Silver Fever freebie - part 3

Last but not least, here's the third and final part of the Silver Fever mini kit!

 

Click here to download the last part of this mini-kit: the elements!

I hope you'll enjoy this freebie and you'll leave me a comment to let me know you do. Oh, and of course, if you scrap with it, I'd LOVE to see your creations!

Silver Fever freebie - part 2

Are you ready for the second part of Silver Fever?

 

Click here to download the second part of this FREE mini-kit: solid papers.

Silver Fever freebie - part 1

Yep, that's right, after my Golden mini-kit (still available in the previous messages), I've designed another mini. This one was inspired by "silver annivesaries", which are 25 years together. My man and I just celebrated our 12.5 years together, so as usual I'm really impressed by people who've been together twice as long as us!!

Okay, enough rambling, here's the mini:

 

Download the first part of this kit (patterned papers) here.

I hope you'll enjoy this freebie and you'll leave me a comment to let me know you do. Oh, and of course, if you scrap with it, I'd LOVE to see your creations!

Subscribe or visit again soon for the last two links of this mini kit!!

You Are Golden freebie - part 2

Better late than never, right? Well, after a long month focusing on work (both my real day job and my budding photography side gig), I'm finally back to offer the second part of my You Are Golden mini-kit! I created it with golden anniversaries in mind.

Click here to download part 2 of this mini kit for free! The first part should still be availble here.

I hope you enjoy this freebie and you'll live a comment to let me know you do! Oh, and of course, if you scrap with it, I'd love to see your creations!

Subscribe or visit again soon for another mini-kit, this one focused on Silver anniversaries (25 years of marriage, still pretty impressive if you ask me!)!

PS: Thanks to all of you who expressed concerns about my little hospital stay. It was a planned surgery, nothing serious, and everything went great. I'm like new now! LOL Thanks again for your sweet words!

You Are Golden... New link!

Sooooo, apparently setting up the first download link of my mini-kit "You Are Golden" right before leaving for the hospital wasn't such a good idea as I got out of bandwith VERY quickly and people couldn't download! It's a shame, I know. Anyway, I set up a new link for part 1, hopefully it'll work this time! Here it is!

Hope you enjoy it, don't forget to leave me a comment if / when you download it!!

You Are Golden mini kit freebie (part 1/2)!!

So, I got this crazy idea a couple months ago and tried designing. Because, yeah, you know, I don't have enough to do already! LOL After hanging out with so many amazing designers at The Digichick, I was already in admiration of their talent and creativity, but now that I've given desiging a try, I'm also in awe of the HARD WORK that goes into it!!

I have to admit that I'm pretty proud of my first attempts and I really enjoyed the process, and I'm really excited to share the result with you guys. So, without further wait... Let me introduce you to my very first mini-kit: You Are Golden. This mini was inspired by Golden Anniversaries, aka 50 years of wedding. FIFTY years, can you imagine?

Click on the image to download the first part of the mini-kit. Please respect my Terms of Use and leave a comment when you download!

ETA: please check the next post for updated link!

Alphabet Get-to-know-me tag game!

My dear friend Marloes posted a blog post with these alphabet-inspired questions and tagged me. It was a loooooong time ago but since I finally have time to post, I thought it was a fun inspiration!

