The Longest Day

  Those words can conjure up the worst of images or the the best of them.  There are two really long days that I can remember with vivid clarity. One being my wedding day and two being the day my son was born. Both hold great memories for me. As many of you know, I started scrapbooking when my son was a little over a year old. What that means is that the days of his first years are happily documented in scrapbook tomes. My wedding, however, is only now being scrapbooked. 1997 was a long time ago, but yet it seems like yesterday. I can remember in detail getting ready to walk down the aisle, how it felt to look into my husband's eyes while we recited our vows, how happy we were to be married, and well...all of the wonderful memories of that day. Here is but a glimpse at that day...one moment perfectly captured on film.

  Finding wedding paper in my chosen colors has proved to be difficult. Since we had a garden wedding, I had chosen hunter green so that the wedding party would match whatever might be in bloom that day. Hunter green scrapbook paper is either not available in a wedding theme or just not pretty. So I chose Basic Grey's cappella line. It seemed elegant and fit perfectly with the photos.I inked the edges in colorbox platinum ink. I chose Bazzill bling cardstock in glass slipper. I loved the weight of the paper and the pearlized sheen made it seem special and perfect for the wedding.

I used white prima flowers and MM all a flutter trim. I can say that if I want to use a lot of jewels in the future I will definitely look into an I-rock.These little self adhesive jewel shapes look nice but are such a pain. This page is based on one I had seen in a June newsletter on Basic grey's website. I plan to submit it over at Scrapwhispers for their longest day challenge. Do you have a day that seemed like forever? Think about it and maybe try to document it. You'll be glad you did...

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!

Ella's Inspiration Chain

  Do you remember that game called telephone...the one kids play a lot? Some people call is Chinese Whispers. In the case of Ella Publishing co., they call it an inspiration chain. Instead of a word or phrase, you take someone 's project and scraplift it, then pass on your version and so on, until you reach the last person. Ella did one recently, and I made a version based on the last page in that chain.

This was the last page in that chain. This digi page was made by Katrina Simeck.

I loved her simple design and wanted to replicate that on my page. Mine of course is not a digi, but a traditional creation. I used DCWV Natural stack card stock for my base. I cut a square out of the back so I can get more out of the paper. It was easy to do with my purple cows free style mouse.

The photo is one I took when I was experimenting with sun light. I am looking up through the branches of a Royal Poinciana tree. I liked the way the Fancy pants harmony paper complemented the colors of the photo. I used a quote from DCWV Nature and inspiration vellum quote stack. I accented the quote with a Fancy pants felt flourish. On the lower left corner, I fussy cut 3 small circles from some Crate Paper pink plum paper. I stitched over them with Bazzill floss.

All in all, a simple page and one I hope to use as the ending to one of my summer albums.

Hand Lettering

  My Writing is something I am not always fond of. In fact, it was something I struggled with in school. Over time, I have come to terms with my printing. I am comfortable enough to hand journal( I feel it's quite important to do so)...but in print form. I tend to make a rough draft and then...slowly, carefully copy those thoughts onto the page so it's legible. Cursive? UGH! I hate mine. I taught myself calligraphy and since then there has been some improvement. So you can imagine my thoughts at a recent challenge to hand letter a title. I shuddered to think about it. How could I pull off anything halfway decent?

  My first thought was to use my cricut to make a stencil. I started to do just that. Then, I decided to challenge myself. Could I mimic the look of a simple font? Looking at the screen, I carefully practiced a few times on a scrap sheet of paper. I decided it wasn't half bad. Now for the big risk! I pulled over the sheet of background cardstock and started the title. My one and only tombow marker slowly ran along the surface of the page. what resulted was a close rendition of the font I had in mind. It still needed a little more. I filled in the letters with the brush tip end, then took my black pen and made an outline. I actually liked it!  I decided to challenge myself to a little cursive. this time, my orange marker slowly moved across the page...and somehow, the results seem to fit with the fun, kid feel of the page.

-Arrow papers and orange triangle print from Sassafrass monstruosity.

-MM chipboard arrow- I drew on it with a white crayon, then inked it

with fresh green with moss green edges

-crate paper ribbon

-basic grey brads

- MM just chillin boy's collection: metal pow sign, diecut and journal spot

submitted at:

Sketches for You August #1 Scraplift and Ink challenge

Frosted Designs: need a little direction challenge

Club CK August week 1 Scrap Challenge; hand drawn title

Camp is over and now...

it's back to work. I had a great time participating in the Club Creating keepsakes summer camp activities. I used up more stash, which is always a good thing and means more pages are complete. As always, I try to combine challenges, both to save time and to push my limits. For my last Club CK project ( journaling), I chose to complete the July 1st Scraplift over at Sketches for You and Frosted's Border punch challenge. I also chose to make the sample for my July Start it Simple Color challenge posted at Sketches for you. My color palette was fun but challenging. It's called Hello calli: http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/1214904/Hello_Cali . 

This Lo  by Stacy R. was a wonderful page to scraplift:

It's a  fun and appealing page. I had a great time lifting it.

I chose PP from Cosmo Cricket's Boyfriend collection since I felt it best went with an LO about my DH at work. I also used some grid PP by Fancy pants. On some of the strips, I used an EK success notebook punch to match the work theme. Sometimes, color from a palette can be subtly used, especially when it's one you don't care for or don't have a lot of in your stash. In my LO, I used brown in the form of Catseye colorbox ink to ink the edges of the paper. The yellow/orange was used sparingly as an accent in the form of foofala buttons and the title. I chose the CK newsprint font as I felt it fit the theme of the page well. I also liked the "business" feel of the Basic Grey periphery ribbon. The 7 Gypsies journal tag also fit the theme well.

Here is my take from Stacy's page:

There is still time to play. So check out these sites and submit a creation of your own.
Sketches for you: http://sketchesforyou.ning.com/
Frosted:
http://frosteddesigns.blogspot.com/2010/07/lets-see-those-border-punches.html

Owls and BellBottoms

I was recently challenged to scrap a graduation day photo( a challenge over at Sketches for You). I don't have any of my own. My Dad has those. I have a few of DH and none of DS( who is too young for high school). I do have this one of my mom...which caught my eye and got me to thinking. I was thinking, not of her graduation day ( I obviously was not there), but of growing up in the 70's. Seeing her photo brought back memories of Brown and orange furniture, the Macrame Owl she made for the living room, and the outfit she made me wear. It was all white with Blue and orange owls all over it. AN owl T-shirt and white bell bottoms(literally plastered with owls). So, inspired by these thoughts, I created an LO all about her day. I'll have to call my Dad for the specific details(my mom is no longer with us), but I must say, I really feel like I captured the feelings of the era quite well.

I used mostly Sassafrass PP. I fussycut the owl, stitched on his belly and added real buttons for eyes( he had printed ones). I used more yellow DMC floss around the mat.The brown PP is Recollections. I loved how the blue diffused the brown and yellow tone of the older photo. The flowers are also Sassafrass. The title was cut on my cricut using CK Far Out font.

 This was a Scraplift project on Scrapbook Challenges. I am proud to say it was one of today's featured photos.