Grab It and Go!

I love quick pages!!  It's something that doesn't happen very often in my scrappy world.  My time frame for a page usually is up to 2 hours, sometimes 3!!  This one took a little over an hour.  I didn't over-think it, I just grabbed a piece of brilliant blue Bazzill paper and my Scenic Route papers and just started cutting and sticking.  I used the July 28th sketch from Sassy Lil' Sketches and also added some circle elements to my layout for the Fabulous Friday Challenge (7.26) at Frosted Designs. 

I used a pencil eraser to add the small circles and the top lid to some of my embellies to make the outer circles, with acrylic paint.

Products Used:

Papers:  Bazzill & Scenic Route
Brads:  Recollections
Chipboard:  Tim Holtz
Thickers:  American Crafts
Acrylic Paint:  Apple Barrell
Adhesive Borders:  K&Company
Fonts:  Typewriter & Franklin Gothic Book
Pen:  Zig
Other:  Buttons

I Have a Confession to Make...

I DO NOT like doing holiday layouts!!!...Valentine's Day, Easter, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Birthdays...whew, I'm glad to get that off my chest!!  :)  Don't get me wrong, I love the actual holidays and the celebrations that go along with them, but I just have a really hard time getting them scrapped.  I think it's because there is an "actual" theme/color scheme that usually goes along with each holiday.  I am more of an every-day, layout kind of gal.  I like to scrap the photos that don't automatically have some category that you feel like they need to fit in on your pages.  So, this explains why I still have Christmas, Valentine's, Easter, and 4th of July pictures from 2010-2011 to get scrapped.

Today, I decided to tackle these photos of my son and his first experience with dyeing Easter eggs (which was pretty hilarious btw!).  Instead of going with the typical Easter theme of eggs, baskets, and bunnies, I just took more of an everyday approach to my colors, papers, and embellies.  I am happy to say, I really am pleased with the way it turned out.  It's not overly embellished, but it is a boy layout, so I couldn't stick a flower on there like I normally would for my girls' layouts!  :)

I used the July 21st sketch from Sassy Lil' Sketches.  There is still time to join in the fun to win this month's prize, so hop over there and check out the great sketches for this month!  I had a little fun with this one and flipped it to fit the orientation of my photos.  Instead of adding the banner to the top corner, I just made a little scalloped border under the row of photos and added the talk bubble over the top of my pictures, for my journaling.

Products Used:

Paper:  American Crafts & DCWV

Punches:  Marvy & Martha Stewart

Thickers:  American Crafts

Mini Market Stickers:  October Afternoon

Brads:  Recollections

Pen:  Sharpie

Other:  Baker's Twine



Crop for the Cure

This past Saturday, I got to attend an all day scrapping event, Crop for the Cure!  It was so much fun and this was my second year to attend.  The lady who hosted the event raised around $1,500 for Breast Cancer awareness, which is pretty awesome!!  There were various Scrapbooking vendors, giveaways, and a silent auction.  I won the kit contest for one of the LSS for the 2nd year in a row and got a $20 gift certificate to shop in their store.  My friend Cori won 1st place this year, so we'll both be making a trip to buy some scrappy goodies!    Of course, my favorite part of the day was the shopping!!  I bought the new Victoria Gardens kit from Echo Park-which I have been drooling over since it came out-and some yummy Jillibean Papers, and several sheets of the Blissful collection from Authentique (btw, the lady from the Scrapbook store didn't even know how to pronounce the name of the company and asked me how to say it!!!  SCARY!)

So here are the pages I finished (and I'll be posting them in the Gallery).  Between being slow, talking, and shopping, I only finished 5 pages, but it was still a lot of fun!  I can only post 4 of the 5, because one is for a later reveal for SLS.

"Bathing Bootys" - For Sketchy Thursdays 7.21 challenge:

Products Used:

Paper:  October Afternoon & Bazzill
Thickers:  American Crafts & The Paper Studio
Pearl Accents:  Close to My Heart
Ribbon & Trim:  American Crafts & The Paper Studio
Embroidery Floss:  Janlynn
Mini Market Stickers:  October Afternoon
Pen:  Zig
Other:  Flowers & Brads

"Have Your Cake & Eat It Too" - This one is my favorite from the day...believe it or not, I used my own design and it's not for any challenges!!  :)

Products Used:

Papers:  Jillibean Soup & Bazzill

Thickers:  American Crafts

Font:  Arial Rounded

Brads:  Recollections & The Paper Studio

Pen:  Sharpie

Punch:  Marvy

Grungeboard:  Tim Holtz

"Little Bitty Pretty One" - For Issue Challenge #3 at Club CK, to use tape on your lo or project and also for Scrapping Chics challenge this month, to use a song on your lo or project:

Products Used:

Paper:  My Minds Eye

Pom Pom Trim:  Wrights

Tissue Tape:  Tim Holtz

Ribbon:  The Paper Studio

Tiny Type:  Cosmo Cricket

Brads:  Recollections

Punch:  Marvy

Pen:  Zig

Baker's Twine:  The Twinery

Other:  I am not sure about the frame tag and the little ticket embellie, because they were in the kit I used for the contest.

