you & me

For my final post for 2011, I completed one of my favorite layouts of this year.  It's not fancy, but came together quickly and turned out better than I hoped.  Here's my layout based on the Scrapbook Steals sketch for this week, modified by turning the sketch on it's side to accommodate a vertical picture.

This layout started with one of my favorite staples, kraft paper.  Then I added lots of fun patterned papers from My Mind's Eye and added some pleated ribbon and trim.  My favorite part of this layout was making the title.  A few weeks back, I picked up some burlap fabric remnants at JoAnns and I decided to work it into my layout.  I cut out a large "&" on my cricut to use as a pattern and traced it on the reverse side of the material.  I hand cut around my shape, being careful not to unravel the fabric too much.  I adhered it with glue dots and added some thickers to complete my title.

For years I avoided scrapping photos of myself.  With two super cute kiddos, I have plenty of photos and reason to scrap.  Only recently, I've made my scrapbooking more personal.  I realized that I scrapbook to preserve memories and tell our story.  Our story really does include me, and that means getting on the other end of the camera and putting myself out there.    Even if I'm not always happy with how I look, I realize that my kiddos will value having pictures of mom, at every stage of life.  I'm not a super model and never will be.  But I am real and normal and worthy of being included in these memories.  And with this in mind, I've posed for more pictures this year than ever before, I've handed over the camera to the kids and occasionally my husband, and I've created several layouts featuring yours truly.  And I'm happy to say that I'm looking forward to capturing more family memories, including ALL members of our family. 

I'm pleased with how I've grown as a scrapper over the past year.  I started blogging, posting my work in on-line galleries,  entering contests, and am part of an amazing group of scrappy friends that I've "met" online.  My scrapping style has changed and improved,  I've won oodles of free goodies and scrapbook swag, and I was chosen to be part of a design team (as a fresh face designer at Practical Scrappers).  I am excited to continue pursuing my passion and I'm looking forward to 2012!

Born 2 Ride

In between all of the holiday madness and prepping for Christmas, I managed to squeeze in this week's layout for the Scrapbook Steals challenge.  Here's what I came up with:

Everytime I scrap an outdoor layout, I find myself using the Campy Trails collection by American Crafts.  I purchased this collection from Scrapbook Steals just before our camping trip and I (ahem) may have dressed my children in these same colors just to make sure I could use these papers with the pics.  Don't judge.  A scrappers gotta do what a scrappers gotta do!  The colors are fun and masculine and compliment my outdoor pictures perfectly!  Here's the sketch by Kristy Lee that inspired this week's layout:

Thanks for looking!  Christmas wishes and blessings to all of my "followers"! 

Marshmallow Rudolph

After a long day at work, there's nothing better than spending 2.5 hours making cute little treats for a 1st grade Christmas party.  At least that's what I kept telling myself.   I was in charge of "something sweet" for the party, and being the overachieving crafty momma that I am, I turned to Pinterest for some inspiration.  My little guy got to choose the crafty snack and settled on reindeer pops that were originally to be made from cake balls.  Since that seemed like way too much work, we opted for chocolate coated marshmallows instead.  Here's what you need to get started:

Marshmallows, sucker sticks, almond bark, red hots, white beady looking things, treat bags, and brown pipe cleaners.   The shopping part seemed easy, but ultimately involved visiting three different stores to find these items.  But being the overachieving crafty momma that I am, I made it happen so as not to disappoint the world's cutest 1st grader.

Since this part of the project involves little technique, I enlisted the assistance of my cute little helper.  He shoved sucker sticks into 30ish marshmallows while I melted the chocolate coating.

Then my handsome assistant carefully and methodically covered the marshmallows in chocolate as I hovered over him, reminding him that we had 30 more of these to make and he needed to be in bed in two hours.

Then, because I wanted to finish this project in one evening, I suggested that he count out reindeer noses while I coated the remaining marshmallows. and put them on a wax paper sheet to dry.  My chocolate started thickening up and eventually got lumpy, resulting in some odd looking reindeer, but I carried on, reminding myself that 1st graders don't expect perfection.

Using a clean cheapo paintbrush I stole from my handsome assistant, I used more melted chocolate to attach a red hot nose and two beady eyes.  After a few saggy eyeballs and droopy noses, I realized this step works best if the marshmallows are lying face up and given time to dry a bit.  I originally thought this would be the final step in creating reindeer faces, but those beady little eyes looked a little too lifeless and alien for my liking, so I grabbed a toothpick to add a tiny drop of chocolate to the center of the eyes.

After the chocolate dried and all noses were secure, we shoved the marshmallow pops down inside treatbags and I started making antlers. After much experimenting, I found it was easiest to twist a circle like shape at each end of the pipe cleaner.

Then I squished in the center of each circle to make a heart like shape that would eventually be squished even more until it resembled an antler.

