Some of My Favorite Ornaments

I thought it might be fun to see how many layouts I can get out of the Sweater Weather kit I won from Scraptastic and Mercy Tiara.  I've been lusting after a membership to one of the several really good scrapping kit clubs there are. And Scraptastic is definitely on the list (I kind of like that there is a choice between two  main kits each month).   But I simply have to wait until the house is sold and we are moved and settled.  Anyway this will be kind of a test for myself to see how far I can go with a kit. 

Here we go... Sweater Weather layout #1...

I used a piece of my own white cardstock, some layers of white tissue paper.  The stitched banners are from my stash (Basic Grey's 25th and Pine collection), as is the twine.   I absolutely love the Studio Tekturek white on white bokah kind of  print (Peachy Christmas #08) and the My Mind's Eye woodgrain that came in this kit.  So, to make it last a little longer, I just used strips of them,  Tore the edges of the white bokah and punched one of the strips of the woodgrain, but left the other a really thin little sliver for the top of the page. The alpha stickers from Bo Bunny are perfect with these papers, but I did also use the red Tiny Type from my stash.  The Merry Everything sticker and the red heart are from the sticker sheet that was included (Warm & Cozy from Carta Bella).  Although I did punch two of the stars from the woodgrain deer sticker that is on the sheet, since I just don't see myself using that one.   The red enamel dots came in the kit, as did the snowman flair badge. A minimal but of journaling and some penned in stitch lines and I called it done. 

This was fun!  And even though the stickers all kind of scream winter, snow and Christmas...  I see lots of other uses for the papers themselves.  There's a bit of a red, white and blue thing going on that has me wondering if I have any 4th of July photos filed away.... h-m-m-m

have a scrappy good day all,
Cheryl  

Winner, Winner...Chicken Dinner!

OK, so this has nothing whatsoever to do with chicken for dinner...  Chicken I would have to make and clean up after... this is soooo much better!  I won the current Sweater Weather Scraptastic kit via a contest at Mercy Tiara's you tube channel.  (If you've never checked her videos out, I strongly encourage you to visit her --- I have her listed in my sidebar, under places to visit.)

Anyway.....Wow is all I can say.  I like n.e.v.e.r win anything, so I was totally blown away to see my name listed as the winner of this scrumptious kit.  And to top that off, the kit arrived only a couple of days later!   Now I could take a few photos of the kit--- but better that you hop over to the Scraptastic site to check them out and besides there are several folks on you tube that do a share of their kit contents. I am so excited to go up to my little room tonight to play with my winnings!  A public, big ole thank you to Mercy Tiara for my winnings! 

In the meantime, I am putting up a travel themed page from my grandson's trip last June to Australia (and New Zealand and Hawaii). 

The background paper is from a Studio Calico travel pack from Michael's, as are most of the layering papers.  The brown and black checked pieces are from Basic Grey (a pet line from several years ago). Stitched banners are from Crate Paper and the "today" and "truly awesome" stickers I think are from Amy Tangerine.  I softened the area under the photo layers using some gesso, did a little stamping (that weird branchy looking circle,  the chevrons and the "wow" on the sunburst wood veneer) then tucked in some miscellaneous tags and a couple more wood veneer pieces. 

So the story goes (that will also be included on one of these travel pages) is that my wonderful grandson was so very pleased with himself that he took 27 photos while on his trip.  Um, 27 photos of a trip to Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii?  Hello, have you met your grandmother?  Now to be fair this was a whirlwind trip, like three days in each place and it was a wrestling junket...but...   27 photos? 

Stay tuned to see what I can create from the Sweater Weather kit and I did take photos of the gift card holders that I mentioned a while ago. 

Now off to my room to play! 

best!
Cheryl

Happy New Year.  Happy January....  Mother Nature is having her way with us.  Bitter ugly cold outside and I've been sick with whatever this body aching, congestion, coughing, fever, chills, creeping crud thing is.  Yep, happy January...  (be happy when it is over). 

The only scrappy thing I've done is to pick up photos. 

But January is a big birthday month for us; it's about this only thing that gets me through... my dad's birthday, and both my grandsons' birthdays fall in January.

This was Jacob's 8th birthday and it was his first birthday shared with Nick's parents. 

