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!

Fun @ the Farm

What a fun and busy weekend!  After a little shopping, traveling for a family bridal shower, dinner out with the family, church, breakfast out after church, hanging at the zoo with the family, spending way too much time making a delicious fruit pizza, and a wonderful Sunday dinner of beer can chicken, I FINALLY had a chance to get some crafting in.  I was beginning to wonder if I'd have any time at all, but I managed to sneak in an hour and a half to work on this week's sketch challenge for Scrapbook Steals.  Unfortunately, the first half hour was spent cleaning up a mess from my last project (hate it when I do that!).  I cannot begin a new project until I clean up the old one, so I have a fresh slate to make a new mess.  Here's what I came up with:

I used my new Silhouette Cameo to cut out the little postage stamp shapes from scraps of patterned paper.  This is truly a hodge podge of papers from a variety of sources, including Simple Stories, American Crafts, Imaginisce, Pebbles, and maybe more.  Thanks for stopping by!

Love this Dude

This week's sketch challenge at Scrapbook Steals was a great chance to feature one of my favorite photos of my youngest.  His free spirit and ornery nature make him a handful, but he brings us so much joy.

I cut my title with my new Silhouette Cameo machine.  I figured out how to "weld" the letters together to make placing my title a breeze.  The papers are Collectable from My Mind's Eye.  My distressed and sewn border was inspired by a recent layout by my scrappy friend Cathryn Hanson.  I adore her style and couldn't wait to try this technique on this layout.  I cut down my blue paper and  stitched around the edge before distressing heavily and attaching to the cream background paper.  That's all the crafty time I got in this weekend.  Now that school is over and summer is here, we're adjusting to a new schedule and are always on the go.  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!

Brown County State Park

This week my scrappy friend Marisa Torp is the guest sketcher at Scrapbook Steals.  You can check out her original sketch HERE.  Since I gave up chronological scrapping years ago, I dug into my pile of photos and found some photos from last July when we had our first ever camping trip with my brother and his family.  These photos went great with the Take a Hike papers by Simple Stories that I have been hoarding. Since I had so many photos I wanted to include, I turned Marisa's one page sketch into a two pager:

We had a wonderful four day camping adventure at Brown County State Park.  It was a sort of "meet in the middle" event where we met up with my brother and his family for a fourth of July trip.  They had camped once before, we camp all the time, but we had never camped together, so it was  a new adventure.  It was so much fun for the cousins to spend lots of time together and for us to just hang out with my brother and his wife.  Usually our trips home involve crowded family functions or scheduled activities, so it was a nice change of pace to just hang out with them and take life easy.  The only thing bad about this trip was the weather.  We were over 100 degrees everyday and never even built a campfire.  We had air conditioning in our campers, so we still had a sweaty good time! Hopefully we can convince them to camp again with us sometime soon!

Fall

We took our first camping trip of the season and were surprised by temperatures that were colder than expected.  Luckily, I packed some scrappy supplies "just in case" and was able to work on this week's Scrapbook Steals challenge inside the camper while the kiddos watched a movie.  I have a hard time deciding what products and tools to bring, but once I realize that I have to work with limited supplies, I manage to make do.  I grabbed a few fall photos and the Harvest Lane collection from Simple Stories.  All of the fun fall prints worked perfectly for this week's sketch.

National Scrapbook Day

It's that time of year again!  Time for my favorite holiday, National Scrapbook Day!  Last year I celebrated by meeting some scrappy friends for a weekend crop in St. Louis.  This year I celebrated by myself, in between shopping and cleaning.  I did manage to complete two layouts on a busy Saturday. 

The first layout I made was for the weekly challenge at Scrapbook Steals.  We're starting a new gemstone series, so this is the first of the Peridot group:

I used some bright summery papers from the Splash collection by Echo Park.  I pieced together my own sun embellishment and added some stamped arrows, sticker elements, and tags from Elle's Studio.  For details about the weekly challenge, click HERE.

In addition to a fun video chat on Friday, Scrapbook Steals issued some extra challenges for the weekend.  I only had time to complete one of the four challenges, but am hoping to complete the others someday soon.  This challenge was to complete a layout based on the words "right now", so I decided to document my 11 year old and some details of his life "right now".

I mixed layers from Studio Calico and Simple Stories and am thrilled with how it turned out.  The alphabet card that I used in the background just happened to contain my son's initials, so I added a circle stamp around them, just for fun.  Thanks for stopping by, and happy scrapbook day!