I did this to each end of the pipe cleaner and then bent it in the middle so that I could wrap it around the top of the treat bags.

Then I twisted the antlers around the top of the treat bag to complete my little reindeer friends.  We only needed 24 for the party, but I made several extra so that I could pick the prettiest ones for the class party and save the lazy eye, droopy nose reindeer for home.

It was way more work than I anticipated, but it was all worth it as my little first grader squeezed my neck and proclaimed "You are the bestest mom ever.  My friends are gonna love these!"

Joy

Since I was in the Christmas spirit, I stuck with the Christmas theme when I created this week's layout for Scrapbook Steals.  It was a good excuse to use up some of my Imaginisce scraps and to use up last year's Christmas pictures. 

My inspiration was this sketch by the amazing Kristy Lee:

Breakfast @ Chef Mickey's

This week's sketch at Scrapbook Steals was created by my scrappy friend Heather Conklin who was the lucky guest sketcher this month.  Heather created a super fun layout featuring the oh-so-trendy chevron pattern and her adorable daughter Isla.  Here's the original sketch and Heather's layout:

I changed things up just a bit by squishing my chevron strips closer together and by moving the journaling tag.  Here's my layout:

Scrapping this page brought back a lot of great memories of our Spring Break trip this past April.  I'm more than half way through my Disney album and hadn't worked on it in a while, so it was good to get back to it.  Thanks Heather for a great 2 page sketch!

Opal Club @ Scrapbook Steals

In my never ending quest to win free crafty supplies, I am pleased to announce that I'm "Officially Opal" and am in the running for a wonderful prize package from Scrapbook Steals!  They feature super discounted products and have amazing customer service.  And while I can't afford to purchase their "steals" very often,  I have been faithfully completing their weekly sketch challenges (I haven't missed a week since I started their challenges 66 weeks ago!) At the end of every group of ten sketches (grouped with gemstone names), they are giving away some scrappy swag. Even though these layouts have all been featured elsewhere on my blog, I have to group them all together to enter for the prize, so please indulge me (and enjoy looking at my creations one more time!)

Thanks for looking!  Now I'm crossing my fingers that it's my lucky week at Random.org so that I can win this amazing prize:

Paint Can Gift Box

This week I was featured on Practical Scrappers, making an altered paint can to show a creative way to package a small Christmas gift. Start with an empty (and clean!) quart sized paint can. I found mine at a local hardware store but have seen them at the big box home improvement stores as well. Measure your can and cut cardstock to fit around it. My can was just over 13 inches around, so I used two pieces, overlapping the paper just slightly and leaving one seam in the back and one seam directly in the front since it would be covered up anyway. Apply a thin layer of ModPodge to your paint can using a foam brush and apply a thin layer on the back of the cardstock. Adhere the cardstock to the can, smoothing out air bubbles as you go. For the "fur" trim on Santa's suit, I cut a strip of quilt batting, but you could also use white felt instead. I adhered the batting with a glue gun and added a "belt" made from black velvet ribbon. I cut another piece of batting to fit the lid of the paint can and adhered it with ModPodge. I embellished the lid with some trim, a tag, and some jingle bells. Don't forget to include a paint can key so the lucky recipient can open their gift! I was able to get the hardware store to throw in the key for free when I bought the can. I embellished the key with more ribbon and another jingle bell.


The quart size can is perfect for holding a gift card, packets of drink mix or tea, homemade snack mix, candies, or cookies. The possibilities are endless and it's a great way to give a gift! Kids and adults alike love prying open the lid to reveal the goodies inside. 

Blessed

I loved this week's sketch at Scrapbook Steals and decided to break out a recent family photo and some terrific new paper I picked up over our Thanksgiving trip.  Here's the sketch I started with:

And here's my take on it:

We recently made a trip "home" over Thanksgiving week and I had to pay a visit to the Doodlebug, the local scrapbook store, since I no longer have any local scrapbook stores where I live.  The first display I saw was the Autumn Splendor line by WRMK and I knew the papers would go perfectly with our recent family photos. 

Up until recently, the only family photos we had were those taken for the church directory.  I hated the thought of spending lots of money trying to get professional photos and the pressure of getting four people coordinated and smiling, etc.  But when my good friend Stacey offered to take some casual family photos for us at a local park I jumped at the chance.  I figured we could walk around and give it a shot and even if we looked terrible the boys would still have a good time at the park.  It was so much better than trying to do studio photos and Stacey got some great shots of us.  She took over 400 photos, and Jacob closed his eyes in at least half of them.  The kids were goofballs and grew tired of posing by the end.  But I was able to go through the weed out all of the ones that I deemed unflattering and still managed to find several photos that I fell in love with.  This was one of the first ones Stacey took and is one of my favorites.  I edited the photo for free at Picnik.com and printed it out at Walmart.  The fall colors matched perfectly with these papers and made for a pretty nice layout if I do say so myself.   

