Wow, way too long!

I have been absent from both the scrapping and blogging worlds for far too long.  I've missed scrapping so much but life has been so overwhelming.  We have moved into our new house and done lots of work with it.  We are finally done with the flooring and the painting and the baseboards are in too.  We've been busy unpacking all our things - our shipment from Jamaica and the things we had stored at both my parents' place and DH's parents' place.  Trying to find places for everything and making it all come together has been lots of work but lots of fun too.

I've also gone back to teaching after five years staying at home with our kiddos.  It's been tough but I'm very thankful that I have a great homeroom class so it's made the transition much easier.  I still wish I could stay home and be a homemaker but it's not in the cards.  I've also started selling ViSalus nutrition products. I've been taking them and I feel so much better, just healthier, and I want to share that with others.  I included a link in case you're interested.  :)

Tonight, I was so darn tired from life in general so I decided that I needed to do some scrapping.  I wasn't sure how it would go since I've had no creativity flowing through these veins in months, only practicality.  lol  But a good friend of mine has been patiently waiting on me to get a baby announcement done for her.  Her sweet baby boy was born in August so I decided that this was the project for me.  And I'm happy to say that I finished it and it turned out great!  Unfortunately, I can't share it with you.  But I'm hoping that this is the start to my return to the scrappy world.  I miss you all so much and I hope to get back into the swing of things soon!

Thank you!

I just have to say it, I have wonderful friends!  When we got back to my mom and dad's, I had two scrappy packages waiting for me - one from my friend Jennifer and one from my friend Melissa.  They know that I've been overseas and haven't had regular access to scrappy stuff so they loaded me up with scrappy goodness.  They are both very talented scrappers and I'm so lucky to count them among my friends.

 Here's what Jennifer sent me - first the whole package and then close-ups of the goodies.  What great stuff!  Thank you so much, Jenn, for everything you sent me.  I'm going to have so much fun using it all!

And this is from Melissa.  I won a RAK from her and look at all the great goodies she sent me.  Melissa, thank you so much for everything.  I'm so excited to use it on my layouts!

I met both of these ladies over at Club CK, which is such a wonderful community.  I'm so lucky to have made some great friends there, even though I've never met them in real life yet.  I would love to meet some people off the message board but until then, I'm happy to keep chatting away with them and getting to know them better.

June 2011

June was an incredibly busy month for us and full of changes.  We took plenty of pictures with everything that went on so that means lots of pages for the month!  Since we've been just as busy in July, I didn't get around to doing the collages but I decided that today was the day!  lol  So, here is our June in photos:

Thanks for stopping by!  Hopefully I'll be back soon with July's layouts too.  ;)

Back and forth

I find that I am so much more productive and inspired when I vary the projects/layouts that I work on.  When I do too many layouts for a certain project, I get to a point where all the layouts start looking the same and there's no creativity left in me.  Since I'm not caught up, I have plenty of different projects to choose from so I can keep scrapping without missing a beat.

The latest example of this is our road trip album that I've been working on for the last few months, off and on.  I was going great guns on it but then I had to take a break.  I left it alone for a few months and worked on other projects and then finally came back to it in February or March.  Now, I work on a layout here and there and have been quite pleased with them.

After doing the layout about K last week, I've gotten my creative juices flowing again so I decided to get back at it.  I'm far from doing a layout a day but hopefully I'll get there soon.  ;)

I used this sketch from Sketch Support for this layout.  It's the second time I've used it - actually the second time for our road trip album! - and I love it this time around too.  I used Misty Cato's "Rocky Shores" digi kit for it.

I wish I had discovered this jumping back and forth idea much earlier because I know I would have gotten so much more accomplished had I scrapped this way.  Oh well, better late than never, right?  :D

Long time, no post!

I never thought that I'd ever have such a long hiatus on my scrappy blog.  It's been a whirlwind of events since we left Jamaica.  We had a family situation that made us decide to end our overseas teaching adventure and return to western Canada, closer to family.  Since being home, we've had two birthday parties for A, got teaching jobs in the town that we really wanted, have started house hunting and taking care of the business of returning to Canada.  There is an insane amount of paperwork to do when you return but thankfully, we've now done most of it so we're making progress.

