Sneaking in Some Pink and Yellow

  I think everyone has a colour nemesis. Two of mine are pink and yellow. Yellow...I just don't care for a whole lot. Pink... well, I've talked before about how a male dominated household means scrapping with pink is not a regular occurrence. So I really surprised myself with this next LO for the November challenge at Scrap Our Stash.  I pulled out this plaid paper by Cosmo Cricket. The yellow and pink reminded me so of a cozy morning. It became the basis for the design behind Pancake Morning.
  While there is nothing wrong with pancakes from a box, it's really not hard to just make your own mix. My son loves helping me and so, when the challenge to scrap a family recipe was issued, it was the perfect excuse to make pancakes for breakfast. I should do this more often. I guess I am just more of a " let's have cereal" type of mom. Anyway, to make your own pancakes " not from a box", try this recipe"

Ingredients: 1 1/4 cups flour, 1/4 cup of sugar( yes I know it's a lot of sugar. We like em' sweet. You can reduce the sugar if you want to), 1 Tbsp. baking powder, 1 egg, 1 cup milk, 2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

- stir dry ingredients together
- in a separate bowl, mix egg milk and oil. then mix with dry ingredients
- spoon onto a heated pan, allow to bubble, then flip and cook until golden brown

It's such an easy recipe! It makes a lot more than we can eat. So I proportion the leftover pancakes into zip loc bags and freeze. I then have my own toaster pancakes!

paper- Cosmo Cricket
ribbon- unknown
BG paper clip
Sassafrass flowers
glass beads
 K and Co. chipboard- Let's eat
Pink Paislee pink foam alphas
Rusty pickle brown alphas
 glossy accents
Webster's pages sparkler button
knife and Fork- unknown
tiger lily glimmer mist
Plum pudding smooch spritz
maya road sheer journal spot- recipe card

  To make the page more quickly, I left the white edges from the photo paper.The smaller photos are all one sheet of wallet size photos, three to a row. Some of them printed in groups with the photos in those rows aligning the same direction. I kept one group of three and simply cropped away the excess white. I cut the two photos which were horizontal and left the vertical photos in groups of two. This allowed me to save time( and supplies) by having photos that were already matted and easy to place on the page.

  I don't have a lot of cooking themed embellishments in my stash. I had a Eureka moment when I discovered food themed embellishments in my travel supplies. Prior to this page, I might never have thought to look in my travel stash for such a thing. I noticed many of the travel themed collections had papers or items about places you had eaten. So next time I have a cooking themed page, I will also look to the travel themed papers.

 I am very happy with the title. Glossy accents is one of my go to adhesives. It allowed me to add dimension to the flat brown letters. Now they look more like epoxy letters and I was able to add some glass beads to add more texture.

  This year, my goal was to learn how to take better photos of my pages. I am best at photographing one page LO's. Two pagers are very difficult given that they often have a warped or bent look to them. With this two pager, I think I finally found a trick to reduce the warped look and get a more flat, even photo. I placed the LO on a travel trunk which reached to my knees. I was then able to bend over the photo and I found that if I cocked my wrist as I photographed the page, the page came out more flat as I cropped in afterwards. So try finding something to lay your page on that is about the height of your knees and experiment with moving the angle of your wrist. 

  Overall, I really enjoyed making this page...from staging a photo shoot with a pancake breakfast, to adding the finishing touches on the page. Yes, it's true...I staged the photos. So now it's your turn. Find a recipe you like and stage your own photos to make a wonderful LO. Don't forget to submit it to Scrap Our Stash.

If I could Change One Thing...

 That's the title I have to think about and use for round 5 of the Ms. Scraptastic 2010 competition. When looking through my photos, I chose some photos of my son's first orthodontic consultation which center around yet another change in our lives.When I first thought about scrapbooking these photos, they were simply going to be about him getting braces. Now, using the title as a prompt, they have become a deeper exploration of how I wish he would not have had to go through so much. These braces are what will hopefully be the last in a series of procedures and events occurring  b/c of my son's premature birth. He looks so frightened in this photo! His eyes are so wide and he is making that weird face. They wanted him to smile so he could show his teeth and this is the best he could do at the time. My thoughts about his fears and my feelings became what the journaling centered around...all sparked by that title prompt.

  For part of the challenge, I was asked to use paint. I chose a silver metallic paint b/c it makes me think of his braces. I took a mesh style ribbon, painted it and stamped it on the page. If you try this, I highly recommend practicing a bit on a scrap piece of paper before using it on your cardstock.

I also chose to paint the title letters silver. I wanted them to blend into the background. The letters on the left were also painted sloppily. I wanted them to have a rougher texture. While the words on the right of the triangle are smooth.

The only word that's different is the word "change". I wanted it to pop. This page is about the change of getting the braces but on a deeper level, it's also about the changes my son has experienced. Triangles are often used in chemistry to symbolize change. So I cut out a triangle shape and then rolled the paper back. I stitched it to hold the rolled edges and then adhered some Sassafrass PP behind it. The PP has a triangle background to reinforce that symbolism for me. I used a wire pen to make a base for the word "change" I painted the letters with Smooch Azure ink and adhered them at intervals on the wire over the triangle.

The challenge required 3 photos. Two of the photos I chose were of my sons xrays. They were so stark across the page in comparison to the rest and drew the eye away from the photo of him. So I added a sheet of vellum over them. On the vellum, I used a word processor to add quotes about change, courage, strength and love. I also wrote in my own thoughts about these quotes. I can still lift the vellum to see the photos of his teeth.

* I placed the paper over the photos on purpose to obscure them a bit for privacy purposes..

I don't own a lot of stamps. In fact, I pretty much only have 1 set of journal stamps that a friend gave me for a RAK. So I had to get creative for the stamping portion of the challenge. I chose to use the lid from my oil of olay tube. It was pointy and easy to hold and stamp with. In fact, I enjoyed experimenting with a variety of lids and will keep some at my disposal. I finished things off by hand stitching triangles and a border.

A variety of effects can be created with lids found around your home.

This was definitely a tough challenge. As I work on future pages regarding my son's braces, I hope to change the pages to show the metamorphosis that took place.

Playing with my new glimmer mist and smooch inks

I know it's not new to many people, but it's new to me. I must say that I like the glimmer mist, though I am not completely blown away by it. I still want to try Maya Mist and some of the other new products out there. I specifically bought glimmer mist in blues and greens since those are my 2 favorite colors. I hope to try my hand at making my own...but first, I plan to use up these bottles so I can then reuse them for my concoctions.

  I completed this Lo using sketch 125 from Sketch Inspiration.
http://sketchinspiration.ning.com/

  I made paper waves from leftover scraps from a punch. I sprayed the scraps with Patina and Sapphire glimmer mist. Then I layered them to create the waves. Some of the scraps had a spattered paint look. I added Crate paper Blue hill ribbon over it to continue the turquoise and blue color theme. I have had the title block in my stash for quite some time and don't know who makes it. The star fish had a little cartoonish look to it which I changed by adding Diamond stickles. I used the diamond stickles and waterfall stickles to add some accents to the water droplets. To add a slight shimmer to the words, I used I covered the letters with smooch accent ink in azure and pool. I used scrap CS to make journaling strips. I inked the edges of the journaling strips in Colorbox blue lagoon ink.



To make a 2 page LO, I slightly altered the original sketch for the 2nd page.