Loved Beyond Measure

This week was a busy one, with a road trip to visit family and friends at the opposite end of the state.  I came home to a mountain of laundry but still managed to work on my mid-week-mojo challenge from Scrapbook Steals.  After an 11 photo layout last week, I was thrilled to see a one photo layout that I could put together quickly.  This is the amazing sketch by Kristy Lee:

And here's what I threw together, in between six loads of laundry:

I started with a piece of woodgrain paper from K and Company, then added other patterned paper from Simply Stories, the Paper Studio, and My Mind's Eye.   I cut some letters from patterned paper and added other letters from Echo Park.  This photo was taken during one of our summer adventures to Marengo Cave.  I love seeing photos of my boys when they enjoy being together.  One of them always has their arm around the other.  Occasionally that arm is used to put a brother in a headlock, but for the most part they love one another and are really good brothers.  They tend to pick on each other when they are bored, so outings like this are usually good for all of us.  It was great fun to escape the June heat and put on sweatshirts to head underground where we explored the caves that I had been in so many times before.  It was the first cave trip for the boys and my husband and I'm so glad we worked it into our plans. 

Bounce

This week's sketch challenge at Scrapbook Steals was one of my favorite kind-  a two pager with tons of pictures.  While it's certainly easier scrapping one photo layouts, I have a terrible time narrowing down photos or "telling my story" without multiple pictures.  Here is the sketch challenge for this week, including 11 photos!

I decided to create a bright fun layout about our trip to Bremen Bounce, an inflatable wonderland where my kids could play for hours days at a time.  It was a great day and they had lots of fun.  My favorite part was that adults could even go into the bounce houses and slides.  Before the place got too crowded, I joined them to take pictures and even had a ride down the big slide.  Thank goodness there were no photos of that!

I used a combinations of papers from Echo Park's Little Boy and Playground collections.  I stuck with sunny fun colors because they matched the mood of our day.  The only problem with scrapping this layout was that it reminded my boys of that great day and now they're begging to go back to the bounce place.  Hmmmm, they did have big tables for parents to use to sit and watch their kids...I wonder if I could scrapbook there while my kiddos play.  Maybe we should go back!

November Imaginisce Challenge

This month's sketch challenge at Imaginisce is by Cari Locken and looks something like this:

A few months back, I was lucky enough to win a Geek is Chic prize package from Imaginisce.  I loved the fun colors and the whimsical designs.  When my son pulled out a pair of silly glasses, I knew I had to snap some photos just so I'd have a good excuse to use some of this collection.  I snapped photos of my sons and husband as they tried on the silly glasses, and before long, we were all laughing and snorting.  Of course, they had no idea that I planned to use these photos on a layout and post them for all of the scrappy world to see! 

This title says it all!  Being a self proclaimed nerd, I relish my days participating in marching band, orchestra, academic quiz bowl, spell bowl, and otherwise "nerdy" activities.  I embraced my nerdiness, was Salutatorian of my class, and was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" by my high school classmates.  No matter what I do, I always try to do my best.  If that makes me a nerd, then so be it! 

football

This week my scrappy pal Cathryn Hanson was the lucky guest sketcher at Scrapbook Steals.  She created two beautiful sketches this week and I was so excited to play along.  This is the sketch I worked from:

I decided to create a layout for my son's first season of football.  I flipped the sketch to make it work better with my paper and created this:

I matted my main photo with a piece of textured paper that had dimples just like a real football.  Then for my journaling spot, I hand cut a football shape out of another piece of textured paper and added the white stripe across the top.  The word FOOTBALL was already printed on the background paper, but it didn't stand out as much as I liked, so I outlined the letters with a sharpie and added some dimension with Glossy Accents.  I added some football ribbon and a few die cut embellishments.  Maybe this week the random.org drawing will be in my favor.  If not, I still have a great new sketch to work with and another layout completed!

One month in

A little over one month ago I threw my hat into the crafty ring and applied for a position as a temporary design team member at Practical Scrappers.  I have "met" a lot of crafty friends online who were very supportive and encouraging.  They see my work every week and always give such great feedback.  I decided I'd like to try showing my work to even more people, so the fresh face design team was calling my name. I had submitted projects to Practical Scrappers as a "fan" and had several of my layouts featured on their blog.  I love the way they use "practical" themes and ordinary products while challenging readers and designers to look at things in a different light.  At the beginning of October, I got an email telling me I was going to be part of the team through the end of January.  I was beyond excited to be chosen and I started right in, working on projects for the month of October.  In this first month, these are my projects that have been featured:

The requirement for this layout was to use "print" from either book, music, etc.  I didn't have any music note paper handy, so I photocopied parts of a hymnal and used them to highlight these pictures of my youngest playing his keyboard.  I printed a 6 inch strip of piano keys off of Google images and cut it to go across as a border strip.  Since the color of my son's shirt didn't really match the rest of my layout, I had my photos printed in black and white.  He was so excited to see himself on the blog feature!

