Load 512 progress report

 So far so good. It always seems to start this way. I keep up just fine. This go around, I am really shocked that I have found a way to keep up with the daily prompts. I made it a point to have all of my page calls and assignments done for Scrapbook News and Review magazine.  Working on their staff has been awesome so far. it was a bit harrying at first, as is any job. Now I have a handle on the workload and am just enjoying being a part of the team. What did throw me a monkey wrench was life, as usual.On day one I was dealing with a sewage back up in the house. I haven't been feeling my best. The landlord asked me to show our house( it's for sale.) Little things here and there, but I have still manages to pull out pages.


Day one was to use a self portrait. I really dislike these type of prompts. Then I remembered I had a wedding photo of me prepping for the big day. So the issue of the self portrait became a non-issue. I used Paula Gilarde's ad inspiration challenge and was able to crank out a page with ease.

Cardstock: Bazzill; patterned paper: Basic grey
alphas and Stickers: basic grey, trim: Maya road
stamp: glitz designs with colorbox gold ink
mist: tattered angels, other: pearls, button, DMC floss, tulle

I am not 100% in love with the page. I liked everything until I got a little experimental. I painted the vine design with glimmer mist in the hopes of mimicking a design on the BG paper is was using. I then stamped the frames to use as journal spots. I have received many nice compliments about that portion of the page. I personally feel like it's kind of flat. It's funny how the parts you love are usually a miss but others rave about the parts of the page you think look horrid. LOL.

Day 2: I worked on my project life pages for February. I am no where near finished with those. I will share the full February pages in a later post. I know I am seriously behind with PL. Quite honestly though, it's not worrying me in the least.

day 3: My favorite page so far.  I have these HORRIBLY grainy photos of my new kitten meeting the family dog. Since these photos were a one of kind/ time deal, I am using them. I cleaned them up with photoshop the best I could. I used a stencil to make a custom background. Then I just layered some paint and embellies. The page came together fast. It's a fun page and I adore it!

Patterned paper: Die Cuts with a View
paint: claudine hellmuth; Die cuts: the Girls' paperie and
iloveitall- etsy; Buttons: October afternoon
Stickers: October Afternoon Other: acrylic paint, stencil,
and heart button

For whatever reason, the Beatles song was stuck in my head while I made this page. : You say "goodbye, I say hello..." It's time for me to go make dinner now. Check back with me later for the Mother's day blog hop and more LOAD pages.

Spring Fling

 Spring is here.  Most notable for us this time of year, is the Easter holiday. Last year, we took our son to Atlantis' Easter fair. They had a lot of fun games along with the usual fair foods. What we enjoyed the most were the arts and crafts. My son had a blast making a candle, filling candy holders with treats and sand art. We did not do all of the crafts available. We picked and chose what seemed most interesting to a 10 year old boy. His favourite by far was making a wax hand.

glimmer mist- oriental poppy, Studio 18 jewels
Ribbon- Maya Road, Making memories
Alphas- Colorbok, Cardstock- Colorbok
Buttons- Basic Grey,Bazzill Basics
Sequins, homemade mask

I thought the Scrap Our Stash Pagerize this #20 challenge was the perfect jumping off point for making my page about our Spring Fling at the Easter Fair. Have you had a fling this Spring? Share it with us at Scrap Our Stash!

Eggs-tavagant Easter blog hop

   Welcome to the Eggs-travagant Easter Blog hop. There are a dozen eggs in a carton and so we've chosen a dozen colours to share with you today. You should have started out at Jordan's Blog. If you arrived here first, pop on over there to start your colourful journey.
  Egg dyeing is a lot of fun. I could have shared a page about that. I have oodles of photos. However, I have been working on photos of last year's Easter fair and figured I would share some of those. My son made a ton of crafts. My favourite was the sand art bottle. While I loved the bottle itself, what I loved more were the expressions my son made as he created his sand art. He was so serious as he measured and poured the sand.

Sequins, glimmer mist- Oriental poppy
Ribbons- Maya road and Making memories
Studio 18 jewels, Paper trunk alphas

As you can see, my colour for the hop was Orange. the vibrant colour was perfect to highlight the precise pouring action in the photos. Don't be afraid to go monochromatic with your pages. It makes paper choice and embellishing easy as you can choose a wide array of items in various shades of the same colour.
  While butterflies might be a feminine embellishment( my son even asked why I had them on this page), I was able to slip them in here. I think of Spring when I see butterflies. Using them in the bright orange also made them less feminine. If you have a son, look for opportunities to use things like butterflies and flowers in symbolic terms on a page.
  Now it's time to head off to the next blog in the hop. I am dyeing( pun intended) to see what Lorri has for us! So head on over to Lorri's blog to take a peek!

