I love your smile (layout for Ella Publishing contest)

The rules were simple.  Make a layout using the title "I love your smile."  I thought this photo strip was perfect since it shows me with my friends and all sorts of smiles!

Stacy Julian's new blog

Stacy has made a big difference in my scrapbooking.  SHe has a new venture.  heres her blog:

http://stacyjulian.com/blog/  Check it out!

Above Rubies Studio....new site for videos

I am a sucker for scrapbooking videos.  Here's a link to a new site I found:  Above Rubies Studio.  Check it out!

10/1 Sketchy Thursday using my blog candy

I was lucky enough to win some yummy blog candy from Sketchy Thursday: the Cosmo Cricket paper crafting kits Mr. Campy and Jolly By Golly. In honor of winning that prize (which I received yesterday), I made one LO using each of the sets and this week's sketch.

Jolly by Golly is a super fun set. The border is from their border paper and the title from their elements sheet. The snowflake paper is called Silly Chilly. Even the names make me smile! I made the background paper by spraying Pink Angel glimmer mist over some Basic Grey holiday chipboard shapes. The chipboard turned out so glimmery cute that I decided to include these in the design too. Anyone know how to prevent the paper from bowing and not laying straight after the glimmer mist dries? My page isn't quite flat anymore. :) But the pictures still shine...even my youngest son who apparently hadn't caught the idea that snow is supposed to be fun.

This page was also inspired by the sketch, even though it has a very different look. I had this one photo that was printed by accident, and I saw these Mr. Campy borders and elements and knew I had a perfect match! The background paper totally goes along with the theme (take a hike), even though it has nothing to do with the pic. Practically no one here in Santa Fe has grass, so these three pieces of equipment were useless to us. We were glad to kick them to the curb! The only elements on this page not from the kit are the Bazzill scallop paper and the brad/eyelets. Great kit!

Thanks for looking!

Two cards, same sketch

I didn't use someone else's sketch. I made the Trick or Treat card and then used the same sketch for the card I made with my new {stamps} of life stamps and paper.

The Trick or Treat stamp is Pink Paislee and embossed using CTMH black powder.

These stamps are all from the stamps of life September set. The pink circle flowers are done using watermark ink. The one is embossed as well as the sentiment being embossed. Can you tell I love that dotted circle stamp??

New stamps and monthly club

I just joined a new monthly stamp club called The {stamps} of Life. The stamps are only $11 + $1 shipping per month and they are super cute. It was started by Stephanie Barnard who I first was introduced to by watching the videos she made for the former stamp company called Inque Boutique. I sent her in a simple stamping idea that she used to make one of her last videos with them.

So fast forward to yesterday when I ordered her new stamps yesterday. Her policy is that you order and then she calls you personally to get your payment information. I was excited to tell her who I was and sure enough, she remembered me. And she mailed out my stamps the same day. She has some great customer service! I can't wait to start using her stamps!

Gypsy...another chance to win!

Win A Gypsy By Cricut over on cartridge helper.com. That link will take you there! Good luck to all of us!

Call me crazy...10 posts today!

Make that 11, including this post. I took a long break from posting projects on this blog and I am repenting of that. I decided to update my scrapblog with my favorite projects I've done over the past 6 months or so. I hope you enjoy them!

Giraffes

Aren't giraffes funny creatures? I mean, check out that black tongue! I made the border on this page by cutting out the center of this DCWV green stack paper, and the tree branch is from the same stack. I made the paper flower using Donna Salazar's technique. I'm pretty proud of how I changed up the journaling card. It had the right words but it was the wrong color. I traced over the red on the card with a blue Sakura Souffle pen. It was a perfect match!

Halloween...then & now

I love finding photos we have taken that match photos from our youth. These photos were taken in the same doorway (with the same color costumes) of my husband as a child and then my oldest child his first year of really getting trick or treating. The title and haunted house I first dry embossed on this black magic core'dinations paper and then I sanded for the orange color to come through. I love this technique!

Places we go title page

I felt liberated when I discovered Stacy Julian and her Library of Memories system. Organizing pages by theme and not chronologically was a very freeing concept for me. I enjoy scrapping memories and little things more than big events. This was a perfect match! The categories I chose for the main albums are : People we love, Places we go, Things we do, and All about us. I made the title pages the same, just changing the colors, and tied them together by adding stripes of the other three colors on each page. Here is my Places we go title page:

The mini images are from my index prints. The title strip is a piece of black magic Core'dinations paper that I dry embossed with some old stencils and then sanded to let the color come through. The strips of brown, red, and green are scraps from the core'dinations paper I used for the title strips on the other pages.

