New Scrappy Space

I am absolutely beyond excited...the furniture for my new scrappy space is installed!!!  This is a dream come true and I'm so happy that I'll finally have a space for my stuff.  Derwin is the best - he knows how I'd love to have a space just for scrapbooking and he knows how much this hobby means to me.  So, he told me to decide what I wanted to have in the scrappy space and get it made.  Aren't I married to the best guy ever?!?!

Making the decision was really hard.  I really wanted a big island-style table in the middle of the room to work at where I could stand or have a tall stool.  However, with the space that we have and how we share it with play space, I felt it wasn't the best fit.  I looked through all kinds of pictures to find what I wanted and then had my ideas ready.

This is the desk and shelf that I had made.  I wanted a U-shaped desk so I could be working on one side while the kids did their crafts next to me.  If they need help, they're right there so I don't have to get up and go to them.  I got the shelf made for above for all those embellies that fit into those pretty jars.  :D

This is the set of drawers I had him make for all my itty bitty stuff - bottles of paint, Stickles, stamps and inks, etc.  I'll be putting my chipboard, stickers, etc in here.

This is where I'll be keeping my papers.  I like vertical storage so I'll be keeping everything in the Cropper Hopper vertical containers in these slots.  I'll also keep the albums I'm working on here, if there's room.  The space to the left is the desk where the kids can do their projects.  There's an opening on this side and another on the other side so they both can be there.

And this is my customized Expedit-style shelf.  I got it made so it'll fit the WRMK d-ring albums so the squares are bigger than the Expedit units.  This is where my albums will go.

Now, it's just a matter of finding a new home for all my goodies!  How exciting!

Thanks Living February 15

The other monthly challenge that I've vowed to keep up with is the Thanks Living challenge.  I've been keeping my journal but I have to admit that I haven't been doing it daily.  I was so good at first but then slacked off.  I was doing it every week or so but now I'm back on the daily track.  Not only is it good for the soul, it's good for the memory and all those daily happenings!

So this layout came from one of my statements on February 15th.  I wanted to get a photo of the kiddos to send to Pascuala.  I have no idea why I thought of it but I asked A if he wanted to get his hair spiked.  He was so pumped about it - I even had to get the full-on shot (as requested by Mr. A).  K also got fancy for the picture and put on her bright pink lipstick - wowzers!  Fun times with my two munchkins are so precious and I love each of them.

Digi supplies used:  "Rawr" kit by Melissa Bennett; "Date Bits" by Misty Cato; "Thanks Living" download by Deena Wuest

Since this month's lesson was on visual hierarchy, I focused on the words to play around with it.  I took Deena Wuest's design for the title and recoloured it to suit the colours in my layout.  Then I played with fonts, colours and sizes in the journalling block.  With the block being that green, it made it a bit tougher to decide on colours but in the end, I'm happy with what I ended up choosing.  I decided to make key words bigger and change their colour to have them stand out and I made sure that my Thanks Living statement really stood out, which is why I "framed" the journalling with them.


I have a couple more statements that I'd like to scrap yet so I may have more of these coming.

One Little Word - February

At Club CK, Yolanda is hosting a monthly challenge for those of us who chose a word to guide us in 2012.  February's challenge is to choose one goal related to our OLW and scrap about it.

My word is PEACE and I feel I've done a decent job at maintaining it though I still have areas to work on.  This whole balance thing in life is proving to be very difficult!  ;)  One of the ways I plan to achieve peace is to do yoga on a regular basis again.  When I was doing it daily, I felt soooo good.  So this was the topic of my layout for this month.

Digital supplies used:  Sweet Shoppe Designs' 2010 Quarterly Assortment 3,
Julie Billingsley's "How Sweet It Is" (background paper)

I chose these colours because of my yoga block and strap - they're such vibrant colours so I thought I should choose papers and elements to go along with them.  This is definitely not my idea of yoga colours, nor colours that reflect peace, so I'm not 100% convinced that I like it.  I would have rather used zen-like colours and make my layout have a more natural feel but that just wouldn't have worked with the photos I had.  That's OK, though, I need to push myself to move out of my comfort zone every once in a while.