Totally scrapping from my stash---some really old Kaliedescope papers from My Mind's Eye, a little Cosmo Cricket, a little Basic Grey, some wood veneer arrows, camera, and a flair badge.  Pretty simple, just a couple layers of paper and then the little tidbits tucked in here and there. 

Kind of an unusual birthday page, not really about the birthday but about beginnings... it went into his grad album(s) as a reminder of how things were. 

I am ever hopeful that I'll be scrapping this coming weekend.  But for tonight, a load of laundry is about all I am going to accomplish. 

stay warm, '
Cheryl

Too Tired for Complicated Pages

Ho, Ho, Ho, It's my "after Christmas I'm so tired I can't think straight" time of year. 

Time for an easy page layout.  It helps that the paper was so easy to work with.  Heidi Swapp's No Limits paper pack had this arrow border paper that needed little but to pile on some coordinating papers under my photo. 

I added a few things; stamped title, a (for real) Bingo card, some tags (Pink Paislee and Tim Holtz), several banner stickers (from Glitz) for who, what, when kind of journaling, a strip of paper and a length of washi tape for the photo to rest on.  After that, I fussy cut some of the circles from the circle patterned paper (I think that one was a scrap of old Cosmo Cricket), added some leftover pieces of border stickers, and  glued on some teeny gold star sequins.  But that's really about it. This was just stuff that was out on my desk and within easy reach.   Just what I needed right now, an easy, no brainer kind of page. 

I know I mentioned posting some of my gift card holders...the pictures I took were pretty awful.  My daughter did put them aside Christmas Day so I could take photos again and hopefully I do a better job this time and can get that post up in the next day or two.  (Cuz they really did turn out cute!) 

best,
Cheryl

Fa, La, La, La, la, Lots To Do

Don't usually do this, but thought I'd post a couple pics of life at my house... (or why I haven't been able to scrap lately) 

Just like so many others, over-booked, over-worked, over-it-all...this was my 12 days of Christmas

1.  Buy tree
2.  Put up tree
3.  Catch and pick up tree after it falls over
4.  Tie tree to bookcase until son can come over and help
5.  Go to Christmas parade
6.  Bake cookies
7.  Bake more cookies
8.  Bake more cookies
9.  Decorate children (I mean cookies) 
10.  Attend Bella's first Christmas program 
11. Pick up and watch grandbabies while daughter is traveling for work
12  Finally, decorate the @#*@ tree

 

 

 

 

 

 

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night...

 

Stuff, Lots and Lots of Stuff (ephemera, stickers, and embellishments, oh my)

OK, so some scrappers can define their "style" by  describing themselves as a simple scrapper, or a minimalist, or being all about the patterned paper, or some such description.  But a defined style, me?  mmm, yeah, no. 

 As much as I jump around from subject to subject and year to year. I also seem unable to remain within one "style" of scrapping.  I can be perfectly enamored with lots of white space and minimal embellishments one week and the next be over the top for sticking on a stack of embellishments.  (Which is where we are at today; stuff, lots and lots of stuff.) 

When I saw some a couple of packs of very dimensional birthday embellishments at Michaels, I just loved them and snatched them right up. As it turns out, the paper rosettes, title banner, party hat and happy birthday sticker (part of the two different embellishment packs I grabbed) were re-branded Recollections, but are in fact part of the Party Day Maggie Holmes collection (no wonder I loved them).  I already had the ephemera pack (snared at Hobby Lobby weeks and weeks earlier) and sometime later I lucked into finding the Party Day paper pad on clearance. 

Now, with all this Party Day stuff collected I sat down to make Bella's party page.  Used two different background pieces, the diagonal red and pink stripe and the grid paper.  Prior to this I had stacked up and stapled together little piles of the flat ephemera, so I just tucked a couple of the piles in and around the photos.   I added the rosette and the party hat and then the banner title, which kind of gave me fits.  I mean that part should have been easy, peas-y.  But the title looked flat, so I cut out an extra sunburst layer for each of the letters and popped every other one up.  The sticker letters are from Echo Park, Little Girl sticker sheet and I think the party, play-fun day piece is from Heidi Swapp, but otherwise everything is Party Day.   

