First Day of School

Last year I started the School of Life album for my oldest.  So when the first day of school rolled around I wasn't sure what to do with the pics.  I know that I will use them in the School of Life albom but I still wanted to document the day with a page.

Enter Crystal Wilkerson and her awesome templates!  She posted this one (and several other color variations) as free downloads over at Ella Publishing.  It took all of 5 minutes to add my photo and the date.  And DONE!  It's cute, it was quick, and it marks his first day of school.  Love that!
















What did you do to honor the first day of school in your home?  Ever used a digi quick page?  Ever wish you could go back to simpler times and be in elementary school again?  Leave me a comment, I'd love to hear all about it!

Made Me Laugh

It has begun!  It's time for the Mother LOAD.  It started on Sept 1st, and I am attempting to make a layout a day for 26 days.  Hopefully that will mean lots of scrappy pages to share with you!

The challenge that inspired this layout was to scrap the last time you LOL.  I knew immediately which story I had to tell.  But I didn't have any pictures.  Luckily my son wants to play this game every day so it wasn't hard to grab my camera and re-create the moment.

Design Inspiration: I have lots of layouts pinned to my Pinterest board so I scrolled through looking for a design that caught my eye.  This one by Donna Jannuzzi seemed perfect.  I loved the two 4x6 photos stacked on top of one another.

Color Inspiration:  Because of the story I wanted the layout to have a party feel.  Which means bright colors.  I built the color palette around the small strip of pattern paper with colorful triangles.  It reminded me of banners.

This little swirly tag seemed like the perfect place to add some red at the top of the page along with a title.

 I saw Lain Ehmann use twine with buttons and thought it would work perfectly here!  The little bit of yellow keeps things from looking to Christmasy!

And here's the story.  Just read...you'll being LOL-ing too!


























Ever had to recreate a scene to get a photo to scrap?  Got any awesome stories about something your little one said?  Leave me a comment!  I'd love to hear all about it!

Good Eats

Recently our Mother LOAD challenge was to use a product we love.  I've never started a layout with a product before and was excited to try!  And I knew exactly which one I wanted to use...

See the numbered bracket paper?  I've been holding on to this for awhile and decided it was time to use it.  I did however trace it onto a piece of chipboard so that I can create more paper in this shape if I want to.  :)

I searched through one of my newest downloads from Ella Publishing called List It ~ Everyday Edition.  It is full of lists you can make for a layout.  When I came across the prompt for listing your favorite restaurants I knew I had a winner.

But no pictures...

So I went online and searched for logos for our favorite restaurants.  Using Photoshop Elements I made these 2 in circles with the logo and text around the edges listing the food we like from that restaurant.  They remind me a bit of coasters.  I'll post a tutorial on how to do this soon!

For the design I used one of Noell Hyman's flexible templates called the Pinboard Template.  The ribbon looks like it is pinning the discs down.  I added a mat of turquoise with black borders to add some contrast.

I knew I needed to add some color to the far right side of the layout.  So I made this embellishment.  I decided to make a circle embellishment to mirror the circles "photos."  I punched a 1 in circle out of flowered patterned paper and stuck it on a white metal rimmed tag.  Then I placed the tag on top of a blue journal block. Finally I added a black piece of bling to the center of the flower and doodled around the inner circle.  I have the embellishment hanging off the edge of the paper for a bit of added interest.

Found this sticker and thought it was perfect for a title.  Backed it with some more of the turquoise paper and added a couple more black bling.

For the journaling I listed the restaurants on the paper and added a bit of commentary about each one.  I also used a white gel pen and drew a bracket to divide the restaurant name from the commentary.

Totally different from my usual style.  I do love that I have a page documenting not only our favorite restaurants, but the food we eat, and other special info about each place.

In case you are wondering, this layout went in the Places We Go section of my album.
















Where do you love to eat?  Any funny stories about a restaurant?  Ever made a layout with NO pictures?  I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Scrapbooking Your Christmas Card

My very first blog post ever was this one where I posted about using your Christmas card as your design inspiration for a layout.  I've always really loved how this layout turned out and thought it was a perfect way to end my yearly album.

But this year I decided to create my own Christmas card digitally which you can read about here.

