The Scent of Violets

The Scent of Violets features one of remaining photos of my great-grandmother, Lola Bachang. I never met her, yet I'd like to think that since I knew her daughter, I might know a little of her too.

Journal: When I smell violets, I imagine you. I only know of you because of your daughter, my grandmother, Lola Chiching.
I imagine you to be strong because my lola was strong. I wonder how you survived the Spanish-Filipino War, being half-Spanish and half-Filipino. Oh, the tales you could tell, if your photograph could speak!

I imagine you to be a great beauty because my lola was beautiful. I wonder how you must have turned down many admirers, and I wonder too about your own love story.

I imagine you to be very interesting to talk to because my lola was easy to talk to. I wonder what your childhood was like. Did you have brothers and sisters?

I imagine you to be intelligent because my lola was intelligent. She remembers details in history like it just happened yesterday. I imagine you to be like that too. I'm sure you can tell me many things about your parents, as well as grandparents!

I imagine you to smell like violents because it reminds me of the old world, of the life of nobility and gentility, of a life beyond mine, ---just like the scent I find in my lola's wooden closet. That scent and this photograph are all I have of you.

Materials: chipboard for backing, Bo Bunny Marakesh, BG Periphery Bordeaux, IOD Coquette Collection Vanity, Anna Griffin violets AG030, tracing paper, Maya Road Fresh Scrolls chipboard, Heidi Swapp SHe Raw alpha, Thickers Alpha, Autumn leaves Frech Twist RubOns, mm Colors eggplant, Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist Merlot, Carolina's lace & ribbon, Carolina's sequinned flowers, Fancy Pants French Market RubOns, VersaCraft 15 Pine, Colorbox Chalk warm violet, Uniball Signo white pen. Adhesives: Ms. Elizabeth's double-sided roller tape, UHU Bastel Kleber, UBL double-sided mounting tape, Glue Dots vellum.

Techniques used: Spraying of Glimmer Mist, doodling, inking lace and leaves with chalk and stamp ink, painting, hand-cutting pps + free-hand cutting of leaves, layering, gluing patterned paper over the chipboard scroll for emphasis.

Missed

For the Scrapbooks Hawaii Around the Block Challenge, I made this LO of my dear Tita Annie. It's the first time I poured out my sentiments on her passing last year on the eve of this year.

Journal: Christmas 2006 was bittersweet for us.

We had set up a makeshift hospital room in the house when you asked to brought home for Christmas.
Cancer had spread from your lungs to your head.
You were constantly in pain.
By then, we knew it was a matter of time.
It would be your last Christmas

On New Year's Eve, you left us.
It was something we thought we were prepared for.
Yet, when death came knocking, it was still a shock/
You left us bereft, lonely and missing you.

Another Christmas is coming and we still feel lost without you.
We know that you are now happy and at peace.
Although the pain of our loss grows less each day,
it has never been the same.
We still have to find peace in all of these.

You will always be missed, dear Tita Annie.

China Doll

Just finished my last LO on my last day of vacation. This time, it is about my niece, a cute and pretty baby who resembles a doll. I had a hard time cutting the cardboard of the patterned paper. I guess, for fine cutting, paper is easier. The hardest thing about this LO however was the journal. Since I am making a journal of my niece, and my sis didn't know what to write either, I had a challenging time making a journal for someone else. In the end, I really liked how it turned out.