"Our Little Secret" - For the Fabulous Friday Challenge (7.22) at Frosted Designs, to use buttons on your lo or project.  I used sketch #165 from Creative Scrappers.

Products Used:

Paper:  Crate Paper & The Paper Studio
Buttons & Paper Punch Outs:  Crate Paper
Mini Market Stickers:  October Afternoon
Smooch Spritz:  Clear Snap
Thickers:  American Crafts
Pen:  Zig
Baker's Twine:  The Twinery





Meet the Newest Sassy...and a Layout to Share!

Around the same time I applied for the upcoming EBook at Sassy Lil' Sketches, I also applied for the DT Call.  Well...I was contacted last week with the "Congratulations" email that I made the team and I've been about to pop to share the news!  The announcement is up on the blog, so now I finally get to share it!!  :)  I will be part of the Switch It Up Saturday team, which is a new feature premiering in August.  When I receive my assigned sketch each month, my challenge is to "switch it up" by rotating it, changing the # of photos, making a single page into a double page, etc.  I am so excited to be working with Katie & Cherie and the SLS DT members.  I'm looking forward to an awesome 6 months!  I can't wait to share my first assignment with you and if you haven't had a chance to check out their blog, hop on over and check out the current 7.14 sketch challenge here.

Here is the layout I wanted to share, which is actually based on the SLS 7.14 sketch.  It is also for the Fabulous Friday Challenge at Frosted Designs this week, to use a quote on your project.  My kids always say the funniest things, so this was a great way to add a few of those quotes to my daughter's lo.

 

Products Used:

Paper:  Bella Blvd, BoBunny, K&Company
Stickers:  Bella Blvd
Flowers:  Prima
Pearl accents:  Close to My Heart
Thickers:  American Crafts
Teeny Alphas:  Glitz Design & Echo Park
Punch:  Marvy
Font:  CK Brittany B
Other:  Baker's Twine & Ribbon

Playing Catch-Up!

When things are busy around here...they are BUSY!  Last week seems like a whirlwind and I am glad it's over and a new week is starting!  I didn't get to work on as many layouts last week as I usually do (and of course I've had tons of ideas swimming around in my head for pages and haven't been able to work on them), but I did get to finish up some over the last few days.  I'll be sharing the 7.14 Sketchy Thursdays lo, the August GDT layout form Sketchy Thursdays, and the Sketch Along Tuesday layout from Frosted Designs in this post.

"Hats" (Sketchy Thursdays 7.14) - A while back, my friend bought several grab bag packs of paper from Scenic Route and I have to say it was one of the best buys I've ever made!!  I love the quality and colors they use.  I love how the patterns and colors from these papers worked together and I threw in a little blue from the fun, circle border from Recollections.

"This Is Summer" (Sketchy Thursdays August GDT challenge) - If you think this one looks a little simple and home-made...then YAY, I achieved my goal!  I think Sunflowers are the epitome of country and they are my ALL-TIME favorite flower.  I wanted this lo to have a homey/cozy feel.  But it actually did take a lot of work at the same time!  Punching all of those circles and then cutting them in half and embossing them took up a lot of time, but I love the effect.  And of course I'm not the fastest sewer, so my stitching seemed to take forever!  The challenge for this month's GDT member also included using the colors Red, Yellow, and/or Orange, a Summer theme, and a journaling spot.

"Whatchoo Talkin Bout Willis" (Frosted Designs Sketch Along Tuesday 7.12) - Even though I started this layout with a sketch, I still had no idea where I was going with it.  I just started with my picture and the circles from the sketch and just started adding embellies here and there.  I love the way all of the Tim Holtz products work together on this one and I added in a couple of scraps from the Emma's Shoppe kit from Crate Paper.  I love the fun look of this one and struggled with what letters to use for my title and remembered these fun vinyl Thickers from American Crafts and they worked perfectly.  I also found the fun arrow brads today at Michael's for 99 cents and the Issue Challenge #2 July/August this week at Club CK was to use arrows on your lo.  I had planned to either cut out some arrows or use chipboard, but I really like these much better!

Got to Scrap!

