See Christina Scrapbook...

sticker storage {a product review}

2012-01-24T11:10:00.000-08:00

i have a problem. i buy stickers. a lot of stickers. i buy them when they are on clearance or on a closeout at big lots or tj maxx but i have a lot of stickers. seriously. it's ridiculous.
i've struggled with a storage solution for my sticker sheets. i tried a homemade clip it up. {took up too much room.} then i tried a drawer in my jet max cube storage area. {since they were tucked away, i totally forgot about them and they never got used.} my last solution was a cropper hopper paper organizer. {again, tucked away, and forgotten.}
my poor neglected sticker stash. i have a goal this year to USE MY STASH. especially stuff that been around for 5+ years.
when i saw this cropper hopper sticker stadium storage tool, i thought i'd give it a try. i got mine at archivers with a 30% off coupon. less than $10 and suddenly i had the sticker storage solution i'd been looking for!
my stickers are organized in one compact place, that is visible and easy to access. {and it's pretty stinking cute.}
here's what it looks like with my sticker stash loaded inside:

and here's a side view:

love it!!! i'm probably going to get at least 2 more. one for rub-ons and another to divide these stickers out a little better.

in other news, my lss is closing. :( i stopped in on my lunch break today and everything was 60% off. she carries a ton of bella blvd, which is my absolute favorite paper company. i got the complete lines of making the team, finally fall, too cute to spook, mr boy, and family dynamix {in addition to a few other random papers} for less than $30. what?!?
so flipping excited. can't wait to play with these papers this weekend!

bicycle {a scrapbook layout}

2012-01-20T13:26:00.000-08:00

looks like we might just get an ice storm this evening. double yuck! but that means a night of crafting in my scrapbook room {after my son's basketball game, that is. :)}
i put this layout together last week on my friday night crafting session. i got a few slice design cards on sale at michael's for $4.99 each! {i know!} for this layout i used the "remember this" card to cut out my title, "best day" and shape. i'm really starting to love my slice again.

all of the materials with the exception of the journaling card/circle in the corner (Elle's Studio) and twine are from the Scrapbook Circle 5th Anniversary Kit-it's an awesome value, totally recommend it!
here's a closer look at the right side:

and the left side:

i totally love this layout-love the banners, love the washi tape, just love it. makes me smile just looking at it, so bright and happy.
happy friday blog friends, stay safe out there!

a year in review album {scrapbook album}

2012-01-17T11:34:00.000-08:00

last year i contemplated starting project life but decided against it, because i was concerned about keeping up with a picture a day. i still wanted a way to capture our daily activities and year in review. so, i came up with this idea for my "year in review" album.

my materials for this album consisted of:
-13 sheets of kraft cardstock (title pages and one layout per month)
-13 assorted ki memories die cut calender pages (one for each month)
-12 packs of ki memories monthly frosting stickers (January-December packs)
-2 sheets of Cosmo Cricket Snorkel patterned paper (you can use any-I just love that paper)
-alpha sticker/ die cut alpha for title page
-Elle's Studio 2011 Monthly Pennant Tags

throughout the year i kept track of events and daily happenings in my Erin Condren planner. love this planner, i do all of my appointments and work scheduling in google calendar but i love my paper planner for memory keeping-recording stuff my boys say and things like when they lose a tooth, etc. it even has places in the back for sketching layouts, lists. i just really love it.

then at the end of each month i'd transfer all of the info to my ki memories calendar paper, which i had decorated with the frosting stickers.

i'd summarize all of our outings, events and big {and little} news for the month on the journaling space on the back.

and i'd print out a bunch of 2" x 3" photos that represented that month. just highlights really-this was the hardest part, picking photos that represented each month. each month i did the same layout, just with a different strip of patterned paper and monthly pennant {i mixed the placement of those up a little on each page to give the album some variety}

by the end of the year, i went from this:

to 12 layouts that summarized our year!

i fell behind on filling out my calendars in september and finished up those the last week in december. i decided to print all of my pictures and do my layouts in one sitting-if i were doing this project again, and i will be doing this again, i would definitely try to keep up on a monthly basis. but the beauty of having everything in my planner was that nothing was lost-it was all there waiting for me. :)
i am thrilled with how this project turned out. it's a big reason why i am doing project life. {which by the way-i am totally caught up on!! yay me!}
i have lots to share this week-layouts and mini albums and a storage review, oh my!

december memories {a mini album} and project life progress

2012-01-08T22:51:00.000-08:00

it's done! my december memories mini is done. so happy with how it turned out. as i mentioned in previous posts, it's super simple-just kraft, patterned paper and photos. oh, and the stories behind the photos. captured. recorded. preserved for my boys to look at. yay!
i won't bore you with tons of pages but here's a few:
the cover after adding some binder rings and ribbon {everything looks better with ribbon!}:

and some of the interior pages:

the last two pages {my favorite december activity-the christmastown event at the creation museum in bullitsburg, ky}:

so glad i did it. i'm also feeling really good about the progress i'm making on project life.
here's a better picture of my title page:

and here's my journaling cards all done and ready for my prints {ordered and waiting for me to pick up at WalMart tomorrow}:

i need to decide if i am going to print weekly or every two weeks because i'm thinking a weekly trip to wally world is going to get real old, real fast-however, they are the only place that prints matte finish on the same day machines and i don't want to pay for shipping.

so my questions for my fellow project lifers-how often are you printing? and where?

check back later this week, i'll be sharing how i went from this:

to a totally finished 2011 year in review album {it's also finished!!!! what!?! you know that's right!}

happy monday kids!

grin {a scrapbook layout} and some goals for this quarter

2012-01-03T13:43:00.000-08:00

yay! 2012, so very glad to see you. 2011 wasn't great for my family. my mom, who i love dearly and i'm very close to suffered a pretty terrifying health scare that cast a a bad light on the whole year for us. so glad to put that whole year behind us.
in my business, we focus on quarterly goals {annual as well, but the current quarter is the most important}
so here's my q1 scrappy goals:
-finish my 2011 year in review album
{making excellent progress-calendar/journaling pages done, photos printed, patterned paper, cardstock and embellishments purchased and ready to go-just need to assemble-go me!}
-finish my december daily {ahem, december moments}
DONE! will share this in a post later this week.
-stay caught up with my project life album
{title page done!, journaling day one done!, go me!}

sorry for the lame photo-taken with my iPhone-look for a more in-depth PL post later this month

-complete two layouts a week
{one done already this week-woot!}
-set up a consistent blog schedule
{working on this one}

and because it's been a while, a quick layout to share with you. been seeing a lot of these hexagons and had to do a layout with some for myself. my three year old has the most amazing grin. ever. i challenge you not to smile looking at that little face. :)

happy tuesday blog friends!

a fun moose adventure {a scrapbook layout with pinwheel flowers}

2011-12-14T03:39:00.000-08:00

i recently received my jan/feb issue of creating keepsakes magazine and saw a layout with these cute little pinwheel flowers made from circle punches. i had to recreate those flowers. in fact i was kind of obsessed with recreating them-i had to do it that night. sometimes, i just get the urge to do something creatively and i can't let go of it.
the obsession with those pinwheel flowers turned into this layout:

that's my moosey boy having an everyday adventure in our backyard. he has a lot of those. he loves exploring the area around our playset, finding new creatures {aka ants} to talk to. i think this line of paper and embellishments really brings out the fun and playful feel i am trying to get across with this layout.

here's a closer look at the left side:

you probably can't tell but i used pop dots to pop the main picture {the close up of my son's face} and keep it the focus. i also popped the pinwheel flowers. i used smaller and tighter petals than the one featured in creating keepsakes but i like how mine turned out.

close-up of flowers:

these are super easy to make: you just punch circles and then cut them in half to make your petals; layer your petals with the flat sides facing each other and then use a button or {in my case} a piece of flair as your center. very cute and adds a lot of fun to your layout!

here's a close-up of my right side with the journaling and title:

because i used one line of paper, embellishments, and stickers {Tinkerin' by CTMH}, this layout came together very quickly even with the handmade pinwheel flowers.

i will definitely be making these flowers again! can't wait to try out different variations of sizes and spacings!
what do you think-are pinwheel flowers something you are going to try?

the redesigned december daily {it's now a christmas memories album!}

2011-12-12T10:03:00.000-08:00

So yeah. 12 days in and I have kept up with my Dec Daily exactly 50% of the time. Sigh. I knew this would happen. I do have some lovely photos to show for it. {Which will be incorporated into my NEW mini.}

{my son, jackson, picking out a santa hat for his school play}

{christmas decorations in our family room}

What's the new plan? A mini album of 25 Christmas memories inspired by this blog post by the uber talented Lisa Day. I just wish I'd read that post BEFORE I made my 6x6 pages. Sigh. Those divided page protectors are awesome. Oh well, there's always next year.

In other news, as you all know I'm huge fan of a good deal and there's a new deal site in town. Blitsy is for members only and has great craft deals-$19.99 for the same ATG gun I got at Michaels. {I had to use a 50% off coupon to get it at that price!} Every couple of days they have a new deal posted. Fun stuff!

And finally, I did it. I bought the Project Life Core Kit in Cobalt for 2012!

{photo from becky higgins' blog-isn't it lovely? can't wait!!!!}

I know what you are thinking. "Christina, you can't even keep up with a December Daily, how on earth will you keep up with Project Life?" Ahhhh, but I am not planning on taking a picture a day. I'm going to organize my PL album more loosely-more like a week at a time. I take a lot of pictures in a month and letting go of the expectation of taking one picture a day is really what made me want to do this.
I'm a Project Lifer. :)

Happy Monday!

happy 3rd birthday {a scrapbook layout with banners}

2011-12-01T06:19:00.000-08:00

Thanks for all of the nice comments on my DD mini. I will definitely share pictures when it's done!
As they say on a very old show my parents watched, and now for something completely different...
I must have cut out and flagged at least 50 layouts with banners this year with notes to myself that say "Try This". But until I saw this paper from Jillibean, I just hadn't found anything that I wanted to try it with. And then I got the photos back from Brody's 3rd birthday and it was BANNER TIME!

Moose had not one, not two, but THREE birthday celebrations. {Fitting, since it was his third birthday and all.} So this layout is a summary of those and has THREE banners {sort of}. :) I used Bazzill Dotted Swiss cardstock for some added texture and Jillibean Spotted Owl patterned paper. I just cut around the shapes in the paper to make my banners. I added some fibers and twine to make the banners stand out a little bit.

I had a lot of journaling, so I added a KI Memories pocket to hold it all and created journal cards from white cardstock. I just punched the number "3" from the patterned paper and added a decorative edge with a border punch. I dressed up the pocket with some fiber from my banner on the left side of the layout and my SMASH date stamp {it's a little blurry but it's his birthday and says 'this deserves a fist bump'-he loves fist bumps right now}.

Can't tell you how pleased I am with how this turned out! I will definitely be pulling out the banners again soon!

the super simple december daily {a mini album project}

2011-11-30T10:56:00.000-08:00

I'll be honest, I was definitely NOT going to do a December Daily. It was just too much work. And I knew there was no way I'd remember to take a picture every day.
But then about a month ago, I was in the scrap room and my son was going through the Summer Mini album that I put together using this kit from my friend Monika's shop, when he said, "I love looking at these little albums, Mommy." And I realized how often they look through our little mini-albums. And suddenly working on a December Daily didn't seem like that much trouble after all.
I decided to put together my album ahead of time-I kept things super simple. No fancy binders or overlays. I wanted something the kids can pull out and look through any time they want.

I used kraft cardstock as my base pages. I had purchased a couple of sheets of the Simple Stories 25 Days of Christmas at Archiver's 43% off sale and decided to use that for all my accents. I paired it with a plaid print from Basic Grey's Oxford line.

My pages are 6" x 6". I'm either going to use 4" x 6" photos or since I take so many photos with my iPhone-4" x 4" Instagram photos printed by Postal Pix.

I'll add a few extra embellishments once I have pictures and journaling but I love that most of the work is done. Super simple and fast! I plan on either punching some holes with my Crop-A-Dile and adding some binder rings or getting a cheap red binder-just depends on how big this album gets.

Either way, I'm looking forward to starting this tomorrow! :)

all boys {a scrapbook layout}

2011-11-16T12:55:00.000-08:00

Have I ever expressed how lucky I am to be a momma of 4 boys? How thankful I am to be raising a houseful of young men? Recent events in our neighborhood {girls bullying other girls, makes me soooo angry!} reminded me of how lucky I am to be dealing with the non-drama of sports, consuming massive quantities of food, and a lot of random wrestling.
I love being a mom of boys. Of these boys. They are amazing and funny and kind.
And sometimes I need to stop and remind myself of that.

Yup, there's no pink or purple in this house. And that's okay. Because I've come to love the blues, grays, and greens these boys have brought into my life.

he finally loves snow {a scrapbook layout}

2011-11-07T10:09:00.000-08:00

I think I may have posted a layout in the post with photos of my little one clearly not enjoying snow. That all changed this past year. I'm not sure if it was the super cool Iron Man rain boots or if at 2 years old he finally figured out that living in Ohio meant we'd be dealing with it on a yearly basis, but this year he seemed to love the white stuff.

I was very excited to get to use my Elle's Studio winter goodies on this layout-they match my Jillibean paper perfect!

I also got to use an ATC card I made at an Archiver's Make and Take a few months ago-the colors and sentiment were perfect for this layout.

I rarely use my Make and Takes for what they were originally intended for-these are a great way to save money. I keep a little box with all of my M&T's in them. I go through them every now and again to remind myself of what I have and to get a little inspiration. :)

Happy Monday!

budget friendly scrapbooking {a magazine review}

2011-10-28T07:56:00.000-07:00

Let me apologize in advance for the lack of photos in this post-I'll be back this weekend with the snow layout I promised last week.
Today, I want to share my review of a magazine I recently picked up at Hobby Lobby-Creating Keepsakes' Budget Friendly Scrapbooking. First of all, I have a hard time with a "budget friendly" magazine that costs $14.99 retail. Especially when it has about the same number of pages and ideas as a normal issue of Creating Keepsakes. I purchased mine with a 40% off coupon at Hobby Lobby-still a little high but not totally ridiculous.

The magazine {I refuse to call it an idea book} was laid out in the following sections and I'll do a quick review of each:
Accent Swap-Good ideas but little to no direction on how to create the accents and each of the layouts had a LOT of product besides the "accents" that were swapped.

Wallet Savvy Organization-I would have like to seen real pieces from flea markets/yard sales made into functional organization pieces. Instead, the magazine showed organzation pieces that were clearly purchased new made to look "old". Show me how to do it not what it could look like.

Planning for Scrapbooking-This article actually made me mad. Because it was such a waste of space. The photo printing chart on page 23 took up the WHOLE page and was completely pointless. The whole article had me scratching my head-long term versus short term investments and using patterned paper for more than one layout...all common sense ideas that most scrapbookers are all too familiar with.

Using Sketches-Again, not sure how budget friendly this one was since the majority of layouts used a ton of product. Not to mention the "Manage Your Budget by Using a Kit Club" story. Really? You pay a premium to have some one else pick out papers and embellishments that go together. There is no way that is budget friendly. It might be a time saver, but it doesn't save you money. You can save money by finding kits with a style you like and buying the paper and elements you can afford. {I have nothing against kits, I have bought them and loved them but it is not okay to pretend they are somehow cheaper when they aren't.}

Keep It Simple Scrapbooker-Finally, an article that actually gave tips on being budget friendly! This article was well written and had a wealth of great info. The layouts weren't product heavy. I knew I could recreate them without spending $5-10 on each layout. I also liked the "One Product, Three Ways" story. It was interesting to see how different scrapbookers used the same materials.

