so happy together

After a six week crafty hiatus, I'm happy to say I'm back.  I was juggling family time, working full time,  enjoying Spring Break in Florida, hosting a youth group function for our church, and was just overwhelmed with life itself.  I wasn't feeling the least bit creative, and I was stressed about nearly everything, so I took a break and regrouped. 

Now that they've started a new series of scrapbook sketches at Scrapbook Steals, I knew it was time to get back on board and find my crafty mojo.  I must say that being away from my scrappy place for so long made it hard to get back on track.  I had to clean off my desk and organize some supplies just to remember what I actually have in my collection.  This is what I came up with, using the sketch from Scrapbook Steals as inspiration:

The supplies I used are mostly from Elle's Studios and Gossamer Blue, with a little Simple Stories thrown in for good measure.   I didn't spend as much time as I would have liked on this layout, because I kept finding myself reorganizing supplies and moving things around to make room for my newest addition to my scrappy space...

My wonderful hubby salvaged these old lockers and secured them to the wall in my scrappy space this weekend.  I still need to get them cleaned up and scrape off years of old tape residue, but I've already started stashing away goodies in my newest acquisition!  Right now, I'm more excited about organizing than scrapping, but this will definitely be a work in progress.  I still have a lot of vacation photos to print out and I'm hoping to try my hand at pocket style scrapping to get a vacation album started.  Camping season is right around the corner, so my crafty time will be even more limited, but I'm hoping to stay on track and create something each week.  Thanks for stopping by!

Enjoy the Ride

This week's sketch challenge at Scrapbook Steals was a good chance to use up some of my August kit from Gossamer Blue.  I decided to mix and match a bunch of random patterned papers and came up with this:

It's not my favorite work, but it's done.  And some weeks, that's all I have time for.  This weekend was spent camping with my family, so I hurried this one out before our trip.  It was a good excuse to play with my Silhouette Cameo, which I used to cut out the bicycle "card", the title work, and the arrows on the side of the layout. 

Explore

This week I used my Gossamer Blue August kit to complete the weekly sketch challenge at Scrapbook Steals. 

I found a few pics of Caleb "in his element" and decided to go with an "exploring" theme.  The GB kit has lots of travel elements this month and since we don't travel very often, I tried to use them in a different way.  I added some stitching and distressing to the already distressed background paper and made a "clothesline" effect with some twine.  As usual, I kept adding things and messed up when I was doodling around my title.  I had to pull up some stickers and add the speech bubble/journaling spot behind my title to cover my error.  Luckily, it was an easy fix. 

Lake Michigan

I decided to play along with the Pinspired color challenge with my July kit from Gossamer Blue.  The photos were taken yesterday, when we took a quick trip to Lake Michigan for an instant dose of summer!  We walked on the beach, played in the waves, walked to the lighthouse, and soaked up the sun!  Here's the spread of colors that inspired it all:

Since my beach photos included lots of blue and "sand", I only added some yellow to make it all pop!

I kept this layout clean and simple.  I love how the blues and teals came together with the woodgrain paper from Elle's Studio.  I adore the Simple Stories I (heart) Summer collection and the cork Thickers are perfect!

Summer Fun

I dug into my June kit from Gossamer Blue to take on the weekly sketch challenge at Scrapbook Steals.  The colors in this month's kit are softer and more pastel than I usually work with, but I thought they were perfect for this summer layout featuring my nephew Gabe.

I love the challenge of working from the monthly kit, using papers I wouldn't normally select, and then falling in love with the finished product.  If the stars align, I hope to get another layout started/finished tomorrow, but am not sure there will be much crafty time on Father's Day.  Thanks for stopping by!

Catching up

I have a few layouts that I haven't blogged about yet, so this is a catch up post.  We spent a long weekend at the campground and once again, I brought along some scrappy goodies and worked on this week's mid-week mojo challenge from Scrapbook Steals.  This is the layout that was inspired by the weekly sketch:

I used Melodee Cloud's sketch and the May kit from Gossamer Blue to document our first trip via Amtrak.  The train embellishments were cut from the train schedule that I kept to document our trip. 

I'm thrilled to be using a fun mix of papers from the Gossamer Blue kit.  I recently subscribed to the monthly kit and I have had lots of fun mixing and matching the bright prints and patterns.  Using the supplies in the kit really pushed me out of my comfort zone, forcing me to use papers that I wouldn't have chosen or paired with other patterns.   The kit encourages members to create 4 layouts from the monthly kit to be eligible for a free album in your sixth month.  That motivated me to get the most of my papers and I happily completed 4 layouts with this month's kit, with enough paper left over to do a couple more.  In addition to the layout featured above, I also created these lovely layouts with the Gossamer Blue May kit:

 

This last layout was created based on the Gossamer Blue sketch challenge.  The other two layouts were my own designs.  I loved working with Gossamer Blue and can't wait to see what my June kit includes!