You Are My Sunshine

I started out the week gung ho, creating a layout after work on Monday.  I was raring to go Tuesday night, but as the evening wore on, I started not feeling well.  So the pages I had planned didn't get done.  I need to get a move on if I am to meet my goal of 30 layouts in June. 

I want to share the page I completed on Monday.  I used the June 8th Boys Rule sketch.  I really loved the sketch.

I wanted to follow one of the challenges at Scrappin'-n-Chattin' as well.  I added a sun to the corner of the page inspired by the layout on the cover Creating Keepsake. I used it as my 2nd entry into the Rays challenge.  I used Echo Park's Little Boy for almost everything, except the cardstock and the title is from EP Springtime.



Thanks for looking.

Waiting For..... David

Earlier this week I had the time to create a couple of pages.  The pages really are a double page layout.  I recently ordered several new Echo Park collections.  It had been while since I got any new EP paper.  I got the 4th of July collection pack.  I knew I would use these papers to create layouts of my son David.

David has been back from Iraq for a year now.  Even though he marched in the Memorial Day Parade in our town almost every since he was little, this was the first year he marched as a veteran.  He participated in the ceremony at the park as well.  Willie, Tessa and I went to watch the parade.  I took some photos of the dogs waiting and waiting for the parade to start and photos of everything that was in the parade.

The first page is one of the dogs with several of the photos I took of them.  I used a sketch from Boys Rule, from May 25th.  I LOVE Boys Rule sketches and really enjoy using them.  I'm late blogging about this and missed the deadline for entering, but I wanted to post it any way.

I had to rotate the position of the photos on the page, but I like the way it turned out.

For the 2nd page, I used a photo of David I took as he was passing by us in the parade.  I used this month's sketch at Artful Delight.  I think it was perfect for this page....

Of course David was the youngest member of the VFW in the parade.  As a matter of fact, he's the youngest member of the VFW by far in the town.

Here are both pages together.

Thanks for looking.  I have to blog about a few more pages that I created.  Hopefully I will be able to get the posts created this weekend.  

Holly Jolly Christmas

Happy Wednesday everyone. It's time for the new challenge at The Paper Variety. Our challenge this week is to create a paper project that is inspired by a Christmas song.



And we have an awesome prize up for grabs.......

My Minds Eye Kraft Funday

6x6 pad, clear stamps, and 3 embellishment packs

As I was searching through some Christmas songs for inspiration, the song Holly Jolly Christmas struck me. Holly.... I know Echo Park's Merry Christmas collection has some holly in it. Here's what I came up with....

I added some bling from my stash over the holly berries for a little extra interest. I really like how it turned out.

I am also entering this card at Christmas Card Challenges. The challenge is to make a one layer card, but the challenge is always optional. But it is a Christmas card. And Paper Issues current issue is Holiday Madness. You can link up your holiday paper projects.

Last week I received an email from Echo Park. They are having a Holiday Card Project Contest. You can post a photo of a Christmas card made with Echo Park paper on their Facebook page. Then you mail the card to their office. Some of the office staff will choose favorites and the winners will get a collection. Sounds like fun.

I hope you will let a Christmas song inspire you to create something special. I can't wait to see all the wonderful projects.

By the way. It is time for Abby and Suzanne to select a new design team at TPV. They are so awesome to work with and the designer they choose are so talented and great to work with as well. Check out this post for all of the details. I can't wait to see who will be on the next team.

Happiness is..... SNOW

I am so disappointed. Stew's working 2nd shift this week and I really had wanted to create each night while he was working. I didn't even make it the first day. I was so wiped out, I just ate and went to bed.

But today, I was able to put together the page that I had wanted to do last night. I used a photo of Tessa from over the weekend. It was her first experience with snow. And she LOVED it!!! This one photo really excited me. I printed 4 copies of it already. One will be framed and hung in the bedroom, 2 small ones are in each of our offices at work, and the 4th I had to scrap.

I had the title picked out Sunday. It was going to be used as my last layout entry into the October monthly challenges at Scrappin'-n-Chattin'. This challenge was to use the words Happiness is in the title. Watching Tessa play in the snow over the weekend made it clear that this would make the perfect title. Unfortunately, I didn't get it done in time to enter the challenge. But that's ok. I still love the title for this layout.

