Summer Camp = Many Layouts!

Could a summer camp get any better than creating lots of layouts?!! 

I don't think so.

Over at The Digital Press this month, they are running a summer camp. They have activities each week. Although I followed a few designers over there when it started, I had never attempted to get onto their forum until May of this year when I joined to grab part of a freebie set that was broken up among different places: their forum, blog, facebook, etc.  I do both digital and traditional scrapping, so I never thought to join their forum. The summer camp has been fun.  The creative & design teams there are executing it really well, and I am enjoying myself.

Now I said, I do traditional and digital. Here's how I decide, if my photos are more event and will be multiple pages - they're digital pages. If the story has multiple photos or photos that could use more manipulation or sizes other than more standard size like 5x7, 4x6, 4x4, 3x4 - the page is digital. Lastly, If I know that I have the best supply options for doing a story in digital format, then I chose digital.

For week one, I told chose stories that  were based on supplies or photos and one story about my childhood that wasn't even on my radar to tell.

 

Since these were really poor photos, they lend themselves nicely to being very small. This was for the orienteering challenge. They provide a template (map) for you to create with. I LOVE this template so much. I did have to make a few changes to make it work for my story, but I see using this template again and again.

 

There really isn't a story here, but I knew I wanted to use so many of the photos that I took. The LOVE on the bottom right had to be taken off to enter it into the challenge gallery at TDP. The LOVE is from a retired designer from there, and only current designers are allowed. It didn't hurt the layout at all, but I will print with the love on.

This was for the Arts and Crafts challenge. We needed to look through their list of tutorials and choose 1 to use on our layout. I chose one that said expanding your digital toolkit and scraplifting yourself. Well, I didn't have anything posted in their gallery, so I chose another layout to scraplift. I turned her one page layout into a 2 page spread.

 

This was one that I thought my products might be better for the story telling. But my products from their current designers weren't school related but book related. I do have school related products so this might get reworked and another photo added in here.  

This was for the Bonfire challenge. Here we meet in the chat room and as we chat for the hour, the designer also slowly gives out a list of to do's to make your layout. So you have no idea how many photos would be used. I found this challenge the most difficult.

 

 

This was not even on my radar to tell. It was prompted from their journaling challenge - Letters Home. I'm very happy with it and having the story told.

 

For week 2, having seen what the challenges were all about gave me some "clarity". Not sure if that's exactly the right word to use. I'll try to explain below.

 This was the Orienteering challenge. The template was given. This is what I entered. With so many photo spots, I thought the template lended itself nicely for using in my Christmas pages that need to get finished.

Although after seeing the above page a couple of times on my computer screen, I did add a gray over the top of the green, blended it and changed the color of the white dots to a mint green.

I like this one so much better. I made those changes after doing the arts and crafts challenge from this week. Part of my clarity was that I have many Christmas layouts that need to be finished and I could use some of these challenges to accomplish that goal.

This started out in the letters home challenges. But as I thought about the page, I saw the "be" in a font in the background and knew that it would be better served in the arts and crafts challenge. I had to learn about the gradient tool and masking with it. The tutorial wasn't clear to someone like me that generally just uses a template for digital scrapping, but YouTube is my friend. I also used their blending modes tutorial. Although I know and have used blending modes, I often don't.   This is an 8.5x11 page and it starts the book that will, hopefully, be about the changes I hope to accomplish in my life.

This. Well. This became my letters home challenge layout.  My daughter suffers from a chronic illness of some type. Although she complained off and on of belly aches for years, I could not find any correlation to her diet or any rhyme or reason. In the summer of 2014, she became horribly bad. 2014-2015 was a miserable year and started search for a deeper medical answer. We've been to a naturopathic, to the GP, to a GI, to an ENT/allergist, to a neurologist and all to no avail. I knew I wanted to document this as a separate free standing book, but hadn't really thought about it much. The Mayo accepted her as a patient and we will be going shortly. It's been weighing on her mind.  I've done the page in 12x12 but will print in an 8x8 book once all of the pages are complete.

