Paper Secrets Manu Challenge - Jillibean Soup - First Day of School 1989

This month's manufacturer challenge from Paper Secrets was to use Jillibean Soup. I really love their products but haven't had much exposure. I ordered the Apple Cheddar 6x6 stack back in October as I was seeing bits of it everywhere and I really loved it.

I hadn't gotten a chance to use it yet, as I had no fall photos to scrap really...

And then this challenge came along.

I struggled with what I could use. It seems like all the childhood photos my mom took of us were in the summer or winter. Maybe spring. But I had nearly zero fall photos.

So I hauled out the old sticky page albums she'd made and hunted through them for fall photos. Still none. Clearly my mom had SAD or something and hated the fall... lol.... not really but I do have to ask her why?

Finally I settled on some back to school photos. I think this is my first day of school ever. I would have been going into Junior Kindergarden I believe. The boy in the photo is the neighbour across the street. We got on the bus together and I felt so darn important having this big Grade 7 boy as my friend and protector on the bus. While all the other little kids had to sit in the front, he let me sit with him in the back with all the big kids... I was just so darn important lol.

The trees and the apple circle are both from that 6x6 Apple Cheddar pack. I cut up a page of the trees to give me the two borders and the three little trees bottom left.

The apple bottom left is painted with some glimmer glaze to deepen the red a bit as it wasn't so matchy beforehand. The alphas are Thickers that annoy me because the n-onwards sheet is slightly different in color than the a-m part of the pack. Grr.

I also used two glimmermists, in orange and brown (can't remember the real color names right now), to splatter the background a bit beforehand and give it a bit more interest. I have to say, this is becoming an addiction. This weekend I misted, glazed and glammed all over the place. I'm getting a little depressed that I only have the 4 products I got in the Rustic Barn Paint System Set from Tattered Angels...  I need an angel to drop by with more colors!!! Not the glam though, not so into the glam, I prefer the subtle effect of the mists and glazes :)

Hope you enjoy!!

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I am in the Practical Scrappers layout contest...

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Double Challenge Double Layout - The Animals of Kualoa Ranch

So I officially lost it this weekend. I found two different challenges and combined them into one and made a crazy double page double challenge... and it was fun! I might be hooked!

I started off working on the Scraptastic Club 2nd January Challenge - to use the below sketch and at least 5 photos. I had a bunch of ideas for this, none of which I used when I switched gears when I found the animal photos...

Paper Secrets' QOTW was about animal photos, and whether you scrap them, so I had scrapping animals on the mind)

 

The Scraptastic Club challenges are a lot of fun as there is 4-5 per month and they are all different - sketches, recipes, themes, etc! It keeps you on your toes and away from the rut of sketch-layout sketch-layout...

Then as I was laying it out I had way too many photos, and some that couldn't be cut into 3x3s...
So I immediately thought of Love Joy Paper and the cute sketch for the challenge this month:



And that is how the following two pager became a double challenge double layout....

Here is the overall double... I used the same papers and colors on both pages. The alphas are Fancy Pants, and everything else is stash stuff. I had this big bold and somewhat ugly Hawaiian themed paper I cut cut up for 2 of the 3x3s and then used some remnants for the strips and squares seen everywhere else. For a bit of a hare-brained idea, it turned out really sharp looking. 

This is the Scraptastic page. Essentially all I did was flip the sketch and flip the bottom trim upside down. I also omitted the little element on the grid as it was busy enough with all those animals. 

This is the Love Joy Paper sketch. I changed the proportions on the photos and added the 4x6 of the cow on top. I moved the title and omitted the journalling.

Thanks for visiting!!

Sketchy Thursdays 1.12 - World War II Bunkers

Well, sad announcement over at Sketchy Thursdays this week, accompanied by a great sketch. This week will be their last challenge, so everyone, get over there and participate to give them a proper goodbye.

Here are the layouts I have made for their challenges since I started this blog in October:
Psyclone
Down the Aisle
My Veil
Freeze the Moment
USS Arizona and Pearl Harbour

And here is this week's final sketch *sniff sniff*:

I know! Not more banners!! Lol! I actually had a fairly easy time with this one because I knew I needed two photos, one that I could make into a little circle...

These are the bunkers left up from World War II that were erected on Kualoa Ranch to protect Hawaii from the Japanese. Will walked out to explore them, which I regret not doing as I stood back to take more landscape photos (I did get some fabulous photos). This was one relic no one seemed interested in exploring at the ranch, which we were all too interested in.