2 Sisters

Once again, I journalled on Penzu. This time it was about my childhood memories of my sister. I was 9 when she went away to college and 11 when she got married, so I don't remember a lot about her. As I typed, I came up with quite a bit, and I wanted to remember all of these things about her. I came up with this mini book I attached to my page with elastic ribbon. It can be removed to be read without taking the whole page out of it's page protecter. I bound the pages with some gaffer tape. Those little letter stickers from Pink Paislee sure came in handy on this mini album--I labeled the top of each page with them. Most of the journaling is only interesting to me or my family, so this hidden journalling was the perfect solution.

Johnny-isms

My youngest son is a talker. And he comes up with some winners. I could do a page like this every month highlighting his funny phrases, I'm sure!

No photo layout: Just a Note

I recently discovered an online journaling site, Penzu, where I'll occasionally write a long journal entry which isn't necessarily scrapworthy. I wrote this note about one of life's lessons: I'm not in charge of my life. Life is in God's hands. A lesson I learned when we were trying to grow our family and suffered loss through miscarriage a few times. I didn't feel like this entry required a photo, but it was something I decided needed to be preserved in an album.

The title comes from the Wild Card Cricut cart. The flowers I cut from an MME stack, I believe, and then I dry embossed them to give them dimension.

Blanket & One Happy Kid

It was with mixed feelings we celebrated Johnny giving up his blanket. It helped him in so many ways. But it was nice that he gave it up on his own. These two layouts feature different aspects of his blanket, and both include actual pieces of it. Brads and eyelets were the perfect tool for attaching the pieces. The first layout I went for a more subdued mood as I discussed how particular he was with his blanket. The second layout focuses on how happy he was with it, and hence it has a more fun mood to it.

Brothers

This layout features my two sons and how alike they looked as babies. My favorite feature of this layout is the detail cutting I did on the border papers. And the buttons. I love buttons!

Mini Me

I got this Pink Paislee transparency in the warehouse box I bought from PP. This is my first transparency and I love how easy this one made the layout. The paper, letter stickers, and brad are all PP. The flowers are prima, of course! Doesn't my daughter (on the bottom) look just like me as a child?

The flower and brad are attached on top of the transparency. Everything else is underneath.

Scrapbooks, Etc. adhesive challenge: It's All Good

The Scrapbooks, Etc. challenge was to use adhesives in new ways. I had a lot of fun playing with my adhesives trying to find new ways to use them. My favorites, obviously, were heat embossing with them. Here is what I came up with. First, a close up of all the embossing I did. I rubbed glue around the edge of my bracket paper to emboss and also embossed glue dots (the gold dots) and Kokuyo dot n roller. I also glittered a button.

This is the final product, about all the little things in life that make me happy!

And a couple detail shots showing how I painted glue over a template I made on my Cricut to make a mask...

...and then I inked over the mask to make my background paper and title.

Thanks for looking!

Sketchy Thursdays: 9/17 sketch Cute & Crazy

Here is my interpretation of the 9/17 sketch on Sketchy Thursdays. I admit, that at first I was motivated by the giveaways for these sketches, but I'm having fun discovering inspiration through the sketches. For some reason this one took me all day and 3 tries to get a page I was happy with. First, the sketch:

And here it is, me and my crazy family!

I used rub-ons on the letters to help communicate the emotions I was going for. The ampersand was an interesting technique: I stuck a Pink Paislee glitter sticker on some white paper and decided against it, but when I removed it the bottom layer of the chipboard backing stuck to the paper. It looked too good to throw away, so I cut around the edges and sprayed with my new snow angel glimmer mist.

Moxie challenge

I did another challenge from the Moxie Fab World blog.

Create a paper crafted project (card, gift bag, tag, layout, home decor, etc.) that incorporates some kind of household item as its focal point. I chose a grungeboard key and lock. They are actually pretty gold and silver looking in person. I sprayed them with Glimmer Mist...a favorite product of mine. This is actually my first time using my sewing machine on my paper crafts. I've always loved the look but never dared try it. After stamping my image, I sewed and then added the doodling and ended with liquid glass over the image. Very cool effect!

