A Couple of Layouts

I still have more auction things to post, but I thought I'd break away and post a couple of recent layouts.

Both of these were inspired by sketches at PageMaps.com. I love the sketches there!

This was the first sketch I used (this one is from May sketches):


And here is my layout - "Sweet & Sour"

Sorry about the shadow - I guess I was between the light and the layout!

Here's a close up of the journaling:


Here is the second sketch (From February sketches)


I flipped the sketch for my layout. I also added a pull-out tag behind the picture for the journaling.

The plain cardstock behind the title looks almost white, but it is actually grey.
I didn't take a pic of the journaling. But it basically explains the title. I call my hubby, "My Love". When I was trying to come up with a title for this page, it was he who suggested, "My {little} Love" since CJ is a "mini-Chip". And he is my little love, so it's perfect. Though, he's not so little anymore - he's only 1/2 inch shorter than me!!! This picture was actually taken in December 2005.

For this one, I used some chipboard letters from Cloud 9. I inked the tops with black. They were originally a beige color. I only inked the tops though, I left the edges the natural color. You can't really tell in the pic, but it makes them have even more of a dimensional look. For the brackets, I actually used a chipboard piece as the stencil, traced it and colored it in. I stamped the word 'little' on red cardstock. I can't remember the name of the stamp set, but each letter is a different font. The 'e' is a negative image, but is a little hard to see in the photo. You can click it to make it larger if you want to see it better. The heart if by Heidi Swapp, I believe. And the little circle with the date on it is a chipboard circle. I covered it with the red cardstock and punched a hole with my Crop-a-dile.

Rain

Yes, we got some MUCH needed rain over the weekend, but that's not what I'm talking about.

It would be the title of the layout I'm about to show you. When I participated in the Superbowl Challenge at Paper Petal Memories on Superbowl weekend, the few layouts I managed to get done fell under some of the challenges we were given.

We had one challenge in which we were paired with someone else. My partner looked through my gallery and found some things to challenge me on, to push me outside of my box a little. She decided my recent layouts had been on the neutral side and challenged me to use LOTS of color. And lots of flowers.

So that's what I did.

I pulled out the colors from Ruthi's dress. It was a VERY colorful dress, so it was easy to use lots of color here!

I used my Cricut to cut the flowers.
The quote says,
"Let me play in the sunshine, let me sing for joy. Let me grow in the light, let me splash in the rain, and remember the days of childhood forever."
I painted the chipboard (Rain). It started out a pale pink color which didn't match, so I changed it to yellow. That was another of the challenges as well - to use paint somewhere on a layout.

Christmas Hug

I know I've been sporadic with my blogging. I have aspirations to be a daily blogger, but that's probably never going to happen. I'm ok with that. I hope you are too!

Anyway, here's another layout I did. This one is super simple. The challenge (at PPM) was to use a large photo, covering at least 2/3 of your layout.

This is one of my favorite pictures I took at Christmas. I printed it in 8x10 - that took up plenty of space for the challenge.

And I just wanted to keep the rest simple so the picture would be the focus. Yes, that is our little tree in the background. We opted to just put up a small one again this year for several reasons. But I'm looking forward to having a real tree again next Christmas. I miss the smell!



It's hard to tell, but the punched flowers at the bottom were punched from the same patterned paper. Simple, but I like it

Baby Love

OK Christy - I'm back! You crack me up!!

And for the rest of you - so you won't be in the dark, Christy wrote:

Okay, it is officially now OVER a week since you blogged on here. Get busy girl!
You sick?
Your kiddos sick?
Too involved in all the politics on TV?
Wondering if John will be released from Stefano's hold? (I don't watch, but saw the commercial)
Worried about the writers strike?

No, I'm not sick, but I have had a sick kiddo. Definitely not too involved in the politics. A little behind on Day's so not too worried about John at the moment. And although I'm annoyed at the writer's strike, that's not what has kept me away either. Nope, I've been at my parent's house, and though I intended to blog from there, it just didn't happen. If you really want the details, you can read them here.