When it came time to scrap this year's card I realized that I didn't want to recreate it with paper.  I'd spent so long on it digitally that it just didn't make sense to start over.  So I chose to use an actual card as the main element in my layout.  Those of you that read this blog much know that I typically scrap double layouts.  But since this is for the last page in my album I could do a one pager.  Which worked perfectly.

I cut a mat for the card and just stuck it right on top, as I would a picture.

For this mat I used a border punch.  I wanted the straight edge left on so I was careful not to punch all the way to the corner.  For more info on how to use a border punch see here.  The red mat on the red background paper didn't have quite the pop I was looking for so I added a white layer underneath the red.

Things still seemed a little too monochromatic for me so I added a thick white ribbon.  This ribbon came off a package that was sent to me.  I loved it so I threw it in my color bin and it was just waiting for me when I pulled out my white tub for this project.  Love that!

I hate dealing with frayed edges of ribbon at the edge of my page so I usually wrap the ribbon around to the back and tape it down.  I use adhesive on the front as well to hold it in place, but the tape on the back seems to work best for me when I'm trying to keep it from snagging the edge of my page protector on the way into the album.

For a little extra something I added this cute gem Christmas tree.  It gave this simple layout just the right amount of sparkle.

So quick and simple!  Gotta love that! And I have a way to remember my Christmas card always.  Perfect!

Picture the Holidays Layout

Scrap-lifted myself again.  I've decided to make all my "Picture" layouts the same in design.  So here is my latest version.

Once again I made a collage of the photos I took during Picture the Holidays.  You can see more about this on my previous posts about Picture Summer and Picture Fall.

This year instead of scrapping Christmas as I've done in the past I chose to just use this layout.  So I used some Christmas papers and elements on my page.

Like this adorable sleigh and Santa.  :)

I added an embellishment to the collage. And another just above the journal block.

I used part of Tracey's original email as my journaling and only used one line of my own that addressed the struggles we had this month.

Christmas Countdown...Again

After posting my last Christmas Countdown Calendar a friend asked me if I'd make her a Countdown Calendar too.  I, of course, agreed!

She decorates with more traditional Christmas colors.  It's hard to see in this photo but the background paper has Christmas words and phrases in very subtle red tones.  So perfect!

I also decided to add a larger patterned paper border behind the title box.  I backed both the text box and the mat with a very tiny amount of dark green.

This cute little elf was the perfect way to bring green into the calendar.  He is from the same Cuddly Christmas Friends collection as my other characters.  All are from my friends over at SVGCuts.com.

I tied some red and green ribbon and then added this adorable white fringe.  Loving it!

I then added a bit more green around the edges of the numbers.

Same process, totally different results! Love how easy these things are!

Summer Reading

Today at the Big Idea Festival over on BigPictureScrapbooking.com Amy Sorensen challenged us to make a layout involving reading.  My boys and I all love to read, but I don't really have any pictures depicting that.  So I thought this layout would be one to go in the someday file.

We spent the morning at an interactive Clifford exhibit on loan from a MN children's museum.  There was  lots of opportunities for creative play, and my boys took advantage.  But I began noticing them in the library area reading.  We were surrounded by chaos with kids everywhere and my boys would wander over, sit in chairs and read book after book.  I grabbed my camera and snapped away.

My layout is very similar to the inspiration layout.  You have to be enrolled in the class to have access to that, but I can show you how I made mine.

The original layout was one page.  I always scrap two so I flipped it for the second page.  You can see that I adapted my right page a bit from this sketch by moving the vertical 4x6 down so that the top lined up with the top of the horizontal 4x6.

I was so excited to learn this new tip from Amy.  Whenever I want a border around the outside of a page I usually just put a piece of cardstock behind the slightly smaller piece.  The paper Amy was using had a solid border, but was decorative inside.  She cut out the inside to use elsewhere, and just used the solid part.  My paper was just solid red cardstock, but rather than waste a whole page, I used a craft knife to cut out the center.  I then attached the white cardstock to the front.  Here is a view of the back.  I left enough of an edge to put adhesive on.  Such a simple idea, but one I'd never thought of before.

