixed feelings on this copyright thing, having been victim of stolen ID which I may have never know if it wasn't for a few friends of mine up north (in the UK) who talked to someone online who was using my photos as herself....poor girl did not know how much I traveled around...but there is also the thing I'm most passionate about, regarding music.
I was a performer for 33 years and have seen so much of it, is scary.
Not even going into the depths of piracy or plagiarism, I m constantly having to show my daughter original versions of songs by Stevie Wonder, Chaka Kan or other less acknowledge (and sometimes less talented) are putting out there without not even a simple mention of the artist...
In the Uk we had a few years ago a bunch of kids going around with Eternal Flame *by Atomic Kitten* did these kids ever knew about Siouxie and the Bangles? me thinks not,unfortunately.
I went to my daughter;s school to teach the kids how "As" was written by Stevie Wonder and NOT by Mary J.Blige, and so on.

And then we come to the part that maybe more familiar to the scrapping community, and this is why this subject is such a difficult one for me
I love digital scrapbooking.it has become a pain relief therapy and a creative outlet .
I don't get much around the net, but enough to be able to say that very, very few people read the TOU, and of those who do, very few really acknowledge the artist... even the designers themselves: I am amazed as how many times I got the same cluster frame in different designers kits, which I thought was the marvelous creation of one person but it isn't. And try figure out who first created it?
Well, their designers themselves only acknowledge the name of the people they bought things from in a very, very small print, and don't really say who made what.....
I know some people may think scrapbooking a minor art....if an art at all, but this is what I know about these days,and what makes me reluctant to have an opinion in which I can passionate about in the Copyright thing...

I'm going to leave this in here, as my mind doesn't go very far in the mornings, but there is something I have been thinking a lot about and is related to this issue too, which is the attitude of the designers and how much can this influence the way you (one) respects their work, and I really, really want to elaborate about it.

And as I cannot finish this post without a LO, here is something I made with one of my most loved freebie girl: Rosemarie Pixel, of Pixel Scrapbooking. This template plus kit was given as a freebie by Rosemarie a couple of weeks ago, as she is following the 365 Project. I only changed color I think, in a couple of elements and added something *derivating* of her elements :)
This was our last outing, to a dear Brazilian friend of mine's house. She is married to a marvelous Finnish International (like he likes to describe himself) and that day made a Feijoada, our typical Brazilian dish of rice and stewed black beans.
Have a great day!


For the next one I used a kit from one of my newest finds, Julie Marie Designs, a kit she started as a freebie, then made a full kit which I HAD to go back to buy,luckily it was on one of those sale days, plus a coupon she wonderfully sent me for 30% discount after I bought from her on a U$1 dollar sale at GottaPixel.