My Croppy Summer Challenge #12 & #13 (with a Twist)

I have a confession to make: even though I live in a place where other people come to spend their summer holidays, I don't actually particularly enjoy summer myself. I mean, in the dead cold of winter I think that I love summer, but when it is actually here I realize that it is not my favorite season after all.

The heat, the humidity, the bright glaring sunlight that renders you blind when you come in from hanging out the laundry... not my favorite things. And this summer is panning out to be even less enjoyable than others since the pool still isn't ready to be used and we still haven't had the boat out on the lake since the new licensing requirements went into effect and no on in the family has their license yet. Oh yeah, and we also have a bear that has made himself at home on our property so at the moment we are having to keep the kids indoors. Fun, fun, fun...

Ok, enough whining. I apologize but my husband is out of town and I have no one to vent to at the moment.

There is a point to all this complaining though and the point is that a couple of days ago I found someone else who shares my opinion of summer. And that someone just happens to be hosting a series of scrapping challenges, appropriately titled "My Croppy Summer".

So, since the one good thing about summer is that when it is hot outside no one really expects you to do housework or bake, I spent most of yesterday and this morning in my craft room with the AC and the iPod blasting, making layouts for Lori's challenge.These first two layouts are for Assignment #12 which was to use die cut paper. Both these pages are for Ellie's baby album, and you will notice that I am in a bit of a chocolate and pink mood. I am also in a bit of a lazy scrapping mood so both of these LO's are fairly simple as a result.

SUPPLIES
Making Memories die cut paper, brad, metal alphas
Maya Road shear journaling card
Heidi Swapp flowers
Unknown ribbon

SUPPLIES
American Crafts patterned paper, rub on
Bazzil cardstock
KI Memories die cut paper
K & Company bling, glitter alphas
Making Memories brad
Unknown ribbon

This third page is for Assignment #13: crumple, tear, antique or otherwise distress something on your layout. I wasn't feeling very inspired so I turned to one of my favorite sketch sites for help and used Twisted Sketch #58. It actually worked out really well since the twist for this sketch happened to be "texture". Hopefully it is apparent in the picture that I did a lot of distressing and roughing on the paper edges, and my flowers are made of crumpled songbook pages. The chip alphas are textured and the brads are corduroy, so that should satisfy everyone.

SUPPLIES

My Mind's Eye patterned paper
Sassafras patterned paper, playing cards
DCWV chip alphas
Pink Paislee brads
American Crafts thickers
Vintage songbook pages

And I just noticed that Lori has posted Assignment #14 so I am going to take a look at it and see if I can't squeeze one more page in before I have to start thinking about dinner for the kids.

Read more...

My Favorite Store

There are a lot of really great scrapbooking challenge blogs out there and one of my new favorites is These Are a Few of My Favorite Things. Most challenge blogs are based on the model of providing a sketch, possibly with a twist, and having participants submit a layout based on it. I love playing along with sketch challenges, in fact virtually all the pages I have done lately have been based on sketches. I find they are such a great way to jump start my creativity and give me a direction for my layouts.

What I love about the These Are a Few of My Favorite Things challenge is that instead of providing a sketch, their challenges provide a prompt about, you guessed it, your favorite things. In recent weeks it has been toys, shoes, books, and this week's prompt, my favorite store.

I know for myself, it is really easy to get focused on scrapbooking cute pictures of my kids. And while that is important, I think it is really important to be including pieces of me and of our everyday lives in the albums as well. Including "favorites" pages has been on my scrapping-to-do list for a while now and I am hoping that playing along with these challenges will help me actually accomplish this goal.

This week's prompt was perfect for me since I absolutely love our local thrift store and already had some pictures I had snapped of some of my favorite thrift store finds - vintage crafts supplies, including my vintage button stash.

And since multi-talking is always a good thing, I based my layout on sketch #55 from Twisted Sketches. This one was actually pretty light on supplies. I used some more of my favorite October Afternoon patterned paper from the Fly a Kite line, and I actually used one of my thrift store purchases, a sewing pattern from 1954, as the background for my page. And of course I had to incorporate some of my vintage buttons.

SUPPLIES
October Afternoon patterned paper
American Crafts cardstock, thickers
Ck Stenography font
Vintage buttons, sewing pattern, cord

Read more...