Pinay New Yorker

Cross posted on my PinayNewYorker and PinayFrancophile blogs

I’ve spent most of my free time the past few days "stitching" together scrapbook paper for my Paris scrapbook.  I had mostly blues and a few reds and beiges.  A paper store website gave me some paper samples which I have been able to weave into loud floral borders.

I tried to put together an orange pair and a pink pair as well, but now that I found a website that had free scrapbook background papers for download and one of the packages I downloaded was tartan (or what most people refer to as plaid) backgrounds.  They are such a breeze to "stitch" together even if they download onto regular letter (8×11) pages.  Three sheets will make a 12×12, and the stitching is seamless given the straight lines in the various pages.

Meanwhile, I’ve designed various sheets in shades of blue and printed them onto 12×18 sheets via color laser.  One sheet I’m particularly proud of because it looks as though it had been bought from a store.  I had also managed to scan parts of the two Paris maps we had used and pasted the various parts together into one solid graphic (given that the flatbed could not scan the whole map), giving me additional background graphics.

In my spare time, I try and cut out the flowers and other embellishments I’d pulled off the clipart collection of Microsoft online which I intend to paste into a floral collage as borders, frames and spotholders.

I’ve also collected a sizeable bunch of border artwork which I resized or pasted onto 12 inch strips.  I have saved cutting it into pieces for when I actually find a use for it.

My sewing kit has an assortment of threads and buttons which I intend to use as additional embellishment, and I have always had a penchant for collecting fabric swatches from IKEA and the color swatches from the hardware store.  It’s just that at the time, I was concentrating on reds and greens with just a smattering of blue (because I intended to use them to make my own Christmas cards sometime in the future), but now that I know my color theme, I intend to go back to the IKEA in Hicksville to collect more swatches in my color scheme. 

Browsing scrapbooking sites has also given me a lot of ideas about what I can do for this project, and it’s basically what has convinced me to stick to one color scheme.  I’m glad I did this before I used up the other colors in my paper stock. 

This weekend, I’m piecing together basic pages per tartan pattern, and I’m going to start writing up the captions and journal entries for the scrapbook.  Hopefully before Monday, I’d have been able to put together the first few pages of my Paris sojourn.

I have two friends to credit for the inspiration - Kate and Pier who I sat down with for dinner some two weekends ago.  Kate has even invited me to a scrapbooking event in Manhattan on December 5 which I hope to attend.

My scrapbook has definitely started to take shape — and I’m getting very excited to see my Paris trip unfold again.  Now if I can only find a French dictionary that shows the intonations and definitions, not just equivalent English words, I have red tags to put them on to deck the various pages.  It’ll not just be a trip down memory lane but an elementary lessong in French as well.

Working on the scrapbook has been very relaxing for me — it has even made blogging a second passion only because I’ve devoted a lot of my time online to surfing for scrapbook resources, downloading fonts, artwork, background paper and actually resizing and creating something I can use for my project.  So I guess the books I’ve been meaning to read will have to wait for later..

You know that my world has been hectic when you don’t see the blog updated daily as I’m wont to do when things are "normal" — (Normal being still busy, but not chaotic.) Monday and Tuesday hardly saw me online because I had to relinquish my computer to my replacement. She got her laptop last night so I’m a happy camper here in my new space, trying to get settled in and enjoying every minute of it! The boss is out today but he called to say hello and ask how things were going. He also happily mentioned he had gotten me a flat screen monitor (something we don’t really get automatically here) which would be arriving anytime soon. So I’m thinking I’ll just abandon the request for a black laser printer — maybe the dot matrix color printer will do. I can always network to the color laser printers on the floor anyway.

I was going to start getting ready to go but decided I needed to do an update here. Something I’ve been meaning to do since Monday but have been unable to due to everything that’s been going on. My scrapbooking project has been progressing well, I think. I’ve started to formally gather everything I want to use, but I realize now that like a book that needs to have a cohesive storyline, I need to start planning how that scrapbook will be like. I have the pictures, the artwork, the materials and embellishments — but I need to be able to tie everything together into a unifying look that will enable me to use everything to the max. I must say I’ve found it very enjoyable. I am not spending a fortune on creating this but I know it will be a good one.

It is all the more meaningful to me now that I have decided to forego my planned January trip to Paris because I am now planning to go home to the Philippines instead. ( * Sigh *) So I am immersing myself in my scrapbooking project just to relive the joy of Paris — and here’s to hoping Alan gets to go there again end of 2006 so I can take that long-delayed second visit to the City of lights.