Christchurch in Ruins

At the last minute, I decided I wanted to enter my online friend Ingeborg's Scrapbooking Competition for February. She provides the sketch, one of her own making this month, and you make the layout. Having visited Christchurch in January I have been quite heartbroken by the scenes of devastation that have taken place there following the earthquake last week. As we stayed in a hotel right next door to the Cathedral, and visited inside it, it has been especially poignant. Christchurch is such a beautiful city and we certainly enjoyed visiting there. It seems so unfair, and my heart goes out to the families who have lost loved ones, homes, businesses, etc in the quake. So, here is my tribute to their city, or their Cathedral at least.

I took the photographs on the left when we were there. The night time photo was taken from our hotel room, and the other one from Cathedral Square. I got the photograph of the ruined Cathedral from the internet (it was taken by UK TV I think).

Here is the sketch I started with.

Most of the things I used came from my stash. I bought the papers (Kaisercraft) just the other day, but everything else I've had for some time. Here are the ones I can remember:

cardstock - Bazzill

pearls - Kaisercraft

chipboard shapes - A2Z Scraplets painted with twinkling H2Os (persimmon, skyblue).

Since I needed 3x C's and 3x H's (for Christchurch), I found these silver alphabet sticker letters were the only ones in my stash that were small enough and had enough of each letter, so those are the ones I went with. Unfortunately they didn't really show up against the cardstock. So, I painted over/around them with the twinkling H2Os, then rubbed it off the letter stickers. I think that turned out quite well.

Here are some closeups.

If you are in New Zealand, and Christchurch especially, I send you my deepest sympathy and hope that you will be able to recover from this tragedy in time. I hope to return there some time in the future to see what it has once again become.

Till next time, happy days.

Francine