The agony of defeat

Thanks so much to all of you who voted for my layout in the Queen of Paradise contest. I didn't win, and didn't even make the top 4, but I was inspired to create several pages that I really like so it's all good. Thanks to the design team at Croppin' Paradise for hosting a really fun contest. I posted my first two challenge layouts earlier, so here are my submissions from rounds 3, 4, and 5.

Challenge 3: Create a page about the person you'd want to be with if you were stranded on a desert island.


Challenge 4: Scrap your favorite book.


Challenge 5: Use only products more than six months old.

Queen of Paradise Update

Tonight over at Croppin Paradise they announced the immunity winners from round two, and I didn't get immunity this time. Boo hoo, boo hoo. Tomorrow we'll find out what the next challenge will be, and those entries will be posted for voting on Sunday.

For the round two challenge, we were shown a photo of a tropical beach scene and told to create a layout using at least two colors from the photo. I made these two and chose (with a little help from some friends) to submit the first one.

School Days Scrapping

Last week I picked up a cute school-themed paper pad by My Mind's Eye, and it's got me in school-scrapping mode. I am really ready for school to start, not because my kids are bored and driving me crazy, but because I am bored and ready to get back into a routine. Both children have been at camp all day for weeks, and I miss them. I am at loose ends with nothing to do, and feeling a bit useless. I realize that this is a problem many moms would love to have, but I am ready for fall and back-to-school and church activities and an upcoming trip to Chicago with some wonderful friends.



These papers have wonderful texture, spot embossing, and glitter, which makes even these very simple pages look a little bit fancier, and somehow sparkly school buses are perfect for Annamarie.

Simple Vacation Album

I have been working on an album for the big American Southwest vacation we took last year. Because we took so many photos, a couple thousand at least, I am using a very simple style with a lot of photos per page. For the title page, I printed out a map of our route that Ron created using Microsoft's Streets & Trips software. (Have I ever mentioned how that man loves to plan a trip? He is a trip-planning fool.)

Here are the first few pages, created mostly with cardstock, scraps, and the Making Memories Slice and the Travel cartridge. I plan to add at least a little embellishment to the plainest pages, but right now I am all about getting the photos and journaling (done by Mr. Trip Planner on the laptop as we traveled!) down on the page.

I will never sleep tonight

HI! HOW ARE YOU? I'M GOOD, REALLY GOOD. I was feeling pretty draggy before I went to pick Thomas up from summer camp for the weekend, and I thought a cup of hot cranberry tea might perk me up a little, and now I AM PERKY. "Bouncing off the walls" might not be an overstatement. We're getting ready to head out to dinner with a friend, but I thought I'd use some of this excess energy to post a couple of layouts. Maybe after we get home I'll have some more tea and whip out 15 or 16 pages before I crash.

Many times I have considered signing up for a kit club but haven't actually bitten the bullet until Margie Romney-Aslett and her daughters announced the opening of The Girls' Loft. I love Margie's style and knew that I'd love the things she threw together, and I was not disappointed when I received my first package this week. Look at all of this pretty pink-and-greenness.



Both of the pages below were done with the Girls' Loft kit. The first one is an older photo that I have scrapped before, but it's one of my favorites.

Yes, I am scrapping

The embellishments on this last one might look a little random, but all of them were part of the kits used in classes on the Ultimate Scrapbook Cruise. So there's a sticker from Heidi Swapp, a rub-on from Karen Russell, a brad from Margie Romney-Aslett, etc.

When my friend Sandy left to spend three months in New Zealand, I told myself that I was going to do one scrap-related thing every day while she was gone. Clearly I misunderstood myself, and I did approximately one layout the whole time she was gone. The scrapping fire seems to be rekindled in me now, and I've created a bunch of layouts in the past week, including these:

Just a little acrylic album for a friend with a new grandbaby. I made it very simple and left most of the pages blank so that she can add photos. I had a blast using both my Slice and my new Bind-It-All on this.





I had some scraps from that project and another layout lying on my desk and thought they looked pretty together, so I whipped this one up. I love these colors so much. (The papers are Heidi Swapp and Making Memories.)

Tonight's work

Since my design team gig evaporated, I don't really have a place to post my layouts online and so I'm using my blog as my gallery for now. It has been fun this week to just scrap for me, and these simple layouts are going pretty quickly. The background papers on both of the first two pages are papers that I love and have been hoarding for just the right time. I went ahead and used them and the sky didn't start falling. I am trying to break out of hoarding mode and actually use the stuff I have before it's as out of date as the eggs in my fridge.