The Rainbow Connection

    Sometimes a song will just spin around and around in your head. For whatever reason, Kermit the frog singing " the rainbow Connection" popped into my skull every time I looked at these photos of my son with the food colouring. We were conducting an experiment for school. It really had nothing to do with colour. The experiment focused more on the properties of water and it's movement. The colour just facilitated our ability to see the movement of the water through the tubes. The idea was to produce a syphon effect and to get the water flowing between each container. The colours would mix and you would have this sort of rainbow between the curved tubes and the bowls. The photo in the lab manual was spectacular looking. Our experiment, well...less spectacular. We did get it to work though not as intensely as the lab manual suggested it would be. What we did have was another moment of mom and son sharing their love of science...a connection if you will. So that's where the title really took shape...the song, the rainbow of colours we used, and the connection between myself and my son. I guess you could say that Kermit was singing inside my head for a reason.
   I chose to use one of Scraphappy.org's 15 minute page idea for this. As usual, it took me longer than 15 minutes to complete it. It was more like 20-30. None-the-less, I find 15 minute page sketches quite satisfying and an overall sound way to get fast, but cool pages that I love. Initially, I had only wanted to use the Sassafrass paper, Cosmo cricket ribbon and various chipboard parts for the title. My son took one look at the page and said something to the effect of, " I know you taught me about white space, but that page is just too white. Add some more colour to it." So, taking his advice, I splattered a lot of glimmer mist all over the page. It produced some very happy non-white white space which seemed to please him quite a bit.

Sassafrass paper
Cosmo Criket ribbon
SEI inke blue ink(on paper edges0
glimmer mist- tiger lily, sapphire, meadow green and candy apple red
bread tage with Nerdy bird fussy cut rainbow dude from sassafrass
Inkadinkadoo bracket stamp in green paint with marker
Sassafrass chipboard alphas(rainbow)
American crafts minimarks rub on alphas on crate paper chipboard cloud
Maya Road william chipnpard ( connection)
Bic mark it in playful purple

  Page two was easy to produce. I simply extended the design over to the second page on the left. It truly was a 15 minute page...well, sort of. The journalling made it take longer than 15 minutes, but who is really counting, right? Overall, it's a simple two pager with a lot of pop. I am happy with the results and am now off to try for another quick page before my son wakes up for the day.

0001110101

   I have no clue as to what I may have said in the title's sequence of numbers. If you are not familiar with these types of number sequences, they are the language of computers. My son is sure getting curious as to how he might translate the way a computer speaks. So to that end, I bought a homeschool computer programming course for him last fall. I say it's for him, but truth be told, it's for both of us. This is all so new to me that I have to learn right alongside him. This has caused quite a few challenges for us in a short time( I am not very savvy with computer programming), though I do enjoy learning something new. It's nice that my son can see, first hand, that even adults learn new things. Learning should be something that does not ever end.
  As boring as programming may seem, I was stoked when my son programmed his first text box which proclaimed " hello world" as it popped up onto the screen. I took a lot of photos of the text box and my son working diligently at his computer. Now I needed an interesting way to document photos that, while a huge milestone for us, were in reality quite mundane. Page one was completed last fall.
                                                       

Sassy Lil' Sketch made for Sketches for All's Fall Sketch-a-thon
DCWV Tech generation Stack paper
Bazzill Silver CS
Pink Paislee alphas
DMC floss
MISC. ribbons stamped with colorbox white or black inks
Basic Grey Brads
Black magic glimmer mist

  DCWV had made this wonderful computer language paper in its' tech generation stack. Paired with the Metallic silver card stock, it perfectly symbolized computers and technology.I used some chipboard numbers to create a mask for some black magic glimmer mist. I carried the number patterns off the patterned paper using DMC floss to sew little ones and zeroes onto the page. I stamped more ones and zeroes onto ribbon. It varied the embellishments a little while at the same time, continuing the theme of computer progamming. In the end, I had a layout I loved. However, I still had enough photos and paper scraps for one more page.

