hey dude

This week, my crafty friend Brenda Smith was a guest sketcher for Scrapbook Steals.  She knocked it out of the park with her sketch and amazing talent! Seriously, Brenda is one of the best and is always inspiring me with her breathtaking creations.  I try to play along with the weekly Scrapbook Steals challenges and have only missed a few, but I'm keeping up with this series so far and couldn't wait to give it a try!  Here's what I came up with:

Brenda's original sketch called for circles or other shapes in a grid pattern, but I had this great "circle" paper from Pink Paislee that was a perfect shortcut!  I cut part of the patterned paper off and flipped it around to the B side, which featured the fun border and grid paper where I completed my journaling.  The strip of black chevron patterned paper is by Gossamer Blue. I die cut my title using negative space inside the arrow shape and added a few flags and a sticker from Echo Park to finish it all off!  Here's the original sketch by Brenda Smith:

Worster Lake

This Memorial Day weekend, we visited Worster Lake, one of our favorite places.  I decided to dig up some photos from 3 years ago and did a page featuring my darling sons enjoying the lake.

I used papers from Crate Paper, Basic Grey, and Authentique combined with stickers and embellishments from Echo Park, Simple Stories, and Elle's Studio.  This is the sketch from Scrapbook Steals weekly sketch challenge that inspired it all:

Home Sweet Home

This week's sketch challenge at Scrapbook Steals was a great reason to bust out a new collection from Simple Stories.  I used the Homespun papers and embellishments to create this layout as part of the Daisy series:

The original sketch that inspired my version is by Melodee Cloud for Scrapbook Steals:

little artist

This week's sketch challenge was more of a challenge because I had to complete it while at the campground, celebrating Mother's Day weekend with my family.  I packed a few supplies and had to work out of a bag instead of my crafty room, proving to be quite the challenge.  Here's what I came up with for the Daisy #3 sketch for Scrapbook Steals:

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!

Just one more picture?

This week, my super talented scrappy friend Chloe Salerno, provided the sketch and inspiration layout for Scrapbook Steals.  Chloe used three photos and three blocks of patterned paper.  But, since I had 6 photos I wanted to include, I skipped the patterned paper and just made a grid of photos.

After marking out my grid with pencil, I machine stitched over the grid, to "frame" my photos somewhat.  I added a large title, just like Chloe did, and added stickers and stamps and various "photo" themed embellishments.  It's fun to do a silly page like this every once in a while.  It goes to show that all of our photos don't have to be perfect to make it into our albums.  In fact, the crazy photos are my favorite ones of all the photos I took on this particular camping trip.

Caleb{age8}

This week's sketch challenge at Scrapbook Steals came together quickly.  I pulled out some photos of my little dude and let him fill in the blanks on my journaling tag.  It's a fun way to capture his personality and preserve his handwriting at this stage in his life. 

These papers are all by Simple Stories, from the Take a Hike collection.  It is my favorite collection to use with photos of our outdoor adventures!