I saw this week's sketch at Sketchy Thursdays and loved it. I thought it would work well for this page.


And as luck would have it, I got a package in the mail today. Last week I saw a deal at ScrapbookSteals.com for Echo Park's Little Boy and Little Girl Collections. I have had Little Boy for a while and LOVE it. I didn't get Little Girl, because at the time I had limited girls photos. But after we got Tessa, I had to get it and the perfect deal came along. I actually got both collections.


Thanks for looking. I hope everyone on the east coast has recovered from the weird weather from over the weekend. I'm hoping to be able to get creative at least Thursday and Friday. We will see. Thanks for stopping by.

Santa?

Happy Sunday everyone. It's time to reveal this week's challenge and layout at Lasting Memories. We have a sketch to follow this week. I loved this sketch. It's so versatile. I can see using time and time again.

I know that it's spring, and you probably don't want to be thinking about Christmas today, but my page is a Christmas one. I have been wanting to do a page with this photo for several months. The photo was another outtake from trying to get photos of the dogs in their Christmas hats. Willie's position really looks like he heard something on the roof. Stew came up with the title again. He was the first to notice that it looked like Willie heard something.


I used Echo Park's Everybody Love Christmas collection, a total favorite. I am also excited that I was able to include a Cupcake Poppy from Tessa's Etsy Shop, Precocious Paper. These are so cute.

I am also including this as my 2nd entry into Scrappin-n-Chattin's Long Title Challenge. The title needs to be at least 5 words long.

Hop on over to Lasting Memories and check out what the other members of the team created with the sketch. I hope we inspire you try the sketch too.

Willie's First Snow

We finally got some real snow here the day after Christmas. I really wish it had been on Christmas so that we could have played with the dogs during the day on Sunday, but I got a few photos at 2:00 AM (when Katie needed to go out), 5:00 AM (when everyone got up) and 4:30 PM on Monday (when I was clearing the walkway).

At first Willie was not sure about it. He was a little freaked out with the snowballs that stuck to his paws and all over his fur. But once he was outside with Harley, the fun began. They started running lightning fast all through the yard.

Of course I had to do a layout of Willie's first snow experience. I struggled with what to do. I knew I wanted to do do the December Challenge#19 at Lasting Memories . The challenge was to produce a winter themed layout. Well, I had the photos, but no direction. Well, today on Facebook, Let's Scrap posted the January Sketch Challenge. Wow... that was it. It's a Julie Bonner sketch for a double page layout. Just awesome....



My pages came together quite easily after finding this sketch. Here's page 1 ....

And page 2.....


And both pages together.... I used Echo Park's Wintertime collection and cardstock. What great papers.


I obsessed so long about the winter themed layout, the challenge is due tonight. But there is plenty of time to check out Let's Scrap and give Julie's sketch a try.

Santa Claws

This week's challenge at The Paper Variety is a photo inspiration challenge. Suzanne chose the most adorable photo for inspiration.


Such a sweet puppy. The challenge is to create a project with something from the photo being your inspiration. Of course doing a project with a doggie subject is pretty easy for me. For this one I decided to incorporate the Scraplift challenge for Scrappin-n-Chattin also. I scraplifted Suzanne's project for this week's TPV's challenge. Her page is just too adorable. I even used paper from the same collection Suzanne did - Echo Park's Everybody Love Christmas. Jax is so good, and just too darn cute.


And here is my page. I took Willie to see Santa today. He was pretty good about it.


Thanks for looking. I'm off to plan another page or two....

Baby's First Christmas

The weekend of Ben has spilled over to a 2nd weekend. I did a layout today of Ben's first holiday photos.

I followed a sketch provided by Ashley at Scrappin-n-Chattin that came from Beggahuna. OMG!! I really loved this sketch as soon as I saw it.


I used Echo Park's Merry Christmas pack again for this layout. I love those papers. In addition to entering this into SnC's sketch challenge, I am using it as the Song challenge on SnC. The challenge is to use a Christmas song title as the title of your layout. Baby's First Christmas is a song recorded by Connie Francis. I am also playing along with Challenge #13 at The Paper Variety. The challenge is to create a layout or other paper project about or for a child.


