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!