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Monday, October 07, 2013

Pumpkin Love

If you've followed my blog for any length of time, you know I LOVE Autumn and all the colors that go along with it.

I'm particularly fond of pumpkins...and since we don't let our kids do scary things with pumpkins in our house, I'm always looking for interesting pumpkin ideas...

This year, I found some really really cool ideas.  I know there will be more that come out as we get closer to Halloween, but these are the ideas that caught my eye so far:

Pumpkins with Faces:



Black Cat Pumpkins:



Paper Owl Pumpkin:



House Pumpkin:



Hop on Pop Pumpkins:



Button Pumpkin:



Felt and Pom Poms:



Swiss Cheese Pumpkin:



M&M Pumpkins:



Funny Face Pumpkin:



Catarpillar pumpkins:


Do you have a fun pumpkin idea? or are you more of a traditionalist?

Peace, ya'll!

Monday, September 30, 2013

This Means No - another experiment

Happy Monday!!!

Here it is the end of September. That means that the next few weeks for me will be filled with preparations fo birthdays and Halloween, and my planning for the approaching Holiday Season.

But today, I'm here to share another happy experiment.

This one, believe it had NO sketches and also experiments with smaller photos - in this case 3 x 4.

For this one, I just wanted to showcase the two photos of Noah's hand motion when he wants to say no...NOW, at three, he just screams.

BUT when these photos were taken, he would wave his little hands in front of himself and just fuss at us.

The whole layout is elevated with one and sometimes two layers of dimensional adhesive, even under the border stickers.



I am in LOVE with the dimension and how the focus remains on the photos.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Changing Perspectives - Game Boy

If you pay attention at all to my work, you know I have this habit of arranging my photos in a line down the left with larger photos on the right. 

I wanted to use this same approach, but with smaller photos, clustered together.

This arrangement was originally going to be set in the lower left of the page, making use of the alphabet down the right as a border. But the more I messed with it, the less I liked it...

Accidentally, I tipped the grid while messing around and then just fell in love with it.

Remember my post about Polaroid Love? I used some of the Studio Calico overlays to build some interest into the layout and then camped my journaling along the right border.

The result is a very fun layout, that is also very simple.


It perfectly displays my little guy's obsession with his Leap pad and the fun he has solving all the letter games he has. And I LOVE the misting in the background and the Basic Grey Pennants.

Tell me about your happy mistakes - what unintentional successes have you had?

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Not A Sketch Wednesday

So normally, I do a sketch to layout on Wednesdays.

BUT this Wednesday, I don't actually have one to show you.

I do, however, have a wonderful layout to share.

In January, some friends and I went to a Play All Day event sponsored by Embellish It! Inc..

If you get the chance to get to one of them, they are super fun crops. Shelby does mini-classes during the crop that you can participate in or not - either way you get the kit.

I LOVED the kit and actually the layout, but it was a two-pager. Since I don't actually scrap two-pagers, I split it up when I got it home.

My sweet big boy learned to ride his bike without training wheels - a perfect set of photos for the bike-themed papers.

The time it took him to learn to ride a bike and the time it took me to finish this project were about the same - 20 minutes!


Experimenting again with the different sized photos, this time in a little collage, all with white borders. A bit of washi and some title letters and I have the perfect simple layout about my baby's accomplishment.

Monday, September 23, 2013

All Aboard for Monday

Do you remember when Donna Downey released A Photos First Approach to Designing Layouts?

I still have that book on my shelf and refer to it for base sketches.

Her sketches are some of my favorite because they are incredibly simple, mostly just drawings of photos on a plain 12 x 12 base.

One of the things she did so well in the layouts in that book were to line up different sized photos along some line or lines as an arrangement.

In this layout, I had three very distinct photos to tell the story and they were all different sizes...when I went looking for a sketch, I got inspired by a base layout in Donna's Book.

The layout is all Studio Calico Abroad and some Thickers for a title. This line was AMAZING for scrapping my little guys "train."

A little mist,  little cutting, an edge...and voila! a layout:


Happy Monday, Everyone!

Peace!

Friday, September 20, 2013

Simple Friday Layout: 4 X 4 X 4

here we go with my 4 x 4 prints -another series, another grid.

Squares are hard to scrapbook...and squares inside of squares inside of squares can be a real challenge.

Where, for example, do you put the journaling?

So...for this one, I stretched the grid apart and put the title and journaling in the middle. Then, that cute little edge thing with some paper and tape and a bit of flair to finish it off. 


Happy Friday!!!

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Sketch to Layout - Fun & Games

Having little boys is always fun and games...I have many many pictures of the littles doing what littles do.

In this case, a fun game of big brother pulling little brother in a small lego wagon.