  Those leftover photos and paper scraps sat waiting  until recently when I saw the Pagerize This #10 challenge at Scrap Our Stash. I decided to make a page which highlighted my son's dreams of becoming a video game programmer. In place of Lea's block of rub-on's, I used the chipboard numbers to once again make a mask. I chose to use 3 photos rather than just one. I had just enough white space on a photo of the computer screen to place my journaling.

 Scraps of paper and ribbon from the first page were arranged around the photos in such a way that they gave the appearance of creating a background of data strips behind the photos.

In reality, as you can see from the  picture above, the scraps are just sort of tucked in underneath the photo. This method is both a wonderful way to use scraps and a paper saver. I use this with papers of all sizes. It has allowed me to really stretch my stash just that much farther. From the photo, you can also see a close up of the stamped ribbon. Stamping on plain ribbon is another way to optimize the theme on your page. Plain ribbon can often be found in large rolls at the fabric store and is much less expensive than printed or fancier ribbon. It's something I plan to add more of to my stash in the future.

  From the original page down to a wonderful scraplift made with, well quite literally, scraps, I have two wonderful pages documenting my son's dreams and one of the milestones he reached in getting there. There is still time to pagerize Lea's wonderful page. Pop on over to Scrap Our Stash to check out Lea's page and to submit your work. We'd love for you to share it with us!

                                                            

Happy New Year

So many people celebrate so many different ways. At sketches 4 All, We thought we'd celebrate by adding some bling to our pages. Thus the phrase "Bling on 2011" was coined! If you love fun challenges and adding bling to your pages, then this fun event is for you! The prechallenge has posted. The rest of the event will soon be in full swing. I hope to see you there!

Let's Scrap Sketch 6-2-10

The Best Gift of All

Holidays and birthdays are often about the giving and receiving of gifts. For me, the best gift of all( and the true meaning of each celebration) is the warm, happy feeling I get from giving the gift. My son's birthday is no exception to that.

This is actually the title page for the layout I did recently in the Pagerize challenge. I used the rest of the My Mind's eye complete boy patterned paper sheet here as well as more of the Making Memories Just Chillin' Boys die cuts and trims. I used My Tim Holtz embossing folder, but instead of the whole sheet, I cut a star and a crown from it. They make nice accents at the top. I hand stitched around the star to make it pop out a bit more. I cut the K and Co. border into strips, using 3-d adhesive on sections of it for more dimension. You may be wondering about the little frame on the photo. Well, I just had to highlight my husband sitting there smiling.

You see, he also enjoys giving gifts to our son. You'll have to pardon the photo. One of my New year's resolutions is to learn to be a better photographer and to improve my photo editing. When I originally shot these photos, I was focusing on my son and not what was going on in the background. When I later saw my husband sitting there smiling, I knew this was one of those instances in which the background was really important to the story. I edited the photo as best I could, but as you can see, the lighting still hides my husband a bit. I chose the frame to draw more attention to him.



I hope you'll share your birthday celebration layouts with us at Scrap Our Stash. I know I can certainly use some heartwarming cheer during these cold days of December!

A Birthday Theme

Since this month's theme at Scrap our Stash is all about birthdays, I decided that now would be a great opportunity to finish off my son's tenth birthday photos. I also used my new birthday present, a sizzix texture boutique, to make an embellishment for the page. While gifts are a great thing about birthday's, the best gift for me, as a parent, is giving them to my son. His joy sparks mine and inspired the journaling for this page.

In my take of the pagerize challenge, I chose to use wallet size photos and to place them into groups. I used the placement of the original page's pictures, omitting one, as my inspiration for placement. Rather than regular birthday theme papers, I chose paper from My Mind's Eye's complete boy collection and embellisments and trim from Making memories Just' Chillin' Boy collection. The bingo card was made on coredinations cardstock with a Tim Holtz folder.Small star brads finally found a way out of my stash and onto the paper to add to the star motif. I hand stitched around a star on the lower right corner to add some color and texture. I actually fussy cut that star from the above patterned paper strip. The bingo card hides the hole perfectly. Another stash saver I utilized here was the method in which I matted the photos. It also saved me time. I simply chose to leave a small border of white photo paper around each photo when I cropped it from the main sheet.