I used two different "photo" papers from DCWV Photo Stack 2 - the small piece at the top left and the background to the 4x6 photo, which is like a dried up creek bed or something like that. I also used some black corrugate (I love this stuff, where do I find more!) and a couple star brads to keep the page feeling all American! Its really bad me not being an American as all I can think of for my America themed pages are stars, red, white and blue! I guess its OK since most Americans think of Canadians as Inuit :) 

I really didn't have stickers that I liked enough for the title on this page, so I wrote it myself. I used a book I have called Scrapbook Lettering and the "font" is called Pinstripe which I freehanded. I used pencil fo rmy lines and to sketch out the top line of text, then did the bottom line without a pencil guide. I really need to get a better pencil or a better eraser! The letters didn't stick out very well, so I added the red and the blue after they were complete. It really changed the look and brought the title from the background to the attention getter, which was what I wanted. 

I really can't print neatly without a line lol! Look at that terrible journalling card! I have a collection of these I will be using on the photos I took in Hawaii about the military and at Pearl Harbour. I love the American feel they have without being Crayola red and blue :)

Hope you enjoy, and thanks for the fun Sketchy Thursdays!!

Paper Bakery January Sketch - 5 Generations

Paper Bakery has fun scrapping kits, and also has challenges on their blog. They started out January with this cute sketch.

 

I hesitated on this one as I wasn't sure what to do with it (its all the butterflies lol, they always throw me off). This morning I had the inspiration to use a photo of 5 generations of my family taken the year my sister was born... and this layout emerged...

Sorry about the not-so-great photo of this one, I had to go out and get the photo I had enlarged as the proportions were wrong and didn't get home til it was WAY dark.

The papers are all Fancy Pants from two different collections. The large flower is a floral stem I painted with a bit of gold glimmer glam, and the two red flowers are ribbon flowers from the stash that I painted with glimmer glaze to make the colors work. The "generations" is from Creative Memories and the "5" is Thickers.

Above are my closeups.

I truly feel blessed to have known my great-great grandmother. She lived to be 104 or 105. She is the seated woman. The woman on the left is my great-grandmother. She is still alive and well at 90-something. Next to her is my grandmother. She just turned 70, and other than the grey hair, doesn't look much different. Then myself and my new baby sister in front. This was taken in 1991.

If my great-grandmother is still alive when I have my first child, then there will be 5 generations in my direct family line again. The first 5th generation grandchild to my great-grandmother is about 7 or 8 I think.

Hope you enjoy this little piece of my family history!



Let's Scrap 1-4-12: Waikiki Sunset Cruise, and a guest appearance by Precious :)

Can I just say, I love two page sketches... and I love Let's Scrap.

This is the two pager of the week:

How fun! Except it has banners. I have to say, honestly, I think I hate banners. I never know what to do with them, and it does come out great in the end every time, but every time I see banners I stall, hence why I am posting this on 8:30 PM the night it is due!!

I really need to get over this anti-banner thing :)

So for this sketch... I essentially changed everything but you can still get the gist...

I used white cardstock and my very first bottle of glimmermist I just got in the mail yesterday to add the orange to the background. I wanted to use colors to go with the pastel Hawaii stickers I have because I avoid using those, and I thought with the soft colors of the photos it would all work fab.

The border papers are Recollections for the pink and Fancy Pants Little Sprout for the green and pink, which was punched with my Marvy Uchida border punch system.  

Here are the pages individually:

And here are some detail shots:

The letters are Creative Memories for the pink, and Thickers glitter for the teal. All the other stickers are Jolee's, all off one card except for the few flowers on the right page. I used all the stickers but one from the card on this page... a record for me... now I just have a palm tree left to use up! Way to stash bust!

Given that I hate banners, I had a brainwave first of replacing this banner with a photo, then I decided to change the photo into a banner, so I just cut it into three :)  The brads are Recollections and the bungee cord is Making Memories.

Hope you enjoyed this one, it is so different for me - no matting, new glimmermist, pastel colors (barf lol but it turned out pretty hot I think), banners.... way to make me feel uncomfortable Let's Scrap!!

Today I will leave you with some snapshots of Precious inspecting the quality of my work. I think she was satisfied, but its hard to tell!

