Frill Ride

I have this huge assortment of ribbons and other fibers that I'm never using on my layout, so I attempted a fuzzy border on this photo of Rainier rock in out in the living room earlier this year. My dad Ed sent her the horse for Christmas, all the way from his house in New Jersey, so I get a real warm and fuzzy feeling inside when I see her on it!

While we were at the Scrapbook Expo earlier this month I picked up some Studio Calico wood veneer pieces (finally) and so after inking them a bit, I had to add those to my layout, as well as the piece of paper I was testing my new wood parquet stencil on, part of a 12x12" sheet out of the Indie Chic collection, and a bit of the paper tapes we picked up too. All perfectly justifiable purchases since I used them right away :-)

I couldn't come up with a title on my own, so I asked for help from Ray. He suggested, "Thrill Ride." I asked him, did you look at any of the girly stuff on the page?! Ha, ha, I played off his title ~and my observation on his lack of observation~ and came up with "frill ride." I love it!

Rainier really is about the sweetest soul I have ever encountered; these small phrase stickers echo my heart's sentiment perfectly!

 

While Moms Away, She's Gonna Play!

Every summer, my friend Angela invites us (adult) girls up to her family's cabin outside of Shelton. This year it was my and Marilyn staying overnight with her and I managed to fill in some of the time making some scrapbook pages- what a surprise!
I keep a to-go package of papers and some old photos that I can grab on a whim. I'll need to add some more photos though, because I used quite a few of them this weekend. Included were these darling pictures of Rainier that were taken when she was between three and six months old. The one of her in the striped shirt looks so much like Sunday! A new technique I tried on this layout, I used my new EK Success Scalloped border punch to cut from  the same patterned paper for a dimensional but very subtle look. Using pop-dots helped to bring some more attention to that detail. And then underneath I put the title and another photo.


Then it was a trip even farther back in the past to scrap some photos from when my mom first met and started dating her husband Peter. That is the look of love in their eyes! It also looks like it was a really nice summer! Some scraps made the layouts really easy to put together and I', happy with the way they turned out, even if they are a bit simple. I figured I could always add more bling to them if I felt they needed it in the future.

 


 Then it was time to use what was left on my desk to create these four cards. That's a great way to avoid cleaning up! Plus I knew all the papers would go together since they were pulled from coordinated paper packs.

  My sister Ruby came out to see us the summer after Rainie was born and we took her to Ruby beach. These photos show her wonder at playing in the sand for the first time at the Pacific Ocean. Using paper packs is a really easy way to get a cohesive look when you're scrapping a series of photos like this beach trip that spans more than one page.

 I even managed to get Marilyn to make a few pages for her recent trip to Punta Cana! She did a great job for it being very late at night when she made them!

 

 

Oh and did I mention that I lost my glasses upon jumping into the lake immedieatly upon my arrival?! So despite our best efforts to look for them, all of these pages were made "blind."

What a fun weekend filled with memories :-)

Creating Keepsakes Scrapbook Convention Registration is Open!

This fact may not be enough to get your blood racing as a flurry of creative ideas race through your mind, but for me, this announcement comes at the near end of almost a year of waiting! Well, the convention is in November. So I haven't been waiting THAT long I guess, but it's something I look forward to each year beginning the day it ends.
Every year my Dear Friend and I head up to Bellevue to enjoy shopping, classes, and a ton of fun together. There are tons of vendors loaded with products and a lot of the booths have make-and-takes too. The variety of classes offered ensure there is something to be learned by everybody. I love the SEI and Embellish It! classes because they are fast paced and match my style, plus I love the goodies we get to play with. I've already been looking over the class list and it looks like Creating Keepsakes has some new classes I'm interested in. I also saw one featuring October Afternoon, one of my favorite designers.
Last year, we tried something new that will definitely be repeated; Volunteering! What a great way to be exposed to the class information, while sharing the demos and helping participants too. I personally pretend I am Vanna White :-)
My girlfriend and I wake up bright and early Friday morning, and, armed with an extra large coffee, we drive up, giggling with excitement the entire way. The last couple of years we've stayed overnight up at the Hilton, so the trunk of my car is filled to the brim with our scrappy supplies for the cropping we do at night with all our new stuff. As soon as we park the car, we look at each other and she always asks, "Are. You. Ready?"

