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. ;)

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!

National Scrapbooking Day inspiration

Everytime National Scrapbooking Day come around, I have such good intentions of participating in ALL the challenges from Two Peas in a Bucket... and it never happens.  It always feels like a cool accomplishment when I get something finished and submitted to a challenge. This year I only finished one, but the nice thing is I still have the sketches and inspiration for the others I was going to try. So it's not a total loss, I just won't get the virtual badges I was working towards. (Yes, I'm that big of a dork.) Pagemaps has some fun challenges going right now and I'm going to try to do more with the ones Two Peas always has up. I want to get back into the rhythm I had for awhile of submitting a couple a month. Any who, here's the one I finished last week.

 

I finally used last summer's Little Yellow Bicycle "Splash" line that I HAD to have. It really is a fun line and perfect for lake pictures. This is a page about my sister and I tubing. We thought we were pretty cool stuff... which we were of course. ;) Definitely good memories.

 

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. :)

I'm Lovin' It (da da da daahh da)

One thing it seems I can't express enough is how much I freaking love paper! One of the best feelings is finding papers that look great together and then when they perfectly compliment your photos, it's like all is right in the world. A little dramatic? Yes. Sound crazy? Absolutely. However, I know there are people out there who know exactly what I mean and that's a good feeling too. This page is one of those moments when paper and photos come together to make a fun layout.

I've had these pictures on my table for awhile just waiting for me to find the right paper. Last month new Simple Stories lines came out and I loved the arrows paper. I'm trying to get away from buying papers just because I like them and stick to buying papers that I know there's a plan for. I strayed away from that plan for the arrows paper and it ended up working out.

The papers are Simple Stories from their "24/7" line. I cut the title on my Cameo then added the usual suspects of mini markets, October Afternoon stickers, and enamel dots. I'm also happy to say the yellow and blue strips below and under the photos were cut from the barcode strip of the pattern papers. On double sided papers, the vendors will give a preview of what's on the flip side. So I cut and used those pieces to leave the rest of the 12"x12" piece intact. I told you, I love paper. Every little bit of it.

 

If you want to see my friend's page using the same pictures, check out her blog here http://justmylife-erica.blogspot.com/. Prepare to be impressed!

Once in a Lifetime Opportunity

In the not so distant future I'm going to be starting my last year in my twenties. I realize this isn't such a big deal to some people, but it feels a lot like a PRETTY BIG DEAL to me. It also tends to resemble a panic attack. I tend to feel like I'm not doing enough or not doing something well enough. It's not a matter of being lazy, it's that I expect a lot from myself. So the other week when I was awake at 2am worrying about my personal life and professional life, I started making a list. Not a list of things I wanted to do (although I do have one of those), but a list of things I have done. It made me feel better. Just because we haven't achieved everything we wanted to, doesn't mean we haven't done anything or we've failed. There's always room for improvement, but to give myself more credit (and a bit of a pep talk) it felt nice to focus on the good things I've done. Now I'm taking my list and scrapbooking it. Two birds with one stone type of thing. Look back on the fun I've had in my twenties so far and get some pages done.

This is the first page from my "Done That" list. After graduating college (on the list) I went to Europe for two and a half weeks. One of many memorable "done that" items was water ski in Greece. The only other place I've water skied is on our lake in northern Indiana so skiing on the Aegean Sea was very, very cool.

The papers are by Studio Calico and I managed to mix in my favorite mini market letters from October Afternoon and My Mind's Eye enamel dots.

 

Later this month I'm going on a scrapbook retreat (over my birthday weekend) so it'll be the perfect time to work more on my "Done That" list.

Hello Retirement (Dad's, not mine)

Last year after 41 years of teaching at the same high school, my dad retired. When he started he was just a few years older than his students and ended up teaching a lot of their kids (that's two generations). So when he retired, it was a big deal. I'm not going to scrapbook all the photos from his party (most of the pictures will end up going in divided page protectors), but a few special pages will be made. Here's the first special page I've done. This bull is famous in the township. We knew we HAD to have it outside for Dad's party. I even had my picture taken with it, which has been a dream of mine since I was in elementary school. It's a Wanamaker thing.

 

Here's a few detail pictures. The paper is Echo Park's "Note to Self" line.

Circa 1923

The upside to being sick is lots of sofa time for plotting. I'd like to say my plotting involves discovering the next great ice cream flavor, but in reality it revolves around paper. I was planted on the sofa flipping through photos, sketches in my notebook, and looking through a paper line I knew I wanted to use. The nice thing about planning is that the page ended up being finished in the same amount of time it took to watch "The Wedding Date". Which is pretty fast for me. (There's still a page on the corner of the desk I started two weeks ago and haven't finished.)

 

This page uses Echo Park's "This and That" girl line and a photo of my Grandma when she was younger. It's been a little while since I've done a vintage page about her.

 

 

Here's a close up. I love using cork on pages.

 

 

Next on my "To Scrap" list are some vintage pictures from the lake. Definitely ready for spring, so hopefully some fun lake pages will cure these winter blues.

Fun with Echo Park

I love scrapping vintage pictures. It's fun seeing photos of my parents and my grandparents when they were younger, especially my grandpa because I never met him. So finding pictures of him is always a treasure. It gives me a good reason to ask my dad questions about him and it makes me feel like I know him a little. One thing I've learned is that he'd stop whatever he was doing if my dad asked him to do something. If they were at the lake and dad wanted to go skiing, Grandpa would take a break from his project and they'd head for the boat. (My dad will do the same thing for us too.) 

Here's a page about my grandpa using Echo Park's "Note to Self" line. It's nice and masculine, plus looks good with the black and white photos.

 



 

 

This is another page using Echo Park paper (their "All About a Boy" line) more recently. While we were in Universal Studios we went to "Harry Potter World" (that's not it's actual name, but that's what we kept calling it) and my sister bought an awesome Sorting Hat. We had fun when we got back to the condo and took pictures of everyone in the family wearing it. Tara and I had extra fun doing our own little photo shoot while drinking the pumpkin juice she also bought at Harry Potter World. She got a little carried away using my fancy camera for the first time. "This is fun! It just keeps clicking." So I ended up with enough pictures of me for my own page and I'll do another page with Mom, Dad, and Tara in the sorting hat. 

 

 

 



 

And here's a Christmas page using "Season's Greetings". We always make sure to take pictures with our stockings Christmas morning. It's my favorite part of the day.

 



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. :)