Take your Place

This week marks the beginning of another series of challenges at Scrapbook Steals. This is the first week of the Amber series (each group of 10 is named after a gemstone).   Every Wednesday, a sketch is posted and I create a layout based on that sketch using any materials I choose.  I link up my layout on the Scrapbook Steals blog in hopes of being chosen by random.org as the weekly winner.  For this week's sketch challenge at Scrapbook Steals, I created another rugged layout featuring my oldest son.  I love the Simple Stories collections and the Awesome line is my go to collection for boy pages. 

I used one of the 4x6 element cards as my title, since I really loved the message.  All of the patterned papers are from the Awesome collection.  I added some painted chipboard, distressed the edges of my kraft paper, and matted it all on a green piece of cardstock.  Easy peasy!  Thanks for looking!

Joyously Jade

I've completed another series of sketches for the Scrapbook Steals weekly challenges.  These 10 layouts represent the Jade series and include some of my favorite projects.  Here they are all together:

^^^(my favorite layout of this series!)^^^

 

 

 

 

Family is a patchwork

This week's Scrapbook Steals sketch challenge came down to the wire!  With only hours before the deadline, I finally had a chance to get my scrap on.  Luckily, I had the day off work and I bribed my kids with redbox rentals to ensure I would have a little time to myself.  This sketch was a big challenge for me, considering that I couldn't see using any of my photos with the inspiration sketch.  I was thumbing thru photos and papers and saw this element from Simple Stories Harvest Lane collection:

The heart on the bottom of the page inspired my entire layout. I borrowed the title phrase and re-created a large heart pieced from scraps:

I love this photo I took of my boys and their cousins on Thanksgiving.  We don't get to spend much time with them, but when the kids are together they have such a great time!  The photo was taken at my grandparent's barn, which worked perfectly with the woodgrain patterns in this collection.  I had to print the photo in a sepia tone because their outfits clashed horribly. For the title, I took the phrase from the original inspiration piece and recreated my own version.  I started with the wood house and worked backwards, adding the title words from last to first.  I stitched on the "stitched" portion of the title and machine stitched around "family" to frame my feature word.   I think I love the end result.

Meeting Melissa

This week's sketch at Scrapbook Steals featured a beautiful sunburst pattern and a single photo.  Sunburst designs are the perfect way to showcase lots of patterned paper and I immediately knew I wanted to use the Pebbles Seen & Noted collection I "stole" from ScrapbookSteals.com a few weeks ago.  These papers are flowery and girly and nothing I can imagine using on my boy layouts, so I was thrilled to come across a photo of myself and my sweet friend Melissa that would work perfectly.

 

On this cold dreary day, after a weekend of feeling under the weather, this project was exactly what  I needed to pull me out of my funk.  Because the papers coordinated so nicely, I didn't have to "think" too hard to put this together, which is a bonus since I'm full of cold medicine and still a bit woozy.  I added a few doilies from my collection and was so happy with how it turned out.  Honestly, I wasn't a big fan of this photo, given my unflattering resemblance to a water buffalo, but with the beautiful patterns and papers, I hardly even notice how ridiculous I look.  Not only do I love the layout, but I love the memories this photo brings back.   We were lucky enough to travel with Nate to Milwaukee last summer when he went for a work training, allowing me to meet up with an on-line scrappy pal who I had never before met in person.   After over a year of being on-line friends, I finally met my dear sweet friend Melissa as we spent the day with our kiddos at the zoo.  We had a wonderful day together and I can't wait for another chance to meet up with Melissa and her delightful family!  Now I'm inspired to dig out the rest of the photos from this day and do a zoo page featuring all of the kiddos.

snow buddies

This week's sketch challenge at Scrapbook Steals was perfect for a picture I snapped of my son and his neighborhood pals.  I already had a 5x7 printed of this picture, not sure what I was going to do with it.  I was a bit concerned how I would coordinate papers with the boys' colorful outfits, but once I started putting papers together, I quickly settled on a red/aqua theme.

I machine stitched a zig zag border around my gray paper, although many of the stitches broke loose-oops!  The large white snowflake is actually a Christmas ornament I picked up on clearance from Target a few years back.  I believe I got a three pack of them for .50, and it was the perfect embellishment for this page.  The red scarf accent happened quite by accident.  I originally set out to pleat a piece of red fabric or ribbon, similar to the pleated burlap on the inspiration layout.  I found a piece of red felt in my fabric stash and I cut out a strip and laid it down on my layout.  Suddenly, it reminded me of a scarf, so I cut two shorter strips that I layered and snipped fringes into the ends. The only thing I'm not happy about are the snowflakes punched into my journaling spot, but I was too lazy to make a different one, so it will have to do.  This turned out to be one of my favorite layouts I've created in a while, mostly because I was able to complete it while home with my kiddos waiting on a two hour school delay. 

I've been faithfully playing along with the weekly sketch challenges at Scrapbook Steals, but due to difficulties with Blogger, I wasn't able to get photos to attach to my blog posts, so there were several weeks where I wasn't able to enter the drawing.   I did post them to the Scrapbook Steals facebook page so you may have seen them there.  Here are some of the layouts that were completed but never posted: