Favorite Summer Activity

I started an All About Me (AAM) book a while back. At first, I couldn't imagine why I would do this - it seemed a little vain to me. But "everyone else was doing it" and it peaked my interest. So I started trying to figure out what the big deal was.

I came to the conclusion that it wasn't vain at all. When I'm gone, my kids and grand kids and generations beyond will have my scrapbooks to look at. They will be able to tell I loved my family and I had so much fun creating pages about them.

But what will those books tell them about me - the one behind the creating?

Not Much.

And that's what I decided, at least for me, is what and AAM book is for.

At Paper Petal Memories, we have a special thread that is for these albums. Linda, (the moderator) provides prompts for pages to complete in our AAM albums. There are some that don't totally appeal to me, just not things I find that I want included in my book. But that is the beauty - it is mine, and I can decide what to include.

Well, the latest prompt was, "What is your favorite summer activity?" I liked this one and decided to work on it.

My AAM album is 8.5x11 - the first time I've worked with this size, and I've been quite happy I've chosen this size. If felt my typically 12x12 was just too large for this and the smaller 8x8 that I like to do sometimes, I felt wasn't quite large enough.

Anyway, here's the LO I came up with. And thought most of my AAM LO's are only 1 page, I turned this one into 2.



All products are Top Line Creations, except for the brads (Making Memories) and the vellum that includes my journaling.

(It looks a little dark in the photo, but it really isn't that dark.)

Baby Mine

I SCRAPBOOKED!!!!! I actually made myself sit down and play for a bit! I'm sooooo happy!

I got 2 2-page layouts done. But I thought I'd spread it out just a little, so I'm only sharing one today. I'll be back tomorrow with the other one.

These pictures are from January 2005. I've been wanting to scrap them for quite sometime, but wasn't sure what direction to go with. I finally decided to quit thinking about it so much and just do it. So here's the result.



I have no idea why each side photographed completely differently, but I just didn't feel like going back and doing it again.

I used my color wheel to help decide the colors. I knew I wanted a black background, and I knew I wanted the red. But I needed a third color, and the pale purple in her outfit just wasn't cutting it. A dark purple came up, which I had not even considered, and I really liked it. I don't know why it appears blue on my screen though - trust me, it is dark purple.

I wanted to keep it pretty simple, with minimal embellishing since I really wanted the focus to be the photos.

I printed the journaling using Blackladder font. I used a quote for the first part, that I found on the internet some time back. I don't remember where I found it. It reads:
As I gaze upon my daughter's face, I think to myself...Never have I seen an angel fly so low.
My beautiful baby girl...words will never be able to express how much I love you!

I used miscellaneous cardstock, MM brads and Heidi Swapp chipboard hearts. The title is from one of the DCWV vellum quote stack books.

Father's Day Card

I can't believe I *STILL* haven't really had any creating time! I am making it a priority to get something done this week!

My Cousin-in-law came over on Saturday to get some help with a scrapbook she's putting together. We had a blast and I had so much fun helping her! I felt my creative juices beginning to flow again, so now I'm REALLY itching to create!

Now I'm just trying to decide whether to stay up late and work on something or go to bed and get up early to get started. Decisions....decisions!!!

I did have time to make a Father's Day card for my FIL. And if you knew him, you'd know why this card was perfect for him. Nothing fancy, but very suited to him.

I found the image online and created a paper piecing from it, and added a little detail with a Zig pen. I mounted it on a lighter cardstock and trimmed it, so it wouldn't blend into the background so much. I printed the sentiment, tore and inked it. Then just added a couple brads. The background paper is by Provo Craft and the cardstock is misc. pieces from my scrap drawer. Once I found the image I wanted to use, this went together very quickly.

My Dad was in China on Father's Day, and we haven't been able to get together to celebrate yet. We will do that next week, so I won't be able to post his until after that.

I promise I will be posting again this week...stay tuned!

