Tearing Paper - the Scrap Our Stash Challenge for November

Hello Everyone,

I still find tearing beautiful patterned paper difficult but that is the challenge, to Tear It Up, over at Scrap Our Stash this month.

My response to the challenge? Well, I steeled myself and added just one torn piece of Ruby Rock-It's Flourish Vintedge to the lower edge of this page. The base and the fussy cut flower trim is from the BoBunny Serenity collection. I added a bit of stamping around the edge with a Victoria and Albert Museum leaf trim and added a chandelier, from Kaisercraft's Le Chateau set, to the top right corner. 

The lace and trims are vintage style, as is the Prima locket which can be opened to reveal photos of my great-grandparents. My great-grandfather appeared in an earlier post - in the layout is entitled Hero. I can't say I will ever find tearing paper easy but I do like the effect on this layout.

This is a page made especially for my family history album. The journaling reads as follows:

"This photograph is of my great-grandmother, Nana Douglas, my grandmother, Granny Vass, and great-uncle Robert. It's a studio pose, with them all in their Sunday best, taken for my great-grandfather, James Douglas, to carry with him as he went of to war in 1915. Safely stowed away in his wallet, it went with him to France and he still had it when he finally returned home at the end of the war. By then his copy was dog-eared and much creased from constant handling - it helped him through the horrors of war."

Nana was the tiniest creature I ever knew, not even 5' tall and with the most perfect figure right into old age. She was also incredibly sprightly well into her eighties. When I was a little girl, and had the temerity to ask her how old she was, she would always tell me she was sixteen - for years I believed her!

War made her bitter and who could blame her -  she lost the two men that meant the most to her because of war. Her husband returned a sick man after active service in WWI - due to gas inhalation - and her only son died fighting in Hong Kong during WWII. She was widowed in 1930 and towards the end of her life, whenever I visited, never failed to tell me that she had been a widow for more than forty years. She never remarried, saying no one could ever replace great-grandfather.

If you'd like to have a go at the SOS challenge, Tear It Up, and want to tear either a little or a lot of paper, pop along to the blog where you will find details on how to submit your layout(s). You can also see all the other great interpretations of the current challenge that have been posted this month already. There is also the opportunity to take part in a pagerize (scraplift) challenge every month too - this month's layout, Pagerize #24, is terrific and I may well be having a go myself.

Time I stopped and got myself off to bed. I will be back later with this week's WOYWW post - quite a bit later though because I have forgotten to take a photo of my workdesk for it.

I hope you are all well and finding plenty crafting time.

Happy crafting,