If you want the recipe for a fast, fun page than pagerizing is a great way to go. The inspiration is right there for you to take and make your own. We'd love to see your version of the challenge...so don't forget to send it in!

Another November Challenge from SOS

Recently, I bought a texture boutique. I have been wanting to have the ability to emboss. I love that I can use almost any brand name embossing folder in it. One of the things I stumbled across in my quest for embossing folders was a cricut kit to make your own embossing folder. Essentially, what you do is to cut a design on the provided sheets and then adhere the design to the plastic folder. This produces a custom design of your own.

What you will need: a cricut machine, the cricut embossing kit, 1 pack of extra sheets to cut( optional, but I highly recommend it if it's your first time. I messed up a few times and ended up using 3 sheets), a design to cut

I HIGHLY recommend thinking out the design you want to use very carefully. Choose something you just can't find in an already made folder. I bought my embossing kit at Joann's for $10 and then another $10 for the spare sheets. So this can be an expensive folder to make. The design needs to be unique for it to be worth the cost. Also, I won't lie...this was a lot of work. At least for me on my first folder. I think my mistake was in choosing such a small design. I had these chipboard people and I had decided to make an embossing plate to match them. I found a dingbat font of a man, woman and boy holding hands...which matched my chipboard people perfectly. It was a small design though! So it took me 3 hours to make the folder!( now that I know what I am doing, it will be a lot less next time- I hope!)


Step 1: choose your design and set your cricut to do a double cut. I used SCAL and a dingbat font. I do not have a deep housing blade. One is not necessary if you use the double cut. I didn't use the double cut the first time...so I had to use another sheet. thank goodness I had some!
Step 2: carefully remove the design from the cutting mat. the negative space will be on one side, so you will remove the backing and adhere, then run it through your embossing machine to make sure it sticks.
Step 3: take the parts that were cut out, remove the backing and stick them to the opposite side of the folder. this is where I had some trouble. Take the image that was cut out and put it back inside the negative space, then remove the backing on the image. Run it through the embossing machine and it will stick...in the right place to the opposite side of the folder.

As you can imagine...with such small images, this took me quite some time. It was especially hard to get all the little heads poked out and then adhered to the folder. I do think it was worth my efforts though! I used one of the November sketches to make a title page for an album.

I embossed 3 sheets of carstock and inked the edges on colorbox black ink. I used naked chipboard from K and company and Maya Road. Basic Grey June bug embellishments were added for a hint of color. Hand stitching softened the hard colors of the red cardstock and making memories 5th avenue ribbons.In place of the photo, I used a sheet of vellum with the title for the album. The word family was a die cut given to me by a friend. To create a visual triangle, I used a silver hat pin slipped inside the stitching. It helped balance the silver on the chipboard people and the silver S( for our last name) on the tag. The silver S was a find at a thrift store. It was inside a tin marked We R memory keepers for $1. A great find as I have a lot of metal letters now. You can see that I shifted some of the sketch elements around to make it work for my page.

As far as the cricut embossing folder kit...I do plan to try it again. Now that I know what I am doing, I think it will take me less time and effort. I am very happy with the results of the folder I made. It's unique to me and to my page. That's what made it all worth it!

If you have a page to share, post it at Scrap Our Stash Show and tell Sunday!

Scrap Our Stash November Sketch Challenge

One of my biggest challenges is finishing off albums. It's not always the lack of scrap time. Sometimes, it is getting inspired by newer photos and moving on to new albums before one is finished. The sketches for the November challenge gave me the inspiration to complete some layouts in some albums that have awaited completion for months.
The first sketch sprung to life in my mind as the title page for a spring album.

I used the making Memories Panorama collection and some vellum. Since I live in a tropical locale, this collection of papers was perfect!

I love the palm trees on the paper, but really hated the idea of covering them up. The stitched vellum panels still allows the design to show through while providing an anchor for the title block and embellishments. Since I used a collection of papers and embellishments, this page was made in a snap!


I love using memorabilia on a page and I felt this 2nd sketch was perfect for some that I had from a recent trip to Planet Hollywood. I sort of adapted the sketch and my page is a very loose interpretation of it. I believe strongly that you make a sketch work for you...you don't work for the sketch.

The place mat was used as the base piece for the layout. I again used vellum to allow the design show through. In this case, the vellum also helps tone down the loud design and colors of the place mat while giving me a place to fit in my journaling. The large vellum block and smaller vellum pieces are my interpretation of the hearts from the sketch.