I think I have finally shared all my Christmas stuff and I honestly haven't done much this year yet. I'm hoping to change that soon though. I have gotten a couple layouts done, however. I'm trying to keep up with the challenges at Paper Petal Memories - the message board I'm a part of. It is a much smaller board - nothing like Split Coast Stampers. But I think that's why I love it. We are kind of a close-knit group of gals and have formed some wonderful friendships. I even got to meet up with 3 of the girls a couple summer's ago for a weekend of scrapping. Well, we didn't actually accomplish that much scrapping. But we did lots of shopping, eating, laughing and having a good time. And one of the other ladies on the board, I have formed a wonderful friendship with. We talk on the phone pretty regularly, and even though we haven't met "face to face" she has become a great friend. It's amazing that you can form friendships like this. Anyway, we have some challenges going on over there, and I'm trying keep up and do them this year in an effort to get more scrapbook pages done.

The layout I'm posting today was a sketch challenge. The sketch came from Page Maps. I LOVE the sketches from there!

So the sketch was my starting point. Then I chose the pictures. Then I chose the colors and went from there. And I used my brand new toy I got for Christmas to make the title. My parents got me the Cricut Expression - what an awesome surprise! And I'm having fun figuring out how to work it!

Anyway, here's the layout:



It's funny, I actually had a completely different picture in my head of the outcome of this layout. But it changed as I went. But I'm happy with the end result.

I'll be back to share the other 2, plus hopefully more that I'll be getting done.

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.

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!

My Sweet Valentines

Yes, I realize it's Officially May, and Valentine's Day was in February, but I think the fact that I have already scrapped these pictures is a big accomplishment. Especially considering I have hundreds from before February that are patiently waiting to be scrapped.
I had a little time on Saturday and decided I needed to play. So these are the pictures I worked with. I made a 2 of these 8x8 layouts for the kids' books. (They are exactly the same, so I'm just showing one) My favorite picture is the enlarged one, and the smaller pictures are all the "outtakes" of my little photo shoot.

I then created a 2-page 12x12 layout for my book. On this page, I stamped the title with my foam stamps from Paper Studio. It's a little uneven (I never can line these things up right), but I don't mind. I created the saying in the heart using parts of various stamps and my handwriting.

And here is the companion page. I kept these layouts pretty simple, as I wanted the focus to be on the pictures.

Silly

I used a sketch for this layout. At Paper Petal Memories, we have weekly sketch challenges. I'd like to say I do them all, but I don't. But I do them when I can. When I saw this one, I knew exactly which picture I wanted to use and what title I wanted as well. I took this picture of the kids during a "Christmas photo shoot" as I was trying to get pictures for Christmas cards and gifts for the grandparents. I love how they are both making the same silly face. I don't often do a 12x12 layout with only one picture, but I thought this one was a keeper and deserved its own page.

This is the sketch used for the layout. It originally came from ScrapRoom Blueprints.

The papers are by Provo Craft, flowers by Heidi Swapp, button by Favorite Findings. The ribbon is from Really Reasonable Ribbon. The chipboard letters are from TLC and Cloud 9, and are covered with patterned paper.

Expecting the Extraordinary

This is another layout I did a while back. It is one of my favorite pregnancy layouts. I love these pictures and was trying to express our love through the page. I was having a hard time coming up with a title and asked for Chip's help. He came up with the title. He did a good job, didn't he? The tag behind the picture contains hidden journaling.

Precious Baby Girl

Since I haven't had a lot of time lately to create, and what I am working on at the moment I can't post yet, I thought for the next few posts I'd share some of my past stuff.
This is a layout I did of my sweet little girl a while back. Can you tell I love pink? That wasn't always the case. I really didn't start having an affinity for pink until I knew I was having a little girl! Now I just LOVE pink!! And I think it's obvious in this layout.
This is a 12x12 layout, and I think it was the first time I used a large picture on a scrapbook page.
The quote is from DCWV and says:
A Daughter Is...
...a star glimmering
in the sky
a wonder, a sweetness
a perception, a
delight...
everything beautiful
A daughter is
love

The rubons are from Deja Views
Chipboard from Topline Creations (TLC), which I inked
The little page pebble is from EK Success
The eyelets are by Boxer Scrapbook Productions
The little flowers are by Offray (@ WalMart)
And the ribbon is from Really Reasonable Ribbon