February Sketches

Just beating the deadline for a few online sketch challenge blogs. Sometimes if it weren't for the last minute, I'd never get anything done! First, from The Scrappiest February 7th sketch, this layout is a tribute to our best friends.

Background Paper: Basic Grey Basics

Patterned Paper: My Mind's Eye Bloom and Grow

Journaling Tags: My Mind's Eye Bloom and Grow

Stitching: We Are Memory Keepers Sew Easy 

Flower: Prima

Lettering: Thickers

Other: buttons, brad

This layout is for Creative Scrappers February 13th sketch #143. The four of us had a great time at our annual Scrapbook Mega Meet last May. (notice my best friend from the previous layout is also in this one) Registration for this year's Mega Meet opens in March and I'm already getting excited to go again.

Background Paper: white, green cardstock

Patterned Paper: Bo Bunny Abbey Road

Journaling Stickers: Basic Grey Basics 

Flowers: Jillibean Soup Corrugated Flowers

Lettering: Thickers

Other: buttons

Is anyone else as glad as I am that one more winter month is almost behind us? Welcome March!

Friday Picks

Here is the biweekly installment of my best online finds related to scrapbooking. I'm so thankful snowstorms can't stop me from surfing these links!

#1 Debbie Hodge's article, 10 Ways to Make a Scrapbook Page Title, is very practical and inspiring. Great ideas!


#2 I think I could make these handmade flowers, which should tip you off that this is a very easy tutorial. See how Tara crafts her Glittered Posies on the Crate Paper blog.

#3 Have you been catching the excitement over Echo Park Paper? Here is "I Spy Echo Park!" featuring fabulous projects from all over the internet that use Echo Park Paper products.

#4 Becky's new studio is really making me wish I could get my scrap room out of the basement! Maybe someday.

#5 And if that's not enough, my blog buddy and fellow enabler, S, pointed me to iHeart Organizing. Love Jen's posts!


#6 The twelve challenges in Ella Publishing's new eBook, How to Scrap Your Personal Heritage, provide a springboard to great story telling! 

There's still time to enter the February Challenge over at Scrapbookers Anonymous. You can find my contribution as a member of the design team here. Great way to use up your stash and have a chance to win a wonderful prize! Deadline is February 28th.

Valentine Follow-Up

Yesterday I had the exciting honor of being a Guest Designer on the Making Memories blog! The layout I submitted features their Je t'Adore collection. A more detailed description of the layout design and some close-up photos are on the Making Memories blog. I'd be thrilled to have you click on this link to check it out!

As an added bonus to my wonderful and faithful blog readers, here are a few Valentine cards I created using leftover paper from the kit Making Memories sent me, plus a few additional supplies from my stash.

Additional supplies: Core'dinations Whitewash cardstock, Cuttlebug dot embossing folder, Sandylion Essential flower stickers

These cards were mailed to Card Cupids for The Children's Hospital at Legacy Emanuel. They are doing a fantastic job over at Card Cupids!

Did you take some pictures on Valentine's Day? Do you have a favorite photo that needs to make it on a layout ASAP? That's called seizing the moment - grab it before it gets away!

Crate Paper Restoration, Part 1

I'm finally ready to reveal my layouts using the Crate Paper Restoration line! This first two-pager shows the Edison Lab at Greenfield Village. Love these night photos Phil took; the lighting gives them a vintage feel.

Design: Sketches for Scrapbooking, Vol. 4

Other: Basic Grey Basics journaling sticker, Tim Holtz metal gears and arrows
Journaling: "In our computer age, it's always amazing to contemplate the inventions that emerged from this simple building."

This next layout is my version of Christmas Past at Greenfield Village. The photos are various scenes around the village in December, portraying holiday traditions.

Design: Sketches for Scrapbooking, Vol. 5

Paper: Crate Paper Restoration, Basic Grey Basic (background paper)

Other: October Afternoon and Slice lettering, Distress Ink on journaling strips, Basic Grey Jovial snowflake stickers

Journaling: "We greatly enjoy the stories told by GV volunteers who love historical America as much as we do!"

Tomorrow I plan to post a couple 1-page layouts using my Crate Paper Restoration stash. I really enjoyed working with one paper line for several projects. Rather than getting bored, I developed a creative flow as I progressed. Have you ever done that? What gets your creative juices flowing as you scrap?

Crate Paper Restoration, Part 2

Today I'm featuring single page layouts using Crate Paper Restoration. This is the Martha Mary Chapel at Greenfield Village. Love the night scene, the lighting, the fresh blanket of snow on the ground. Just a magical setting.

Journaling: "This chapel was built in 1929 at the head and highest spot in Greenfield Village. It was names for Clara Ford's mother, Martha Bryant, and Henry Ford's mother, Mary Litogot Ford. Weddings are still held here year 'round."
Lettering: October Afternoon and Thickers (a favorite combination)


And finally, Winter Scenes at Greenfield Village. While some would call these photos blurry, in our house we call them "capturing motion". Phil tells me it's just difficult to get good night pictures when everyone is moving! So I decided to embrace the blur (excuse me, motion) and group these photos together.

Journaling: "We love coming to GV to catch the sights and sounds of an old-fashioned winter!"

Other: October Afternoon lettering, Basic Grey Basics journaling sticker

So that's it for the Crate Paper. I made a few cards from scraps, broke apart the rest of my kit and filed it in my leftover paper stash, which is sorted by color. Got my eye on a few of their new collections....

Catching Up

Earlier this week when I shared my news about being the newest member of the Journaling Junkie Design Team, in my excitement I neglected to post any layouts. No eye candy? Shame on me. So to make up for my bad manners, here are the two layouts I submitted for the current challenge, Seasons. 


First, this fall layout, because autumn really is my favorite season. With these gorgeous photos, I kept everything else very simple. That decision afforded me time to play around with the font colors on my computer journaling.

I also submitted this layout about spring, because at this time of year, many of us are yearning for spring to put in an appearance, even briefly.

I haven't seen that first robin yet, but there is always hope. Do you have a favorite season? Have you scrapped about it? What about a season of life - do you love your current one? That deserves a layout!

Scrapping My Stash

This month I have the honor of being a Guest Design Team Member over at Scrap Our Stash. The announcement on their blog is here. The February Challenge is to do a LOVE project; if you want to enter you can see the complete details here. This is the page I submitted. You can see it on their blog here, where I included a complete description of the story behind the layout. 

You lucky blog readers also get a behind the scenes peek at some of the design details. First, I used this sketch from Sketch Support, and the paper is My Mind's Eye So Sophie.

A quick online search let me to this free front of Scrabble letters, which I printed onto kraft cardstock. And I busted out the Sew Easy tool for some handmade detail.

A little inking on the edges of the journaling sticker and embellishments helped them stand out on the page. Maybe playing Scrabble isn't the first thing that comes to mind when you think of LOVE, but it's helping us fight cabin fever this winter, so that's got to count for something!

WOYWW

Today you can see the remains of a project I started two weeks ago, namely, to use my Crate Paper Restoration paper collection. So how did I do? Glad you asked.

          Completed - two, 2-page layouts

          Completed - two, 1-page layouts

          Completed - two cards (you can seem them sitting on my desk)

          Filed - leftover paper into my stash, put some stuff in my giveaway box

          Yet To Do - a photo shoot of my layouts and a blog post

Not bad. Not bad at all. (patting myself on the back)

"What's On Your Workday Wednesday" is a weekly event where over one hundred crafters show and tell what's going on in their corners of the world. You can go to Julia's blog for more glimpses of our creative endeavors.

I'm A Journaling Junkie!

I am excited to announce that I am now a part of the Journaling Junkie Design Team! This blog is a hidden gem. There are two monthly journaling challenges and then the design team gives their versions for further ideas and inspiration. If you make a layout, you can put leave a comment with a link to your blog or gallery. This would be a great way to combine the journaling challenge with say, a sketch challenge, and have two for the price of one!


The current challenge is Seasons. As in, what do you love about the season you're in? It could be weather, ie. summer/autumn/winter/spring or it could be a season in your life. You can find the post for this challenge here and my layout here.

If you are looking for ideas to tell more stories on your scrapbook pages, may I suggest becoming a follower of Journaling Junkie? This would be a great way to mix up your Event Scrapbooking (we went here, we did this, we had fun) with stories that may not be tied to any particular event. I definitely want those kinds of pages in my albums to pass on to future generations. How about you? 

Friday Picks

Here is the (now) biweekly installment of my best online finds related to scrapbooking. Enjoy surfing these links!

#1 Do you love a classic layout design? Check out what Teka did with her 4-square grid. Playful, fun, anything but boring!

#2 Tammy is having a love/hate relationship with scrapping challenges, but her layout looks great and she offers some insightful comments. 

#3 Here's some serious Valentine card eye candy, courtesy of Stasia on the Making Memories blog, using their Je t'Adore collection. 

#4 Ella Publishing has been posting CHA Recaps all week. This one is my favorite because of the Smash book video and all the fun button sets.

#5 I'm really enjoying the new Sketch Support blog. Here's a great post about options for redesigning a large background piece in a sketch - very creative!