 This was for the Bonfire challenge. I chose my story before I went into the chat. This has one photo. but I knew I could use the same photo 2x if the challenge called for 2 photos. I could leave a fuller image or just crop in. If I needed 3, I would have  cropped in on the hands as well and converted the larger to black and white. Here is where more of that clarity comes into play.  For these challenges, I've decided to choose stories that I want to tell that could work with 1 or multiple photos. If I have multiple photos, I can use the challenge page as the left side of the layout and create a 2nd page to coordinate.

For the above, I chose a softer palette that I hope to continue throughout the whole album.

Now for something really fun. My layout for my daughter, (2 layouts prior to this ) was chosen as a gallery standout.  When Mrs Peel commented on my layout and let me know, I was surprised and honored. But, also, I was thinking this was a TDP shoutout, not THE Gallery standouts. Now I'm even more honored and quite frankly shocked.

Be Awesome

This week the challenge at Use your Stuff was to really heap the supplies on. I love to do just that. I was so looking forward to getting some mixed media going on it too. Having been out of town at the first part of the week, the getting back catch up taking longer than I wanted it to, and now gardening taking over our life, means that this lady got no time to play with this challenge.

What did I do? I finished the layout that was on my desk from before the weekend. Because, you know, I can't possibly start something new when something is already in the works on my desk.

I do like how this turned out though.  I used my stash and the December 2016 Hip Kit.

The journaling up the side reads:  This is what you get texted when you leave 2 boys alone in a hotel room.  The little chipboard puffy word pieces & my mini rectangle alphas line up to say - Random life is lovely always with you.

The text message is actually printed out where you see my husband texted the silly photo with the comment "something is going on". My reply, "dorks united?". His response, "Say what? We be awesome". This is why I chose be awesome as the title.


And something awesome happened to me this week.

My layout of the New Puppy Cuddles was one of three chosen to be featured on the Use Your Stuff Challenge Blog for Metallics.  I'm beyond thrilled!!

Doing a happy dance on the inside. I said gardening is taking over my life right now, so I have  no energy to physically dance. Actually walking upstairs is kind of a process at this point.  But off I go, I'm bushed and need some sleep so I can plant tomorrow.

Hugs,

Lisa

Shiny!

That's the challenge up at Use Your Stuff this week - #264. Use anything metallic, shiny, glittery.  Oh, My!

Here I used sequins, some MME gold die cut pieces, and glitter washi.  

Since stamping is something that I'm also trying to incorporate in all my layouts this month, I added some hearts in with sequins and enamel dots sprinkling with a color of ink that wouldn't stand out too much. Then I added the "nothing better than spending time with you" stamp in a darker color next to the journaling at the bottom so it would stand out a bit more. 

I have to thank myboysnme for the lace used here. In a forum post over at 2peasrefugees on proboards, we were sharing what we just have to buy even though we don't use it as often as we like. For me it's lace. I LOVE pretty lace. She generously sent me a large envelope full of gorgeous lace. So thank you, myboysnme. 

Selfie Memories

Today, I'm sharing a layout that I created combining the 2peasrefugee May Stash and the Scrap Our Stash Tic-Tac-Toe challenge.

For the SOS challenge, I used the last vertical column, vellum (bottom layered tag), paperclip (with the bird), tabs.

For the 2pr challenge:

• your favourite paper or pattern: I love all colors and patterns, so this was one of my favorite patterns in the June 2016 Hip Kit.
• one of the oldest things in your stash The vellum tag is from SU! when I was a demonstrator in 2002-2004
• brads: The self adhesive ones
• frames: Substituted Stamps
• tags: The vellum one above and a punched one.
• templates or stencils: Substituted Paper Scraps - Used paper scraps to cut the "selfie" title and the pink tag out of

Without further ado:

You can't see from the photo, but I also added a wink of stella glitter pen to the butterflies black body part; the owl's bow, wings, and heart; the wood veneer bird's tail, wing and breast; the bottom left rose to the white outline and the very center 3 parts.

This is the second layout that I've created with selfies of my daughter and me. It had seemed that all my selfies were either family or just me and my son. I'm making an effort to get more of my daughter and me. I guess I should make an effort to get some of hubs and me too.....hmmm. Add that to the list.

Happy selfie creating!

Page Kit Count Down - Page Kit #4

I had 5 page kits left at the end of my recent clean up. I'm working to get all of the layouts finished up.  Now I'm using page kit #4, the We R Memory Keepers Snapshots 12x12 Page kit.

Inside I had 4 photos for 3 different layouts.

 For this layout, I only pulled out some gelatos to create one of the background papers, some printed acetate, wood veneers, and enamel dots.  I really love the way the background turned out that I had my dd make for me. She enjoyed playing with the gelatos. She also made another one while playing.

For this one, I pulled out some mulberry!! I know, crazy! I also pulled the enamel dots, a piece of white cardstock, vellum, ink for the edges of the embellishments, and a punch.  I love the layers with the mulberry. I also love the triangle piece in the bottom corner which is covering up the small cut out of the corner piece of the background paper.

For this, I just used the leftover white piece of cardstock, the white enamel heart, ink for the edges, the rest of the vellum, and some HS color shine in black and gold.

All of these layouts are very simple using very little extra embellishment, but I still like the look of each one. I created a 1page layout previously plus these 3 which equals a total of 4 layouts.

And this is what I have leftover in the kit. Easily enough for another layout before getting added into the stash and scraps.

Page Kit Count Down - Page Kit #5

When I cleaned up, I found I only had 5 page kits left.  When I make page kits 85-90% of them are collection kits that I just toss photos into that I think the kit would complement. The other 10-15% are kits where I've actually gone through my stash of papers and found coordinating papers. I might throw in other things I know I want to use, but I mainly leave embellishments out. That's the fun part of scrapping the page for me. I really dislike the photo editing. I find the paper picking to be a chore. This is why I've taken to doing these things in batches.

These are the 5 page kits I have left.

Pulling out my Carta Bella All American Collection Kit which had photos from July 4th 2015 left in it, I set to work.  This kit actually had some ribbon thrown in as well.  I pulled out the mass of photos from the day, figured out the best arrangement. I would create a double page and 2 single pages. The singles could go side by side if need be or one could go before the double and the other after. This will give me some flexibility when putting them in the album. (I scrap whenever but store close to chronological.)

I used the ribbon. I also pulled in some red hemp, the white cardstock, enamel dots/shapes, ink, vellum, a couple of punches, and some red small tab alphas.  Everything else was from the kit. The pages came together quickly, which I liked.

I had already created a layout with my great niece from this kit as well. Plus there is still enough for a couple of more pages. I put the collection back into my stash. Another reason I love using collection kits for page kits is the ease of assimilating the items back into my stash, since I keep the kit together and place all kits together. ha. With individual papers I have to go to each section to put them away - feminine, masculine, vibrant, polka dot, office, specialty, wood-look, etc... It's cumbersome.

One Stylin Girl enjoying the process

The balance between quickly telling my stories in the limited bits of time I have, and creating pages with creativity that I releases my happy endorphin's that I desperately need is a struggle to say the least.  On a facebook swap group, we have been having a craft war. Each week our hostess puts up a new challenge, and we play along.  If you complete the challenge by the allotted time, you move forward. Instead of my 90% methods of either pick and stick speed scrapping or doing just the bare minimum to get it done. I've been challenging myself to get creative with these layouts. To enjoy the process even more.

Here is this week's page.

We had a sketch: The layout needed to have at least 4 layers, a large page flag, and a layered title.

What I like:
 The page flag is super cool as a sequin pocket that used my fuse. I love that I have glitter, sequins, wood veneer stars, the pipe cleaner flowers and the wood veneer glasses that I embossed with silver to match the ones my dd is wearing in the photo.
The hand stitching on the title layer. I love stitching but am too lazy to do it.
The blue flower in the bottom right cluster was actually made by my dd and given to me on a birthday gift in 2012. I love that!!
My silver bow! I am THE WORST at bow tying. I used youtube and a video that showed you how to tie bows with a fork to get this one. It worked!!

What I didn't like/learned:
The stitching was difficult on the smaller parts of the lettering even when I used only 3 strands of embroidery thread and a smaller needle. After welding the word together my silhouette software would not let me edit points. Maybe you can't within letters. If I were to do this again. I would read up and see first about edits or use a thicker font.
I liked using the small sequins on the N and R of my San Serif font, but it was so difficult to get a straight row. I'd do less of them and take more time.

