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!

You can Trust me

When I saw this month's challenge at White With 1, use WHITE + CORAL + DECORATIVE EDGES, I first pulled my Laser Lace paper made by Paper Pizazz from my stash. I didn't wear a lot of lace on my wedding day so I decided to scrapbook our cake since the design made me think of the frosting.

I always say you get some insight into a couple's relationship when they cut the cake. Not good or bad, just some insight. We were not cake smashers.

After cutting the lace out of my 8.5x11" paper I decided to add in the coral lace ribbon I had on hand. I'm going to give a shout out to Creative Imaginations again because this paper lace is so easy to use. In fact, I also decided to use the backing from the ribbon on the page for another layer since it was too pretty to throw away.

Delight Thickers and some random letters make up the title. I added some white brads, journaling strips, and Jolee's Wedding Cake stickers to finish off the page. I put everything a little crooked because our cake melted. Also almost every photo our photographer took was crooked so it was basically the theme of the day. (We discovered you get what you pay for when it comes to wedding photographers, kids.) Speaking of photos, I lamented the fact that Instagram wasn't invented when we got married, but at least I had the precursor: disposable camera + paper cutter + corner rounder = Instagram.

One page wasn't enough to tell all of my cake stories, so I added a second to talk about the melting issue. At least it still tasted good!

I used the rest of the coral lace ribbon to tie the two pages together. And I used a little of my Target brand washi tape that I incorporated on another page in the album. I also had this cute coral journaling card in my stash to tell my story on.

Here they are together. Only 8 pages to go!

P.S. That was 14 years ago today! Happy Anniversary Cutie!

Shoes

The quest to have a wedding scrapbook with 14 pages by the end of the summer continues. Luckily I found some inspiration from Inspired By:

and also from this sketch at Delightful Inspiration:

to come up with this:

I used pictures of myself and my bridesmaids from the rehearsal dinner and the wedding displaying our shoe choices. Ah, I love the 90s.

I used navy blue cardstock with a scalloped edge and backed it with some patterned paper from Basic Grey. I have 2 pieces of that paper, but I decided to save a piece and cut out what I needed from the part most people wouldn't see:

I also found some inspiration from A Year in the Life of an Art Journal. They're working on a coffee table book project, but one of their challenges is to use up a sticker sheet. I decided to use up 2 sticker sheets of shoes, using Target brand washi tape as a border background for one sheet, and incorporating the rest into my title.

My journaling says: I loved my silver shoes at the time but if we got married today I would choose Chucks or flip flops.

Only 10 pages to go!

Today I will marry my BEST FRIEND

I just discovered a challenge blog called Purple Pumpkin Crafts. This month they challenged scrappers to use this sketch to create a layout:

This is my interpretation:

I started gathering the wedding patterned paper I've been collecting through the years to cut into rectangles and use as my paper mat, but instead I felt like I needed to punch the paper into triangles and make a banner.

The sketch has a flower on the left so I chose a journaling card that had flowers to use in its place. The journaling tells the story of this final conversation we got to have as single people. Mainly, my husband explaining he was late to our wedding because he was doing laundry. I love this guy!!!

I liked the swirly in the sketch so I included a chipboard piece I won in another challenge and painted it.

I made a little collage personal to our wedding for the bottom right corner. The stick people sticker is significant because we had stick people on our wedding invitation. The clock from my friend Stephanie is significant to Corey being late to our wedding. Our wedding colors were navy blue and silver.

11 wedding pages to go!

I just started experimenting with taking pictures of my scrapbook pages outside for improved lighting. Captain Skippyjon Jones loves having his picture taken so of course he had to sit on the page and pose the minute I got it on the ground. I love this dog!!!

Purple Pumpkin asked if I used any of their products to create this page. Since I just came across their website a few days ago everything came from my stash.

green

watercolor succulents is by Carolyn Gavin.

My heart belongs to you!

Corey and I are coming up on our 14th wedding anniversary and I love that guy more every day! We have a happy marriage so I must have an incredible wedding scrapbook, right?! No, I have done 1 page in 14 years!!!

