Inspired by Lynnette in the Lawnscaping Challenge #74

Last night I was just puttering in my craft room waiting for the hockey game to start, so I pulled up my Pinterest card layout board and quickly found a cute card using the new Lawn Fawn set I picked up called Love You Tons.  I quickly stamped the cute little elephants in VersaFine ink and heat embossed them.  Then I colored them with my Spectrum Noir markers and cut them out using the matching dies.  I found the heart bubble in the Lawn Fawn Into the Woods set and inked it with some ColorBox chalk ink in Warm Red.  I fussy cut the speech bubble (is it really speech if it's an emotion?).

The inspiration pin has what appears to be a hand stamped background with the little heart in the set but I am NOT patient enough to do that.  But I found some cute paper from the 6x6 pad from Pink Paislee called Secret Crush.  After debating far too long about what side of the paper to cut from (left? right? left? right it is), I stamped the sentiment in the VersaFine ink and added my elephants and bubble with some pop dots. But, it needed something.  I swiped some white Wink of Stella on the heart, stared at the card for far too long before deciding to add some clear Wink of Stella to the red in the bubble.  Done.

I picked out a pretty red card base from my rainbow stash, taped down my top panel then added a simple panel inside with a heart form the Lawn Fawn set Bee Mine in my red chalk ink on the inside.  Done and done.

So the only thing I left to do was find who posted my inspiration card so I could give credit where credit is due - to my surprise, when I scanned the cards posted for the Lawnscaping Challenge that I pinned it from, I discovered it was Lynnette of Netter's Notables again.  Inspiring twice in a week? I would say this must mean I really like her style.

Birthday Good Fortune

My husband recently celebrated his birthday so, of course, I made him a special card.  I love this stamp set from Lawn Fawn called Good Fortune.  Maybe it's because I love Chinese food so much and it naturally reminds me of that.  But for this card, I simply stamped the food carton and embellished the carton by stamping some hearts, brushing them with Wink of Stella and topping them off with Glossy Accents.  I then stamped and colored both my chopsticks and three fortune cookies.  The cookies were super easy to cut out with the matching die and I fussy cut the chopsticks (still pretty easy because it's just straight cuts).  I stamped three different "fortunes" for the inside of my cookies and cut them out with the matching dies too.  Then it was just a matter of putting it all together using some super cute paper from the Pink Paislee Secret Crush 6x6 paper set.

Project Life Week 18, Spring is Here and French Curves

This is the first week that I didn't have last week's Project Life finished by Sunday night.  I had it mostly put together, but there were still a few items that didn't quite come together for me right away.  But that was fine because when I came back to it the next day, it just sort of fell in place.  I guess it was a bit of creative block on Sunday or something.

This week I finally had a week where I didn't have more pictures than I could reasonably use and I think that was part of the block for me.  But I used a number of great cuts from the Silhouette store to fill it in.  I loved their sale last week and I really stocked up on some great cuts that I'm really excited to use.

I'm going through this Basic Grey Fact line faster than the Pink Paislee, but I think that's a good thing because I certainly won't have time to get bored with it. 

 

I love that Spring is here.  All the flowers are in bloom (I'm ignoring the side effect of allergies) and it looks amazing outside.

 

To wrap up, I've mentioned that I use French curves any time I need to draw a curve and Cely, from Creating in Carolina (love her cards, be sure to check out her blog at www.creatingincarolina.blogspot.com), asked about them.  Before I found these at the office supply store, I was always hunting around for the "right" curved items (plates, cups, candles, etc) to use when I needed to draw a curve, but with these, I can draw any curve I can imagine. 

 

Hello Card - Design Principals with Britta Swiderski

I'm sharing today a card I made as part of an online class called Design Principals with Britta Swiderski. 
I've just started this class and so far it's pretty interesting.  In addition to a lecture video, there are three project videos:  a tag of class information and two cards.  I thought I would share with you one of the cards I made after watching her video.  I used some paper from the mat stack for Mango Frost by DCWV and my Sizzix Top Note die for the shape and a EK Success punch called Bumpy Road for the strips. The sentiment is stamped in Chocolate Chip ink from Stampin' Up using a stamp from the Portfolio set by Pink Paislee.  I inked the edges of all the paper except the sentiment with Aged Mahogany Distress Ink and finished it off with some Pearls by Recollections.  It was pretty quick to make once I saw her video.  I'm sure I'll share more finished projects as I work through the class.

Project Life - Week 14

Wow it was an interesting week here. I had a lot of fun putting together this week's project life, even if I didn't have much energy to do it.  I used the Pink Paislee Portfolio collection for the last time.  While I have a few scraps left over, I don't have nearly enough to do any real journalling.  So next week I get to break out my new collection.  Yeah!

In the meantime, here's week 14:

 

Week 13 is in the book...

I have to say that my notebook definitely made tracking pictures for the week easier.  This time I already knew what the layout would be when it came time to print the pictures, because I had them set out in the book already.  I printed out only the pictures I needed and used just those pictures and one from last night that I printed on my home printer (I had already sent my pictures to the store yesterday afternoon). 

Laying out the pictures was easy after that, but for some reason today the embellishment was really the hardest part.  I think part of it is that I'm getting to the end of the Pink Paislee Portfolio pack.  There was still plenty to finish off this week and probably enough to see me through next week too, but I am having to think a bit more about it because there are less options as I get near the end of the stash.  But, still, I'm making myself use them up first before I move on to the next set (and I'm SO excited to use that set). 

So here is this week's layout:

When I had finished this week's layouts, I looked at my desk and was stunned by what a mess it was.  I couldn't help but snap a picture of the chaos. 

But, this is what I love about my craft room, this is what it looked like a mere five minutes later:

San Antonio @ Night

I've finally finished the last pages of the San Antonio trip using that same sketch from Creating Keepsakes.  It was so quick to put together since it was a duplicate of the previous page.  This time I had to get a little creative with my journaling because I had too many pictures that I wanted to use, but otherwise, it was all the same products.  It was so nice to slip this layout into the book and realize I've completed everything I had in mind.  What a great feeling! Now to get to work on sorting my completed pages and getting them in books...

Finishing up San Antonio...

I had a few pictures left from my San Antonio trip that I wanted to scrapbook.  I've had this idea about a day versus night layout since I had so many night pictures from my morning walks and our Riverwalk cruise.  I found a perfect sketch as a starting point on the Creating Keepsakes website.  I used the same ink and paint technique on the edges from my other pages of that trip so this grouping would look cohesive.  I didn't use much but the pictures on the layout, but I did want a longer strip to run along the bottom of the pictures on the left.  Unfortunately, I didn't have anything that long, except, well, the packaging.  I've seen others use it on their layouts, so I thought I would try that myself and really liked how it turned out.  The layout came together very quickly after that with a section of paper and a title cut from that Pink Paislee Portfolio paper.  I also added some cute Thickers and little journaling to finish it off.  Now, I can replicate that for night and finally be completely done with the San Antonio pages and caught up completely with Project Life.

Project Life Week 12

Yep, that's right.  I'm still caught up - minor miracle that may be.  I think that's likely because we've had some quiet time each weekend.  The last couple of weekends I've had a lot of time to play, but this past weekend was pretty busy, except Sunday.  After I finished putting together my new little notebook, I set out the pictures I had printed and started playing with paper and tags and such.  It actually all came together pretty quickly, but I realized it didn't really quite look the way I wanted.  I printed a different picture on my home printer (rather than sending to Walgreens - I absolutely adore their one-hour printing).  When I slipped it into the slot, I knew that was what I needed.   I also loved getting to play with my newest stamp roller that I picked up at CKC on Friday.  It's from Dear Lizzy and I love having the days of the week to match up with the date.  It's absolutely perfect for Project Life.  With that I just added a little more journaling (I still hate my absolutely atrocious handwriting, but I'm trying to keep an open mind) and it was ready for the book. 

My 500th Post and Week 11

I cannot believe that this is my 500th post.  That just seems a bit crazy, but that's what Blogger says so it must be true.  How cool is it that it falls on St. Patrick's Day?  So how do you celebrate the day? 

Me?  Since I managed to get all the laundry done yesterday and finish up Project Life for last week (that's right, I'm still on track), I decided to spend this day doing other things I enjoy. I have corned beef bubbling in the crock pot and dear hubby has some good beer (that I will not be drinking - yeck).  After a quick run to the store for kitty food so Chewie doesn't throw a fit about not getting any canned cat food today, I'll be kicking up my feet and reading a library book on my Kindle app.  I have to say that it's nice to be able to check out library books at any time, but I do sort of miss the trip to the library.  The convenience of electronics just can't quite replace the pretty amazing experience of walking down the stacks and being seduced by smell of paper and ink and the visual smorgasbord of colors.

So, as I said, Project Life Week 11 is in the book already.  I finished it up last night while I listened to the Hawks make history with the most road wins in the regular season with a nail-biter of a 6th round shoot out win against the Thunderbirds.  Way to go Chase De Leo! I used that Portfolio collection from Pink Paislee again.  I'm pretty much down the dregs of it so this may be it's last appearance.  I love, love, love (ha!) using the Amy Tangerine date stamp.  Then I spent some time playing with my cameo.  I chopped down an arrow from the Ali Edwards design from the Studio Calico cut set from the Cut It Up class.  I loved the arrow, but I needed a shorter version.  But the piece I love the most is probably the hat I created from a hat card design.  I made some extra cuts here and there and welded the words "hat trick" to celebrate Brendan Leipsic's hat trick. So when all is said and done, here's this week in history in our house:

Love the unique things...

Although I don't usually have much free time when I go to a conference, I try to get out and walk around the town a bit no matter where I go.  This time I had a walk built into my daily schedule because I didn't stay at the conference hotel (it was sold out).  But that was okay by me.  I found a lot of really cool things walking around the town.  One of my favorites was a map of the United States poured into the concrete patio outside of the convention center.  I walked by it every day and it really made me think about how amazing it was to be a conference where every state on the map was represented (at least I'm pretty sure they all were). 

But it also made me think about how far away from home I was and how much I was really looking forward to going back, which became the inspiration for this layout.  I used a PageMaps sketch that I had pinned on Pinterest, but my link back to the original pin has a warning and since I've already gotten one virus through Pinterest, I wasn't tracking that one back to give you the source. I tried looking through the monthly PageMaps sketch releases (yes I have them all printed and in sheet protectors in a notebook), but I still could not find it.  So while I don't have a link to this exact sketch for you, I encourage you to go check out PageMaps sketches.  I'm sure you'll find many sources of inspiration.

Since this single page will face the other half of my actual divided pages, I had the same dilemma as yesterday of how to use my quickly dwindling supply of Pink Paislee Portfolio materials.  Fortunately, this sketch, like the other, let me use small pops of the Portfolio papers on a background of plain cardstock.  I used the same ink and paint treatment around the edge so that these pages will all have a cohesive feel.  I have a few more inserts to do and I'll find some way to bring that in on those too.  I also included a reference to the week in my journaling.  One thing I love is that the page this one will sit next to had some red on them from my button and badge, so by using the hearts on this layout, I was able to bring that red across and make it all tie together nicely.  I just love how that worked out.

 

I'm really having a lot of fun with this.  I guess I had forgotten a bit about why I fell in love with scrapbooking in the first place.  It's nice to be reminded.  One thing I realized again is how little embellishing I really do.  I love designers like Shimelle Laine who can turn a pile of supplies that would surely look like a jumbled mess if I tried to use them into something truly amazing.  Their pages look nice and balanced, while I always felt like mine look plain in comparison.

But in the last few weeks of working on this, I realized that I don't really care that my pages are never going to look like all those designers out there turning out amazing work.  I'm happy with how my pages look.  I have a very simple, clean style and there's nothing wrong with that.  This is about making myself happy and I am happy with my simple pages.

Just last night, hubby and I were talking about just how happy I am right now despite all the reasons why I shouldn't be right now.  I thought about it a lot last night when I couldn't sleep because my head was pounding from our lovely change in weather.  I came to realize that I am happy with our quiet little life.  It been nice these last couple of weekends being just the two of us, hanging out together, doing things that need to be done (like laundry, grocery shopping and house cleaning) but also doing things we love (playing in my craft room with him sitting in the next room playing some Xbox game with a manual the size of a thesaurus just so he can find his way home). 

It makes me think back to a quotation I read a while back about needing to stop in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.  I know I wrote that one down somewhere because it was so thought-provoking.  I'm going to have to dig it out and do something with it sometime soon.  But I feel like maybe that's what this last week and a bit has been for me - just taking a little time to just be happy with what I have, who I am and where I am.

The Alamo

Here's the first of the insert pages from my recent trek to San Antonio.  I knew it would facing the first page for that week, so I needed to keep the paper somewhat coordinated with that layout.  The problem was, I only have random pieces of the Pink Paislee Portfolio 6x6 set I have been using for the last few weeks of my Project Life pages.  So I had to find a way to make this insert page work with paper no larger than 6 inches, but preferably much smaller than that.  While trolling through some of the inspiration I've pinned on Pinterest, I found this sketch from Sketch Saavy that I thought would be perfect for the pictures I had from my jaunt over to the Alamo and uses only 2x2 inch squares of random papers.  As usual, I kept the layout pretty simple.  I'm just not one to put a lot of stuff on it.  But this time I did try something a little different with the edges.  I wanted something to soften the white a bit.  I knew from week 10's layout that my Iced Spruce Distress Ink was a good coordinating color so I sponged the edges a bit, but then I smeared it too much in one spot and I didn't like that.  I decided to see if could tone it down with some white ink.  That didn't work.  My white galaxy marker didn't work either.  But white acrylic paint did okay, but then the paint really stood out.  I decided to fix that by painting a little all the way around the page.  That was perfect.  So that just left a title.  I really love these letter from Amy Tangerine.  They are just a little brighter than the rest of the colors, but I decided I didn't mind that.  I thought I was done with it, until I put it in the page protector.  Then I realized it would be nice if I added a few of the black rhinestones to tie the two pages together. 

Week 7

I made my first real mistake in week seven.  I had it planned out before I went on my trip, but, by the time I returned, I forgot I had set aside the protector sheet and my Valentine's Day card to my hubby. When I got home from my trip, I was so excited to see my order of the Pink Paislee Documented kit from Peachy Cheap had arrived.  I opened it up all over my desk and eagerly started to work with it.  Once this layout was "done," realized I had completely forgotten the card in the layout.  This is where the time I spend looking at everyone else's work really comes in handy.  I knew that others had made inserts for additional materials.  So I took a plan letter sized page protector and cut it down to the size of my card.  I sealed the cut with some washi tape and popped it right into my book.  Problem solved!