Graduation Card

OK, I have been in a very dry spell the past couple weeks, and my fingers are aching to get messy! I NEED to create something, and SOON! There are just so many other things that have needed to be done, that it's taking all my creative mojo!

So, I'm sharing a card I made a couple weeks ago for a cousin who was graduating.

This card isn't fancy or anything - it was for a boy, so I couldn't get cutesy or froo-froo. What made me smile about this card was the colors.

I received the graduation invitation and decided to use the school colors as my inspiration. I was tickled pink when I discovered I had the same exact purple colored paper that was on the invitation!

The second color was gold, and I had just enough of that in my scrap pile to work. I did have to run out and buy some gold embossing powder - I knew I wanted the image embossed in gold!

I only had one graduation stamp to work with, and I even looked for one when I went to get the ep, but couldn't find one. So I worked with what I had.

I found matching purple and gold embroidery thread and thought that worked just right. Then I added a gold brad with a little bit of the thread for the tassel. I was quite pleased with the way it turned out.

And when Steven turned the card over, he was surprise to see my stamp on the back. He said he was expecting to see a Hallmark symbol. I'll take that as a compliment!



It doesn't look like I will have much time this weekend to do any creating either, but hopefully next week - we'll see!

Cousins

I did a LO today! I haven't had a chance to create anything all week, even though I hoped to. It was just one of "those" weeks, and I had other things going on and honestly just wasn't in the mood to create. But that all changed today.

I was in a 5-supply kit swap at PPM in which we each sent to another 'player' the following:

1 sheet solid cardstock
2 sheets double sided pp
1 lettering ( either rub-ons, stickers, etc)
1 type of embellishment ( a yard of ribbon, buttons,stickers,etc)
The challenge, when we received our kit, was to create a LO using ONLY those supplies.
This was a bit of a challenge for me. It was very tempting to just add something else from my stash....but I played by the rules.

This is what I received:

I Loved these papers! I believe they are by Wild Asparagus. (I know the letters are.)

I wasn't feeling quite as creative as I had hoped, so the first thing I did was find a sketch that I'd like to work with for inspiration. I chose one from here. It is the last sketch - the one that has an example LO following it.

Then I started looking through pictures to decide what to use. I chose pictures from last weekend of my kids with their cousin. I planned to print them in black and white because I figured I'd never find pictures to compliment the colors in the papers. But I forgot to switch them before printing, and to my surprise, the colors in the photos actually went well with the papers!
So, this is what I came up with:

And I have to say, I was quite happy with it until I wrote the info in on the bottom. My white Signo pen didn't seem to like the textured paper, and I'm really wishing I had just used a black pen. It just doesn't look right to me, but oh well...not much I can do about it now! And it just shows that I'm human and make mistakes!

There are a lot of buttons, but that's the only embellishment I could use, so I used them! I really wanted to cheat and add a flower until I remembered recently seeing others making flowers out of paper, so I used the patterned papers to do just that. (Since the paper was double sided, I actually had 4 patterns to work with, but only used 3.) Oh, and this picture doesn't do justice to the colors in these papers - they are so pretty in person!

This was a little 'out of the box' for me, but I had a lot of fun! And at least I got something done this week!

More Sympathy

Just quick post - so very busy right now! I'm hoping to have lots of time next week to be creative. We'll see! I have so many things I need to work on! Here are 3 more quick and super-simple sympathy cards I made. All using the Close as a Memory set from Stampin' Up. I won't be around this weekend, but hopefully I'll be back in full swing next week. See ya then!

I Won!!!

I WON BLOG CANDY!! Woo Hoo!! I meant to post this earlier, but I just keep forgetting. But I won this AWESOME blog candy from Heidi at Sweet Somethings. If you haven't checked out her blog, be sure to do so, she is very talented! And look at the wonderfully sweet goodies I won!


I snagged the picture from her blog, since she had already taken a great one, and I already opened my stuff before I remembered to take one! (Hope you don't mind Heidi!) Be on the lookout for these goodies in upcoming projects!