A – Attached or Single? Attached, since a bit more than 12 years
B – Best Friend? Nanie, since we were 14.
C – Cake or Pie? Mmmmm... chips? I'm more a salt person!
D – Day of Choice? Wednesday: we're halfway through the workweek!
E – Essential item? A camera and a computer
F – Favourite Colour? Neutral colors: black, grey, white, with a touch of red, purple or turquoise to add some fun!
G – Gummy bears or worms? Both, I love those jelly-ish candies!
H – Hometown? Sion, Switzerland
I – Favorite Indulgence? Browsing the web mindlessly
J – January or July? Both, January for the snow and skiing, July for warmth and sea
K – Kids? Not yet
L – Life isn’t complete without... the internet!
M – Marriage date... Not married, not planning to get married, we're just happy the way we are.
N – Number of siblings? A younger brother, Jeff
O – Oranges or Apples? Since I have food allergies that forbid me to eat apples, I'll have to go with oranges!
P – Phobias? Being buried or crushed, for example by a truck.
Q – Quotes? The serenity prayer: "Give me the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other." And the "mantra" we practice after each yoga lesson: "Every day, on every regard, I'm feeling better and better" (crappy translation, but you get the idea!)
R – Reasons to smile? Too many to choose from!
S – Season of Choice? I love all seasons, they all have good and bad aspects!
T – Tag 5 people... Mmmmm, nope, I won't play on this one! LOL
U – Unknown fact about me? I was badly burnt on my feet when I was less than 1 year old, that's why I only walked when I was about 18 months: I couldn't use my feet for a long time!
V – Vegetable? Salad, radishes... which are the only veggies I can eat raw (still those darn allergies!)
W – Worst habit? See letter I
X – X ray or ultrasound? X rays freak me out with their radioactive signs, so I guess ultrasound!
Y – Your favorite food? See letter R
Z – Zodiac sign? Scorpio

The best-spent 6.90€ of my photography life

Hi everyone, and happy new year! One of my resolutions is to revive this ol' blog of mine and use it as a way to stay in touch with the few people that don't have a FB account, first and foremost my mom and dad. That's why I'll start writing in French more often, too.

Bonjour à tous, et bonne année! Une de mes résolutions est de faire revivre ce bon vieux blog et de l'utiliser également pour donner des infos à mes proches qui n'ont pas de compte facebook, en premier lieu mes parents. Voilà pourquoi je vais également essayer d'écrire en français en plus de l'anglais!

I don't want to start too fast too soon with a ginormous post about my OLW and resolutions, so I'll keep it short for today. I just wanted to share an awesome accessory I recently bought. It's a tiny investement that brought huge rewards to my photography: a remote.

Je ne veux pas me brûler les ailes en démarrant tout de suite avec un énorme post à propos de mon "mot de l'année" et de mes résolutions, donc je vais commencer léger pour aujourd'hui. Je voulais juste vous faire part d'un accessoire absolument génial que j'ai acheté il y a peu. C'est un investissement minuscule qui a apporté d'immenses nouvelles perspectives à ma photographie: une télécommande.

 

And trust me, when I say "tiny" investement, I'm not joking: it cost 6,90€ (about 9$) since I bought a generic brand and not a Nikon one. Yet it works wonderfully and I've used it for so many projects already!

Et quand je dis que c'est un investissement "minuscule", ce n'est pas juste façon de parler: elle m'a coûté 6,90€ vu que j'ai acheté une sous-marque générique et pas une Nikon. Pourtant, elle fonctionne parfaitement et je l'ai déjà mise à profit pour plein de projets!

First and foremost, it allows me to get in the frame too. For example I took this pic with "da man". We're an "old" couple, that's why I still had 2 or 3 brain cells available to press the remote despite the fact that he was kissing me and making me forget about everything around but him! ;)

En tout premier lieu, elle m'a permis d'être moi aussi sur la photo, comme celle-ci avec mon homme.On est un vieux couple, c'est uniquement grâce à ça que j'ai réussi à garder deux-trois neurones disponibles pour appuyer sur la télécommande plutôt que de m'abandonner totalement à ses baisers et oublier tout autour de nous! ;)

I used Charm Box Studios' Shaped Bokeh Overlay on this pic.

Then I also put my camera in a corner of the room and used the remote to snap pix regularly along the evening. That was during the Christmas party at my dad's. We were a small group so it was perfect.

J'ai aussi profité de la télécommande pour poser mon appareil photo dans un coin de la pièce et prendre des photos au cours de la soirée. C'était durant notre Noël chez mon papa. Nous étions un petit groupe, donc c'était idéal.