Since I'm out of school for a few weeks I decided to set a goal for myself: get 13 pages done for our wedding scrapbook so (combined with the 1 that's already done) we will have 1 page for each year of marriage.

I began scouring my favorite challenge blogs for motivation and came upon 3 things that inspired me.

1. This scrapbook page made by Robyn Werlich from Scrapjacked.

2. Botanicals from Take a Word Challenge.

3. Stitching from The Studio Challenges.

And here's what I came up with:

This is one of my favorite pictures from our wedding day and it was unplanned. My bouquet doesn't look big but after carrying it around for a couple hours it got heavy. While we were waiting to be announced at our reception I complained that my arms were getting sore and Corey offered to hold my flowers for me. What a gentleman! Did I make a good choice or what?

I think Robyn's page was done digitally so I had to think of a way to mimic it with paper. I decided to silhouette some flowers with punches and scraps to use as my repeated botanical graphic. That's 3 punches per flower, a little workout for me.

I dabbed some Sail Boat Blue and then Watermelon Tim Holtz ink onto a paintbrush and splattered the background paper. I like how it broke up the plain off-white paper and made it a little more fun with dimension.

I used a title on vellum and added some blue washi tape, and some paper lace ribbon made by Creative Imaginations (Narratives by Karen Russell) to help adhere it to the page. I recommend this paper lace because it came off the backing easily and didn't tear. It was also easy to trim with scissors.

I've had the fabric pocket with the navy blue heart tag in my wedding scrapbook supply box for probably, um, 14 years or so and finally got to free it from the restraints of packaging. I don't like sewing so I thought this would be a nice way to add some stitching for The Studio Challenges without giving myself any grief.

I know some challenge blogs don't like when you combine challenges, but I feel it would be unfair leaving any of the websites out since they each inspired me in some way to make this page.

Only 12 to go!

pink

This punk rock pony picture came from Private Arts.

white

I wish we were going back to the beach today!

P.S. This picture came from Soul Seedlings.

red

We're back from our trip to California. The dogs loved the ocean, but we learned Stellaluna prefers a private beach to public. Happy birthday to my best friend and life partner.

P.S. Sylvia Needs A Couple Of Eggs is by Robin Faye Gates.

blue

This picture makes it seem about 5 degrees cooler than it is right now.

And it came from Private Arts.

yellow

It's Summer Colors Week at Poppytalk, which means it's my chance to share cute pictures I find on the internet. This card is from a Japanese website called Comesmart, but the french sentiment, "jouons ensemble," means "Let's play together." And now that I'm out of school I'm definitely ready to play!

quote of the week

This one comes from my friend Kellee who told me yesterday,

"You are the human Pinterest."

Heart...swelling!!!

P.S. Extra Crafty is by Kathy Jeffords.

Project Life March

This weekend documents getting a card from Corey, the books I purchased at the VNSA book sale, a knitting night with my friend Audrey, and picking weeds in the front yard.

Usually I remember to snap a pic of Audrey with her knitting project when we get together, but this time I forgot. Instead I used a picture of a giant ball of yarn I had saved from a magazine on the left side. On the right side I put my journaling on the packaging from some clothespins I purchased on a Target run we made together. The packaging was so cute that I had to save it from the recycle bin! My favorite part is at the top where I wrote the new knitting moves/pattern I learned that night: k2, yo, sl1, k2tog, psso, yo, k1.

The 3 spaces next to Saturday are devoted to Sunday.

First I used a letter from the HOA as my journaling space. They left a space for comments so I commented! We decided on our own that we needed to pick weeds on that Sunday. Later in the week I finally got around to opening what I thought was junk mail, but it was the HOA letter which coincidentally set that Sunday as the deadline to get our weeds taken care of! Phew.

While picking weeds I noticed we have a friend nesting in our mesquite tree. Birds love that tree and I wonder if it's the same one that nested there last year.

And a "before" shot of our yard. Notice the patterned paper I used in the back. Probably one of the first pieces I ever bought and when I think about using it for a traditional scrapbook page I see why I still have it. However, I think it works great for this kind of Project.