There is a big BIG box of new supplies coming my way soon, including a Bind-It-All, which I have been wanting for a long time. I love to play with new tools, and the Bind-It-All feeds right into my mini-album addiction.

Too fast

I think Annamarie looks so grown up in this picture. What's happening to my babies??

Determined to get my mojo back

I have spent the past week reorganizing and purging in my scrap area, and while it's not perfectly finished, I am beginning to feel like I can find things again. I was feeling overwhelmed by too much stuff and after a brutal purge, I think I own less patterned paper than I have in 8 or 9 years. And I am finally taking those 8,000 Zig markers to my Sunday School class. It's kind of freeing!

My dearest local friend left today to spend three months in New Zealand with her new granddaughter, and I am going to be so lonely without her to hang out with. I am going to try to use my spare time getting some real, back-to-basics scrapping done. One of the reasons I've been in a scrapping funk recently is that the design team I've been part of for nearly four years has been disbanded. We've seen it coming, and it's really the best thing for the owner, but it makes me very sad and leaves me without a DT gig. I am pretty much OK with that...it's never been about the recognition for me, but it has been so inspiring to work with such a talented group. And I cannot tell a lie: I will miss the discount.

Here's a page I did tonight. It's Ron and Annamarie at her school's family Valentine dance.

Baby card

I haven't been doing much real scrapping recently, but I have made a few cards, and I keep sending them away before I remember to photograph them. This one is going to a soon-to-be-born little bundle in New Zealand. The striped paper is the wrapping paper I used on the gift.



I also did a layout using a rare photo of me and Ron, based on a challenge at Create My Keepsake to do a love page using no red and no hearts. I sprayed Maya Mist over one of Heidi Swapp's masks for the background. I love to use new techniques, but whenever I try to get artsy my pages end up looking "chumpy," to use my friend Maureen's word. I should probably stick to the simpler style.

True Love Mini Album

Hmm, about the only subject I haven't documented in a mini-album is my love of mini-albums. Wouldn't it be funny to have a little book in the mini-album basket with pictures of the other mini-albums? And how many more times can I say "mini-albums"?

I really made this one just to play with the beautiful Love Letters line from My Little Yellow Bicycle. There are so many wonderful embellishments in this line and the colors are wonderful. MLYB debuted more great new lines at CHA-W--I can't wait to get my hands on some of them. I am a sucker for travel lines and they have a great one coming soon.















I listed this album on Etsy, despite my lack of luck there. Clearly I am not trying hard enough. Don't you need a little album for your Valentine?

I am easily distracted

So I said earlier in a post at Busy Bee that my plans for the afternoon were to clean out my shameful closet and take before and after photos. Here's what I've done so far (click on the image to see it larger):



Nothing sparks my creative instinct like the prospect of avoiding housework. This layout is very different for me...I don't do many heritage layouts. But last week I bought some Tattered Angels Glimmer Mists and Glimmer Screens (masks) that I wanted to play with, and this page was the result of that. I tried using the spray on canvas first, but I should have used watercolor canvas and the waterbased spray pooled too much on the treated canvas. In person the sprayed parts of the layout are beautifully shimmery but it's hard to photograph.

In other news, the drop-off of our little boarder went well. Ron took him while I was at horseback riding with Annamarie, and you can see from these photos that he is terrified by the thought of leaving his loving, nurturing family.





These photos were taken by Ron, bless his heart. I hope that orb in the second photo is Thomas' guardian angel. Ron said that when they arrived, the other boarders who hadn't gone home for the weekend were all sitting around playing Nintendo DS. He hoped that Thomas wouldn't be immediately bored to tears, clearly forgetting who he was dealing with. I'm sure that there aren't many opportunities for sitting around playing video games, but he just may be praying that rain always cancels planned activities.

Yeah, scrapping!

This first layout was part of a tag challenge at Busy Bee. I lifted a layout by Shawna Webster and now someone will lift mine and the challenge will continue. Check it out here.


I did this layout last night while watching Definitely, Maybe. What a cute movie! Sandy and I attended a simulcast of Living Proof Live at her church and although this photo is terrible (we asked a stranger to take it) I wanted to remember the awesomeness of that weekend and also to use Heidi Swapp's amazing new lines. The pocket contains a bunch of the scriptures from the weekend. It scanned way brighter than it actually is, but I am far too lazy to rescan it.