Swim America

This month's Red, White and Blue challenge was the perfect motivation for me to scrap the photos of my son learning to swim. He participated in the Swim America program and finished up with it a little over a year ago. I've had the photos sitting, printed and grouped by theme begging for me to get them onto pages, but I was never sure of what paper to use. I had even bought swim team themed stickers quite some time ago when I knew he was going into the program. I realized that the small star print paper and borders in my little 6x6 kit of Pink Paislee's home town summer line would go swimmingly with the photos.

  I set to work, happily splattering sapphire glimmer mist onto the card stock.After fidgeting with the photos, I settled on a design. However, I was not happy at all with the team photo. My son seemed lost in the large group of children. I wanted some way to highlight him while still having him a part of the group. I chose to use a scrap piece of vellum. I used an craft knife to cut out a little window. It was a wonderful solution to my dilemma.

Please pardon the blurry photo and the covered faces, this was done for privacy
Pink Paislee border and Paper
Sapphire glimmer mist
 7 Gypsies number tags
Jolee's by you stickers-goggles
Making memories snaps
SEI Ink blue ink
Me and mY bug Ideas Stickers

I was very pleased to use up some older Making Memories silver snaps. I used my son's first ribbon as a part of the page while adding some of the sticker's I had been holding onto for so many years. In these photos, my son could not yet swim well, but they allowed him to participate with a coach as a spotter. he raced in the seahorse race(pool noodle) and a paddle board race.

  My second page started off with the best of intentions. When I was almost done, I realized I had a big problem. My photos were off-centre.

 I chose to draw attention away from that using markers and hand stitching. The off kilter squares sort of hide the off kilter photos and border. It may not be as noticeable here due to the lovely straightening feature of my photo editing software. ;)

  We'd love it if you shared some patriotic themed pages and projects with us here at Scrap Our Stash. With all of the wonderful events this month, I am sure you will have plenty of photo ops!

Scrap Our Stash October challenge- That Project!

We all have them...projects that need to be finished. I personally have a list of them. I think that is because I take WAY too many photos. I just love photos though...so I refuse to stop. I love looking back on my son and my husband...enjoying all of the moments. Especially since, sometimes, little details slip my mind. So, here I sat, with all of my projects, trying to decide which was the one I was going to work on today. There is my wedding album, honeymoon album, the 2008 photos, current pictures(because, I try to keep up), and childhood photos( both from DH and I). I finally settled upon some photos from our trip to Vail in 2008.

  Dh was lucky enough to have to go to a conference there. This meant my son and I could tag along b/c hotel, rental car and DH's expenses were covered. We were so excited! I had seen snow, but never this much and this was my son's first time. We were told how lucky we were...it usually doesn't snow that much during the time of year we went. And here was this beautiful winter wonderland. My son was ecstatic! I captured these photos our first evening out. I had bought a ton of different winter theme papers to scrap them, but in the end, I chose to let the beauty of the photos accent the papers. To keep it simple, I stitched across some Ms. Elizabeth's stickers by hand. I did accent the photos with silver colorbox ink.

I love the simple and elegant effect. I was inspired by a friend of mine ( Erika H) and her "nature" layout over at Club CK. I am also happy to finally be using up the stash I bought to scrap these pages over 2 years ago! So, now I'm off to work on some more pages... Don't forget to work on projects you need to complete and post them at Scrap Our Stash!