Things Are Getting Sketchy

Recently, I heard about a blog and online scrapbooking store called "Paper Issues". They carry all my favorite brands, have coupons, and their blog has sketches! I love sketches. They really help when my creative juices aren't there. Even when my pages don't turn out exactly like the sketch (which I usually prefer anyways) it helps by giving me a jumping off point. This month I participated in their Saturday sketch challenge. Here's their sketch...

 

March sketch

And here's my page...

 



 There are a few obvious differences; I only used one photo and have two rows of squares instead of three, but I was really inspired by their sketch. I kept the stitched lines, the basic grid concept, and the title's in the same spot. I've had this photo since last September and wanted to make sure it ended up on a pretty page since it's me with my favorite three (soon to be four) year old. The paper is Maggie Holmes' 'Flea Market' line. I love the pink, mint, and gold together.

Banner Detail

I'm hoping this will lead to me scrapbooking more regularly. Whether it's on my own, with friends, or at a retreat next month. I hate when life gets in the way of me being crafty. ;)

Project 12: August

I'm excited to be on the ball with Project 12 this month! August was a lot of fun and even though I love summer, I'm also looking forward to fall. To help me keep track of the month, I kept a list in my phone to help me remember everything I wanted to add as it happened. A few small things got cut, but all the good stuff was included. I also knew from the get-go what paper I wanted to use. It's all Crate Paper's "Pier" line with a few Project Life cards from the "Kraft" kit mixed in.

Here's the left hand page. It talks about the state fair, my first (and delicious I might add) zucchini bread, and a last minute trip to the horse track.

 

I really like using a photo as the title space. These plastic letters from Crate are really fun so I knew it'd have a cool effect on the page. I've also been using my roller date stamps more. It's good for a subtle way to note the date and I'm not gonna lie, it just plain looks cool.

Here's the right hand page. It features putt-putt, a baseball game, and a weekend at the lake. I tried to use a combination of detailed openings and some plain photos that had just a little embellishment.

 

 

I also included a 6x12 insert to add a few more stories this month. The front of the insert talks about my Dad collecting smurf happy meal toys for my sister and I. (It's a classic "Dad" move.) The back of the insert features my parents' trip to Denver to see my sister. I realize it wasn't my trip, but my Mom and sister took too good of pictures for me not to use them. Plus, I did get presents from the trip so that should count for something.

 

Like I said, there were too many good photos so the back insert also got an extra flap. Next month I'm taking a trip out there so there will definitely be another insert for October.

I've Got the Blues

Happy CHA! It's exciting to see all the new paper lines that'll be coming out... it's also going to be a lesson in self control. Seriously, who needs to purchase three different Christmas lines in one year? Been there, done that. So this year I'm going to do better. *crosses fingers* I already didn't buy any 4th of July papers, I went last year without buying Halloween paper, and the goal is the same for this year. Anyhow, circling back around to CHA; Two Peas in a Bucket has challenges up now to go along with CHA. I saw the posting Wednesday night and I'm proud to say I finished a page last night for the first challenge of "use one color". I'm a sucker for water paper and most things blue so it seemed like a good jumping off point. Plus, we took a trip to the Dunes over 4th of July so I had some nice beach pictures.

The paper is Echo Park's "A Perfect Summer" and a piece from October Afternoon's "Midway". For the challenge you could use neutrals too so I mixed in kraft stickers from Crate's "Pier" line and the little wooden sailboat from Studio Calico.

Usually everything gets inked with my Chestnut Roan chalk ink, but this time I brushed a white paint dauber along all the edges. The paint reminds me of white caps and then the splatters make me think of ocean spray. Isn't it amazing sometimes how much thought goes into our pages?

 

 

Cruisin' on the Lake

I'm excited to say... SUMMER IS HERE! Our boat is in the water, the cottage is open, and water-themed papers are in the scrapbook stores. I'm a sucker for summer paper lines. Echo Park, Simple Stories, Crate Paper; I love it all. We have over 60 years worth of lake pictures so I don't have too much guilt buying summer papers. Plus when you add up all the Florida vacations, Cape Cod vacations, and other trips; I have plenty of things to use those papers for. Crate Paper recently posted a challenge to make a "Summer Splash" project so I gathered some papers and made a lake page.