Don't forget to use an archival mist on keepsakes like this place mat. I fit in 2 photos I had taken...one of us and one of the restaurant. I moved them down a little to cover the stock photos on the place mat. I also used a found VIP coupon as the title block.I will say that I love the quick versatility of embellishing with a hat pin. The silver pin through the prima flower gave it a little extra something I felt the title block was missing. I handstitched around the drink glass my son got as a souvenir(since I did not have good photos of it) and then added some glossy accents to make it pop more.


Using a collection of items and sketches provide a fast easy way to get pages done. If you don't buy kits or items from a collection, you may want to try sitting down and making up little kits with items from your stash. You may find that you create some pages you love in a short amount of time.

Halloween Bonanza

  If you don't know by now, I love Halloween. I love the costumes, the trick or treating, carving pumpkins...well everything! Sadly, I am WAY behind in documenting the photos that go along with this holiday. So, with many recent challenges focusing on this spooky holiday, I took the opportunity to use some of my new BG Eerie paper to get those photos onto paper.

Let's Scrap sketch 10-13-10

Pumpkin carving is a favorite family pastime, so I wanted a fun, pumpkin theme page. Add to that the fun of incorporating your senses into the page...for carving pumpkins is a very touch based experience. Orange Cardstock set the mood and I loved the textured feel of the embossed felt pumpkin trim from Recollections Autumn collection. To add to the sense of touch, I used Chatterbox corduroy brads to hold twine and handmade felt banners. I found the poem on-line,printed and stamped a tree onto the background, then used colorbox inks in chestnut roan, olive and creamy brown to mimic the tones in the BG paper. I did the same with the title. Hand stitching added a warm cozy feel while i-rock jewels and orange peel stickles added a little glitz to the pumpkin stamp.

To scrap the trick or treat fun, I used Eerie papers over a DCWV purple Cardstock base. This is a hybrid page. I used a printed title from CLUB CK which I fussy cut and distressed with colorbox inks. I also distressed a prima flower with black ink, then added an Eerie brad for the center. This was the first page I had made with my new I-rock. I love how easy it is to put on jewels. The trim is from my local fabric store. I have been finding some great deals on trims and lace there.

completed for Sketches for All Sketch-a-thon

I love how the many challenges out there get me in the mood to scrap. There's a ton of Halloween challenges right now from the Halloween party at Sketches for All, Workout #30 at Scrap fit, to the Halloween/Fall challenge at Frosted.  Also, don't forget to submit to Scrap and Stamp Saturday if you use a stamp on your page. So go on out there...find challenges, make pages!

DT Sketch reveal at Sketches for All

  It's another wonderful month full of sketches and challenges at Sketches for all! There is a Halloween sketch party, The Sweetest day challenge. Not to mention all of the great challenges my fellow Design Team members are hosting. I am really enjoying being part of the Design Team. We had another great sketch to complete for the big reveal today! You can see my fellow DT's sketch at the main site.

Here is the sketch we were given:

I chose to scrap my son's birthday cake since we are focusing on sweet things this month. I even incorporated the whole  birthday song on the page! I used CK's happiness font which was a perfect fit.

The papers I used have been in my stash for so long that I don't even know who makes them. I am glad to use them up for such a fun page. I used some of the papers to roll into candles which I bundled with some fun fiber. To make the rolls look more candle like, I used some EK success Floss which I inked with black colorbox ink(to look like scorch marks). The ribbon is from a swap and I used a new Martha Stewart punch on some musical paper( which I felt went great with the song lyrics). I doodled for an easy added pop to the page and added some jewels with my i-rock to a sassafrass stamp. It was a fun happy page! I love that I have pink accents but they don't feel girly at all on this layout.

I ended up making a wonderful two page layout. I used some K and Company Stickers on both pages.

The ribbon helps both pages connect and flow together. I was also able to get the correct number of candles for my son's age by using them on 2 pages. I hope you like my page...but I also hope you'll check out all of the great examples at Sketches for All! Don't forget to share your own take with us there!

