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.