Oh, Yes.... I am!  Maybe I should break out the blue sequined dress for my volunteering roles?! :-)

Notice Anything Different?

I'm making a few changes to my blog, did you notice the tabs up above now? Hopefully these will make it a little easier and a bit more fun to navigate my site. I plan to feature some of my favorite projects under the "Greatest" tab, and (obviously) I put all my process videos in one place, too. They are listed with the most current at the top :-)
Let me know what you think about this small but somewhat interesting development :-)

Forever Friends

Two Peas In a Bucket Co-Founder Kristina Nicolai-White inspired me to print off a sheet of their current free summer file and I'm so glad I did; the bright colors of the sun rays and the motifs in the circles mirror the bright warmth of the sun shining down myself and one of my greatest friends.

Flashback to the late 80''s  and you'd find the two of us spending nearly every weekend together. Sunday mornings I'd always go to Sunday School with her at Christ the King Lutheran church in Tacoma, which was across the street from our elementary school, Harvard. Yes, we really went to Harvard at that early age :-)! In fact we discovered our friendship began in kindergarten class, which for some reason for our class was held on the stage... no surprise that we were learning to hog the spotlight from the get-go.

Jenny's mom, Patty, and my incredibly crafty mom were our Campfire leaders, too, so once a week (I think- it was 25 years ago) we'd gather with a gaggle of our girlfriends to learn all about preserving our earth, being kind to others, and those beautiful songs to sing around the potential campfire.

When we were in middle school, Jennifer and I each moved to Gig Harbor, albeit different ends of the Peninsula so to speak. Many years passed with the occasional run in at karaoke nights, until last year when we found each other again on facebook and decided to officially get together. It was just as if we were right back in grade school again; giggling long into the night and swapping stories about all our "old" friends. I felt so comfortable with her that when I found out I was expecting, I invited (demanded) her presence into the delivery room to photograph our daughter's arrival! Now that's a real friend, isn't it? The kind that, after 15 years or so, can walk right into the delivery room and start snapping (modest) photos of your hoo-hah!?!

All joking aside, she is a delightful person to be around. Her snappy come-backs and sarcastic observations perfectly compliment my delayed deadpan responses and optimistic say-sos. She's a great deal of fun to hang out with and it doesn't hurt that she always wants to drive to our events! She still makes me laugh until my sides hurt as we solve the problems of today and continue to reminisce about "the good ol' days."

Jennifer has truly become a part of my family and one of the only people I feel confident confiding to... the best kind of friend for me is one who isn't offended if a few weeks pass without a call or text or going out; she knows that I'm thinking of her because, she's thinking of me!

When I think of how long our friendship has lasted, I'm always reminded of one of the songs we learned way back when, "Make new friends, but keep the old, one is Silver, and the other Gold."

 

Halfway Complete!

This afternoon I was just looking at my pages and rearranging a few in my album. I happened to notice that these two pages are almost completed! with a few photos placed on top I think they'll look great.

Why did it look this great you may ask... Did I plan this ahead of time ? the answer is No.

You may have heard me talk on my videos about how I cut the backs of my papers out. Basically any paper that won't be showing I cut out of the background pattern paper . That's because I love paper and I can hardly stand to use any pretty piece, even though that is why I bought it - to use it!

