The Best Farkle Counter

When the Cosmo Cricket line "Boyfriend" came out, I loved all the patterns and colors. It's actually a school line with pencils and test worksheets, but I wanted to do something different since I'd already used it for a page about my Dad teaching. I had printed some pictures about my cousin's oldest son playing farkle and thought this paper would be fun. I figured it would still work since the pencils would go along with filling out score sheets.

At this point in the weekend, I was still friends with my Revolution so I used two different fonts and some of my favorite October Afternoon sticker letters. I absolutely love the look of cork on scrapbook pages. A few little Basic Grey brads added some more color and depth.

Here's another close up. I punched out a few circles from different patterns and tucked them under the edge. Adds a nice little detail and layer.

Life is Better When it's Fun

This is the second page I did over the weekend. Last summer, I went to the State Fair with Erica and her kids. While we were walking by all the food vendors (aka Heart Attack Alley) we saw this Twinkie the Kid cutout and couldn't resist the fun photo op. The background paper is My Mind's Eye and the rest is October Afternoon's 'Seaside.' I've wanted to challenge myself by using the beach/ocean themed line for something non-oceany and the colors ended up matching the photos great. The banner is cut out from one of the patterned papers. I was trying to use it on another layout earlier, but it didn't quite work. So after all the work of cutting it out, I was happy it worked for this one.

The title (taken from my handy dandy 'Inspiration Station' book) is a combination of October Afternoon stickers with a line of stitching run through it. I really love stitching. Anytime I work on a page, nothing looks quite finished till it's stitched.

I also had the kids sign their names for a personal touch. Sarah wrote her name then drew a star next to it. So when it was AJ's turn, he writes his name and asked if he could draw a star. Next was my turn and Erica told me I had to draw one too. I think it turned out cute. Plus, now there's a fun story about the pictures and even one about putting the page together.

Rockets Red Glare

Here's the first page I did over the scrapbooking weekend. It always amazes me how long it can take to put such a simple page together. One thing that makes me feel better is something my Uncle said once, he said "Each page is like a small work of art." Which I completely agree with. The tricky part about this layout was deciding on the size of circles to use and how to overlap them. I do really like how it all came together.

Since the pictures were taken in the evening; I kept the background light and added red, white, and blue for a patriotic theme.

The circles were a mixture of papers from October Afternoon and Girl's Paperie. Another little detail is two straight stitch lines down the circles. Plus, they're distressed and inked. The stars are wood veneers from Studio Calico which I inked to tone down the light wood color. The title was fun too because I used three different Quickutz fonts. It's a mixture of Blossom, Rollerskate, and I think Chocolate. For more texture and interest, the "th" and "July" are cut from cork.

I have to admit, the more I look at this page, the more I like it. I'm proud of how the pictures turned out and the layering. My practice at layering is starting to pay off... I'm still gonna keep trying new things, but I do see an improvement.

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.

Oldie, but a goodie

I haven't scrapbooked anything the past couple days because I get to go on a scrapbooking weekend in a few weeks (at Quaker Haven Camp!), so I've been trying to get organized. Right now I've got 17 sketches drawn up and I'm going through my pictures to figure out which ones I want to use so I can get them edited and printed. Next I'll go through my papers and get a folder ready for each page. Each folder will have paper, pictures, and embellishments so it'll be easier to get my layouts put together. For me, organization is the key to getting pages scrapbooked when I'm cropping somewhere other than my own house.

Here's a picture of my scrapbooking table. It's an older picture so there's more stuff on it right now. It's one of the best investments I've made. Absolutely love this table!

And here's how I store my paper. Sometimes I'll just stand there and spin it until I get motivated by a pattern I see. Most of it's sorted by manufacturer, some is in themes. (You can see a painting my sister made me in the left corner of the picture too. On top of the painting are some felted animals we've made. The birds to the left we made together. I made the weird looking big one and she made the smaller. She also made me the owl, R2D2, and Yoda. They're my favorite things she's made me.)

And just for more fun, here's an older page I did with Cosmo Cricket's 'Garden Variety' line... an oldie, but a goodie. That's my Grandpa and Dad in the picture.

Getaway Car

True to my word, here's a page about my Mom when she was little. I've had this picture for awhile, but I've been waiting to get my hands on Crate Paper's 'Toy Box' line. I almost had a heart attack waiting for it to be shipped, but I survived and managed to make my page. I love all the colors and mix of patterns.

This is one of mine and my Mom's favorite pictures. It's just so funny how my uncle's in his car and she's in her crib. Almost like they're planning a breakout... which is why I choose the title "Getaway Car". This page came together pretty quickly for me because I started with a sketch I made the night before. Sketches have been really helpful lately (whether they're originals I've come up with or ones from other places) and are part of the reason I've been able to finish so many pages this month. Here are some close ups of the sticker letters and punch out shapes.

I can't wait to make even more pages with the new Crate lines. I have all of 'Portrait' and 'Emma's Shoppe' to play with too.

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.

Boo Yah!

This isn't the clearest picture, but for a little while today my birthday layout was the third most bookmarked page on 'Two Peas In A Bucket'! Luckily, my cool friend Amanda saw it and called me at work so I could take a screen capture of it. I was even thinking the other day how cool it would be to be posted on their main gallery page. And yep, I feel pretty cool right about now... in a dorky kind of way. :)

Happy Birthday Uncle Ed

Most of the pages I've done lately have been ones about my Dad when he was little (partially because my Grandma took so many). So now I'm trying to make more of an effort to do pages about my Mom. I had remembered seeing a birthday picture of her and my Uncle Ed recently and when Basic Grey's 'Life of the Party' came out, I knew they would be perfect together. Plus, I had a sketch in mind that would look good too. The nice part is it turned out pretty close to how I pictured it in my head.



I've also developed an appreciation for spray mists, either Tattered Angels or Studio Calico's Mr. Huey sprays. The 'happy birthday' letters are the same ones I used on the "Boys of Summer" page (sprayed brown) and the same from the "Panama City" page (left their original white). I never really understood all the hype till now.

Here's a detail of the pennants I cut out from the different patterns. Pretty sure this is the third page in a row I've done that uses a banner of some sort. I jumped aboard the banner train awhile ago and never looked back.



Here's another little detail of the chipboard and folded ribbon made from patterned paper. I even put five little stars around the candle since it was my uncle's fifth birthday. (That's him in the picture.) You can also see a good close up of the machine stitching. The zig-zag stitch is the easiest to do since it doesn't matter as much if you're not going in a perfectly straight line. (Great for around circles.)



On a side note... I'm kinda proud of myself for two days in a row of posting. Maybe I can go for a three-peat.

Cosmo Cricket Challenge

When Cosmo Cricket posted a challenge where the winner gets published, I was all ears. For this page I used their new line 'Social Club'. The colors in the papers are a lot of fun and the blues and greens felt right for a page about the lake. Their sketch used one 5"x7", but I changed mine to use three photos which still measure out to 5"x7" together.

Here's a detail of the title. I used white Thickers and sprayed them with my coffee shop glimmer mist to turn them brown. They were the right size, but wrong color. (Which was easy enough to fix with the right tools).

On Cosmo's sketch, they had clusters of circles going along the top edge of the page. So for my layout, I punched circles from one of their patterned sheets and turned them into a banner. I stitched two lines first to place my circles on and then stitched one more time over the top to hold them in place. For more dimension, I folded some circles in half and added twine bows.

One of my goals is to eventually get published. I know tons of people submit, so even if it doesn't happen this time, I know I'm trying and still end up with a really cute page I'm proud of.