I still have my journaling to do. Typically I'd just write on the pattern paper at the bottom and be done. But.... I really like the look of the layout and don't want my bad handwriting to detract from it, something I don't care about on a quicker page. I'm thinking of telling the story on the back side. Still debating.

I'm On A Roll!

Today I'm sharing a short video as to why I love collection kits for my page kits. I still have bit to learn about taking videos. Plus my iphone keeps telling me I'm out of storage and shutting off while taking the video?!?  Yet I have 46 GB free of a 50GB icloud storage. So why do I pay every month if it's not going to help!?!

I also have a layout I finished for the Monthly 2peasrefugee Sketch/Scraplift Challenge.

Two days in a row for blog posting!  I must be I'm on a roll! Just don't expect it to continue like this. ha.

I Must Be Crazy!

I've been so busy with summer projects that I've been neglecting my crafting. I get uptight when I've been away from crafting too long. You too?  So what's a crafter to do?

Well, this crafter decided to sign up for a bunch of swaps and a group Craft War - 1 layout a week for 8 weeks.  I must be crazy!  I thought it was the perfect prescription to get me back into the crafting habit or at least make me set aside time for it.   Fast forward in. I'm looking at what needs to get done in my house and what I'd like to get finished in crafting. The list is overwhelming. My blog has sat really only touched on Wednesdays through the summer. With September, my thought was to make my blog more productive.  I must be crazy!  How did I think I had the time. I know that I'm not alone, right? Everyone, some others go through the same bouts of busy and have to put their crafting aside.

I've decided to not fret about my blog and just post when I can for September.  I will share my 2nd week layout of the Craft Wars with you, this also fits the September Bonus Challenge over at 2peasrefugees.

I used Shimelle's collections. I created the pattern in my silhouette and cut out a template. Yeah, I'm too lazy to separate each ray and to run each paper through individually. It was just easier to take the pieces put them on the pp and cut them out.  I did run the yellow cardstock through to get the Sonshine part of my title. It has really little on the embellishment side of things, but with the amount of pp across the page and they design which I wanted to highlight, I'm really very pleased.  I've been wanting to do a "Sonshine" page for a while.

The jouranling: "Ever since you were a baby, I would sing, "You Are My Sunshine." But I always meant Sonshine. You have brought so much happiness and love into my life and my heart. I am so very blessed! Love you, Baby Boy. -Mom"

I must be crazy, but it's a good crazy!

WOYWW 380 - Back in the Saddle Again.

Hello Deskers!  I've missed 3 whole weeks of posting and desk viewing as I took a ONE week vacation with my family. What? Yes, it took me a week to prepare for vacation, a week to go on vacation, and a week to get things back to as normal as they seem to be in my house. Oh, plus we started school. (I homeschool.)

OK, so you're not here to hear me bather on, but to see the state of my desk.....cringing.....
so here it is.

So I'm currently working on an inspirational quote ATC swap (yes, the deskers got me hooked with their annual ATC swap that I joined this year.) There is such a small work space on this big ole' desk. The left side has a stamped image on tissue paper still resting on my stamping pad which is laying on top of a pile of stamps and ink and stamp blocks and my trimmer and part of my tape gun. The far right has a pile of things brought back from vacation: maps, brochures, postcards, etc. There is a book in the far right upper corner which I haven't read in years and for some reason is now in my craft room. In the middle sets the background I've been working on.

After coming home, I did work and finish a new layout as well.

So, that's it for me. Hop on over to Julia's to view the other link-up's or to join in the fun. And have a great Wednesday!

A Hodge Podge of Activity

Wednesday had me schlepping my laundry out to do. On Tuesday as I was piling it in my van, my wonderful husband had a great idea of me trying to get passports for myself and the kids. Sometime in our future, we are planning to visit an area where the border of MI and Canada is so close it would be a shame to not pop across. I went to the designated place to find out the information needed: Hubs and I both would need to be present to get passports for the kids. So I went home, filled out the forms, grabbed the proper identification, and snagged up the family. It was really quite an easy and painless process, well, except for the pocket book which is still groaning and moaning over the cost of 3 passports. Then we had a bit of an unexpected adventure afternoon which included a ride up the peninsula with a view of the lovely wineries, a library book sale with 5 stuffed bags for $10, and an antique shop. Super fun and relaxing afternoon that makes you forget that you had to go to the laundromat. (The piece for my washer came yesterday, so hopefully I won't have to do that again soon.)