Stretch Your Supplies-Another great article! Loved the cutting guides that showed how to turn one 12 x 12 piece of paper into smaller sheets-just wish they had included more! Loved the practical ideas on what to do with leftover stickers, pieces of ribbon, etc.

Use Your Scraps-This article really should have been the focus of the magazine. So many great ideas that they just barely touched on. Disappointed that they gave so little space and focus to this but loved what little they provided.

Found Item Fun-Weird and out of place. Not worth it's own article.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed. {I would have been down right mad had I spent $15!} Only 2-3 articles were actually helpful in providing budget friendly tips. The rest just seemed like more the usual CK product heavy layouts we see every month, which is fine if that is what you are expecting but if you are expecting to get realistic tips and tricks to help save you money with your scrapbooking-this isn't it. This definitely wasn't worth a $15 price tag. However, if you find it for $6 or less it's worth a read. The Keep It Simple, Stretch Your Supplies, and Use Your Scraps articles deserve a second look. :)

Be back this weekend with a layout! Have a great Friday!

it's your birthday shout hooray {a scrapbook layout}

2011-10-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

I recently went to the amazing 43% off patterned paper sale at Archiver's. Let me just tell you that is a smoking hot deal. I got a ton of Basic Grey {mostly Oxford}, Simple Stories, Jillibean, and, of course, my current obsession-Bella Blvd. If they run another one of these, I highly recommend it, definitely worth the trip.
Anywho, I got a chance to do some crafting Friday night and worked on two layouts and my December Daily. {I'm very excited about my DD-I will share that in a couple of weeks!}

I'm sharing my first layout today-Jackson's 7th Birthday. Poor Jackson, we usually are on vacation for his birthday {he's a July baby}and this year we were gone the week before, so we decided to let him open his present early. Especially since his present was a Playstation Portable-something he would definitely enjoy on the 14 hour car ride to Florida!

I used the new Simple Stories Birthday line for this layout. This is all from one sheet of patterned paper and some journal cards! When you figure in the cardstock this layout cost me about $3.00 to make. Nice!

Love these Journal Cards-great for a quick and easy title!

Not sure if you can tell in the picture but that green dot strip is actually a ribbon.
I had some Simple Stories ribbon in my stash that matched the papers and I thought it added a little something extra.

Love this line of products, makes things super easy.
I will be sharing my other layout (a SNOW layout!!) early next week, I also have plans to share my thoughts on a new magazine I picked up last week "Creating Keepsakes: Budget Friendly Scrapbooking"-so check back for that!
Have a great weekend!

escape {a scrapbook layout}

2011-10-13T09:30:00.000-07:00

We've been doing a little bit of cleaning around the house and came across a stack of photos from our trip to Holland, MI way back in 2005. That trip was a just a little weekend away but was packed with memories. It took place just about a month after our son had major surgery to remove tumors from a neural tube disorder. So it was an escape for us in many different ways. {Our Jackson is totally fine-he had no lasting issues and is totally on track developmentally & physically-just some scarring from his surgery-God is so good!}
Every time I think of Holland, I think of the beautiful flowers we saw-even in September. So I knew I had to use some floral paper on this layout and some flower accents.

Used those Amy Tangerine letters I love so much and some more of my Elle's Studio goodies.How did I never know about Elle's before? I've placed two orders since I won a package of goodies in August and have wish list together for another order!
{And totally off topic-my hair is ridiculous in these pictures-I had some really bad hair choices there for awhile, sigh.}
I am super excited because my new Canon DSLR arrived at my house at my house today!! Can't wait to get through work and parent/teacher conferences so I can play with it! Happy Thursday!

abc's of me {a little bit about me}

2011-10-05T06:36:00.000-07:00

This has been on quite a few blogs lately, so I thought I'd join in on the fun.
A. Age: 34 and 10 months {sigh}
B. Bed size: Queen
C. Chore that you hate: Mopping. Bleh.
D. Dogs: Conan, terrier mix.
E. Essential start to your day: Ice cold Coke and at least one Zac Brown Band song
F. Favorite color: Green but not just any green.
G. Gold or Silver: Silver
H. Height: 5' 3 1/2"
I. Instruments you play: long ago I played clarinet and flute {loooooong ago}
J. Job title: Marketing Manager and Momma {I prefer Momma}
K. Kids: 4, Bryce, Jarron, Jackson, and Brody {aka Moose}

L. Live: Fairfield, Ohio
M. Mother’s name: Patty
N. Nicknames: Christi, Great Lakes, Veronica {from the Archie comics-my blonde friend was Betty}
O. Overnight hospital stays: 5 {all childbirth/pregnancy related}
P. Pet peeves: things that don't match {for example if all of my pushpins are silver and one is white-that white one will drive me crazy}, rain on field trip day, slow drivers on the highway, so many things...
Q. Quote from a movie: "What road is this we are on? Bob's Road?" Twister, my favorite movie, ever. I know just about every line.
R. Right or left handed: Right handed
S. Siblings: 1-the little brother.
T. Time I Get Up Each Morning: Weekdays-6:00AM, Saturdays & Sundays-7:30AM
U. Underwear: Of course, I'm a momma. I have to set a good example. {And ewwwww, who doesn't?}
V. Vegetable you hate: Peas
W. What makes you run late: I plead 4 kids.
X. X-Rays you’ve had: Knees, Ribs, Head, Foot, Chest, more ultrasounds than I can remember {at least 40}
Y. Yummy food that you make: I'm told my pork chops and lasagna are very tasty.
Z. Zoo animal: Penguins and Peacocks. Love them.

There you have it, a little bit more about me {and a layout sneaked in for good measure}.

santa rosa beach 2011 {scrapbook layout-vacation albums}

2011-10-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

I miss the beach. I love the beach, it's my favorite place to be. Ever. If it weren't for pesky things like jobs and family, I'd spend all day, every day on a beach somewhere.
Which is funny. Because I live in landlocked Ohio. :/ I'm where I should be, but sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I was supposed to be somewhere else.
Instead, I satisfy my beach craving once a year with a trip down South. This year it was to Santa Rosa Beach {just east of Destin}. So beautiful, definitely a place we will be returning to again and again. The perfect vacation spot for our family-plenty to do {or not do} depending on our mood.
This is the first of many layouts from this year's vacation album.

I'm using Echo Park's Splash line almost exclusively for this album. Excellent for this trip. Love all of the cool letters and extras that come with this kit.

I've been on a total circle kick lately. Just love my circle punches!! Love the look of different patterned papers stacked in different size circles!

Instead of a brad, I raided my stash for some fun little clear glitter beach stickers to act as my "brads" for the center of my circles. {These are tiny little suns.}

I added my favorite picture of the boys, some beach scenes and viola! Layout done!

For my next beach layout, a put together a little beach scene with some of the cardstock stickers, since this layout is all about the boys and their sand-castle building. Okay, their sand digging, my kids seem to love digging ginormous holes.

More circles and I even used the negatives from punching out my circles as a page element. :)

I won't even tell you how long it took me to arrange and re-arrange photos before I got them all on the layout. But it was awhile. Totally worth it.
Now I'm going to go listen to some Zac Brown Band and pretend I'm on the sugar white sands instead of wrapping things up on my 2012 marketing budgets and taking kids to dentist appointments.
Happy Tuesday!

burger farm {a scrapbook layout}

2011-09-30T11:51:00.000-07:00

As promised in my last post, I wanted to share a couple of autumn layout with you. Before finding Neiderman Farm here in our county, we used to travel to one of our eastern counties to another local pumpkin patch-Burger Farm. Which was also very cool-lots of fun kids rides and activities, in addition to the traditional hay ride and patch activities.
I used more Bella Blvd paper on these layouts-a couple of things I really loved about this line of paper-the chevron pattern of the B side (so cool right now) and the color scheme. Love the blues and pinks mixed in with the traditional fall colors. Good stuff!
For my first layout, I kept it simple, just added a Making Memories alpha to it.

That layout will join a couple of other in the album which include journaling about finding the right pumpkin and riding some rides, so I didn't really need more than a title.

Supplies: Cardstock-Bazzill, Patterned Paper-Bella Blvd, Letters-Making Memories

For my next layout, I added some Doodlebug letters and Bella cardstock stickers.

I love these little Bella alpha stickers...

And the B side of another Bella paper has a really cool wood grain-perfect as a background for a title.

Ummm...can you tell that I'm a HUGE fan of the new Bella line ? ;)

Supplies: Cardstock-BBP; Patterned Paper-Bella; Cardstock Stickers, Small Alpha-Bella; Blue Letters-Doodlebug; Ink-CTMH; Small blue letters-October Afternoon

Be back tomorrow with the beach layout...it's cold and dreary here in Ohio, I need a little sunshine right about now!

neiderman farm {a scrapbook layout with the coolest alpha ever}

2011-09-28T06:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, that might be a bit dramatic but as soon as I pulled out the new Amy Tangerine American Crafts Thickers at scrap night, I had about 4 women ask me where I got them. They are THAT cool. I've said it before, sometimes it's hard to tell if you will like something until you see it in person and let me just say these are AMAZING in person.

What? You want to see the layout attached to those letters? Okay. Okay.

It's been very crisp here in Ohio in the mornings and I've had pumpkin patches on my mind. This new Bella Blvd paper is perfect for scrapping our annual trip to Neiderman Farm to pick out a pumpkin and get lost in the corn maze.

That tag there on the bottom is made with cardstock, a Bella sticker and a hand-stamped heart.

I stamped a background on a piece of transparency, used some alcohol inks to get that purply-red color and then punched a heart. Very easy and fun way to add a little extra touch to your tag.

Stay tuned, later this week I have another fall layout to share and a little bit of beach love to wrap up the week.
Happy Wednesday Friends!

Supplies: Kraft Cardstock-Paper Company; Patterned Paper, Cardstock Stickers-Bella Blvd; Letter Stickers-Amy Tangerine for American Crafts; Stamping Ink-CTMH; Twine-WRMK; Blue and Green Cardstock, BBP; Alcohol Inks-Tim Holtz; Pen-Sharpie

a stamped frog {a scrapbook layout with stamping and watercolor}

2011-09-27T10:44:00.000-07:00

I've been busy working on my new blog look. What do you think? I'm still learning my way around backgrounds and banners and such but I'm really starting to like the look of it.
And because I just can't post without sharing a layout...here's a quick one.

Super simple and quick, just some patterned paper cut with a Creative Memories wavy trimmer, some Mind's Eye journaling/embellies and clear buttons. I stamped the frog and used mineral spirits to blend in the color of my watercolor pencils.

I rarely stamp on a layout, so this was a real departure for me; but he was just too cute to send off on a card.

Let me know your thoughts on the new blog look-love it or hate it? :)

conan {a scrapbook layout-challenge!}

2011-09-25T16:55:00.000-07:00

No, not THAT Conan. {Although, he's cool too.}
Our dog, Conan. Who is actually named after Conan the Barbarian. You see, when we adopted Conan, 13 years ago, he was just 6 weeks old. He had these giant ears and a ton of energy. You could just tell that he thought he was a German Shepard trapped in the body of a little Mixed Terrier.
Conan, or Coney, as we sometimes call him, has been an awesome dog. He's so sweet and gentle with kids and he just loves to snuggle up on the couch and watch Top Chef with me. :)
I realized I haven't really done a layout of Coney, so I knew the time had come to fix that.
Mary Pat had issued a challenge over on the Burlap & Buttercups Blog to use this sketch and some sewing and see what we could come up with:

I didn't follow the sketch exactly, but I stayed pretty close to it. Here's what I came up with:

I used the Bazzill In Stitchz tool to make my circles {I'm hopeless with a sewing machine} in three different sizes and colors to match my patterned paper. I made the heart embellishment with a Heidi Swapp ghost shape and some bling embellies.

I have to say I really loved this sketch and used another variation of it on a vacation layout for our beach album. It's really versatile and can be easily adapted for a double page layout.

Lots of layouts to share this week-stay tuned!

Supplies: Cardstock-Bazzill; Circle templates, thread-Bazzill; Patterned Papers-We R Memory Keepers, Basic Grey; Letter Stickers-American Crafts; Felt Embellies-Sassafrass; Ghost Shape-Heidi Swapp; Bling-Unknown; Pen-Sharpie

brody {a scrapbook layout}

2011-09-22T07:36:00.000-07:00

My baby is turning three today. I'm both sad and happy about this. Because he's my last baby. {And at three, technically not really a baby anymore.}He is such a joy to have in our lives. I truly can't imagine our family without him.
I created this layout with a photo from his 3 month pictures (taken by his Aunt Bobbi). It's probably my favorite layout in his baby album. It's pretty simple, just a large 10 x 8 photo, the lyrics to a song I listened to frequently when he was a tiny little baby, and a bit of journaling. I just love it though.

I used a SEI "Chick a Doo-Boy" kit to create this the patterned papers, title and rub-ons, all coordinate.

I actually had 6 x 6 kit in this same line that I did a mini album of his 1st year. I displayed that at his birthday party that year. Might have to do that again this year! Hard to believe this tiny baby is a rough and tumble toddler!

The only thing {besides cardstock} that isn't SEI, is the journaling card-which is from October Afternoon. I originally had a SEI journal card on there but I misspelled 2 words {hello, sleep deprivation!}, so I swapped it out.

In case you were wondering-the song I journaled about is "Morning Lullabies" by Ingrid Michaelson. Great song for a new momma.

Happy Birthday Moosey! We love you so much little man!

Supplies: Cardstock-Bazzill, Patterned Papers, Rub-ons, Letters-SEI, Journal Card-October Afternoon

us {a scrapbook layout using elle's studio}

2011-09-19T11:07:00.000-07:00

I was recently lucky enough to win some goodies from an Elle's Studio blog hop. I've been interested in Elle's Studio products for some time but I'm one of those people that need to see something in person before I buy it.

I was super excited when my package of goodies came in the mail. {Just days after I won-those ladies at Elle's are totally on top of things-I was VERY impressed!} I immediately feel in love with everything I received:
Pieces of Life Note Tags
Handmade Layers Date/Place Strips
Owl Love You Forever Scallop Circle Tags

And the other day I had the perfect layout to use two of the three products on. I started this layout as a make and take at Archivers but immediately did the sewing incorrectly {it's supposed to be on opposite corners}. Being the rebel I am, I left it the way I did it and brought it home. :) The imperfection made me remember a photo I had of our little family that wasn't perfect but that was so "us".
I grabbed it and got to work.

Can I just tell you how much I love these scallop circle tags? So sticking cute. And the colors matched my layout perfectly. Love that my journaling becomes a design element.

And here's the other Elle's product-the Handmade Layers Date/Place tag-looks perfect at the top of the kraft cardstock!

Lots of scallopy goodness in this layout!!

I loved my Elle's goodies so much, I placed my first order this weekend. I have a feeling it won't be my last. :)

Supplies: Cardstock-CTMH, Kraft Cardstock-The Paper Company, Patterned Paper-Echo Park, We R Memory Keepers, Buttons-CTMH, Twine-We R Memory Keepers, Sewing Template-Sew Easy by We R Memory Keepers, Journal Tags-Elle's Studio

a hair raising good time {a scrapbook layout}

2011-09-12T13:12:00.000-07:00

Have I ever mentioned that my youngest son, the one we call the Moose, is a bit of a trouble maker? After 4 boys, you'd think I'd be used to that. And for the most part I am. But this little guy; boy, oh boy. It's not that he's intentionally bad, trouble just seems to find him.
You can pretty much guarantee if he's quiet, he's getting into something. And one particular night he was very quiet.

Now, here's the thing about the Lakes men. They have a thing about their hair. It has to look perfect; all the time. And that requires time and a certain amount of hair product. Our oldest boys are ten and "do" their own hair in the main floor bathroom. They use a product called Garnier Surf Gel. It's sticky. VERY sticky.

Moose has witnessed the boys "doing" their hair many, many times. Moose is also potty training, so anytime he independently goes into the bathroom, we are thrilled. As we were the night these pictures were taken.
Except he wasn't going potty. He was "doing" his hair. With a whole tub of hair gel.

I wish I could say this is the first time this has happened, nope. Sneaky little Moose. It took about a half an hour and a LOT of shampoo to get that gel out. The funniest part? About a week later I got a text from my husband while I was grocery shopping. All it said was "He did it again. Get Hair Gel. And More Shampoo."

Supplies: Kraft Cardstock-The Paper Company: Patterned Paper, Letter Stickers, Embellishments-Echo Park; Twine-We R Memory Keepers

alien clones {a scrapbook layout using a kit}

2011-08-31T07:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks so much for all of the kind comments on my last post. The Disney project was definitely a labor of love, but so worth it!
I also had someone ask a few posts back where I got my black clipboard that I use sometimes to photograph my layouts. I got that in a Creating Keepsakes Kit of The Month waaaaaay back in 2007. {I tried to find a link to the actual kit and that was the closest I could find.} I haven't seen it available anywhere since then-maybe a Pea will be selling theirs? I do love my clipboard though, and I did put together every one of those layouts from the kit. {Which reminds me-I need to add pictures to those!!}

Since we are going back in time, I thought I'd share a layout from Halloween 2006. Because we are starting to think about Halloween at our house. In fact, a certain little almost 3 year old's costume is already purchased and hanging in my closet. {And oh for the love of cute, it's adorable, can't wait to share the layout of that!!} And oddly enough, I purchased one of the twins' costumes back in April, so I'm 50% done. Go me!

I've chosen to put all of my Halloween layouts in one album, and I love looking through it and seeing how the boys have grown through the years. I only have one year left to go before I'm totally caught up on Halloween . {2007 photos, where are you??}

In 2006, we were in year one of Power Rangers costumes. The following year, Jarron was also a Power Ranger but a different style Rangers. It's funny because when I got these pictures back, they looked more like Aliens than Power Rangers. Even Jackson as a Dragon looked like an Alien. And my nephew as a GhostBuster, looked more like an alien hunter.Which is why the title is "Alien Clones".

You don't believe me? Take a closer look...

Yup, Aliens alright! And that pumpkin decoration? Yeah, still working 5 years later-not bad for something we picked up at Big Lots for $5! :)

Supplies: Cardstock-Bazzill, Patterned Paper and Embellishments-Zany Zinnia Rocket Man Kit, Letter Stickers-American Crafts

walt disney world {a vacation album!}

2011-08-29T07:03:00.000-07:00

It's a day I never thought I'd see. A day 4 years in the making. The day I finally posted my completed 2007 Disney vacation album to the Two Peas gallery! Woo-hoo!

I have to tell you this project was overwhelming to me for a number of reasons. We took soooo many pictures, I had no idea where to start. And it's not every day you get to spend 5 days at Disney World. In fact, it has been our first and ONLY trip to Disney, so recording those memories was really important to me.

I won't bore you with all 24 or so layouts {I only posted 20 to my gallery at Two Peas-feel free to check out the whole album there if you are so inclined :>} but here are a couple of my favorites:

This is actually my son's favorite in the whole album, which makes it one of my favorites too. His reaction to this layout and the smile on his face when he sees this page are why I scrapbook.

This one is my favorite:

I love that little house die cut sticker and the cool picture of the mouse pumpkin. {It's the little things, people. It doesn't take much to make me happy.}

A few things I learned while making this album:
-Consistency is key! I used the same font for the titles throughout. I have the Mickey & Friends font cartridge for my Cricut and just adjusted my size depending on how long the title was. {BTW, my Gypsy was a huge timesaver here-I took it with me to my kids' basketball and football practices and worked on titles. All I had to do was plug it into my Cricut and press cut. Huge timesaver!}

-I used the same journaling font and text box set up for all of my journaling. I used CK Journaling, which is a favorite of mine, because it was clean and easy to read. Didn't distract from the pictures or the title. I just changed the color based on the cardstock I was using for each layout.

-My family blog was a vitally important to my journaling. I kept a detailed blog about this trip on my family blog and I used it to help with the journaling-90% of the story was already done. I sometimes slack off on keeping that blog up to date and this exercise was a good reminder for me on how important it is.
ETA: Just realized the Disney trip was on my old family blog that was up before we had Brody. Oops!

- I didn't buy all of the materials for this album at once because that would have been crazy expensive. I picked them up here and there when I saw them on sale or with coupons. BUT, and this is key, I kept everything together in a 12 x 12 box that was set aside just for this project. As I got closer to putting the album together I started putting together Cropper Hopper folders with pictures, cardstock, stickers, and memorabilia for each park. This made assembling that album much faster!

It feels so good to have this album done, this makes 3 vacations completely finished! I have a scrapbook night scheduled with some friends in 3 weeks-should I be good and work on our 2009 Wisconsin trip or jump right into this year's Florida beach vacation?? Hmmnnnnn....

enjoy life {a scrapbook layout with 12 photos!}

2011-08-25T12:53:00.000-07:00

It's well documented that I like to take pictures. I rarely do a layout with just one or two photos, because I think about all those other photos that didn't make the layout, sitting there lonely and dejected and I have to include them too. :)
But this layout, well...it's a little extreme, even for me.
We had so much fun at the park, just the boys and I, that I had to include all of the pictures. {And go me! Four boys under the age of 9 at a park by myself!}

I used PhotoSheet to print two 2X3 photos on each 4X6 print with white borders-no need for matting and super easy to trim! Love that little program.

All about enjoying life and having fun!

mu {a scrapbook layout}

2011-08-24T10:24:00.000-07:00

Since my boys went back to school yesterday, I thought I'd share a school-ish layout with you.
Our twins love to read and do a lot of reading. Jarron did so much reading that he won a contest for the Fairfield District and got to go to a Miami Redhawks game!
I took quite a few pictures at the game-this layout is just of the game itself and the sights players, cheerleaders, that sort of thing-there's another one that I did of him getting his award at halftime on center court that I'll share at some point.

Even though I broke it into two layouts, I still needed more room for pictures. So I created a fun little fold out area and added lots of 2x3 pictures. Jarron loves this layout!

{You can't see it, but the journaling is on the first page of the foldout.} Yet another fun use for my Martha scoring tool! Love that thing.

I'll be back tomorrow with a layout featuring over a dozen photos! {I'm not even kidding!}

Supplies: Kraft Cardstock-The Paper Company, Red patterned paper-KI Memories, Red diecut paper-KI Memories, letters-Accufit diecut system, Red cardstock-Bazzill, Black pen-Sharpie

the lakes brothers {a scrapbook layout}

2011-08-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

I'm not a big fan of vintage papers or embellishments. I'm much more of a modern, clean, and simple scrapbooker.
But when I found a Jenni Bowlin kit at Tuesday Morning for super cheap, I thought I'd pick it up-I might use it for something. It's a more modern vintage look.
This weekend I had a few hours while the kids were watching wrestling with their dad {don't ask} so I did a little scrapbooking.
These pictures were originally intended to be framed but when I saw them I knew I wanted to tell the story of our boys. Of the special bond they have as brothers. It's amazing to me they way they interact with each other. They can argue and fight at home but they are such a unit to outsiders. They stand together always. Amazing.
I felt like the B&W photos had kind of an old fashioned feel, so I wanted to mimic that with my papers and embellishments.

I struggled with the title-I knew I wanted to use the "name" sticker, but wasn't sure if I wanted to spell out Lakes Boys {what we, and everyone else typically call them} or Lakes Brothers. I felt like Lakes Brothers really told the story more.

I also wanted to capture the idea of how lucky these boys are to have each other-because they really, really are. This "lucky" bingo card and some twine were perfect!

A little old fashioned-modern vintage.

Supplies: Cardstock-Bazzill, Patterned Paper-Jenni Bowlin, Embellishments-Jenni Bowlin, Twine-We R Memory Keepers, Letters-My Mind's Eye Lush

This is our last weekend of summer, our 3 oldest go back to school next week-we might just end up at Kings Island again. :) But first tonight, we'll be meeting our son's first grade teacher and touring his new room.

Have a great weekend!

red white kaboom {a scrapbook layout with glitter, so much glitter}

2011-08-15T06:13:00.000-07:00

I love the new Target back to school commercials. My favorite is the teacher who is listing supplies and at the end says, "Glitter, so much Glitter." Ha. Ha.
I don't normally use a lot {or any} glitter on my layouts but this layout of our 4th of July festivities last month seemed to scream for it.
We went with some friends to a fireworks display in our city, called "Red White Kaboom". Such a blast (ha ha-get it-blast?)

Here's a close up of the left side-

And the right side-

All of my embellies and the alpha came with the glitter already applied. Much more convenient that trying to do it yourself.

Besides the fun of working with the sparkily stuff, I was also super excited to fit 11 pictures on this layout! Woo-hoo!
Supplies used: Kraft Cardstock-The Paper Company, Red and White Alpha Stickers-Doodlebug, Gold Alpha-American Crafts, all other embellies-K & Company, blue marker-Sharpie

Have a great Monday!!

The One with Things I Love Tuesday

2011-08-09T08:59:00.000-07:00

Well, hi there.
How about we do a little post about things I love..and since it's Tuesday. We'll call it "Things I Love Tuesday". Fun, right? :)
First up, this planner that I ordered from erincondren.com. Full disclosure here-I bought a monthly calendar from Tiny Prints by this designer earlier this year and loved it. The only problem was a corner of my laminated cover started coming apart. I contacted the nice folks at Erin Condren.com and they made it right-how cool is that? So with my credit, I bought the new 2011-2012 Life Planner. So excited to get it! When it arrives, I'll post pictures and give a little review.


Mine will look like this but have our family name and a cute picture of the boys. :)

I'm loving the new products that Becky Higgins is releasing this October. I love the idea of Project Life, but know I can't commit to taking a picture a day (I last until about March and then fall off). But I like many elements of the kits-page protectors, journal cards, the page dividers-and now Becky is making all of that available a la cart! So cool! I'm definitely getting the 6 x 12 page protectors-I just started doing some pages in this size and haven't found a good source for these just yet.

I finally ordered the Ella e-book that had been in my cart for far too long-Celebrating the Everyday. Can't wait to spend some time looking at this. I think I've mentioned how much I love Ella Publishing before-it really fills the void the Simple Scrapbooks has left behind for me. This book is by Elizabeth Dillow, who happens to be one of my favorites scrappers-love how she ties the story into every page she does.

I didn't keep up much with the CHA new releases but I did see the new Basic Grey lines. (I {heart} BG!). And I think Picadilly might be my favorite.

That's all I've got for today. :)
What new products are you loving today?

The One with My Craft Channel

2011-07-26T08:12:00.000-07:00

Have you heard about this?
I'm actually really, really excited about this. An online "channel" with all kinds of craft shows. People like Christy Tomlinson, Heidi Swapp, Stacy Julian, and Angie Lucas! What?!? How cool is that?
It looks like it will launch this fall with 20 new shows a week dedicated to crafty goodness.

The really fun part is that they are giving away a Cricut for each day that they announce a new host-so head on over for your chance to win!
Tell me-which show are you most looking forward to? I can't wait for Books & Crafts and Photo Freedom.

The One Where I Scraplifted...

2011-07-20T06:26:00.000-07:00

Ah scraplifting...the art of taking someone's else sketch or layout concept and copying it. I do it. I have the Becky Higgin's Sketches books and use them all the time. I love Allison Davis' sketches.
I even scraplift from myself. Gasp. It's true. Sometimes, I'm just too lazy to reinvent the wheel or sometimes, I just really love the way something turned out.
I created this layout of my son Jackson's photos from a family photo shoot and loved the look of it so much I replicated it for my other two boys (Brody wasn't born yet, so no photos of him).
Jackson:

Bryce:

Jarron:

The only difference (besides the cardstock color) is the use of some additional elements on Jackson's layout. I used twine for the very first time on his layout. I have to admit I'm kind of hooked-good stuff!

All materials are Sassafrass except the twine (We R Memory Keepers).

Do you scraplift? Who is your inspiration?

The One with the New Simple Stories Lines

2011-07-17T22:49:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a much needed family vacation to the beautiful Santa Rosa Beach area of Florida. It was so nice to disconnect and spend some time with my family.
While I was gone, MemoryWorks released sneak peeks to four different Simple Stories lines. All I can say is, wow. I love the original Simple Stories line and I used it to scrap my whole year in a glance of 2009. Super easy and very cute.
When I saw the sneaks, I was so excited, I know I'll be buying each one of them.
The first one is Generations-perfect for heritage scrapping.

Love the rich reds on this one.

Next we have Happy Day.

Hello, birthday layouts! Perfect color combos!

Next up, Baby Steps.

Pretty sure this is the answer I've been looking for to finish the twins' albums.

And finally, 25 Days of Christmas.

Have a great Monday!

The One with Some Bungle Jungle

2011-06-28T12:47:00.000-07:00

Ummm...I fully intended to be a better blogger but I had the opportunity to hang out with my kids at Backyard Bible Club all week last week, so I took it. So I have lots to share over the next few days.
First up-my favorite layout that I did at scrapbook night a couple of weeks ago.
I used the Sassafrass Bungle Jungle line to create this layout of my boys {this was before our 4th son was born}.

I used strips of the Bungle Jungle papers, Sassafrass chocolate glitter letter stickers, American Crafts thickers {joy}, and a Bazzill page topper element on this layout.

Here's a closer look at the right side. Love the look of the different fonts.

And here's the left side. Such fun!

I'm so happy with how it turned out! I have it on display in my craft room.
How do you display your "favorite" layouts?

The One with the Teacher Gifts

2011-06-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

This year I decided to go the quick, easy route with the teacher gifts. We had 4 teachers this year, and I wanted something that would work for all of them.
I decided to buy cloth photo albums from Target, decorate them, then add pictures, journaling and embellishments as a "mini-album" of the school year.
For my youngest son, this was pretty easy, I had a ton of pictures because I'd be on his field trips and at his class parties. It was a bit more difficult with my 4th graders. They don't have as many photo opportunities. In the end, I created albums for their teachers that they could use for the next few years.
The cover was pretty simple.

On the inside, I created journaling cards and dividers using a simple Word template. I found a super cute poem about teachers on line and formatted it to match my journaling cards.

A few ribbons and some more flowers as embellishments and it was all finished.

Lessons learned from this project:
-Buy inexpensve albums as I find them throughout the year. I paid full price for these and while they weren't crazy expensive, I could have gotten a larger size for a similar price on sale at TJ Maxx or Tuesday Morning.
-Print photos throughout the year. I would have had a much better idea of the need for more photos for the 4th graders if I had been printing all along.
-Keep it simple-don't go to crazy with embellishments, it makes it hard to close. :)

Totally doing this again this year, the teachers seemed to love them. :)

The One With the Winner!

2011-06-01T10:53:00.000-07:00

And the winner is.....

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

Timestamp: 2011-06-01 17:48:57 UTC

Commenter number 6....which just happens to be:

Monika Wright said...: Everything looks fun, but you know I can't pick just one favorite line...I Love them All!; May 31, 2011 1:31 PM

Yay!!!! Congrats Monika! I think you know my email-and I'm pretty sure I have your address but can you send it to me just in case? :)
Thanks for stopping by! Check back later this week for new layouts and finished teacher gifts!

The One with Yoda

2011-05-30T09:14:00.000-07:00

Doing lots of crafting this weekend! I'm working on some photo albums for the boys' teachers {thank goodness for the Walgreens 10 cent print sale!}.
Not only that but I finished up my Bo Bunny Fun in the Sun Mini Album-this will hold last year's 4th of July/Family Reunion pics.

I did a little work on Moosey's baby album. I just love Becky Higgin's baby kit. I bought a second one for our second youngest and I'm going to work on his album next. I'm debating whether I try to do the same system for the twins'. {Yes, I'm that far behind.} Anyway, Moose's album is almost done and when it's finished, I might just do a little video of it for you guys.

I also finished this layout of Moosey as Yoda from Halloween 2009. These pictures have been sitting on my desk for awhile now just waiting for inspiration to hit me. And it finally did. :) I used one of the alphas from the Sassafras box and some cardstock and the story behind the title. That's it. simple scrapbooking at it's finest.

Don't forget to there's still time to enter my giveaway here. And check back, I might just have a few more giveaways in the next few weeks. :)

Enjoy your Memorial Day and don't forget the reason behind this holiday-please say a prayer for those who are serving and the families that have loved ones serving!

The One with the Sassafras Mystery Box and a Giveaway!!!

2011-05-27T10:08:00.000-07:00

I'm a frequent visitor to the Two Peas in the Bucket message boards. And a few weeks ago the Peas were excited about the Sassafras mystery box sale. Now I have bought into mystery boxes in the past-only to be disappointed.{I'm looking at you Pink Paislee...}
Here's the deal with mystery boxes, you have to really like that particular manufacturer and you have to be okay with the fact that the lines you'll be getting aren't their most recent.
Now, I love Sassafras, but find them to be a wee bit expensive at my local scrapbook store. I think their Monstrosity line is one of my all time favorites and I recently scored their entire Bungle Jungle collection super cheap at Micheals.
So, I was on the fence. To buy the box or not buy the box. It seemed like a great deal $49 shipped for $215 worth of product-and I knew I would probably be happy with 80% of the products. And I had the money in my paypal account from some eBay sales. So I caved.
And within a week it arrived:

Yeah, that's a lot of stuff! Holy smokes. Was I happy to open that box!! Wowzers. You want to see close ups, don't you?

Okay.

Here's the Felties {love these}:

And the vintage brooches-2 blue, a pink, and a yellow:

Whimsies, seriously, I've been wanting these so much but they were $3.99 a pack at my LSS!!:

Entwined Blossoms-in Tender Green and Yellow-already know what I am doing with these!:

Two wee bundles-Count Me In and Mix and Mend:

And 10 Alphas and Count Me In stickers. Oh, how I love alphas, I shouted for joy when I saw these. My son came downstairs to check on me:

And the paper packs, each has 4-6 sheets of double sided paper, a border sticker sheet, journal stickers, and accent stickers. One also came with another set of alphas. (Score!) I got Cherry Delicious, Mix & Mend, Count Me In, Nerdy Bird, and Indie Girl.

Whew! So much stuff! I can't wait to play with it this weekend!

Now for the giveaway. I put together this cute little bundle for my blog readers:

The winner will get the Sassafras Mix & Mend Wee Bundle, the blue Vintage Brooch pack, and two packs of Autumn Leaves stamps! :) Giveaway winner will be announced on Wednesday, June 1st.
How to win:
1) You MUST be a follower of this blog. It's super easy to do, just follow me over there to the left.
2) Leave a comment with your first name and your all time favorite patterned paper line.
3) You can win an extra chance by blogging about this giveaway-just leave me a comment with the post.
Good luck!

The One with the Mother's Day Gifts

2011-05-16T08:22:00.000-07:00

Thanks so much for the kind thoughts and prayers for my momma. She's the toughest person I know. :)

She also loves handmade gifts. Fortunately, I have a {few} craft supplies down in the scrapbook room to accomodate her request for a scrappy Mother's Day gift.

For Christmas I had put together a 7 Gypsies painter's tray for her, so I wanted to do something different but that would match. {if that makes sense...} I got this white 12 x 12 scrapbook layout frame at Archivers and created a layout with black & white photos and blue color scheme.

I'm not sure why it won't let me rotate this-darn you Blogger!!!

The papers are from the Echo Park Little Boy line {but they don't look the least bit childish here}, the letter stickers are American Crafts Thickers, and the crocheted flowers are from Close to My Heart. {Photography by my amazing sister in law Bobbi.}
Fun fact: I have identical twin sons who are 10 years old, I have no trouble telling them apart in real life, but sometimes in pictures....I hesitate. I spent waaaaay too long making sure I had a picture of each. individual. twin on this layout because they looked soooo much alike in these pictures.

Might just have to recreate this layout for myself, with Momma's Boys as the title. :)

Of course, I couldn't leave my mother in law out. So I grabbed one of those 7 Gypsies trays and whipped something up for her too. Same paper line and color scheme.

Flowers are from Prima this time and the ribbon is from Keeping Memories Alive. Do you remember KMA? They had this wonderful catalog that you could look through and then order online? I love technology, but sometimes I just want to sit down and look through a paper catalog. Know what I mean?

I'll be back later this week with more layouts...have a super Monday!

My Apologies...

2011-05-12T08:55:00.000-07:00

So sorry for being absent for so long. But we had a fairly serious family emergency happen. My momma (who also happens to be our day care provider) had a massive heart attack on April 20th. It was totally unexpected, out of the blue. My momma is a super healthy and active 53 year old. She's a vegetarian that works out and lives much healthier life style than I do. But she also has a rare blood clotting disorder that we now know about-and that disorder caused the heart attack which led to congestive heart failure. I've taken a leave of absence from work to help out with her care and recovery.

After a scary couple of weeks, she's doing really well. We'll met with her cardiologist next week, but as of now it looks like she will not need surgery to repair the damage (God is good!).

Don't want to be Debbie Downer-so I'll leave you with the post I had planned on writing the day everything happened:

My Echo Park Little Boy kit was calling to me. So I sat down and created this layout from our trip to Colerain Park from last year.

This line is perfect for all of the boys running around in my house! And it's even more perfect for all of the reds and blues of the park equipment. :)

I used my Close to My Heart Edge Distresser for the very first time on the patterned paper strips and I love the look and added dimension. I know I'll be pulling that out quite a bit in the future!!

I really liked the picture of the playground equipment and thought it added a nice visual to the title. It also provided a nice balance to the journaling card on the opposite side of the layout.

What looks like a collage at the bottom of the layout is 4 different 2" x 3" photos with their corners rounded. I had them printed at Shutterfly with the white borders (no need for matting!).

I'm loving this line so much, I really wish there were other versions of it-Halloween, Christmas, etc...

Supplies: Patterned Paper, journal card, letter stickers: Echo Park Little Boy; Cardstock: C'oordinations Lake; Buttons: CTMH; Edge Distresser: CTMH; Adhesive: Scotch ATG

The One With A Family Layout

2011-04-08T11:23:00.000-07:00

As I was in the backyard last night playing with my boys I was thinking, "Wow. I can't believe these are my kids. I am a momma of four boys, how did that happen?!?".

This layout features our very first picture as a family of six. It was taken Thanksgiving weekend 2008. Moosey was about 2 months old. I hadn't gone back to work from maternity leave yet and I was loving every minute of being home with those boys. He's so tiny in these pictures. It's hard for me to see the 2 year old he'll become in these pictures. Even the twins are so small to me here. Boy, how quickly time flies. I can remember taking these pictures. How cold it was. How the ground was pretty soggy from the rain the week before. How the boys fought over who would hold the baby in the shots of just the kids.
When I see this layout and these memories come flooding back, I am so very thankful I scrapbook. So thankful for this hobby.
{I also realized that I wanted to add some journaling to this, just need to decide where!}

Supplies: Kraft cardstock (Archivers), Patterned Paper CTMH Serendipity line, flower embellishments (unknown), bling embellishment (MAMBI)

Wish I knew where I got those flowers-love them.

Have a great weekend!!

The One with An Award {You Like Me, You Really Like Me!}

2011-04-05T07:22:00.000-07:00

Thanks so much for the nice comments I've gotten about returning to the blog world! It's nice to be back! :)
And many thanks to Sharla for this fun award:

Not sure how "versatile" I am but it's an award and I'll take it! :)

Now the rules for this award are as follows:

1.) Thank the person who gave it to you {Done}
2.) 7 things about yourself {See Below}

3.) Send it to 15 other bloggers
4.) Leave a comment so they can pass along the recognition

Seven things about me...
1) My family is the most important thing in the world to me.
2) I'm really messy when I craft. I'm the worst person to sit by at a crop. I spread out and have paper everywhere. But I'm also a lot of fun and tell really funny stories, so maybe that makes up for it?

My desk in action-so messy.

3) I really want to run a half marathon before I turn 40. Considering I can barely walk a 5K this dream seems pretty far off.
4) Sometimes when I cook dinner, in my head, I pretend I am on Top Chef. Does anyone else do this? I can't be the only one.
5) I love a good blue/brown color combo and use it a lot in my layouts and my clothes.
6) If you were to look at my Twitter feed you'd get a good snapshot at the things I'm interested in: scapbooking, religion/faith, family, TV shows (Chuck, Psych), and stormchasing? How did that get in there? But yeah, I'm kind of fascinated by weather.
7) I married my high school sweetheart. We've been together since I was 16 years old. This year will be our 13th anniversary and our 18th year together. That's a crazy long time. I'm a lucky girl!

I don't think I know 15 other bloggers that haven't gotten this award so, here's a few that I am currently reading and enjoying:
A Matter of Memories
ScrappnBee the Scapbooker
And So I Don't Forget -I just found her courtesy of Two Peas and I love her scrapbooking style!!
Siehled with A Kiss-A fellow Ohioan! :)

Ummm, that's only four, I'm so lame sometimes. :)

The One Where I Ask You to Go Vote and Moosey Grows Up!

2011-04-01T07:52:00.000-07:00

I love fabric. Which is funny, because I can't sew at all. But I love walking through Jo-Ann's looking at all the beautiful fabrics, imagining them to be patterned papers in my scrapbook albums.
But what if the opposite were true? What if one of your favorite designers for patterned paper could design fabric too?

That just might happen for one of my favorites-Crystal Wilkerson, with your help. Head on over to her blog HERE. She has all the details of a contest she is in to become a fabric designer! While you are there, check out her amazing digital papers-I love her stuff, she makes me wish I was a digi-scrapper.

She also happens to be the designer of my current favorite kit that I FINALLY picked up a couple of weeks ago and will be playing with this weekend:

So, so excited to have this!!

And because I feel like I should be sharing at least one layout, look who moved up to the big boy class at church recently:

Moosey is not a baby any more. :( I can't believe my last baby is in the 2 year olds room already. So not ready for that!

This single page layout uses: Cosmo Cricket patterned paper, ki Memories lace numbers cardstock, a Martha Stewart journal card, and some AC thickers.
Have an awesome weekend!

The One with My Big Idea

2011-03-31T07:50:00.000-07:00

Well, hi there.
My name is Christina. And I scrapbook. And blog. Occasionally. {Apparently.}
I'm not sure why but this winter has been a tough one for me. I've had a lot going on at work and at home and I just haven't felt motivated to write. At all. And that makes me sad. But I'm getting my "groove back". I'm finding myself WANTING to write blog posts again. Jotting down ideas on napkins and in my little notebook that I carry in my purse. So here I am.
And today I'm sharing my big idea.
It's not very original. {I freely admit that.}
You see, every year we get annual passes to our local amusement park. {Kings Island for those of you familiar with the Ohio area.} And every year I take a gazillion photos of us at KI. And yes, gazillion is a technical term. So what do I do with those photos? I end up with at least 6-10 layouts a year just of KI photos. That seems like a lot for our family album.
So a couple of weeks ago at scrapbook night, I had a big idea. Why not have an album for the KI layouts? Who says you have to have albums just for holidays, and chronological stuff?
So I sat down and created a title layout for that year's photos.{2009-I'm a little behind.}

Each year will use the same color scheme and patterned paper line {in this case-Bo Bunny}. I cut all of my strips of patterned paper to 3 inches and each layout will have a uniform look. The cardstock will be one of three colors all from the same manufacturer {C'oredinations} or kraft cardstock. I will bring in some variety using embellishments and lettering.

For this layout I used Jillibean corrugated letters and some MAMBI bling stickers. Fun stuff-and let's face it going to King's Island is this family's idea of fun in the summer. I really want this album to reflect that.

And a little look at how some of the other layouts in the album will look:

I have all of my King's Island pictures printed out and ready to be scrapped-I love the idea of getting them into a fast, simple album that my boys can look at again, and again.
Happy Thursday!

The One with a Few Updates and The Much Anticipated Snow Layout

2011-01-30T22:36:00.000-08:00

Hi there. Is this thing on? Is anyone still reading? :) I hope so....sorry for the little hiatus. Things got a little crazy at my day job and I need to step away from the computer for awhile and relax when I got home each night. Sometimes we all just need to unplug a little bit.

I promised I'd share a fun layout I did of some snow pictures I took of the kids last season. And boy have I had a lot of inspiration lately. We've had one of the snowiest winters on record here in Ohio.
I had so many great pictures to work with for this layout that I didn't want to leave any out. So I tried something a little different. I did a traditional double page layout. {Because I am the queen of double layouts...must do more single pagers in 2011...}

And then I created a couple of 6 x 12 layouts to highlight some favorite photos and journaling. I love them! They were so much fun to work on-I can't wait to do it again. Totally got my creative juices flowing and got me thinking about other things I want to do in this size. All in all I have 20 photos and 2 really rich paragraphs of journaling on this layout spread-love this.

I used a bunch of Heidi Swapp Ghost shapes that have been sitting in my stash waiting for the perfect project. I am going to make a big dent in my stash this year-no more waiting for the perfect project to come along!

The other thing I wanted to update you on was some fun scrapbook room decor. I am still working on getting some art and other fun stuff on my walls. We are actually in the midst of redecorating quite few rooms in the house {slowly but surely and as the budget allows it}. It's tough because I'm FAR from an interior decorator but I know that I like classic, modern decor. Nothing too crazy but nice clean lines. I really struggle with making the right choices for my walls and such.
But I have started small and with my scrapbook room.

My first two pieces are originals. One is from my dear friend, Monika. I love her art. Just love it. She gifted me this "Have Fun" piece and I spray painted a frame that I loved and framed it. The other piece is by, ummm...me. Yup, I made that i Scrap piece. I love that Cosmo Cricket Snorkel line and I just needed to have it hanging up in my scrap space because it inspires me and makes me happy. So I created this piece of art around it. They'll hang side by side next to my desk as soon as my Dad comes over to help me line them up. {I'm hopeless at hanging pictures...hopeless!}

That's my update. Did a lot of scrapping this weekend. I'm doing my own version of Project Life and I put the framework of that together this weekend and did my weekly goal of 2 layouts...so far so good. Hopefully I'll share both later this week and maybe even a {giveaway}! Stay tuned!

