Sketch~N~Scrap

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday. Ours was nice...it warmed up a bit (I didn't even have to wear a coat) and we had great food & fellowship with family.  Did any of you brave the stores to shop Black Friday today? I'm not usually a fan of doing that...I mean I'm all about finding great deals, but the crazy mobs that you usually encounter at the shopping centers are a bit much for me. However I have to admit I did hit one store today. Kohl's. Gotta love that place for amazing deals. I had a coupon that was only valid today, and I really needed to buy a gift for a birthday party Santiago & Paolina are going to next weekend...so I sucked it up and ventured out. Surprisingly enough it wasn't horrible...in fact, not only did I survive but I paid $13 for a $50 toy...so maybe I would be willing to do it again in future years.

Anyhow, I just wanted to pop in real quick to post this page that I made using a sketch from Sketch~N~Scrap.

I used some photos of the kids from this summer...I can't believe how tan Santiago was!! I have a great mix of product here...Crate Paper On Trend, Fancy Pants Down by the Shore, some older Scenic Route, Basic Grey & My Mind's Eye, and some of the brand new Pink Paislee Hey Kid. The ephemera pack was jampacked with fun little tidbits.

Thanks for looking...I'm off to enjoy Thanksgiving leftovers with the in-laws!

ScrapMuch?

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope everyone is enjoying their time with friends and/or family. What are you doing to celebrate? We will be having a late afternoon dinner at my brother-in-law's house, and it's potluck-style so I spent the morning making a few side dishes and an egg-free, dairy-free dessert for Paolina. Now I have a bit of time to post this layout before we head out the door. I used the below sketch from ScrapMuch?

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

If you've been following my blog, maybe you will remember that at the end of October I posted a layout of some flowers Noé gave me for my birthday in 2009. The above layout is the adjoining page with the card he (and Santiago) gave me.

Thanks for looking...and again a Happy Thanksgiving!

Sketchabilities

Three days into Santiago's week off from school and we've been enjoying our time together. I thought he was going to be incredibly restless and beg to play computer games and/or watch cartoons all day. Instead he's been helpful when I've done chores, well-behaved when we've run errands, and we've had the opportunity to play some games & puzzles that we can't usually do when Paolina is home because she's still too small to play them. Of course he has spent some time playing his beloved Minecraft and also gone over to the neighbor's house to play, which I have been thankful for. I really do need about an hour or so of quiet per day or I'm just completely on edge. So I'm taking one of these rare quiet moments to post this layout that I did this past weekend using a sketch from Sketchabilities, one of my all time favorite sketch blogs. Here's the sketch I had to work with...

And here's my take on it...

I used this adorable photo of my boys napping on a Sunday afternoon a few months ago. It's funny how I sometimes don't notice minor things about my layouts until I'm staring at it on the computer screen. I'm just now realizing I didn't put a date on it....hope I remember to do that before putting it away in it's album!

Everything on this page (except for the background paper obviously) is scraps and other old miscellaneous bits & pieces. I love being able to do that! Anyhow, thanks so much for looking and have a happy Thanksgiving!

Let's Get Sketchy November Week 4

Happy Monday! Ok maybe not so happy for me. Remember how thrilled I was that we were having temperatures in the 80s...well my wish did NOT come true. The fabulous weather did not stay...in fact it's like winter here. Below freezing with sleet...and they're even predicting possible snow. SNOW?? I haven't seen the cursed stuff in 10 years. Oh I want to go back to California...

And to make matters worse...Santiago is off school all week. Don't get me wrong...I enjoy spending time with him. But we're talking about being cooped up in the house all day because it's too cold to play outside. I am so not used to this. First we spent most of the summer indoors because of the extreme heat...and now the cold. I really really want to go home...

Well enough of my pity party...on to actual fun stuff like scrapbooking. Maybe you live somewhere cold too and will have time indoors this week to spend getting some done. If so, here's another sketch from Let's Get Sketchy to inspire you.

And my take on it...

I thought it appropriate to scrap some Thanksgiving photos since here in the States we will be celebrating later this week. These are from 2008 when my mother & father-in-law came out to visit us...Santiago was just 7 months old. I used the same produce as I did with my Thanksgiving Dinner layout posted last week....mostly older stuff like KI Memories Grateful & SEI Poppy, but a tad bit of newer Studio Calico Sundrifter. Oh and I actually got out my Sizzix Sidekick to do the title. I'm embarrassed to say it's been years since I used that thing. Anyhow, thanks for looking and have a wonderful week.

Let's Get Sketchy "Inspired" Magazine

I was so excited when the founder of Let's Get Sketchy announced that she was going to release an online magazine. I was even more excited when she told the LGS design team that she wanted us to design for the magazine as well. The first issue was released on November 1st...have you had a chance to check it out? The magazine is aptly titled "Inspired" as it is absolutely pages full of scrappy inspiration! Readers also have a chance to be published. Check out this link for more information.

Below are the layouts that I had featured in the magazine.

If you haven't yet had the chance you should go check it out here. We're all so proud of the work that was put into this issue. And coming soon will be a special Christmas publication which will be filled with Christmas layouts, cards and other projects. They are looking for submissions for the magazine as well as a special layout to grace its cover...for more information on having your layout appear in the magazine you can go here, and for more information about being featured on the cover you can go here.

Stuck on U Sketches

Happy Hump Day! Well what's left of it anyway. I had to actually put thought into what day it was this morning, as my week has been a bit topsy turvy. I woke up early Sunday morning feeling sick, went back to sleep and didn't wake up again until two in the afternoon. I proceeded to sleep the remainder of the day, only awake long enough to eat once. I slept almost all Monday morning...until 11:30am to be precise. I guess I had the flu. My only symptoms were an achy body and extreme fatigue. I'm pretty sure I haven't had the flu for well over 10 years. So I'll cross my fingers and hope I'll go another 10 without coming down with it again. Today I feel fully back to health, but needless to say I am now behind on housework and still disoriented as to the day of the week.

This past Friday I did a layout using a sketch from a new blog that I recently discovered called Stuck on U Sketches, and as I was going out the door this morning I remembered I had never photographed it. And then I panicked that I had probably missed the deadline to link it up to their blog. Once I got home I realized I still have another day before the link closes so I breathed a sigh of relief. I know that getting my scrapbooking done is really just a personal goal I set for myself, but when I use a particular sketch, I really want to give credit where credit is due in regards to my inspiration, so it's always a disappointment to me if I miss a deadline to link my layout up to the originating blog. Anyhow, here's the sketch I had to work with...

And here's my take on it...

Except for a few more photos I have of him at his newborn photo shoot, this was the last I have to scrap of Santiago as a newborn. Bittersweet! I'm pleased with myself in terms of accomplishment but sad that I won't have any more photos of him so tiny to reminisce over while I'm scrapping. Oh wait! I can look through the actual scrapbooks to reminisce...that is what they are for right lol? Well thanks to those of you who took the time to look at my page, and have a great remaining week.

Scrappy Friends

Happy Saturday everyone! Sooo just when I was getting super homesick for the amazing climate back home in California...Dallas went and gave me a sweet gift for the weekend! Yesterday started to warm up, today it's about 80 degrees and tomorrow is supposed to be 85. Ahhhh....finally feeling at home. The only thing better than wearing shorts in November is wearing them come winter too. So if we can just keep these temps for Christmas I will be one happy girl!

On to scrappy things! I got a chance to play along with the the Scrappy Friends challenge this month. This is one of my favorite monthly challenges as it combines a sketch with several challenges that typically help me use up my stash and/or try a new technique. So along with the below sketch by Brenda, Rochelle challenged us to use a "family" theme for the layout and Kristi B challenged us to incorporate dots & chevrons into the page.

I used a photo of Noé with Santiago when he was only 3 months old. Doesn't it just make you smile? I used lots of Crate Paper The Pier product, the last of the Fancy Pants Roadshow scraps siting on my desk, along with some Carta Bella Alphabet Junction that I received as a prize from S.W.A.T. Thank you Lanette! And thank you for looking...have a wonderful weekend!

S.W.A.T.

Before moving out to Dallas from Southern California, I was serving on four different design teams. With all the craziness involved in packing & unpacking, I knew that it would be impossible to keep up with my duties for so many teams so I made the difficult decision to resign from two of those teams. And then of course several months later, after attempting to take on the administrative duties of one of those four sites I closed that blog. I truly miss the challenges and the other ladies on those teams though! And now that life has finally fallen into more of a predictable routine, I try to go back and visit those sites and play along with their challenges. Last week I was able to join in with Boy Meets Girl and this week I have made a page for S.W.A.T. For Drill #19 we have been challenged to create a layout that featuring photos of food or a recipe.

In keeping with the current season, I used a photo of our dinner table from Thanksgiving back in 2008. The product is older too...some My Mind's Eye, Basic Grey, SEI and KI Memories from years passed. I tried to update the older product by painting the background paper and adding in a few scraps from more recent collections...Studio Calico Sundrifter and Crate Paper Maggie Holmes.

Thanks for looking and have a fabulous weekend!

Let's Get Sketchy November Week 2

Happy Monday! Time for another sketch over at Let's Get Sketchy! It seems like team A usually works with my sketches but this month my team was given one.

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

I've been feeling a bit homesick so I thought I would pull out some pics from our photo shoot at Crystal Cove Beach back in 2011. None of the photos quite worked with the sketch so I decided to rotate and flip it to accommodate the photo I wanted to use. I will always love love baby feet! I used mostly scraps sitting on my craft table and was thinking that I haven't used flowers on any of my layouts lately so I dove into my Prima stash. I've never been much for using rub-ons yet I seem to have a plethora of them...so it made me feel good to use three on this page.

Please go check out how the other girls at Let's Get Sketchy used the sketch and hopefully you will be inspired to join in!!

Thanksgiving Inspired Page

With Thanksgiving right around the corner I was inspired to pull out some photos of Thanksgivings past that I had yet to get scrapped. When I saw that Boy Meets Girl is running a challenge for the first part of the month to create a page with a fall theme and a male subject, I knew I should scrap a photo from Santiago's first Thanksgiving. To make the page I used sketch #53 from the My Scraps & More Sketches blog.

And this is what it inspired me to create...

I love that at that age Santiago always had this same surprised look on his face when I took photos of him. 

The background paper of this page is Basic Grey Clippings and the scraps are Fancy Pants Road Show (sitting on my desk after the last two layouts I made), Sassafras Lass My Dearest (also sitting on my desk from an altered autumn banner I made for a client), Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm and Crate Paper The Pier. The ephemera is Echo Park Fall Fever and Crate Paper Lemon Grass. Isn't it great to use up scraps that haven't even been put away yet?

Sketchabilities

After finally scrapping that photo from our friends' wedding on a page last week..I was motivated to scrap one more photo from the reception...which also helped me to use up more of the Basic Grey Capella & Fancy Pants Roadshow product that I have been hoarding for way too long! And it was all thanks to the stunning sketch that is currently running at Sketchabilities. Here's the sketch...

And here's what it inspired me to create...

Thanks for looking!

Stuck?! Sketches

It's always a privilege & honor to have an opportunity to guest design for a challenge site or blog, especially one that has cool sketches and an amazing design team. And that's just what I am doing for Stuck?! Sketches this week. Check out the awesome sketch I had to work with...

And this is what I did with it...

This page has a mix of Fancy Pants Down by the Shore, Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm and Crate Paper Maggie Holmes and Sundrifter. I love that manufacturers usually have color trends that carry across lines released at the same time. Makes it all that much easier to mix and match, especially I'm down to just scraps.

I encourage you to head over to the Stuck?! Sketches blog to see what their talented design team did and to join along as well! You have until November 29th to link up for a chance at a prize from Linnie Blooms.