I guess I have a rendezvous with my photo album of un- scrapped pictures tonight! Oh darn :-)

Sunshine and Rainbows

As you may have guessed, as most parents do, we are often calling our girls Rainier and Sunday by the cutsie nicknames we've adopted in our house. We usually call Rainier, Rainie, but we love to call her Rainbow, too. And we named Sunday with the intention of using Sunny, but we somehow just fell into the habit of saying Uhn-day like her sister, who doesn't say the S. Sunday's smile is like a burst of Sunshine for the heart, and in that way she and her sister can make any dreary Washington day brighten instantly :-)
Here is my latest uploaded Scrapbook Process Video, featuring their smiling faces:

I was having a blast editing this clip, however, it didn't seem to translate well when I uploaded it, so a lot of the transitions are weird. I hope you enjoy it anyway, and hopefully my girls can brighten your day like they do mine!

Daddy Daughter Posing

This photo makes me smile every time I see it; when I first showed it to Ray, he immediately joked that we needed a paternity test for Sunday! At the time she seemed to look SO different than him that I wasn't at all offended by his comment. Now, after a few months, when I look at this photo I can't see that they look different at all, to me they have the exact same expression on their faces!

I tried something new on this layout... new, and yet so often repeated, lol. I dug through my scrap box and found a bunch of brown shades with a little reddish and pink thrown in, trying to match the softness of the colors in the photo. I even found some oranges that seemed to go along nicely from CTMH's old Aspen line. Isn't this Prima background paper beautiful!? I thought the grey was a terrific neutral and it happens to be the same color as their eyes looked on this day.

This weeks episode of Two Peas In A Bucket's Glitter Girl asked that we challenge ourselves to incorporate stamping into our layout, and also to talk about how we used some design principles when adding them in. At least, that was the challenge I was remembering to follow. So, since I have about a zillion stamps, I looked through them all, and after a little impromptu sorting session, I pulled out some journaling, sentiment, and of course the Dad stamp that is so rarely used.

I was trying to create a visual triangle with the colors, using the timepiece and the two stamped doily pieces. I don't usually use vellum but it was so softening against all the harsh corners and angularness of the many layered papers. Then the soft sherbet orange ribbon fit in that white space perfectly for my last finishing touch.

The only thing I sort of don't like so much is that stamping on vellum resulted in some smudging because I can never remember to keep my fingers away from the stamped areas. I probably should have used some embossing powder to set the image cleanly, but alas, my heat gun is in a drawer that refuses to open.

Another great part of making this layout is that it came together really quickly and Rainier and I were able to craft it while Sunday was sleeping. I think she's starting to get some teeth because she is grabbing her mouth and throwing her head back while nursing. That, and whimpering in her sleep, poor baby!

Thanks for stopping by, and please, share any completely all natural teething solutions with me!

 

Garden of Plenty

There is a certain simple beauty in this photo that a year later compels me to scrap it... the late afternoon sun casting shadows of the tomato plants across Rainiers face and the warmth reflected in the ripening fruits causes a reflective pause when I flip past it in my (non-scrapped-photos) album.
 

Do you remember your early experiences with gardening? I do, and what I remember most is the endless weed pulling! But then there is all the fun of harvesting to look forward to -after chasing all the slugs away!

I based my layout on a sketch from shimelle.com using sun rays. Its my first time doing this type of cut apart at the top of my layout and I'm really pleased with it. That seemed to be what a lot of the sketch-submitters were saying too :-)
  I used CTMH's Tommy papers mixed with Simple Stories. Same for the embellishments with a splash of Authentique and Fancy Pants too. The sticks holding my canvas pinwheels came from our shish-kabob skewer stash!

I'm glad the picture I chose to work with is from last year, that way I can do it again in my this year's album and it won't be too repetitious. This year we are already getting peas, summer squash, blackberries of course, and yes the tomatoes are growing. Looking forward to some potatoes, Zucchini, and Spaghetti squash, beans, carrots, leeks, lettuce and a log of weeds too I'm guessing. A bountiful harvest in our back yard!

Sew Thoughtful

Hi there!

