4-Year-Old Princess

Last night, I did a Fast Scrap for Skrap 'n Chat's first day of their month-long crop.  We had an hour to scrap a layout with some kind of royal theme and include something fancy.  I had bought this digi kit from Julie Billingsley ("Storybook Princess") a while ago but hadn't used it yet.  So, this was the perfect time to break it open!

We don't refer to K as a princess much at all because we're just not much of a princess kind of family here.  However, since I wanted to scrap these birthday pictures of her, I thought it fit well.  I got this done in just under the hour and while I'm fairly happy with it, I feel there's something missing.  I'm going to go back and play a bit.  I feel there needs to be a little something else with the princess and the coach and something on the RH side, near the title.  I also think I need to move the journal block over a bit.  I know the point is to do it and be happy with it but this is only my second fast scrap and I'm a really slow scrapper.  The little details take me a long time.  

Online Crop All Month Long

Over at Skrap 'n Chat, the design team is hosting a whole month of online cropping fun!  Yep, starting today in honour of the Royal Wedding, there are going to be challenges, fast scraps and all kinds of fun happening.  Tonight starts is off with a Fast Skrap at 6 pm EST.  If you're interested in having fun with us, come on over.  You have to register and get approved and then you're in with us.  I'm so excited and can't wait!

First Hike and Sweethearts

These layouts have been sitting on my desk waiting for me to get the Cricut out to finish them up!

This first layout is for a challenge over at Skrap 'n Chat.  We needed to scrap about the outdoors and use at least one cute critter on the layout.  This was A's first hike, when we went to Las Siete Tazas with Kristin and Dean.  It was an absolutely gorgeous hike so it was easy to choose which pics to use.

You see that little squirrel, leaves and the acorns?  Those are from my stash from way, way back.  I got those years ago from Creative Memories in an outdoors sticker pack.  Wow, I can't believe I actually used something from that long ago.  But it was just right for this layout.  I just stuck them on black cardstock and fussy cut around them.    The tree is from the Create a Critter cart and I cut the title using SCAL.

The idea for the pleated and then stitched ribbon came from a layout I saw in the gallery at Club CK.  I loved how it looked so I had to lift that idea.  Thank you to SierraScrapper27 and her layout called "Birthday Reunion page 2".

This layout was so fun to do.  This is one of my favourite pics of A and K so I knew I wanted a special page for it.  I pulled the colours from the pic and went from there.  That's how I choose most of the colours for my layouts.  I used textured purple paper, teal glittered paper and white cardstock to mat the photo so it wasn't absorbed by the busy butterfly patterned paper.  I added the ribbon as a border.  And then I realized that I could make this layout work for another challenge over at Skrap 'n Chat, to use bling on your layout.  So, I added the flower stickers which have gems, the glittered brads and some liquid pearls on the butterflies' flight paths.  I am really happy with the final product.

I did the title using SCAL and my Cricut.  I love that program - the best thing about my Cricut.

On Top of the World

I did this layout for this week's issue challenge.  Erika challenged us to use two or more of the following elements:

Circles

Clouds

Colour Scheme:

  - green, blue, brown

  - pink, green, grey, yellow

  - light grey, dark grey, orange, blue

  - purple, peach, pink, black

  - pink, turquoise, green, red

  - aqua, turquoise, teal

Flowers

Butterflies

Banners

and one or more of the following techniques:
Stitching
Misting
Painting
Using only one border punch
Hand journalling
Hand doodling

I decided to use these pictures at Lakes Miscanti and Miniques in the Chilean Altiplano and do the colour scheme of dark grey, light grey, blue and orange.  I wanted to reflect the feeling we had when we were there so I used clouds and butterflies and that's why I chose the title I did.  I loved this rosette flower so I just had to use it.  I included a bit of stitching (underneath the picture of the kids) and I used one border punch.

I didn't have any room for a journal spot so I decided to journal along the edges of the paper.  I used a real variety of digi supplies.  The rosette is from the kit "Little Buckaroo" from Miss Mint; the scalloped border is from Julie Billingsley; the stitches are a brush from Jessica Sprague; the ribbon, the clouds and the blue paper are from "Good Night Mr. Moon" from Kristin Cronin-Barrow; and the grey papers are "Perfectly Kraft" from Jenn Barrette.  The font is "Hey Gorgeous".

More baby pages done!

I've finally gotten back into the scrapping groove after a week's hiatus.  I got January 2011 done - 15 pages of our visits with B, H, I and R and Nana and Papa.

These three layouts are for A's baby book.  I wasn't sure where to go with this one at first with the patterned paper.  However, I decided to just mat the photos and added a few little brads and left it at that.  I didn't want to overdo it.

This layout combines two challenges.  One was a sketch challenge from a Page Maps sketch.  And the other was a Mad Libs challenge, both over at Club CK.  I was given the colours of yellow, blue and black, I had to use stitching and flowers and use the word "street" on my layout.  I had these pics of a trip to the zoo that I thought would work well for the challenge.  The toughest part was trying to work the word into my title.  No matter what I thought of, I couldn't think of how to work street in.  But I used calle, the Spanish word for street, and it worked well since we were at a zoo in Chile.

The paper is much more yellow in real life, not sure why it's so washed out.  I did blue and yellow zig zag stitching near the title and at the bottom.  I chalked the flowers and edged them in black chalk.  I had blue and white glittery brads that I thought would be perfect in the bubble borders.  So, I chalked the white ones yellow and voilà!  The centres of the yellow flowers are little black gems and I used a thin black mat around the photos.  This was a super fun challenge!

I did this layout because I wanted to try out the Smooch Spritz that I won as a prize from CK back in the fall.  I really don't like the look of mist on the backgrounds so I wanted to try it out in different ways.  I misted white cardstock and used it as a mat to the focal photo and then cut my title out of it also.  I really like how that turned out but I cannot believe how much of it I used for one thing.  It's cool but I'm not yet convinced it's worth spending my scrappy money on.

To add some dimension and texture to the layout, I included orange ribbon, five small brass-coloured brads, 3 tiny buttons, a hemp photo wrap and a dark brown hemp border around the paper block and on either side of the ribbon.