Leisurely Drive

For those of you who have been reading my blog this past year, you know that I've been working on an album from our big road trip in 2010 through Argentina and Chile.  I have to admit that I have totally put it to the side.  Life has gotten far too busy and I've just gotten back onto the scrapping train and I've been more motivated to do paper scrapping than digi.

However, one of my friends from Club CK put a challenge out to scrap a layout from your southern hemisphere wanderings.  What better motivation than a challenge, right?  :D    So, I went into one of my folders from our trip and I pulled out the pics I wanted to use.  I headed over to Sketch Support to find a two-pager that would suit my pics and got to work.   Here's what I came up with:

Based on 2-page sketch #12, Sketch Support

"Vintage Dreams" digi kit from Little Dream Designs

Stitching from Cathy Zielske

Scalloped border from Julie Billingsley

Santa's Little Helpers

I decided to tackle some of the Christmas pictures from A's first year.  We have a few of them since we celebrated an early Christmas, just the four of us before we left Chile, and then we had two other celebrations in Canada.

I bought a Christmas stack from DCWV about three years ago and have hardly used it so I decided to break it out and get at it.  My friend, Jennifer DeWolfe, sent me a great bunch of goodies this past summer and in it was this awesome pom pom trim.  I'd never used it before but I think it looks great with these papers and colours!  I decided to add a little bow and ribbon to the trim too.

I didn't have any cardstock the shade of red I wanted so I brought out the inks and did it that way.  Gotta love being able to customize things to your needs!

I cut the title out with SCAL and popped it up (I've been doing that lots lately!) and then I decided that I needed a little something between the title and the ribbon so I decided to stitch in some lines.  Why not make it peppermint colours?  lol

Splash!

One last layout from my scrappy weekend!  There were so many more challenges that I wanted to do but alas, I ran out of time.  Boo!  lol  This was a great challenge for me - to do a layout about a little one doing something typically girly or boyish.  I was going through our photos and I found these pictures of A when he was just over a year old throwing rocks into the ocean.  We were on a trip to Uruguay and our hotel was right near the water so one morning, we took the kids to the beach to throw rocks.  Both of them loved doing it so we spent a good hour there while my mom was getting ready for the day.  I love these pics of A doing one of the things that he's always loved to do.

I used Julie Billingsley's kit "Leaps and Bounds" for this layout.

Yuck!

This layout was for yet another challenge - can you tell what my current obsession is?  lol  The challenge was to use onomatopoeia in your title.  I went through some of the pics of A's first year and when I came across these ones, I knew what title I wanted.  So funny!

When I decided to use these pictures, I knew I wanted a fun font for the title.  I hadn't yet used my new stitching template for letters so I decided to pull them out.  I love using them!

It seems as though buttons have become one of my go-to scrappy supplies since working on A's books.  I look to ribbon and then to buttons.  I also tried out my new blending tool for inking on the bottom scallop border and I must say, I love it!  So much easier than the other ways I've done inking.  And yes, you saw it right...I used Smooch spritz again on my layout.  Not sure why I'm going to it so often lately but hey, whatever does it for you, right?  lol

And gems!  I never, ever thought that one of my go-to scrappy supplies would be gems because they don't seem me but I use them often.  When I can't find that just-right embellie, a gem seems to fit the ticket.

Fun at the Fair

Last week's issue challenge at Club CK was to use the colours on the cover of the current of Creating Keepsakes.  I love the combo of purple, teal and brown so I was really excited about it.  I had started a different layout but then realized that it was a sketch from Sketch Support and wasn't my own design and for this challenge, I like it to be of my own design because Erika gives us such great feedback.  So, I'll save my other one for later and I did this one instead.

I used the kit "Bumble Blooms" from Julie Billingsley.

Smiley

This was another fast scrap layout.  Yep, two in one weekend!  It's hard for me to believe that I managed to do two in two days.  Wowzers!  We were to use at least three patterned papers and to have either a star or yellow on the layout.  So, I went with this kit and these pictures.  These are some of my favourite pictures of A - he's just so happy and his smile is priceless.

I used Melissa Bennett's "Artistic U" digi kit.

Maestro

This layout was for a fast scrap, meaning we had one hour to get it done.  It's so tough for me but I'm getting better at doing it.  I decided to use these pictures of A on New Year's Eve when he decided to play us some songs on the piano.  It was so cute and I just loved the little hat he was wearing.  One of the things I loved in this kit was the painted bubblewrap circles that I used as a journalling spot.

I used Julie Billingsley's "Rambunctious" digi kit.

Burrito Baby

This layout was for a challenge to do most of the layout above the middle of the page, have some bling on it and to doodle.  I hate my doodling - I always think it looks so ugly.  However, I decided to go for it.  I used my new-to-me "Animal Crackers" kit and I love it.  I used SCAL and my Cricut for my title and I really like how the font turned out; I used "Smiley Monster".  

Am I happy with the doodling?  Nope, not at all.  I think my stars look ugly.  But I love the rest of it so I'll get over it.

The Cutest Superman Ever

I decided to scrap these photos of A's first Halloween.  I absolutely loved the kids' costumes and these pictures make me smile.  So, I wanted to do a great job with them.  I love the colour palette and it was fun to try a couple new things.

I won these transfers from a challenge from Club CK last year and hadn't used them yet.  Since I was actually paper scrapping some Halloween pics, I decided to give them a try.  I used the embossing powder that I also won in that prize package (can you believe that it matched the colours I'd already chosen?!).  I'd never embossed before so I had to get creative on how I'd heat the powder.  I used my flat iron for this one.  It worked OK but it warped the paper.

For this one, I had gotten some advice from scrappy friends to try a light bulb so I tried it.  It worked better, slower but no warping.

And then I used some blue glitter for this one.  I hadn't used it before either.

The circles by the title didn't start out as circles.  I thought I'd try out my new Sew Easy scallop stitching head but I didn't realize that I'd pierced the holes the wrong way.  :(  Oops!  I had to make it work so I pierced holes on the other side to make it look like rings.  That's why they aren't perfectly round.  But that's OK - it's part of the scrapping process.

I *heart* U

Another layout for last weekend's challenge.  We were asked to put everything "crooked" on the page and to include something soft on it.  If you know me, you know that crooked and I don't work well together.  In fact, if something's crooked, it's because it was a mistake and rarely intentional.  So, as much as it killed me to do it, I tilted it all.  I actually like the photo mat with the pics tilted.  

I'm loving using pop dots for my title - it just adds great dimension without having to use Thickers.  I don't have a big stash of them so I rarely have the right ones.

The soft part on my layout is the felt circles on the embellies.  I felt the journalling needed a little bit of attention so I pulled out this bling "line" (for lack of knowing what to call it!) to underline the first line of journalling.

And yes, I misted AGAIN on a layout.  It's just seemed right for these last few.  Huh, maybe I'll become a fan yet.  ;)

Miss You card

Another challenge for last weekend's crop was to make a card using sheet music and black somewhere on it.  I'm so not a card maker but for some reason, this one spoke to me and it was the first challenge I did all weekend - so strange but so nice for once!

I've had this patterned paper in my stash for years, seriously 8+ years.  *blush*  I still really like it but I'd never known how to use it.  So, I just needed a kick to use it!  I love the green trim for this card so even though it doesn't match perfectly, I still like how it looks.  The two flowers were white and I chalked them to make them the right shade.  I thought the little stitched swirl would add the right finishing touch to the card.  And I know exactly who I'll be sending this one to!

So Happy Together

This past weekend was an amazingly awesome one, in terms of scrapping.  There was an online crop over at Skrap 'n Chat and it's my one-year anniversary of being active on that message board.  It was last year's crop where I jumped in and got so much creative inspiration.  Well, my fabulous hubby told me to reserve the day Saturday and scrap my heart out while he took the kids.  I managed to get seven - yes, 7!!! - challenges done!!!!!

This layout is for a challenge to use hearts on a layout in a creative way.  I decided to use this sweet picture of K and A for this layout.

I cut out these hearts and layered them and then added a button on top for good measure.

I found this little blingy heart in my stash and thought it added a little cuteness to the title.

And then I thought of doing a heart border using my Cricut.  I love it!

Timber!

The issue challenge for this week at Club CK is to use a card as inspiration for a layout.  I cruised the Cards, Crafts and Decor forum over there and found this awesome card by Patti in last week's challenge.

I really like how the ribbon divides the page and how the sentiment is to the bottom left.  So, here's my layout based off of it:

I pulled out one of my new punches - love it!  I'm falling in love with border punches, I have to say it!

I cut out my title using my Cricut - first time that I've pulled out that baby since June.  I used a 3-D flower from my stash and then stitched a little flourish using baker's twine.

I put the journalling where the sentiment was in the card and voilà - that's it.  The white ribbon, star brad and little clothes pins came with the kit that I used for the papers.

Baby Brother

I love these two pics of Baby A and Big Sister K.  She was so, so proud to be a big sister and just loved her little buddy.  So I wanted a simple page to show off the pics and I love the design of this page by Melissa Johnson:

So, I scraplifted it and came up with this:

Yep, you saw it right.  I used mist on the page!  I don't use it often so it ended up being too much for what I wanted but that's OK.  It still gives the white cardstock a little something.

Come and join us!!!

We're going to have lots of fun all weekend long over at Skrapnchat (click on link in sidebar)! There are going to be challenges, fast scraps, prizes and lots of chatting from Friday to Sunday. It's such a fun group of ladies and so inspirational! So, if yoy'd like some scrappy fun, come on over!

1 Month Old

I'm finally at A's one-month photos.  Yep, that's it!  However, I have done layouts from other points in his year but I can't believe how slow it's gone.  Wowzers!  And that's with all my scrapping last year too!  Oh well, at least I'm enjoying the process.  :D

These papers are old - I have no idea of any lines or anything.  Just using up my stash!  I was quite proud of myself for using some foam Thickers (I rarely use them) but I needed them to match so I inked them.  Note to self (and others):  NEVER INK THICKERS WITH REGULAR INK!  Nope, it doesn't stay on.  I thought it'd dry but it doesn't - it just keeps smudging.  Yuck!  I ended up getting ink on the background paper because of this fiasco.  Hence the flower trails!  lol  You gotta be creative to cover up your boo-boos, right?  I do like how they fill up some extra white space - I have issues embracing white space so filling it up is good for me.

Lucky

There are two challenges that I have committed to doing on a monthly basis.  One is for 2012's "One Little Word" and the other is for the Thanks Living challenge over at Club CK.  For January's layout, I knew exactly which one I wanted to use but I needed some time to think about how I wanted it to come out.  It took me a while to make it all come together because I wanted to make sure that the design, colours and embellishments gave the right feel to the layout.  Here's what I came up with using Melissa Bennett's digi kit "What About Love":

I know the journalling isn't very clear so since it's such an important part of the LO, I'm including it:

Ever since we discovered the lump on K’s chest, we’ve been worrying.  Worrying about what the lump is from, about how she got it and most importantly, what it means.  We went for the blood tests and ultrasound on December 15th and Dr. S said that if we didn’t hear from him, that everything was OK and to see him in three weeks.  We didn’t hear from him but it wasn’t reassuring enough.  D and I constantly had a worry in the back of our minds about this bump and what it could mean.  We tried not to think about the negative possibilities but it’s tough not to, especially with L’s battle with leukemia right now.

So today, I took K to the ER to meet with Dr. S again.  Thankfully, his report was great - the lump is getting softer and it’s moving, which means that there’s nothing to worry about.  This was the first time I had felt relief in weeks.  It was like a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders.  However, I think this scare was exactly what I needed to gain a better 

perspective.  These last few months have been really tough with the move back home, buying a home and trying to get settled and me going back to work almost full time after being at home with K and A for five years.  I was not appreciating the beauty of being a mom; instead I was too caught up in the frenzy of life.  Now, though, I’ve changed.  I’m more patient, I’m more caring and I’m just more aware and thankful for those little moments and our beautiful little girl.  I think of these past five years and realize how very lucky I am to have K as my daughter.  God knew exactly what He was doing.                                                                                   January 5th, 2012