Why do I feel like I'm never getting anywhere??

Oh yeah, because I take more pictures than should be humanly allowed!!  But hey, when you have 3 kids who are always being cute, who can blame me!  In reality, I am actually getting pages finished...45 already this year.  WOW!  that's a lot!  Here are some of the ones I've finished this week:

The Shoes:

Playing Around at the Playground:

A Day in the Big Easy (this was a submission to Creating Keepsakes):

Play. (this was for the 1 Hour on Club CK:  Using only paper and photos):

Another Thursday...Sketchy Thursday, that is!

The 2.24 Sketch seemed a little more simple this week, but once I got going, I ended up with all kinds of little doo-dads on my lo.  I wanted to go with the color scheme from my photos and I have some great papers from Scenic Route, that matched perfectly.  The chipboard frame was originally gray, so I painted it white with acrylic paint.  There is some doodling going on, which I threw in for one of the challenges over on Club CK.  Thanks ladies @ Sketchy Thursdays for another fun week!

2.24 Sketch:

Products Used:

Paper:  Scenic Route
Buttons:  Jillibean Soup & Misc.
Trim:  Hobby Lobby
Chipboard Frame:  Colorbok
Tiny Type:  Making Memories
Brads:  Spare Parts
Pen: Sakura
Acrylic Paint:  Apple Barrel

Love Is In the Air!

February never fails to disappoint, with an abundance of pink, red, flowers, and hearts.  So in honor of the month of Love, I wanted to do a lo for each of my children and why I love them. 

The first is "Love U".  Now that I am the proud owner of an Expression, making my own lace cardstock is a breeze and once I had the idea for cutting the word "Love" the rest of the lo just fell into place.  I also took a chance of layering on this lo.  That's not one of my strongpoints, because I like to lay everything out ahead of time to see how it looks and then go back and adhere everything.  I really like the way the clusters turned out.  The white flowers, are simply, varying size circles and I roughed the edges and put them together with pop dots and added the pink pearls to the center.

Next, is "Lucky In Love".  The idea for this lo started with the K&Company Bingo Card.  I had been wanting to use it on a lo, but never had one that I felt like I could incorporate it into.  But I thought it was perfect for the theme of this lo.  I really loved the picture of my daughter, so I repeated it in Sepia, B&W, and color to emphasize the photo.  For the title, I just wrote out the word "Love" and then hand-stitched it with embroidery floss.  Took a while, but I definitely think it was worth the time.  The torn heart was inspired by a picture I saw in the study book from the College Sunday School class my husband and I teach...inspiration is everywhere!!  :)

"You're the Bees Knees" isn't your typical Valentine's colors, but still a lo based on love.  It was actually for a challenge, hosted by Melissa Johnson on Club CK, to use only Black & White with one accent color.  I loved this challenge!  Normally I use at least 5 variations of color, so it was great to see a lo with a simple color scheme.  I used the Expression once again for the honeycomb background.  I cut the shapes and adhered them to white paper and then just cut along the edges of the shape.  I used acrylic paint behind the American Crafts letter stickers and painted white corrugated alphas from Jillibean Soup, to get they yellow letters for my title.  For the bee accent, I just cut the shape of his body from black cardstock, added yellow strips, used a button for the head and cut wings from vellum and attached with a brad.

My final lo "The Littles", is of my oldest daughter and two of her best friends on Valentine's Day.  In our group of friends we have an age range of 8/9 year olds and 2/5 year olds.  One of the moms, has dubbed the younger kids "The Littles" and it has stuck with the group.  I did this lo for the 1 Hour Challenge on Club CK:  using trim on your lo.  I really like being able to stick with a color scheme that matched the girls' clothing and the trim adds to the girly-ness of the lo. 

2.17 Sketch Challenge - Sketchy Thursdays

Crops-away from home and kids-are wonderful things!  Fortunately, I get to attend at least one a month.  I had one at our church last night and took the time to work on the Sketch Challenge for this week on Sketchy Thursdays.  I like doing double and single page layouts, but I have to say the single page layouts seem to be much easier on design and quick completion!

Products I used:

Paper:  Nikki Sivils "Happy Holly-Days"

Brads:  Recollections

Letter Stickers:  American Crafts

Tiny Type:  Cosmo Cricket

Provided Sketch:

March Guest Design Team Member Challenge

This is actually the first lo I did from the Sketchy Thursdays site.  It is for the March GDT Challenge.  In addittion to using the sketch, you had to use the color combo of Pink & Green or Red & Turquoise, a heart, and a list.  Here is what I did based off of the sketch:

This is the original sketch provided by Sketchy Thursdays:

2.10 sketch challenge on Sketchy Thursdays

Well, I've been a horrible Blog keeper-upper...which isn't unusual.  But I have found a renewed interest in updating my Blog through the Sketchy Thursdays website.  They host all kinds of fun challenges and this is my second one to participate in this week.  This is the lo I did for the challenge:

This is the sketch that was posted by Sketchy Thursdays:

This was a great sketch and perfect for these pics!