I used my SCAL program to cut the squares (what are those pointy squares called anyway?).  The inspiration layout had flowers alternating with each square.  I didn't have that many flowers so I chose to add in some gems as well.  The gems are from Creative Charms (love that place).

To line up my gems and flowers I used my new ruler from Tim Holtz.  The ruler has holes every 1/8 in that you can pierce through.  I lined the holes up across the points of the squares and found the center between each square.  I punched the hole through the ruler.  Once I had all the holes punched I added the brads.  It worked so well.  LOVE THAT RULER!  I've got issues, I know.  :)

Amy printed her journaling on the bottom corner of her 12x12 page.  I do not have a printer that can feed paper that size.  I just printed mine onto white cardstock and cut it to match the corner of paper visible at the bottom of the page.  It gives the same look without requiring a bigger printer.

Rather than putting the title at the bottom of this page as the original sketch showed I decided to move it to the top.  I liked the balance that gave the two pages.

When I cut my title on SCAL some of the letters ran together so much it made it difficult to read.  I decided to use red Sharpie to outline the edges of some of the letters to give it more definition.  I added one last gem for the dot on the i.  I really like how it turned out.

This layout was quick and simple.  Used mostly 4x6 photos and very easy embellishing.  I love how it turned out.  Now I have something to document the love my boys have for reading, and that is something we will all cherish!

Christmas in July Part 2

This weekend my friends and I gathered at my house for a 3 day crop.  It was the perfect time to finish up my Christmas layouts.

Every year I give my boys an ornament that represents something about their life at that point.  I decided to document their ornaments up until this point.

Instead of using strips of patterned paper I decided to emboss strips of vellum.  I love the texture that gave!

I used this adorable Christmas tree SVG I downloaded from the internet.  I wish I remembered where I got it so I could give credit.  I love it.  It is a layered SVG.  I cut the bottom layer in this green paper with dots which I thought looked like lights on the tree.  I cut the top layer out of vellum.  It's very subtle but the Merry Christmas in vellum does not over power, but still gives a nice look.  I then topped the tree with a gem.

I added a few gems to the corner of the mat on each of the large photos.  Love the bits of bling that adds.  I also tried out my Tattered Angels glimmer mist on the strips of vellum.  It made them curl a bit, but I managed to get them to lay flat...mostly.  :)

One of my favorite little elements is this string on the ornament.  When I was opening a package of product recently it had this sequined string attached to the packaging.  It was way to cute to just through out so I tossed it into my embellishment jar.  It was the perfect touch on this little ornament.  Love it!



While I LOVE Christmas I don't really like doing Christmas pages.  I completed three Christmas layouts this weekend.  A major accomplishment for me.  :)  And I actually like them!  An even bigger accomplishment!  I'm glad I got the opportunity to be a part of Christmas in July.

Cherry Dog

My son came home from school with his first assignment, to create a dog.  He could make it look like whatever he wanted and he decided that he wanted to make a cherry dog.  So I pulled out my scrap supplies and he went to work.

The Week 4 TV Challenge over at the Ella blog was to use a commercial as your scrapping inspiration.  I  wasn't sure what commercial I wanted to use.  So I went onto youtube and did a search for popular commercials.  I found a few but nothing sparked any inspiration for me.  Then I saw something about a credit card and that made me think of the "priceless" commercial.  Then a lightbulb clicked on and I thought of these pictures.  I knew it was a perfect fit.

I did a search online for the prices of my items.  Recently I've seen a lot of journaling in paper strips and this seemed like the perfect layout for that style.

I wanted to highlight the amazing smile on my son's face so I decided to create a special mat for the main photo.  I thought I would create some cut out paper with cherries.  I did a google search for cherry wall paper to find a print that I liked.  Then I used the trace feature in my wonderful, amazing SCAL program!  :)  I backed the cut out piece with a bright red to really make the cherries shine.

I then took some of the cherry cut outs from the paper and used them as further embellishments on the page.  Added a bit of glossy accents, and I had some adorable shiny cherries.

I went through several variations of the title color.  I finally decided to keep it simple and use the same colors I already had on the page.  Keeps it very monochromatic, but I like it.

I then cut one final cherry to use as the dot of the i.  A little ink on the edges for dimension...priceless.  :)