Love Laundry Layout

This layout was so much fun to put together! The photos are of my daughter pulling clothes out of the laundry basket. For some reason, she loves laundry. Whether it's dirty or clean! The papers that make up the little squares (and the majority of embellishments) are from American Crafts' Dear Lizzy Neapolitan collection. The 'wooden' background paper is from Echo Park's This and That - Charming collection. I think it goes so well with the theme and feel of this layout! The border with the numbers is also from that collection. The scallop edges on the side were punched from white card stock using the Martha Stewart Scallop Dot punch.

I wanted this layout to have somewhat of a 'laundry feel' to it which is where the clothespins, twine, and buttons came in. The wooden buttons, pennant flutterbys, and pink Thickers are also by American Crafts. The colorful buttons are from October Afternoon's Sidewalk Chalk collection. I fussy cut the tiny Polaroid camera from an Echo Park's Playground collection paper. The word 'love' is spelled out using alpha stickers from Simple Stories' Fabulous collection.

Happy Friday! Don't forget - COLOR ME SCRAPPY goes live THIS SUNDAY! Make sure you become a follower so you can participate in our very first challenge. I hope everyone has a great weekend. Toodles!

Post Mojoless Layout & a weekend recap

I am so sorry for my lack of blogging this week! I don't know what came over me but it seemed my mojo had run dry. I went into the craft room Monday only to find that every layout I made an attempt at came out looking horrid. To top it all off - I was having a huge run of bad luck. My glue dot runner broke which left me only my ATG gun. My ATG gun is running VERY low on adhesive. To put it lightly, I am quite screwed in the adhesive department.

Thank goodness my luck turned around on Tuesday. I was able to make this layout. While it isn't my favorite - it is much more decent then the trash that was coming out of the craft room on Monday. The layout mainly features papers from Simple Stories' Fabulous collection.  The teal wood grain paper is by Bella Blvd. The photos are of my daughter helping her godmother cook breakfast.

The wooden buttons and felt pieces are from American Crafts. The alpha stickers for the word "1st" are from My Little Shoebox.

HELPFUL TIP!  If you are like me and find it impossible to get your mini alphas properly lined up AND you like for them to be inked around the edges - this tip may help you! I lined them up close to the edge of a scrap sheet of paper, cut them out as a whole, and inked the edges. Voila! They were much easier to play around with on the layout.

One of the reasons I was unable to make my usual Monday post is because I did not scrapbook on Saturday or Sunday. My best friend came into town. She lives about four hours away from me so we don't see each other often. We were quite busy shopping, eating out, and being overly silly. Don't you just love our 'staches? (My bestie is the blondie. I'm the curly sue.)

On another note...the above came in the mail yesterday. I have no excuse not to scrap the photos from the day my daughter was born now! After searching high and low - I found the collection PERFECT for the photos (despite it being a much older collection). Now I just need to DO IT. These are my most prized photos, though. They are so very special to me. I am having a very hard time coming to terms with scrapping them because I just want the layout to be as perfect as it possibly can be. Does anyone else have photos that you just find hard to scrapbook because of how much they mean to you?

 

...And just because I've decided that everyone could use a little cuteness in their lives today, I'll leave you with this picture of my daughter and one of our beloved kitties (Matrix).

A Thanksgiving 2011 layout & a note about Pinterest

There was a discussion over on the 'Two Peas In A Bucket' forum that asked if anyone has issues scrapping 'out of season' photos/layouts. For the most part, I don't. The only holiday/season I just can't bring myself to scrap out of season is Christmas. With that being said - I was in a 'fall' mood when I scrapped this and decided to get the few Thanksgiving photos I had out of the way.

I made this layout from a pretty basic sketch that I doodled up myself. My main goal was to work in a few layers of papers with tabs on them. I really like the look of tabs as opposed to flat edges. I think it makes layering all the more interesting. The orange dotted paper and the brown and orange strip are from American Craft's Night Fall collection. The chevron paper and pink paper are from American Craft's Dear Lizzy collection. I wish I could tell you where the grid paper and the floral background paper are from but I honestly have no idea! They were sitting in my scrap basket with no name to claim. The title is is made up of alphas via sticker sheets from Crate Paper's Emma's Shop and Simple Stories' Fabulous collection.

The round 'fall' embellishment and leave stickers are from American Craft's Nightfall collection. The little pie in the corner is also from American Crafts. The sticker at the very top and the 'Slice of the Good Life" sticker are both by Amy Tangerine. The pink paper bits that are spread out near the embellishments are all either punched out from my Fiskar's postage punch or my EK Success Binding edge punch. The "tasty" sticker is from American Craft's Dear Lizzy collection and the pink doily is from the sticker sheet that came with Simple Stories' Fabulous collection.