The past few days and the rest of the week have been/will be very busy!  My oldest daughter is doing a Princess Camp this week at our local dance studio and in the evenings our church has had VBS.  So between playing taxi, running errands, doing laundry, cleaning, preparing for VBS, teaching at VBS and anything else that I haven't thought of...I haven't had much time for scrapping!  :(  But I wanted to try to squeeze in some pages here and there if I could, so today I worked on the 7.7 sketch for Sketchy Thursdays.  I love the outlined letters technique (it was one of the challenges for the 1 Hour Challenge at Club CK last week) and decided to use it again on this page.  I was glad to see a banner on the sketch, because I always love adding a banner to my page.  For this banner, I used a piece of baker's twine and then folded my half circles and full circles over the twine.  I also added a few dots from a pack of Thickers above the half circles.  For a little more texture, I used the paper crimper on some kraft circles to make a few fun circle embellies.

 

Products Used:

Paper:  The Paper Studio

Thickers:  American Crafts

Tiny Type:  Cosmo Cricket

Pen:  Zig

Paper Crimper:  Fiskars

Brads:  The Paper Studio

Stitching:  Singer

Pom Pom Trim:  Wright's

Other:  Buttons & Baker's Twine

Kids & Their Crazy Eating Habits!!

When my middle daughter first started eating solid foods, she LOVED Spaghetti!!  I mean loved it like could eat it for every meal loved it!  Well things changed after a while and we couldn't get her to touch it.  She would maybe take one or two bites and that was it.  Well I think I finally figured out what the problem was!  I used to make actual Spaghetti noodles back when she was little and I ended up switching to Penne, because it was much easier for the kids to pick up and eat.  This past Wednesday, I decided to use some of the Spaghetti noodles that had been in the pantry for a while and she ATE IT UP!!  You would've thought I'd laced it with sugar!  So I guess from now on I'll be using Spaghetti instead of Penne!

Of course being the child of a scrapbooker, she wanted me to take her picture and like any good scrapbooking mommy, I grabbed my camera and snapped away.  I used Sketch #163 from Creative Scrappers for this one.  It is also for the Fabulous Friday Challenge (7.8) at Frosted Designs this week.  The challenge was a Recipe Challenge, using 1. Ribbon/Trim, 2. Charm, 3.  Rhinestones/Pearls.  The ladies over there are also hosting their first Blog Hop through July 11.  It's their First Birthday - Ice Cream on the Beach Blog Hop!  Get over there and check it out and enter to win some great prizes!  So here is what I did:

 

Products Used:

Papers:  CTMH, Doodlebug Design Inc., Scenic Route
Buttons:  Michael's
Charm:  Making Memories
Pearl Stickers:  Recollections
Ribbon & Thickers:  American Crafts
Stitching:  Singer
Embossing:  Sizzix & Provo Craft
Pen:  Sharpie
Tiny Type:  Cosmo Cricket
Other:  Baker's Twine 

Knocking Out Challenges and Having Some Fun!

Today, I started working on my lo for the Sassy Lil' Sketches Ebook, which I can't wait for you guys to see!!  I was cooking along pretty good on it, but decided to take a break this afternoon to work on a lo for several challenges from this week.  The 7.7 sketch was posted today at Sassy Lil' Sketches and it was such a fun one and I thought it worked great for this photo of my sweet little boy.

The 1 Hour Challenge posted today at Club CK was using Outlined Titles on your lo.  There is a really great lo by Kim Watson in the July/August issue of Creating Keepsakes using this technique and I actually had the corner turned down on the page, because I wanted to try this out.  So with the challenge posted today...and a great scrappy prize in the mix...I decided to give it a try.  I used the negatives from some My Mind's Eye chipboard letters.  It was really easy and fun, and I love the way the title turned out!

I also incorporated on the of the Weekly Challenges from Club CK that is hosted by one of the awesome Peeps each week.  This week's challenge was a recipe challenge and you had to use 6 of 7 elements/items on your page.

-the colors red, white, and/or blue - Feel free to use one of these, any combination of 2, or all 3.  The colors do not have to even be your main color - as long as one of these colors is somewhere on your page.

- ribbon, floss, or twine

-stars

-stripes

-a border punch

-4 of something (in honor of the 4th) - use your imagination - it can be 4 embellies, 4 photos, 4 different pps, a 4 word title - however you want to do it as long as there is 4 of something

-handwritten journaling

I used everything from the list, except for the border punch for my lo.  There is still time to join in this fun challenge and if you'd like to participate, check it out here.

Okay, so without any further delay...here is what I came up with based on all of these great challenges:

Products Used:

Papers:  Cosmo Cricket & The Paper Studio
Embossing:  Sizzix Big Shot
Chipboard Elements:  Cosmo Cricket
Buttons:  Basic Grey
Chipboard Letters:  My Mind's Eye
Pen:  Zig
Other:  Baker's Twine

Vintage for the Everyday!

