Two Days {CSI Case File No. 75}

I'm so late posting this. The end of the school year is such a busy time for teachers. Oh, well. Better late than never, I always say. I loved The Scene and the soft, dreamy colors of this Case File.

Here's my page. Clues I used...Evidence: lace, chevron, flowers, jewels, wood, heart, gold, and a banner; Testimony: Document a wedding.

Here are some details. The framed text was cut out of a Teresa Collins paper. Papers I used are by My Mind's Eye (the stripe at the top, the teal underneath the vellum), American Crafts (the gold dot vellum and gray), My Little Shoebox (the grid), and Teresa Collins (the rest).

I used acrylic paint mixed with molding paste and a template from The Crafter's Workshop for the chevrons.

This striped My Mind's Eye paper had all the colors of the palette.  The ink that looks like mist is actually an old stamp by Stampin' Up.

The title lettering is by Webster's Pages. My journaling, on the back, reads: We were in love and had already talked about getting married. We had no specific time frame, but I figured it would happen after I finished school. Like all young girls, I had dreamed of a fancy wedding with a long gown and veil, bridesmaids, and all the trimmings that go with a wedding. As often happens in life, things don't always work out as planned. 

Immigration agents showed up at Farzad's work and hauled him away, set a deportation hearing, and threw our love into a whirlwind. Yes, I was dating an illegal alien. I didn't know it at the time, and Farzad didn't even realize it either. He had come to the United States five years earlier to go to school. When the Iranian revolution started, his parents were unable to send money to the States, so Farzad was forced to quit school and start working. He got a job flipping hamburgers at Roy Rogers in Georgetown. He worked his way up to manager over the next few years, and landed in the Gaithersburg Roy Rogers, where I was working as a cashier. We eventually started dating.

Fast forward six months. An old girlfriend showed up at the restaurant. She scowled at me. I didn't know who she was. Within a week INS showed up at the door to escort Farzad downtown. Seemed this old girlfriend reported Farzad to immigration.

There was no question in my mind that we had to get married, and pronto. There was no way I was going to lose the love of my life, so marry we did. We had two days to plan. File paperwork for a marriage license--Mom had to give written consent, since I was only seventeen. Find wedding garb--we drove all over Maryland, Virginia, and DC to find white bloomers in my size (I had seen them in a dream and knew that's what I was destined to wear). Invite family and friends (just our small family-Mom, Gram, Dawn, Tina, and Aunt Vonne--and our good friends Doris and Lama).

It wasn't the fancy wedding I'd dreamed of--just a civil ceremony at the Rockville courthouse and a gathering at Gram's house with some food and a couple of hastily-purchased wedding gifts, followed by a weekend honeymoon somewhere in the Shenandoah mountains a couple of hours away. But that's okay. I have the life of my dreams with the love of my life, and we'll be celebrating our 32nd anniversary next month. And that's really all I ever needed.

An Elegant Valentine Palette at CCG!

Challenge 179 went live at Color Combos Galore last night, and this week's palette was chosen in honor of upcoming Valentine's Day. I love that we included gray in the mix:

This palette, plus the Designer's Challenge, was perfect for scrapping one of my wedding photos. I've just recently started re-scrapping them. When I first started scrapping, I was so excited with all the stickers and deco scissors, that I went to town on my wedding pictures, and unfortunately I ruined a lot of them with those dreadful scissors. I cringe when I look at that first scrapbook I made. It wasn't until lately that I've gotten the courage to start scrapping them again.

Here's the page I made. We got married way back in 1981--yes, that means we'll be celebrating our 30th anniversary this July! Boy does that make me feel old (though I was a child bride--really--I was seventeen)! The picture was taken in front of the courthouse steps.

I had pulled a whole bunch of papers out when I started planning my page, and to my surprise and delight, this clapperboard from one of the Webster's Pages Hollywood Vogue papers had the number 24 on it--we got married on July 24!

This transparent detail was cut from a Teresa Collins transparency that has a whole bunch of these pretty framed words on them. I wanted to lift it off the page so that the print would cast a pretty shadow on the white background. I added some jewels so that I could put the pop dots behind them.