Where am I going with all this?  Well, there is a lotta, lotta of stuff on this page, lots more than I usually use.  So just when I think I have myself figured out style-wise, um, not so much.  I guess we'll just go with it and see where we end up. 

see where you end up, surprise!
Cheryl

Four-Square Page Design (and little boys and hats)

What is it about little boys and granddaddy's hats?  This is my Jacob man years ago at age three proudly wearing Boppa's felt cowboy hat. 

I wanted to use kind of a four-square design, and I wanted it to be casual and playful, so nothing is lined up, the outlining is done very loosely and I used three different alphas on the title square.  It's a really simple design, the four-square thing and worked out great for me because I didn't want to have to arrange and rearrange and rearrange again till I was happy with the photo placement.  It was 1,2,3 oh yeah, and 4 and I was done! 

Used Heidi Swapp No Limits papers and I think a piece of Echo Park's About a boy, as well.  Most of the embellishments are from the cut-a-parts in the No Limits pad or from a Heidi Swapp embellishment pack, but the viewmaster piece is from a Maggie Holmes emphemera pack, the Oh Boy is from the Echo Park sticker sheet (About a Boy or a Boy's Life---I can't remember which), and the little camera and dimensional star are from an Amy Tangerine embellishment pack.  The alphas used in the title are from the Echo Park sticker sheet, a Webster's Pages alpha set and the large textured red alpha are Thickers. 

And this was just taken the other day...our Mr. Jackson, a.k.a Bubba Lu (he's almost three)--and yep, he's sporting Boppa's woven cowboy hat! 

So funny to me---Jacob and the hat 15 years ago and Jackson now.  Little boys and granddad's hats, some things don't change, do they?  I may even use the same layout design to scrapbook this!

best,
Cheryl

More is Better

Sometimes serendipity takes over... "more is better" not only applies to my page title but is also pretty descriptive of the page design. 

I was watching a video on ohsnapgonzo's you tube channel and she was working up a layout with all these strips of paper and I thought it was so very cool that she was not seeming to worry about color coordinating anything, but was just going for it, gluing all the strips across the page and curling up some of the edges.  Plus, what a wonderful way to use up scraps! 

So here's my take on the strip piecing technique. 

The Jacob man insisted (way back when--I think he was 4 here) that he could indeed wear both pair of sunglasses...so he did.  More is better, he said. 

And with all the paper layers on this page...more is also better....  Plus it was just a lot of fun to grab a stack of strips and start gluing 'em down.  Now I think this technique would look really good with stitching across the strips.  But with no sewing machine, I opted to draw in some sketchy black pen lines on some of the paper strips.  And since there is so much going on with all the various paper patterns, I trimmed the whole thing down and centered it on a black piece of cardstock and kept embellishments to a minimum. 

I also spied another layout done using the same paper strips kind of technique, but this one arranged the strips by color, in a rainbow fashion. I think I have this layout pinned in my scrapbook folder on pinterest. 

But I thought I would try the technique on a more monochromatic page.  And this time, I only did a half page with the strips, varied the width of the paper strips more, inserted some scalloped border punched pieces plus a couple of stitched border pieces (those were from Basic Grey).   

I will definitely be using this method again.  Loved using up all those bits and pieces!  (Yeah, I know, it's getting a little weird how much I am into the using up the scraps thing.  Just. Cannot. Seem. To. Stop.   Note:  I also do not seem to have any shortage of scraps with which to amuse myself. )

does this require a 12-step program? 
Cheryl

A Little Glitter Here, A Little Glitter There, Lots of Glitter Everywhere!

An ornament making frenzy going on here this weekend. 

I did take some photos, because making ornaments has been a big part of my Christmas'es for a long time and I've never scrapbooked that.  Silly Nana.  We'll work on that, amongst other things. 

Here's just a sampling... 

Nope, not cookies (for whatever reason we've never even made Gingerbread cookies for Christmas...we make White Chocolate Dipped Molasses Cookies, but not Gingerbread Cut Outs.  
These are salt dough ornaments, these and the snowflakes--I just added cinnamon to the gingerbread-y looking ones.  And then "frosted" them with puffy paint and glitter glue, adding a final dusting of fine white glitter.  Small gingerbread men, large ones, snowflakes, snowman faces (not pictured--maybe later), trees, and hearts in two sizes.   

