NEW Products in the store!

Just wanted to share the three new kits in the Heritage Scrap Store this week (in addition to the Blue Willow Kit below). Click on the preview to go to the store for a better look. :) Happy Spring!!

April Collaborative Kit Release!

Blue Willow! Just the words bring thoughts running through our minds, of blue and white china, lace and afternoon tea; English cottages and love stories. The designers at Heritage Scrap have each done a kit in this theme. And they are all on sale for only $2.50.

Do you know the legend of the Blue Willow Plate? Here's a little poem that tells the story...

My Willowware plate has a story,
Pictorial, painted in blue
From the land of tea and the tea plant
And the little brown man with a queue.

Whatever the food you serve, daughter
Romance enters into the feast,
If you only pay heed to the legend,
On the old china plate from the East.

Koong Shee was a mandarin’s daughter
And Chang was her lover, ah me,
For surely her father’s accountant
Might never wed pretty Koong Shee.

So Chang was expelled from the compound,
The lover’s alliance to break,
And pretty Koong Shee was imprisoned
In a little blue house by the lake.

The Doughty old mandarin reasoned
It was time that his daughter should wed,
And the groom of his choosing should banish,
That silly romance from her head.

In symbols the dress she should wear,
Her headband of scarlet lay waiting,
She should ride in a gold wedding chair.

He was busily plotting and planning,
When a message was brought him one day,
Young Chang had invaded the palace,
And taken his sweetheart away.

They were over the bridge when he saw them,
They were passing the big willow tree,
And a boat at the edge of the water,
Stood waiting for Chang and Koong Shee.

The furious mandarin followed,
The groom with revenge in his eyes,
But the little boat danced on the water
And traveled away with the prize.

But vengeance pursued to their shelter
And burned the pagoda, they say
From out of the flames rose the lovers
A pair of doves winging away.

They flew toward the western heaven
The pretty Koong Shee and her Chang
Or so says the famous old legend
From the land of the Yangtze Kiang.

I wouldn’t be one to deny it,
For the little blue dove and her mate
Forever are flying together
Across my Willow ware plate.

Here is my contribution to the Blue Willow Collaborative Kit...

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

For starters, let's get the good stuff out of the way. :) A FREEBIE!!!

If you are wearin' o' the green today, here's a cute little St. Patrick's Day card (print some out, sign them and pass them out like Valentines!), a bookmark with the Legend of the Shamrock, and a Celtic Cross element for your scrapbook pages for you to download free. Just click on the image to go to the download page.

I've been doing research on my Irish Heritage and was so psyched to be able to trace a direct line from myself to my ancestors several generations back who hailed from County Armagh, Ireland. County Armagh was the religious capital of Ireland and the very place St. Patrick chose to build his church. The Connelly brothers (who later changed the spelling to Conley) came to America and were instrumental in the settling of the colonies - particularly in South Carolina and specifically Charleston. This line has very interesting stories attached to it.
One of my ancestors served in Braddock's Army at Ft. Duquesne (and to think I worked in Pittsburgh for years and didn't know I had a personal connection!) His son was a Captain in the North Carolina Militia. He was married to Ann MACGREGOR, a member of the Clan MacGregor one of the oldest and most historic as well as the most persecuted of the Scottish Clans.
My great great great grandfather was a civilian who was killed by Rogue Confederates during the Civil War because they suspected he had Union ideals. His daughter married John C. Oney, who in my mind was a hero in the Civil War. I am currently working on an album documenting his service as part of the Civil War Challenge at Heritage Scrap (running through March 22nd). Their daughter was my great grandmother, my paternal grandmother's mother.

Here is the page I did that put all of this research together. It was for the Celtic Heritage Challenge at Heritage Scrap which closes at midnight tonight if you'd like to submit a layout! (Click on the image to go see it closer in the gallery.) There's also a Celtic Font challenge going on.

I love the challenges at Heritage Scrap, because they really do challenge me to dig deeper and discover a little more about my roots, and therefore, myself. And of course, there's also the opportunity to win prizes from the Heritage Scrap Shoppe, too! If you would like to know where you came from, or maybe you already do, but have all that research in a filing cabinet, come on over to Heritage Scrap and start putting it into layouts that you can put into the hands of your children and grandchildren. Heritage Albums are a Living Legacy that will become family heirlooms and passed down for generations! And that's no blarney! :)

Sale Time!

My NEW kit and a FREEBIE!

Happy Spring!! (It's almost here!) Even here in the Snow Belt, the thermometer hit 60 degrees, and that's the magic number where the kids are allowed to go outside without a coat, so everyone is happy. :)

To celebrate, I have my new and very Spring-y Forget me Not Page Kit in the store, along with a matching FREE alpha for you to download. Just click on the images to go to the store to get them, now. And keep your eyes open for a challenge to win a free page kit when you make a Forget Me Not Layout!

While you are at Heritage Scrap, browsing through the Gallery, please be sure to take a look at Theresa's very touching layout, Danny, that she did with the Forget Me Not kit, and leave her some love. Thanks for using my products!