Ellia at 14

This year, Andrei's birthday layout is all about the neutrals, while Ellia's is as colorful as can be!

Ellia at 14 (affiliate link)

She's a colorful kid and always has been. What fun to make a layout that highlights what a neat person she is! Happy (belated) birthday, Ellia! 

BYSS World Series 2022: Ellia at 13

Since I shared Andrei at 16 yesterday, it can't be too much of a surprise that today's post is Andrei's little sister, my goddaughter Ellia. I can't believe she is a teenager. I was there when she was born. Somehow, it feels like yesterday and a million years ago at the same time. 

Just like with Andrei's layout, I incorporated the four single-point elements from Game 2 of the BYSS World Series. 

Ellia at 13 (affiliate link)

I used stickers for the title, as well as the smallest hearts on the top- and bottom-right. The larger hearts in the corners are stamped. Each cluster has a sprinkling of white sequins and the ric-rac dividing the layout in half counts as a "texture textile." Another four points for the Scrappin' Banshees!

Ellia at 12

Yesterday, I shared my Andrei at 15 layout; today it's time for their sister's 2021 birthday page. Here is Ellia at 12. 

Ellia at 12 (affiliate link)

As with Andrei, Ellia's mom picked the adjectives for this layout. As little time as I've spent with Andrei recently, I've spent even less with Ellia. Thank goodness for social media where I can keep up with their lives (and ever-changing hair colors!). Speaking of which, I had a lot of fun pulling colors for this layout. Between her shirt and hair, there were lots of possibilities. I'm happy with how this page turned out. I look forward to making both kids' 2022 layouts as soon as they do their photo shoots. 

The Annual Birthday Layouts

Nothing has been normal in 2020, which is why I'm just now sharing the layouts I made for my godchildren's July birthdays. After not seeing each other for WAY too long, we finally had a chance to meet for a brief, socially-distanced gift opening. 

Here is the page I made for Ellia, age 11. She's getting so big! I didn't get close to her when we visited, but I wouldn't be surprised if she is nearly as tall as I am. 

Ellia at 11 (affiliate link)

Here is Andrei at 14. I know for certain that I'm the shorter of the two of us. 

Andrei at 14 (affiliate link)

And speaking of shorter, check out this photo that Courteney snapped when Trevor and I delivered the birthday layouts. 

Am I slouching? (I don't think so.) Is the pavement sloped? (Doesn't seem like it.) Or is it time for me to make a new version of this layout? (Probably.) Could Trevor have grown that much between September 23 and November 13 when the two photos were taken? (Yes, based on how much he eats.)

It's crazy seeing these kids growing up! Crazy awesome, that is. 

Ellia at 10

As hard as it is to believe my goddaughter Kylinn is 13, it's harder to believe that her little sister, Ellia, is 10. I was there when Ellia was born, which will always be special to me. Watching her grow up has been a delight.

Ellia at 10 (affiliate link)

Each year, it seems like one of the girls' layouts comes together much easier than the other. This time, Ellia's was the challenge. When I pulled the black of her outfit or her purple hair, the page was too dark and heavy for this happy, sassy, imaginative girl. The page worked so much better when I switched to the lighter background with pinks. 

Looking back at her 9 previous pages, I've used a lot of different colors and to capture expressive and creative Ellia as she's grown. But many of the words I've used to describe her have stayed the same from year to year, which is true for Kylinn and Trevor as well. It's so interesting to me that their personalities as preteens/teens are the basically the same as when they were toddlers.

Celebrating 13

I've already told you about Trevor's Peanuts-themed 13th birthday party; here's the layout about that fun day. 

13th Birthday Party (affiliate link)

Every item, except the white cardstock, is from the Party Boy collection by Photo Play. Sometimes it's nice not having to dig through different collections or different manufacturers to find embellishments that coordinate. It certainly makes scrapping faster to stick with a single collection. 