The One with Some Halloween Layouts

2011-01-13T09:50:00.000-08:00

Two weeks into the new year and I am keeping up with my goals! I did not 2, not 3 but 4 layouts this past week! Woo hoo! Most of them were Halloween layouts (from 2009-slowly but surely catching up) but I also sneaked in a fun multi-page snow layout that I will share this weekend.
I love, love, love this Bo Bunny Halloween line.

I'm beginning to realize that I am the Queen of Double Layouts. Jeesh. I'm going to need a room just for my albums if I keep up at this rate.

One more, to prove that I can break free from the double layout madness, a-- wait for it-single page layout. Gasp!

Have a great Thursday night!

My Favorite Christmas Layout {So Far...}

2011-01-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

As promised...the favorite Christmas layout that I've created {so far}.

I just love how clean and symmetrical it turned out. But more than that. I love, love the pictures. Everyone was smiling and happy. Love that little picture on the bottom of Jackson and Brody from behind looking at decorations. And that Santa? Hands down the best mall Santa we have EVER met. He was jolly, happy, loved kids, and had a real beard!

Okay, so maybe the memories of this happy day are what makes this my favorite Christmas layout, but I still think it's pretty darn cute!

When I got home from work yesterday, there was a big orange envelope on my porch! My shutterfly order finally arrived-I'm working on some Halloween layouts this weekends. Getting lots of inspiration from Mary Pat lately.

Hopefully I'll be sharing those next week! :)

Have a great weekend!

A Collection of Christmas Layouts

2011-01-04T08:05:00.000-08:00

So, I did some scrapbooking over the holidays...and finished up all of the layouts from our 2009 Christmas photos-yay me!
I realized quickly that I really need to put all of my Christmas layouts through the years in one album-I tend to take a lot of pictures in December and end up with at least 5 or 6 layouts each season. So I'll be working on that little organization project this weekend.
I actually finished the very last layout last night (along with another one that I'd been thinking about for some time). I'll share those later this week. Super excited that I've already completed two layouts for this week. 1 week down, 51 more to go!
On to the layouts...

Lots of bling on this one-but I think that super frilly tree needed it. I used my Gypsy to cut out the word "Christmas". {Have I mentioned how much I love my Gypsy? Because I do.} The gold ribbon is from a package of Godiva I got from one of my vendors. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. :)

I used up some of my Basic Grey Fruitcake patterned paper for this one. I did a little paper weaving with the strips-same piece of paper just used the backside to give it some contrast. Paper weaving is kind of addictive-going to be doing it again soon! The letter stickers are American Crafts.

Basic Grey Fruitcake again. Can you tell that I am trying to use up my stash? I also used Kraft cardstock for most of these layouts. Oh how I love Kraft cardstock.

Christmas with my husband's family. I love the little pictures on the bottom half. I take a lot of pictures at family gatherings-so glad I got to use them all in this layout.

Christmas with my family. And more little pictures. I use Photo Sheet to create those on a 4x6 canvas. Super fast and easy. That poinsettia embellishment?

I made it using a couple of different Making Memories paper flowers and a brad. I made about 10 of them and used them on cards, tags and this layout. I am so sad that I am out of them-so stinking cute.

That's it for today. I'll share my favorite 2009 Christmas layout later this week. :)

I'm Back {With Layouts!}

2011-01-02T22:30:00.000-08:00

Sorry to be MIA for so long. With the busyness of the Christmas season and a pretty major health scare for my nephew, I just didn't get online as much as I normally do.
Happy to report that my nephew is going to be just fine and things are starting to settle down.
Thought I'd share that Christmas layout I promised you many moons ago.

Last year, just after the holidays, we took the boys to Jackson County to see Chuck's grandmas. We spent the night in Lexington and did some exploring the next morning. Lexington Mall (attached to Rupp Arena) had some amazing Christmas decorations-I took a ton of photos.

I used the Making Memories Fa La La line to create this layout. I also grabbed some Thickers from my stash for the title and some jelly stickers from MAMBI for embellishment. Hard to see but there's some bling on this page too-bottom left corner and at the top of the journaling spot. I can't for the life of me remember where I got that bling.

And since the holidays are over (but I still have a ton of holiday layouts to share-I did some scrapbooking while on vacation!), I thought I'd share a non-Christmas layout I recently completed.
My 6 year old was playing on a treadmill at a neghbor's house and took a spill. He looked much worse than the injuries really were. This happened back in March/April when my 9 year old got injured and had to go to Urgent Care 3 times in a week.
Never a dull moment with these boys. I think it's really important to capture those not so perfect moments too-so here's a layout about "The Treadmill Incident".

I used the Comso Cricket Boyfriend line for this. I seriously love me some Cosmo Cricket-use their stuff ALL THE TIME! Snagged some more Thickers for the title and Cosmo Cricket Tiny Type stickers for the sub-title. {Told you I loved CC!}

Don't you just love the "give" band-aid?

I {heart} those Tiny Type letter stickers!

So very true!

I've set a goal of 2 layouts a week for 2011. I even blocked time on my calendar each week to keep me honest. Hopefully, I'll be more successful with this goal than I was with my 2010 goal (a picture a day).

Happy New Year!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas...

2010-12-13T13:14:00.000-08:00

we got our first real snowfall yesterday. Nearly 5 inches! Looks so beautiful but with windchills below zero there is no way we are venturing out to play in it just yet. So what's a momma to do? How about pop some popcorn, rent a new movie from OnDemand for the kiddos and get some scrapbooking done??
We spent most of the weekend prior to the snow getting some holiday items checked off our checklist-visit to Santa, picking out our tree, and decorating our tree-all done.
So, thusly inspired-I got out last year's Christmas photos and got to work.
This was my crew on Christms Eve 2009:


Supplies: Bazzill Cardstock, Basic Grey Patterned Paper, Making Memories & KI Memories letter stickers, various ribbons

Finally got to play with my Martha Stewart circle cutter-fun stuff! And I used a white gel pen to journal around the edges of the cardstock-I never do that! But it was fun breaking out of my box and doing something different for a change. And my white gel pen is my new best friend-seriously can't wait to use this again.

Love, love, love these letters stickers! I think they are Chloe's Closet by Making Memories. I added the "christmas" from the KI Memories new Frosting Stickers.

I finished another Christmas layout...but I think I'll wait until tomorrow to share that one :) ...Happy Monday!

Future's So Bright...

2010-12-09T05:54:00.000-08:00

I wish we had to wear shades. I think part of me put this page together because I am yearning for sunshine. :) Winter is starting to settle into the Midwest. And while I love snow and the time inside to get things like scrapbooking done; I miss the sun already.
I captured these photos of my son, Jackson, at his pine car derby this year. He was trying on his Nana's sunglasses and just looked too funny not to photograph.


Supplies: Bazzill Cardstock, Cosmo Cricket Patterned Paper, Cosmo Cricket Die Cuts & Rub Ons, American Crafts letter stickers, Journaling cards-unknown

I really wanted the journaling card to be customized to the layout, so I grabbed some rub-ons that matched the patterned paper and got to work. I really like how it all tied together.

One other note about this layout-I very rarely use gray cardstock. Not sure why. But when I saw that patterned paper, I knew I had the perfect opportunity to use some gray cardstock that I had kicking around. Jackson LOVES this layout. He wants me to frame it for his room-silly kid. :)

Head on Over To....

2010-12-06T14:13:00.000-08:00

Domestic Blunders, Courtney Walsh's blog, for a super awesome Christmas giveaway. Courtney is a scrapbooker and the author of Scrapbooking Your Faith. I love reading her posts because she is a very honest writer--she doesn't try to be perfect, she's just trying to live her life in God's grace and I appreciate that. Not to mention, she's a real talented scrapbooker.
And did I mention she has an AWESOME giveaway??? Go on...head on over...I'll be back tomorrow with a fun layout. :)

Double Page Design

2010-12-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

I took advantage of the great Black Friday sale Ella Publishing had this past weekend and purchased this awesome eBook, Double Page Design.

Love, love, love this book. I highly encourage you to head on over to their site and check it out. I'm typically a double page layout girl anyway but it inspired me to break out of my 4x6 photo rut and use some other sizes.
This is a layout I did of my son's school trip to our local children's museum. There's another double layout that goes with it that has journaling and more photos so this one is kind of his "journey" through the museum.

Supplies: Bazzill Cardstock, Doodlebug buttons, Cosmo Cricket patterned paper, Mrs Grossmans letter stickers

I loved the way this looked so much I did a very similar one about our day at the park.

Supplies: Bazzill Cardstock, Basic Grey patterned paper, Doodlebug letter stickers, Marvy scallop circle punch

I made the flower embellishments by using a bunch of different sized scallop circle punches. (I did this at a scrap night at my local Archivers. I only have one scallop circle punch.)

You could also add a brad in the center and pull up on the edges for more dimension but I wanted mine to stay flat.
I have to say I think this might just be my favorite Ella book to date!! :)

Feeling Thankful....

2010-11-29T12:22:00.000-08:00

Awww....you guys! I've been getting some serious love in my comments lately and I'm feeling super thankful for my amazing readers-you guys are awesome! I am truly appreciative of each and every one of you that decide to stop by!
Three of you (Sharla, Mary Pat and Emily) gave me this fun award-Thanks ladies!!!:

Now, this award does come with some rules and I have to pay it forward:

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this

2. Share 8 things about yourself

3. Pay it forward to 8 bloggers that you have recently discovered

4. Contact those bloggers and tell them about their awards

Share 8 things about myself

1. I drink a can of ice cold Coke every single morning. I can't function without it.
2. I went to a French-English Bi-lingual Elementary School for 5 years. I can still read quite a bit of French but sadly can't speak very much of it anymore.
3. I have four sons, including a set of identical twins.
4. I am addicted to all reality shows involving parents of multiples-Raising Sextuplets, Jon & Kate, Quintuplet Surprise, Etc. See #3. I think it's because I can relate to the madness that is life with more than one.
5. I secretly love to shovel snow. Seriously, it gives me such a sense of accomplishment when I am done. We don't really start getting serious snow until January here in southern Ohio and I can't wait!
6. My favorite flowers are daisies.
7. I desperately want to start running every day but I usually get distracted by a show on TV or a layout I want to work on.
8. I would wear flip flops every day of my life if I could but, alas, I work in the business world {and um... live in southern Ohio where it snows} so I can't.

Now I have to pay it forward. Here are 8 people that I have found recently {that aren't in my list of links over there on the left} and I love to read their blogs. I feel sort of silly contacting some of them since they have HUNDREDS of followers. So I just invite you to check them out. I enjoy reading their posts and seeing their layouts and hope you do too.
1. Over the Rainbow-Keshet Starr
2. the hufford house-Jenni Hufford
3. kelli crowe
4. Me And You + Two-Mary Jo Johnston
5. Creativity By Crystal
6. Designs by Diana
7. Celebrate We Will
8. it is what it is-Beth Proudfoot

Shutterfly for Christmas

2010-11-20T08:52:00.000-08:00

I think I've mentioned before how much I love Christmastime. One of my favorite parts of Christmas is giving and receiving Christmas cards and photo albums.
I love seeing how our friends and families have grown and changed over the years. Our family has been sending photo cards or cards with photos inserted for the past 9-10 years. I love sharing photos of our little family. For some of our extended family and friends this is the only time they see how our children have grown.
I love Shutterfly for so many reasons. I take a lot of pictures-a lot! {Like 400 a month-I know!} For a long time I used Kodak Gallery for my photo printing but I wasn't totally thrilled with the process or quality. Last year I tried Shutterfly. I got my pictures much faster than I had in the past and the quality was much better. Plus they have cool features like printing the date the photo was taken on the back of the card. That's a big deal for me-especially when I order in large batches-it makes organizing my photos soooo much easier. Now Shutterfly has the Express Uploader tool. It's a program that is on your computer desktop that lets you upload pictures to Shutterfly with just a few clicks of your mouse. So cool.
I use Shutterfly a lot at Christmas time. It's a hectic time of year for us, so I don't have a lot of time. But I want to give thoughtful presents-things people will treasure for years to come. Thank goodness for the photo book.
I've made a number of photo books with Shutterfly. Each and every one of them have turned out great. Photo books are quick and easy to do and make excellent gifts. Each year I make my mother in law a photo book of the boys. I usually do an 8x8 hardcover album-she loves them! You can go here to try it for yourself. If you are at your child's school a lot and are able to take pictures of the students, this would make a great teacher gift, too.
My plan this weekend is to work on Christmas cards. All of our cards have photos in them. I hand make some {for close family and friends} but everyone else gets a photo card. You'd think it would be a super quick and easy thing but Shutterfly has over 800 designs! Oh my. Of course once I decide it will be easy....but I have a tough time deciding. More choice is better than no choice though.
This was last year's card-which I loved! Love the blues and the cream. But I want to do something totally different this year.

I love cards that have non-traditional Christmas colors. There are so many choices-I found this card and this card and so many more. But I think I am leaning towards this card. Love that I can put individual pictures of the boys and write a little note. And how much fun is that font!
This is my Shutterfly weekend-I'll be finishing up the photo albums and getting the Christmas cards ready to order. {I'm going to try to sneak in some time to scrapbook, too!}

Are You on a Scrapbook Budget?

2010-11-19T12:37:00.000-08:00

Who isn't these days? But there are still things that I need {okay, want}. Well, just look at my "Things I Love" posts. :)
So what's a girl to do? How about earn some easy money doing things I'd be doing anyway?
I have a $25 craft budget each month. I can either carry the balance over and save up for something I want or make money outside our household budget. I can almost never carry money over month to month, so looking for money outside our budget is something I've gotten really good at.

Here a few reputable ways I do that:

-Swagbucks. Oh, how I love swagbucks. You earn points for doing web searches, answering polls, etc. I earn about 15 a day. Every month or so I turn them in for Amazon gift cards.

Earlier this year I bought a Cuttlebug with my cards. I have about $60 worth saved right now; not sure what I'll do with those. For more information on Swagbucks, go here.

-Online surveys. After a lot of trial and error, I know which companies are worth signing up for and which aren't. I am a member of two panels. Both are great and send surveys pretty frequently. I've made about $50 every 3 months with each panel. Plus I've got to try cookies, crackers, diapers, toilet paper and more before it hits the market. I love being able to give my opinion about products to help make them better.
The first is Opinion Outpost. They pay you in checks, Amazon gift cards, or Citibank gift cards.
The second is Mindfield Online. They pay you in checks.

-MyPoints. This one sends you emails every day or so and when you click on them you earn points. You can redeem your points for gift cards. I used my points to get gift cards for my children's teachers for Christmas this year. I have an email account set up just for My Points-that why my every day inbox doesn't get too full.

-Cash in on your old supplies. That adorable Crop in Style binder you just had to have but is sitting unloved and unused in your closet? Put it up for sell on Ebay, Craigslist, or a For Sale area of your favorite scrapbook message board. I love selling stuff on Two Peas in a Bucket. It's a great way to get rid of the clutter and earn a few dollars at the same time. If your local scrapbook store has a yard sale, consider joining in. You'll usually get a store credit to spend on all the new stuff that catches your eye.

