A Baby Page from the Past

I'll admit I was at a bit of a loss when given the assignment to scrap a baby page for a recent Get It Scrapped! article. After all, my "baby" is 27 years old and I've thoroughly scrapped his baby days. So I dug deep into the archives and found baby pictures of ... my husband.

Older photos like these can be a challenge. The colors may be faded and the subject very small. Memories are nearly impossible to recall, so by necessity the journaling is short and of a more general nature. But they are the only pictures available and deserve a place in my scrapbook!

Whether you have photos of your baby, grandbaby, nephew, niece, a good friend's child, or even yourself or your spouse, this article will give you nine great ideas for getting those baby photos onto a scrapbook page. Why not check it out?

Next week is the last week of summer before I return to my piano teaching schedule. We plan to pack in lots of outdoor fun, so I'm taking a blog break to enjoy these activities. I'll be back on Labor Day with the Simple Scrapper September Blog Hop! Hope you'll stop back then!

Two-Page Tuesday: Clean and Simple

I should call this Two-Page Tuesday post the "minimalist edition", because I used a sketch, but only for the photo placement! There is enough color in the photos for my taste, so all I added were slim patterned paper strips, wavy border stickers, the title, journaling strips, three stars, a few buttons and a banner. The color palette is limited to a few blues and a pop of red.

Design Inspiration: Sketches for Scrapbooking, Volume 6

This might be the least amount of product I've ever used on a page! Yet I'm pleased with the results. How minimalist have you ever gone? Were you comfortable with it?

Take Twelve: August 2012

The special theme for August is...food! Perfect timing, in my humble opinion. You can't beat August in the midwest for fresh produce. Whether it comes from our own garden or the local farmer's market, with minimal preparation you can have a tasty meal that tastes even better when eaten outdoors. I'm also not averse to baking yummy peach desserts and chocolate chip zucchini bread! But my hands-down favorite is the tomatoes from our garden. They have such flavor and cannot compare with the store bought variety. This is the only time of year I will eat tomatoes, and I do so every day until they are gone. Does this make me a tomato snob?

The design template for this page came from Ella Publishing's Take Twelve Guided Inspiration Kit. The majority of my products are from My Mind's Eye On the Sunny Side collection. The title is a combination of American Crafts Thickers and Jillibean Soup Alphabeans - love these little guys! 

Even if you are not participating in Take Twelve, does your summer scrapping list include a layout about your favorite seasonal foods?

Incorporating Maps

A recent article over at Get It Scrapped! covered ideas for scrapbooking road trips. For my contribution, I chose to trace the route on a map. Our Spring Break vacation was one big road trip, covering 1600 miles and 26 hours, 39 minute of travel time in the car. Whew! I printed a map from MapQuest highlighting our route and used brads to pinpoint each destination. The six smaller photos represent our stops.

I’ll use this page to introduce the trip in my travel album and follow it up with layouts about each place we visited. Most of the products are from Jillibean Soup. You can read the rest of the road trip article here. There's some great inspiration, so I hope you go check it out!

Ten Things On the 10th

Ten Favorite Recent Pins on Pinterest

#1. This layout. Love the circles, the tag and the small photos.

Source: clubcreatingkeepsakes.com via Sue on Pinterest

#2. This knitted headband. Trying to decide if these would look good on me.

Source: weefolkart.com via Sue on Pinterest

#3. This layout. I like the large letters and mixture of colors and patterns.

Source: scrappyjedi.com via Sue on Pinterest

#4. This cartoon. Because that's our sense of humor around here.

Source: Uploaded by user via Sue on Pinterest

#5. This recipe. Because I need something to do with all the stuff ripening in our garden.

Source: midwestliving.com via Sue on Pinterest

#6. This layout. So much about it I want to scraplift.

Source: debbiehodge.com via Sue on Pinterest

#7. This layout. Wish I could create irregular grid pages as well as Lisa Truesdell does.

Source: gluestickgirl.typepad.com via Sue on Pinterest

#8. This scene. A house by the lake with a wraparound porch. Sigh...

Source: whittenarchitects.com via Sue on Pinterest

#9. This room. Because there is a grand piano. I bet the acoustics are great.

Source: homedsgn.com via Sue on Pinterest

#10. This location. We hope to visit here before summer is over.