The Fabulous Friday Challenge this week (7.1) at Frosted Designs, was to use a vintage photo on your project.  I didn't have any vintage or heritage photos that needed scrapping, so I decided to use a vintage filter on this photo of my daughter to acheive the same effect.  From there, I was able to keep a vintage theme to my lo.  These papers from the Life's Journey pack from K&Company were a perfect match for this challenge.  I used one of the Martha Stewart border punches to make the frame around my photo.  And the flowers were cut from an SVG file on my Expression...I really love the way those turned out!!  My Singer hand-held and I are having a love/hate relationship.  I love using it on my pages, but hate when I mess up the stitching!!  Things went a little haywire on the right hand side...but I've given up perfection on my pages a long time ago!!

Products Used:

Paper:  K&Company

Ribbon & Brads:  The Paper Studio

Thickers:  American Crafts

Punch:  Martha Stewart

Stitching:  Singer

Flowers:  Prima

Boutique Fleur:  Recollections

Font:  Bookman Old Style

A Day of Adventure!

Our local State Resource Center hosted a Delta Day back in April and we didn't really know what to expect.  But once we got there, we had so much fun!  There were several different activities geared just for the children, such as educational games and a few inflatables.  They also had a lot of booths set up along the trails, that included a Raptor stop, a Marine life stop, and arts & crafts.  We also got to go for a ride on the pontoon boat, up the river, and saw two aligators along the way. 

I've been waiting for the perfect design to scrap these photos and when I saw the 6.30 challenge for Sketchy Thursdays, I knew it would be perfect for these pics.  I had these fun Back to Basics papers from BoBunny, which worked really well for the theme I wanted on this lo. 

Products Used:

Papers:  BoBunny & The Paper Studio
Grungeboard & Distress Ink:  Tim Holtz
Embroidery Floss:  Janlynn
Thickers:  American Crafts
Ribbon:  The Paper Studio
Brads:  Recollections
Mini Market Stickers:  October Afternoon
Pearl Accents:  Close to My Heart
Pen:  Zig
Edgers:  Provo Craft

Texture without the Bulk

If you are looking for ways to add texture to your pages, without having a lot of 3D elements that barely keep your pages from fitting in the page protector, then here are a few tips:

1.  Try stitching!  Whether you are an expert seamstress or just a novice at sewing, a little stitching on your page can go a long way.  I am definitely a novice in this area, but I really like using emroidery floss to add hand-stitched elements to my pages.  Try drawing a shape on your lo - ie, a flourish, cirlces, flowers, etc. - and then use a paper peircer to trace along your shape.  Then choose your embroidery floss and stitch away.  I also just purchased one of the hand-held Singer machines and I used it around the outside edge of this layout.

2.  Emboss & Layer!  I had fun playing with the waves under my photo on this lo.  I used the Sizzix Big Shot to emboss the waves that I cut using SCAL.  And instead of using just one wave shape, I decided to layer 3 for a more fun look.

3.  Add Ribbon!  There are tons of different styles and colors of ribbon out there.  It is a great flat embellishment to add to your pages.  You can experiment with girly ribbon, vintage ribbon, or twines for more rugged or little boy lo's.

Have fun with your pages and look for new and different ways to add some texture to your next lo!  Here is mine and it is based on the 6.28 sketch from Frosted Designs for their Sketch Along Tuesday challenge:

Products Used:

Paper:  Colorbok & DCWV
Embossing:  Sizzix Big Shot
Stitching:  Singer Hand-Held sewer
Embroidery Floss:  Janlynn
Acrylic Paint:  Apple Barrel
Acrylic Stamps & Brad:  Close to My Heart
Thickers:  American Crafts
Pillow Stickers:  Studio 112
Ribbon:  The Paper Studio
Mini Market Stickers:  October Afternoon
Pen:  Zig

Breaking Out Some New Goodies!

Last month I started playing along with the sketch challenges at Creative Scrappers and couldn't believe it when I won the challenge for May!!  The prize was an awesome kit from Scrapbook Sussies and I couldn't wait to do a page with it!  There were some great papers and a sticker sheet from Bella Boulevard and some cute layered chipboard letters from BoBunny.  I love how all of the proucts came together on this fun page.

I've also discovered Sassy Lil' Sketches recently and they have a fun weekly sketch challenge and I used their June 28 sketch for this lo.

I also did this lo for the weekly Issue Challenge hosted by one of the ladies at Club CK.  This week's challenge was to use a ruler image on your lo or project.

Products Used:
Paper:  Bella Boulevard, Doodlebug Design Inc., Bazzill
Letter Stickers:  Bella Boulevard
Teeny Alphas:  Glitz Desings
Punch:  Marvy
Rulers:  Tim Holtz
Pen:  Zig
Layered Chipboard:  BoBunny
Fonts:  CK Journaling, Impact Label