12th Birthday Party

One of my favorite things about blogging is that I can tell more of the story and include more photos of an event than I can squeeze onto a scrapbook layout. So while I want the important photos and the story to appear in the album, it helps knowing that the details are preserved here on the blog. Because I shared so many details from Trevor's narwhal-themed ice skating birthday party back in June, I didn't feel compelled to include close-ups of the narwhal items we made on the layout. Instead, I packed it with photos of Trevor and his friends having fun.

12th Birthday Party (affiliate link)

I debated whether to include the grinning alligator on a page about a narwhal-themed birthday, but I couldn't resist. He fit the space perfectly and looks so cute holding the present and the balloons. 

You may have noticed that the only journaling I did was to label the kids (and Narwhal). The photos answer the rest of the basic questions:

• What: Trevor's birthday party
• Where: ice rink
• When: Trevor's 12th birthday

You might argue that, years from now, one of Trevor's descendants won't know when his birthday was and thus what year this took place. Nor will they know which ice rink we visited. But I'd argue that both of those questions are answered by other layouts in the same album. For the record though, I'll note both of those here, with the optimistic (though perhaps unlikely) expectation that my blog will be accessible to future generations: This party took place at Vacaville Ice Sports on June 8, 2018, the day after Trevor's 12th birthday. And it was awesome. 

The MAKE Party

I've been wanting to check out MAKE in nearby Vacaville for a long time, so I was thrilled when I learned my goddaughters would be having their birthday party there. MAKE is an art studio and it is awesome. 

The space at MAKE is divided into a small lobby, a main room with supplies and tables, a paint area, a party room, and a designated glitter space. 

After a tour, we were given free reign to create. It was overwhelming, because they have literally every art supply you could think of. I started the background for a painting, set that aside to dry, and then started really digging through the dozens of bins of supplies for inspiration to strike.

Meanwhile, Trevor had said, "What should I make?" and someone answered, "Parakeet." He gathered a bunch of supplies, sat down, and started creating.   

I wandered around looking at what everyone was making, spent some time taking photos, and then sat down with an empty frame.

I have a clean and simple aesthetic, but have always wanted to try just gluing a big pile of random bits to something to see how it would turn out. I scooped a few handfuls from the bin of game pieces, grabbed a glue gun, and jumped in. Everything about this was completely different from what I'd normally make. I didn't plan ahead, didn't edit, and didn't hold back. It was a lot of fun. 

I did put some thought into the items I chose to glue on the frame. You'll see our initials, my birthdate (3/12), our family colors, and tokens from our favorite games. Amazingly, even though I was just gluing stuff on haphazardly, I still managed to make something that: a) I like; and b) is still quite Cindy. 

 

That's Trevor's parakeet leaning up against my frame. He turned a glass bottle upside down, glued half of a plastic egg to it, then added tissue paper and built up the features from there. Super cute and so creative! 

Happiest of birthdays, Kylinn and Ellia! We had a blast celebrating with you.

And I can't wait to go back to MAKE! Check it out if you are local. Better yet, let me know when you're going and I'll meet you there!

Ellia at 9

It's Year 9 making birthday layouts for the younger of my two goddaughters, Ellia. I chose to go really colorful to match her colorful personality. It was a lot of fun to dig through cardstock scraps to find colors to match the polka dot background paper. It's always so satisfying to discover scraps that are exactly what you need. It justifies the huge amount of scraps that I save!

Ellia at 9 (affiliate link)

You can see the layouts from Ellia's previous birthdays here. She's grown and changed so much in 9 years, but she still has the same spunky personality!

Ellia at 8

Beautiful and spirited Ellia, eight years old already. This is even harder to believe than Trevor and Kylinn turning 11 this year!

Ellia at 8 (affiliate link)

I don't normally look back at the girls' birthday layouts until after I complete the current year's, but I did take a quite peek back at Ellia at 7 before starting this one. Her shirt is a similar color to last year's dress, so I wanted to make sure to go with a different color palette. I don't think I would have gone with pistachio, navy, grey, and watermelon, but I love it. You can look back on the rest of Ellia's layouts here and here. Happy birthday, Ellia!

