My Mind's Eye Blog Challenge #27

After a long weekend of house guests, I finally returned to my crafty space in the basement, determined to find some "me time" and make something spectacular.  I found the blog challenge and knew that I wanted to work with the Lime Twist collection from My Mind's Eye.   I love the Out of the Blue and Go Fly a Kite collections and decided to mix them for this layout.  The challenge was to start with this sketch and the title "Back to _____"

With recent back to school photos sitting on my desk, I decided this would be a natural fit for this challenge.  I wanted to use multiple photos so I did some trimming and worked in three photos that document our morning routine.  This is what I created:

When I saw the journaling strips on the original sketch, I immediately thought of pencils and decided to make my own to highlight our back to school schedule.  I started with a line drawing of a pencil that I found in a clip art file.  I copied the pencil image several times onto a transparency and printed them.  After cutting our each individual pencil by hand, I set about the arduous task of decorating the pencils.  Since I used a transparency, I was able to paint the back side of the image so that the color showed through without covering up the details.  Next I cut strips of patterned paper from the 6x6 paper pad and  typed my text into my label maker.  I put the clear labels on top of the patterned paper and then glued them to the underside of the transparency to complete my pencils. 

Someday my boys will love to look back and know what their schedule was.  I added a title that I cut with my die cut machine and cut the number 2 out of a patterned piece of paper.  I added some pieced apples to complete the "theme".  I love how the papers coordinate even though they are from two different collections.  Thanks for a great challenge and the chance to win some great MME product!  The winner of this challenge gets to choose three entire collections.  I know Lime Twist would be on my wish list for sure!