Paper Secrets Scraplift Challenge - Michelle Hernandez

Paper Secrets this month has challenged us to scraplift from Michelle Hernandez. Her blog, My Analog Life, is full of awesome inspiration.

The layout I picked can be found at its original blog post here; I did not want to copy over for fear of violating copyrights, and out of professional courtesy (plus you need to check out her blog anyways!)

I was instantly drawn to this layout because its a great way to feature one landscape photo without making a boring page. I take so many photos of landscapes and cityscapes and never know what to do with them, and find making a page just about a photo is so unpersonal.

I love everything really about this page, and decided to re-create it as much as possible....

The bamboo background paper and the hibiscus paper is DCWV travel stack, and the green and blue trims are Websters. The little tag (close up below) is Making Memories, as is the glittery hibiscus, which I colored the centre of and the green ribbon and blue bungee cord holding the tag.

I also used Thickers and my Silhouette to cut the large letters, but I didn't stitch them I just drew a rough line inside each large letter with a pink gel pen. It shows up a little more IRL. Both ribbons are cheapies from Michael's, and the leaves I made by hand and added gel pen to make the ribs.

I am also entering this over at Two Scrapbook Friends as they have a "big title" challenge going on right now too :)

Hope you enjoy!

2SF 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Challenge - At the Bar!

Two Scrapbook Friends put up weekly challenges on their forums...

This fun one came up a while ago...

We had to use 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 of separate elements of our choice.

This is what I came up with..

I love this photo of Cam at the bar getting himself a non-alcholic bev... Its just so cool and laid back looking, just like Cam!

Now for the challenge:

I used 5 stamped, and slightly drunk bevvies colored with my Copics. I also added some glitter glue to the 1st, 3rd, and 5th drinks to bling them up a bit.

I used 4 brads - two stars between the words of the title and two to hold on the frame.

I used 3 word for my title

I used 2 frames - the green one with the black background cut from my Silhouette, pattern purchased from the Silhouette store, and one small chipboard frame around Cam's name.

I used 1: photo, circle, and background stamp. I made the stamped circle using a scrap from the bin and my Anna Griffin bkgd stamp and some more of that lovely Memento ink that I also used on my bevvies :) 

Hope you LOVE the close-ups of my bevvies! Can you believe I didn't use any green? I used BG10 and blended like a <insert choice word here> to get the greenie look to my greenie drinks. This is my very first time blending colors together that don't match in letter and first number... I'm so proud.

To break it down, top to bottom: [this is all from memory, I need to write this stuff down!] 

Martini: E00, E0000, BG10, R29

Green Collins-y drink: Y11, Y13, YR00, BG10, R29

Tequila Sunrise: R24, R29, R35, YR00, YR04, Y11, Y13

Rye and something pink drink: R24, R29, YR00, YR0000 and maybe some Y11

Margarita: Y11, Y13, BG10

Note - I did layer the BG10 in and then colored on top of it heavy and then layered it back on top and colored it out more lightly to really drag the greenish-ness up through and get rid of the blue. I honestly don't know how it worked and am in awe of myself lol!

Hope you enjoyed checking this one out with a bevvie of your own!

Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge & Sketchy Thursdays - Photo with Santa

Well, this week I decided to combine two challenges, something I rarely do. Another Freaky Scrapping Challenge had a challenge to scrap a Christmas Past, while Sketchy Thursdays had the below awesome sketch, with the added requirement to use blue and silver.

I found this old Polaroid of a little me with Santa. I am going to assume it was either Christmas 1990 or 1991 since my sister is not in the photo, and therefore she must not have been born. I started out picking the pink background paper, and decided pink, blue and silver was a great combo to make a non-traditional Christmas color set... and thats really how the two challenges combined. I did not set out with that intention at all in the beginning :)

The background paper is Momenta, and essentially the rest of the stuff came out of the stash. I decided to put the journalling part on the background circle off centre to give it a bit more attitude :)  I left it blank for my mom to fill in because I certainly don't remember this occaision!

I colored the centre of this glitter star with an Elmer's glitter gel pen and added a bling to make it more fun.

Here's a closeup of the details, all the silver stuff is from the same package. I really like how the Polaroid looks - too bad we didn't have a Polaroid camera because the photos are so cute!

Sketch Along Tuesdays #31 - Kelly

Frosted Designs is a great website full of inspiring challenges. Each week they post a layout sketch and a card sketch, and then they also add a random challenge on Fridays.