Ellia at 7

My goddaughter Ellia will always be special to me for many reasons, among them that I was privileged to be there at her birth seven years ago. There's no one else in the world who can say that! Well, except Trevor, I suppose. He's pretty special to me, too. 

Here's the layout I made for Ellia's 7th birthday:

 

Obviously, I took my color inspiration from her cute two-tone dress. The page came together so quickly and easily. Scrapping is easy when you have a great photo of a beautiful girl as the subject! 

As always, I waited until after this year's page was done to look back at the previous years (which you can see here and here). I love seeing how my descriptions of her have changed as she's grown. It's fun to see the changes in my scrapbooking skills as well!

Ellia at 6

Here is the layout I made for my goddaughter Ellia's sixth birthday. It's an annual tradition.

I love how it turned out, although it was quite different than I intended! I'd chosen the floral side of this two-sided paper by Chickaniddy Crafts as the background, with a strip of the stripe as a title.

It looked really good, so I took it all apart and glued it. Somehow, I glued the background paper on upside down, with the stripes showing instead of the floral. I was really mad at myself. I *hate* when a project looks just the way I want it and I have to take it apart to add adhesive and hope I put it back together correctly. It's my absolute least favorite part of scrapbooking. But then I decided that the stripes looked pretty cool and that Ellia's photo pops against the really light background. She loved it, which is all I really care about.

Ellia at 5

There aren't too many people who I have known for their WHOLE life. I can think of exactly five: Trevor (of course); my younger sister, Kari, who I met in the hospital when she was a few hours old; Kari's kids, Timothy and Allison, each of whom I also met in the hospital when they were a few hours old; and my goddaughter Ellia, whose birth I witnessed five years ago.

Each year, I make a framed layout for Ellia's birthday, just like I do for her older sister, Kylinn. Ellia requested purple, so I dug out three purple papers, a purple pen, purple ink, and purple Stickles and got to work. The first step was changing yellow letter stickers to purple.

The layout came together quickly and easily. Here it is:

Here are the layouts I've made for her the past four years:

Happy 5th birthday, Ellia!

Ellia at 4

Here is the layout I made for my goddaughter Ellia's fourth birthday.  It's hard to believe it's been four years since she was born!  I remember it like it was yesterday.

Here are the rest of her layouts:

Such a beautiful girl!

Ellia at Three

In between the Fiskateers challenges, I worked on this:

That's my goddaughter Ellia.  Each year for my goddaughters' birthdays, I make them framed layouts with a list of their best qualities at that age.  You can see the two that I made for Ellia's previous birthdays here.  It's fun to see how she has grown and changed.    

Each year I use the scraps from the layout to make a coordinating card.  I was hoping there would be a Fiskateer challenge that would inspire the card and indeed there was.  The "How Does It Feel?" challenge required us to make a project with three different textures.  The background paper from Ellia's layout is flocked and the solid paper is beautifully smooth, so I was 2/3 of the way there.  I decided to emboss the sentiment to add a third interesting texture.  

 

 On Monday I'll share the layout and card I made for my other goddaughter, Ellia's sister Kylinn.

Ellia at 2

Two years ago today, I had the experience of a lifetime. My friend Courteney asked me to be in the room with her when her baby was born. I couldn't wait for the big day. Each day I wondered when the call would come. It came on a Thursday at 1:30 am; in less than 5 minutes, I was in my car and racing to the hospital 15 miles away.

This was the first, and possibly only, baby I would see born. My son was breech and came via c-section. I wasn't given the option to watch (I probably wouldn't have chosen to see myself being cut open, even if I had the choice). So it was even more special to me that Courteney asked me to be there.

It was absolutely amazing to watch her daughter enter the world. That baby is my goddaughter Ellia. She is awesome.

Here is the layout I made for her second birthday:

And here is the one from last year:

Happy 2nd birthday Ellia! We love you.