I started with a sketch from Shimelle (my favorite!):


A bit of modification - my layers are visible on both sides, my journaling is superimposed over the layers in order to make room for the title, and then, the title itself, for which I used a Mister Huey's mask.

This layout has a number of lines mixed together - products from Heidi Swapp, Theresa Collins, Crate Paper, Studio Calico, Simple Stories, Pink Paislee and Recollections...truly scraps from my scrap bin. Another cool stash-buster!


So fun to put it all together and find a happy project at the end.

Monday, September 16, 2013

All From One Kit

I don't often generate layouts from a single kit of products.

I use papers from lines together, but rarely execute an entire layout from one manufacturers product kit.

Echo Park Mini-Themes are great when you are in need of a few well-coordinated products to get things done.

I've been meaning to scrap these photos for some time. My kids have the greatest relationship with the grandparents that live here in our same city. Time on their back porch, in their living room, or at their dining room table is part of the fabric of our life.

I wanted them to both see this same layout, this same relationship, and how each of them were woven together, one with the other and both with their grandparents.

These photos were actually taken to a crop with the intention of using a different home-made page kit to get the layouts done. BUT I wanted to do two layouts of these photos - one for each of the boys. Unfortunately, kit I took with me didn't have enough of any one product to accomplish the identical layouts...

So, I purchased the Echo Park Boys Mini Theme:


Once again, This kit had enough of each thing to construct two layouts that both look like this:


Everything but the blue cardstock and journaling came from the one kit...NICE and DONE!

Friday, September 13, 2013

Friday Experiment; Smaller Photos


Normally, I scrapbook straight 4 x 6 photos or some reasonable crop of them. I'm very interested in keeping things simple and there isn't much more simple than keeping the photos the size they get printed in and going with the flow.

This has three photos, all 2.5 by 4. For me, the challenge was dealing with the real estate that would normally be covered by larger photos. All together, they take up about the same space as one 4 x 6 photo. 

I just couldn't abandon the "shelf" I use so often to get my layouts accomplished.

In this case, some things are placed on the shelf to the upper left of the photos and some things to the lower right in order to draw the eye across the page.

Also, the heavier paper was placed below the shelf and the lighter feeling paper above. 

Normally, finding papers that can compliment both the orange sweatshirt my boy was wearing and the pink sprinkles in his hand would be impossible and i would have to switch the photos to black and white. 

But this was rather successful with the full color photos!


There is a lot of dimension on this that is hard to see.. Many of the stickers are raised with dimensional adhesive to give them a bit of a lift and the title thickers are leather-like.

Not bad for my little experiment!

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Sketch to Layout - modifying a sketch

Modification of sketches is something I do frequently.

I always start with a sketch that more or less matches my photo sizes and/or photo counts.

Today's layouts are based on a sketch that I modified to get to where I needed to be with the layout. I have four photos for one of the layouts, but only two for the other. My original idea was to use the same general sketch to accomplish both.

This is the original sketch, taken from Pamela's World of Scrap:


My first modification kept the same number of photos, but modified size a bit and placement.  I also framed the layout by shrinking it to 11 by 11 and placing it on a piece of 12 by 12 kraft cardstock.

This first one uses three photos that are 3.5 by 3.5 down one side and a larger 5 x 7 photo on the right:


The second layout gets modified more heavily still from the sketch. This one is probably more of a modification of the first layout than of the original sketch...for this second one, I used a 4 x 6 photo on the left, a 5 x 7 on the right, and moved the journaling and embellishments around a bit to fit the space:

With this progression its easier to see how a sketch can be a good starting place, but doesn't need to be followed rigidly to get to a great layout.

Happy Wednesday, everyone!

Monday, September 09, 2013

Multiple Photo grids

Happy Monday!

Lets get this week off right by conquering a TON of photos (17 total) in TWO single page layouts!

I think I've told you before that I like to take series of photos with the fast action setting on my camera...It makes editing very hard to do.

The upside is that it gives me captures like those in the next two layouts.

The first one - boo poon - aka blue spoon - is of Noah feeding himself with his favorite blue spoon. Nine photos arranged in a simple three by three grid and primarily using the Heidi Swapp No Limits line:


The second - By Myself - pretty much tells the story entirely by the pictures - Noah pulling himself into the pub-height chairs all by himself. This one was harder. The photos had to be taller, but all still fit on one page. With all the photos, this one had to be kept simple. So, it is a bit of Basic Gray Hello and some extra-wide washi tape from my Studio Calico kit.


Completely love how letting the photos tell the story with minimum products works for me. I think I'll be doing this sort of layout again!

Peace, ya'll!

Friday, September 06, 2013

Two For - Silly Bunnies

Remember when I told you that I often find myself doing two layouts at once, using much the same pattern or even similar photos of my boys?

