Get Ready for a Blog Hop

I am so excited!! I get to be a part of a blog hop. My favorite scrapbooking group, Scrappin-n-Chattin is having a blog hop this week. It will will be Thursday through Sunday, the 12th-15th. There will be a lot of great projects displayed on the participants' blogs and many of them will be offering their own prizes. Take a look at the goodies being offered as the grand prize.


I hope you make plans to join our hop. It's sure to be great fun.

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.

Broadway at the Beach

When I went to South Carolina to visit my sister and nephews, we went to Myrtle Beach. One afternoon, we went to Broadway at the Beach in search of a cinnamon roll store. We never found it. The phone was disconnected, so it must have gone out of business. We walked around a little bit and paid a visit to a candy store near Margaritaville Cafe. There was a giant bear outside, so one of the boys decided to pose with it. Then the other, and Jill posed too. This week's Sketchy Thursdays sketch worked out well for the layout with these photos.


And here is my take...

I am so glad that I was able to get a layout done with this sketch. I really didn't think I was going to be able to. 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.

Lollipop Crafts

There is a new challenge blog that will be starting up next week. It's called Lollipop Crafts. They will be offering challenges, tutorials and much crafty inspiration. How exciting!! Today they are offering some blog candy to celebrate. Head on over to Lollipop Crafts and check out the crafty goodness.

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'm loving challenges

I have found that the sketches and challenges that I have been using are really inspiring me to get more layouts done. It's a goal for me to complete the 1o monthly challenges at SnC. I also try really hard to get the Sketchy Thursdays sketch done each week. Sometimes I am not able to get this weekly sketch done, but I do try. I have found that some of the challenges that I am trying are really making me step outside my comfort zone.

This week's sketch at Sketchy Thursdays was a nice 2 photo layout. When I saw it, I thought I would have no a problem putting something together using the sketch as inspiration. I'm totally loving using the border punches I have started collecting and I get very excited when I see a sketch that I can use one with.


When I work on a sketch, I try to incorporate a challenge at SnC with it as well. Sometimes this isn't real easy, especially if I've completed most of the challenges already. As an added challenge, I have been trying to incorporate a 3rd challenge into each layout. This is very difficult for me, so I get pretty excited when something comes together that incorporates 4 contests.

I have been checking out the sketches and challenges at Scrapbook Challenges, a ning site that has some great inspiration. One of their challenges for July is By the number. The challenge was to use 0 - Patterned paper, 1 - Stamp, 2 - Photos, 3 - Ribbons and 4 - Alphas or fonts. An added twist was to use yellow and orange as the main colors. As it turns out, there is a challenge at The Studio Challenges blog from July 4th to do a layout with orange and yellow as the main colors.

When I saw the 2 photos in the By the numbers challenge I thought of the Sketchy Thursdays sketch. As I was checking out my photos, and the challenges I have left to do at SnC, photos of Courtney and Morgan struck me as a good match for these challenges. When the girls were visiting in May, Courtney discovered a stone in the garden near the office window. This was the perfect perch for each girl to stand upon for a nice photo. Courtney went first. I don't know what she was doing, but she made a strange face. Morgan had a neat pose. I was not sure I was going to scrap these photos because I didn't really like the expression that Courtney had. I used a photo of Jessie in a another layout in May, and I didn't want to use it again. One of the challenges at SnC is called Pose. We are to use a photo featuring a funny or fabulous pose. Hmmmm.

I used a stamp and stamped all over a piece of white cardstock. I'm not a very good stamper so this took me some time. I used 1 ribbon across the middle of the page on top of a piece of yellow cardstock that I punched with a border punch. The other 2 pieces of ribbon I created flowers with. That was a bit of a challenge for me as well. I've never made a flower from ribbon before. For the title of the page I used 2 different fonts. In the body of the journaling I used 2 additional fonts, alternating at each word. I have always wanted to do this with fonts, and just never tried it. I feel so good that I incorporated these challenges together and the page really came together.

Thanks for looking.