An IMPORTANT note: I only just recently realized that my blog has not been allowing people to pin my work. It was simply because I did not have the code on my page. The issue is fixed. I know many people are up in the air about Pinterest but please know that I don't mind at all if you pin my work! In fact, I encourage you to because it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. ;)

My first two page layout...

I did it! I actually scrapped a two page layout. If you've been reading my blog for a while then you know that two page layouts immediate me immensely. One of my goals for this month was just to go ahead and give it a try. It came out much more simple then how I usually scrap but I think it came out nice. The more two page layouts I do, the more I'll grow comfortable with them. I'll learn how to 'clutter' them  up a bit, eventually. But for now....here is the layout:

The design of this layout was actually inspired by one of Nancy Damiano's layouts. A one pager that I stretched to a two pager. The floral paper, striped paper, and thickers are from American Crafts' Dear Lizzy Neapolitan collection. The green grid paper and the alpha stickers that spell out "first" are from My Little Shoeboxes' Lovely Day collection. The striped yellow paper is from Echo Park's This & That - Charming collection. The pennant banner is by American Crafts (flutterbys).

The owl in the middle of the photos is from American Craft's Daydreams collection. The owls that are around the title are from Bella Blvd's Finally Fall collection. The envelope is filled with memorabilia. Inside you can find a napkin from the birthday party, one of the invitations to the birthday party, and two extra journaling tags to tell of a few memories from the party. It is fastened with Doodlebug twine and Dear Lizzy Neapolitan brad. I wrapped  Bazzill Basics' Vintage Marketplace paper tape around the bottom corners just to add a extra interest to that area.

As you can probably tell from the pictures on the layout - the reason I went with 'owls' is because that was the theme of my daughter's 1st birthday party. I blogged about her birthday party a few months ago. Feel free to take a look! I still have a ton of photos from her birthday party that need to be scrapped. I think I am just going to add them in divided page protectors and put them behind this layout in the album. I may spruce it up with some 4x6 cards though. We'll see!

Announcement!

I am now a member of the Color Me Scrappy design team! This is my first time ever being on a DT and I couldn't be more excited. I can't wait to work with all the lovely ladies of the DT and of course the owners - Lisa and Pam. Very exciting!

Now...a little more about Color Me Scrappy....
Color Me Scrappy is a new challenge blog. I know that everyone loves a good challenge blog, right? The challenges will consist of color challenges and alphabet challenges.

The first challenge will be posted on April 1st - so be sure to subscribe to their blog and play along.

 

We are gonna' have a ball!

The weather has been so nice lately. I am hoping it doesn't decide to get cold again. I took Charlotte outside to play with her ball and explore. She loved every minute of it! This will be the first year that she is actually able to play on the playground, go to the beach, etc. Last year she was a little to young. I am really looking forward to these experiences with her. I snapped some really cute photos and decided to scrap them right away.

The grid paper, the teal polka dot paper, and the doily border are from Simple Stories' Fabulous collection. The pink/orange striped paper is from American Crafts' Dear Lizzy Neapolitan collection. The  yellow piece (with the numbers on it) is from Crate Paper's Neighborhood collection. I punched it with my EK Success Binding Edge punch.

The little brown butterflies were punched out using my Martha Stewart 3 in 1 Butterfly punch. The card stock flowers (which I am in love with) are from My Little Shoebox's Enchanted Garden Collection. The buttons are from October Afternoon's Sidewalks collection (I've become a bit button crazed). The various word stickers and alpha stickers are from My Minds Eye, Bo Bunny, and a couple of the companies I already mentioned.

Thanks for reading!

A Boy & His Mustang (LAYOUT)

Shimelle Laine has an ongoing series on her blog called "Starting Points". In the series she creates a starting point for us to recreate and follow. A starting point is a basic foundation for your layout. This was the starting point that I recreated following along with Shimelle's starting point. I then went on to add pictures, journaling, a title, and embellishments which resulted in this layout:

 

Almost all the papers and embellishments are from Echo Park's "This and That - Charming" collection. The wood grain paper is however from My Mind's Eye's Stella Rose collection. The kraft border is put out by Studio Calico and the kraft tags are by Maya Road. The buttons are from October Afternoon and American Crafts. There is even a little Amy Tangerine thrown in there.

