The Good with the Bad

I have two layouts to share in this post...one is a happy layout, the other...not so happy!  I know when I take photos of my children, I am always encouraging them to smile and be happy, but I want my albums to include ALL aspects of their lives.  But we'll start out with the happy layout first!! :)

Club CK hosts a 1 Hour Challenge each week and I used to be pretty on the ball about participating in them.  But lately my time has been spread so thin, that I've missed them for the past several months.  I had some free time this weekend, so I decided I would play along this week.  They combined a Recipe Challenge with the 1 Hour Challenge, so I couldn't resist because I love both of these types of challenges!!  The Recipe portion of the challenge included using:  1 or more vertical photos, felt, ribbon, acrylic or rubber stamp, and a punch.

I don't know about you, but sometimes when I am working on a page, I look at it half way through and think "what in the world am I doing...this looks completely crazy??!!"  But usually, once the whole thing is completed, I end up loving it!!  That was the case with this layout.  I combined some of the My Mind's Eye On the Bright Side collection, with some embellishments from Jillibean Soup.  I think once I got the mix of alphas in the title, on the little tag at the top, that sealed the deal.  And how can you not love a page with those adorable photos of our cute little guy??!!

Now, onto the not-so-happy layout, which also has photos of our little guy.  These pictures are from last September, when he decided to smack his head into our brick fireplace.  I haven't scrapped them up until this point, because I really didn't know how to approach the page.  But, thanks to two of my favorite challenges, I finally had an idea pop into my head.  Case File #12 at CSI went live on mid-day Friday and once I saw it, I knew how I wanted to use these photos.  This was their first monochromatic color scheme and it just happened to be Blue.  I came up with the title "Feeling Blue" and everything else fell into place, once I started digging out some of the awesome Blue patterned papers from all of my new MME stash!  The second challenge I incorporated into this page is the March/April Issue Challenge #4 at Club CK.  Our challenge this week, was to use tags...plural that is.  Since I had a little more journaling to add to this page, I thought using overlapping tags would be a great way to accomplish this.

And just a word of warning for those with weak tummies...I did cover the wound on our son's head, so you don't have to worry about seeing the full cut.

 

And I can't forget about the other two fun components from the CSI challenge!!  For this week's Evidence, I chose stars, and I combined the cloud embellishments with the silhouette cuts.  Under the Testimony, I decided to go with string on my journaling spot.  I added some baker's twine to each of my tags and then stapled, for some added texture.

That's all I have for today!!  Even though we homeschool our Kindergartner...next week is Spring Break for our area public schools, so I am thinking we might take a break too.  That way mommy can spend some extra time working on some layouts!!  :)