On this one I used "Roman Holiday" action from the Classics 1 set, still by Charm Box Studios.

Last but not least, the remote is extremely useful for night photography with a very slow shutter speed. Even if you are very careful when pressing the shutter, you have great chances to shake the camera and get a blurred pix. One possible solution is to use the delayed shutter (you press and the pic is taken 10 seconds later), but you lack control on what will happen when the photo will actually be taken. For example, a car can show up in the middle of your pic... Yuck! The remote is great here because it allows you to take the pic exactly when you want to without touching the camera!

Enfin, la télécommande a aussi un gros avantage pour les photos de nuit, à exposition longue. Même si vous êtes extrêmement prudent en déclenchant, il y a de bonnes chances que vous fassiez bouger l'appareil et que vous obteniez une photo floue. Une solution possible est d'utiliser le retardateur: vous appuyez sur le bouton et la photo est prise 10 secondes plus tard. Le problème, c'est que vous n'avez aucun contrôle sur ce qui se passe au moment où la photo est effectivement prise. Par exemple, une voiture peut se trouver en plein milieu de votre cadre... Beurk! La télécommande est donc parfaite dans ce cas puisqu'elle vous permet de déclencher la photo exactement au moment où vous le souhaitez sans toucher la caméra!

 

There you have it, an amazing accessory that will cost you a couple bucks and yet help you tremendously in your daily photography. Do you have a remote? Are you interested in getting one?

Voilà donc un petit accessoire qui n'a l'air de rien mais qui peut faire une grosse différence dans votre photographie au quotidien. Est-ce que vous avez déjà une télécommande? Si non, êtes-vous intéressé(e) à en acquérir une?

Can't wait...

Seems like I've been waiting a lot lately. Waiting for people to do their part of the job, waiting for the weather to get better so that I can do my job,  waiting for my computer to process through tons of pix in raw format... Right now I'm more specifically waiting for my vacation. One week... It can't come soon enough!!

Okay, not the most amazing news ever, I know, but that's all I have for now! ;)

TDC Blog hop!

Welcome to the French step of TDC's blog hop! You should have traveled aaaaaaall the way from Japan (Holly's blog) and your next stop is Michelle Batton's FB page. If you get lost along the way you can start back here.

My freebie is a quickpage / template pack. "Template" is a bit too ambitious of a word for this, actually. I just created the chevrons and the folded frame skeleton but the rest of the page is up to you. One thing that could be fun to do is to use this big white space for title, journaling, or even a blended pic, watcha think?

Just a word about the chevrons, since I'm at it! I created those as shapes and applied an inner shadow to create the "cut out effect" to them. That way, you can clip different papers to each of them (like I did in the quickpage), clip the same paper as the background one to increase the cut out look, or even ditch the inner shadow completely, apply a regular shadow and change the cut outs in paper pieces.

This is truely a perfect example of how versatile digi scrapping is, and of one of my main reason for LOVING this hobby of ours!

Anyway, hope you'll enjoy those goodies. Please shoot me a comment and link me up if you use those, I'd love to see your creations!!

Have a fun DSD and remember to hang out at The Digichick this weekend, we have even more fun planned for you. The shop is 40% off November 1st to Nov. 5th, it's time to get those paypal accounts ready! ;)

I'll host an International Chat on Sunday. It'll be at 11AM (Paris Time) = 10AM (England Time) = 7 PM (Japan Time) = 5 AM (EST). I won't post the PST time, it's indecent! LOL If you're around, please come hang out with us, it'll be fun!

ETA: sorry, I'm a dork, I forgot the link to download the freebie! DOH!!! I guess that's what you get for writing a blog post after your b'day party (with champagne!) LOL It's fixed, now!

EATA (edited again to add... yep, totally made that one up!): Apparently my box account is out of bandwith. I'll try to get this solved later today, please come back in a dozen hours and thanks for your patience!

EAATTA (edited again another time to add): Here is a new link to download the template. This one is via 4shared. Let me know if you have any trouble and THANKS for your interest in the freebie!!

