Library of Luminaries: Frida Kahlo: An Illustrated Biography by Zena Alkayat & Nina Cosford

This is a cute little picture book biography about Frida Kahlo. Even though I feel like I know the basics about "one of history's most celebrated artists and feminist icons," I still read a few new Frida facts. I was surprised that it did not contain any of Frida Kahlo's artwork, but it was fun to see Nina Cosford's interpretations instead.

I have always thought of Frida's life through her autobiographical artwork and from her perspective. It was interesting to look at her through another artist's eyes. The illustrations of Frida's tragic life story seem whimsical in this book. I liked thinking about Frida in a joyous way. One of my favorites was "Frida's Wardrobe," which I'm pretty sure made me giggle. I've never imagined Frida packing before. Thank you.

Michael's Wallet

My wedding scrapbook was still a project I felt too overwhelmed to tackle up until a few years ago when I set a simple goal: 1 scrapbook page for every year of marriage.

It was sentimental and it got me started. Today I finished my 17th page since we celebrated another anniversary yesterday.

I used this sketch from Sketches in Thyme:

And I also used the B&W + Color Challenge from rukristin Scrapbook Sleepover Challenges for inspiration.

It took 17 years but I got another favorite story from that special day documented!

Messy Box 2: Electric Boogaloo

SPRING...

I used the striped paper for journaling on top and the SPRING card from the 2nd Box. The WOW chipboard letters look super on my saguaro pic. They're from the 1st Box.

But my favorite was this 3x4 card. I cut out the head from our take home papers from urgent care. Recycling awesomeness.

Kelly Purkey inspired me to stamp on my pic. I used Staz On for the first time. It is no joke. I like how it turned out and will definitely be doing it more.

I also tried to use up an entire sheet of tiny puffy heart stickers but only got halfway. When Corey saw it he said those hearts are what Stellaluna pictures all the time, and then we laughed.

I like how both kits still fit together and I can't wait to get the next one!

Project Life May 2013 continued

I really like how this week turned out. It includes Corey meeting Grumpy Cat, a pack walk, buying flowers for 2 of my favorite people, 2 students watering our class garden, Mad Men, Star Trek Into Darkness, a funny hat bike ride, and The Preakness Stakes.

A closer look...The Born in the USA thing came from the packaging Corey's flowers came in. I also wanted to note that Corey meets celebrities constantly at his job and rarely takes pictures of them for himself, but he couldn't resist when Grumpy Cat came to the station.

Another post card saved from advertising days used for finishing season 2 of Mad Men, mounted on a junk mail card:

Vellum and patterned paper:

Star Trek pic printed off the internet, and Liberty Market sign pic taken by me:

The sign pic goes with a bike ride my friend Stephanie organized with her bf. I added a sticker to the pics on the left and used part of their invitation for a caption on the pic on the right:

Here's the whole page, mostly about the bike ride but I fit the Preakness from the previous day in too:

Again I used the invitation as my background here. Saved me from journaling the who, what, when, where...

Coincidentally the canal we rode along was constructed exactly 100 years before. It says, "WATER FROM THE SALT RIVER RUNS THROUGH THE CITY":

This pic from the Preakness is from the newspaper. I just added journaling and a sticker:

Again, you can be creative with the materials you find around you to scrapbook with. The only traditional supplies I used were 3 stickers, 4 scraps of patterned paper, a post-it note, and a vellum die cut.

Project Life May 2013

It's been awhile since I shared my pages but I'm still doing Project Life and loving it. I'm almost done with November.

This week documents a card for Teacher Appreciation Day, watching Dbacks baseball, Survivor, and Mad Men, rereading The Great Gatsby, having a clean-a-thon in the bedroom, and Captain enjoying the backyard.

Angi remembers me on Teacher Appreciation Day every year with a card mailed to the school. So thoughtful. Glad I have this Project as a place to display this super cool card and remind me of one of the many special things she does for me.

The Dbacks logo on the base is from some junk mail, and the Survivor sticker came with a Buff we bought. Reduce, reuse, recycle!

I have a postcard book featuring women in advertising through the years. I tore out this ad from 1962 which is when this season of Mad Men took place. I'm more likely to look at it in here than in the postcard book.

I saved the Chipotle bag, cut out the talk bubble, filled it with brown cardstock, and filled in my own journaling from the night (a run-on sentence but really this is for me right?). More waste saved from the recycle bin!

Spoiler alert from 2 Survivor seasons ago! Cochran wins, and Corey and I were very happy about it. I printed this pic off the internet.

Captain Skippyjon Jones loves relaxing in the "creepy crawly" and it makes for a nice photo op, don't you think? I just added a little scrapbook paper at the bottom.

Just a reminder for people who say scrapbooking is too expensive...on this entire page I only used 3 scraps of scrapbook paper, a post it note, and some letter stickers. The rest of the materials are things I had on hand or scavenged from my life that week, + photographs. You can do it too!

in love

I fell a little short of my goal to create 14 wedding scrapbook pages before the end of summer but I squeezed 1 more in during a night of scrapping with Angi! I know you see 2 pages here but I'm only counting it as 1 because the right page is about Corey's great grandparents' wedding.

Luckily for me Corey's dad was really into genealogy for a long time so when I was scrapping our trip to Chautauqua a few years ago he dug out a bunch of memorabilia for me pertaining to the nuptials of Corey's great grandparents in 1924. Not only did he share the page of genealogy about his grandfather, but he also scanned and printed their engagement picture, wedding announcement from the newspaper, a telegram from the bride's aunt and uncle, and railroad tickets to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. Score!

I discovered a weird coincidence: we got married almost the same day as them 75 years later, and in an Episcopal church as well. They were married June 25, 1924 and left for their honeymoon on the 26th, which is the day we got married.

The top picture is of our 2007 visit to the church where they got married, and the bottom picture is from our wedding in 1999.

I put off making these pages because I couldn't decide whether to use a heritage theme or how to put everything together. Spurred on by my goal I just went for it, selecting distressed-looking patterned paper with only scraps for accents to keep the focus on the items of significance. When I cut out the honeymoon tickets I did it by hand to follow the tears and make them look more like originals. I love the stamps on the back with the date. I trimmed some of the border off a postcard and included it to show the location of their engagement picture.

I love the bride's scallop-edged dress, so I salvaged some scallop-edged scraps for accents, used scallop-edged cardstock to accent our wedding picture, and trimmed the genealogy page with decorative scissors.

I feel so fortunate to have copies of these pieces of family history, and that I have them displayed now where people can see them in the future.

P.S. I have completed 11/14 pages about our wedding. I doubt I will make 3 more pages this weekend but I might try.

Project Life March continued

This is my other favorite week (visually) from March:

It documents the girls ganging up on a cricket, a text from my nephew, watching Napoleon Dynamite, the first day of spring, and spring in our backyard.

Recently I started printing the pictures family and friends text me to include in this Project. This way I can include the people who live far away that are still a part of my life. This picture is of a card and Weekly Reader about Ireland I sent my nephew for St. Patrick's Day, which he texted as a thank you. Love that kid!

Napoleon Dynamite was on t.v. and we got sucked in. I saved this Napoleon Dynamite chapstick packaging when I got it a very long time ago, and my paper hoarding tendencies paid off. The journaling is on the back (see below).

My Favorite Season is from a Smash pad. I popped out the other seasons, put some patterned paper behind it, wrote some journaling, and stamped the date.

On the left you see Caprica Six guarding our backyard. I added the 24/7 sticker since we joke that she is always on duty. She takes her job very seriously.

On the right is a picture I took of an orange tree blossom. I love the smell of our citrus trees blooming. The quote I used came pre-printed on vellum. One of the nice things about this Project is that you don't have to figure out how to adhere your vellum without it showing. This time I just trimmed the quote and slid it in over my picture, no adhesive required!

Maybe I should post more of my pages because now I see I've made a mistake here: it's March not April. Off to fix it...

I'm back. Another beautiful Arizona sunset! I added a Home sticker and Thickers for the title.

The rest of the week documents my book club meeting to discuss Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, finishing Dragons of Winter Night, a family pack walk, playing Hangman with my class, a factoid about the moon, Survivor, a phone call from my sister, and getting the dogs nails trimmed.

I used a magazine ad and stamped it. Free and saved from the landfill!

The distance to the moon was mentioned in The Secret Life of Bees which I was reading that week so I wanted to include it. Luckily I went to the internet to double check the distance before I included it because it was wrong in the book. Actually I went to many websites that gave various distances so I finally settled on the one that had a range of distances since the moon gets closer and farther. That one made the most sense to me so that's what I went with. Hopefully it's right!

I used some scraps of patterned paper, letter stickers, and a sticker (couldn't believe I had a sticker with the moon on hand!). The patterned paper had a star already punched out of it so I highlighted it by rubbing some white stamp ink along the edges.

Finally we have an unfortunate victim of Survivor which I printed off the internet, and the back of the Napoleon Dynamite chapstick packaging (it's as cute as the front) where I added some paper flags for journaling. Free and saved from the landfill!

the getaway car

This month Child's Play Challenges is asking us to use a tire swing as inspiration. Since I'm working on our wedding scrapbook the tire made me think of the pictures of our old Isuzu Rodeo all decorated up by our friends and family at our wedding. Luckily lots of people took pictures of our Rodeo and passed them on to me. As I laid them all out to decide on which ones to scrap I realized I could use almost all of them to make the shape of our s.u.v.:

See it?

I cut some clouds from white cardstock and punched 2 pictures with my circle punch to make tires.

I only used my corner rounder on the "spare tire." Get it? This is how I entertain myself.

I would also like to point out the top picture. Looks like all of our guests are there on the sidewalk behind the Rodeo. I wish whoever took that picture asked everyone to turn around but I can actually tell who some of them are by the backs of their heads.

I used my fancy edge scissors for the journaling strips, which I tried to make look like the exhaust coming out the back. I put washi tape under die cut heart ribbon and held it together with yellow staples to make a freeway of love.

I know that the trashing of our car took contributions from at least 5 different people all operating independently. When I look at these pictures I feel their love again as they worked to make our day special.

P.S. Only 4 pages left to my goal!

Project Life March

I'm currently working on June but I'm behind on my posting. Here is another favorite week of mine, but I had to cover a lot of it to share on the internet because I have a lot of pictures of kids from my school.

This week documents a student earning a Happy Meal for completing all of his timed tests in math, my tutoring kids, giving Strega Nona her medicine, the new pope getting elected, a field trip to the Arizona Science Center (best field trip ever!), spelling with Play-Doh, and finding some clips from my Amazon wishlist in Target.

I used a felt blue star border for my math star, and Lego letters for my tutoring kids. I used packaging from the Sparrow Clips to share the story of coveting the clips for so many years.

My friend Alana gave me a guinea pig calendar from Etsy a few years ago when she was my secret santa. I saved it and cut out all the cute guinea pig pics at the end of the year. I got those out to document Strega Nona getting her medicine and found the one of a pope guinea pig. Coincidentally this was the same week the pope was voted in so I had to use it. I don't know why I followed the story so closely on NPR all week, being an agnostic, but it was interesting to learn about the special shoes and all that stuff. However, Corey and I had a little off-color joke about it which is why it's covered for you. We are pretty PC people but sometimes we can't help ourselves.

Here's the rest of the week which documents the boys basketball team winning the championship, watching The Fighter and Property Brothers, and having lunch at Jimmy John's on St. Patrick's Day.

I printed The Fighter movie poster from the internet but The Property Brothers came from a magazine ad. I had a marathon and graded a lot of papers that night. Probably something I normally wouldn't deem interesting enough to share but with their picture from the ad I had to do it.

When we go to Jimmy John's I try to save the tape that holds my sandwich closed for this Project. I'm sure they had a whole team of people working on that tape design which saves me some crafting time. The St. Patrick's Day card came from an old Creating Keepsakes magazine insert. I cut it out and painted the letters with watercolor paint. It feels good to bust out the paint every now and then.

There's also an 8.5x11 insert this week. I made a collage pic from the multitude of exciting pictures I took on our field trip. It's a great way to get up to 20 pictures on one page which is why I mention it, but of course I can't share it because of all the innocent little faces on there. I get my collage prints from Walgreens but you can also make one yourself using Photoshop and help from The Nerd Nest.

tom boys

This month Child's Play Challenges asked scrapbookers to use the Radio Flyer wagon as inspiration.

That sent me on a photo hunt. I knew that with all the pictures of me playing outside as a kid, there had to be one with my wagon. Surprisingly I only came across 1 picture with my wagon, but it was enough to get a fun scrapbook page started. (It's the top picture and the wagon is on the left side.)

This is my childhood friend Missy. When I look at these pictures I think of the things we did together, like play with cars, ride bikes/trikes, dig in the dirt, ride my pony, build forts, and of course, haul things around in my wagon. I dug out a mini-book kit from K&Company called Danny O, and used the sheet of push car stickers. I changed an "all boy" sticker from the kit to "tom boys" with my alphabet stickers.

I chose red as my dominant color because of the wagon and our clothes. I like the red paper with the swirls because it's faded like our little barn there in the back. I almost used it as the full page background but it seemed a little sad in a larger amount, and sadness is definitely not what I feel when looking at these pictures.

Another thing I would like to note is the photos themselves. Often in scrapbook magazines they tell you to never use an original old photo on your scrapbook page unless you can remove it, the idea being that it can be destroyed if you ever wanted to take it out. I myself prefer using my originals when I can, but I always scan and save my originals before using them just to be safe. I have 12 boxes of photos and they never get looked at. I like to pull the pictures out of the boxes and put them on display. Some people like collecting antiques, but I think antique photos are cool. And as a little gift to myself in the future, when I pull a picture from a box I leave a card in its place with where the photo is saved on my computer. That way if I need another copy I know where to find it quickly.

P.S. Child's Play Challenges is looking for new members of their Design Team, but hurry! You need to apply in the next 4 hours! Details can be found here.

Owl love you forever!

This month at So Artful Challenges they ask crafters to create something with an owl in it. Hooray!

Since I'm still working on our wedding scrapbook I thought a page about our nieces and nephews would go well with an owl. I chose a patterned paper broken into quarters by We R Memory Keepers called Nonsense Silly Sally because I wanted to sit an owl on one of the branches. But that was the only part of the paper that went with my color scheme so I cut it out and saved the rest for another project. Keeping with the quadrant layout I added a navy blue piece to the bottom half and a pink pp from K&Company called Berry Sweet to the top.

I added everyone's name with my Dymo label maker, and white cardstock to mat 2 photos into Polaroid-esque pictures. The silver letters at the bottom say "Nephew Swap" since Corey's dancing with "my" nephew and I'm dancing with "his."

Which left the owl. I decided to use this price tag that came on something I bought but it wasn't the right color. I just wanted to change the red to pink. I scanned it, printed it, and cut it out to make a pattern which I traced onto the pink pp. I cut it out and glued the pieces over the original. I also added a tiny flower sticker for our owl friend to hold so she wouldn't feel left out of the wedding.

I added foam alphabet stickers by Sandylion. Can you tell I ran out of Os and Es?

I didn't really believe we've been married for 14 years, but looking at these pictures makes me realize it's true. 2 of these kids are married, 1 with a kid, 2 of these kids are in college, 2 already have degrees, and 1 is in the military. Maybe I should have made the title "Time Flies." Ha!

P.S. Only 6 pages to go!

True Happiness

This week at Take a Word the challenge is to use True Happiness as your inspiration. Super easy when you're working on a wedding scrapbook!

This is one of my favorite pictures from the day, although you'll notice it too is crooked (still complaining about my wedding photographer, sorry!).

I gathered a bunch of stuff from my stash. The Flirty Dots patterned paper is made by Bo-Bunny. The "love" sticker is made by Pebbles. The chipboard buttons are from the Betty collection by Love, elsie (I used one to cover a big yellow circle on the tag). The tag is the newest thing on there, made by Dear lizzy + American Crafts. The "happiness" letter stickers are Delight Thickers. Finally we come to the polka dot letter stickers made by Momenta. I don't have many left so of course I didn't have an E. No problem! I used an F and added a leg from the Z. After I put it all together all that was left was the journaling.

Yesterday on our anniversary we got some good news: DOMA was ruled unconstitutional! True Happiness is equal opportunity.

I chose to share this historic event in my journaling. It is so much sweeter celebrating our wedding anniversary knowing every marriage is recognized by the federal government!

P.S. Only 7 pages to go!