Have any questions? Please feel free to leave me a comment or email me. :)
This weekend I'll be doing a post about my favorite photo processing website-Shutterfly! Stay tuned...

Things I Love Thursday...

2010-11-18T13:24:00.000-08:00

Just a few quick ones this week...
-The new Over the Rainbow collection by KI Memories. Perfect for a year in review album! Love the paper and love the puffy stickers. They are all on my wish list on Amazon (hint, hint, family members reading this blog)

-I've decided I want a mini sewing machine just for paper crafts. I have a regular size sewing machine that I have used a few times {she and I have a love/hate relationship} but I want something small that I can put in the craft room. I've heard great things about the Janome Sew Mini. But I can't find it anywhere. I found a Michley Lil' Sew machine that looks really similar-but I'm not sure if they are the same thing. Who knew it would be this hard to find a little sewing machine.

-I saw this collection at JoAnn Fabric on my lunch break this week. Woodhaven by Colorbok-just love it. It would be great for spring photos. I want to use it for the album of our Michigan trip that I have been putting off forever. Hmmnnnn...might just have to use that 50% off coupon.

Have a great Thursday!

Things I Love Thursday

2010-11-11T08:18:00.000-08:00

It's sketch week over at Alison Davis' blog! I love Ali's sketch and I have at least two of her sketch books on my Christmas wish list.

Love this idea of framing a "Gratitude" poster and having the kids talk about what they are thankful for. I might put a little twist on this idea and do this at Thanksgiving with the whole extended family-how fun would that be?

Speaking of Thanksgiving-Beth Proudfoot has some seriously adorable downloads for Thanksgiving favor tags. The boys have a Thanksgiving fest at school soon and these will definitely come in handy! If you aren't following Beth, you totally should.She has super cute downloads nearly every week.

Non-scrapbook related:
-The weather in Ohio this week has been AMAZING! Sunny and 70's in November? Yup, I'll take it!
-Football season is over for my boys! {Hello life, it's nice to have you back for awhile.}
-I am coveting this bag something awful. I don't need a new bag but man, do I WANT this one:

It's also on my Christmas/Birthday wish list!

Baby Layla's Mini Album

2010-11-09T13:17:00.000-08:00

I can finally post pictures of the mini album that I've been working on. My husband's best friend and his wife welcomed their first child a couple of weeks ago. Chuck asked that I make a scrapbook for Layla as a gift. I was a little nervous about it-I always get a little nervous giving "homemade gifts".
Fortunately, Layla's mom & dad seemed to like it. :)

I used the Making Memories Animal Crackers album kit. I realized about halfway through that the album kit did not include nearly enough paper. And no one carries it anymore. Anywhere.

So I found some papers that matched pretty close in my stash (Basic Grey, DCWV, Becky Higgin's baby kit) and worked with what I had.

I have another friend that is expecting a little girl. Wish I had more Animal Crackers to work with but she'll probably get something done with the super cute October Afternoon paper I picked up at Archivers recently. {Note to self-get started on that!}

Been a little lazy blogging lately, had a whole house full of sickies. The stomach virus going around seemed to stagger itself by two days through each of my four boys. Sigh. I even had one sick at Trunk or Treat.
So glad things are getting back to normal and I can start crafting again!

Things I Love Thursday...

2010-10-28T09:43:00.000-07:00

-Echo Park and Crystal Wilkerson have teamed up for a brand new line, called Little Boy. It just went to the very top of my wish list. I literally can't wait to get my hands on it.

Seriously? How stinking cute is that? November can't get here soon enough!

-I have a Making Memories Slice die cutting machine and about 6 or 7 cartridges. {I also have a Silhouette machine but I hate lugging it out for one or two cuts.) Slice just came out with a bunch of new design cards and I have my eye on the Zootopia one. I'm a sucker for cute animal die cuts.

We have Trunk or Treat tonight at our church, so I'll be in the mood to scrap some Halloween photos this weekend-good thing I still haven't got around to working on last year's pictures! :)

Things I Love Thursday {Inspiration Edition}

2010-10-21T06:23:00.000-07:00

So I mentioned in my magazine post that there is all sorts of fabulous (and FREE) scrapbook inspiration on the internet. This week's Things I Love Thursday post, is all about inspiration-the places I go to get inspired!

-Two Peas in a Bucket-this is the very first place I found on the web for scrapbook inspiration and a place I visit daily. Two Peas has message boards, galleries, shopping and more. For a long time, I didn't really know anyone who scrapbooked in real life. Two Peas was the ONLY place I had to talk to other scrappers. {My pea name is twinsandtwo {because I have twins and two singletons-get it?}-if you see me on there, please say "hi".}

-Monika commented on my last post the she really missed Simple Scrapbooks magazine. I do too. BUT...a group of contributors from Simple have formed a wonderful website called Write. Click. Scrapbook. WCS is chockful of great ideas, downloads, and more. And did I mention the weekly give-away? :)

-Another brainchild of former Simple writers is Ella Publishing. Ella publishes eBooks that are priced at about what one magazine would cost at newstand. But they are BOOKS-that you can print at home or download to your Kindle {or like me-your iPhone to read at football practice}. Ella also has a blog and a newsletter that are completely free and have tons of amazing ideas!

-Blogs, oh how I love blogs. Do you have a favorite line of patterned paper? Google the manufacturer. Odds are pretty good that they have a blog and likely a design team {who each have blogs of their own}. I've listed a few of my favorite over to the side of this blog.

-How about a FREE MAGAZINE! That's right I said free magazine. Okay, you have to print it out yourself or download it to your computer {or, again, like me put it in iBooks to read at football practice}. But, Scrapbook & Cards Today is totally free to download. How cool is that??? And it's good-with articles by Stacy Julian and Aly Dosdall, it's almost like having Simple back.

So, there you have it- tons of free inspiration right here on the web. What about you? Do you have a favorite website for inspiration? Leave a comment with a link!

The Magazine Wars

2010-10-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

I love magazines. I always have. Love the thrill of opening up my mailbox to see that glossy 8 1/2 x 11 piece of goodness. My favorite part of my old job was sitting next to the media department and getting all the free magazines I wanted. {They still hook me up with People magazine because they know I am hopelessly addicted.}
Sadly, the optical company I work for does not advertise in scrapbooking mags, so I subscribe to two-Creating Keepsakes and Scrapbooks, Etc. I've had my CK subscription for about 4 years, and sadly, this month it runs out. My SBE subscription is about 3 years old and I recently ran into a smoking hot deal on Tanga for a year's subscription for $8, so somehow(?) I'm good through 2012.
So this month, I have a decision to make-do I renew my CK subscription? A lot has been said about the changes at CK. There's this article at Scrapbook Update and this thread on Two Peas. I'll be honest, I miss seeing columns by Becky Higgins, Jessica Sprague and Ali Edwards. I like the columns by Mandy Douglass and Jennifer McGuire but are they enough to justify the high (in my opinion) expense of a subscription? Especially considering the issues with customer service and how their parent company has treated some of it's designers?
So I did what I am trained to do: I sat down and looked at this month issues from an analytic point of view.
Creating Keepsakes
What I liked:

Mandy Douglass's article on Recipes for Quick & Easy Layouts-loved that she used common photo print sizes and the layouts were adorable.
I loved the article on Kraft-I'm just learning to love kraft, so this was great for me!

What I didn't like:

The scrap room article. I usually really enjoy this feature but this month the photos were taken from such a distance that you couldn't see much detail.
The CK Shows You How article on paint, seemed amatuer-ish and thrown together.
Overall, the whole magazine seemed off. I can't put my finger on what it was, maybe it's me and I've outgrown it but I wasn't feeling it. :(

What I wanted to like:

The Scrap Your Faith article and The Deck Your Pages article-both just missed the mark for me. The faith article was pretty superficial and the deck your pages article didn't address the most common concern with adding that type of texture-how to limit the bulk. I just found both a bit lacking.

Scrapbooks, Etc.
What I liked:

Ali!!!! You are back! Yay! Ali Edward's article on her December Daily was great-concise and informative. If you visit her blog, you probably are already familiar with it but if you don't you got all you needed to know from the article.
Jen Lessinger's tip on how to create those cool scratch off cards was awesome. I'm totally doing that with the boys, just for fun. {Jen needs a blog-I love her layouts and sense of humor!}
Loved the last minute gift ideas article. I have so many gift idea lists bookmarked on my computer, it's nice to see them in a magazine article for once.
I've made no secret of the fact that I hate sewing but I actually enjoyed the article on sewing in this issue-in fact {i kinda want a teeny little sewing machine to try to do some sewing} there I said it out loud.
Yes, this was a holiday issue but they didn't beat us over the head with holiday layouts, there were plenty of non-holiday layouts too.

What I didn't like:

Ummmm...maybe the paper piecing? That's about it though, because I seriously wore this issue out looking through it!

Conclusion: I'm super happy my SBE subscription doesn't run out until 2012-I have literally looked through this month's copy like 12 times! I'm sad to say that I will likely let my CK subscription go. I might eventually pick up past issues on eBay or at Half Price Books but it's not a "must have" for me anymore.

That being said, there are tons of great non magazine sources for inspiration out there-I'll share a few of my favorites and why I love them on Thursday! See you then!

Things I Love Thursday...

2010-10-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

-I need a new circle cutting system. While I love my Creative Memories cutting system, I'm pretty limited on the size of my circles.
Erika over at Scrapbook Obsession used her 50% MS coupon to get the Martha Stewart Circle Cutter. I have a craft budget of $20 a month (includes cardstock and adhesive). I haven't bought anything at all this month. AND I have my 50% off a Martha Stewart product from my copy of MS' Living magazine. So for just $13.00 + tax, I could have this:

My dilemma is this...I also like the EK Success Circle Scissors tool.

I'm just not sure which will be easier to use. I've found MS products to be VERY well constructed and easy to use, so I'm really leaning towards the Circle Cutter.
I will do a review of whichever I end up purchasing.

-Jill Marie has a wonderful and FREE fall download on her blog HERE. If you have never visited Jill Marie's blog, I encourage you to take a peek. She has some great downloads and ideas-I have her bookmarked and visit her daily.

-Oddly enough I got both my Creating Keepsakes and Scrapbooks Etc monthly magazines yesterday-it was interesting to read them both in the same evening. I have a post planned that compares and contrasts them coming up for this weekend. But I LOVED having not one but TWO new scrapbook magazines to read in one sitting.

-I have no words for how happy I am for this lady. No words. Congratulations Angie!

-I'm working on wall art for my scrapbook room and stumbled on this post by the very talented Kelli Crowe. (Who was inspired by Ali Edwards.) I'm so stealing this idea. Not sure what shape I'm doing yet though. But I'm thinking I'll use my Slice to cut the design. {Full disclosure: I had no idea Kelli had a website and spent hours reading back posts and grabbing ideas for layouts-that girl has crazy talent.}

-How much fun is this Monsterville line of papers from SEI? Perfect for my rowdy boys. It's on my wish list.

Happy Thursday!

Summer Fun Mini Album

2010-10-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

We finally got some fall weather this weekend-rain and cooler temperatures. I also got a cold, so instead of going to the boys' football games I stayed in all day Saturday and {gasp} scrapped! Rather than working on the baby albums that I should have been working on, I decided to work on my Summer Fun mini album.
I've kinda been on a mini album kick lately. I got this mini album from my friend Monika from a giveaway on her blog-but you can buy it from her etsy store here. She even has a fall version available!
I've never done a true 4x6 mini album but boy did I have fun with this. It ended up being about 2 1/2 inches thick when I was done. Monika's kit had a ton of embellishments with it but I ended using a bunch of my own too. :) Love that the kit inspired me to go look at my stash and pull some things out.

I used photos from the summer of 2009--my six year old came down when I was almost finished and was sooo excited to look through it. Totally inspired me to do one for each season.
Here's a look at the inside{warning: pic heavy!}:

The last page is one of my favorite pictures of the summer, of our littlest looking out of the slats on the front porch, waiting for his brothers.

Of course, that baby album isn't going to put itself together, and our friend isn't getting any less pregnant, so I think I know what I'll be working on this week!

Things I Love Thursday...

2010-09-30T08:31:00.000-07:00

this idea by Beth Proudfoot! Totally stealing this for goodie bags for my boys for Halloween!

The Scrap Review has a great post about Color Core'dinations new line with Stacy Julian. I'm loving these "Happy Colors". I'm especially excited about the embossed words paper.

Finally, I am stalking the poor ladies at Archiver's hoping that the Matilda mini-deck will finally arrive. {Bonus-the 30% off coupon showed in my email today too! Woot!}

Oh, Matilda, you will be mine!

I'll Take the Scallops, Please...

2010-09-29T12:31:00.000-07:00

Well, not really. I'm more of a lobster girl. But I do love the Stampin' Up Scallop punch. I mean serious, serious love. Use it all the time. On layouts. On cards. On crafts. That poor thing gets used to pieces. Gonna need to buy a back-up, because if it ever breaks I might just cry.

Christmas Kisses layout Supplies: Bazzill Cardstock, Basic Grey Patterned Paper, CTMH Ribbon

Used it a lot on this layout of my nephews from their Christmas card. By the way, how genius is that photo? My sister in law is an amazing photographer, and lucky me, she is taking our boys' pictures this Friday! Woo-hoo!
Here's a close-up of the scallops:

I think I might just go back and use my Slice to make a title for this one-"Christmas Kisses". Yup, that's exactly what this needs! :)
What's your favorite punch?

A Pirate's Life For Me

2010-09-24T06:37:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, the twins were way into pirates. Loved everything about them. So it made total sense that for their birthday, we'd have a pirate themed party. The boys and their friends had so much fun "walking the plank" and "finding the pirate's booty" that I couldn't fit it all onto one two-page layout.

So it's a four page spread.

That's okay though. They love looking at those pages and talking about that day.
This layout was my first time covering chipboard letters with patterned paper (the ARGH), I think it turned out pretty cool.

Gotta say that I am also a huge fan of the font that I used for the journaling. Alright, I'll admit it, this layout is one of my favorites too. It's just so piratey. Argh!:) Have a great weekend!

Pirate's Life layout supplies: Bazzill cardstock, OTC patterned paper & die cuts, CTMH ink, Creating Keepsakes chipboard letters, Studio G alpha stamps

Head on Over to....

2010-09-23T08:16:00.000-07:00

Write.Click.Scrapbook.

Today {and every Thursday} is giveaway day! This week's giveaway is extra special awesome because it features my friend Monika's work. And if you don't win, you can always find something you love at Monika's etsy site here.
{Hint: There's a coupon code over at Write.Click.Scrapbook. for any one item in her etsy store.}

While you are out and about, stop on over to Ella Publishing, where they just released their newest e-book, Ella's Essential Guide to Scrapbooking Boys.

I love Ella's e-Books! As a Momma of four boys, this one is a must have for me!
Those are my Thursday picks.....hmmmnnnnn...maybe this will be a new blog feature. :)

Scrapbook Room Revealed and Ribbon Storage Idea

2010-09-21T12:06:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is-- the unveiling of the scrapbook room. Before you see the pictures, please keep in mind, I have no flooring down (no carpet or rugs-that will happen after the next tax return-maybe!), and I haven't had a chance to decorate just yet. Once I get everything decorated and the flooring down I'll take some more pictures, but this is what I am working with for now.

View from doorway

I have a good amount of space in the room-on one wall is my huge built-in bookcase and the newly refinished antique desk and on the other is my JetMax cubes with my paper storage. The end wall has my Making Memories embellishment cabinet and opens up into a storage room. The opposite wall (that you can't see) is blank and has an extra chair propped against it right now for when one of the boys come down to visit with me.


Paper storage

All of my paper storage is in Jet Max cubes. These were purchased one at a time, over time with 40 and 50% off coupons at Michael's, and on clearance at Target. I'd like to eventually get about 3 more. I have 2 for 12 x 12 patterned paper and one for 12 x 12 cardstock. All of my Thickers, letters stickers, dimensional stickers, and sticker sheets are in the drawers. All of my 6x6 pads, mat stacks, etc. are in the open top cubes. Albums are lined up on top. My Cuttlebug is acting as a bookend. :) My most recent magazine issue are in magazine holders on the shelves to the left. The back issues are stored in the built-in bookcase.

Built-in Bookcase

This built-in bookcase was designed and built by my Dad. It was originally created to be used as my sons' playroom-which is way it isn't quite big enough for 12 x12 albums. But it is perfect for my HUGE magazine and idea book collection! It also stores old year ooks, photo albums, memory dock photo storage cases, and much more! Love it!

My Labor of Love

Ah....my desk. My labor of love. I worked so hard to bring this back to life. You can see what she used to look like here on my family blog. It turned out even better then I had hoped. So much room to work. My Making Memories tool caddy sits on top along with my ribbon storage (which we'll get to in a minute). I lined smaller Jet Max shelves along the top with things I use most often like like pens, markers, inks, adhesives, etc. In the drawers are a treasure trove of supplies-punches, Cuttlebug folders, stamps, all hidden away. I also have (not shown) two wood butcher blocks that pull out (like a lawyer might have to sign papers) for even more space to work. Awesome.

This desk is a dream-holds so much stuff!

That glass fishbowl you see sitting in the upper left corner of my desk holds my ribbon collection. I had no idea how much ribbon I had until I started moving my things. I think when things are out of sight, they are out of mind and just don't get used. And that was definitely the case with my ribbon stash.

I was brainstorming ideas to get them onto my desk but not taking up a ton of space when I saw these baby wood clothespins at Michaels. I used my 50% off coupon to get 50 of them for less than $2 ( I had to go back and buy another pack a day later-I have a lot of ribbon). We had the glass fishbowl on hand from Chuck and the boys' adventures in fishkeeping. I just wrapped each ribbon around the clothespin and threw it into the bowl. I love that it adds a touch of color and is very functional. For about $4, I have all of my ribbon neatly organized and displayed where I will actually use it! Love it!

So there it is, my new scrap room. It still needs a little bit of work but I am very excited to have my own space to work in.

The Outfit and Doing the Raindance...

2010-09-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

Not a lot of creating is going on at my house right now. For a couple of reasons. First, not sure about the rest of the country, but in southwest Ohio (we live about 1/2 hour northwest of Cincinnati) it hasn't rained in like a month. We've a had a spotty shower here and there but no real, all day, soaking rain. And I just seem to be in a craftier mood when it rains. And second (and more importantly), I am relocating my scraproom to a new, bigger area in the basement of our house. I am really excited about it. I have a dedicated area that is just for crafting. They only bummer is that my Silhouette has to stay upstairs in the office since it needs the computer to work. That's okay though. Once I have everything semi-organized, I'll take some pictures to share here on the blog. I am most excited about having a desk. I have been scrapping on the floor. (Or the kitchen table.) For a long time. I'm giddy just thinking about it.
In the meantime, I wanted to share this one page layout of my son Jackson. Jackson takes great joy in creating his own pajama outfits. And this one, well.... it was definitely original. He wore it ALL THE TIME last winter. I think that jersey needs to be retired.

Supplies: Cardstock by Bazzill, Papers, stickers, letters, die-cuts, Archiac by Basic Grey, Journal Paper by Making Memories

Next week, I'll share my super cute ribbon storage. For the record, I had no idea I had so much ribbon until I packed it all up to move-oh boy!

Buttons Are A Girl's Best Friend

2010-09-10T07:06:00.000-07:00

Sorry for being MIA. I've been having some issues with migraines (yuck), I'm hoping that some new medicine and some diet changes resolve them pretty quickly.
Today I want to talk about an embellishment that I really, really love-buttons. Some girls like bling, some girls like ribbon, some girls like paint, but I like buttons. Don't get me wrong I like those other things too, but more often than not, I reach for my buttons to finish off a layout.

Cannonball Layout, supplies: Bazzill cardstock, Cosmo Cricket printed papers, stickers, and diecuts, buttons-sewing aisle at Wal-Mart

That's a lot of buttons on one layout. I really wanted to emphasis the wave in the paper-what better way to do that than with buttons. It was super easy and fast. I just grabbed some glue dots and got to work. I find the glue dots are the best adhesive when working with buttons-I like to use the kind that come on the roll like this:

Here's a close-up of the button wave:

I bought that whole bag of buttons for $0.99 at Wal-Mart in the sewing aisle. I still had a TON left over when I was done with this layout. I rarely buy my buttons in the scrapbook section-they are just much more affordable in other places.
I also like to save the extra buttons that come with shirts and sweaters. It is well documented that I am not going to be sewing anything on. I have a little jar in my closet just for that purpose.
A few more button layouts for your viewing pleasure:


Sprinkler Fun supplies: Bazzill cardstock, American Crafts letter stickers

I love this paper on the next layout so much I could marry it, if I wasn't already married, and it wasn't paper. But you know what I mean!


Thanksgiving 2009, supplies: Bazzill cardstock, Basic Grey Nook & Pantry patterned paper, American Crafts letter stickers, Jillibean buttons

My challenge for you today is to use buttons in at least one layout or card and post your link in the comments-I'd love to see what you created!

The Journaling's The Thing...

2010-09-02T07:32:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, I'm not as good with journaling as I should be. More often than not, I will work on layouts at a crop night and put a sticky note that says "needs journaling". And then the layout sits in the same page protector with the same sticky note for who knows how long.
But here's the thing, I really truly believe that journaling is one of the most important aspects of scrapbooking and memory-keeping. It is the reason I started this hobby-to tell a story with words and pictures. So I am recommitting myself to making sure the journaling gets done.
As you can see, the journaling is a HUGE part of these next couple of layouts. Without it, the pictures don't always make sense.

Supplies: Bazzill cardstock, AC Thickers letter stickers, Stampin' Up cardstock (white), CTMH ink

The picture shows Jackson in a Batman outfit. Is he playing dress-up? Getting ready for Halloween? What is he doing? Well, the journaling goes on to explain Jackson's habit of wanting to be called by a character's name.

The picture is cute...but without the journaling, this story might have been lost.

On this next layout, you could probably tell that the kids and Chuck went to some college basketball games.

Supplies: Bazzill cardstock, Stampin' Up cardstock (white), Kentucky emblem-Kat's Pause bookstore

But would you know about the undying passion that the men in this family have for Kentucky basketball?

Didn't think so!
If Shakespeare were a scrapbooker, I believe he would have said, "The journaling's the thing...that will tell the story."

I Love A Good Collage

2010-08-30T12:39:00.000-07:00

Ah....collages. What a wonderful way to cram a ton of photos onto one layout without trimming and cutting and resizing.
But, if you are like me....grrrrr....collages.
Photoshop Elements and I are not friends. At all. All of the online tutorials make it seem so easy. "Just click this layer and drag this here and blah blah blah...." I was able to do one collage in PSE for this layout of Glenwood Gardens:

Supplies: Bazzill cardstock, Basic Grey paper, AC flair, AC Thickers alpha stickers

That little collage on the 2nd page there? Took me 2 hours to do. Oh my heck. I was so burnt out after doing it that I can't even look at this layout without thinking of the stress. (Thus the lone embellishment.)


Poor little lonely embellie...

I thought collages were too much work and that we'd have to break up. ("It's not you, Collage, it's me...")
And then I found this website: Big Huge Labs. The Mosiac Maker is a life saver. Completely idiot proof. Love it so much.
Created this layout:

Supplies:Bazzill cardstock, Basic Grey paper (again? I must have a BG addiction), AC Thickers alpha stickers

Makes me so happy to be able to add all of these pics without stressing out.

Literally, took me 5 minutes to create that collage. Ah....sweet, sweet simplicity. Yup, I love a good collage.

Scrapbook Crop Night

2010-08-26T11:27:00.000-07:00

I am super excited. I am going to a scrapbook crop night tomorrow night. Cropping for 6 hours with my girlfriends! Woo-hoo! If you've never been to a scrapbook crop, I highly recommend it. Crops are usually held at local scrapbook stores, libraries, churches, or hotels. (Somewhere that has enough space to accomodate large tables where you can spread out your gear.) Generally, the location you are at allows you to use their dies, trimmers, punches and other non-consumable items. However, you need to bring your own paper, photos, pens/markers, adhesive, etc.
You can get a lot accomplished at a crop night, if you go in with a plan. I typically start preparing for a crop night about a week prior. Here are my steps:

Look at my list of scrapbook layouts to do and decide which ones I'll work on that night.
Gather all of the photos for layouts and organize (or have them printed in the correct sizes if that is not already done-I'll share my easy photo organization system in another post).

Begin selecting cardstock and patterned paper to go with the layouts.

Find the embellishments, stickers and ribbon that will add finishing touches (I do not include small embellies-buttons, brads, etc-that's a different step).
Organize each layout's items behind dividers in my Crop in Style paper taker.

Look at my button and brad organizer and make sure it is stocked with colors to compliment my layouts.

Pack it all up in my Crop In Style tote.

Check my crop tote and make sure it is restocked with adhesive and writing tools.

Ready to go!

My crop tote is always stocked with my basic scrapbook tool kit:
-12" Trimmer, I use this one:

-Adhesive, I like Duck adhesive and I just discovered this American Crafts adhesive-which I am loving:

-My file set:

-Scissors, I really like Cutterbee Scissors, they are super sharp and non-stick:

-A zero centering see through ruler, these are great for lining up letter stickers and placing titles:

-Pens/Markers-I use Zig writers, but any acid-free writing tool will do.

-Self healing Cutting Mat, this is optional, but I'm a messy scrapper-I use a Martha Stewart Mat:

Optional: I also bring my Creative Memories cutting tools, adhesive pop dots, twine, corner rounder, paper piercer, and Crop-a-dile. Some might say that I overpack. :)

Last but not least, don't forget your cup with a lid! Nothing is worse than working hard on a layout and then ruining it when you knock over that can of Coke!
This was my favorite mug (Chatterbox Scrapaholic), sadly it is no longer available. I am desprately searching for a new one-let me know if you see one.

Have fun!!!

MemoryWorks Express Kit-September Sneak Peek

2010-08-25T07:37:00.000-07:00

One of the really cool things about being a MemoryWorks consultant is that we get to see of sneak peek of the upcoming month's Express Kit!
What's an Express Kit, you ask? Express Kits are the monthly kits the MemoryWorks puts together. They are have tons of great products. You'll get patterned paper, cardstock, embellies and more. Everything coordinates, so you don't have to spend the time trying to pick the right colors to match you patterned paper-the work is done for you! And you get a ton of stuff!
MW also gives you layout ideas and a sketch for each month's kit. So much fun!
The kits are only $29.95 (plus $6.50 s&h) per month.
And because I love my blog readers, I'll share a little sneak of the September kit:

Super cute, right? Perfect for back to school photos! Contact me if you are interested in ordering.
Join me tomorrow for my tips for crop night-what to bring, what not to bring, and how to get as much as possible done!

Howdy

2010-08-23T12:41:00.000-07:00

Not sure why, but I seem to use this word in relation to any horse-related paper craft.

Exhibit A:
The invitation to my son's 4th birthday party (held at a local attraction called "Parky's Farm"). The horse was die cut using my Cuttlebug machine and colored in with markers.

Exhibit B:
My mom has given me a ton of old photos lately of my brother and I growing up. I think she might be hinting that she'd like a scrapbook of these photos. So far I haven't taken the bait. (Sorry mom!)
This photo I just had to scrap. For so many reasons. Because I remember that day like it was yesterday. Because I was wearing purple sweatpants. Because every kid who grew up in the 70's and 80's has a picture like this. (Although maybe not with your brother-my parents were frugal.) But mainly because I want my sons to know the story.

Simple. Clean. Totally focused on the story.

Howdy, indeed.

What about you? Do you have a word that seems to be appearing on a lot of layouts? Tell me I'm not the only one. :)

Dirty Little Secrets...

2010-08-21T20:56:00.000-07:00

I have a few confessions to make.
1) I am so far behind with scrapbooking my family's memories sometimes I feel completely overwhelmed. I have 12 years (YEARS!) worth of photos, all neatly organized and labeled by date in photo boxes on shelves in my scrapbook room. Just looking at them freaks me out. I need to scrapbook them all but between raising my family, working full time and being a half way decent wife I've only gotten to about 15% of them. And let me tell you that other 85%? They mock me! Every. time. I look at them!

2) Sometimes I don't feel creative. Sometimes I don't want to do a sketch. Sometimes I don't want to choose paper, sticker, embellishments or anything. Sometimes I just want to crank out layouts as fast as I can and get through some of those 12 years of photos.

3) Here's the big dirty secret...sometimes I use kits. Not a kit club where you still have to be creative. But those predesigned Creating Keepsakes Hall Of Fame/KOTM kits. Where all you do is follow the instructions and glue pictures where they tell you too. I know! I can't believe I'm even admitting that. But you know what? Those pictures on those layouts created from the kits? They aren't in boxes anymore. They are in an album or in a frame where my family can enjoy them.

Created from a CK Hall of Fame kit-those pictures are from 2002!

Whew. I feel better having shared that.
Of course, I still love creating my OWN layouts too.

Supplies: Bazzill Cardstock, Jolee's sticker, AC rub-ons, Silhouette die-cut machine

Check back later this week when I'll share more of those...and I'll share my process for creating page kits for a crop night.

The Days Are Getting Shorter...

2010-08-18T20:30:00.000-07:00

and that can only mean one thing....fall is on it's way. I love fall. Back to school. Playing in the leaves. Football. Cooler temperatures. All of that makes me so happy.
When I saw this line of paper from Basic Grey (Indian Summer) and this line of paper from BoBunny (Delilah), I knew it was a match made in heaven. For our Christmas card photo last year we went to a local park just as the leaves were at their peak of red color. The boys (being boys) were horsing around in the leaves and generally having a great time. Perfect paper for this series of pictures. I love all of the reds and deep purples. I wish I had stocked up on this line when I got it on clearance at Archiver's-it's probably the prettiest Basic Grey paper I've ever worked with.

Supplies: Bazzill cardstock, Basic Grey and BoBunny patterned papers, Basic Grey alpha stickers

That same afternoon we captured a couple of priceless shots of the cousins looking out at the Great Miami River. Totally made me remember a promise my brother and I made to each other growing up.

See that stitching on the right side of the layout? Hello Bazzill In Stitchz! Love that tool!

Sew easy to do! (Couldn't resist that pun, sorry!)
I'm also loving the little bit of bling on the left side of the layout.

Supplies: Bazzill cardstock, BoBunny Abbey Road patterned papers and alpha stickers, Bazzill embroidery thread, Prima bling, American Crafts Thickers stickers

Christmas in August

2010-08-17T21:13:00.000-07:00

I make no secret of my love for Christmas. I love everything about it, I probably create at least 10 Christmas layouts a year. I should probably organize them all into one album that holds all of my layouts through the years. (Maybe that will be this weekend's project!)

Despite all of the adorable Christmas themed papers, stickers, and embellishments out there, sometimes I just can't find what I am looking for. That little element that will make my page complete. And when that happens-I have to get resourceful. More often than not, I just make them myself! :)

I created this little tree embellishment using a bunch of tiny epoxy Christmas trees and red buttons from my stash-I think it turned out pretty cute.

Supplies: Cloud 9 Design patterned paper and stickers, Recollections epoxy Christmas tree stickers, buttons

I created this fun layout in about 30 minutes at my friend Christie's house this week. Christie is fairly new to scrapbooking so I wanted to show her my process for designing layouts. I used the Making Memories Mistletoe line for this layout about Jackson's Christmas party at school.
It still needs a little journaling but I'm really happy with how it turned out.

I used Bazzill Dotted Swiss cardstock as my base and the MM dotted letters really popped against it.

The clear star stickers had a little bit of shimmer that added a nice finished touch.

Supplies: Making Memories Mistletoe paper, stickers and die-cuts, Bazzill dotted swiss cardstock

I still have a ton of the Mistletoe line left-the only thing I didn't like about it was that the alphabet die cuts weren't self-adhesive as I had expected them to be. I just used my trusty Martha Stewart glue pen to get them adhered but the project was a little messier than I had planned. (Am I the only one that ends up a sticky mess each time I use a glue pen?)

Check back later this week when I'll share a finished layout using the Bazzill In Stitchz tool and a layout with some of the prettiest Basic Grey paper I've ever worked with!

Summer Layout Drive-by

2010-08-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

I had an insanely busy week last week, and didn't get to post as much as I wanted to. I have lots planned for this week though. In the meantime, I have a quick summer layout drive-by.
I made this layout using a Creating Keepsakes kit I got from QVC. Love those kits for quick everyday pic layouts. I rarely use the given instructions, I like to mix it up and make it my own:


MMMMMM...popsicles!

Makes me want to go looking for an ice cream truck!

Altered Pink ATG Gun

2010-08-10T20:01:00.000-07:00

The scrapbooking universe has been all atwitter over sightings of the pink ATG gun. If you are wondering what an ATG gun is, it stands for Advanced Tape Glider (or Adhesive Tape Gun-I've heard it both ways). It is a tool that was initially used by picture framers to mat photos and prints for framing. But as scrapbookers tend to do, we adapted it for use in scrapbooking.
Why do we love it? A roll of adhesive for the ATG is relatively inexpensive, acid free, and lasts FOREVER. No joke, it's like the never ending supply of glue.
So what's the big deal about the pink ATG gun? Well, for starters it's the first time they've been broadly available in retail stores, prior to Michael's stocking them, we've had to source them from frame shops and online retailers. And because it's being offered at Michael's, you can use a 40% off coupon and suddenly it is a very affordable tool. Oh and did I mention that it's PINK? The old guns were red and yellow and not at all attractive!
So after reading about the pink guns, I decided to stop in and at my local Michael's just to see if they had them. And lo and behold, there they were piled up in a cart ready to be shelved! (I think I heard heavenly choirs of angels singing and a bright light shining down from above on them). I, of course, had to get one.
As soon as I got it home and opened the box, I realized it was pink. I mean, really, REALLY pink. Like almost neon pink. Not my favorite pink at all-I immediately thought, "this just needs some toning down". So I got out some pink themed Making Memories paper tape, because let's face it with 4 boys it will never see a layout, and got to work "toning it down".

I think it looks fabulous! Now, I just have to talk my dad into making a stand for it! :)

Inspiration Binder

2010-08-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

There is so much scrapbooking inspiration out there these days-websites like Two Peas, blogs (like those in my sidebar-talented ladies!!), and magazines. It's hard to keep track of all of that goodness. Well, for me it was.
Until I put together my inspiration binder.
I got a basic 3 ring binder (mine is from russell & hazel) and prettied it up with some Stampin' Up! patterned paper and American Crafts letter stickers.

Then, I added some dividers (again, russell & hazel) and started going to town with the hole punch. I added layouts I had torn from magazines, and print outs of things from blogs for the layout section.
For my color section, I added ads from magazines that inspired me and color combos taken from this very cool tool on Bazzill's website-easy way to figure out which cardstock matches your patterned paper. I printed out the combos for the paper lines I have in my stash-makes my trips to Michaels for the Bazzill sale go much faster!
Finally, in the front I added my list of on-going scrapbook layouts to do. This is an excel list that I downloaded from Becky Higgins' blog, (although it doesn't appear to be available any more-so if you want it-feel free to email me at christinalakes at gmail dot com and put "layout list" in the subject line.) I feel funny about posting it as a share on my blog since I didn't create it! It's such a great way to keep track of layouts I need to do and layouts I've half finished.

I hope this "inspires" you to make a binder of your own. If you do, I'd love to see it!

Free Journaling Class

2010-08-03T07:19:00.000-07:00

Elle's Studio will be hosting a free journaling class this month. I don't know about you, but I could always use some help with my journaling. Hop on over to the Elle's Studio blog (click on the blinkie) to check it out. While you are there check out her super cute store, love those baby album journal cards! And I have two baby gift albums to work on the next couple of months. Hmnnnn.....

Bo Bunny Summertime Mini Album Share

2010-08-02T19:01:00.000-07:00

Yup, I'm on a mini album kick and this weekend, I just had to finish this album. I got this Bo Bunny Summertime kit at Archiver's at the end of the season last year for less than $8! Total steal! If you have an Archivers, you should spend some time in their clearance section, you just never know what you might find!

My sons wanted to play some Club Penguin online Saturday night, and our house rule is that an adult has to be in the room when they are playing, so I decided to work on some layouts. Which led me to get out this mini album kit. It took me bout 2 hours to put it together but I'm really happy with the results and I'll probably use it for next year's photos. (I already have a plan sketched out for this year.)
The album is 9x9 and came with everything you see. The only thing I had to use from my stash was adhesive, ink, and marker.

When I was done putting the album together, I had a lot of little pieces left over-alpha stickers, patterned paper, etc. Rather than throw them all away or put them into the black hole I call my "scrap" basket, I decided to use them right away to create cards and custom embellishments.

So glad I did! It took me another 20 minutes or so but was worth it. I made 4 everyday cards and bunch of cute embellies to use on future layouts. Best of all I used 98% of what came with the kit-no waste! Love that!

Supplies: Bo Bunny Summertime Calypso kit, CTMH Chocolate ink pad and marker, white BBP cardstock

Cosmo Cricket Giveaway on The Scrapbooking Cottage Blog

2010-08-02T11:02:00.000-07:00

I love Cosmo Cricket and eagerly look forward to their releases each year. Head on over the Scrapbooking Cottage blog for a sneak peek at the newest collections and for a chance to win one of the Mini-decks! I love using mini-decks for cards-perfect size!
My favorite? The Matilda line. I'm a sucker for cutesy Halloween paper.

Simple Stories Fall Catalog and A Chance to Win

2010-07-30T07:08:00.000-07:00

MemoryWorks just released the fall catalog for our exclusive line of Simple Stories scrapbook kits. The Simple Stories-Life Documented kit is a great way to capture a year's worth of memories. It's similar to Project Life or the CK Project 365 kit. (I'll have some sample layouts posted in a few weeks.)

The new fall release is the ele.ment.ary kit and it's all about capturing school memories. I am so excited to get my hands on this one! This kit is an excellent way to record your child or grandchild's school year. It will also be a great tool for making teacher gifts throughout the year!

You can go here to download the catalog. All of the products will be available to order August 16th If you are interested in purchasing anything from this catalog, or hosting a party, just shoot me an email.
You can also enter for a chance to win the ele.ment.ary kit,matching cardstock, journaling jots, & stickers, page protectors, and a classic leather WRMK 3 ring binder!!
Just visit the Simple Stories blog and leave a comment by August 2nd for your chance to win this prize package worth $70!

Fancy Pants/Cosmo Cricket Mini Album Share

2010-07-28T09:09:00.000-07:00

I just recently became obsessed with mini-albums. And I absolutely love these mini-albums by Cosmo Cricket.
I have been wanting to do a little album with all of the pictures I have of my son Jackson and his cousin Andrew. Jackson and Andrew are only 4 months apart in age and they are the best of friends. We attend the same church as Andrew's family, so they see each other fairly often. They absolutely love getting their picture taken together and typically make seriously cheesy faces. Needless to say I had a lot of material to work with.
As soon as I saw the Fancy Pants Rough and Tough line, I knew it was perfect for this project!

I used a few other items from my stash as embellishments. The album came together really quickly. Because of the size of the mini-album, I could use 4x6 photos without trimming them. Huge time saver!

I love these Blackboard albums and I have them in a few styles. I love that they already look finished and I don't have to do a lot of complicated trimming and sanding to cover them. If you are just beginning to experiment with chipboard albums this is a great way start!

Materials used: Cosmo Cricket Jack Blackboard Album, Fancy Pants Rough and Tough patterned papers and journal cards, American Crafts Thickers letter stickers, Basic Grey Archiac chipboard embellishments, Doodlebug Design letter stickers (bff), American Crafts Flair, KI Memories rubber stickers, American Crafts ribbons
Markers: Copic, CTMH, Zig

Bazzill In Stitch'z

2010-07-27T07:10:00.000-07:00

Let me start this off by saying I have the utmost respect for people that can sew. My mom was a professional seamstress; I am in awe of people with that talent. I, unfortunately, am not one of those people. I have trouble sewing buttons on correctly; let alone stitching in a straight line. So, when sewing on paper became a trend, I stood on the sidelines watching. I loved the look but knew it wasn't something I could do.

Until, I saw the Bazzill In Stitch'z products at my Archiver's. Hmmmnnn...maybe I could sew!

Background
Each piece is sold separately: the piercer, mat, case, templates, thread, etc. At first, I purchased just the template. I used my paper piercer and my cutting mat. It worked okay but I realized the In Stitch'z mat would make things a lot easier.
Eventually, I bought the piercer, the mat, the carrying case, 3 templates, and 2 sets of threads. (All with 30% off coupons at Archiver's).
Each piece runs between $3.99-$9.99. They can be purchased at most online scrapbook retailers, Archiver's and many LSS's. I have not seen them at Michaels, Jo-Anns, or Hobby Lobby.

How It Works
Using the mat as a base, place your cardstock on the mat, overlay one of the templates onto your cardstock. Use a paper piercer to pierce holes through the template into the cardstock. Simply, thread your needle and stitch along the holes.

Viola! Cool hand stitching without a sewing machine or skills!

Why It's So Cool
-No sewing experience required! Woo-hoo!
-Thread that matches Bazzill cardstock perfectly
-Dozens of templates with 12" designs, handwriting fonts, words, card sentiments and more
-Relatively affordable when combined with a coupon
-Because it's sold in pieces, you can build your collection over time

I love this product! As soon as I finish the circle layout I will share it here. Join me tomorrow when I share a fun mini-album using Fancy Pants Design papers.

I won! I won!

2010-07-26T06:41:00.000-07:00

Remember that scene from Christmas Story where the Dad wins the "leg lamp". That's kind of how I felt this morning when I visited one of my new favorite blogs-Monika Wright's blog. Because I won her super cool summer memories kit. If you have visited my other blog, then you know that instead of going out of town this year, we chose to stay home and do some local stuff. I have been on the fence on what to do with those photos/stories. I would typically create a 12 x 12 vacation album, primarily because I generally take 400 or 500 pictures on vacations. And while I did take a lot of pictures, I'm not sure I wanted to do a 12x12 album, so this is the perfect solution! If you are looking for a way to capture your summer memories, I encourage you to visit her Etsy store, I Love It All. Not only does she have fun scrapbook items like this one:


From Monika's Etsy store

But check out these adorable prints (they would be perfect for our playroom!):

Seriously? How cute are those!
I'll be back tomorrow with another review of the Bazzill In Stitchz kit! :)

Win Monika Wright's Summer Fun Album!

2010-07-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

Just head on over to her blog for a chance to win this cool mini-album.
While you are there check out her adorable mini-album share and flower tutorial.
Needless to say, I have bookmarked her blog-love it!!

Tools I Love: Martha Stewart Scoring Board

2010-07-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

I've been making more and more cards in the past year and finally broke down earlier this year and bought a scoring board. A scoring board is a tool that allows you to score lines into your paper to fold it into a variety of shapes. I use mine primarily for cards and envelopes. You just place your paper on the board and use a bone folder to make a crease at the correct measurement.

When shopping for a scoring board I looked at the Scor-Pal and the Martha Stewart Scoring Board. Both do the same thing but the Martha Stewart tool had a few advantages:
-a handy little compartment with a flip up lid to store your bone folder
-a triangle envelope making tool that is stored on the underside of the board
-the grooves on the MS board are every 1/8 of an inch-they are much more spread out on the Scor-Pal
-the MS board is much more affordable! The Scor-pal is available at Archiver's for $39.99 (you can use the 30% off coupon to bring it down to $27.99). The MS Scoring Board is $19.99 ( it was 40% off at Michael's and I had a 25% off all MS products coupon, so I got it for $8.99!)
-a nice bonus is inside the compartment to store your folder are measurements for a number of projects, they are kind of hard to see though. But another scrapper has been kind enough to create a PDF of them here, thanks Candice!

I am very happy with my MS scoring board-it's a must have for card-makers!

Certified Scrapbook Design and You Instructor

2010-07-13T11:45:00.000-07:00

That's me! I'm officially a certified SDU instructor. I'm very excited to be sharing my love for memory keeping in a classroom setting.
I will be teaching a Scrapbooking Basics class on Thursday nights at the Michael's Arts and Crafts in Bridgewater Falls Shopping Center in Fairfield, Ohio. The class runs 4 weeks and will be held from 6:30-8:30PM. This is the perfect class for a beginner scrapbooker or someone who has been away from the hobby for awhile.
To sign up or for more information, see a store associate at Michael's.

Thinking of You Cards

2010-05-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

I had a few cards that I needed to make last weekend. I love making cards, such an easy way to be creative. It doesn't take a lot of time or supplies but I think it really adds a touching of caring.

This came together really quickly-cardstock as a base, a little patterned paper, some more cardstock with a stamped sentiment and a Prima flower. For the sentiment, I stamped it in purple to match the card base and then used my scallop edge punch to add some dimension. I added the little pearl embellie to the center of the Prima to dress it up a little and distressed the whole think with purple ink to finish it off.
I was really happy with how this one turned out.
Supplies: Bazzill cardstock, Basic Grey patterned paper, CTMH "Say It With Style" stamp set, CTMH purple ink, Prima flower, CTMH pearl

This next one is made up entirely of CTMH products. This one also came together super fast.

For this I used some scraps from a My Reflections Level 2 CTMH paper pack, Caprice. I also had some leftover Stickease from the same line. (This line is retired but if you are a digital scrapbooker you can use it with the Studio J software-I'll talk more about that in a future post!)
I literally just cut a piece of patterned paper to about 3.5", inked the edges, used two stickease stickers and added a rub-on sentiment to one of the stickers. That's a super easy way to make your own embellishment to match your design. I distressed the whole thing using some chocolate ink. Done and done. I love how versatile the CTMH paper packs are, I've gotten so many projects out of that paper pack.
Supplies: Cardstock, patterned paper, stickers, ink-all CTMH (Caprice)

Later this week, I'll share some projects form my current favorite CTMH line-Animal Cookies. See you then!