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. :)

Let the Disney Pages Begin...

Back in October my family and I went to Disney World for the sixth time. For us, it really is the happiest place on earth.We also spent a day at Universal Studios so I made sure to take tons of pictures during the trip. Now everytime a new paper line comes out with bright colors, I get so excited to do a Disney page with it. This is the first layout (with many more to follow) with pictures from this trip. It uses My Mind's Eye "Boy Crazy" line. A lot of the fronts had boy images like bicycles, robots, and other toys; but the backsides had more generic patterns so I knew it'd be great for the photos I had. 

 

This page is about one of the rides at Suess Landing in Universal Studios. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a kiddie ride, but we had so much fun on it. You sit in a fish and there's a toggle that you can use to go up or down. So you're going around in a circle, flying up and down, and then there are fish spraying out water as you pass by. We ended up riding it twice. We spent most of our time in Suess Landing riding all their rides. My parents don't really do rides well and my sister and I are big kids at heart so we were all content riding silly rides. 

 

I had several pictures so it ended up being a two page layout. Here are closeups of each page.

The title uses two Quickutz fonts and was cut out of cork. I love the texture of it and the color matches whatever paper you're using too. Some of the other details used are stickers and brads from the "Boy Crazy" line and a few October Afternoon stickers.

 

 

 

 

I'm excited to get some other vacation pages started soon. Might even have to do some scrapbook reorganizing so all of our family vacation trips will be in the same album. Stay tuned for more. :)

Snowcones, hockey fights, and mascots

Earlier this week, I saw My Mind's Eye had a new sketch challenge up on their blog so I decided to play along. Some of my favorite pages have come from doing their challenges. It's nice because it gives me a jumping off point, but then I usually try to see how I can spin it. For this one I simplified it a bit. I also combined two different My Mind's Eye lines, "Fun Day" and "Fine and Dandy" for a little bit of color.

Here's their sketch:


Here's my page:

The theme this time was "new" so I made my page about this year's New Year's Eve. Mom, Dad, and I went downtown for the Indiana Ice hockey game. It was a fun night. I had a snow cone, was bugged by the mascot while waiting in line for said snow cone, and saw a good fight. It was a quick fight, but the Ice player landed a few really good punches and to me; that's what counts. Plus, to top it all off the Ice won. So now it's nice to have a scrapbook page to remember the night by.

Here's a close up of the title and one of the little wood banners MME came out with. You can also see where I used vellum again to mat the photos. I used a zig-zag stitch around the circles because it's easier to to sew than the straight stitch when you're trying to turn the paper the whole time. It gives you more wiggle room for errors.

These little embellishments are from the "Fun Day" line too. The felt came in a border pack they have. I thought it was another cool texture to add in. Of course there's one of the brads and some chipboard buttons. My absolute favorites.

A few of my favorite things

Don't get too used to this... but here's a second page of the day. Back in April, a friend and I went on a scrapbooking weekend. I probably prepared 30 pages to work on and only finished a whopping 11. Next month we're trying to go again so I thought finishing some of the others to make room for more would be a good idea. Plenty of paper has been bought and lots of pictures have been taken since then.

This is a page about some of my favorite things. Sometimes, it seems easier to make pages about other people since I'm behind the camera. So this page is an attempt to put a little bit of me into my scrapbook; tell a story and show some of my personality.



The papers are a mix of My Mind's Eye "Abbey Road", "Lush", and a Jillibean Soup paper. The white splatters are October Afternoon's sprinklers. Which I have to admit, I was brave to use again after spilling half a bottle of yellow sprinklers on my scrap table while working on the page before this one. I like the look, though it has taken some getting used to since I never really thought of it being my style since it's more artsy.



The pictures include my parents' old recliner (which I've called dibs on for when I have my own house), peach Faygo (my Grandma always had some in her pantry for me when we went to visit), circus peanuts (absolute favorite candy), orange sherbet (absolute favorite ice cream), and an old American Eagle sweatshirt (I've had this thing at least since high school).



For the title, I used my "Just Chillin" slice cartridge to spell 'orange' and October Afternoon stickers for the rest. These little alphabet stickers are definitely at the top of my favorite scrapbooking supplies list. Baker's twine is also up there, which I wrapped around the "o" and "g". Add in some machine stitching and a couple brads, and the finishing touches are done.

Back Together

Last Sunday, my Mom's side of the family had their 100th annual reunion. I hadn't been to one since I was little. So with it being the 100th, I went and was inspired to do a page about the reunion from 1988. I also had some help from My Mind's Eye sketch challenge. Their sketch was for a 12x12 page, but I managed to stretch it into a two page layout. The papers are from their "Lime Twist" line. The colors are fun and the wood grain pattern made me think of a family tree.



On the first page, I enlarged a picture of the whole Pulver family. The women in the front row are my Grandma Pulver (on the left) and her sister, our Great Aunt Lulu (on the right). Part of the sketch challenge was to incorporate the title, "Back to", so I expanded it to "Back Together".



On the second page, I found some more group pictures and ones of my cousins and I.



I think after doing this two page layout, I'm going to try and do more. Especially since anytime our family gets together I always end up taking a ton of pictures. That's what happens when my cousins' kids are so cute.

Let the marathon begin...

It's been awhile, but I'm back on track with scrapbooking. The planning is over, the scrapbook weekend is over, and I have eleven new pages. I had planned for about 30, so hopefully I'll just keep working on more and posting more. I thought I would get more done, but scrapbooking is a bit of a process with me. Everything gets sanded or distressed, inked, and sewn down. Plus, there was A LOT of die-cutting. It's worth it though when I can get a font out of whatever paper I want (and not have to worry about running out of "e's" or "a's"). So here's the first page of the scrapbooking marathon... it's a page I did about my Great Uncle.

The papers are from My Mind's Eye 'Alphabet Soup' boy line. I love the colors and the patterns were really fun to mix. The sticker letters are new from October Afternoon. (At this point, I got a little tired of die-cutting so having some cute stickers came in handy.)

The story behind the photo is my family was at my Grandma's house and our Great Uncle Bernie let my sister and I tie him to the chair with yarn, put barrettes in his hair, and cover him with dolls. You have to be a great person to let two little girls torture you and still love them.

Celebrate Today

My favorite place in the world is my family's lake cottage. My grandparents starting building it themselves in 1950 and for me, that's what makes it so special. It's not a house they just bought, they put themselves into it and did all the hard work. You can see my Grandpa's shovel marks in the basement wall, there's a story behind why the ceiling panel with the most knots is above the stairwell, and I know that every nail is equally spaced and put there by my Grandpa. The cottage is my best connection to my Grandparents. My second favorite place is being on the lake. Every memory I've made on the lake is a good one. I remember being pulled behind the boat with my Dad when I was three, my Dad teaching me to ski, and the summer I refused to touch the bottom of the lake because I was scared of fish. The lake is where I get to spend quality time with my Dad.

So when My Mind's Eye had a sketch challenge with the theme of "Celebrate Today", I knew I wanted to make the page about the lake. How a perfect day up there is me driving the boat, my Mom as the spotter, and my Dad still discing and doing 360's.

Here's a detail of the stitched sun. I've put a sun on a scrapbook page before and my favorite part is the little buttons. It's funny to think how a year ago I didn't know how to use buttons and now they're on 80% of my pages. You can also see a close up of my Dad discing. It's even the same disc my Grandpa cut and varnished at least 40 years ago, maybe longer.

The "celebrate" I cut from cork using the QuicKutz font 'Winter Wishes' and the circle letters are from the 'Fine and Dandy' line by My Mind's Eye. Mixing fonts is one of my favorite things to do.

For the love of kiddie pools

Most of the pages I've done lately have been old pictures I've found in boxes. It's interesting to see the differences between when my parents were little and when I was little. Even more interesting though, are the similarities. Awhile back I did a page about me playing in a kiddie pool when I was little and recently found pictures of my Dad playing in a kiddie pool. There were four different pictures, but I just used the three that were the funniest/silliest.



The papers are from My Mind's Eye 'Stella and Rose' line. Black and white photos are fun to work with because you can use whatever colored paper you want and not have to worry about it clashing. For this page, I though the yellows and blues seemed boyish and fun together. The postage edged paper started out as a 12" x 12" paper. I trimmed it down and patched it back together to be a mat for the photos. I even went wild by tilting AND overlapping the photos. The "summer fun" came from the Slice cartridge 'Vintage Findings'. I'm trying to remember to use my Slice more often since I can get different sizes of letters from it. So using it on this page seems like a small victory.



And just for fun, here's the page of me in the kiddie pool. It uses Fancy Pants papers from last summer. I also have a picture from this past summer of me hanging out in a kiddie pool that needs to make its way onto a page. Weekends I couldn't make it up to the lake; I'd fill the pool, add a beach chair, and read a book while eating some crackers and easy cheese. Just another day of keepin' it classy.

Oh, Paper... I love you.

I love the fact that something simple like pretty paper can make me feel so happy. It literally makes me do a happy dance. This happened the other day when the My Mind's Eye paper line 'Stella and Rose' came through the store. I'd seen it all online, but there's nothing better than seeing it all together in person. I bought it Tuesday and was doing a page with some of it on Thursday. It may have been the first time I've done an entire page in one sitting. It was helpful having a sketch I'd thought up earlier, but sometimes partial pages will sit on my table for a week before all the details get nailed down. The colors are kind of worn so I used an old picture of my mom and her older brother from 1954.




It's a relatively simple layout because I was more focused on adding interest with the color combinations. I really like the blue with the accents of orange. It makes the photo stand out nicely. Don't my mom and uncle look cute? (Especially with their hats.)



Here's a close up of the details. I cut the chipboard doily in half because whole, it was really large and I also liked the idea of the half circles. The "All Smiles" sticker seemed perfect for this page and of course I added brads because no page is complete without them.

I love everything about...

For some reason, participating in challenges and having a deadline to finish projects makes me feel important. So when I see new ones posted online I'm excited to jump on board. My most recent layout goes along with a My Mind's Eye challenge where they give you a sketch and a theme. The theme for this page is "I love everything about...". A few weeks ago I found a great picture of my Grandpa hugging my dad when he was just a baby, so I figured this was a good page to use it on.

The red paper and star patterned paper are from My Mind's Eye 'Alphabet Soup' line, while the green paper is from the 'Fine and Dandy' line. I also got crafty with the corrugated stars by making them myself. I had kept a piece of cardboard from a package I'd ordered online recently and used an Exacto knife to cut away one of the top layers so I could see the inside. I used my Quickutz star die cuts to trace the shapes and then cut them out by hand. To add a little interest, I used my white paint dauber over the top and inked the edges with brown ink. I like how they turned out, especially since I saved around $5.00 by making them myself.

I usually have a hard time figuring out where to put my journaling. For this layout, I wrote it around the outside edge. It reads... "Even though I never got to meet him, I love everything about my Grandpa. From stories I've heard, pictures I've seen, and the kind of guy my Dad grew up to be; I know he was amazing. I never learned why his nickname was "Buck", but I know he was nice, hard working, and loved his family. So it always makes me happy to hear he would have loved me... and spoiled Tara and I rotten." I like having a page explaining how I feel about my Grandpa... makes me feel closer to him.

The Magic of Snow

There's something about a fresh covering of snow in the yard that's irresistible. So I recruited Dad to take pictures of me making a snow angel... for the sole purpose of being able to scrapbook it of course. (That's a sign you're a true, dedicated scrapbooker.) To make it even easier, My Mind's Eye posted a sketch challenge where the theme was winter. So I had my photos, a sketch, and the motivation to work on this page.



I used non-winter papers, but ones that had winter colors. The yellow was added for contrast. My favorite thing about doing layouts is all the little details that go into it. Using multiple fonts in the title, wrapping embroidery floss around the letters, stitching down the buttons, and inking the edges of papers are subtle touches that give it a finished look. I'm really happy with how this page turned out and has become one of my favorites... pretty sure I say that about every page though.