I made the sentiment box on this card using the outside of a used frame sticker by SEI. Basically, I just stuck the leftover sticker border in to the paper and cut around it before stamping the sewing machine (CTMH's Puns of Praise Occasions clear stamp set).

The inside says You're Sew Thoughtful.

Fun With Photos

I hope you had a pleasant day celebrating our Nations Independence and the sacrifices of all those who make our freedom possible.

I enjoyed a wonderful day with my family, and even squeezed in a quick card made from some scraps and a few punches. Since my newborn isn't exactly fireworks-friendly, I had some time alone at home while she sleeps. I decided to try out a new photo app! I added a Sparkler effect to the top and bottom borders, the Stars and Stripes border, and it was really easy to add my text, too.

To find this app, I simply went to the Google Play Store and searched "photo." That was hard, right?! I love how my picture enhancement turned out. Hmmm, maybe I can start digitally scrapbooking this way...

Made with #Pixlr# - http://pixlr.com

Poking Fun At Myself

I've had to chuckle at myself a few times today, and since it has been happening ALL DAY, I figured I'd share it so I can start feeling a little less like a crazy person laughing at herself!

Okay, so on Sunday night I finished up my 30th layout for the month of June. And felt so great about having met my self-issued challenge that I went ahead and created one more page :-) The next day I started co-crafting six-by-six pages for a small album. Co-crafter being my oldest daughter, Rainier, who is almost 2 and a half.

So what could be so funny about all of this? Well, I am finding myself wandering in and out of my craft room. In, and out. In, and out. Because I have nothing to work on! No project sitting on my desk! No page to count towards a monthly goal like last week! I would go ahead and blast through that small album, but I really want to make it with Rainie (even though I am a glue hog when it comes to helping her).

I got a much-welcomed email from my Aunt this morning, and so I figured, Aha! I will make her a card! But then I realized, I already had the perfect card made. Boo. Does writing a letter count as crafting?! Then, I flipped through my bursting at the seams album and thought about trying to get it to not burst...decided that was not crafty enough (and requires tools). Boooo! Totally didn't do that!

I finally scratched the itch a bit by cutting out some Pooh and Piglet characters on the Cricut with my Rainbow. This activity turned out to be a lot of fun, and I did get to hog some glue, too. She loves her little cut-outs and even dialed up her Mimi & Gran'daddy online to show them off.

Such a simple little activity, and yes, I did get one picture of her during our session, so I can now use those little paper dolls on a page chronicling how much she has grown to enjoy stories out of the Hundred Acre Wood. I will have to include the information that she has yet to see any of those movies or shows and so we still have a lot of fun making up voices to go along with what we read in the books. So far Pooh and Piglet are her favorites- she knows they are best friends!

I also (forced) encouraged her to scrap two more stops on our Northwest Paper Chase 2013 trip :-)

Hopefully I can find a few crafty moments in the next few days; my parents will be here all weekend helping with the girls and celebrating our nation's Independence.

Happy Fourth of July to all you American's reading this, and a Happy Weekend of Fun to all you other Internationals, too !

Mission:Complete!

I will be the first to admit, my craft excitement today is even higher than normal! That's in part because I successfully accomplished my 30 Layouts in the 30 days of June challenge to myself!

It feels great to have gotten so many beautiful memories preserved. The only drawback was, I need like five more albums to house said memories :-)
Despite my overflowing album I still have a full "regular" album (regular meaning :no embellies, just photos in sleeves), lots more pictures to scrap. I'm considering mailing some away to relatives and friends to make it easier for me to move on into the rest of the summers forthcoming photos.

My other excitement factor is that this morning I found out I won a contest! Yahoo! More details to come on that...
 I just had to share my met-the-deadline excitement while its fresh. I feel so accomplished!

Next up for July? Making a six-by-six album with my oldest daughter featuring the pages we got during our Northwest Paper Chase tours in 2012 & 2013.

I hope you're enjoying the summer so far! I know we are :-D