Croppy inspiration!

Well, here are the other two layouts I completed at the VERY funny New's Year's crop at Personalscrapper last week! For layout one the challenge was to use a large photo, so I picked this one of my brother, SIL and nephew in front of their Christmas tree. The papers are from Bo Bunny Blitzen found in my December Personalscrapper kit. I added the American Craft flairs (love those things) as well as the Stampin Up felt snowflakes and Paper Trunk Benny alphas ( another MUST HAVE) from my stash! This layout is a direct "lift" from another layout I did in the past you can find it HERE.....don't you love it when you can lift yourself? After all, who needs to reinvent the wheel.

The second layout is my first time to use my papers I got last spring at Archivers from the Simple Stories summer line. I must say this line is super fun to work with, too bad I only got just a few papers, may have to find more somewhere! This layout is based on a sketch by Allison Davis from Sketch Support, this is one of her best sketch in my opinion! These pictures of my brother and nephew were a bit blurry, but in the wallet size format it is not as noticeable, so hard to photograph a fast moving two year old without a bit of blurriness! lol! I hand stitched the flower stems, the flowers are punch outs from my stash by Stampin Up and the letter stickers are Thickers!

Thanks for stopping by to check out the rest of my scrappy creations, up on this week's agenda is getting caught up on the 52 week challenges over at Personalscrapper! Can you believe how fast January is going? So what's on your scrappy agenda this week?

Croppy fun!

The Personalscrapper Happy New Year's crop was a lot of fun and pretty productive for me! I got 5 of the challenges done. These are two of the layouts I was able to finish, the first one didn't really fit one of the crop challenges but did fit the challenge for week #2 of the 52 week challenges to scrap your family. This is my SIL, brother and nephew at the pumpkin patch last fall! I love this pic of them. I used the October Personalscrapper kit, featuring We R Memory's Autumn Splendor line. Letters are felt Thickers by American Crafts and Basic Grey minis (love these things!). Extras from my stash ( journaling spot by Paper Trunk, flower by We R Memory Keepers, Stickers by We R Memory Keepers (PS Oct. Kit) and calendar cut out by Paper Loft). Layout based on a sketch by Sketchy Thursdays. Sad to say, they are no longer going to be doing weekly sketches. I didn't have a chance to play along with them most of the time, but I always followed along and enjoy their sketches as well as the inspiration from those playing along!
The second layout was for the crop challenge : Mix 3 patterns of paper! I love these kind of challenges. I used the November Personalscrapper kit for the first time, featuring American Crafts Night Fall line. Letters included in kit are from Scenic Route (sure miss that company!). I used a lot of embellies from my stash on this one too! Ticket by Tim Holz, flower by Sassafrass Lass, calendar by Jenny Bowlin and family embelli from Rusty Pickle (this is an old one for sure)
This is a another page for my nephew's album, he just turned 2 last week! I love this picture of the 3 of them with the elk head my brother got hunting this fall.
Hope you enjoyed my scrappy crop fun folks! I'll be back in a day or two to share the rest of my 52 week challenges, can you believe we are in week 4 of 2012 already? Wow, hope 2012 doesn't blow by as fast as 2011 and hope I can complete all 52 of the challenges this year! Come join us at Personalscrapper if you would like to for the 52 week challenge, it's a great way to get those pictures in those albums and those memories in those books! Have a wonderful week friends!

Puppy Love!

Hope everyone is ready for the weekend! I know I am! We started a crop last night over at Personalscrapper and I was able to complete a challenge last night! This is a record for me. I completed a layout of my nephew with his puppies using the June 2011 kit featuring Jillibean Soup Watermelon Gazpacho line. I am now down to scraps of this kit and am thinking about reordering some more, it is an awesome line...but that takes me to the age old debate should I get more of the old or wait for the new summer lines which I am sure are going to be awesome as well? Kind of like the Seinfeld episode where Jerry has to take Bania out lunch after Bania gives him a new Armani suit...remember that one? Ok, maybe you don't I may be the only one on the planet who has every Seinfeld episode memorized. I love Seinfeld and find that a lot of things in my everyday life can relate to a Seinfeld episode! Hmmm...maybe this is another idea for a layout!?! lol! This layout is a scraplift of Aphra Bolyer's layout shown above. You can visit her AWESOME blog HERE....I am sure when you do you will find lots of fun things you will want to lift, she is an awesome designer and does a lot of work for some of my favorite manufacturers like Jillibean Soup! Well, I better stop yaking and get back to the crop, I still have 9 challenges to try and complete! Hoping to spend most of the weekend cropping with just a wee bit of cleaning thrown it! Happy Friday the 13th everyone!

Happy Scrappy New Year!

Here is how I spent my New Year's Day....scrapping, sketching, and buying a few new products! I was able to take advantage of a great 40% off sale at Scrapper's Boutique on New Year's Day, I could have went HOG WILD, but didn't! lol! They had some awesome new Valentine's lines (my fav is the new Crate Paper Paper Heart line!) but I contained myself to only things I could find an immediate need for (at least that was how I justified it to myself lol) So I came home the proud new owner of the new My Mind's Eye Kraft Fun Day lines! These lines are so versatile that I figured I could easily put them to good use! Well, I had vowed not to spend all day just gathering MORE supplies (eeks!) so I came right home and went to work drafting up a sketch for the January Personalscrapper sketch challenge! And then, with still loads of time on my crafty hands I was able to whip up a layout using the sketch and my new papers and embellies! This is the ONLY picture from my son's birthday party last month with his friends (gasp!) And I had to beg, borrow and steal to even get that. I had kept telling myself that I was OK with the one pic, but really I wanted to jump out from around the corners at the boys while they were playing video games and snap away, but I decided to keep my promise to my son and be a crazed camera momma...besides this ended up being one of his gifts and I figured with Xbox games being $60 a pop it was an easy way to save some $$! So here you have it, my one picture 14h birtday party layout...a bit different from his first birthday where I literally had 100 pics (even if they were all pretty bad...no digital camera back then in the "OLD" days!) and could have created 10+ layouts of just this one event! Don't you just love the kraft paper? I have always liked it and am so glad it is making a showing once again! All papers and embellies are from My Mind's Eye, letter stickers are American Craft Thickers. On another note, I didn't meet my scrappy goal of 100 layouts last year (I know...lame huh?) so I set my goal a little lower at 75 this year and am pretty sure I can achieve that one! One done...74 to go! Hoping to scrap more this weekend, so check back again real soon!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all my friends out there in blogland! Here is a sampling of the Christmas cards I made and sent out this year. I had fun making them all and it was nice to get out my much neglected stamps, dust them off and just play! I forced my self to use some of my retired designer paper by Stampin Up (I have WAY to much of it) and though I like it, it seems like the newer ones are always more appealing lol! I also did not buy any new stamp sets this year, I figured I already own enough and made myself pick and choose from them to create my cards. So proud of myself for using up some stash! I hope everyone is having a wonderful day with family and friends and I want to take this time to send out my Christmas wishes to you, my blogland friends. My wish for you is that you may be filled with joy, touched by His love and believe in the Miracle of the manager! Merry Christmas!

Happy Birthday to my baby!

Seems like just yesterday I was singing Christmas carols to him in my hospital room on Christmas Eve! Today my baby turned 14! He is the best Christmas gift I have ever received! Happy birthday son! I am so proud of the wonderful young man he has become. He is thoughtful, caring, kind and considerate of others. He is a talented clarinet player, lover of games and puzzles, tall enough to get things down from high places for his mother so she doesn't have to climb up on a ladder or step stool(which is a big irrational fear of mine) and most all he laughs at my jokes (well most of the time anyway!) It won't be long before he is driving, or so he tells me. He has lofty goals for his life and I am going to be right there beside him helping, watching and guiding him to those goals. And while I am not ready for him to grow up just yet, I am also excited for him and all that the future holds. Can't wait to see where his journey will take him in the next 14 years!

Race to the finish line!

Well, the end of the year is looming and so is the end to this year's 52 week challenges over at Personalscrapper! This is a layout I quickly created tonight for the "Use stamps" challenge. This makes my 27th layout done for the 51 challenges that have been issued so far. As you can see I am lagging behind by almost 1/2 a year lol! But I still have a little over a week left, think I can do 25 more? Now that is what I would call a "pipe dream!" So since my time was limited to around 2 hours tonight to get this done before my Pilates class I decided to use some inspiration from my early Christmas gift to myself- my Scrapbook and Cards Today 2012calendar with sketches by Beck Fleck of Page Maps! This layout is based on a sketch by Becky included in the calendar and is also almost a direct lift of the sample page for this sketch, of course, I have altered it a bit to fit the supplies I had on hand, but it is definitely inspired by this AWESOME calendar! I am so glad I spent the $12 or so to get it, WELL worth it! Becky has the most awesome sketches out there in my opinion! These pictures are some of the less desirable ones from our trip to the Pumpkin Patch this last October. I decided shrinking them down this small lets me use them without the flaws being so noticeable. Papers on this layout are by Bo Bunny, Stickers from Bo Bunny, sticker letters by Basic Grey, cardstock Bazzill....and then stamps are from the set Fantastic Foliage by Stampin Up and here is the neat part, are you wondering how I get the image to look like this? Well, I stamped on the rust cardstock with BLEACH! The image bleaches out the color of the cardstock, it is so cool to see what color it will bleach too as you can never tell til it completely dries! Helpful hint: use the "gel" bleach for best results as liquid bleach is a bit to runny. Also these stamps had almost too "detailed" of an image making them look a bit "blobby", the less detailed the image the easier it will be. However, this is my only leaf stamp set, so I had to use it. If you decide to try stamping with some bleach, please link up your project in the comments section so we can all see your results! This is a fun fun technique and really simple too! Well, off to wrap up some gifts, gotta get going on that front so I won't be up all night Christmas Eve! Look for my holiday card share coming soon, I just mailed my cards yesterday, but hey, they should arrive the day or so before which isn't too bad right?