So much time, so many changes

Well, once again my blog was silent for way too long. I've had good excuses for that, though, some were indeed great and some not that great.

The last time I posted, I was about to start a new IVF procedure. This one went pretty well, we found the perfect dose of meds for me and it went really smoothly.

Right after Bastille Day, my friend Nanie came for a one-week visit. It was fabulous to have her and her two kids around for such a long time, we really enjoyed each other's company and had time to talk and catch up. It was also my last week of treatement and I got the egg retrieval procedure in the middle of it, so she also helped me focus on something else.

The day she left, we had the implantation procedure. I then spent another week off work and went back to the office for a week before my pregnancy test on August 3rd. Which came out positive.

After 4 years of trying, 3 of them with various infertility treatements, I was finally pregnant. As you can imagine, I was incredibly happy.

Unfortunately, I only last for about a month. On August 27th, we had our first ultrasound, which didn't show any cardiac activity. The embryo wasn't evolving, it wasn't even here any more. I decided to stop the pregnancy with meds rather than wait for it to happen naturally.

This was probably the most terrible experience I had to go through. Not the miscarriage itself, which was uncomfortable but not that terrible, but the fact that I lost this baby. Which wasn't even a baby  yet, of course. But as I said to Guy once, I wasn't 6 weeks pregnant, I was 4 years pregnant. I had been expecting, hoping, waiting for this pregnancy for so long that I was devastated to lose it.

I've been having a hard time since then and I was really thankful to have the opportunity, through the fertility center, to see a psychologist. It helps to have someone neutral to talk to, and even if I know it will take time, I think I'm moving in the right direction.

Through all this experience, I've been blessed to have amazing people around me to support me, comfort me, pray for me and send me good thoughts. Guy, of course, has been amazing. My family, my friends and my online friends have been fabulous. I couldn't have gone through all that without them and I'm really thankful for those amazing people.

Since the miscarriage, I've changed. It made me reconsider things that I thought were important, I lost interest for some things and found passion for other. For example, I've been more and more interested about photography. I also started yoga and, even if I only went to one lesson, I love it. This perfect mix of mindfulness and letting go is exactly what I need right now. Without even mentioning the serenity and peace you feel during the class and after! So, yeah, I'm evolving, growing, changing, hopefully for the better. I wish I wouldn't have to, though!

Another month has come and gone...

... and I failed at keepin this blog up to date. Again. There's just too much going on in my life and in digi world for me to manage it. At least that's my story and I'm sticking with it! ;)

Bonjour, visiteurs francophones! Je vous invite à passer à la fin de ce post pour quelques mots dans notre langue natale! ;-)

So what happened since my last update? Let's see... My main news is definitely infertility-related: we'll have our second IVF attempt this July, and I got all the papers yesterday. This should happen during the week that my BFF Steph will spend here in vacation. She'll come to visit with her boyfriend Daniel, her almost-6-years-old son Tristan and her 2 1/2 yo daughter Ambre. It's both good and bad, good because it'll help me not get too crazy about the IVF thing, and bad because I won't be able to fully enjoy their presence, carry the kids, walk too much, etc. But even though I won't be fully participating in everything, I'm determined to enjoy this week. Then in early August, my dad and his girlfriend will come for a visit. And after that, if I can travel safely (=if I'm not pregnant), I will go to see my grandparents and mom. Pfew, this will be a fun summer! :D


Talking about fun, I've had a bit of a mojo-less time recently but I've still managed to scrap quite a bunch of pages. Here are the one I created since my last update. As I already did in my previous post, I'll just link them to my gallery so that I don't have to explain all of them. They are all created with TDC goodies.

