Sunday, April 28, 2013

This Ain't No Recital

Soccer is a permanent fixture in my house, with my daughter on two teams (Texans select team plus her middle school team), my husband on two teams, season tickets for FC Dallas professional team, and non-stop English Premiership games on TV on Saturdays.  This layout is from her middle school team where she plays forward.

Inspiration came from a number of places, as always:
  1. Sketch = Becky Fleck's Sketch #41 at A Cherry On Top
  2. Dots and Strips = Scrap Our Stash #2 (though I'm not entering it in challenge as I omitted the twist to add a bird, butterfly or bee)
  3. Title = inspired by A Cherry On Top musical challenge to use a musical term in your title.   It's a great kind of challenge as it really gets me to think rather than resort to typical titles.
  4. Sketches4All Let's Get Cooking # 8 - Twine, 2+ Stamps, Recycled item (the ticket stamps were stamped onto the white card packaging from a set of American Craft tags )
  5. Scrapbook.com Stamping on Your Layout



Ingredients:
  1. Paper:  background = Jillibean Sup Atomic Soup; top stripe = Basic Grey :Lauderdale; tiny strip = Paper Studio; cardstock = Bazzill; all other pattern paper = Colorbok paper kit
  2. Alphas = Thickers "Goodness" by Amy Tangerine; October Afternoon "Sticky Keys" Denim & Cream
  3. Square brads = Paper Studio
  4. Stamps - "Admit One" stamp by Lost Coast Designs; "You Rock" by Jilibean Soup Birthday Party; the tickets were stamped on the packaging from a set of tags I recently bought.
  5. Twine = WeRMemory Keepers Sew easy

Family Moments


We have very few true family photos, and hardly any with my in-laws so I was happy to get these pictures when my husband visited them last summer.  Since it was just the three of them there is no single photo of all but I'll take what I can get!  As for the lack of smiles - they have always refused to smile in photos - it's hard enough to get the photo so again, I take what I can get - I just refer to it as my Welsh Gothic, a close relative to Grant Wood's American Gothic painting.

The sketch came from Brenda Ragsdale at Scrap Our Stash, though I did convert it from a 2-photo sketch to a 3-photo sketch.  I am also using this for Mary's A to Z challenge at Soul Scrappers (letter "F").

Ingredients:
  1. Paper:  Union Square paper pack by Recollections; Script Cream by Recollections
  2. Doily cut file - Ironwork Flower by SVGcuts.com
  3. Title - Chocolate Box Decorative Fonts101.com.  The font is a little imperfect so I always find I have to edit some of it in MakeTheCut (or Design Studio) before cutting on my Silhouette but I really like the font so it's worth it
  4. Scroll border punch - EK Success
  5. Sketch - Brenda Ragsdale

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Water Baby

I have fallen a bit behind with some of my favorite blogs and their challenges but I am determined to catch up!  One of the ones I try to follow regularly is Scrapping Everyday Miracles.  They have such great tips and ideas and fun challenges, a great sketch every month, and of course the inspirational messages. 

So with their sketch in hand, I went to work scrapping photos of my DD at a company picnic nearly 11 years ago!  Wow how time flies!  I went banner happy with individual banner stickers from Echo Park's Happy Summer collection and added a sun sticker from the same sticker sheet.  The striped paper is also from Echo Park - I added some pink polka dot washi tape to the top half.  The other two papers are from Close to My Heart.  And of course lots of mist (too much in hindsight) from Dylusions and October Afternoon.


Monday, April 22, 2013

Pajama Party Fun


This came together super quick last night.  I came across a photo my daughter was given from a birthday party back when she was in kindergarten.  It is always fun to see how much the girls have changed as all but one are still friends as of 7th grade. 

The design was based on a sketch by my fellow Texan Tabitha Trippet for 2 Broke Girls (I did rotate it 90 degrees) and the title was inspired by my dear friend Cheryl for one of her weekly word challenges at at Sketches4All - this time the word was "Fun".  And not to leave out Colorful Creations, a lot of the embellishments were inspired by their stash challeng:
  • 4 papers - Coredinations cardstock, MME Follow Your Heart Be Happy ( 3 different papers), Bo Bunny Double Dot (A and B side of a paper)
  • 3 of the same embellishments - 3 brads from Prima Lyric collection; 3 layered chevrons I made on my Silhouette
  • 2 stickers - 3 clear epoxy word stickers from Bubble -a-Bilities; layered butterfly sticker from American Crafts
  • 1 photo


Other ingredients include alphas by Thickers (Patchwork), edge punch by EK Success, tag by Chic Tags (I cut off the bottom and layered it at the top so as not to loose the fun word), ribbon below photo from may Arts, ribbon on tag recycled from a tag attached to a new blouse, "Smile" stamp by Unity Stamp Itty Bitty Echo Park line, and chipboard flower from AMerican Cratfs (its more pink in real life - photo makes it look orange.

Tabitha's sketch:

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Heaven at Manchester City

First a confession - I admit to going a little nuts on the embellishments with this page.  This is what happens when you don't clear off your scrap desk and there are just tons of things around that attract your eye.  I can now proudly say that I have a lot less chipboard pieces to put away!  Ha Ha!

So the theme for this page was my husband's love (if not obsession) with Manchester City Football Club.  He lives and breathes everything City and I even got him a personalized license plate with "MANCTY" for him (he actually teared up - seriously!).  So when I came across this photo he took last year of Man City's hollowed ground I had to give it a home along with the rest of our treasured memories.  And what better way to start than with another great Pagemaps sketch courtesy of Paper Secrets April 15 challenge?