Tuesday is the layout sketch day, and this is this week's challenge:



Its a pretty cute sketch, eh?

This was my take on it:

The paper is a new manufacturer for me, Kaisercraft. Its from the Lush collection and is called Cherry Blossom. I really like this collection for the great color combos and different styles of papers.

Don't you love my fabulous new border punch? Its from Marvy Uchida... I have their border system (only two patterns so far though) and I am loving this one... I sort of just want to punch it all over right now.....

I added a little bit of Cosmo Cricket both in the line sticker and also here with the chipboard flourishes :) 

Last but not least... here are some of the first words ever cut out of my brand new... SILHOUETTE CAMEO! Woooohooo! I am loving this thing, and its only fitting that I used it on the page of my MOH Kelly... who is also who got me into the whole Silhouette thing... she had one first :)

Hope you enjoy!

~T

My First Blog Hop!!!

Wow! So Let's Scrap has invited me to join in on their blog hop! I am sooo excited!

 

Even more exciting, it is a card hop, so I have to make a card based on one of their exclusive, never-seen-before sketches! Sooo exciting! The sketch I got was fabulous and I know exactly who I am giving the card to... (so she better not be peeking on my blog Miss Valentine's Baby!)

 

In total, there will be 50 ladies participating, so thats 50 card sketches, 50 inspiration cards.... and the best part, every one of us will be giving away a RAK with 2 chances to win on each and every blog! WOW!!!

 

So ladies... get ready, this is gonna be a fun one!!

Let's Scrap 12-28-11 - Kilauea

OK Ladies, y'all need to check out Let's Scrap.

Why?

Well... awesome sketches. Double pagers even (my fave!!)
Fun groups to join (more on that later)
Other fun and challenging challenges
Lots of inspiration
A great bunch of girls!

So back to the groups....

I joined 100 LOs in 2012 thinking it would be a challenge, however when I got down to doing the math...

I do 2 LOs on average in one sitting (estimate, probably more like 2.9)
I scrap at least twice a week
52 weeks in a year

2x2x52=208 LOs I should be able to do minimum in one year.

Does that make sense?

Well... in 2011, I only blogged October til December, and had 70 blog posts (71 actually, but lets make the numbers easy).

October to December is only 3 months or 1/4 of the year.

So in theory I could have made 280 LOs in a year, or about 5 a week.

I am going to need to revise my goal for sure, and I'm thinking 212 should be a good target (12 for 2012), but I'm a little concerned I'm going to run out of photos to scrap... so we will see!

So back to the sketch... here it is:

Note the whole opening door deal on the RHS... snazzy! Why did I never think of this? I have used a few doors before but just to hide one photo, not 6!! LOVE IT!

So then the issue was thinking of where I have a ton of photos I can use. And also the whole photos touching each other and the edges thing.... not so into that normally... but I decided to give it a go.

I thought this was a perfect fit for the photos we took in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in 2009 on our honeymoon. I take a ton  of landscape photos and then never know what to do with them, and can never pick just one to represent the wonders of the world. So this was the perfect application to have a ton of them included with the very few photos of Will and I. I actually have enough to do one more page.

So my variation on the sketch was that I sort of rotated the left page, but kept the horizontal strip tying the two pages together. I also eliminated the middle elements under the journalling and used one Creative Memories Travel sticker there instead.

I also altered the photo door, adding a sticker and the "off" pieces of the border punch I used for the border on the left strip. That is a new border punch I got for Christmas, and I am loving it. Its a cartridge one so you change the cartridges and away you go. Similar to the Creative Memories one, but available at Michaels. There are a lot of different images available, all different than what the CM one has... so I think I want both lol. 

The alphas are Studio G, and the green, orange and burgundy papers plus the hibiscus papers are all DCWV, while the dark brown cardstock is Recollections and the light brown is from the stash :)

Here is the inside of the door on the layout, as you can see, I hid the landscape photos more inside, and added a little description next to each.

Here is the journalling/embellie spot. The sign at the bottom is a photo I took at the park.

The journalling says

Hiking in an active volcano area was incredible. It did not smell like sulphur, but the ground was black everywhere and amazing exotic tropicals grew in this seemingly inhospitable soil. We explored steam vents, lava tubes and walked around an extinct crater and the active Kilauea. Definitely unforgettable!