Then and Now: One Concept, Two Takes

 Recently, I did a one hour challenge at club ck. I was very rushed. My son needed help with school, and that comes first. So after assisting him, I had about 30 minutes left to complete the challenge. I almost didn't...but then thought. What the heck, let's give it a go and see what you get. The overall result of my 25 mad dash of scrapping was not horrific. I had pulled out my Cosmo cricket earth love kit to make it easier on me. The challenge centered around showing a timeline of change. So I had quickly pulled together photos of my son highlighting 4 years of his life. I was in love with those photos. Each one depicting his sweet self at each wonderful stage of life.

There was just one problem...I was bothered by the fact that in my haste, I had covered my Sweet boy's hands in one of the photos. Not to mention the fact, that though I loved the border with the birds, as whimsical as it was ...it just wasn't working for me.


I generally come to a point in which a page is just considered done. This page, though simplistic, was important to me because it depicts my son's growth from 2001 until now. So I ended up making the page over. When I pulled the bird border off, the page was damaged. I wanted to salvage it, so I used an Martha Stewart punch to create a border on Cardstock. This, coupled with the Making memories ladybug trim from the Flutter collection, maintains the earthy feel of the paper while hiding the rips and tears. It also adds a little dimension to what was before, a very flat, basic page.

I changed the buttons from blue to yellow for a pop of color and also because the light blue just did not match the turquoise of the ladybugs. Though the page is still simplistic, I corrected what was bothering me about it and I feel, made it a little more interesting.

That being said, I will be shortly popping over to Scrapwhispers to enter this project in their "Then and Now' challenge.  I also have some future then and now projects planned. I would love to scrap about my son's change in favorite cartoons and also do a timeline for video games we have played from "then to now". So stay tuned...

It's all Vegetal!

Yes, that's a word. At least, I think it is. It's vegetal...as in vegetation. I like using the word. It sounded interesting and upon reading that it was a challenge over at Method Playground in which I need to use something plant related. I set out to find some floral paper to use up in my stash. I settled upon some MM die cut 5th avenue paper. It's black and white color matched with what I need to complete an LO about dinner at Carmine's...an Lo which I am entering over at Challenge Masters, and, as is my usual pattern, am popping around the net submitting where it may best fit into with other challenges. The challenge masters week 2 challenge requires me to use colors that match the logo of a favorite food or place to eat. Coincidentally, We had just been to a local favorite restaurant: Carmines! I had taken a photo of the sign over the door. So I fussy cut this and used 3-d adhesive along with pink paislee letters to make the title pop on a polka dot background. I went to Carmine's website to look for more photos and a menu. It was a jack pot! If you ever visit someplace and don't have a photo, their website can be a goldmine for you or for ideas on how to scrap your trip.

I used some white crochet lace ribbon from Melissa Johnson. The black crochet trim was found at my local fabric store. The buttons were an awesome find. I was cleaning out a box of craft supplies and discovered them in a box. They were my great grandmother's. I used some MM and prima flowers embellished with  some prima pearls. I felt all of these elements matched the atmosphere of the restaurant. Carmine's is a family style, Italian place decorated in a style I like to call gaudy elegance. Some of the looks are very traditional, but there are tons of photos in various eclectic frames on the walls. Some of the lamps in the bar are mismatched in both color and style. So I felt that the crochet provided the home style feel of a family meal, while the mismatched buttons provided the eclectic feel. Diamond stickles on some of the dots and flowers of the paper added to this eclectic tone.

Pagerize this!

There is a new challenge over at Scrap Our stash. It's a scraplift challenge...and I love scraplifts. I find they are a great way to make a quick page and maybe learn a thing or two along the way.

August's scraplift is this page by Kathy:

I was instantly inspired by the flow of Kathy's page. I felt the design would work perfectly with photos I had taken of my son making wishes on dandelions. Having a boy, it's often hard to use paper or items with floral designs. I had some paper from a June kit with flowers all over it. I loved the bright happy feel of the paper and felt that I could use it on this layout since the dandelions were part of the main focus. If I had used green paper, I think the page might have had a more spring feel. I chose the dark orange cardstock because I felt it gave the page a more masculine tone and a more summer feeling color palette. Orange, coincidentally, is one of those colors I don't use often. I have a lot of it in my stash. If you have a color like that in your stash, try finding way to use it as an accent color to other papers, as I did here.