#6 Have you heard about Pinterest? Here's a little teaser blog post to whet your appetite, and here's the episode of Paperclipping Roundtable where it was a Pick of the Week. (I'm just getting started and here are my boards, so far)  

There's still plenty of time to enter the February Challenge over at Scrapbookers Anonymous. You can find my contribution as a member of the design team here. Great way to use up your stash and have a chance to win a wonderful prize! Deadline is February 28th.

1 Sketch, 2 Ways

My two cats, Lucky and Chessie, each have their funny little quirks and unique personalities. I recently documented some of their more endearing traits on
8.5 x 11 layouts using the same basic layout design, but different color schemes.

This is Lucky, who loves to be around moving yarn and knitting needles. She'll watch quietly for a bit, and then she just can't help herself and springs into action. Lucky is also a princess, can you tell by that top pose? She's beautiful and she knows it. But also a very nice cat.

And then there's my black cat, Chessie, whose favorite toy is her stuffed turtle. Turtle is a little worse for the wear these days. That white material on the side is her stuffing coming out. Again, this is pretty much the exact same layout with a different color scheme. I even used my go-to striped pattern paper on each.

If you own pets (or more correctly, if they own you), have you documented something special about their habits or personalities?

More Winter Layouts

I've completed a few more pages using my Fancy Pants Hot Chocolate paper. Finished just in time, too, because I am ready to move on from scrapping winter. We got 6 inches of snow last week, 4 more inches on Saturday and scattered flurries in the forecast for this week. Nothing like the east coast, but I'm longing for some sunshine.

Scenes at the ice show in nearby Plymouth, but not from this year. The arctic cold kept us home. So photos from a past ice show work just as well.

Another view from our house, this time out an upstairs window looking into the back yard. The building is our neighbor's garage. I like the photo and the way the curtains frame the winter scene outside.

The other layouts I made using this paper line can be found in my post here. So what about you - ready for winter to be over, or would you still welcome more snow?

WOYWW and Blog Award

Since we are in the path of the Groundhog Day Blizzard, I'm pretty confident of having the whole day to myself to scrap, unless of course we lose power. Phil bought a generator so at least the furnace and refrigerator can keep running, but that's about it. Fingers crossed that the lights stay on, because I've got quite a bit going on at my work desk. I'd hate to waste this opportunity.

First - A gathering of Basic Grey Basics, journaling options, planning paper, sketches and ideas for my latest batch of layouts.

Second - Piles of pictures from Greenfield Village. We have a membership and come here so often that I've set aside an album just for our visits. It's a collection Phil and I will love, and it's okay if nobody else appreciates it but us. Which I totally suspect will be the case.

Third - The paper and embellishments I want to use, Crate Paper Restoration. Perfect for my historical setting.
Confession Time: The real reason I want to use up this collection is so I will feel justified in buying the new Crate Paper lines I've seen debuted at CHA. Is that wrong?

Finally, the total accumulation of stuff as it sits on my workdesk. I love having a bigger project of several layouts in progress. I feel like I can immerse myself in the process more fully than when I just do one layout at a time. 


"What's On Your Workday Wednesday" is a weekly event where over one hundred crafters show and tell what's going on in their corners of the world. You can go to Julia's blog for more glimpses into our creative endeavors.


On to a bit of other news...
I recently received a blog award from Danielle. You can see her wonderful blog here. Thanks Danielle!

Now I must pass the award on to a few of my favorite bloggers:

Jennifer - Happy Things

ScrappnBee the Scrapbooker

Angela - Paper Cupboard

Liz - Celebrate We Will...

There are a couple of conditions for the award:

If you have been tagged and want to participate, create a post where you add the above 'LOVE BLOG' image, then link back to me and let me know that you accept the award. Choose 3 - 5 favorite blogs which you also link in your post, then each blogger will inform you that they have been tagged. (Try to chose bloggers with less than 100 followers to help spread the word about the great blogs you love.)

February Challenge

Here is the February Challenge over at Scrapbookers Anonymous. This month you must use as many X's as possible on your layout! So dig into your stash and get ready to use up those extra letters!  I made a few basic decisions to get me started on this one.


Decision #1 - with past experience as an avid cross-stitcher, I saw the x's not as letters, but as stitches and thus, as a design element
Decision #2 - with an embarrassingly large supply of black Thickers, I headed for those and pulled 22 X's from my stash
Decision #3 - with a desire to use a classic color combination, I decided to go with black and tan and pulled my favorite kraft cardstock


With those very basic decisions made, I started playing and eventually ended up with this border design...

...which eventually morphed into this layout. The final result surprised me. Not my usual style at all, but interesting. The Tim Holtz tissue tape borders at the top and bottom was a last minute decision that made me very happy.

I hope you'll consider giving this challenge a try. You have until the end of the month and there is a great prize! You can see that prize what the rest of the design team came up with here.