This is what they look like, just out of the oven.  Have to add some Distress Stain from Tim to get rid of the white edges and deepen the color a bit. 

These are the plain salt dough ornaments, embellished with the glitter glue, puffy paint, and loose glitter. 

Then it was one to glitter swirled glass ornaments.  Can't take any credit for this idea either...there was a gentleman that made these for a local craft fair a couple of years ago and I just loved them (bought several for my daughter).  Anyway, I thought I'd give them a try. 

Yikes, these are really bad photos!  (More subject matter for the what to do with poor photos line of posts, I guess.) 

In years past, I've usually made ornaments which required sewing...  I may still try a couple of hand sewn felt stockings or mittens...but just to use as package décor.  I don't think my hands will allow me to make too many of those. 

Oh, and just wait till I show you the gift card holders!  Not today though...today I am headed to my daughter's house for the making of the Christmas cookies (or at least the start or the cookie baking extravaganza). 

get your glitter on, girls,
Cheryl

Scrapping My Stash (again, or still)

More Christmas projects are forthcoming... but taking a break from the holiday foof-la for today, I am posting a scrap your stash sort of page. 

I think I may now have used all of the bluesy, greenie stack of scraps.  (Is it weird to get excited about using up stuff?  Cuz I kind of do...) 

I thought the colors went well with the water in  the photos and it was ok ... but it needed something a little bit more, so I outlined all the paper strips.  Still needed something more.  I used some white and green acrylic paint and applied it with two different size cardboard tubes.  TP and paper towel tubes--they were handy--it worked!  I used a torn piece of blue text patterned paper as a ledge to "sit" my photos on and added some washi tape.  Title alphas are Thickers.  The arrows and the Love Life sticker are all from Heidi Swapp, tickets and tags are from an Amy Tangerine sticker book, admit one and evidence labels are from 7 Gypsies.  The only other thing I added were some dippy-dots of Lime Stickles. 

Short blog post, I know.  But I have to get back to ornament making (and that is a page in the making, come to think of it!) 

best!
Cheryl

Gettin' My Merry Mojo On (and makin' a mess)

Recently I got to spend a weekend in my favorite fashion.  In my jammies, making cards.  Usually I start with some sort of a notion as to what I want the card(s) to look like.  Not this time.  I just got out some favorite supplies and started playing (and making a mess--not a little pile of scraps and some punches sort of mess---I'm talking a big, old, can't find your phone in it,  honkin' mess---ha!  it was great!). 

This was the first batch.  A bit of paper, part of a doily, die cut Christmas icons (covered liberally with Stickles---cuz all Christmas cards a better with something sparkly, right?) and some twine, ... and this is what happened.  I made about a dozen of these. 

On the next batch of cards, I wanted to use the cut-a-parts from a pad of Pink Paislee holiday paper and see if they could help me put together some quick and easy cards.... and they did!  All I really had to do to spruce them up a bit was layer the cut-a-part on a coordinating paper and add a dimensional embellishment (or two). And since there were two sheets of the cut-a-parts in the pad I got multiples of this set done too. 

And last I took out one of my favorite Christmas stamps, picked out some coordinating Distress inks and added a die cut greeting, some punched stars (and yeah, I still managed to get a little glitter glue going on too). 

Ahhh, jammies, paper and punches and glitter glue (and a whole lot of coffee).  It was a great weekend (I'm pretty sure even the dogs were kind of sparkly by Sunday evening.) 

It was such an awesome mess...

get your merry mojo on,
Cheryl

It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas - Without Christmas Papers! Say What?

I've said it before.  I don't have much in the way of Christmas papers.  It's not that I don't scrapbook Christmas, I do.  We just do not seem to have Christmas colors going on in our photos and they never have seemed to look right on traditional Christmas-y papers. 

In more recent years, lots of paper companies have designed papers using non-traditional colors, so they are out there, yeah!  But I've gotten kind of used to making things "merry and bright" without the use of Christmas themed papers.  I have some....see,  Oh, Deer! that I did use Christmas paper (Wassail from Basic Grey) on.  But more often than not, I've used whatever papers are on hand, combined with Christmas embellishments, sayings, punches or dies to create that Christmas feeling. 

I used old, old, old My Mind's Eye papers on this page, along with stickers from a short-lived, but extra sweet company called Girl's Paperie.  The vellum stickers are from Little Yellow Bicycle (a bargain, purchased on clearance at good old Hobby Lobby for $1.07), the Joy To The World title was made from little scrabble style letters from EK Success (and those are years and years old, you don't even want to know how long I've had those things hanging around), the glitter brads were from Making Memories, the star shaped buttons are Prima, and the ribbon is actually a piece of seam binding, scrunched and taped into place.  I added some random dots of dark red Stickles glitter glue and some outlining around the edge of the page. 

The photo is from my daughter's Christmas card circa 2006 and I only just got this scrapped---what can I say---this is how I roll--I scrap what I want, when I want and never in any particular order! The holidays can be overwhelming for lots of us...why make it any harder on yourself?  Scrap, craft, sew, bake, whatever you do, do what you love.  It makes things loads easier.  And just know, you do not have to have the perfect holiday papers to make a perfectly joyous holiday page. 

best
Cheryl

Updated Uses for Old Supplies

My bad.  Haven't blogged in a whole week.  Since Thanksgiving we've done the small town Christmas parade with the grandkids (and kids), had a house showing, spent another evening with the grandies because mommy had to travel for work (meaning Nana picked them up from their respective schools, fed them, checked school papers, and had Miss Isabella do her "homework"  -- loved this!).  So much busy-ness going on here. 

The kids here last night were "stamping" with some little Scooby and friends rubber stamps (I've had these since Jacob was little---they've more than paid for the $1.75 they cost me some 15 years ago!!!).  And it was how excited they got over this that made me think of the following page and the using old supplies thing. 

The papers were mostly older Cosmo Cricket and there is an overlay (old 7 Gypsies--from before photo overlays were all the rage).  New additions to update the page a bit was the use of washi tapes, the little cluster of tabs (punched, fussy cut and stickers) and the more updated use of two alphabet styles in the title.  Did a little outlining, added the chipboard star/circle piece (that was part of a pack purchased at Tuesday Morning for a whopping $.99 several months ago), and did my journaling using the lines of the background paper (since I cannot write in a straight line for love nor money!). 

Old supplies can sooooo be updated depending upon how they are used.  (And old supplies, or toys, are new again in new little hands.)  Jacob absolutely adored Scooby Doo and all the Scooby cartoons and movies and I'm glad to see that (old) Scooby is still well loved by my (new) youngest grandies.  I sense another Scooby layout sometime in my future! 

best,
Cheryl 

Thankful for Friends

The pumpkin pies just came out of the oven, old Tom the turkey has defrosted quite well in the fridge over the past couple days, the ingredients for artichoke dip are lined up ready to go in the mini crockpot, the bread cubes for stuffing have been seasoned and have dried out nice and crunchy, and the apple pie is set to go into the oven bright and early in the morning.  Potatoes-check, corn-check, dinner rolls-check.  All is ready for a Thanksgiving Day feast.  And of course I am thankful for family, which will be arriving (invading?) at about 11 a.m. tomorrow with even more food goodies.  But what else? 

Friends.  I am so grateful and fortunate to be able to count these two ladies as friends. 

The page?   I wanted to use white. White on white on white   I applied some white modeling paste on the background through a honeycomb stencil, used a whitewashed looking barn board paper, vellum and a piece of white handmade paper for layering.  I also used a piece of diagonally striped black and white paper (Crate, the DIY collection) as a photo mat.   Then added the white die cut (Sizzix, Stem and Leaves I think it's called), painted the wood veneer butterflies and "Laugh" with Picket Fence White stain, split a white doily in two, tied on some white (and gold) baker's twine, and added a scrap of off-white lace trim.  And because there is so much white, I repeated the black and white diagonal striped papers at the top and bottom of the page, curling up and bending the edges bit.

I saw a quote these words on a church message board the other day, "When you are down to nothing, the Lord is up to something."  I hope so.  I have to believe so.   In the meantime, we are warm and snug. We will be together.  We have family.  We have friends. 

Happy Thanksgiving all. 
Cheryl 





 

Favorites - The Last Installment - I Promise

Probably sick of my oldies but goodies, huh?  Well, bear with me through one more session while I get this out of my system... 

Favorite # 7 - a two page layout

This set of pages isn't that old, the papers are, but the layout I did just this past summer and it has become a favorite due to the contrast between the photos, papers and the black background page.  The photos, paper feathers, and title pops and I was able to include six photos across the two pages. 

Favorite #8  - a one pager

Another more recent layout.  Again, it's the simplicity and the colors I think I am drawn to.  The red and yellow plays off the colors of my Isabella's little shirt and it feels to me like a summer day, a play day.  Still not a ton of embellishments, but those that are on the page are sprinkled on to lead the eye diagonally across the page, so I guess while I really do love all the embellies that are out there on the market for us to play with, I really don't NEED a lot of them to make my pages work for me. 


Favorite # 9 - another one pager

This has to be one of the first pages selected as a favorite that is heavier on the embellishments.  But it's still not the embellishments that I think make me happiest with this page.  I think, for me, that it the embellishments would actually detract from the page if it were not for the monochromatic color scheme.  (and that little behind just makes me laugh)

And finally,

Favorite #10 - a one pager

This is the most recent of my favorites and it is embellishment heavy, but it really only works (for me that is) because the embellishments are the layers for the photo and are somewhat subtle in color.  If the ephemera stuff I layered up was brighter in color or more modern and not vintage in feel, I think it would have over-powered the photo. 

I've learned a lot by going back through layouts and selecting some favorites and then trying to view the pages objectively to determine what about them I really like.  It's not going to be the same for everyone...but for me I've learned that I can be really happy with simpler pages.  I should maybe quit struggling to include a bunch of embellishments (maybe just because everyone else is using them I've tried to use them too?) and focus on color, small tight clusters of embellies or tiny embellies sprinkled on in select areas. 

So, maybe go back through your pages and try to take an objective view of them to determine what you really are drawn to.  It's been a true learning experience for me.  I will still try new techniques, my style will still change and evolve, but I will try to pay attention to the core things that make me happy with a page. 

Done blabbing on this subject...blah, blah, blah and returning shortly to the posting of new pages and such... 

best,
Cheryl

Favorite Layouts Continued

On with my blathering about some of my favorite layouts... 

Favorite #4 - a two pager

Again about the structure of the page itself... it's the simplicity of it, the linear placement of the photos, the colors that queue in with his little orange shirt, and all those fussy cut stars leading the eye across the page.  (and that happy little face...gets me every time) 


Favorite # 5 - a one page layout

This time it's the layers of paper that coordinate, but help detract from the garage background of the photo...the colors seem to help focus my eyes on my dancing-a-jig grandson.  small doses of embellishments tightly clustered, and the star paper clip clinging to the title (sticker).   

Favorite #6 - another two pager

Gotta say, I really like the fussy cut paper, the colors, and again the simplicity of the photo placement.  I truly am drawn to order and simplicity, much as I love all the quirky and fun embellishments that exist for us to play with...I keep being drawn back to simpler pages. 

all for now,

Cheryl

My Favorite Layouts

A fellow scrapping buddy and I were talking about favorite layouts and what made them our favorites.  Now lots of time, the most recent layout I have finished is my current favorite.  But when looking through albums (or when I page way back in my blog), I found I have favorites that are not current at all...not current materials...or styles...or even current photos.  Happily, most of the time, it's the photos and the memories they evoke.  But if I look at the page as a whole, I'm surprised at some of my favorites. 

So here are some of my all time favorite pages...and a little bit about why. 

Favorite Layout #1 - a two pager

I love the colors and the little accents of aqua gemstones (reminds me of water droplets).  It feels like a bright, hot summer day at the pool when I look at these pages and I love that they make me feel like this.  I love the mix of patterns, and the dash of clean white here and there and that even with the inclusion of 5 photos, I I can still see the paper patterns.   

Favorite Layout #2

What makes this one a fave?  That look on my boy's face!  Now about the layout... the paper layers, sitting on the stacked strips and a title tucked in, nice and tight (also that little bunny-- that silly little bunny).  

and one more for today

Favorite #3 -- another two pager

Always love red, white and blue... what else makes this a favorite?  The buttons and stars and the layers of border pieces with that piece of pleated fabric, and I am still loving that title in various fonts, but word and color coordinated.  The linear photo placement appeals to me...much as I like pattern and color, I crave order (split personality, perhaps?). 

I used to do almost all two page layouts; I do them now sometimes, but I no longer feel as though I absolutely must have two pages together in an album.    I am a work in progress and so are my pages, my style evolves and changes. But, there are things that I can see that I gravitate toward; linear placement of photos and border strips, color speaks strongly to me, scattering small embellishments to lead the eye, leaving some clean or open spaces to let the eye rest. 

to be continued...
 Best! 
Cheryl

Not So Traditional Baby Page

OK, I know baby photos are typically all soft and ethereal or cutsie-patootsie (technical term, cutsie-patootsie--you know all bunnies and toys and such).  But Jackson was seated in a child's leatherette wing chair, looking rather like Winston Churchill...um, just did not really lend itself to said cutsie-patootsie. 

So I went with a distressed (Paper Loft) background paper and layered up the photo with coordinating papers in blues and browns, some tags, wood veneer butterflies, tiny paper clip and several small red accents (the baker's twine, the tiny red game pieces...love me a tiny red accent or two or three!!!). 

The tile letters in the title are Thickers, the other alpha is from Basic Grey, the Clippings collection.  I also added a little more stamping, the "love your face" and the arrows. 

Bubba-Lu is what we often call Jackson.  He's a big boy.  Always been a big boy.  Hence "Bubba."   A while ago, at lunch, I prompted him, "Come on Bubba Lu, let's eat", when his sister admonished me, in her ever so prim and proper 4-year old voice, "His name is Jackson Daniel."  To which he knitted up his eyebrows, pursed his little lips, leaned over the table and replied, "I a Bubba-U!"  Cracked me up!   Had to get this on a page.  Yes, Jackson, we do indeed call you Bubba-Lu. 

Love you, Bubba-Lu.
Nana

Scrapping Not-So-Great Photos

We've all got 'em.  We all hold on to them for various reasons.  And we all struggle to scrapbook them.  Poor photos.  Or in my case, just plain bad photos (not misbehaved---although I may have a few of those too!). 

The photos I used in this layout are old film-based photos.  Sometimes you can scan the photos into your computer and muck about with the colors  and sharpness and such, but you know what.  I just didn't want to spend that kind of time.  (I've said it before--I am a lazy scrapper!)  Plus, these were not photos of a significant event or of a great uncle Harold who no one seems to have photos of (whoever great uncle Harold is--I just figure we all have someone in the family that no one has photos of).  They are just photos I want to keep. 

To somewhat combat the poor quality of two of the pictures, I arranged the one "better" one over the top of the  other two and matted only that one (in a buttery yellow to queue in on the yellow jacket).  The two poor-er (is that even a word?) photos kind of fade to the background and become supporting photos.  It's ok, not great.  But it gets the photos on the page. 

Looking at the layout now, I kind of wish I had matted the whole layout on a navy piece of cardstock, not brown.  I used non-competing background patterns---a piece of autumn leaves patterned paper, a bit of navy print (to pick up on the jeans), an off-white notebook-y paper.  Added a couple of stamped embellishments (in navy), a coppery leaf die cut that was lying about on my desk, a couple of wood veneers (the camera and the love pieces), the yellow "Life" layered embellishment (that one is from Amy Tangerine--a pack I picked up at Tuesday Morning for a whopping $.99).   Tucked in a couple of tags and did my journaling on a speech bubble sticker.  But I needed another navy blue element to complete the visual triangle---and I just like things in threes.  So I added the finger with a string sticker (Heidi Swapp). 

The coppery leaf didn't have any detail to it, looked a little blah, so I used my stylus to outline and put in the veins and then traced over the de-bossed lines with a black pen. 

Alphas are from Thickers (another Tuesday Morning steal).  They are kind of a strange peachy beige color with not glitter on them, but more like mica pieces. 

And there it is, my not so hot photos, scrapped.  We may re-visit this whole topic of scrapping bad (or misbehaved) photos again...I have more!!

