a BOY and his temporary DOG

This week's sketch challenge was hard to fit into a busy week.  The original sketch and details about the weekly challenge can be found HERE.  After having relatives visit for the weekend, I was hard pressed for crafty time.  I ended up using photos that are over 2 years old to create a page about my son and our rescue dog.

I hung onto these photos for so long, debating on whether I even wanted to include them in my son's scrapbook.  My title shows that the dog was, in fact, just a temporary pet.  My boys wanted a dog for years and we finally decided to take the plunge and rescue a low shedding dog that might not irritate my allergies.  We found "Jill" at a rescue 90 minutes away and picked her up on September 4, 2010.  We promptly changed her name to Ruby and started our adventure as pet owners. Turns out allergies were the least of my worries.  Long story short, Ruby wasn't all she was advertised to be.  Practically everything we were told about her turned out to be wrong.  She wasn't a good fit for a busy working family with no other animals.  After lots of problems, prayers, tears, and family discussions, we ultimately decided to return her to the foster home where she lived before.  It just wasn't meant to be.  I decided to scrap this page anyway, even though Ruby is no longer living with us.  I decided that 20 years from now, Caleb will want to see pictures of his dog, even if it was only his for 3 months.  The boys are still eager to find a "replacement" but I'm a little more apprehensive after this experience.  Maybe someday we'll find a good dog for us....

Top of the Class

Since my last few layouts have featured my oldest, I had to switch gears this week and make a layout about the youngest of the youngins.  He was chosen to receive a reading award and Mom and Dad were invited to the school assembly to see him get his award.  It was all a surprise to him, so it was especially fun to see his reaction when he saw us sitting in the auditorium.  This award was especially surprising because, unlike his older brother, Caleb doesn't necessarily love to read.  He usually only reads when he "has" to, and seldom reads for fun, so I loved seeing him rewarded for his hard work.

This layout features papers from the Hall Pass collection by We R Memory Keepers.  I worked with some of these papers at CHA last July and received even more goodies from this collection when I was a guest designer on the WRMK facebook page last fall.  The colors worked perfectly with my photos for a fun school themed layout.  This page was inspired by a sketch for the weekly Mid Week Mojo challenge at Scrapbook Steals.

5th grade

This week I decided to do another layout about my oldest son's first day of school.  I mixed papers from WRMK's Hall Pass collection and Imaginisce's Geek is Chic collection along with a couple random pieces from Echo Park to create this layout.

I added some doodles, paint splatters, and rub on elements to complete the look I was shooting for.

This is the third layout from this weekly series at Scrapbook Steals.  For details about the challenge and to see the inspiration sketch, you can visit them HERE.

Basketball camp

This week's sketch challenge at scrapbook steals featured a large half circle, so I decided to go with a basketball theme and scrap some photos from last year. 

I had a piece of "basketball textured" paper approximately 6x12 inches, so I cut out a half circle and added some thin strips of black cardstock to it to look like the seams on a real basketball.  A little black ink on the textured paper gave just the right look for my homemade basketball.  I decided to add some spray ink after the basketball was already attached to my paper, so I had to create a mask out of scrap paper that was the same size as my basketball to protect the area I didn't want to splatter.  It's hard to see on the photo, but there's a thin splattering of red paint on the cream cardstock.  A few die cut stars and some washi tape finished off the layout. 

Every March my boys participate in a three week basketball camp at their school.  Since we'll be starting a new round of March Madness this week, I decided I should hurry up and scrap these old photos from last year.  How time flies!  Hope I can find time to be crafty this week!

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.