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.

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.

Another sketchy Thursday challenge-determined for Victory

  So here I am again...I love these sketches. I can see the sketch and can visualize the photos and the pp. Suddenly, I'm off and the Lo comes together. Seems easy...though there are often hitches along the way. I saw the sketch for this week and visualized using my  Black orchid pad...that lovely set with all of those great paper patterns...which has been sitting unused for months waiting for the right photos. In 5 minutes flat, I had cut the PP and laid it out on the cardstock. Excited that it was going so fast, I then hit the first bump in the road. I had these great brads with letters from my stash. It would seem though that I lacked enough e's. I really wanted to title the Lo " Determined for Success" but after playing around with the thesaurus and the available letters( because I was determined to use them) I settled on "Determined for Victory." *It's a little hard to read them because the camera won't pick them up.

  So I am off and running again now. I decided to use this Lo as part of a journaling assignment for the Textuality class I am taking at Big Picture Scrapbooking. Here comes hitch 2... I played for an hour with the word processor trying to make the journaling "just so." In the end, I called it quits...deciding I liked what I had. So as usual, a fast Lo quickly turns into several hours of tweaking.

Ahh, the Lo...I made this about my son being determined to blow up a balloon and tie it. My husband had done one, so he figured he could. DS literally tried for hours! This from the Sketchy Thursday 5-6 Challenge. BTW, the font used is CK boutique and as mentioned above, the pp is SEI Black orchid, the letter brads are unknown.
And so, without further ado, the grand reveal:

And as usual, I made a 2 page lo: