Perfect Peridot

Every week I play along with a sketch challenge at Scrapbook Steals.  They are grouped in a series of 10, with each group of ten named after a gemstone.  This week I finished up the 10th layout in the Peridot series.  Now I have a chance to win a $50 gift certificate to Scrapbook Steals, my favorite place to score on-line crafty bargains!  Here are my 10 Peridot layouts:

 

 

 

Scrappy Fun

I completed the weekly sketch challenge from Scrapbook Steals while camping over the weekend.  It is always more challenging using only a few supplies, but this Seen & Noted collection from Pebbles certainly made it easier.  The original sketch can be found HERE.  And here is my version:

This layout brought back all sorts of fun memories.  Last May I travelled to St. Louis to meet up with some scrappy friends and spent the whole weekend crafting and hanging out with my crafty girls.  It was a ton of fun!  Thanks for stopping by!

My first publications!

I've been a long time subscriber to Creating Keepsakes and I love the projects they feature.  I often read the same issue over and over, finding new inspiration each time.  It's always been my goal to one day see one of my projects featured in their magazine.  Last fall, I saw that they were planning a special issue about Boys and Men and were looking for projects demonstrating masculine layouts, products, and techniques.  Since my two boys are the reason I scrapbook, and because these are the only type of layouts I'm comfortable doing, I decided to give it a shot and throw my hat into the ring.  I sent in several photos of my layouts and had almost forgotten about it, when I got a surprising email in December.  It was from an editor at the magazine, asking to publish one of my pages.  I was home alone at the time and *may* have squealed out loud when I read it.  I was so excited that I called my husband at work, emailed some friends, texted some others, and finally settled down enough to check the rest of my mail.  Imagine my surprise when I see three more emails asking to publish more layouts.  Then a few weeks later, I got another email from another editor, letting me know that they chose a fifth layout to publish in the magazine.  I packaged them up and shipped them to Utah just after Christmas to be photographed and then waited somewhat impatiently for the magazine to be published in May 2013. 

 

The magazine is currently on newsstands (but only until July 8th) and contains some great projects and tons of inspiration, even if you're not a scrapbooker of men and boys.  I was like a kid at Christmas when my copy arrived.  I ripped into the box and poured through the magazine, amazed at the wonderful photography and still shocked to see my name in print.  I'm so glad I decided to give it a try!  These are my layouts that were featured in this special issue.  

If you struggle with scrap booking masculine layouts, this is the perfect publication to inspire you.  You can purchase you own copy HERE if you haven't already.  Thanks for stopping by!

Kalamazoo Air Zoo

I was thrilled to see that Melodee gave us a two page sketch challenge this week at Scrapbook Steals! I initially struggled with the title portion, but after looking through my papers and stickers, I decided to create my own airplane themed title.

 

The photos were taken last September when we spent an afternoon at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo museum.  I used my silhouette Cameo to cut out some cloud shapes and airplane themed elements.  Then I used an Echo Park airplane sticker and hand cut a banner to "fly" behind it.  I added some texture to some of my clouds with embossing folders to finish it all off.  I adore two page layouts with lots of photos, but don't like the time it takes to complete them, but this one came together quickly.  Thanks for stopping by!  

Follow me!

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For those of you who follow my blog, Google Reader will be going away as of July 1st.  I'd hate to lose any of you, so I've switched over to Bloglovin' and I'm so glad I did.  It automatically switched over the list of blogs I follow, so I won't lose any of them either.  If you aren't already a follower, you can click on the bloglovin' button over on the right.  I sure hope I don't "lose" any of you when the changes take place next month. 

Love beyond measure

I loved the June sketch challenge from My Mind's Eye and decided to play along.  I grabbed a few pictures of my boys and dug into my MME stash to come up with this:

I used pieces from at least 4 different MME collections to come up with this layout.  I love the messy look of paint splatters and random placements of brads and enamel dots.  I hand stitched some arrows to go along with the inspiration sketch by Ronda Palazzari:

Little Man

This week's crafty project was created while escaping the swarming gnats that invaded our campsite.  I gathered up some supplies to take on our weekend camping trip and I forced myself to use just what I brought to create this week's layout.  This layout is based on the sketch by Melodee Cloud for ScrapbookSteals.com for the weekly mid-week-mojo challenge.
I combined lots of scraps and pieces from different manufacturers to come up with this layout featuring my youngest "little man".  The only thing I don't love is the orange washi tape that I placed above the photo.  Normally, I just slap some washi tape anywhere on my layout and peel it off if I don't like how it looks.  Except this time, when the washi tape peeled up the background paper, so it stays just where it is.