This is the card I made for the fall/leaf card feature.  I used some scraps from my favorite Apple Cider collection from Imaginisce and fussy cut some stamped leaves.  I embossed the orange leaf for a little extra touch and added some torn kraft paper to make the card a little more rustic.

Following in the fall/leaf theme, I created this page for the layout feature.  I had this photo sitting around for almost two years and decided this was a good excuse to finally use it.  I combined pieces from Apple Cider and Happy Harvest collections, both from Imaginisce and I distressed the edges and made a grid pattern.  I had some flimsy leaf border paper that I snagged a while back and I cut it into strips to create a leaf mat behind my photo which I popped up using dimensional tape.  I added a leaf that I cut from my Cricut and threw in some baker's twine for good measure. 

This card was created for a "stitching on cards" feature.  I simply love my Sew Easy and couldn't resist making a sweet rainbow card for a dear friend recovering from surgery.  I traced some lines with pencil using a circle cutter as my guide.  Then I "drove" my sew easy right over the pencil lines to create my holes to stitch my rainbow.  I added some free form clouds that I edged with glue and dipped in glitter.  A little white ink around the edges and it was done.  Super fast and super easy. 

This layout combined two different projects.  I signed up to do a stitching layout for Practical Scrappers and was inspired by the weekly sketch challenge at Scrapbook Steals.  I used Kristy Lee's amazing sketch and created this layout.  I used papers from Echo Park's Splash collection and added some "waves" of stitching using my sew easy once again.  I tucked a cute little half circle at the top of my page and added more stitching to make a sun.
I love a good challenge and I'm a stickler for deadlines, so I am already working on my next projects to be featured at Practical Scrappers in November.  Thanks for looking and be sure to play along.  Go to the Practical Scrappers blog to see a list of the current calls and send in a photo of your project to practicalscrapperslayouts@gmail.com to see if your work will be featured on their blog.  That's exactly what I did to get started and now I'm thrilled to be part of the team! 

Halloween Happenings

We survived yet another hectic Halloween.  We crafted one homemade costume, recycled an old one, and are up to our armpits in candy.  Here's what we've been up to:

The boys (with lots of help from mom and dad) carved pumpkins on the eve of Halloween.  I put them on the porch complete with candles, and then we got busy wandering the neighborhood and never got them lit.  Oh well. 

Jacob settled for a rubic's cube costume.  Maybe one of the cheapest to make, but definitely a challenge to find a perfectly square box.  I used $2 worth of black spray paint and covered the box, then added 6x6 squares of scrapbook paper in a grid design.  That shows you just how much I love him.  I used (wasted) several sheets of scrapbook paper and didn't think twice about it.  He got tons of comments while we were out and even got some extra treats because his costume was just so cool.

Caleb recycled the spider costume that Jacob wore three years ago.  We started with a cheap hooded sweatshirt, stuffed black tube socks with polyfil and I sewed them on and tied them together with fishing line.  A couple pom poms and googly eyes glued to the hood and we've got ourselves a spider.  The best part, now that we're done with the costume, is that I can remove my stitches and Caleb will have a new sweatshirt he can wear the rest of the year.  He was a little disappointed that he didn't get as many ooohhs and aaahhs as his brother, so next year he wants to go back to the tried and true costume from a box.  Those always get the most attention.

The boys started off at Truck or Treat at our church.  Then they came home to empty their bags and start over in our neighborhood.  Mom and Dad both wanted to walk them around, so we kept our lights off and headed out with the masses to walk the neighborhood.  By the time we got home we were too tired to hand out our own candy, so we called it a night.  That means we had even more candy left over.  I let the boys keep one canister of candy for home, then we donated a big bag to each of their classrooms for the prize boxes and we're both taking a big bag of candy to work with us.  I'm proud of my little candy goblins, because they each only ate one piece of candy at the end of the night.  We generally ration the candy out pretty well.  When I cleaned out the candy canister to fill it with Halloween goodies, I threw away candy that was still in there from Easter and even some from Valentine's day!

Here are the treats I made for Caleb's classroom party.  I couldn't get out of work on the day of the actual party, so I found this cute mummy idea on Pinterest and headed to Sam's Club to buy a case of Hershey bars.  I wrapped them with white streamers and added some googly eyes.  I attached a little note that said Happy Halloween and Caleb took them for all of his classmates.  Jacob no longer has classroom parties, but he took some for his teachers and I had a few left over to hand out myself.

I already have the materials to make Jacob's box costume for next year, and Caleb will recycle an oldie but a goodie, so stay tuned......