Scrapbook Layout: Ninja & Shark

I might be a little off-season with this layout, but I have really been wanting to use these awesome photos taken by our friend Brian Dewey at Halloween!  He's a talented professional photographer and also part of our kids' carpool so it was really exciting when he offered to take Halloween photos of the kids at a neighborhood party.  The images are so different than what I could manage with only the available lighting and my point and shoot flash, that even though I don't normally do a Halloween layout, I wanted to this time. Doesn't Zack's intensity about his costume show through the picture?

I was glad to use it as a chance to capture how their ages and personalities showed in their costume experiences, so it wrote on die-cut Top Notes*, one for each boy.  I wanted a spooky but elegant look without using pre-made Halloween products (since I don't do a lot of Halloween scrapbooking, I didn't want to buy any custom product with spiders or what-have-you.  Also, I just like the less Halloween-specific feel).  I choose black background paper and a dark brown transparent overlay made by Slice/Making Memories (I can't find a link to the transparency sheets so maybe they don't make them anymore).  I intentionally left a strip of the transparency without any backing.  I plan to do another layout to back it with that will coordinate with that spot, but I don't know exactly what- wish me luck! 

The title is done with Thickers in felt - I love how they feel!  You can feel the texture even through a page protector.  Then I added black, die-cut leaves and black, hand-cut branches.  Branches are not hard to hand cut, especially when they are supposed to look bare and spooky!  I got the idea for the row of paper flag/pennant pieces at the bottom of the pictures from somewhere else but I can't find it (not for lack of trying!) so thank you to a nameless inspiration!  To finish it off I stamped the bird from the Stampin' Up! Notably Ornate* set, embossed it and cut it out.  That bird can look pretty or spooky!  Or maybe both!

*If you use the links above my friend and fabulous Stampin' Up demonstrator, Cheryl, will benefit, but so will you since you'll get the preferred pricing by checking out through a demonstrator! 

December Daily: pages part 2

Today I'm showing a few pages from the middle of the book where I worked on capturing the boys school art and events.  They bring home so much stuff that I'm always completely overwhelmed.  I am ok with recycling the worksheets but the stuff with their writing or art on it is harder.  I try to narrow down and keep only best or the most representative items... but that requires thinking so I put it off.  And when I do bring myself to do it, I find that even the "best" stuff still ends up just sitting there, without anything done with it.

For this album I picked one page from each boys stash of creations and folded it up to 5x7 and put it in the book.  I really like it in there.  Because it is squared off, it has a neater look than I though it might.  I added it on the day I was showing pictures and journaling from Sammy's program and Zack's class party.  These were also their last days of school for the semester so it forms a big finish for the "at home" portion of the book.  After that it's all travel - a "most delightful journey" (if the fortune cookie says it, it must be true).

December Daily: Pages part 1

Sammy was so funny with the chopsticks this day! I couldn't resist pulling out the camera in the restaurant and getting a series of pics. Then when he resorted to the fork it was priceless! I didn't show the picture here, but on the back I put in our fortunes from the fortune cookie - it said Sammy has "a magnetic personality". Well, I think so!
I wanted the pictures all in one long row, so that the progression would show, but to print them small enough to do that in 7 inches really wasn't cutting it.  I ended up making this accordion fold so that you have to pull out the tab to see the final (fork) picture.  I just used three sheets of heavy cardstock with "hinges" made out of brown paper punched with the Stampin' Up Modern Label punch.  

I like the view of various pages and embellishments that peeks through when you are looking at a different page. Here, the little heart from the picture of James reading to Sammy shows up after two more pages are turned.

And how could I have a December Daily album without a Starbucks sleeve? That would be as wrong as a December without a Peppermint Mocha! In this case it gave me a place to talk about the evening James and I spent shopping, just the two of us. I didn't have any pictures of us but it was a memory I wanted included.

I'll be back tomorrow to show how I included some of the kids school events/work!

December Daily: Finished Album!

I am sure many people are soooo over the holidays and December, but I'm excited to have finished my December project!  I don't care that it's the end January - I'm thrilled to have finished anything.  I mean seriously, how often do I start AND finish something, and all in a row too?  (You don't need to answer that.)

