ScrapMuch? Part 1

Happy Tuesday! Wow...another month has completely gotten away from me. And once again I'm trying to share all the pages I've made throughout the month in the last few days of said month. Today I have three layouts I created using inspiration from ScrapMuch? The first was based on theitrMarch 4th sketch...

And here's my take on it...

For this page I used pictures from my 30th birthday when my sweet hubby surprised me with a little belated get-together at my favorite Indian restaurant.

When choosing the papers for this page, I started with the Dear Lizzy Serendipity line and then pulled some of my paper scraps to coordinate. I didn't have enough of the Serendipity collection to a create a two-page background, but I found that some pink paper from My Mind's Eye Abbey Road matched perfectly!

On the background paper, I used the packaging technique with my gelatos. And then I splattered some white and gold Heidi Swapp Color Shine. Photos never do justice to how shiny that gold ink is!

Thanks for looking and please stay tuned for two more pages I created using ScrapMuch? sketches...

Let's Get Sketchy!

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Yesterday was my birthday, so between celebrating that and Easter, ours was busy and fun! I didn't have time to scrapbook, but last week I got several layouts done and today I would like to share one I did using a sketch by Let's Get Sketchy!

Often times sketches are just a jumping point for me. Sometimes I will flip or rotate them. Sometimes I rearrange the title, journaling or embellishment placement to suit how my page has evolved from the sketch, But in this case my layout looks nearly exactly as the original sketch. See for yourself...

Santiago has been going to a summer camp the last two years and each year they have a Talent Show. This photo was taken of him and his friend, who also attends the camp, doing their comedy routine for the show.

I wanted a simple background that wouldn't overpower the triangles in the design of the sketch, so I chose white cardstock and then just did a little messy mixed media work. If you haven't tried the packaging technique to create a watercolor effect you really should. I love it! I sprayed some of my ink sprays (Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist and Shimmerz Spritz) onto a small piece of plastic packaging material, diluted it a bit with water, and then just "smooshed" it onto my cardstock. Then I added a few splatters with the same ink spray as well as some Heidi Swapp black Color Shine.

The rest of the layout came together in no time as I just followed the sketch. I wanted to use that Amy Tangerine "leaf" patterned paper, so I just went through my scrap stash and pulled different pieces that coordinated. I love that the American Craft Thickers were the exact shade of orange-yellow to match the page!

Thanks for looking and have a great day!

Stuck?! Sketches

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! I'm here today to share some exciting news...a secret I've been keeping for about a week now. I know I haven't been blogging much lately. Life has just been especially busy. It's always a struggle to balance real life with my creative time. Somehow or another, for the last seven years I have managed to serve on various design teams. Sometimes I was unsure of how I would juggle those duties alongside running a (since closed) small business and being a stay-at-home mom to two small children. But scrapbooking is my passion and serving on those teams not only challenged me, but helped me develop friendships with ladies all over the country (and even the world) so I just made it work. At one point I was serving on four teams at once. I quickly came to the conclusion that serving on two teams was the maximum time I could devote to the attached responsibilities. And then this past July I made the decision to resign from my one-and-only design team. It was summer (so the kids were home) and we were packing, remodeling our new house and then moving in to the house. I didn't even have my scrappy supplies available to create, so resigning seemed like the logical path to take. Once I unpacked my supplies, jumped back into creating, and I was not distracted by design team duties, I was on a huge roll. I was cranking out about five layouts a week, which for me is impressive. I was even pretty good about sharing consistently here on my blog...for a few months. I soon realized that while not serving on a design team freed up more of my time to actually scrapbook, it was not holding me accountable to consistently sharing my layouts. It dawned on me recently that I went the entire month of February without a single blog post. I also really miss the camaraderie that is developed between design team members. I feel a bit disconnected from the scrappy world when I'm not constantly communicating with my online scrappy friends. Now hopefully you've managed to make it through this lengthy monologue to hear about my exciting news...I'm so thrilled to announce that I an now a member of the Stuck?! Sketches Creative Team. This is truly an honor for me. Laura Whitaker creates the most amazing sketches, and I use them frequently. Sooooo how awesome is it that I get to be a part of this team and share the pages I've created with those sketches twice a month?!

Here is the layout I submitted for my team application...

Last year we happened to be enjoying a beautiful day at the park on National Siblings Day. I did what any good scrapbooking mother would do and requested a photo of Paolina and Santiago together. Not only did they oblige, but the kids gave me some pretty good pictures.

The sketch is, of course, from Stuck?! Sketches. The product is, as usual, a mish mash of different manufacturers and lines. The background paper is from a pad I picked up from Wal-Mart (?) a year or two ago. I think it might be Colorbok? The paper scraps are Studio Calico, Crate Paper and American Crafts. The heart washi tape I found at the Dollar Tree around Valentine's Day, The title is done with two different types of American Craft Thickers. For the background, I just used a little gesso to tone down the busyness of all the phrases and then splattered a little Heidi Swapp Color Shine. I also handstitched some circles and then added some additional ones using a Sharpie. I'm pleased that all the colors worked so well together, given that they came from so many different product lines.

Thanks for looking! And make sure you check out the Stuck?! Sketches blog to meet the rest of the new Creative Team members.

Pixels and Paper

Happy Tuesday everyone. I can't believe how long it's been since I posted! I've actually been doing a lot of scrapbooking, but just have not found the time to get on here and share it. However, today I have the perfect reason to get back in the swing of things...I'm so honored to be the March Guest Designer over at Pixels and Paper Challenge Blog.

This month's challenge was to use create a monochromatic layout or other project using inspiration from the following image. It does not have to be brown like the photo, but it must be monochromatic.

The first thing I noticed about the photo was the latte art, which inspired me to create a page with lots of circles with hearts in the middle. My mind then wandered to a layout created by Missy Whidden, that I had seen some months ago. Quite honestly, I've wanted to lift her page ever since I laid eyes on it and to also try the technique she used to create her circles. And this is what I came up with...

If you would like to see her technique for creating those super cool mixed media circles, she made a tutorial that's on YouTube that you can check out here. And of course I hope that the Pixels and Paper March challenge will give you some inspiration as well. You can play along and link up your project through March 31st.

New Layouts for a New Year

Happy Monday everyone! And I suppose since I haven't posted since December I should wish you all a Happy New Year too lol! Seriously though, what. just. happened to the first half of January?? I can only attribute this loss of time to the kids being all off schedule for basically the last four weeks. First it was Winter Break with all the holiday mayhem, they finally went back to school on January 5th, and then just when we all got used to being back on schedule...the kids are currently on a four-day weekend. Personally I've been discombobulated since Thanksgiving. I'm pretty sure my brain is a bit like a toddler's...it requires consistent schedules to keep me in line lol.

Anyhow, I actually have been getting a fair amount of scrapbooking in...especially after January 5th (wink wink). But alas, even in Texas Winter rears its ugly head. We've had a fair amount of gloom, cold and gusty wind...and days that were decent I was taking the kids to the park to combat cabin fever. So I haven't had much opportunity for photographing my completed projects. So I'm going to have to apologize up front for the quality of photographs for the next few posts because I finally threw up my arms, said "enough is enough" and attempted to take photos in poor sunlight. Unfortunately, in my opinion, no amount of editing can properly correct that. And frankly I need to just move on and not agonize over it.

Without further ado, the two below pages were inspired by sketches from Let's Get Sketchy...

For this first layout I used the January Week 1 sketch from Let's Get Sketchy. The photos are from the last day of Paolina's art camp this past summer. She absolutely loved it, and I love that she's really becoming a little artist. She adores painting and scrapbooking, and she has requested to take a clay & pottery class for art camp this coming summer.

My second page was created using The January Week 2 sketch from Let's Get Sketchy...

This is one of those pages that started out looking very much like the sketch, but then it just started to take on a life of it's own. Not only was this layout inspired by a Let's Get Sketchy sketch but also by the January challenge at Pixels and Paper which was to take inspiration from the below photo and to use "paint" on your project...

As you can see, I was inspired several ways by this image. When I saw it, I was immediately reminded of the photo I had of Paolina with her face painted at a festival we had gone to a few years ago. And then the background paper I found, not only looked perfect with my photo but was ideal for the challenge as well.

Thanks so much for looking at my pages, and have a fantastic week!