SEI sketch contest...

Ok, two posts in one day, is a little bit of crazy, but SEI has the link up for their monthly sketch challenge and I really want to get mine linked before I head out of town tomorrow for a girls weekend.

I love SEI, their collections are beautiful and have a classic style that is so versatile.  I used one of their newest collection Corinne to create this layout about the relationship between my husband and our son.  They collection is full is Springtime and whimsy, but I was pleasantly surprised that I could create such a masculine looking layout with it.  They sketch for the contest was by Julie Bonner again.  I love her sketches!  I know I have said it before and I will say it again LOVE them!  She has such a simple and elegant style that is right up my ally.  Each month when they reveal the new sketch I fall in love and can't wait to get started on it.  This month was no exception.  So here's her sketch.

See, so simple yet gorgeous!  I loved the idea of using the large photo and in fact I had one that I had been wanting to use but wasn't quite sure how.  As soon as I saw this sketch I knew what to do with it.  So here is my take on the sketch.

I flipped the sketch on it's side to accommodate my vertical photo but otherwise stayed pretty true to the sketch.  Why mess with such a good thing?  With such a large photo dominating the page, I didn't want to add journaling so I created a pocket and a tab at the top for easy access to the journaling hidden there.  Everything is from the Corinne collection except the quote which I made with my Silhouette.  Can't wait to see what Julie comes up with next month!  The contest ends on the April 30th so there are a few days left to play along so go get scrapping!

 

Christmas in April...

I know that Spring is finally here and the last thing most people want to think about right now is winter and Christmas.  I know this, but I have been working through some older photos and already knew what I wanted to do with this one so the other day when I was feeling creative block on some other projects I decided to get this layout done.  I have to admit, that it was fun getting out the Christmas stash when the sun is shining outside and I will definitely do it again sometime.   The is layout is of my son and my mother-in-law making a gingerbread house.  It was a first for them both and had to be documented.  All the patterned papers and the thickers are from American Crafts, the tiny type is Cosmo Cricket and the rest of the embellies are from my stash. 

I love how all the papers coordinate perfectly and make it so easy to put together.  Sometimes I work for hours trying to get a page just right and then there are those pages that almost scrap themselves.  This was one of the latter.  It came together so quickly and I love the final result!



Some AMAZING news...

Let's Scrap just announced their new Design Team and guess who is on it?  Yep, that would be me!!  I really enjoy this scrapping community, everyone is so incredibly kind and supportive.  When I have visited other popular sites or galleries it seems like there is a level of competition that makes me feel less confident about my style and abilities and that is sad.  It is easy to get caught up in the hype and forget why I started scrapping in the first place.  It wasn't to win contests or get published, it was to record our family history and document the special moments and little details of our lives.  Sometimes it is a lot of fun to create just for the sake of creating and to work for hours to get a layout just right, but the rest of the time I just want to get the memories in an album so they can be seen, remembered, and enjoyed.  Anyway, off my soapbox and back to Let's Scrap.  Every week they post new sketches, most of which are 2-pages which can be so hard to find.  So if you are a sketch lover and would love to be a part of a great community of supportive scrappers join me on this new adventure at Let'Scrap for the next few months and let get a lot of scrapping done!!

My Mind's Eye challenge...

I have recently gained a serious affection for My Mind's Eye products.  Not sure why it has taken me so long to figure out which manufacturers really fit my style, but I am finally getting there.  MME has so many great bright fun patterns and I love their embellishments.  I think the Alphabet Soup collection was what did it for me.  Seriously adorable for little boy pages!  I have wanted to play along with their sketch challenge for awhile (who wouldn't want to win 3 MME collections) but I didn't have enough product to work with.  I have now remedied that situation and am ready to play along!  So here is the sketch.

Great right!  The theme is April showers and I knew that I had the perfect photos for it.  I had scrapped this photos before, but I HATED the resulting layout and it has been sitting on my desk for months because I couldn't bring myself to put it in the album.  So this was the perfect opportunity to try again.  Here's what I came up with.

Don't you just love the fun patterns on the papers?  I love how well they all go together without being busy or fussy.  This is mostly Alphabet Soup with a little Penny Lane thrown in.  Here are a couple of close-ups.

I used my new Silhouette sketch pens for the journaling and the cloud.  It took me a couple tries to figure out how to get it to sketch and cut in the right places, but now that I have it figured out, I love it.  The sketch challenge ends tomorrow so hurry and get your entries in.

Surprise..

I got a great surprise in my email this morning, one of my layouts is being featured as the inspiration of the week at Lets Scrap!  I am honored that they chose my layout this week.  You can see it here.  I have already featured the layout here so I won't bore you with a repost.  I have really enjoyed being a part of the Lets Scrap community.  They are such a great group of women, so welcoming and complimentary.  I look forward to each week's sketch and even though I don't always get a layout in, I love to see what everyone else has done.  Honestly, they are a very inspirational group so go check it out and join in the fun!

Lily Bee sketch challenge...

Since my desk is still covered with Lily Bee products, I decided to play along with this weeks sketch challenge.  I wanted a more muted palette so I went with the three little birds collection.  I chose to scrap some photos from our first big snow storm here in Texas.   It started to snow while we were in church and everyone went a little crazy.  The kids couldn't sit still and the adults started grumbling.  You would think that they had never seen snow.  Admittedly, we just moved from Minnesota, so we were loving a taste of the white stuff.  My son couldn't wait to get home and make a snowman, it was all I could do to get him to eat a little lunch first.  I love that his snowman is wearing a cowboy hat and bandana! You can see the original sketch here.

So here's my take on it....

I love how the white polka dots mimic the look of snow flakes and didn't want to cover all of it up so I left quite a bit of white space.  I tucked the journaling under the photo so I could write on both sides of the tage I made and not clutter up the layout.  My favorite detail of the layout is the snowman I made out of the three little birds rub-ons.  Here is a close-up...



To create this little guy, I stacked three of the tree tops on each other.  The arms and part of his scarf are made from the trunks of the trees, and the nose and the rest of the scarf are birds tails.  A couple of gems for eyes and there he is.  Pretty cute huh!  As I have said before, I love Lily Bee rub-ons and now I love them even more.  They seem to last forever, I keep using them and yet there are still so many left.  There is still a little bit of time left to finish this challenge and the prize is some of the new Picket Fence line so join in the fun!

Lily Bee design call projects...

So I took the leap and applied for the Lily Bee design team.  For my submissions, I created a decorative frame and a layout.  I knew that I wanted to do an altered item, but wasn't sure which direction I wanted to go.  My son and I were having a conversation about the fact that we don't have any Spring/Easter decorations.  So, I decided to make something  for Spring that would still fit into our clean-lined non-fussy (can't be real words) decor.  One of the things I love most about Spring is seeing the cherry trees in bloom so I used that as my inspiration.

I really like the way it turned out and it was a lot of fun to put together.  I used my Silhouette to cut the tree, the flowers, and the clouds.  Love the Silhouette...but that is a story for another day.  I added texture to the tree by sewing randomly along the trunk and along the limbs although it is hard to see in the photo.  I didn't have thickers that were the shade of yellow that I wanted and the blade in my Silhouette just happened to break at that moment, so I used a yellow sharpie to color some plain white thickers and then added some yellow glitter glue to even out the color and add some sparkle. 

The finishing touches were the Lily Bee rub-ons on the grass and I love the little bird in the tree.  I put it in a 12x12 shadow box frame and am displaying it on a table in our entry.  I am really happy with the way it all turned out and am considering making one for each season and switching them out. 

The layout I created records a memory of one of our favorite activities when we lived in California (two moves ago) of feeding the birds at a nearby park.  We loved feeding the ducks and especially the ducklings, but when there were geese on the pond, all bets were off.  Those birds can be so aggressive.  They would try to attack my poor 2yr old son to get at the bread, and I would end up literally fighting them off.  I would usually have to pick him up and fight our way out of the flock. : )  What an adventure for a toddler!  You can't tell all of this from the very peaceful photo because on those days I was too busy protecting my son to get great shots.

I used strips of several Lily Bee papers from different collections and sewed them down using different stitches.  The red strip on the bottom was hand pleated and stitched down the center. 

The yellow "ribbon" is another paper strip folded over on itself.  I used a scalloped circle punch on some corrugated packaging and added the Lily Bee sticker on top.  Again, the rub-ons provide those finishing touches along with a stamp of a little bird to get my ducks in a row. : P  I really enjoyed making a more masculine page with Lily Bee products and am happy with the result.