Source: midwestliving.com via Sue on Pinterest

Ten Things on the 10th: Participants will share something totally of their own creation - but always ten things. Some will share ten photos, ten crafty ideas, ten sources of inspiration, ten recipes, ten things in a collection... always ten things and always on the tenth of the month. If you'd like to see more Ten Things on the 10th posts, click here to visit Shimelle's blog. (and find out how you can join in)

One Word Titles

A recent article over at Get It Scrapped! covered ideas for using short titles on scrapbook pages. Debbie Hodge wrote:

"A good title connects your photos to their story. One-word titles are clear and direct, often labeling your topic and even pointing the way to deeper meaning. What’s more, they offer great design opportunities." 

I often pull my title from my journaling, and in this case the one word I chose has a double meaning. While many of the pieces in my glass collection are precious in terms of monetary value, even more precious to me are the memories associated with them. These pieces all have a personal story to tell, so I love their family history as much as I admire their beauty.

To get started, I chose patterned paper and brads from My Mind's Eye Nostalgia collection and some Thickers. As the page got going, I also pulled my American Crafts Date Stamp, some more MME, and my Martha Stewart and EK Success punches.

You can see the rest of the Creative Team's layouts and read the article here. Do you prefer to create shorter or longer titles? Personally, I enjoy them both!

Simple Scrapper August Blog Hop

Welcome to the first-ever Simple Scrappers Blog Hop! Today the design team is featuring layouts made with the August collection of sketch templates, which are available to premium members of Simple Scrapper. You can win a one-month trial subscription; details will be at the end of this post. But first, here are my layouts!

I used Studio Calico's Elmwood Park kit to create these pages. For this first layout, I challenged myself to work in layers and include at least 3 items per layer. This helped me stay focused, think of ways to use my stash, and include items I normally don't think of using. I worked in this order: Background Layer, Photo Layer, Title and Journaling Layer, and Embellishment Layer.

For this second page, I made the trio of embellishments first, then added the patterned paper, the photo and finally the title and journaling. I like mixing up the process!

Here's the blog hop list so you can enjoy more inspiration from the rest of the Design Team. They are a talented group of scrappers!

• Julie Aldridge
• Sue Althouse - that's me!
• Lisa Corbin-Polak
• Ronnie Crowley
• Jess Forster
• Michele Holcomb
• Margrethe Aas Johnsen
• Aimee Maddern
• Valerie Mangan
• Jean Manis
• Amy Kingsford
• Pam Lozano
• Kat Tankersley

You can use this link to enter a giveaway for a one-month trial subscription to Simple Scrapper: http://ow.ly/ctrlx    

***The Premium Membership at Simple Scrapper provides skills and shortcuts to help you simplify and find more meaning in your memory keeping.

Simple Scrapper Monthly Challenge

Every month there is a challenge over at Simple Scrapper with a lovely little prize for the winner. This month's challenge is to create a layout using a 3x3 grid, based on this sketch:

For my page about our Fourth of July concert at Greenfield Village, I followed this simple formula that I made up myself. Not particularly clever, but it gets the job done.

A Few Products + A Few Tools = Clean, Classic, Colorful

Design Notes:

• Instagram photos are perfect for this square grid design!
• The red, white and blue (with a touch of green) color scheme is subtle and vintage in keeping with the filter on the Instagram photos.
• Paper piecing the stars lends a homey, old-fashioned feel to the page. Using two 6x6 paper pad collections from the same company allows confident pattern mixing.
• The black background helps even these toned-down colors pop off the page.

Supply List:

Patterned Paper & Alphabets: Lily Bee (Memorandum & Harvest Market) 

Star Dies and Punches: Spellbinders, Fiskars

If you would like to participate in this challenge, everything you need to know is right here. I'd love to know if you submit a layout. Feel free to add your link to the comments in this post so I can come check out your work!

***The Premium Membership at Simple Scrapper provides skills and shortcuts to help you simplify and find more meaning in your memory keeping.

August Sneak Peeks

Is it just me, or is summer really flying by? I can't believe it's August already! Just one more month to fill with warm weather fun before I start teaching again. I plan to make the most of it. Here's a peek at what I've got going on the blog...


1. Design Team projects for Get It Scrapped!, Easy Scrapbook Pages and Simple Scrapper

2. Projects from Claudine Hellmuth's Composition for Collage Class over at Big Picture Classes. That's if I have the nerve to share anything from a class that is taking me out of my comfort zone. Will I see any of you over there?

3. Last but certainly not least, my first published layout, which appeared in the July 2012 issue of Scrapbook Trends! (it's on page 84)

I also hope to include some of my regular monthly features, like Ten Things on the 10th, Take Twelve, Two-Page Tuesday, and A Peek at My Process. But I know you'll understand if August is not about staying inside scrapping. It's more about getting outside and creating great summer memories to scrap! How will you be spending your time this August?