That said, I haven't had any time to do scrapbooking.  However, last night, as a sort of celebration, I sat down and did a page.  I hadn't scrapped the second interview I did with K so did an "All About Me" page about her, just after her birthday.

For this layout, I pulled the colours from K's dress and used part of the from the 2010 Quarterly Assortment 4 from Sweet Shoppe Designs.  Krystal Hartley's "Wistful" kit was perfect for my layout - love the patterns, the butterfly and the rub-on.  The fonts I used were Trebuchet, Unicorn and LD Red Hatter's Hand.

Thanks for stopping by.  Hopefully I'll be able to get a few more layouts done this summer before we start work at the end of August!

Building Blocks

This layout was for June's layout tag over at Skrap 'n Chat.  There are so many of those little moments photos that I want to scrap and these were two of those photos.  A has been having lots of fun building with Legos so I wanted to snap some photos of that.  I decided that I'd like to try different stuff - especially that stitched border around the page.  Not sure if it's my favourite but I do like it for this page.

I used Heather Roselli's "Busy Little Boys" digi kit for this layout.

Since we'll be travelling in the next few days, you won't be getting many updates from here for a while.  But hopefully I can still manage to get some stuff done!

Cards

I'm so not a card maker but I've decided that I need to try.  I just don't find it natural and coming up with ideas for them is really tough.  However, I've had a few things where I needed cards so I decided to sit down and really focus.

This one is what D got for Father's Day.  Very simple but it works.  The stamped message and the rounded corners are what make this card for me.  And I painted the edge of the card and then inked the edge of the message mat.

Little A's birthday was yesterday so I needed to make a birthday card for him.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for it, so I kept it simple with a strip and the border strips and a few buttons.  I used old letter stickers and painted them brown to go with the card.

For K's birthday card, I wasn't sure what to do so once again, I kept it simple.  I cut out the flower block from some patterned paper that I had in my stash and added a pink gem.  I put them on a couple strips and done!

And the best thing?  I used scraps for all of these cards.  Woo hoo!

My favourite card is this one that I did for our anniversary back in May.  I did do it on time but hadn't taken a picture of it!  lol  I really like how it all came together - the circular card, the colours, the flower, the stitching on the title mat, the little stamped birdie.

So, what I'm starting to realize is that for me to be able to do cards and actually semi-enjoy it, I need to keep it simple.  I can't overthink it and I just need to keep the fancy stuff to a minimum.  Maybe one day I can start doing fancier ones but at least I've come to terms with what my card style is and can work with it.

Daddy & Me

In celebration of our little boy's birthday today, I thought I'd post this layout that I did of Daddy and A on his first hike.  A very simple page but I didn't think it needed anything else.

Since this page was about Daddy and A, I got Daddy to do the journalling.  Not only is it in his handwriting, it's his feelings about their relationship.  I really think that we need to do this.  Get your significant other's or children's opinion or feelings on things and add them to your scrapbook pages once in a while.  and if you can get them to write the journalling, even better!

Mim-musement

There's a really cool children's museum in Santiago called the MIM (Museo Interactivo Mirador).  Most of it was for older kids but there was a whole area for the little ones and even the babies had a great time.    I used primary colours for the first time and I really like the look of it!  I wanted to go with the ring theme so I cut out the rings along the bottom as a border, the brads and the stitched circles on the red border.  I wasn't sure what to do with the trapped space below the title but my good friends at Club CK gave me the idea of journalling strips and I love it now!

I love foam adhesive - just adds the perfect dimension to embellies and alphas.

Another idea from friends at Club CK - putting a few brads along the edge of one of the rings.  Love it!

My favourite part of this layout is the stitched border.  It took me forever to do but I love the look of it!

Fun Times

This layout was for another round of layout tag.  I was second in line so I worked off my friend, Merry's, layout.  I decided to do some pictures from Nana and Papa's visit earlier this year.  I added in the banner instead of a flourish since it worked better with my pics.  And I'm still loving my digi mist masks!

