New Year Blog Hop!

Happy New Year everyone!!!

Thanks for hopping by my stop. Heard about the blog hop over at Scrapbook Challenges? What a BIG event to start the year off huh? If you haven't heard of SC, then go ahead and check it out! It is a place to find weekly challenges and sketches that will get your mojo working. And if you join us at the hop you can win awesome prizes. Hop starts at Pamela's blog - she's awesome lots of inspirations there. But If you're already in the hop, you must be coming from Annie's blog.

Well to start it off, I'm one of the proud and new Design Team Member of Scrapbook Challenges! Yipeee! I'm so honored to be a part of this great team. I was surprised when Pamela emailed me because I'm sure there were a lot of applicants and being in the Philippines, I thought that would be a disadvantage but fortunately she picked me ~ CHOSEN me! Yipeee!

So who is me? heehee... I'm Catherine Bautista, I'm currently working as a Performance Management Manager at a BPO company and a part-time Strategic Consultant outside that. I basically do a lot of reports and being a consultant involves planning, executing and measuring performance through Scorecards for small organizations. Sounds boring huh? Well, that's why scrapbooking was invented and that's why I'm so hooked to it! LOL. I'm newly married to my childhood sweetheart Gio. We got married almost a year ago and life had been really good to us so far. We don't have kids yet so most of our time are spent traveling and that means lots of photos to scrap about for me. Lucky me! :)

Ever since I was a kid, I have loved collecting papers and stationaries. You can always find me in a bookstore looking at notebooks criticizing the smoothness of the papers inside and opening stationary sets to check out the printed designs. How I wish I took a picture of my collection, they're a lot and most of my allowance is saved for those! Unfortunately I had to let them go when we transferred from one house to another. It was a hard decision but they're occupying too much space in the house so had to say bye bye to them. That was me in High School through College.

When I started working, I started collecting again. Yes again! I guess it's a sickness LOL. This time I discovered paper punches! It was such an amazing tool for me when my friend and I first saw it. That was about 8 years ago and that started it all. I've been hooked on all scrapbook stuff since then. But I have mostly "hoarded" stuff, asking a friend or two from the US to bring the stuff I bought online. And you can imagine my shock when I found out a year and a half ago that there were actually stores now here in the Philippines who sell 'em and there's actually a yahoo group of Filipina women here! You can imagine my excitement so I immediately joined and got hooked especially when my husband and I moved in together, one whole room is spared for my scrapbooking goodies :). So that's when I actually started "creating" out of all the stuff I've hoarded over the years.

I have to admit I've been obsessed with this hobby especially at the latter half of 2009. I've spent gazillion hours in front of the computer researching for tips and techniques, blog hopping and shopping of course. It was intense so I quickly learned a lot and met friends who helped me love this hobby more. I don't have a signature style as of yet, I don't want to stick to one or two because I love trying out new things. I've bought tons of tools that supports this thirst for new techniques so I tend to challenge my self to use them. My fave would be Tim Holtz and Rangers tools and goods. I just love shabby chic and vintage looking projects. I'm also currently hooked into paper cutting and incorporating fabrics to LOs.

Hope you can join us at Scrapbook Challenges because the team is now bigger and we're offering a lot more activities for all of you this year which means a lot more opportunities to win!

The theme for this blog hop is of course New Years! Time to reflect on what you did on 2009 and also a time to look forward for new possibilities. Here's sketch 179 and the layout I did. I have to admit the sketch is a bit off of my normal layouts but I really enjoyed it.

I used mostly Graphic 45 papers. The scalloped circle is a bare chipboard from boutique which I painted and crackled.

Journaling reads: Of the many adventures I've had for 30 years, this year marks the most significant. I married my childhood love and we traveled a lot to our hearts content! Now I'm ready for the new adventures 2010 brings!

Close up of the crackled chipboard. The butterfly is cut out from GCD paper. I rounded the corners of the paper through folding and also applied crackle paint on the CS.
More close ups...

To highlight the two pictures, I elevated it a bit and rolled the top and bottom section.

Here's the bottom section and the big brown flower is made out of a lace ribbon which I stitched and squeezed into a circle.


So what's in it for you??!?! PRIZES! PRIZES! PRIZES!

For simply leaving comments on all the blog hop participants, you can win this amazing My Little Shoebox goodies!

And this goes to one person who leaves a comment on the blogs in the Hop On section.

Don't you just love Prima goodies! Well we've got two for you. You must join the group this weekend and invite your friends this weekend through the invite link on the group.


LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST, if you do the sketch and post your take on the Hop on section of the forum you could win this amazing BG collection! Which includes:

* Origins Collection Pack of 12 x 12 papers
* Origins Stitched Brads
* Origins White Tracery Doilies Paper
* Origins Brown Tracery Doilies Paper
* Origins Chip Sticker Shapes
* Origins Chip Sticker Abcs
* Origins Canvas Tags
* Origins Bloomers
* Origins Buttons


Aren't these just yummy? This is it for my stop now head on over to Deb's blog for another inspiration!

Cheers everyone!

Cathy