  I cut the title on my cricut using a font called "a red bucket." Since the paper had glitter accents, I added diamond, fruit punch and orange peel stickles to the title and the doodlebug "jellishments." I liked the bracket on Kathy's page, but chose to make mine out of vellum. This helped tone down the loud print. The lady bug ribbon is cute world by Autumn leaves. It's one of those impulse buys which each and everyone of us tends to have. I am so glad I could find a use for it here.The green ribbon is Stampin' up.

There are some frugal touches to my page that many of you might find useful. The first being the white photo mattes. The photo of the flower printed perfectly with a white edge around it. I chose to simply crop the photo with some of that white border remaining. This is both a time and paper saver.The mattes for the photos of my son are made from cricut scrap pieces.

You would never know that there were cut outs behind the pictures. I do this to save on paper. For those pieces I don't use for mattes, I cut them down into strip for borders or journal strips.

The flowers were part of a "baddies" swap I did with a fellow scrapbooker. She just did not know how to use them. While they were cute and the flocked aspect of them was nice, they were a little worn looking and dull. I used my stickles on them to change their color and dress them up to match the page.

Before

after

try using stickles in coordinating colors. I used the orange peel on the yellow and the fruit punch on the purple flower.

Since this was a page about my son making wishes and I did not know what his wishes were, I chose a simple quote which I felt reflected the page. It reads: " Our inventions mirror our secret wishes." When you are unsure of journaling or need a little extra feeling to a page, quotes are a simple solution.

Now, let's see if you can Pagerize Kathy's page. We'd love to see your take over at Scrap our Stash!

jump for Joy: a recipe challenge

Recipe challenge can be...well, a challenge. That is the fun in them though...and they are a great way to use up you stash. Frosted currently has one underway. As I perused the ingredients list, I realized that the page I had just made using Scrapbook challenges sketch #212 fit the bill.

Lets see: bird(check),ribbon(check), felt flowers( that marks of two ingredients),buttons(check), and glitter(in the form of stickles). I believe that covers it! 6 ingredients! YES! There were 10 to choose from. perhaps you should head on over and see the list for yourself.

Meanwhile, I am a firm believer in combining challenges. So going through my challenge notebook, I realize I can also submit this page to:
                                             Big picture Scrapbooking for the "I Live" challenge today
                                             Scrapbook Challenges August color challenge
                                             Club Creating keepsakes Scrap your stacks challenge
                                             Sketches for you: Brenda's Fall colors challenge
                                             Challenge masters:go green inspiration challenge

being organized means being able to track and submit my work for a variety of challenges while still getting lots of pages done. I find I am creating more a lot more. So go get organized  and see just what you can come up with!

Capturing A Hummingbird

  I had never seen a live hummingbird until recent years. Now I am lucky enough to see them quite frequently. The community which we recently moved to seems to support a thriving population. I have long wished to capture them on film. It's a daunting task considering that they won't come too close and fly at incredible speeds. For whatever reason, on this particular day, one hummingbird decided to hang out on our patio. Not to mention, that she was gracious enough to allow me to come within a few feet of her. I saw her flitting about, teasing our cat with her aerial acrobatics, and thought she would fly away as soon as I came out the front door with my camera. She just flew around...watching me. I snapped furiously...and though the photos are not of the greatest composition, I am so happy that I captured her photo.

I chose DCWV Far eastern stack paper for its red flowers...since hummingbirds love them so much. I fussy cut some of the branches and blooms.The background card stock is also DCWV. Since it had an oriental feel to the paper, I rubbed platinum colorbox ink on a red strip of card stock. I added a gold brocade Crate Paper trim. This is Sketchy Thursday's 8-5-10 sketch.

The above is page two of the layout. I completed page one during a Club CK one hour challenge. I used part of a chipboard stack remnant to create a frame. I inked it with Autumn Leaves red ink and colorbox Platinum. The alphabet has been in my stash for some time. I don't even remember who makes it. To update it and add dimension, I used glossy accents over the letters. The brads are K and company.

For My Husband

  My DS tends to dominate my lay outs. It's no secret that he is the center of the universe for DH and I. Add to that, the fact that DH is very rarely a willing subject for photos. DH will turn away or make silly faces. A few weeks ago, I issued a challenge on Club CK to take some must have summer photos. DH has a sunglasses fetish...so I figured I would do my best to capture him with them on and scrap the photos, silly or not. Well, I got those photos. Only they are not at all silly... and the more that I looked at them, The more that I realized this was not going to be an LO just about DH's love of sunglasses. So I waxed sentimental and the journaling became about my love of my wonderful husband. When I saw the 6-17 sketch on Sketchy Thursday, I felt these photos fit right onto it.
http://sketchythursdays.blogspot.com/2010/06/617-sketchy-thursdays-challenge.html

I wanted paper that made the lay out feel warm and special to me. I ended up choosing Basic grey's periphery because it was masculine, while capturing some of DH's favorite colors. I had the matching Basic grey ribbon and buttons. I cut the title on my cricut with the CK invitation font. The border is cut from a free svg file. A freind of mine made it. You can find it on her blog:
http://paperscrapsandpicturepassion.blogspot.com/2010/06/freebie-svg-file-day-5.html
I used some My Mind's Eye rub-ons on page 2.

Crawling with Bugs!

  I recently challenged myself to put my camera in Macro and to find as many bugs as I could. I actually found quite a few interesting critters. I did my best to identify them with some on-line field guides...and then of course, decided to make a page all about them. BUT....what kind of page do you make about a bunch of bugs?
  I decided that I wanted some grass on the pages. I know masking is not new to a lot of you. I have done a little masking and I wanted to try it here. I cut scraps of white cardstock into blades of grass and laid them on a sheet of solid white, textured CS.

 I used meadow green glimmer mist and was quite satisfied with the results. I created the paper with the writing on it. I used a scrap piece of vellum and wrote "bugs....creepy crawlies" over and over again. I think it's an expensive way to customize the page for your theme. I used to do this a long time ago and am challengin myself to try things like this again.

I chose  to use shades of green for the trim. The photos had plenty of color and I wanted those to be what caught the eye. On a tip from Scrap Our Stash blog spot, I painted my chipboard alphas a light green. ( for more idea on using paint to change your chipboard, see here: http://scrapourstash.blogspot.com/2010/06/frugal-friday-tip_10.html )To hide the paint stokes, I added Diamond Stickles. All of the bugs used on the pages are from a swap I did on Club CK. The flower buttons are Making memories. The page sketch is from Sketches for you:
http://sketchesforyou.ning.com/

For the second page, I used the blades from the mask and a sketch from studio calico:
http://studiocalico.blogspot.com/2010/06/sunday-sketch_13.html

I find that sitting down and writing a list of photos I want to try to take can be really inspiring. A lot of great LO's come from this. So, challenge yourself...try something different with your camera or list those must have photos for your album!

Glitter...In the Rain

  Playing in the rain is a joy that I think all kids should experience. I have fond memories of puddle jumping with my grandparents as a small child. I take every opportunity to let my son enjoy the rain. So, a few days ago, when the cooling rains came, I indulged my son in just that. It has been so hot lately. We are already near 100 degrees and so playing outside is just miserable right now. Playing in the rain really afforded my son the ability to stretch his legs and burn off some energy. As you can see, I snapped some photos of him while he danced in the rain...while sipping a cup of coffee and enjoying the sound of the drops on the roof top.
  Rainy day photos can really capture some great moments, but, despite photo editing, the pictures can still be a bit on the blue side. Color Room palette #10 really offered some great color choices to warm up the pictures. http://thecolorroom.ning.com/forum/topics/palette-reveal-10-his-room-due
The sketch also worked well with the photos I had chosen. I took the practical scrappers challenge to use something from my cabinet on a page...I used a bobby pin as the handle for my homemade umbrella. I cut the umbrella top from an older piece of fabric paper in my stash ( manufacture unknown). Then I slightly bent the bobby pin and adhered it to the back of the Umbrella top.

 I added some Making memories crocheted passport trim. I really am quite pleased with the results. I created the rain drops with waterfall stickles. I doodled a little with the stickles around the word rain in the title to create a puddle.

The title was cut on my cricut with CK's beantree font. The title itself is actually the June 7th quote on the club ck blog.I used my word processor to print part of it for the title.
 http://clubcreatingkeepsakes.com/blogs/quote_of_the_day/archive/2010/06/07/june-7-2010-rain-themed.aspx
I find a lot of inspiration on Club CK.

As usual, I love making two page lay outs. I used the same Sketch from The Color Room for the 2nd page.

I hope that next time it rains, you will let your child dance in it. Maybe you'll even dance a little yourself. Life is too short to miss moments like these.