Thanks for looking. I will be taking a break from photos of Ben to do a few of the doggies.

Favorites

I did not create as much as I would have liked during my time off this week. I did relax and did some organization in the office. It's getting close to being done. It's so much more pleasant working in there when it's clean. I managed to get the tree up this week. I wanted to have it up before David left. I hope to get a picture of him in front of it today or tomorrow before he leaves. I photographed the progress as I put the tree up. I even took some photos of my favorite ornaments. I used these photos to create a page this afternoon. I used this week's sketch at Sketchy Thursdays as my base for the page.


For some of the elements I followed the challenge this week at The Paper Variety. The Tic-Tac-Toe Challenge is so much fun. We had to create a project with 3 items in a row.


I actually followed 2 Tic-Tac-Toes. I followed the row across the top, and diagonally from top left to lower right.


The layout contains 3 photos. The diamonds that form the title banner are cut from my Cricut, the Jasmine cartridge. The photos and the papers (Echo Park's Merry Christmas) are in the holiday theme.

This page also qualifies for this week's challenge at Design Dollies - Layer upon layer upon layer... The project was to include at least 5 layers. I chose to display these layers on my most favorite ornament - my little angel. This is an ornament I received as a child in 1965. It is triple matted with 2 background papers behind it.

I am using this layout for the Sparkle challenge for Scrappin-n-Chattin. The challenge is to add glitter, bling, gems, etc. on your layout. I added a couple of rhinestones above the ornament sticker as well as sparkly string on the ornament and the banner.

It felt good to create. I am optimistic that I will get another layout or 2 done this weekend. Thanks for looking.

Thinking Rock

I have been working on pages today on my day off. There's other things I should have done, but I really wanted to get these pages done. I'm so glad I did.


The last layout I needed to create for the Scrappin-n-Chattin' challenges for this month was to include the words Rock and/or Roll in the title. This was a bit of a challenge for me. Luckily, we are loaded with rocks around here. I decided to use photos of Harley trying to decide if he wanted to go swimming at the quarry. This layout is based on the current sketch at PageMaps Blog.


This is what I came up with, using some more of my Echo Park Summertime paper.

I created a page 2 for this layout, to answer the question posed in the subtitle, To Swim or Not To Swim. This page was based on a sketch from The Scrappiest.



I used some more Echo Park Summertime paper. It was pretty easy to make the pinwheel. I think it adds a fun element to the page.

Here are the pages together.

Thanks for looking.

So Cuddly

I have gotten much braver about having my photo taken. I would never allow one to be taken before, and if one was, it was destroyed or hidden. Being a part of the Yahoo Group Scrappin 'n Chattin has really helped me to come out of my shell and realize how important photos of me will be in the future.

I had Stew take a picture of me holding Willie today. I had decided I needed it to complete the Fuzzy challenge at SnC. I had only found a couple of fuzzy embellishments when shopping and one was a puppy one, the other a teddy bear. When I saw the teddy bear one my thoughts started to churn.

I used a sketch and challenge from Page Maps to do the page with the fuzzy embellishment.


We were to use the colors at the bottom of the sketch in the layout. That was the tough part. Here is the layout:



Willie is such a lover. Thanks for looking.

I love balloons

I have always wanted to watch hot air balloons going up. They have a balloon festival here in the next county over every year, but we have never gone. This year, they had multiple launch sites with evening launch times. The fairgrounds are just over the river from us, about 15 or 20 minutes away. They were scheduled to have 3 balloons go off on Friday evening. So we went over to watch. It was pretty cool watching them unpack the balloons and baskets, then filling them up. It was breathtaking watching them float into the air. So worth the trip.

I found that some of the photos I took at the launch would make a perfect layout with this week's Sketchy Thursdays sketch. The sketch is for a 2 page layout, and I was so excited about that.


For the large photo on the left side of the layout, I created a collage of 8 photos of one of the balloons inflating.


I used Echo Park's Sweet Summertime collection for this layout. So cool that it had a balloon die cut and the colors were perfect. This is the right side of the layout.

And both pages together.


Thanks for looking.