Paper Secrets May 15th Challenge

Wow what a busy weekend! I found some time Saturday morning to photograph a pile of layouts that I completed last week, but then I had no additional time to get them uploaded here. So over the next few days I will probably be posting them one by one.

This layout was done for the current challenge at Paper Secrets, which is to use the below sketch with lots of bling.

I rotated the sketch and came up with this...

I used a photo from our trip to St. Louis in July 2009 for a family reunion. Santiago was only 14 months old at the time. I used lots of Bo Bunny's Mamarazzi2...what an awesome collection!  For bling I added Prima Say it in Crystals and Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist (although that just doesn't show up in the picture!). Thanks for looking!

Let's Get Sketchy May Week 4 Challenge

Happy Memorial Day everyone! Our family has been on a long & busy four-day weekend. My husband's birthday is May 25th, so it always falls very close (if not exactly on) to Memorial Day every year. So on Saturday we took him to Dave & Buster's to celebrate, and yesterday we had a dinner at his parents' house with his family as well as my parents. Later this afteroon, after doing a few household chores that have fallen by the wayside with all this activity, we're headed to some friends' house for a pool BBQ. How are you celebrating and commemorating this day?

Today is also another sketch challenge for Let's Get Sketchy. It's the last sketch of the month, so make sure you get yours uploaded so you have a chance for the randomly chosen prize!

Here's the sketch...

And my take on it...

I used a card from Paolina's first birthday. I'm determined to finish my kids "First Birthday" albums this year , as they are now 5 and almost 3 years old!

Let's Get Sketchy

Since I can't seem to complete a layout without having a sketch in front of me...whether it be one of mine or someone else's. And since Let's Get Sketchy always has such awesome sketches, you would think I would use all of theirs every week...unfortunately life tends to get in the way and sometimes I'm lucky to get my required Design Team completed on time! In the last month I've really been making an effort to work ahead as much as possible though because once Santiago is out of school for the summer I honestly don't know when I will find the time to scrapbook. I did enroll both kids in a morning VBS the second week of June, so I suppose I will be working frantically those five days at least! Anyhow, somehow or another I managed to take the time to make a layout using this week's Let's Get Sketchy sketch. Here's the sketch...

I flipped it and came up with this...

It's actually the adjoining page in an album using a layout I previously created for Sketches With Color so it will look like this put together...

Obviously the pictures were taken in different lighting and I did a horrible job of editing lol!

May 15th Challenges

It's the 15th of MAy which means it's time for some new challenges!  First up is for About a Boy. The challenge is to create a layout using only white and ONE other color. I am not ashamed to admit that this was a formidable task for me. I love lots of color so it was difficult for me to limit my choices to a single one besides white. But I will also admit that I am very pleased with the end result. It certainly makes the photo pop!

I used a sketch from Scrap Friends

And created this page...

I used photos of Santiago when he was 4 months old. I always loved getting close-up shots of him...I mean check out those big brown eyes! Wish he would stop moving long enough these days to get photos like this still...

Anyhow, I encourage you to head over to the About a Boy blog to see what the rest of our Design Team created. I am sure their layouts will inspire you to try this challenge as well!

There's also another new challenge at Sketches With Color. If you have been following then you know that for the month of May the color aspect of our challenges has been changed up a bit. You are to choose THREE colors from the following 14 colors. I chose Lemon Zest, Grayed Jade and African Violet.

And for our second challenge this month you are to use the following sketch:

I decided to rotate the sketch and create a card to give to my mom for Mother's Day.

Once again, it was super cool to see how much variety there was in our Design Team's layouts simply because they were free to choose which three colors they used. Hope you will join in as well!

Colorful Creations Sketch a thon

Colorful Creations is celebrating its third birthday with a Sketch a thon throughout the month of May. I love having a new sketch every day! I was able to get three done on National Scrapbooking Day. One I used for the About a Girl challenge, and these are the other two I completed...

For this layout I used photos of Santiago getting his gifts when we celebrated his first el Dia de los Tres Reyes. He wasn't walking yet which meant he didn't have any shoes, so I had to buy him a pair specifically to leave at the front door. He was way more fascinated with the shoes than the actual gifts!

I adapted the sketch for a two-pager and came up with this...

I've been wanting to scrap these photos for awhile! I love Paolina's expression as she intently attempts to clip her own toenails.

Let's Get Sketchy May Week 2 Challenge

It's Monday and time for another sketch challenge at Let's Get Sketchy! Here is the sketch you have to work with...

I rotated it and came up with this...

As you know, I don't usually scrap current photos. I'm way too behind with piles of photos from at least two years back to be able to...but ever so often I can't resist getting a few recent photos developed and scrapping them immediately. So here is Santiago a few months ago on his first day of Pre-K at his new school here in Dallas. I'm not exactly thrilled about the uniform policy...khakis and button-up shirts aren't exactly my style..but Santiago has seen  the oher kids in the district dressed like this and he loves showing off that he's a big kid who goes to school.

Paper Secrets May 1st Challenge

I have really been enjoying participating in the Paper Secrets challenges. There are always fabulous sketches and fun twists. The May 1st Challenge did not disappoint

However the twist is to add a polaroid. I was a bit stumped on this one...I don't have any chipboard polaroids or a die. So I figured I would just sketch out and handcut one myself, but when I was at the crop on National Scrapbooking Day the host scrapbooking store provided a diecut machine and several binders full of dies all available to us to use...and lo & behold they had a polaroid die. Yay!!

To accomadate my main photo I rotated the sketch and added a second photo into the "polaroid" diecut.

Love these photos of Santiago! I have so many pictures of both kids in laundry baskets and boxes...they really love sitting in them. I also love this line of papers..it's For the Record 2 from Echo Park. Using just the blues & turquoises certainly changes their look as the line also includes green, yellow and black.  I also cut up and added in some leftover border from Basic Grey's Oliver line for a little pop of maroon. And of course I couldn't resist throwing in a mason jar from Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm...they're so adorable!

About a Girl May 1st Challenge

I'm so excited that About a Boy now has a sister site...About a Girl. And they're currently running their very first official challenge. As with About a Boy where the first challenge was to introduce the man in your life, for this challenge we are introduce our girl. Using the following sketch from Colorful Creations' Sketch a thon

I created this layout...

I used a photo of Paolina when she was two months old. I love how babies at that age curl themselves up as though they are still in the womb. And I used one of my favorite Basic Grey lines...Soleil. That line has such wonderful, bright pastels and beautiful designs often resembling watercolor. I wish their collection packs came with two of each paper...I might just have to buy another so I can get use out of the reverse side of each!

S.W.A.T. Drill #7

I hope everyone had a very happy National Scrapbooking Day! Did you get to scrap? In the five years since Santiago was born I just haven't had the opportunity to do anything special but yesterday I actually got to go to an all day crop. Well I only stayed eight hours...but I'm pretty sure that Noé felt like I was gone ALL day while he was on single-parent duty lol! Since I was away from my computer all day and then today was jampacked with our church service in the morning and a church picnic in the evening...I didn't realize that I totally forgot to "schedule" my S.W.A.T. post for yesterday. It's just been sitting there all this time as a "draft"...whoops! So almost two days late...

Drill #7 is to use one row in the following Tic-Tac-Toe board to complete a layout.

I used Row 1 Down (Buttons, Stitching, 3 Manufacturers) to create this...

I've been wanting to scrap these photos of Paolina since I took them April of last year. I found the perfect papers and the adorable Martha Stewart rainboots just in the last couple of months so I was excited to finally get them onto a layout! Hopefully you will be inspired to join our Tic-Tac-Toe challenge as well!

May 1st Challenges

Is it May already? Good grief! Well that means another new challenge at About a Boy. This time we were asked to create a layout of our boys being "typical boys". These various photos of Santiago when he was 2-1/2 ... playing with trucks and blocks ... seemed perfect to me!

It's also time for another challenge at Sketches With Color. For the month of May, the challenge is ever-so-slightly different. There is a color palette of 14 different colors, and you get to choose which three you want to use with the provided sketch. Further details are available on the Sketches With Color blog.

Here is the sketch...

Here is the color palette...

I chose to use Poppy Red, Grayed Jade and Monaco Blue for my layout...

I used some sweet photos of Santiago when he was a few days short of turning one month old. I can't believe he just turned five years old this past Saturday!  Time really does fly once you have kids...