Made with Silvia Romeo's "Metal Essentials- Gold"

A word of explaination for the following layouts. Recently, I borrowed the album of photos from my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary party held in 1968. My parents had thrown the party for my paternal grandparents at their home with Mom doing almost all of the cooking and a little help from her sister, Dean Jarvis who was then head caterer for Giant Open Air Markets here in Norfolk, VA. A professional photographer came in to do a few prtrait like pics of the occassion plus a photo of my brother and me and one of me and a dear friend, Hazel Pollard.

I'd scanned the photos but hadn't yet scrapped them. Then I got an opportunity to work with Silvia Romeo's "Metal Essentials - Gold" as part of my CT duties. I'm a big fan of Silvia's work so I was tickled to do so. While I understand that Silvia never intended this to be a stand-alone kit but rather a kit of metal elements to be used with other kits, I decided to see what might be done using as much of the kit as possible. Initially I thought I'd be adding some roses and lace and such from some of her other kits but, in the end, I did not. I was only going to make the cover layout and maybe one other this way but found myself continuing until I'd scrapped all the photos. See what you think.

Find Silvia's "Metal Essentials - Gold" (also available in silver) here at Scrapbookersplayground:
http://www.scrapbookersplayground.com/Cart/index.php?main_page=product_scrapbook_info&manufacturers_id=98&products_id=6816
Hurry and you can get the personal version (also available in commercial version) for only $5.63 through Sunday Nov 11! She's got a 25% off sale going on.

Here's my cover shot: my paternal grandparents, Hunter & Lillian Lambert. Sadly my grandmother died the day before my son was born in December 1977. My grandfather joined her in January 1978. I was very close to Pappy & Nanny Lambert and miss them very much.

Here you can see that I cut some other flowers from Silvia's papers to go with the gold daisy she included. Don't you love her clustered tag? Pappy was teasing Nanny as they got ready to cut the cake. He used to play minor league baseball so grabbed the cake knife as if it were a bat to swing. The guests were suggesting that they plaster each other with cake icing, something Nanny laughed over and which Pappy had enough sense not to try with my always neat-as-a pin grandmother.

Not sure if I like this page as well as the others. I wanted to use the photos of all three of their children on the same page but I feel my layout is boring.

Some times simple is best, especially when you have such a beautiful background to work with.
Here all the grandchild (at that time) lined up with Pappy & Nanny. I'm second oldest, the one on the left end. The senior grand-daughter is my cousin Ann at the right end. She's seen as a teenager in my layouts made with Orangeade. The little guy with glasses here, is my brother, Thom, eight years younger than me.

A layout showing some of the guests and using more cut-out flowers. The lady in blue sitting between my grandparents at top left is my grandfather's sister, Lena (named for their mother, Mary Arlena) who is the mother of Constance, the woman in blue in lower photo.
I made a ribbon with one of Silvia's papers so I could use one of the buckles.

Another simple layout below. Just added the embroidered element from Silvia's kit. Top photo shows two of my grandmother's brothers and their wives. Bottom photp shows my cousin Ann again with her first husband, Gary Blanchard.


The photo below is of me and Thom. I was seventeen when the party took place and Thom would have been nine. The original phot shows a pole lamp that was by the chair and part of some faux painting above it. I guess they didn't do much photo editing bak then - like removing distracting things, At any rate, there was a bad smudge on the original so I played with de-cluttering the background.

The photo below was a last minute thing, suggseted by the photographer. My friend, Hazel Pollard (now Riddlehoover) and I pose against a huge oak that used to be in front of the large picture window in the living room. This one give s you a better idea of how thin I was then - just 86 lbs, and a height of 5'6" Just couldn't gain weight. Don't I wish I could say that now!