Ingredients:
  • Sketch:  Paper Secrets April 15 challenge
  • Paper:  Jilibean Soup Blossom Soup; Bazzill cardstock; Echo Park For the Record 2
  • Wooden pieces:  Studio Calico
  • Twine:  SewEasy by WeRMemoryKeepers
  • Cardboard arrow:  Close To My Heart, painted and inked
  • Ribbon:  Yellow Chevron by May Arts; Polka Dot by JoAnn's
  • Chipboard:
    • Yellow hearts: Close to My Heart painted with acrylic and covered with CTMH Liquid Glass
    •  Blue hearts:  Maya Road misted with October Afternoon Twilight mist and covered with CTMH Liquid Glass
    • Stars:  Maya Road Microchips (Stars Brights)
    • Buttons:  Jenni Bowlin misted with October Afternoon Twilight mist
    • Alphas:  CTMH Irresistables painted with acrylic and inked with Pumice



Saturday, April 20, 2013

Catching up...

Though I haven't been blogging a lot lately, I have indeed been busy so I have quite a few layouts to share.

The first layout I'm sharing is a result of a challenge to scrap one of God's many creatures at Scrapping Everyday Miracles.  I had the perfect photos for this from a trip to a local farm in Wales where we took my DD to feed the lambs.  The design is based on a scraplift challenge at Scrapbook.com where someone picks a layout for you from the gallery to lift.  I find scraplift challenges very difficult as I can never decide whether I should lift the design, the colors, the patterns, or the whole thing.  In this case, I lifted the design format but it took 4 attempts to find the right combination of papers to go with the photos. 


Ingredients:
  • Paper:  Amy Tangerine Yes Please; Amy Tangerine Ready Set Go, Paper Studio, Bo Bunny Double Dots; My Minds Eye Nostalgia (?)
  • Flowers: Recollections
  • Quilled Butterflies:  Martha Stewart
  • Alphas:  Thickers
  • Tag:  Chic Tags
  • Brads:  variety
  • Flower Center:  Teresa Collins enamel dots
  • Stitched Banner: American Crafts

The second is one I completed this morning using a sketch from Soul Scrappers and some Use Your Stash hints from 2 Broke Girls that included 10+ brads.  The photos are from Barmouth Wales from a trip my husband took last summer.

  Ingredients include:
  • Paper:  MME Follow Your Heart; Echo Park This and That
  • Ribbons:  Jillibean Soup Bean Stalks layered onto a hemp chevron ribbon from Ribbon Boutique (Hobby Lobby)
  • Lots of brads including the brackets
  • Pewter bookplate from Paper Studio
  • Sticker from MME Miss Caroline Dilly Dally
  • Title cut on my Silhouette Cameo

And the last one to share is a layout of silly photos of my DD and I back in 2004 when we were in Florida.

Ingredients:
  • Paper:  MME Love Me, Good Day Sunshine
  • Borders and corners:  MME Stella and Rose frames
  • Stitched Layered Hearts:  American Crafts
  • "Silly" Sticker and tag:  MME Stella and Rose
  • The vellum behind the photos is embossed with a Fiskars texture plate using my Grand Calibur and then I added a bunch of tiny punched hearts plus some twine from Jillibean Soup

Friday, April 12, 2013

Cats with Bling

OK - anyone who has seen my work before knows that bling is not my thing.  But we all have to get out of our box now and then.  In this case, it was a matter of clearing off my scrap desk.  It began with a class I took a while back at a scrapbook show.  In the class, we created several layouts including one that was VERY blinged up with crystals, Prima flower sprigs, glitter...you name it.  While I loved what I learned, I really hated the layout itself.  I did, though, like some of the materials.

So after having the layout sitting on my desk for ages, I had a minor epiphany - tear it apart and start all over!  So with the help of a Cricut spatula thing, I pried off all the embellishments and then pried off the paper (not easy - I now know which brand of pop dots to use if I want a truly permanent bond!) .  And I started from scratch using a Pagemaps sketch from this months Sketches4All Guest Designer challenge.  I started with a new background sheet (My Minds Eye Stella and Rose) and cut up some of the papers from the original layout (My Minds Eye Lost & Found 3 Ruby).  I then recovered some of the Prima flowers and one small bling sticker from the layout and finished by adding some buttons, glitter ribbon, and lots of leftover chipboard elements from the class.   While it is still blingy, I am much happier with the results.

So the moral of the story for me - when I take another class (which I'm sure I will), I will use tape and glue sparingly.

Special thanks to my inspirations:


More great layouts of Wales

I have many, many photos of the Welsh countryside as we often visited there when we lived in the UK and still visit family there.  It is such a beautiful place.  This is a view of the River Dee from the top of a hill near Llangollen where my husband spent a lot of time walking/hiking when he was there this past summer and fall caring for his Dad after heart surgery.




The addition of the pops of red may seem a bit random but I was determined to include the Welsh dragon die cut I created on my Silhouette which would be sacrilegious in any color other than red.  When I added it, it was just hanging all by itself so I tried to pull in a few additional touches of red to get some sort of balance.  The last minute placement of the stamped "Inspiration" image is not good but unlike paper,once it's there, it's all she wrote!  I will remember next time to stamp on a piece of transparency first to play with positioning...


As I love to combine challenges to constantly push myself, I made no exception here: