Another prom layout today. 

Jacob and his date posing for the customary photos... Ah, don't they look sweet?  I just love prom pictures; the girls all done up and their pretty dresses, the boys all cleaned up and looking so grown up in their tuxes. 

I used some grey prints (the stripe and the damask) that had no markings on them to tell me who made them.  I wanted just small touches of yellow to pick up on her dress, but didn't want an entirely yellow layout, so I used a soft grey cardstock for the background and the grey prints, then tucked in small pieces from a cut apart sheet from Crate paper, the yellow check (from Lily Bee), a punched piece of yellow cardstock, small pieces of a doily, and flowers from Prima and Petaloo,  The alphas are silver glitter Thickers (Dear Lizzy); banners were hand cut from the grey print papers. 

 It's early... gonna hit some scrappy blogs this morning with my coffee, give the house a quick once over in case we get a call for a showing, then sneak in a little scrapping before the grandies come over. 

What are you doing today?  Hopefully a little paper is involved!
Cheryl

OK, Monday is here again.  It was kind of a gray and rainy weekend here.  Saturday was a good day to spend making Louisiana Red Beans and Rice since it takes almost all day to cook.  And to make chocolate chip cookies.    I have to say, I still miss my old stove.  Still guessing on baking times with this new one.  Well it's new as of last year Christmas when the oven went in the middle of making a batch of cookies.  I set it at 7 minutes and the cookies were underdone---stuck them back in for 1 minute more--perfect!  Next batch, set it at 8 minutes and they were not burnt--but well overdone.  argh#!  It's a process I guess.  I had the old stove for 20 years, so I suppose a learning curve is to be expected.  After 20 years, I just knew what to expect and what to set the thing at with the old one. 

Learning curves... they are everywhere.  Tried and true things may need to be shaken up a bit in order to make things work sometimes.  I think that can hold true for scrapbooking too.  

I tend to scrapbook from a color standpoint, matching and coordinating colors with those that are worn by the primary subject matter in the photo.  And I learned something, sometimes that just doesn't work.  And this was kind of a surprise to me.  I had the perfect colors for this layout on its first go round, the paper picked up both the pink that my little Izzie was wearing, the coral that her mommy had on and brown... and it just didn't work.  It was too busy, it was way too much pattern (and that's saying something for me, cuz I like pattern).  So a tore it all apart and went with softer, more pastel colors and my tried and true border stripping.  Much better. 

Papers and alpha are Prima.  I cut the scallopped piece to peek out from under the polka dot piece and then added the strip of smaller print on top of that.  Another scallopped piece and another floral strip went across the top to act as kind of a header. 

I did save the floral stickers and the flourish sticker from the original layout and used them again on this one.  Those are from Echo Park (I think it was from A Good Day--was that the name? ee-uh I don't know--got it in a collection pack from Hobby Lobby quite a while ago). 

Anyway, I used the backside of the Prima papers and roughed up the edges under the lead photo.  Then added a piece of lace as a little extra horizantal grounding.  I also wanted to use the alphas as kind of both journaling and title.  She has changed so much since these photos were taken, but she is still seldom quiet and a little bossy! 

Well, that's about it---I have some paperwork to wade through, phone calls to make, and the ever present dishes to do before I can get up to my little room to play with paper. 

Happy Monday!  I don't know why, but Monday's have almost always been my favorite day of the week.  It holds such promise for everything that I want to get done.  This week that means another load of stuff to Goodwill, to unbury the kitchen table from all the stuff that seems to accumulate there, a job interview on Friday (for a job I'm not r-e-a-l-l-y sure I want, but not sure I have a choice at this point; it's not the job, but the logistics) and the arrival of my Stampin' Up order, not to mention the pages and cards that are started, but not yet finished! 

I was having a difficult time finding the right tone of blue to scrapbook this page of Jacob with his Great Grandma Elaine (everything I looked at had an aqua cast to it and didn't look quite right), when I happened to spot my box full of handmade and specialty papers.  These were all purchased years ago for collage and mixed media projects.  But it was the blue paper that was calling out to me---here I am; I'm the right color blue---see me?! 

After I loosely cut a hunk of it for use on the layout, I started layering papers under the photo and yes, I even took out the old sewing machine (not really working quite right, the poor old thing).  But it did behave long enough to sew through a couple of the layers. I wanted the photo on straight, but the layers to be on a little wonky and crooked.  Besides the blue handmade, I used a white waffle textured handmade and a couple of pieces of Basic Grey and My Mind's Eye for layering and two doilies.  The alphabet strip sticker is off an older Creative Imagination's sheet.  Flowers are Prima.  I didn't want to use gems or buttons for flower centers on the medium size flowers you see, so I scrunched up smaller flowers and glued them to the centers.  I like the dimension it gives them.  Some light blue buttons also found their way onto the page

The challenges with this page were not over yet, though!  The letter "L" in the woodgrain look Thickers set that I liked so much, didn't look like an "l" when I laid it down.  It looked like a capital "C", so I chopped part of it off.  And I stuck on a few of the little asterisks (they kind of look like flowers) to bring a bit of brown into the flower-y areas. 

Apparently, challenge was the name of the game with this page---because although the blue Primas are perfect in color in reality---they photographed with this slight peachy tinge to them---I'm guessing it was my flash (it was pretty overcast the day I took the photo of the page) -- but by this point, I wasn't going to haul it back outside and re-photograph. 

Whew, done.  So there, she says, triumphantly sticking her tongue out at all those little challenges trying to get in her way! 

Time for a bit of little girl goodness.  And a change up in scrapping styles.  While I am enjoying (a lot lately) this kind of free form scrapping; the tucking in of small scraps of paper with tags and stickers and bits and pieces of journing tags sticking out, these pages wound up being much simpler. 

And that's ok with me.  I tried loosely placing strips of paper behind the lead photo and try as I might they just kept getting straightened out and lined up.  They just looked better to me straight and then I tucked in the piece of brown and thought oh yeah--it needed a border.  So there you have it...  sometimes you just have to let the paper do what it wants to. 

It's a quick post today...  I guess the overriding message is that it's ok to change up the style of your scrapping.  Otherwise every page would look so similar, it wouldn't be as interesting to peruse those albums.  And just like the selection of color, or paper---maybe the style needs to be dictated by the photos (or, er, um... the papers, if you let them...). 

I used papers and flowers from Prima, cardstock from  Bazzill and pulled out my Cricut to cut the title and the swirls.  It's called "Get Happy" cuz when I look at our little Miss Izzie in these photos, that old song, "Come on, Get Happy" started playing in my head....  (y-e-a-h, I can see what you're thinking, she has issues---she let the paper go where she thinks it wants to and the photos sing to her--ok, maybe a little less caffeine is in order...) 

Have a scrappy good day everyone (and it's really ok if your photos sing to you)! 
 

Made myself a decorated composition notebook.  I thoroughly trashed my older one, carting it to and from, tossing it in the backseat of the car.  I'm sure this one will get man-handled too.  But right now it's all pretty and fresh and ready for notes on new class ideas, sb page ideas, and quotes and quips that I want to remember.   

Used a couple of sheets of an older Prima paper (Rue 88), some coordinating Prima Essentials flowers plus a few from an E-line package, few tiny Prima rosebuds and I even cut a few flowers out of the lace and tucked them in.   The label at the top of the notebook is actually part of the backing of a Prima flowers package. 

Today  I will be off to help my friend Sandy with her grandson's first grade class making Mother's Day cards.  This should be fun!  Gotta love the energy and enthusiasm of 6 and 7 year olds.  I only hope I am up to it.  Then tonight I am teaching Hot Flashes!, a class for everyone who has forgotten about their heat gun and those who are new to stamping and heat embossing.

White on white on white. 

I wanted to make a card that did not use any pattern paper AND that did not require stamping.  White on white texture is what popped into my head.  Embossed a layer of white cardstock with a dotted embossing folder(Cuttlebug), embossed the edges of that with an iridescent sparkling powder (Judinkins) and used pop dots to secure it to a folded white card.   Then it was time to layer on two pieces of lace (Prima), the small pearl flourish (Prima), the white sparkly flower (Prima)  and a pretty sparkly dangly thing (Prima Vintage Trinkets). 

I think I may make a white on white sb page...  wonder what kind of pictures I could use on that... wedding comes to mind, but that would be far too expected!?!  But maybe baptism photos or new baby photos.

Friday Favorites... 

* Confession; I really like McDonalds' Caramel Latte Coffee.
* Am loving driving my new, used car.
* Cushy new pair of Mootsie Tootsies making my feet so very happy
* Red Velvet Cookies (they are evil, evil, evil---but so darn good)
* Martinelli's Sparkling Apple Cider.
* White. White pens, white embossing powders, white cardstocks. Don't know why.  Just going with it. 


From my desk: 

Found just the right papers for my pictures of Jacob and his brand new sister.  (Well, she's not brand new anymore...)  I just never found the right papers for these photos before this.  Everything was too baby, to sweet.  And I wanted these pages to be about Jacob.  So when I was cruising Two Peas and saw this line from Prima (called Reflections), I just knew it would be perfect .  So rich.  yum, yum yummy yum. 

Still have to add the journaling.  I think I will type it out in one sentence lines, cut them into strips and put them on the page in a row.  hmmm maybe.  we'll see.  (I am sooo decisive. yeah. not.) 

Just a closer look at the flowers! I had such fun putting this together.  Who says you can't put flowers on a boy's page???  Now on to the secondary page. Still have to have a coordinating second page.  Maybe one day I will get over this and do single pages and not worry about making matched or coordinating two page layouts.  But, not today.  Not there, yet. 

Happy Friday everyone.  Happy Easter!

I can scrap with pink

So I promised a layout and here it is. 

I used mostly Prima products on this. I think the only things that aren't from Prima are the pink and brown cardstocks.   Loads of flowers.  And I changed the photo to sepia (see it in color on an earlier post).  I just love the softness that printing in sepia gives photos, especially close-ups.   The other thing I did was to change one of the prima flowers.  While I loved the large pink flower with tulle, it had several pearls and a large bling gem that was a hot pink.  The hot pink so didn't go with this layout. So I kind of pulled the gems off and replaced them with a smaller paper flower.  I even used part of the packaging from one of the packs of flowers for the journaling. 

Wow, I guess I can scrap with pink!