Sesame Summer

I have been so spacey this week. I am have been having a very hard time concentrating for the past several weeks. I would have thought that once my son came back from Iraq, I would have gotten better, but I have gotten worse. So I took today off of work to try to catch up on some sleep and actually spend some time with Stew.

I took some time to plan a few layouts. That felt great!! I want to show you the first one I was able to get done. I followed this month's sketch at Artful Delight.


And I wanted to follow the challenge at The Paper Variety for this page. The challenge is perfect for my new Echo Park collection - Splash.


I decided to use the cutest photo of David from when he turned 5. We took him to Sesame Place for his birthday. We loved Sesame Place. We had been there numerous times before that, but this time it was a special trip for David. I LOVE the wonderful colors in this EP collection. So perfect for summer layouts.


I am also entering this page into the Season challenge at Scrappin'-n-Chattin'. The challenge is to use a season in the title.

Happy Father's Day

It's kind of strange around Mother's Day and Father's Day for me. I really don't have anyone to get something for. Stew gives his father a card, and I was going to make one for him, but he bought one before I got around to it.

So I decided to go with the idea I was working on and make a card for Stew instead. I won't even see him this weekend because he's working 2nd shift and I will be away at an agility trial with Willie, so I thought I would leave him this card when I leave on Sunday morning.


This isn't the best photo, but I had to take it quickly and quietly. When the alarm went off for work this morning, Stew decided he was going to stay home. I already had the day off, so I was going to do some cleaning, some scrapping and work on this photo outside. But I took it while he was still in bed, in the house because it was raining. I think he will like and will be quite surprised.

I am going to enter this into this week's challenge at The Paper Variety. The challenge is For The Guys.


Stew is very special to all of us here, so the doggies will give him this card for Father's Day.

Lasting Memories Challenge #27

I really enjoy sketches. As everyone knows, I use a sketch for almost every layout I do. This week's challenge at Lasting Memories is a sketch challenge. YAY!!

I found this sketch a little bit more challenging than usual. Once I decided on the photos though, things really started to fall in place. Here is the sketch Karen chose for us to use:


The photos may be hard to really see, but they are photos of a family of ducks that were in the creek in our backyard. As the journaling details, the Aussies love the water and they spend a lot of time near the creek. They don't venture far, and come when they are called. This particular day, when Harley was 5 months old, we were out working in the gardens. When I didn't see Harley, I called him. He didn't come. So Stew and I went to the creek to see where he was. We found that he was almost to the Firehouse, 5 houses down the creek. We called him and he wanted to come, but there was a duck flying at him, keeping him down there. He finally just came and the duck came too. Her babies were near shore on the other side of the creek. Harley must have tried to check them out and Momma wouldn't have it. They stayed there for several more hours that day, but never returned.


I am using this layout for this week's challenge at The Paper Variety too.


I also love to stitch on layouts. I have a few stitching stencils and want to get some more. I used a swirl stencil along the strip of patterned paper under the photo mat. I like how it turned out.

The title of the page, I found, was also the name of a television show from the 70's - Family. The last challenge I had to complete this month for Scrappin-n-Chattin was TV Show. We were to create a layout about our favorite TV show or use a television show's name as your title.

This has been a pretty productive month for me. I have completed 12 layouts so far, even though it has been a really tough month. I'm not sure I will have the time to work on any more. But I'm going to try.

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.

A Special Sketch

This week at The Paper Variety, they have an awesome sketch by Julie Bonner. I love Julie's sketches and this one is very inspiring. I have not scrapped in a long time, but this sketch really sparked my interest. Here is the sketch:


I love the placement of the 3 photos and how they are divided on 2 pages. Even though the specific elements are something that I would really play with, the stars made me think of David. I created the first layout of his deployment to Iraq. These photos are from the day we dropped him off at the base. He didn't end up leaving for 3 more days, but when the photos were taken, we thought he would be leaving. Here is my page:

This layout will also qualify for the button challenge at Scrappin-n-Chattin. I used 3 orange buttons along the lower left edge of the green paper. It felt good to get a layout done.

Halloween Treat Contatiners

This week at The Paper Variety they hare having A Sweet Challenge. The challenge is to create a project to be used for treats - a container, tag, topper, etc. What a fun project.

I created a couple of container for my nephews filled with Halloween candy. I used my Tags, Bags, Boxes and Bows Cricut cartridge to cut the container and used Paper Doll Dress Up to cut the cat and bat I used as tags. I sure hope they like them.

This is 4th challenge week at The Paper Variety, and Suzanne chose a scraplift challenge.


The design team members created an "anything goes" layout. The challenge is to choose one of these projects as your inspiration. I selected Tessa's page as my inspiration.


I really like the different elements that she used. Tessa painted the photo mat, but I thought mulberry paper... It's been a long time since I've used mulberry paper. I wet the edges and pulled them. Once the paper was dry, I secured it to my background paper and chalked around the edges. I also used many of the other elements that Tessa did including the 3 embellishments below the photo and an outline around the outside of the photo mat. I used floss, eyelets and brads for the outline and I cut some embellishments from the paper I used, A Boy's Universe from The Paper Studio. On Wednesday, I checked out the Bo Bunny blog and was inspired by several of the layouts posted that day. Janice Medina's layout really struck me. She had the words mischief and mayhem on her layout. When I saw that, I thought of the photo I used. I just had to incorporate that into this layout.


Thanks for looking.

The Baby

This week is the 2nd challenge for The Paper Variety. This week is an ABC recipe challenge - to create a layout using autumn colors (A), borders (B) and cinema (C). This was quite challenging, but very fun.


To create this layout I used Sketch #122 from Creative Scrappers. I thought it was perfect for this challenge, especially because of the borders.


This is what I came up with. Lots of autumn colors, and leaves, making this page qualify for the Leave challenge for Scrappin-n-Chattin. I got to use one of my border punches. I always love using border punches. The cinema part was the hardest for me. Since this is a photo of David when he was a baby, I chose the movie The Baby for the title. This is a movie that I found from 1973, a horror film. The theme of the movie surely does not fit the photo, but the title is a movie title.


Thanks for looking.

TPV's First Challenge!!

What an exciting time. This week is the first challenge for The Paper Variety, the new challenge blog started by my friends Abby and Suzanne. I have been looking forward to this for weeks and when I saw the sketch I was not disappointed. I loved it immediately.


This has been a bad week for me, so I was not sure that I would be able to get a layout done. But I found it therapeutic to study the sketch. I printed a photo on Thursday evening, but had trouble choosing papers. On Friday, a photo of Courtney's friend Molly popped up on my screen saver at work. I thought - That's It!!! So I put this page together.

Congratulations Suzanne and Abby. The Paper Variety has been great so far and will only get better.

Mark Your Calendar!!!

The Paper Variety is launching its very first challenge on September 15!!! Be sure to check TPV on the 15th to join in on the fun. Be one of the first to participate in the awesome fun that Abby and Suzanne have planned for all paper crafters. There will be sketches, color and technique challenges, photo inspiration and much more - something different every week!! I hope I see you there.

TPV is looking for members for its Design Team. If you are interested, please read this post and submit your application to thepapervariety at gmail dot com. Applications are being accepted through August 25th.

**~Sue~**

Every Day Card Challenge

At Scrappin-n-Chattin we are currently running a challenge to create a card every day. And for this month, they are to be Christmas cards. How fun to be creating holiday cards during the summer. There were 2 options - creating 30 cards, or 15. I chose to try to do 15. So far I am up to 4. It's quite fun and very challenging for me. It will be so nice to have a stash of holiday cards all ready for addressing in December.



My day 4 card also qualifies for our Card Challenge #1 this month at SnC. The challenge was to use a transparency. I used one I had from the Eskimo Kisses collection from Basic Grey. It's such a wonderful collection. The colors are awesome and non-traditional. I really like how it turned out.

I am also going to enter this card into a contest at The Paper Variety. Abby and Suzanne will chose a random winner to receive the Imaginisce Christmas Cottage 6 x 6 paper pad, greetings rub-ons and holly stamp. So much fun.

Thanks for looking.

A Blog Giveaway

My friend Abby is having a great giveaway on her blog. She is offering a 6 x 6 mini deck and Ready, Set Chipboard from the new Cosmo Cricket Matilda line. This line looks adorable. Take a look at this wonderful offering at Abby's blog. There are several ways to be eligible to win. One way is to become a follower of the new, exciting challenge blog that Abby and Suzanne are starting. It's called The Paper Variety. They are planning many great and inspiring activites. Another way for a chance at the drawing is to create a blog post of your own about Abby's giveaway. Or you can post a link to Abby's post on Facebook or Twitter. So many chances for a great prize. Good luck.