This is a December Daily album, as inspired by Ali Edwards and many others (here's another extremely pretty one). I showed my kit a while ago. I finished (notice how I am repeating that word finish?) it Monday but it took me until today to work up the energy to photograph it! It turned out kind of large. But hey, it's a whole month!

I do this project a little differently than some - I don't fully make the pages ahead of time and I don't work on it daily. The upside of making a kit instead of pages is that I can choose the papers that I like for each photo and I'm not locked into a certain page size for each one.  The downside is that it takes a little longer during December, a month that is already over-full.  But, the creative part is what interests me and draws me to the project, so that's better for me.  One big mistake I made was not making the cover ahead of time.  Somehow I had a hard time getting started on the pages without a cover to draw a color scheme/style from.  And making the cover was daunting so I kept putting it off.  That led to me starting way late in the month, which I hadn't intended.  Next time I want to stick with making the kit rather than finished pages but finish the cover ahead of time.

There are a couple of reasons that it works better for me not to work on this daily.  The first is that I print my photos at a photo shop (meaning not at my own house, on my own printer), so I don't have the photo for today at the end of each day.  I like the color by sending them out to be printed and Costco is close, cheap and our local Costco's prints are great (I think they calibrate their machines more often than other places).  I don't my going by there a few times a week so it isn't a big delay, but it isn't daily.  The second reason is that I can't really work in the time to make things every day.  My time is organized more by week.  I have two or three two-hour blocks that I try to use for creativity.  A lot of times I can do a little more here or there, but I just don't like the pressure of trying to work EVERY day.  Too much stress!  And this is supposed to be fun :)  When I realized that my time is structured weekly like this, it was very freeing and inspiring.  And fun!

The think I like best about my finished album is the way the pieces peek out the sides and top, and out from behind the other pieces, but without the whole thing feeling too messy.  And the fact that it is finished!

I'll be back with some pages to show soon.

Handmade Card: Merry Christmas

I guess I'm addicted to woodgrain patterns!  I can't seem to resist using either my woodgrain stamp or my woodgrain embossing folder on card after card.  I like how very shiny the gold detailing on these leaves is!  Also, see the ends of the light green piece?  I punched just the ends with the Decorative Label Punch, one of my favorites. 

I am excited for the card sale tonight!

Handmade Card: Baby

This baby is one-of-a-kind! I had that adorable b-a-b-y pennant set (but only one) and couldn't WAIT to make it into a card. This is another large, 5x7 beauty. Those raised dots (a Big Shot creation) are so sweet. The flower has a lot of soft dimension.

It was so much fun to make something soft and pink after all the BOY scrapbooking I do!

This will be for sale along with all the others I've been posting at the Holiday Sale. Come check it out!

 

P.S. Do the larger pictures work for you? Let me know if it looks right on your computer!!

December Daily: Foundation Pages (sort of)

It's almost December!  I'm very excited that I'll soon be starting my third annual December Daily album, as inspired by Ali Edwards.  I have enjoyed this project very much the past two years - here is the album I made two years ago.  I guess I didn't post last year's album, though I did make it and finished it pretty promptly!  The idea is to add a photo and/or story for every day of December to document the month.  Sometimes I do two pictures.  Sometimes I don't have a picture for a day and use something representative.  It's not strict!  It also doesn't need to be all holiday related - in some way it's a chance to document every day life alongside the Christmas season.

Most people completely make their foundation pages ahead of time (here's a beautiful example) but I find that doesn't quite work for me.  The idea is to make it easy to do during the busy December month... but I need it to be easy AND have the lure of a little creative play to keep me going.  So, I make pages, numbers and a few extras and let myself choose which to use each day.  I have them in a clear, zippered pencil pouch to keep the main items together.

The first photo is an idea of what the pages may look like when I choose what to use.  But I'll also probably make some pages that are just photos printed with borders and glued back to back.  The pages themselves are 5x7".  That way, I can use an occasional trimmed portrait-direction picture in amongst mostly landscape-direction pictures. 

This set-up is the same as my traveling vacation mini-book from 2010 (and the results are here).  This has been my favorite mini-book, both in process and in final product, so I decided to follow the pattern for my December Daily this year. 

I even have it in the same traveling clipboard, along with some scraps and random Christmas supplies.

Seeing that puts me in the holiday spirit!  Now I just need to get my Christmas decorations out of the attic! 

Handmade Cards: All things bright and beautiful

Have you been out Black Friday shopping this morning?  That's our plan - it's a little tradition that always feels fun and adventurous.  We're a little disgruntled about shops being open on Thanksgiving.  I hope that doesn't ruin our Friday fun this year!

And now that we can officially kick off the Christmas season, here is my next card to show you.  These are also for the Holiday Sale and they were really fun to make with my new stamp set, Beautiful Season.  I made several of them, since I enjoyed them so much.  The holly and bird image is stamped and embossed (so that it is raised) and then hand painted with a combination of Stampin' Up! Watercolor Crayons and Luminarte paints. Doing these little paintings is therapeutic at the end of a long day!  The background is stamped and embossed with gold embossing powder in the Woodgrain Background stamp - one of my favorites.

The inside reads "May your season be blessed with all things bright & beautiful":  may your season start off that way, today!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here's wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving holiday, with good food and grateful hearts.

Today I'm sharing with you a floral arrangement I made from a flower bunch I bought at Costco and a thrift-store (Valentine's day patterned) glass bowl.

I was really intimidated to make it when I started! I wanted it in a low bowl, but cutting the flowers down that much made me nervous. I find the most likely mistake I make when arranging flowers is leaving the stems too long for the container - when the stems are not cut down enough, you end up with something that looks like a flower bunch, stuck in a vase, rather than like a finished arrangement. But once you cut them you can't get them any longer, so I always feel that I'm overdoing it and messing it up! In the end the stems are almost always slightly too long (or a lot too long), if anything.

In this case I had to cut them down by half, and even then the tallest pieces ended up taller than I had planned. But, it looked good enough that I wasn't anxious to start over. I wrapped the decorative wrap from the original bunch around the bowl to make it match the arrangement and tied it with some rafia.

This is for my mother-in-law's birthday, and hopefully can double as decoration for her Thanksgiving table. We'll be spending our holiday there, for which we are very grateful! Have a lovely day, everyone.

Lookout, there's a ninjashark behind you...

 

I hope everyone had a great Halloween! We did, though my boys were VERY tired by the end of the weekend fun + Monday holiday. They made it through trick or treating with lots of smiles and lots of fun, though. And, neither had a meltdown at school yesterday so we're calling that a success. EARLY bedtimes this week! 

Card: Wonderful Mother

This card is for my own mom! (I think she should have gotten it in the mail by today so hopefully she won't see it here first...) The most fun item on this card was the die cut leaves.  They were cut out of plain vanilla paper, but then stamped and inked in several colors of green and embossed with gold embossing powder.  The other fun thing was the row of small punched shapes from the Itty Bitty Punch Pack. Even though these shapes are small I like the effect when they are combined in a row or a group!

Cards: Happy Mother's Day!

These are the Mothers Day cards I made for my two grandmothers - both pretty impressive ladies!

I used the same cardbase, strip of scallop punched pink paper and stamped image for each. The cardbase is black cardstock embossed with the Stampin Up! Elegant Lines embossing folder. The stamped image (from retired SU! set Eastern Influences) is stamped in black and colored with colored pencils but for one card I mounted the stamped rectangle on silver paper and for the other I cut it out and mounted it on a strip with decorative label ends.

I learned something that Julie says she tried to explain to me but it went so far over my head I didn't even know this is what she was telling me!  But, it's simple to do:

To make a decorative end on a paper strip like this, stick just the end of the strip into the punch from the underside of the punch instead of slipping it in slit as you would to punch the whole shape.  Position your strip to square up the edge of the image with the edge of the strip and punch!  (This will give you the inverse shape from the shape you would get by slipping the paper in the normal slit and just punching the edge).  If my explanation doesn't make sense, just try it both ways and it will become clear right away!

School Valentines

Aren't these cute?  My friend Cheryl designed them and we made them at a little workshop.  It was fun to makes something homemade but I didn't really see myself making 34 valentines (for both Zack and Sammy's classes combined) without some assistance, so this worked out perfectly.  The kids each got a covered lolipop (heart shaped, of course) and the teachers got a matchbox with four Dove chocolates.