My Inspiration

I didn't think I would have enough time to do this tonight!!! YAY!

Here is my take on the suggested sketch from Lasting Memories. The main challenge was to complete a project about someone that inspires you. My main inspiration has definitely been my kids. This page is going into the family album with a facing page of journaling. i try to do one every year with the picture of all three of them. Then in their individual albums, I have their separate pictures with more journaling. I just wanted to get this layout finished before the end of the month. :)

Off to bed now! :)

Water Balloon Toss!!!

This was my best shot at sketch #168 from Creative Scrappers. I just could not find small pictures to work with this one.

I was able to crop down a few pictures from our 4th of July party this year.

It's pretty simple, but it was fun. I used the Summertime collection from Echo Park. A 1 inch circle punch worked great on some of the patterned paper. And then I was able to watch 2 episodes of some lousy reality tv show while I cut out each of the little water drops...lol.

Hey,...a girl's gotta keep practicing time management. :)

At The Beach

Well, I managed to sneak out to the pool store and the grocery store. Lunch is finished too!

Here is a quick one I did with the sketch from Let's Capture These Sketches. I had no idea what I wanted to do with the background, so I just decided to tear up some cardstock and add a little bit of vellum and ink.

Practical Scrappers is having a call for custom buttons. I had so many to choose from! These At The Beach buttons are from Jesse James buttons. I've had them for quite a while...now I have an empty spot in the button box! :)

Time for shopping....???

Gotta love the Grinch!

I can't believe Summer is almost over and it's time to start figuring out a budget for Christmas! And I'm not talking presents...I'm talking supplies to scrap all the pictures that I usually take!

ScrapFit challenge #50 was to be inspired by a book. I did a Google search for kid's most popular books and ran across this title: How the Grinch Stole Christmas. :)

When we were visiting Nana last year, The Grinch made an appearance and my kids freaked out! They had the best time ever and The Grinch wasn't such a bad guy after all. :)

I used this week's sketch by Shimelle. I had lots of scraps of Christmas papers, so the layering was pretty easy. I love these fun button stickers from Reminisce! And a hodge podge of mixed letters from the stash. :)

Can you tell I'm still avoiding the housework...??

My Communion

I don't want to do housework today!!! I want to play in my scraproom all day!!!

Sneaking in a few before the work begins....

This was a gorgeous sketch from Frost Designs Sketch along Tuesdays. Once I saw this color combo challenge from Color Combos Galore, I knew this was the perfect sketch for this picture.

I started with a scalloped circle I hand cut. Which fits the challenge at ScrapFit. :)

I had used Coredinations paper, so after I cut the circle, I sanded the edges just a little bit to bring out some white.

Can you believe this beautiful lace and pearl trim was on clearance at Michael's?? I got this set (two other trims were included) for less than $1!!! The detail is soooo pretty!

The border was made with a piece of scrap paper that has subtle lines on it. The scalloped piece is from Bazzill Borders that I inked with pewter Cat's Eyes. I had to make my own lace trim for this. I just used a piece of ribbon lace and added some pearl bling along the edges.

My cluster is a combination of pearly wedding flowers, Jolee's pearly crosses, and some pearly bling from Recollections.

Again, I was able to hit up the older stash for these letter stickers from Miss Elizabeth. They had stars at the tops, so I covered them all up with pearls. :)

I sure hope my tomboy little girl likes this page! Of course, she is in a dress, so most likely not. :)

Staycation page

Gotta sneak in one more before the party...lol

I used sketch #234 from Sketch Inspiration to do a page from our Chicago Staycation. I went with this fun photo for the Travel challenge from The Paper Variety.

My favorite part was that I was able to include some memorabilia from the trip...a few tickets, and a photo pass. I save everything and it's nice to finally clean it out of the drawer. Since I'm short on time today, I'm also submitting this for the Open Sketch Challenge at Sketches in Thyme. The end of August sure snuck up on me in a hurry!

NOW...I seriously have to get ready for this party! At least the laundry is done! But the brownies aren't...gotta hustle!!

A school project

I hate it when I get an idea in my head and it never turns out the same way! Oh well, it was still fun to make it. :)

Lasting Memories next challenge was to show our secrets. I had this idea for a while and finally got the motivation to put it together. My idea was to create a pocket page that looked like a school locker. :)

I started out by cutting the inside of the cardstock to create a "frame". The inside square would be the door. I added some hinge stickers and to make it more realistic, I added a few eyelets for the hinge rivets.

Next I cute a square for the lock. I also had some fun lock stickers. I wanted a combination lock but didn't have one and couldn't find the right inspiration to make one. Hopefully, it will come to me later and I can fix this.

Next I used a little Glimmer Mist on the door so it didn't look so clean. What locker ever is?? I added some random stickers all over and my daughter's name and the school year. I'm thinking of doing this for upcoming years too. Only the locker door will look worse and worse with wear...lol.

On the right side, I made a pocket to hold all of her school certificates, award tickets, test scores, and her report card.

Now that I think of it, I should have added her school picture in there somewhere...another adjustment coming...

On the left side is the inside of the locker door...where most of us had a small mirror and maybe a picture of our current crush. She has a crush on too many to put anything in there yet...lol. And I just couldn't deal with looking at a picture of Justin Beiber. :(

The mirror was cut from a fun piece of metallic paper from Colorbok.

Behind the mirror are a few pieces from a small notebook with some random notes and lists. I always had pieces of notebook paper sticking out of every book and anywhere else I could tuck stuff. I decided to add a few pieces after Frosted Designs posted their school paper challenge. Great timing!

So there you have it. I made a secret pocket page, cleaned out the drawer a bit, found a fun place to put my daughter's school stuff and finished 2 loads of laundry! YAY!

Family reunion today, so I'm trying to play as much as possible....before I end up with hundreds more pictures....lol

Have a great day!!!

Woodsy Wonders

Here is my take on Pia's August sketch at Practical Scrappers. I'm so excited to start working on Fall pictures. I have accumulated quite a bit of Fall goodies. :)

First day of school today and I still have a million things to do....

Grin and Bear it

Everyone thought I was nuts when I said I was taking my kids to the zoo in February. But when I started showing off the pictures, they realized how much fun it could be. And it sure beats being locked up all winter!

Here is my take on this week's Sketchy Thursdays challenge. This pretty patterned paper is from the Linen Stack from Die Cuts with a View. Those little starbursts reminded me so much of snowflakes. :)

I mixed up my fonts...again. Hey, as long as I can keep mixing and not shop for more, it's all good...just ask the hubby!

A few other elements are some flocked paper along the bottom of the title and the page. Kinda resembles snow...

And some foam snowflakes that I used some pewter ink on. They shimmer really nice!

Fantasy Football draft is over, crowd is gone and now I can scrap in peace and quiet...lol.

Creative Scrappers #170

I love playing with my Glimmer Mists! This was the perfect opportunity to use a couple of different colors.

This fun sketch from Creative Scrappers #170 took a few tries and a few misfires with the mist to get it just right.

The big glittery stars are leftovers from a fun decoration we used for our 4th of July party. :)

My Birthday Hero

This was my first time playing with a sketch from Shimelle. I love the blocks and thought I would give it a try. :)

I decided to use this sketch with the birthday challenge from The Paper Trail Makers. They are celebrating their 1st birthday with some fun challenges.

This challenge was to create a birthday layout without using any birthday papers or theme goodies.

My title came from my little guy's button that he wore all day at this party. To give the page a birthday feel, I made my own birthday candles. I cut up some polka dotted patterned papers and rolled them up. Then I took a gemstone flower that I had from the dollar spot and broke off all of the petals. These became the "flames" on my candles. :)

I love how the candles turned out, but I really wish they had more Spiderman patterned papers. I have sooo many pictures of my guy in his costume. I guess some online hunting and shopping is in order...sshhh....

Heartstrings...

It was a late Saturday night for me, but I was determined to finish up this page. And then of course, there was no daylight to take the picture. So I'm starting out this morning by posting this and then pulling out some new sketches!

I made this layout using this month's sketch from Die Cuts With a View. This is my second attempt. I stuck with the Rustic Stack for all the pretty papers.

One technique that I am soooo not good at is stitching or sewing. But, I pulled out my old eyelet setter, made a lot of noise and added what seemed like a gazillion eyelets. Then I started threading some embroidery floss through each eyelet. What a pain! Did I also mention that I have absolutely no patience! And since I really had no idea what I was doing, it took a few attempts to get it right. Now that I think I got it, I hope I don't have to do this again soon!

This fits right in with The Paper Variety challenge which was to use any kind of threads. :)

On the heart, which was cut from some scrap paper, I added a little bit of paper wire and attached it with a few fastenators.

I was also able to spell out the word "families" with the very few Thicker letters I have left. I really need to restock! The smaller words are on tiny pieces of cardstock and those letters I found from Basic Grey. The word "heartstrings" was a total luck of the draw. I dared to open the drawer of letter stickers....and this untouched set of letters from Inspirables was right at the top! Perfect color, perfect font, perfect amount of letters!

My Cowgirl

LOVE this older picture of my oldest daughter! This is one of my favorites!!

Thank you Creative Imaginations for coming out with this fun pink cowgirl line! I have had this for a while, but never found just the right picture. Love all the pink and the blues!

Sketches in Thyme #54 was the perfect sketch for this layout! All the bits and pieces were just the right fit for the elements needed.

I had some handmade paper that I cut for the circle. The texture on it was awesome and fit the theme pretty well. And a few pieces of burlap and jute added more texture and dimension.

This color combination was just right for Color Combo Galore #205.

My day is winding down....oh no....I may have to do some "real" work today.....

Is it Time Yet??

I am so ready for our vacation!!! I love long road trips and I am so excited that we are in talks about a trip to Ohio. We were supposed to go last year, but never had the time due to family commitments.

I love taking pictures of the kids during road trips. We always play all kinds of games to keep them busy. I print out tons of stuff and keep a folder in the car. Here are the kids getting ready to play roadside bingo.

I saw this sketch from Stuck on U Sketches and was all excited! I bought a pack of die cut papers from Target last summer and this was one I was anxious to use. So glad this sketch came along! I was going to wait to use it until after our trip, but then I remember that I already had a few pictures that I could use. :)

Frosted Fridays challenge this week was to use time pieces or clocks. I realized that everything my kids keep asking repeatedly on our trips were all related to time. I printed them out on white cardstock and inked them out. I also googled clock faces and printed those out too. Then I mounted them onto chipboard circles.

This was fun! Time for a late lunch!

Another Girls page...

A fun Super Saturday Sketch from Memorable Seasons! I just bought some chipboard banner pieces from Maya Road too!

Scrapfit challenge #49 was to use a banner on your project. I so wish I had done more to my banner, but I couldn't find just the right embellishment.

The big circle behind the photo is also a chipboard piece from a mini album. It's actually a Christmas ornament....but I cut the top off. I tried to draw red stitching on it to make it look like a baseball. I wish it was bigger so you could see it better.

Instead of dabbing circles onto the background similar to the sketch, I added..BUTTONS!! In the lower right hand corner is also a cute little baseball button too. :)

Creative Scrappers #169

It's so nice to have a whole day to scrap! I hate being so busy during the week. All I can do is look at my stash and sigh....

I pulled out the huge box of scraps for this fun sketch from Creative Scrappers #169. Love all the different bits and pieces in the background. Some of the papers came from an OLD All My Memories kit. The tags and the journal spot are from the same kit.

This page was used for the pagerize challenge from Scrap Our Stash. I used the same colors that Julie used on her layout. And we had to use hidden journaling and stamps. A huge chipboard tag holds an information card that the school hands out every year. It has all her important stats on the card. I love that I can hide all the current info behind a current photo. I always know where to find it.

I pulled out some chipboard flowers and stamped a smaller image of a flower onto it. Then I used markers and inks to color it in. I didn't realize how much chipboard I had until I started looking around. Thank you Practical Scrappers for the chipboard call!!

For Shimelle's challenge, I added my signature embellishment which is BUTTONS!! I love my BUTTONS!! I just found tons of them in the dollar section at Michael's! Did you hear me scream with joy??

Hoop Dreams

Happy Saturday Morning!!

I started this page last night and was so excited to finally finish it off this morning. Now I can start on fresh pages and new ideas today!

In between life...ya know, can't miss a photo op!

Crop Suey is going vintage! We were to be inspired by this ad for our project. I tried to stick with the color scheme and I loved the title also. :)

I stuck with sketch #95 from Let's Capture These Sketches. The circle was my inspiration to do a basketball page.

I printed out the title on white paper and attached it to a tag. Underneath the tag is some cool magic mesh. I also found these neat basketball brads too! See what happens when you clean out the stash once in a while??

I had a 12 x 12 sheet of basketball patterned paper, so I cut out the circle and used another piece as an accent strip across the bottom.

My daughter so this and thought the title was hilarious! I asked why and she said .....the word "might" was quite funny....girls CAN and WILL kick butt! LOL! This season is going to be interesting.....

You Got a Friend in Me....

I so miss Disney! We are talking about going back next year, but it seems so far off. I flipped through my Disney scrap stash for this page and realized I could take 12 more trips to Disney and still not make a dent in the stash. I love collecting it all! :)

Sketch along Tuesdays at Frosted Designs had some interesting circles for this week's challenge. Not only did I use up more scraps, I even used some circle slide mounts that I have had forever. They were perfect to pop up the fun character stickers. :)

And lately, for me, no layout is complete without a few buttons. :)

My "baby" turned 21...

I managed to get outside and pull a ton of weeds, clean up more branches from our downed tree, sweep up the deck and the backyard and finished up some laundry. I'm entitled to a break, right??