I've had a bit of a surprise going through photos when I found that I had nearly identical bunny-ear photos of each boy at pretty much the same age.

I had also been holding on to some Basic Grey Paper Cottage I picked up on a shopping trip and it seemed perfect for bunny ears.

On this note, why do I find bunny ears so stinkin' cute?  I think I buy new bunny ears every year for each of my boys and I never tire of taking their photo wearing them.

Jayden was not so fond of them when he was smaller. He often pulled them off, so getting his picture was some kind of miracle.



Noah, on the other hand is often to be found wandering around the house in a random pair of bunny ears. I think sometimes he puts them on and forgets he has them on.


I've been experimenting with washi, and layers. Not an overly comfortable technique to me, to be honest. But practice, practice, practice...

Peace, ya'll!

Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Sketch to Layout - Silly Boy

Remember this sketch from a few weeks ago?


Its from Allison Davis' Sketch Support blog. Once again, you can see the original sketch post (and download the printable sketch for yourself) HERE.

I've got one more layout gleaned from this sketch. (hey, when i find something I like, I stick with it!)


I tend to take photos of my kids in series with my fast action auto setting on my camera. The result is that I often have lots of pictures that tell a great story when I show them together. Building the layout is mostly about putting them in a logical order.

For this one, I was stash busting (actually, your going to see a few layouts from me in the near future that are stash-busting. I have SO MANY older but beautiful products in my stash - like this awesome Pink Paislee Prarie Hill collection. The colors are outstanding. The whole layout is from that same line with the exception of the Amy Tan letters.

Breaking out the older product and a twice-used sketch still results in a fresh new layout!

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Second of the Firsts

My big boy finally got his chance at a first day on Monday...

He was SOOOO excited!



He very carefully selected the burgandy shorts and the burgandy and salmon striped shirt for his first day outfit.

If you knew him well, you would say this was not a surprise.

He also very carefully selected the backpack...we pored over packs from three stores. This one won for its volume capacity, toughness and "circut board" quality.

We took his picture with his teacher on his open house day...


 This morning, he informed me that the homework is SOOO much better in first grade...I told him that he hasn't got a lot of room to judge just yet...HAHA!!!

Happy day, ya'll!

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

First of the First Days

This one started school on Monday...




Get a load of the size of that backpack!!! And that one is the smaller of the two. It looks like HE could get in there and his daddy could just carry him to school.

Speaking of daddy, he took these pictures. When I went to edit them, I could tell it was the first day of school for a three year old boy and cooperation was not at its all time high...

Still, He loves school...can you tell?



I was somewhat overwhelmed by ideas for teacher presents...I settled finally on THIS idea (there are about 100 versions of this pinterest...I just did my own version.)



There are pens, colored pens, sharpies, mechanical pencils and traditional pencils, plus a custom note pad and a little chocolate. The "ribbon" says "You are just the WRITE teacher for me!" The big boy will have a version of this same idea for his new teacher when he goes back too.



Honestly, I about blew up my Pinterest Good Gifts board with all the amazing creative teacher gift ideas I found this time around...What did YOU do for back to school this year?

Monday, August 19, 2013

Vacation's All I Ever Wanted

Well, well, well....its that time of year when little's go back to school and parents everywhere breathe a sigh of relief at being able to get back to schedules, routines and some level of organization...at least that is what THIS parent is doing.

I LIKE schedules and organization and the immense possibility of a new school year beginning...

I'm ready to get my planner in shape, to stock the fridge with some school lunch possibilities and to settle into some days where we have a routine. I think my husband is just ready for some quiet time around the house to work, since he works from home.

BUT...we literally just returned from vacation...a lovely, fun and water filled beach vacation...

There was a bit of this...though truth be told, there was as much bickering as hugging with these two...they love each other immensely, but they ARE boys...so...there is that whole competition thing..


There was some of this....in case you can't tell, that is dancing...with wild and joyful abandon.


There was some napping...mostly in our condo, but this was an attempt on the beach.


There was a bit of this...which is pretty much all the further he would go into the water.


There was a LOT of this...and since the beach we were on was FILLED with Jellyfish....


There was one of these...this picture doesn't do it justice...it was the biggest, reddest, ugliest thing...and, honestly, it is STILL hanging around.


So...we switched to this:  The splash park/lazy river/big pool/kid pool at the condo. No jellyfish here!




Jayden took this...a budding photog!


There was some hugging and tickling...



That kind of looks more like this in all the pictures we DON'T show the internet...


And, of course, there was the mini-golf. This is our SECOND attempt. We got rained out the first time and ended up in the local diner eating desserts instead (not a bad way to spend a rain-delay!)



Now to settle back into the "real" life...but I do know this...I could very easily transition to a life in pony tails and flip flops!!!

Peace, ya'll!!