Blog Hop Winner and a couple of simple layouts...

First things first.  The Let's Scrap Blog Hop has come to a very successful end.  I am so glad I was able to participate as a host.  Thanks to all of you for visiting and playing along, there were over a thousand cards made by LS members during the month.  Pretty impressive!  Now without further adieu, the randomly chosen is winner of my RAK is Drue Peters!  Drue, get me your address and I will get your goodies out to you ASAP.

Now for some layouts... I have been thinking a lot about why I scrap and what I really what to come out of it lately.  I love playing with paper and glue and creating pretty pages but, I feel a real desire and need to tell the stories of our lives.  As a result, I think I need to simplify and get more pages done with less fuss and pressure to create a masterpiece each time.  I have long admired Cathy Zielske's classic and graphic style but wasn't sure how to make it work for me.  Recently I took her class Ten tips for Type at Big Picture Classes and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I learned some great tips for making my typography more professional and readable.  If you aren't familiar with her check out her blog here, you will be blown away!  So I thought I would share the layout I made for the class assignment.

The layout is a hybrid, the white background and journaling are one piece created in Photoshop, the title strip was also created in Photoshop and added with the photos and patterned paper.  I am really pleased with the result.  Now that I have overcome the learning curve of figuring out how to make the tips work for me, I will definitely do more layouts like this one.  I love the classic clean lines and the ability to add as much journaling as I want.  I believe that BPC may be offering her class again and I would highly recommend it.

Before I go, I will share one more simple layout.  This was created for a sketch challenge on Lily Bee's blog.  I have wanted to scrap this photo of my son but, hesitated because I really didn't have a story to go with it.  I came across this sweet poem and thought it would be perfect.  I love all the white space on this one especially since I adore the wood grain paper.

The poem reads:
With little rosy cheeks, and a cold pink nose, he's all dressed up in his warm winter clothes.
As I watch him laugh and play in the snow outside my door, I thank my God above for this child that I adore.
A blessing from the Father, complete with heaven's glow, I'll always cherish the memories of my angel in the snow.
Kim Heineman

I will be back soon with another simple layout using Cathy's great tips. 

Lets Scrap Leap Blog Hop!

This post will remain here at the top of my blog
for the duration of the Let's Scrap blog hop so please scroll down to see newer posts!

Welcome to the 35th stop on the Lets Scrap LEAP blog hop!

If you came here from Diana Taylor's blog,  then you are in the right place!  If not, head back to Mindi Brown's blog to get started.

Let me introduce myself, I am Jodi Releford and I am really excited to be a blog host this Lets Scrap blog hop!  Lets Scrap is a wonderful group of scrappers and card makers.  It is honestly the friendliest group that I have come across.  So when Mindi asked for hosts, I couldn't respond fast enough!  I guarantee you will love this group of scrappers.  So go ahead and join the group and start playing along with all of us!

I will be the first to admit that card making is not my forte.  For some reason I struggle to put one together, but I also appreciate the opportunity to stretch myself.  Luckily, I was given a great sketch to work with and although it took longer than it should have, I created a card that I really like!  Hurray for me! :)

I was assigned sketch 4-20-11 by the talented Debby to play with. Here it is...

And here is my take on the sketch...

This Christmas, my son's cousins sent him a sweet advent with miniature ornaments and treats inside.  He really enjoyed the surprises he found each day.  I made sure to take a picture of my son with his little Christmas tree covered in his new ornaments to send to them so they could see how much he enjoyed the gift.  So when I saw the sketch I was given I knew it would be perfect.  I took the photo of my son and created a frame with papers from Crate Paper's Snow Day line and some pop dots.  I added some dimensional adhesive and glitter glue to the brown frame to make it shine.  The trees are fussy cut with a bow of floss and the sentiment is stamped on a die-cut.  Love it!   Let me know what you think.  :)

So now it's your turn to play along!  If you need some extra incentive, I am giving a fun RAK package to one randomly drawn participant.  Here's what I'm giving away...

I chose some of my favorite coordinating products to create a fun prize pack.  Included is a Fancy Pants card kit from the Happy Together line (everything you need to make six adorable cards), a package of white Martha Stewart Rub-on borders (they look like lace), an SEI puffy alpha set in a minty green, some fun Lily Bee tulle flowers, and a spool of blue ribbon from American Crafts.  Worth playing for?  I hope so.

So here's the nitty gritty of how to enter my random draw:

1. If you aren't already a member of Lets Scrap head on over to the website http://letsscrap.ning.com/ to join.

2. Become a follower of my blog!!

3. Leave me a comment telling me what your favorite sites are to find inspiration.  Please share!!

And if you would like a second chance to enter my drawing...

1. Make a card from the sketch I have posted and upload it to the gallery at Let’s Scrap. Please tag it as   4-20-11,LEAP35

Please note there are no spaces and LEAP is all upper case letters.

2. Leave a comment here with a link to your card on Let’s Scrap.

The hop ends at 11:59 pm Central Standard time February 29th. So you have plenty of time to visit everyone's blog and enjoy the hop for the whole month.

Thanks for stopping by, I am really looking forward to seeing what you all create. Your next stop is the amazing Sharon Fritchman! Enjoy and if you get lost along the way or have joined the hop in the middle, head to Mindi Brown's blog to get the blog order. You don’t want to miss any of the fun!

2 My Mind's Eye Layouts...

I loved the sketch for this month's MME challenge so I decided to play along.  The theme for the challenge was "you" which was perfect for the page I wanted to do about all the things my son learned last year in Pre-K.  You can see the original sketch here.  For my take on the sketch, I flipped it and used my journaling block in place of the second photo.

I used the Alphabet Soup collection and one October Afternoon tag.  I LOVE this collection and am going to be sad when I use it all up.  In fact, I love it so much that while I had it all out on my desk I created another two page layout using the Let's Scrap sketch from last week.  It was another great sketch from Cheri, check it out here.   And here's my layout...

I just love the colors and patterns in this collection, and the animals are so much fun.  I am now down to scraps and will certainly use each and every one of them.  Thanks for stopping by!

Some Jillibean and Lily Bee sketch fun...

Although you can't tell from the looks of this lonely blog, I have done some scrapping since October.  :)  During the Holiday season, I went back to using my trusty sketches to enable me to get more done in less time.  As you can tell from reading my blog, I like a good sketch.  I am a slow scrapper, I can't bring myself to embrace the more free-form, messy, clustered style that seems to be all the rage right now.  Along with that, I am pretty left brained so when I do scrap from scratch, it usually takes me a long time to get a layout to look the way I see it in my head.  I either LOVE or HATE the layouts I create this way.  Either it really works or it really doesn't.  Sketches are a great place to start and I can actually finish a LO in a day (sometimes) when I use them.  I also really enjoy seeing what others create using the starting place.  So I thought I would share three layouts that I made using sketches over the last couple of months.   

This first one was created for the Lily Bee challenge in November.  You can see the original sketch here.

I loved the cluster of three photos and knew that I had just the right photo to use.  I cropped a 5x7 photo of me and my sisters into three smaller ones.  The colors of our shirts really dictated the color scheme of the LO.  The black and white background really makes the red and blue in the pictures and accents pop.

This next one is based on the latest Jillibean soup sketch by Julie Bonner (Love her!).  Check here to see the original sketch.  I took a few liberties with the sketch and used a few more circles to mimic wheels in my traveling theme.  I have had these photos (taken by a ride a Chuck E. Cheese) for a long time and have wondered what to do with them.  They are not the best quality, but my little guy is so cute with his pal, this sketch was just right for them. 

Next, we have an oldie.  I created this LO with a sketch from My Minds Eye from way back in November.  The challenge was to use the sketch found here and you had to include brown in some way.  I use brown all the time so that was easy.  Of course, then I didn't get around to posting it in time.  Does that happen to anyone else, or is it just me?    Anyway I like the resulting LO of my son and his cousin.

That's all for today, I'll be back tomorrow to start the Let's Scrap blog hop.  Make sure to check it out, there will be 50 ladies involved.  Yes you read that correctly 50 blogs to hop to and great inspiration and prizes on each.  You will have the whole month of February to play along so you should have plenty of time to visit everyone.  See you then!

Hurray for Fall...

Don't you just love that feel of Fall in the air?  Even here in Texas, the temps have finally dropped and there has been a crisp coolness in the morning air.  October is a fun month in our house complete with a Kindergarten fieldtrip to zoo, a visit to the pumpkin patch, my son's birthday, and Halloween.  Throw in treats with each of these activities and whats not to like!  For the SEI link party this month I created this two-page layout of a trip to the Pumpkin patch a few years ago.  I have been wanting to scrap these photos for awhile, but haven't been inspired.  Luckily, the "Fresh Cut" collection spoke to me.  These are some of my absolute favorite colors and they worked perfectly with these photos.  I used an amazing Lets Scrap sketch which I am a huge fan of and will definitely use again.  Thanks Cheri!

Don't you just love the colors in this collection?  SEI is one of my go to companies because they package all the perfect elements together and make it so easy to put together pages.  There are some amazing prints in this collection that have a bit of a retro feel that I love, but for this layout so heavy on colorful photos, I stuck to the smaller patterns to keep it from looking too busy.  Here are a couple of close-ups.

I love how the pumpkins turned out.  I cut them out with my trusty Silhouette and pieced them together.  Isn't the linen pattern on the papers so amazing!  Love them.  The SEI link party is going on all month this month so you have time to create a great project and get it linked up.  And while you are at it go check out the wonderful team at Lets Scrap and the amazing weekly sketches.  I am still working on Julie's sketch for the month and hope to get it finished in the next couple of days so I can link it up too.

September's SEI Sketch Challenge...

It has been a few months since I participated in a sketch contest and I have missed it.  Last month I had a completed layout and then forgot to Link it to the SEI blog. : (  As of October, SEI is going to leave the link up all month so I definitely won't have any excuse for not playing along.  I always love Julie's sketches and I really enjoy working with them.  She makes them so simple and easy to customize.  This month's sketch is another beauty.

My take on the sketch features...ME!  Let me expound.  My mother recently gave me my baby album which was literally falling apart and including those lovely sticky pages.  I am now in the process of taking bits and pieces of her work and organizing them in a different format.  I have digitized many of the photos and the goal is to reconstruct the album in an updated and more interactive album that will survive for many years.  It has been so much fun going through old photos of my family.  I will also admit, although it isn't easy, that I have enjoyed using a little pink.  As the mother of a son and a self professed Tomboy, I don't often create girly layouts.  Using a little baby girl pink has been fun.  I doubt that I will make a habit of it though. :)

So this is a one year old me.  Can you believe that hair?!  I haven't added journaling here because this will be the left hand side of a two page layout and the right side is heavy on the journaling.  I used the "In the Treetops" and " A Fair Day" collections from SEI.

And since I missed last months linky party I thought I would throw that layout up here too!  Loved that sketch too.

The link party ends Oct. 2nd so you still have a little time to play along.  And don't forget to link it to the SEI blog like I did!

Catching up...

Ok, not sure why this post never made it to the blog... 
I drafted this post almost a month ago, I guess the summer heat melted my brain!  We are going on day 40 something of high temps over 100 degrees F! 


Isn't summertime great!  Love the warm days, kids running through the sprinklers,time with family, ice cream, cold watermelon, and hot corn on the cob.  The only problem with summer is that there is no schedule and as a result, less time for scrapping.  I am about a week behind on blogging, so you get two Lets Scrap sketches today since I missed last week.
The sketch for this week was perfect for all those summer events.  There is room for several photos and plenty of journaling.

 

I decided to use the pictures of my son playing soccer last year.  He is not a very aggressive boy and HATES being the center of attention, so we had pretty low expectations for soccer.  We really just hoped he would get out on the field and run around and maybe, just maybe kick the ball a few times.  In the end, he did get on the field, but there was very little running, and he never purposely touched the ball. :)  Needless to say, he doesn't think soccer is the sport for him.  Maybe T-ball...

I just love the photo of him standing in the field yawning!  Pretty much sums up his whole experience.  : )

Ok, so last week's sketch was a quick and easy one.



I had a hard time finding 7 photos, so I decided to use just the left hand side of the sketch.

I couldn't find Halloween paper that I liked for these photos, so I decided to make my own PP by using these Making Memories stickers.