Here is my interpretation of a sketch challenge from Lasting Memories. This was a sketch with a twist....we were to add buttons to our page. I used a few as the centers of my flowers. :)

I LOVE this trim that I found at Michael's! Sooo pretty! And this color came along at just the right time. It matches my daughter's blouse perfectly! I cannot believe she is 21 years old! She is an adult now and I just cannot grasp the whole concept of that....exciting and sad at the same time....

I raided the flower drawer and threw in some Prima blingy swirls. These colors are so gorgeous! I had to stock up on those....sshhh....

For a title, I just decided to use her initial. It's a chipboard alpha I inked up. I wanted to add some bling to it, but nothing seemed to look right, so I thought it best to leave it alone.

Between the trim and the bling, I am so happy with how this turned out...I hope she is too! :)

Still avoiding the housework...

Heck, as long as everyone else is going to sleep, I"m going to play!

Practical Scrappers has some interesting sketches this month. They are always so pretty, and so challenging for me. Here is a beautiful sketch by Jannike. :)

I'm not big on cutting up my photos on purpose like this, but Lasting Memories challenged us to try something new. I also used this for the color palette challenge from Color Combos Galore. :)

I love that there was plenty of background on this photo to make this sketch work. Luckily, my sister hasn't mastered the art of the zoom button on my camera. :)

And I realized that quite a few of the nozzles on my Glimmer Mist are starting to give me a hard time. They either stop working, or spit out the mist in globs. Time for a cleaning!

I added a piece of handmade paper I found at an Expo a few years back. It was so pretty and glittery and I finally found a use for it. Still attacking the older stash....

All of the chipboard pieces are from a collection by Me and My Big Ideas. And luckily, Michael's had a huge sale on all their bling, so I stocked up on swirls and pearls. The pearls were just the right touch to finish this up. :)

Dr. Seuss Day

Busy, busy weekend ahead! Gotta get something done in the scrap corner before we start working. Not looking forward to all that needs to get done, but the sooner it's done, the sooner I can play more.

Here is my take on sketch #53 from Sketches in Thyme. I love using up my scrap pieces. And I doodled around all the edges to dress them up a bit.

I chose to work with my LAST picture from the Dr. Seuss Birthday party to work with for the challenge at The Studio Challenges. We were to use a book as our inspiration...the title, the book cover, anything that inspired you from a book.

And a fun challenge from Ann at My Sketch World was to mix alphas for your title. I think there are at least 5 different alphas here.

Sad to say this was my last Dr. Seuss picture...and I still have lots of Dr. Seuss stickers and such laying around....hmmm....I"m thinking it's time to take more pictures.....where did I put that hat....???

Re-do challenge at Scrap Our Stash

This has to be my most favorite challenge ever! I have always wanted to re-do my wedding album.

Scrap Our Stash challenged us to re-do a much older layout. I love seeing how much the trends have changed over the years. And my style...wow! What a difference! I had so many pictures, my main goal was just to get them into a book. A few colored pieces of papers, maybe a sticker or two and I was done.

Over the years, the more embellishments I saw, the difference in patterned papers, the techniques....I knew one day I would have to rework my album.

Here is my original page. My hubby proposed to me in Disney World, in front of Cinderella's Castle, just as the fireworks started. :)

So my goal was to incorporate Disney into the wedding as much as I could. Which, of course, was before they came out with the cute Disney stuff.

I simply took a piece of shimmer silver paper, used a corner punch on the pictures and adhered. The picture of Mickey and Minnie came from a coloring book. I loved the simplicity of it and it made the perfect addition to the page. Adhere and done! Wow....I think it might have taken me about 4 and a half minutes to complete this page.

And here is my re-do. I am so happy....:):):):):)

I used the same background paper. No need to waste that. The doily is a placemat sized doily that I had to cut down to fit the page. I used more shimmery silver paper for the photo mats and used a border punch.

The strips across the bottom is a combination of 3 different ribbons. The lace ribbon I just bought from Michael's Recollections sets.

The heart stickers are from K&Company along with the flowers.

My favorite part of the page are the Mickey and Minnie embellishments. :)

I started out with Mickey head paint chips from Home Depot. For the Groom, I traced and cut out a top hat, added some shimmery ribbon and a cute little flower. The bride's veil was made from a few pieces of tulle. I cut the tulle into different sizes to make layers. Then I added glitter Stickles to the edges of each piece. After the Stickles dried, I layered them together and them folded them up a bit and used a fastenator to attached it to Minnie's head. To cover up the staples, I used some Jolee's by You tiny white flowers for the headpiece of the veil.
I am so inspired to work on more of my wedding pictures! With everything that has changed over time, I could easily spend the rest of the year focusing on that album alone. And I could easily spend a lot money buying all the new gorgeous wedding goodies! :)