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This last one is very special since I created it with Jenn's images and story for The Daily Digi's Play It Again feature. They request LOs from several scrappers to have a variety of styles with the same basic "material" (pix, journaling, etc.). It's incredibly fun to see how everyone's creativity is expressed in a different way. One thing that was very surprising to me was that I highlighted a different photo (the one with the two boys) than everyone else (most scrappers focused on the beautiful pic where he's looking straight at the camera). I think that tells a lot about what I love in scrapbooking: it celebrates love and relationships and my favorite pictures and stories are always the ones where peoples are shown happy together.

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It goes without saying, I was also thrilled to be featured in a TDD post. This site is a monument in my digi world and seeing my name up there, next to some of the most fabulous scrappers of this community, made me incredibly proud!

If you made it that far in this ginormous post, congrats and thank you!! LOL Before I'm gone (hopefully not for another month!), let me just say a word for my French visitors...

Bonjour et bienvenue, amis de France! Si vous arrivez sur ce blog depuis le monde du scrap papier, je vous souhaite également la bienvenue du "côté obscur de la force", à savoir le scrap digital que je pratique depuis plus de 6 ans déjà! J'espère que, malgré mes (longues) déblatérations en anglais, vous aurez plaisir à découvrir mon petit coin de web. J'écris dans la langue de Shakespeare car la plupart de mes scropines sont américaines. C'est ce qui arrive quand on a commencé sa carrière de scrappeuse dans un site anglophone! A l'époque (tout début 2006), il faut dire que le scrap digital n'était pas si répandu et il n'y avait rien en français. Le site en question est The Digichick, si vous voulez découvrir le scrap digital, faire quelques challenges et rejoindre une communauté hyper sympa (c'est pour moi presque une famille), vous savez où vous devez aller. Je fais partie de la Creative Team du site (ainsi que de plusieurs designeuses) et le lien vers ma galerie est ICI. Si vous préférez le scrap ou les loisirs créatifs hybrides, je vous conseille le site-soeur de TDC, The Hybrid Chick. Une mine d'inspiration même si, comme moi, on ne fait que regarder. Promis, un jour, j'arrêterai d'avoir peur de la colle et des ciseaux!


N'hésitez pas à me laisser un petit commentaire et/ou un lien vers votre blog, je vous lirai avec plaisir! Et si vous avez des questions, je suis votre homme... enfin, votre femme! A bientôt j'espère!

Photo-heavy catch up

7 weeks since my last post... That was quite a break, wasn't it? Let's see, what happened since I last wrote on this poor neglected blog of mine??

Well, first I had my mom visit  me for Easter. We had a blast, we visited some places but also spent some time just being together, doing nothing special but talking and enjoying being together. It was awesome!!

In April I also prepared an album in memory of our friend Hugues that passed away recently, and we gave it to his wife and son during a lunch we had all together. It was a bittersweet task for me, sad because every picture of him reminded me that he is gone and that his son (DBF's childhood friend) and wife (my collegue) are grieving and in pain, and joyful too because those pix were from happy moments and Hugues was definitely someone that enjoyed life. It was also a great reminder that there's no such thing as taking too many pix, that I should get in the photo too (there was no pic of me with Hugues) and that scrapbooking and preserving memories is not a regular hobby, that it has a deep meaning.

Since I'm at it, I've been scrapping a lot of pages since my last post. Let's see... I'll just post them with a link to my gallery so that you can check the credits and the description of the LOs if you're interested, there are too many pages for me to explain everything again! LOL

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BTW, this is probably my fave LO ever, technically, story-wise, I love it!!

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In other scrappy news, I'm now CTing for three awesome teams: site CT at The Digichick (and I not only love love love the designers and talented CTs there but also the awesome comunity), Amanda Heimann (who moved back to Scrap Orchard on NSD) and Charm Box Studios (Charla and Michelle joined their talents to create fonts, story boards, actions and other tools for photographers and scrappers). It's so exciting, but I have to find a way to organize my time and keep track of my assignements, because I'm honored to scrap for those amazing designers and I want to do it "right". It's still a work in progress!

On that note, I'm off to enjoy our beautiful and sunny Sunday, have fun!