Another Challange

May's challenge was a real challenge to me.
What does being an Israeli mean to you? Scrap a page...

At first I thought I'm not going to participate this month.
During the last week of May I found myself categorizing everything I saw as good or bad qualities of Israelies.

The night of submission I found myself sitting at the computer and searching for information, photos, trying to figure out how to scrap my thoughts, but my mind was racing with ideas, so the page turned out a mess.

So I started anew, with a different take.




The photos were taken from these sites, and credit is due:

The flower: http://totolotek.org/he/wiki/%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9D_%D7%94%D7%96%D7%99%D7%9B%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%9F_%D7%9C%D7%97%D7%9C%D7%9C%D7%99_%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C.html

Flags flapping: http://www.jerusalemshots.com/Jerusalem_he103-1444.html

Hat: http://www.notes.co.il/eshed/32372.asp

Falafel: http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-1939000,00.html

Candles: http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/650/029.html

Prickly Cactus: http://www.tiuli.com/flower_info.asp?flower_id=169


The text reads:
"In one of my favorite episodes of "the west wing", the following question appears:
So What do you call a Society that has to just live every day with the idea that the pizza place you’re eating in can just blow up without any warning? ("Isaac and Ishmael", season 3).
And the answers was, of course, Israel.
During the last decade and a half that has been the essence of being an Israeli, in my mind. Living every day under a threat. Living home everyday with the promise of not giving in to that threat. That we'll keep on living our lives no matter what.
What else is an Israeli? Symbols. A lot of symbols."

The flower (French Lavender) is the one that appears on stickers I used to get every year in Memorial day as a child in school. I think they still give them out. Every memorial day, and only on memorial day.
The flags flapping on top of cars during Independence day and usually the week before and the week after.
The hat is the one everyone used to wear when I was a kid. It's the symbol of the pioneer Israeli, the one that came to this country to build it.
The candles were lit on the floor in a huge square in the middle of Tel-Aviv 13 years ago, right after PM Rabin was murdered. People kept coming to the square where it happened, lit candles, and cried together.
The Falafel - food that's considered to be very much Israeli, and stands for Israeli.
And last - The prickly cactus. It became known as a Nick-name for Israeli-born. They' like the cactus, are prickly on the outside, but sweet and soft on the inside.

Happy New year!

True, the year started over a week ago, but I wasn't here to great you, was I?


I found myself interested in different online scrapbooking challenges. The first one I joined was the DSO December Color Challenge. Those were the first paper packs I designed. You can still get them if you go backwards a little...


Then I found this challenge at the Digital Scrap Shop.
And in one of the Israelis Forums (here) we had our first monthly challenge - design a page about you.
So I decided to combine the two, and what came out was something so far out from what I usually do, but I really like it.

Here, you be the judge:

A new Challenge

I've recently joined happyscrapz. They have 4 monthly challenges: Template challenge, Font Challenge, Grab Bag challenge and Surprise challenge.
This month is the first ever I've joined challenges, and I'm loving it.
I combined all 4 challenges into one LO.
The template is made by Amy W., who is hosting to challenges at happyscrapz.
The stitches and the string tie and part of the grab bag she created for the challenge.
The font is Decemberice, which I downloaded here, at the bottom of the page.
The surprise challenge was a color challenge, to NOT use the regular colors for the theme (for snow it's usually blue & white). So I went for greens.

Also. since it doesn't really snow where I live (Not in my city, anyway), I took the photos from freephoto.com. They were both taken by Ian Britton.

And here's the result: