Today on our blog, we welcome Alana de Fortier, a scrapbooker from Calgary who is sharing some fabulous layouts with us.

Good day readers of Canadian Scrapbooker.

My name is Alana de Fortier.
First and foremost I want to thank Canadian Scrapbooker for the invitation to do a guest post on this blog. It is a great honor to be here today.

I was born and raised in South Africa. Art and crafts have always been my favourite pastimes. Scrapbooking became part of my life in 2005. I was hooked and mesmerized by the whole concept, what a grand idea to tell the stories behind the photographs! Of course I was a few years behind the trend, but hey, who keeps score?

Supplies were few and far between in the small coastal town of Shelly Beach where I lived at that stage, and hence “Scrap a Story” was born. A small shop on the top floor of our home became the place for cropping, classes and affordable supplies for like-minded souls like me. It humbled me to get to know so many beautiful and talented people in my community.

In 2010 we moved to Canada. Now I live in Calgary, Alberta with my hubby Jacques, my son Ruwald, and our girl doggie Zoe. We just love this new country and all its blessings. My very talented husband created a blog site for me to share my passion for art and craft projects. Creating is part of my day, and I love to share ideas and of course Pinterest as much as I can.

We were amazed by all the coffee shops in the cities here in Canada. This layout is an ode to all those fabulous establishments that brings us so much joy, and not just in the mornings but throughout the day.

The patterned papers are from the Basic Grey collection “Wassail” and Bo Bunny “Timepiece “. Making Memories bookplates were used to bring in more photos. The punch is an EK Success “bubble edger”. Oh, and I forgot to mention my addiction to stamps, I just love them and they are all over my layouts. Inkadinkado clear stamps – Inchies “In the Kitchen” was used in the corner, and my trusty Silhouette machine was used to cut out the title.

On my next layout I used K&COMPANY scrap pad to go “TREND”. These paper pads make life so easy with the coordinating paper pieces. I used EK Success punch “edger”, and Tim Holtz grunge alpha for the title. The stamps are also mostly from Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz collection. The ink I usually use is Distress Ink from Ranger.

This is a nice “boy” layout, and who doesn’t know the excitement of getting new wheels, no matter in what form the come.

This is one of my favourite and most recent layouts. We discovered the beautiful valley of Creston in BC a while back. A magical place indeed with great views and gorgeous fruit trees everywhere. My photo is of a pear tree in bloom.

I used Kaisercraft paper, from the “Pickled Pear” collection. The paper and the collectables, combined with layering, stamping and some ink splatter made it a happy, pretty page.

Thank you so much for everyone that took the time to visit with me on this post. I hope you enjoyed my pages, and please do come over to my blog at http://scrapbookmedley.com/ for more projects.

Have a lovely crafty day.

Thank you so much, Alana, for joining us today.  We love your work! So inspiring!