Cricut gypsy giveaway!!

I found a great new blog named Cutting Above. It focuses on scrapbooking, especially for those of us with Cricuts or other electronic die cut machines. They are currently having a Gypsy giveaway to celebrate the blog's debut and the gypsy grand opening on HSN. It will be airing on September 24th, starting at 12:01, I believe. Here's a link to the post on that blog with more info: clicky Good luck!

Sketchy Thursdays: My Sweeties

I don't usually get into doing sketches, but this sketch from Sketchy Thursdays was absolutely perfect for a photo I had hanging out on my desk!

It is all from the Pink Paislee Sweet Cakes collection, except for the button embellishment I put together from various products I had on hand. This is the first time I ever took a photo to go with a piece of scrapbook paper I wanted to use! The journaling reads: "8.14.09 Our family est. 1998 Happy Birthday to us!"

Recycling containers

I recently bought some super cute prima flowers in this tin and decided the tin was too cute to go to waste, so here is my final product. I am currently using it to store a family photo puzzle my dad made for us. I'd consider that a treasure!

And yes, those are wings on the back. I wanted to try something a little different, aka, not flat on the tin. I think I accomplished it! :D

Sketch from Sisterhood of Scrap

I am not usually a sketch kind of scrapper, but I decided this one from Sisterhood of Scrap fit my needs perfectly. See, I did a scrapbook for my daughter a couple years back, but left the title page blank. I also skipped about 20 pages of journalling. I learned my lesson later and don't do that anymore! She was looking at her book this week and I noticed all the unfinished pages, so I decided to just finish the book. My style has changed completely since I made that book, so as I went through it, I didn't redo any pages, as tempted as I was, but I at least embellished a few. I didn't do any lumpy bumpy in that old album, so I had to restrain myself on that part (it is a strap hinge album and those are better for flat scrapping). I tried to stick basically to my old style in making this page. It is much "more" than I used to do, but still less than I do now. Nevertheless, the sketch was a great match! I may just have to try a few more sketches. I might just get hooked!

Details:

Striped paper from DCWV, letter stickers from Cosmo Cricket, pink paper from Creative Memories, scalloped paper from Bazzill, rub ons from DCWV

Simple Scrapbooks blog

Unfortunately, the SS magazine is no longer around, but the gals that put it together are.  They have started a blog.  This week there are entries showcasing how their styles have evolved over the years.  It is interesting reading!

 Blog

Great site for freebie fonts

This site has a whole slew of themed fonts that are copycats of fonts used for TV shows or companies (NASA and Lego, for example).  Check it out!

I just found this new Scrapbook Challenge blog:

http://www.RealLife-Scraps.com/

They have monthly challenges and have a prize drawing for completing the challenge.  Wouldn't you know it, my recent Green page was a perfect match for the April challenge about using green.  That was easy!  Be sure to check them out and help them get a good following.

Maze Book

I just did some research and found that TV Weekly and Inque Boutique are no longer making videos.  I will delete those links, but I did find you can watch their videos on google.  Here's one that I definitely want to try...it would be a great and easy grandma gift!

Green

This is all about me and my love of most things green:

This was my first time using ghost letters, staples (I think), and sewing on a page.  I used my nifty new cuttlebug piercing bugs to make the holes.  It was a lot of fun!
Page two of the layout.  The colors are a little clearer in person for the abc letters on the bottom of the page.  It shows the shades I love and those I don't love.
A close up on the journaling.
My super cute first page.

And the whole thing put together!  I had a lot of fun putting these pages together.  Courtney even got in on the action and made a page about blue for her.  I'll post that on my family blog.

part 2: photo collages

This second one is Bryce & Bettie's girls. They are the family that spends usually a couple evenings a week at our home.  I used my Cricut to cut out all the clothes and the slide.  The sun and cloud were my own design.  These were both done on 8x8 canvases.

Photo Collages

This year for Christmas I made two photo collages, inspired by Claudine Hellmuth's work. Here is my first one ever!  It is of my brother John's boys:

Cool Deal of the Day website!

I just found this:

www.peachycheap.com

Everyday they have one scrapbooking item for sale at a deep discount.  I'm interested to see what fun items they sell!

Now that we have moved, I am almost ready to get back into scrapbooking again.  Then I'll start posting again!