I thought the Hambly birdcage rub-on was a perfect accent because it has two little lovebirds inside. I got that pretty laser-cut frame from a local scrapbook store. The "memories" label is also Teresa Collins, and the ticket is from The Graphics Fairy (my new best friend)--it comes in a whole sheet with different sayings, and what I love is that I can make it any size I want--which is important when you scrap 8 x 8. And isn't that border punch pretty? It's by EK Success.

I used some old 7 Gypsies paper (the circles with flowers) and added some gray pearls for shine and dimension. The red sayings came from Teresa Collins--it's a sheet of paper that has a gazillion word strips on it, all in red, black, and white. I got the butterfly through Google Images. I love the new Google feature that lets you select what color images you want. I knew I wanted red butterflies, so it was easy to find a couple of pretty ones and make them just the right size for my small page. I just printed them, cut them out, and popped on my page with pop dots under the wings and added some sparkly jewels. Yeah, after I drew in those antennae, I wished I had drawn them longer.

Here's a different red butterfly I found through Google Images.  Love all the pretty jeweled swirls they're making nowadays--perfect for a butterfly trail. And I added some lace at the top. Love the embossed Swiss dot cardstock.

This journaling spot is also from the Graphics Fairy. After I put it on, I realized the white was a way different shade than the other white cardstock pieces I had used, and it stuck out like a sore thumb, so I smudged some gray chalk around the edges.

The roses on the Inspiration Board cupcakes inspired me to use these tiny roses I got at Michael's (by Recollections). I love the edging BasicGrey has been adding on their glazed brads lately. So pretty! The gray velvet letters are American Crafts Thickers.

The frames I added to the left and right edge of my page are from a Teresa Collins paper. I added a bit of a Webster's Pages paper behind this one. The "Know This" stamp is also by Teresa Collins. I heat embossed it to make it a nice bold black.

The CCG team, Featured Member, and guest designer did a beautiful job with this palette. You should go take a peek at their work. And you should definitely play along--you might be selected as an upcoming Featured Member or even win the February prize from this month's sponsor, Unity Stamp Company. I hope to see your work in our Gallery soon!

Thank you for visiting my blog and reading about my page!

Happy Anniversary, Baby (Got you on my mind....)

Now, I'm going to have that song stuck in my head all day!

Today's Farzad's and my 29th anniversary. Yes, that officially makes me an old lady.

So, when I first started scrapbooking, the first album I did was my wedding album. I know--huge mistake. Think deco scissors and shaped templates and sticker sneezes. I've wanted to re-do those pages forEVER, and I finally got the push to start.

Our prompt this at Creative Prompts for You (picked out by me) was this image:

And here's the layout I made (details about how I was inspired follow below the layout). After I had stitched everything down, I realized that I wished I had added one more sentence to my journaling: Dreams do come true.

The topic of the inspiration photo drove me to scrap one of my wedding photos. The flowers on my layout were obviously drawn from the decorations on the cake. The stacked layers of the cakes inspired the arrangement of my photo and journaling block, and the design in the upper left photo inspired my choice of background paper. The topper on the lower middle photo made me think of adding something to the top of my photo and journaling spot, so I added the punches. The pedestals holding some of the cakes inspired me to use the lamp post, as I thought it had a similar shape. The pewter-looking ribbon draping the cake on the lower right drew my eye, and I decided to add that color to accent my page--I found a metallic paper in my stash and used that for the outline of the shaped paper and the punched borders above my photo and journaling block. I added pewter embossing powder to the chipboard lamp post, the edges of my label and chipboard letters and around the border of my page. Finally, the dots on the lower middle cake made me think of adding pearls around my photo.


Here are a couple of close-up photos:
 

 
Thank you for looking at my page. I hope you'll come peek at what the rest of the CP4U team did with this prompt and play along!

14 Days of Valentine Tags

Over at Scrapbook News & Review, the staff has been leading up to Valentine's Day with 14 Days of Valentine Tags. I'm on for Day 13. Here is a picture of my tag:



I used Webster's Pages 6 x 6 mini-pages to make my tag. That's my husband and me on our wedding day in 1981! Here are some close-up shots I took as I was making my tag. You can find detailed instructions at SNR, in the forum, under Classes, Events & Swaps. If you go there, you'll also be able to see the tags other staffers made.

28 Years Ago Today...

Where does the time go? Happy Anniversary, Farzad! I love you!