Stuck?! Sketches

Yesterday I was commenting about how I am thrilled when I am able to get more than one challenge done at a single site. I was actually able to do that TWICE this month. Here's a second page I got done for Stuck?! Sketches.

I've also commented in the past about my penchant for hoarding scrappy supplies. This layout is a classic example! I put aside a bunch of my Basic Grey Capella and Fancy Pants Road Show product specifically for scrapping photos from our friends' wedding that was back in 2008. I had honestly forgotten that I even had some of it! And talk about an old photo too...I'm embarrassed by my chubby face in this photo! I suppose my excuse is that I had had a baby six months prior and was still holding on to a lot of the pregnancy weight.

My Scraps & More Sketches

I love taking part in challenges & sketches at my favorite blogs & scrapbooking sites, unfortunately there are so many cool sketches and fun challenges out there that I can never find the time in the month to play along with all of them. So when I am actually able to link up with more than one from the same place all I can say is "Yay!" Below are two pages, both using October sketches from My Scraps & More Sketches

Coincidentally these layouts are also adjoining pages in one of our family's 2009 albums, thus why they color coordinate with one another. I often wonder if other scrappers are as particular as I am in this respect...do your adjoining layouts "match" in color schemes? Are they in chronological order? "Yes" to both for me. Anyhow, both pages feature product that's mostly Bo Bunny Mamarazzi 2, with a few miscellaneous scraps from Fancy Pants, My Mind's Eye, Dream Street Papers and Sasafrass Lass.

Let's Get Sketchy October Week 4

Hello everyone! Hope each of you had a good weekend. Ours was busy but so much fun. I just love this time of year...cooler temperatures and fun fall activities. On both Saturday and Sunday we went to fall festivals. One was out at a ranch and since we're urbanites the kids got to experience some things they had never seen or done before...goats, pot-bellied pigs, pony rides, hay rides and paddle boats. And of course both events featured bounce houses, face painting and BBQ. We're totally geared up for Halloween this week!

And can you believe that Halloween and the end of October are actually already here? Next stop Thanksgiving and Christmas, which we all know come fast once the holiday season gets into swing. Hopefully you are still finding time to scrap. My scrappy time might slow down a bit, but for now I've still been able to work on some pages. In fact I have one to share with you for this week's reveal at Let's Get Sketchy...the last sketch of October and your last chance for a chance at the monthly prize.

Here's the sketch...

I rotated it and used only 2 photos. Don't you love how sketches can be interpreted in so many different ways?

Since I've recently had the chance to scrap some more updated photos of the kids I thought it would be fun to pull out some "older" pictures and reminisce. These were taken when Paolina was just 12 days old.

Make sure you head over to the Let's Get Sketchy blog and see how the rest of the design team interpreted the sketch. I'm sure you will find lots of inspiration to create your own page!

Sweet

It's already been a jam-packed weekend and we're about ready to head out the door again so my post will be brief. Just wanted to make sure I shared this page with you before the last few days of the month got away from me! I lost track of time and didn't get a chance to play along with the first challenge at Boy Meets Girl so I made a special effort to work on a page for the second one. For the second half of the month the subject must be a girl and this challenge was to use texture. This was so easy for me...I love dimension and texture! I roughed up my papers with a distressing tool, did some handstitching, and added embellies like brads, buttons and jewels. To create this layout I also used a fabulous sketch from Sketchabilities, which I rotated and changed the number of photos from three to one.

As usual I have used a mish mash of supplies including Crate Paper, Fancy Pants, Basic Grey, Prima, My Mind's Eye, Glitz, Colorbok and Sassafras Lass. The photo is of Paolina posing in her party dress just before the guests arrived to her third birthday party. I tried taking some quick photos of her with my iPhone which in my opinion didn't come out that great, but I played around with this one using a photo editing app and I'm pretty happy with the results. What on earth did we do before digital cameras and photo editing software??

Thanks for looking and have a fabulous Sunday!

Stuck?! Sketches and Scrap Our Stash

Just when I thought the busyness of summer had ended, and I could breathe a sigh of relief...fall and winter events have begun to fill our calendar. It usually starts to get hectic mid-October as our wedding anniversary is the 18th. This year Noé and I celebrated 10 years of marriage (At this point I have to fib and tell people I was a "child bride" lest they think I'm old lol). I used to always think that for this milestone we would do something amazing like renewing our vows on the beach, getting me a replacement wedding/engagement ring for the one I lost 7 years ago, and possibly taking a romantic 2nd honeymoon. But alas, life had other plans for us. We did however, pass the kids off to my in-laws Saturday night so we could go on a dinner and movie date.

We also kicked off the autumn season with a trip to the pumpkin patch, and I got some of the BEST photos of the kids courtesy of my sweet hubby.

Beginning this weekend we will be inundated with harvest festivals, Halloween parties and trick-or-treating. Which of course leads to the rest of the end-of-the year holidays. I love this time of year though! Cooler weather and tons of fun activities =)

Thankfully I am still finding time to get some scrapbooking done. Yay for kids being in school and Paolina still taking an afternoon nap! One of the pages I've done this past week was for Stuck?! Sketches, and I also am linking it up to Scrap Our Stash's challenge to use the below Tic Tac Toe board. I used the top row...washi tape, 3+ buttons, chipboard

 

Noé is so good about always giving me flowers on my birthday and our anniversary. After getting a beautiful bouquet this past Friday it made me want to get out photos of flowers I've received in the past and get them scrapped! He gave these to me for my birthday back in 2009.

In keeping with this time of year, I pulled out some photos of Paolina in her first Halloween costume. I was inspired by a color challenge at Colorful Creations as well as the below PageMaps sketch

Thanks for checking out what I've been working on...more to come soon!

Let's Get Sketchy October Week 2

It's Monday and time for a new sketch at Let's Get Sketchy! As I was working with this one I was thinking about how when I first started using sketches, I would follow them exactly. But as I have become more comfortable with my own work I have found myself rotating & flipping them, using a different number of photos than the sketch, and even adding/eliminating elements. And that is exactly what I did for this sketch. Not because it wasn't an awesome sketch...because it is and I actually plan to hang onto it for when I have a trio of small photos to scrap. But I had a single small photo and paper in mind that I thought would work perfectly with it after a few minor adjustments. Basically I rotated the sketch and then substituted a frame & tag for the 2nd & 3rd photos. So keep this in mind when you are working with sketches. They are just blueprints for your pages...you should feel free to let your creativity (or necessity) take over and then go from there!

Here's the sketch...

And here's what I did with it...

This past January Sears Portrait Studio offered us a free sitting & photo package. Normally I'm not into those chain photography studios that do the ridiculously posed photos...but hey who says no to "free". Especially if you're a scrapbooker and it's free photos right? And we hadn't done a family photo shoot for two years so I really really couldn't say no. Anyhow, for a "posed" photo it didn't come out too badly. I love how happy the kids look. And this is a great memory as it was taken a month before we left California...sort of a documented photo of how we looked before moving out to Texas. The paper came from a pad I picked up on clearance at Wal-Mart. If you haven't done so before you should really pop in there every once in awhile and check out their paper pads. I've found some really great deals on some unexpectedly cool paper. And speaking of checking out cool stuff...don't forget to head over to Let's Get Sketchy to see what the other designers did with the sketch. And while you're at it please join in and link up your page!

My Scraps & More Sketches

Just a super quick post. I haven't been home much today. I took Santiago to the bus stop, came home, got Paolina ready for school, dropped her off, came home, and then I was right back out the door to pick up Santiago because it was an early release day. It's finally "cooled off" to 90 degrees so my friend and I took our boys to the park for lunch. Now we're home briefly before we head back out the door to pick up Paolina from school. I feel like I've spent a lot of time driving today and not much else. I think I'm starting to understand what the moms of older kids are talking about when they say they feel like taxi cab drivers lol.

Anyhow, I whipped this page up while Paolina was napping yesterday and used a sketch from My Scraps & More Sketches.

I used a photo of Santiago from soccer this past summer. Every week one player received a medal...he got his for "good sportsmanship". And for product I used lots of Fancy Pants Trendsetter with Crate Paper The Pier background paper. Now that I'm looking at this page I'm thinking it needs a title and journaling. It doesn't even have a date lol! I really get carried away with the artistic aspect of scrapbooking and tend to forget the "documenting memories" part.  Maybe I will repost once I've done that...but for now thanks for looking!

ScrapMuch?

Oh wow! It's October already? Time is really getting away from me with the kids in school. Of course it doesn't help that it's still in the 90s here...I have to keep telling myself over and over that yes it is fall. I love that it's the first of the month though...it's my day to puruse all of my favorite challenge sites and see what their new challenges are for the month. I've already found several sketches I'm excited to play with. But before I get carried away with October challenges...I need to post a layout I created for the September Week 2 challenge at ScrapMuch? I'm always on the look-out for sketches that will work well with the cards I want to scrapbook...and this one was absolutely perfect!

As I was saying, I like to scrapbook cards but sometimes they're large and it's rare to find a sketch that is intended for larger photos. I also don't want to use a lot of embellishments because while I don't mind them overlapping photos, I would prefer they did not cover the card because I'd like to have the option of still opening it to read the sentiment inside. So both the sketch and background paper from Pink Paislee totally fit the bill for the card that my sweet hubby gave me for my birthday this year!

Oh and I got a wonderful surprise while I was hopping around my favorite challenge sites. I discovered that I had made the September Top 3 at Scrap Our Stash. Whoo hoo!

Thanks for stopping by!