My Boy

Well, I came downstairs to work so that I can take most of next week off. But, I read a couple of emails from my SnC group and was totally inspired to make a page. So that's what I did.

Several of the girls in the group made awesome pages for a challenge at Artful Delight. I love the sketch and all of the pages were such great inspiration. Here is the sketch:

I chose to do a page of Willie again. I wanted to do a photo of Willie how he looked before he was groomed. I really wish I hadn't taken him to be groomed now and can't wait for everything to grow out. The page went together very quickly and I really love how it turned out.

I am also entering this layout into this week's challenge at Sketches In Thyme. It is their first Open Sketch Challenge, where you can create a layout using any sketch. There was a lot of great inspiration on that site as well.

This layout qualifies for the Repeat challenge at SnC. The challenge is to repeat the same thing at least twice. With this sketch, I repeated the squares.

I am so sad that I have not had time to create much recently. I hope work calms down soon. I am actually pretty surprised that I was able to complete 3 pages this month. I will have to make a point to make time to create more in the weeks and months to come.

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.

There's still a little time to join the fun......

Scrapbook Challenges is having a Birthday Blog Hop. It started on Friday at 10am (MT) and is running through midnight tonight (MT). You still have some time to catch some of the great activities that they planned to celebrate the end of their first your on the ning forum. To start the hop, go to Pamela's blog. She has done such a great job with this hop and all the party activities as well as coordinating such wonderful talent and inspiration at Scrapbook Challenges.

Pamela created a sketch for this celebration. All of the design team members created projects based on this sketch for their blog posts for the hop. What an amazing group of talent. Seeing so many different layouts/cards really made me want to create a layout from this sketch. So I did.

Here is the sketch:



And my layout:
Stew was so impressed with how good Willie was, he decided that he didn't need to stay in the crate during the day when he was 6 months old. That only lasted for about 3 weeks or so. He was getting into things and ultimately broke a glass that was left on a table. So back in the crate. On his 2nd day back in there, one of the big dogs - Lola or Harley - totally killed his Mr. Monkey. Right in front of him, where he couldn't do anything. Poor guy. I can only imagine how bad he felt.

Pamela gave the members of Scrapbook Challenges the opportunity to join in the fun by making a layout and posting the location of the blog post. Check out what other members did.

Great job everyone!!

Trick or Treat

Check out my friend Suzanne's blog. She's offering some great blog candy if you become a follower and leave a message. She has a lot of inspiration throughout her blog. Check it out and good luck. Happy Halloween.

Halloween Cards

I have never made a Halloween card before, but I made 2 today. They were quite fun. I am going to send them to my nephews with the treat containers that I made for them.

This first card I made following the challenge at Jitterbuggin'. The challenge this week was to follow the sketch, include a cricut cut, emboss something and include a pumpkin on the card. The spider and web were cut from the Paper Doll Dress Up cartridge. I used 2 different Cuttlebug embossing folders to emboss the circle and the orange paper along the right side of the card. Here is the example to follow:

And here is the card I created:

The next card I am entering into the Paper Kutz Challenge this week. The challenge is to create a Halloween project - a card, layout, or other craft project using circles, starts, diamonds or crescents. The bat and the cat were also cut from the Paper Doll Dress Up cartridge.


Thanks for looking.

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.