The story behind this layout is interesting enough. I won't go into great detail but the journaling basically just tells how my husband had wanted a Mustang since he was a child. When he finally got one he treated it like his baby. He loved it! Despite treating it so well, he was unable to avoid an accident. He ended up hitting a deer on the highway. He was going 70 m.p.h. so we're lucky that he didn't get hurt like the car (or the deer who suffered a sudden death). Insurance did pay to have it repaired. It looked almost brand new when we got it back. It wasn't long after that, however, that he ended up having to sell the Mustang due to the fact that a two door is not nearly as child friendly as a four door. He dreams of the day that he will be able to have his dream car once again.

Hope you enjoyed! If you haven't already - head on over to Shimelle's blog and give her starting points a go. This is the first one I've done and I enjoyed it so much that I plan on going back and doing all the other ones she has already put out!

A different type of layout & weekend fun...

This layout was completely inspired by Project Life. I, myself, am not a project lifer. I could never keep up with taking the pictures - let alone scrapping them all! However, I really like the look and feel of Project life. I have plenty of photos that I want in my album but I don't necessarily want to use a bunch of my stash to make a full layout. By making 4x6 'layout cards', the entire process is faster and I use less product. Not to mention, I'm finding more use for my 6x6 paper pads which is great!

All the papers you see are from Authentique's Blissful collection and Blush collection. I loved that both collections had grey in them and decided to use a pink/yellow/grey color combo.  As I started to embellish I realized that a lot of my stickers (and such) were pink but not the light pink that the papers were. That's when I decided to throw a splash of the brighter pink, almost red color on each 4x6 card. The embellishments vary by company/collection. Doodlebug Twine, Studio Calico Chipboard Butterflies, American Crafts Neapolitan, October Afternoon Buttons. 

If you haven't tried doing a layout like this - I suggest you do! It was fast, easy, and I had so much fun with it!

The weekend was exciting. My husband had a huge surprise in store for me. We had plans to go spring clothes shopping for Charlotte and decided to make a day of it store hopping and going out to eat. Imagine my surprise when my husband took me to Best Buy so I could buy the camera of my dreams! I've wanted a DSLR for quite some time, a fact that I have made very apparent to my husband with every little complaint about our point and shoot camera. We bought the Canon EOS Rebel T2i and I couldn't be happier. The pictures it takes are beautiful and it shoots great video footage as well. I am in love! If I wasn't married to my amazing husband - I'd marry this camera via royal wedding. That's how in love I am! Though, I still have a lot to learn about it. :)

Charlotte did not go home empty handed. The husband made it a point to spoil our little princess as well. She now has a wardrobe full of spring clothes. They are so darling! My favorite is a t-shirt of a little puppy riding on a scooter saying 'bon-jour!'

 

We of course stopped by Toys R Us. Charlotte ended up with a few new toys. Among her favorites were the new baby doll (she loves her babies) and a 'Little People' (a second favorite brand of toy) airplane. Needless to say, I've been busy flying the pink plane to and fro - making sure that all of her Little People make it to their destination safely.

6lbs of Scrappy Goodness

My Studio Calico/Two Peas order came in the mail today.  I can't wait to play with all the new pretties.  Care to take a peek?

If you watch the video, I apologize in advance for all of the 'uhs and ums'. ;)

My Husband The Artist

My husband is an artist. He paints landscapes and birds.
There are many things that I love about my husband but his ability to capture the true beauty of the world simply at the stroke of a brush is one of my favorite things.
I am proud of him and support him just as he supports me with my scrapbooking.
I thought it would be nice to give my readers a little peek into his artistic world.

If you'd like to see more of his work then please feel free to visit his website - Bruce Collins Studio. He also has an Etsy shop.

He also has a YouTube channel where he does time lapse videos of his paintings in the creative process. I may be biased but I think they are very relaxing to watch! I do hope you all will take a peek.

"Notes" with My Little Shoebox

My legal pad, while well loved, is far to ordinary. I decided to spruce it up using the "Lovely Day" collection by My Little Shoebox.

The flowers are the 3-D Roll Up Flowers that My Little Shoebox has in their many fabulous collections. It took me a second to get the handle of putting them together but once I did - that was it! I layered a few of the flowers together and added a little bit of bling in the middle. Cute!

I kept the inside pretty simple. I made a pocket for any loose papers I may need to store and the legal pad fits perfectly. The word "Misc." is spelled out using Amy Tangerine's "Lovely Straw" thickers.

Hope you enjoyed!