 

The pictures are of my Grandpa and Dad on the lake skiing. I love these old photos. It's funny to see the older boats since we've upgraded quite a bit since then. As my dad likes to say, "I have a boat with enough horsepower to get me out of the water." He's a bigger guy so I think the horsepower is 200 and something. We used to have a 75. :)

 

I'm in love with these chipboard slides. A ton comes in a package so I didn't mind using three on one page. I still have plenty left to play with. I'm already starting to plan which lake page to do next. YAY, SUMMER!

Twelve pages down... one million to go. (Maybe not a MILLION, but you know what I mean)

 

 

This is what 12 finished pages after a scrapbook retreat looks like. The weekend at Quaker Haven was probably the best birthday I've had in awhile. I was with one of my best friends, her mom, and my mom. Plus on my birthday I received text messages and phone calls from some of my favorite people. The weekend was cold and rainy most of the time, but the lake really needed the rain so I didn't mind at all. Truthfully, it was like an extra birthday present. Nothings better than being at the lake scrapbooking so I'm already looking forward to the fall retreat.

Here's a quick rundown of the pages I finished over that weekend. Figured I'd show them in one big swoop, otherwise I might never get them all posted.



1990's Spring Break page using Echo Park's "Paradise Beach" line.

 

Page using My Mind's Eye.

Disney page using My Mind's Eye "Boy Crazy" line.

Universal Studios page using Basic Grey's "Bowties".

Another Universal Studios page with "Bowties".

 

Page about my mom when she was little using Echo Park's "Sweet Girl" line.

Simple Stories line from last summer.

October Afternoon's "Cakewalk" line.

October Afternoon's "Midway" line. LOVE these papers!

October Afternoon's "9 to 5" line.

Crate Paper's "Pretty Party" line.

I'm really proud of how this page turned out. It's a mixture of paper lines because I knew I wanted it to be yellow and blue, so I went "shopping" thru my papers. It uses some Crate Paper "Random", Fancy Pants, My Mind's Eye, and vellum from a Dear Lizzy Line. The splatters are from Heidi Swapp (her gold spray) and then more gold embellishments from Dear Lizzy and American crafts were added. It just plain makes me happy. :)

Project 12: February

I was so excited to do February's layout, I may have started working on it before February was even over. There was only one photo that needed to be added in from the last week, so my plan pretty much stayed the same from how I wanted it. The papers for this month are from Crate Paper's Valentine line from last year. I don't normally use a lot of pink, so I took the opportunity to make a very frilly layout and talk about all the things I love right now. That's exactly what the 6x12 panel is on the left. Sometimes in 12x12 layouts I don't leave space to say everything I want to, so I'm trying to do more storytelling throughout my Project 12 layouts. 

 

 

 

Here's a detail of the left hand page. I mixed in lots of October Afternoon mini market stickers (my favorite!) for captions and titles.

 

 

Title card: detail picture of candy hearts with a Crate border sticker and October Afternoon letter stickers from their "Midway" line. Plus stitching, or course.

 

 

I made these little numbers with my Cameo. Wanted to use something other than stickers or just writing them.

 

 

Here's the right hand page. The "love this" frame was made on my Cameo too. It was a very scrappy month so I wanted to highlight that on this page. Two trips to scrap mania with my mom, an afternoon scrapping with friends, plus an employee crop. Not to mention all the new papers coming in from CHA. It's like a paper heaven right now and I love it!

 

 

Two fun family events happened this month too and I was worried I'd either have to cram too much in or have too much empty space so I used a 6X12 insert that holds 4x6 photos. The convenient part about 3 ring binder albums is the hole placement is standard on the page protectors so you can mix and match. I use We R Memory Keepers pages for the 12x12 divided sections, but this 6x12 insert is American Crafts and it still fits in my album. If I ever need to do an 8 1/2X11 page, it'll still fit too. So one side of the insert is for the hockey game we went to and the other side is for when my dad and I went to the PBR event. 

 

We've been going to hockey games for a long time, but I've never really scrapbooked them before so I used this insert to talk about my favorite parts of hockey games. This means three 4x6 sections wasn't going to be quite enough room, so I cut a panel from another divider and stitched it on top of this one for extra space. This gave me five sections to work with for this event without having to add a whole other page.
 

I'm really excited with how it turned out. It gave me the perfect amount of space to include everything I wanted to. Might have to think of more ways to do this in the future.

 

Project 12: Hello 2013

January already feels like forever ago. These days it's mostly all work and fixing up my house, but I try to make sure a little bit of play gets mixed in too. Highlights were a visit from my seester and brother in law, quality time playing cards and scrapbooking, and my first house party.

 

I was really proud of myself when working on the left hand page because I did all of it with scraps leftover from other pages.  I didn't have to cut up a single 12x12 page. It's good to know it was finally worth holding onto the little pieces I never had the heart to throw away. The line used is Crate Paper's "Storyteller". I like the mix of red, blue, and yellow. It's a different change of pace.

This month, I tried switching up the page protector's layout.  I have a multi pack of We R Memory Keeper protectors with different styles so my challenge to myself is to use a different one each month.  The protector for the right side has three 4x6 openings and a 6x12 opening. It took a lot of thought and planning, but it worked towards my advantage. (I highly doubt non-scrapbookers realize how much thought we put into the smallest details. Of course, if they did know they'd think we were crazy.) I used the 6x12 space to make a narrow scrapbook page of our delayed Christmas with my sister and brother in law. The Christmas papers are from Crate Paper too. It's last year's "Peppermint" line.

I already picked out the paper line I want to use for next month's layout. As of now, it's going to be Crate's valentine line from last year. I don't have a sweetie, but I still want to use the "love" theme for February to document all the other things in my life that I have fond feelings of. Hints: my favorite four legged friend, my appreciation for paper, and snowcones. :)

Happy Being Me

This month on the Crate Paper blog, they've had their color challenge up again. This time the colors were champagne peach, emerald green, and charcoal. The fun thing about this challenge is that the color combination is one I wouldn't have come up with on my own. So I dug into my Crate Paper stash and came out with the colors I needed. I used an assortment of different lines including Peppermint (the white background), Portrait (the charcoal colors), Random (the emerald green), and Emma's Shoppe (all the pink colors). The photos are from a trip to Brown County with my friend and I hadn't yet used them on a page, so this seemed like a great opportunity.



I love these Polaroid punch outs from the Portrait line. I wanted them to be the focus of the page. The labels at the bottom also gave me some room for journaling.



I had a hard time getting this page to look how I pictured it in my head. I knew I wanted the strips of paper, but the colors and layers weren't as dynamic as I planned. So I started adding embellishments and it started coming together. I love this chipboard flower from the line, Emma's Shoppe. A few brads also made it on the page too. Can't make a page without buttons and brads.

Here's a close up of the title. It started as "being me", but I wanted it a little longer so I added the "happy" alphabet stickers. I also really liked how it brought in more color. This was the first time I had stitched through chipboard. Wasn't sure how well it would do, but I went slow and now I don't have to worry about the letters falling off. Plus, I just love the look of the stitching.

So Much Silliness

Scrapbooking everyday events are fun. It's where you can see the most personality come out. This page is about dinner at Steak and Shake a couple weeks ago. I carry my small camera with me everywhere I go so it's nice being able to capture random moments. It also opens up a whole world of paper possibilities. Since there's no real theme to the pictures, I can use whichever paper inspires me. This layout uses Crate Paper's Valentines line "Paper Heart". I chose to use the blue and yellow papers instead of the pink ones.



The title is a mix of October Afternoon letters and American Crafts Thickers. I love how the Thickers already have the stitch lines on them. I also had fun making the paper flowers with my Martha Stewart starburst punch. It's made up of six punched circles where two of the sides are folded up and arranged in a circle. Then I stitched them down to a flat circle to keep it all together. To finish it off, I got into my button stash and stitched it to the center with white embroidery floss.



Here's a close up of the paper flowers. I first saw them on a page by Amy Heller for October Afternoon. You can see the original page where I learned how to make these flowers here.