Scrapping on...
Cheryl

Water Water Everywhere

Took another stab at a watercolor background.  I sure do enjoy sloshing the paint around, but I must be a bit of a control freak because I tend to want to put the paint where I want it, but I'm pretty sure that control is not supposed to play a big part in this technique...

I just used  American Crafts white cardstock instead of watercolor paper this time.   Tried out the watercolor on acetate technique. 

Step One.  Mix up some watercolor on a piece of acetate (in my case I used an old Thickers wrapper)

Step Two.  Turn acetate over directly onto to the cardstock

Step Three.  Smoosh paint around a bit. 

Repeat...

Layered the photo on top of several pieces of plain white tissue paper, then a few pieces of patterned paper and a piece of vellum with gold metallic hearts.  (I found a partial sheet of this vellum cleaning out the closet---must have had this for years!  So what was old, is new again!)  Cut out a few of the gold hearts and then used some more gold chipboard hearts from that Heidi Swapp Project Life kit I picked up a few weeks ago and just a couple of stickers.  Really wanted to keep the page light and airy so didn't add much more.  Alphas are gold metallic Thickers---love this font and have bought them in gold, red and silver metallic, plus a black and a teal set. 

psssssst.  It's the weekend....
Happy weekend! 
Cheryl 

 

The Why's and How's of One Photo and One Page Layouts

I was talking with a friend the other day about why I have so many one-photo pages and many more one page layouts.  When I started scrapbooking years ago, it was for me.  But as time went on, the albums became for my adult children, then for my oldest grandson for graduation, and yes still for me.  So now when I view a stack of photos--I kind of mentally plot out--- this page about Jackson will eventually go into his album(s).  The page I did about Bella and frosting ( "Frosting!") will go into her album(s) and the photos I have of them both with frosting in hand (and in mouth and on face, etc.) will stay with me. 

Gotta give a little equal love to my youngest grandie, Jackson.  Just like his sister, Jackson has decided that frosting is a very good thing! 

Used some old Basic Grey Life of the Party papers, as well as some ephemera from Jillibean Soup, Maggie Holmes, and a couple of tab stickers from Simple Stories SNAP!.  The alphas used in the title are super old Heidi Swapp (yeah--I still have several packs of these...loved them then, love them now.  I'll be sad when they are gone.)  I punched a little star or two or three, and used some of my homemade enamel dots.  That's about it.  This page went together much more quickly than did Bella's frosting page---mainly because I had been hunting about trying to find just the right color and size alpha for the title on that page. 

 Best!
Cheryl

Snow.  It's a four letter word... for a reason.    And guess what was blowing about the other morning when I woke up at the ungodly hour of 4:00 a.m.  It didn't last or accumulate, but there it was. 

So with the cold beginning to set in, I found these photos of Miss Isabella taken at last year's homecoming game.  (The story... very small town, no baby sitters available--because, duh, it's homecoming... so daughter of mine hurries home, hurries the kids through dinner, potty, and re-bundles them up to bring them to the big game...never thinking to check feet for socks~!  After all, you send them to daycare with socks on...pretty much thinking they will come home that way...) 

So we notice midway through the game when Bella is sitting on my lap, that she has no socks on.  And it was c.o.l.d. 

I used a piece of paper for the background that came in a pack of Lucky Charm paper from Dear Lizzy.  It happened to be one of those designs that I kind of shook my head thinking I might have to just ignore the design and use it for the pale pink color.  But it happens that it worked out really well for this page!  I used some water colors for the purple and hot pink background to coordinate a bit with Bella's coat.  And the title took care of itself; used a Thickers set in purple that I never thought I'd be able to use up!  But I ended up having to piece a few of the "e"s together because I ran out, so I'm thinking I've pretty well exhausted this set! 

Photos are matted on vellum and a purple and white polka dot paper that had no branding on it whatsoever; I've had it for years.  Glad to finally use it!  Rub on leaves were from Basic Grey, added a purple felt flower and dark maroon button, the Just Believe tag from Heidi Swapp, a couple of strips of another pink dotted paper and a branding strip from the Lucky Charm collection, some bits of washi tape and some pink and purple sequins and called it done.  

Happy Saturday everyone! 
Cheryl