Supplies:  "Crazy Good" digi kit from Melissa Bennett and Eva Kipler
Banner template from Dani Mogstad
Scalloped circle from Julie Billingsley
Mist Mask from Gennifer Bursett

Simple Page

As you know, I've been doing some work on our Road Trip album.  We take lots of pictures, I mean A LOT!  But having those moments captured allow us to remember the small details about our trips.  But sometimes, those pictures aren't the best quality or there are just so many of them that doing fancy pages for all the photos just isn't feasible.  These photos that we have on our drive from Frutillar to Valdivia aren't great - in fact, all of them were taken on the go and so the angles aren't perfect and some of them are a bit blurry.  But I still wanted to include them in our album, for the memories since that's what scrapbooking is for me.  I have this template from Cathy Zielske that worked perfectly for them.

The only thing I added was the dotted border around the pictures, also from Cathy Z.  The papers are freebies from Katie Pertiet, over at Designer Digitals community challenges.

I love doing more creative things with my photos as scrapbooking is my only creative outlet and I love the feeling I get from a cute page I've done.  However, I don't think that all pages need to be creative, in my sense of them.  Sometimes, just a focus on the photos with the story and none of the fluff is perfect.  My monthly collages are the perfect example of this.  I love doing them - we see our lives that month in pictures with some of the details recorded.  And even better is that they're fast to do.  So, that sense of accomplishment is wonderful.

I've come to realize that a mix of creative and simple is what I want for my scrapbooks.  I don't expect to love every page and that's fine.  If you're trying to keep up or make up some ground with your photos as well as using scrapbooking as your creative outlet, I don't know if it's possible to love every page.  I'm such a slow scrapbooker, especially with paper, that I'd be spending even more time than I do on each layout trying to get it so I love it.  As long as I don't hate it, it's good.  And my latest realization is that I can love those simple pages too, just as much as the ones where I add lots of embellies, borders and all the fun stuff.

Peek-a-Boo!

I did this layout quite a while ago for a session of May layout tag at Skrap 'n Chat. You're given a sketch or a layout to scraplift and it gets passed along.  I was the first on the list this time and it was a sketch with just one photo so I decided to choose one of my favourites.  I haven't done any of K's pictures in the year after she turned one so I thought I'd go back and choose one from there.

As you know, this isn't really my style, with so much white space.  However, I love the colours and the little splash of digi paint that I used.  :)

I used a little bit from a whole bunch of digi supplies on this layout:

Background Paper:  Katie Pertiet's "Joulunaika Solids"

Patterned Paper and Purple Button:  Julie Billingsley's "Bumbleblooms"

Blue Paper and Blue Paint:  Julie Billingsley's "Leaps and Bounds"
Pink Scallop and Pink Jewel Flower:  Kristin Cronin Barrow's "Scoop It Up"
Pin:  Jessica Sprague "Now We're Rockin'" digi class
White Button and Ribbon:  Heather Roselli's "Busy Little Boys"
Purple Felt Heart:  Pattie Knox's "Have a Heart"
K:  Mindy Terasawa's "Howdy Cowboy"

More Chilote Churches

I'm a big fan of sketches - just love them.  My favourite inspirations are Sketch Support and Page Maps.  There are so many sketch sites out there so there are many to choose from.  Though I'm not usually a fan of their sketches as they are too artsy for my style, Sketchy Thursdays has a great sketch that totally suits me.  Here's their sketch:

It's clean and linear with minimal "fluff" - so me!  lol

Lately, I've been working behind the scenes on our Road Trip album.  What I mean by that is I'm trying a new system to help my layouts not look the same.  While I was doing the part in Argentina, I felt like the pages were all starting to look the same.  So, rather than create each layout, one at a time, I decided to  sort the pictures I wanted to use by category.  I'm working on the Chiloe section now so I subdivided the pics into these categories:  agriculture, Penguin Cove, cabins, churches, sunset, etc.  Then I either found sketches or designed the pages based on how many pictures there were and the orientation of the pictures.  It's very systematic and quite assembly-line like but honestly, I'm liking it so much more.  It helps me to have more variety in the design of the layouts.

So, with that said, this layout is of some of the churches we went to see in Chiloe.  This first page is pretty much an exact replica of the sketch.  

And then, of course, I had to stretch it out to a second page and came up with this:

I used Julie Billingsley's "Find Your Wings" digi kit for the layout.  I also used one of Misty Cato's sanded overlays for the little paper strips, a scalloped mat from Miss Mint, a border strip from Splendid Finns and Jessica Sprague's straight stitch brush.

Churches of Chiloe

This is the first of many layouts that are for our Road Trip album from last year.  I was going great guns with it for a while and then I stopped.  I just needed a break from the travel pictures.  As much as I love scrapping them, I've figured out that I need variety in my scrapping themes to stay motivated.  So after several months of being stalled, I've picked it up again.

In Chiloe, many of the churches are built completely of wood - not just made of wood but completely fitted together with wood plugs instead of nails.  Sixteen of the 150 wooden churches in Chiloe have been declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.  If tourists travel to Chiloe, they will often stop at the churches to see the impressive architecture.  Even though this was our second time to Chiloe, we still wanted to stop and see the churches.  It's so neat to see that these churches are still standing, after 250+ years after being built.  Amazing.

Beauty of the Blue Mountains

When we visited a coffee estate not too far from Kingston, we not only loved the tour we got but the estate itself was so beautiful.  When we got there, the dew was still on the flowers and that gave the flowers such an alive feeling - they were screaming to be photographed!  :D  We loved the gorgeous landscaping at the estate and the variety of the flowers.

So, when I saw this template over at Sweet Shoppe Designs by Janet Phillips I knew it would be the perfect design to showcase our photos.  Simple, let the photos be the focus yet allowing for some journalling.

The digi kit I used was "Le Jardin" from Misty Cato.  I actually had done the layout using another kit but I wasn't too happy with the colours and patterns so I tried this kit out.  I love the dark brown background with the other natural colours to accent the page and the photos.  The scalloped border is the one I use all.the.time - from Julie Billingsley.  It's my go-to scallop border.  The dashed border is the one I just picked up by Cathy Zielske - I can tell I'll be using those borders often too.  I love the look of them!

Cool Dude

The May sketch challenge at Skrap 'n Chat was this sketch:

I thought this sketch was perfect for a little boy page so I found this picture of A, one of my favourites, in his new digs from Asher and Liesl:

I used Katie Pertiet's "Little Tot" digi kit, which is so fun!  The border punches are from Julie Billingsley - I've gotten so much use out of those border punches.  I recoloured the paper for the journalling spot since none of the solids worked for it and I still wanted some texture.  I finally figured out how to do that, with some help from Amanda :).  Awesome!

At The Lake

This week's issue challenge at Club CK is to use the colours navy blue, lime green and yellow, like was used on the layout on the cover of this issue of CK.  I knew exactly which papers I'd be using - Echo Park's digi kit that I picked up at Jessica Sprague.  I hadn't used it yet but I knew it would be perfect for this.  I based this layout off a sketch from Page Maps, July 2010.

I did pictures of A at the lake last summer.  I love, love, love that centre picture with Uncle D showing A how to fish.  It's so sweet!

Decorate

I did this layout for the colour challenge for June.  The colour combo?  Grey, red and cream.  I knew I had a digi kit with these colours so I dug it out and used it for the first time.  It's a wintery kit from Katie Pertiet called "Joulunaika" and I love it.  I just hadn't used it before so it was the perfect time.  These pictures are from the Breakfast With Santa that we went to last year.

The title font is CK Heritage and the journalling font is Santa's Sleigh, from Dafont.com.  It's based off a sketch from Page Maps.

My Sis & Me

Over at Skrap 'n Chat, Karen challenged us to use no patterned paper or pre-made embellies.  We could use stamps, mists, border punches, anything to make our own patterned paper.  I didn't make my own patterned paper but I did break out the stamps to help me with this layout.

The green border is a stamp from a sentiments stamp sert from Close To My Heart.  I hadn't ever used it on only part of the page so I made some boo-boos with the ink going over where I wanted it to, but I figured out what I needed to do after a couple times.

All these little bugs are stamps from Close To My Heart.  They are just so darn cute but they are so darn tough to cut around, especially the antennae.

The little flourishes here are stamps from the same set:

Here, I wanted to add something with how long K's legs look, especially compared to teeny tiny A.  So, out came the Stickles.