Great view, huh?

Yesterday, had me cleaning off that mess of a desk I shared on Wednesday. You know, so I can make a bigger mess. 

This meant I had to put away all of lines by Shimelle (AC). I put all of the papers in one bin, including things from cutaparts and all of the embellishments in another.

 My new purchases needed to be put away too. These are from a scrap store. No more than $4 for the lot.

 A sale at Joann's, plus a coupon led to the above. Yes, all I needed was the fabri-tac glue so that I could fix a lampshade. The stencils were all clearanced at 1.97 and have 2 sizes in each.

The latest layout that I finally finished. I really hate when real life gets in the way of my play time.
Photos are from 2009. I even spent some time yesterday afternoon organizing all of dd's layouts in her albums.  And started a new layout. However, then I decided I really need to get messy. So I cleaned the desk off again. Some mixed media backgrounds to follow.

Sandcastle Conundrum

If you read Friday's post, you know that I'm working with all of Shimelle's lines which is how I typically work with Shimelle's collections.

I struggled with these photos and how to put them together. I had a portrait photo of both my son and one of my daughter working on their respective castles. I had a landscape of each of their respective castles. I was originally going to try to put them all on one page. I couldn't make it work. If I separated them by child, then I could go with my go to design of an L or reverse L when working with one portrait and one landscape. But, I just wasn't feeling it. It took me hours to finally cut some papers down and arrange them. I still wasn't crazy about it. I left the layout unglued out until the next day.

Upon waking the next day, I did my normal routine and checked the computer. I'm trying to catch up on the blogs having been away from the computer for 3 weeks. I've been picking a blog and just reading up through the posts. Well, I chose Michelle's lovely blog Scrapthology to peruse. I have to say she puts out sketches every Sunday that are super, and I'm not really a sketch person. When I came to her July 3rd sketch, I was like why didn't I check her blog sooner. Then I could have used this sketch instead of struggling all last evening. I thought I was too lazy to go back and redo the pages, I know they weren't glued down, but I'd have to repick papers, recut papers, ugh, it just sounded like too much work.

Well, I couldn't put this fantastic layout out of my mind and ended up totally using this sketch.  Here are my layouts.

I love how they turned out. The Destination Adventure titles are cut from 4x6 cut apart PL styled cards that I cut in a label shape on my silhouette.  The journaling reads the same on both cards, as I thought they might want them in their individual books, however, it's part of our overall family day experience. If I put them in their individual albums, then I have to go back and write more information on page 3 of my outings layouts (posted Friday) or I could just make another page with just the sandcastles for the family album.  See my conundrum??  I just don't know what to do!  If you have any ideas or a preference, let me know.

For the Joy of Page Kits

I used to call my scrapbooking style "Batch" scrapbooking, as I seemed to do things in a batch styled process. I'd edit and print and bunch of photos. Then my next block of time I'd work up some journaling on the computer for the photos. This would help me solidify the story I wanted to tell if there was one or might help me decide to break photos up for multiple stories. A plus is that it also usually gave me my title as well. Then I'd match the photos with paper, grabbing individual sheets from collection packs and tearing each sheet out from paper pads if necessary and bagging them together. Then I'd grab embellishments that I thought would go in each bag. I'd have a nice stack waiting for me.

I loved being able to just grab a bag. I don't scrapbook chronologically, so I could still go through my eclectic mix of photo bags and choose what was calling to me at the time.  However, over the last couple of years I fell away from my batch scrapbooking process and my page kits.

Recently, I've rediscovered the joy of page kits. 

I forgot to do the journaling before and just paired photos with papers. This is something I will go back to in the future. I realize I don't use a lot of titles when I don't work on the journaling or if there is no real story.

What I tweaked, just because I'm lazy, was that I didn't tear sheets from the paper pads or separate collection packs. If I was using a pad or pack, the whole thing went into the bag.  I would include any photo that I thought went with the collections feel. So I might have a photo of my son to talk about a quirky habit, a family outing, and my great niece (where generally there is no story since we don't see her often).  I didn't worry about embellishments unless I knew there was ephemera or an item that I really wanted to use. I like pulling those things in the moment.

With the Fancy Pants Collection "What A Wonderful Day", I ended up with 2 different photos of my niece in the bag. These are the pages I came up with.

What makes this tweak so AWESOME!  I liked that the paper pieces go back in with the collection pack and get put right back on the shelf for a quick and easy clean up.

I'll be adding even more page kits to my future. (happy dance).

Shimelle's Collections

I love all things Shimelle, aka Glitter Girl. It's probably a nostalgic reason.  My daughter and I used to watch GG together each week. We have different taste from each other and both have different tastes from Shimelle as well. But we both appreciated her teaching style.  So when American Crafts started producing a line inspired by Shimelle, well, I procured some of each. From Shimelle, True Stories and Starshine, I mix them all together. They work so well together.

So I had some photos of a day Adventure we had last June (2015) and some from morel hunting that May which I thought would mix perfectly with Shimelle's lines. Obviously I couldn't make a page kit, as this wouldn't fit in my page kit bag (a 2 gallon ziplock).

I keep all of Shimelle's items together, including the embellishments and stamps (for now). Although I do keep the stencils and embossing folders in there proper places, but they're easy enough to pull. That stack is still 5" tall.

AND this is what I created.

I used the Shimelle Starshine stamps an a PL roller stamp, although some of my roller stamp images came out cockeyed and funky. I took a photo of morels from the net and converted it to black and white upping the contrast and gold foiled them for the bottom corner.

Then I started our June Adventure Day. Page 1 tells the first part of the story, page 2 shows our views during the 2 different lake spots (picnic and playing), and page 3 shows our spot while the kids built their sandcastles.

 

Monday, I'll share the sandcastle pages and my dilemma.


I'm still traveling this week and this post was prepared in advance.  It was suppose to go yesterday. Yeah, that didn't happen. My daughter had a neurologist appointment. She has had some health issues that have become quite chronic in the last 2 years. Also her motion sickness which was always mild increased so dramatically that she cannot tolerate a trip to town that is 40 minutes away. We walked away with a new prescription. This is our 5th in the battle to improve her health. You have to wait 6 weeks to see if any of them work. But this Dr. thinks that the GI diagnosis of abdominal migraines is still good. The medicine the GI gave her did not work and we've tried another one in the interim as well. We have also had an allergy test for the common allergies which she lit up like a Christmas tree - 19 out of the 29 allergens caused a reaction. She just feels everything in her stomach, instead of a nasal or rash or something that would have caused me to think - oh, hey, allergy.  Stomachache - didn't even occur to me it could be allergy, other than food. She is still off gluten, egg, dairy, watermelon, and green beans. So here's to crossing my fingers and hoping that this will help ease her pain. Also we were told to take her to a counselor to learn biofeedback techniques. Excited about that. She has a hard time when her brother makes her mad. He can do something only slightly annoying and she goes from 0 to rage in .023 seconds. Her dad could do the same thing to her without that response.  So I hope in addition to biofeedback techniques they could help with some self calming methods too.

That's it for today. Sorry for the long post.

Finished a layout

With the prepping for leaving and actually going on vacation, I only had time to start a layout, but not time to finish the layout. After returning, I stole bits and pieces of time from cleaning to complete this layout.

Some very old Prima papers were used in the making of this layout. I still like them though. Some gold MME, and 1 gold crown from a Teresa Collins pack and 1 little cupcake that I just bought on vacation. One simple layout.

While on vacation, I thought I'd have more time to work on my ongoing 2007 Christmas photos project.  All I completed are pages 12 & 13.

Wishing you a happy, crafty day!

Working Through The Project

My shoulder injury from the 3rd/4th felt well enough that I ran errands and started doing a bit more house chores last Thursday which, of course, led to me re-injuring the shoulder. ugh.

The up side is that I was still able to work more on my Christmas Project.  Digi-scrapping of 2007 Christmas layouts continued. Here they are:

See that angled paper - I made my own clipping mask for it.  I was proud of myself.  I also made my own cardstock for this project.

LOVE this picture of my daughter throwing her little fit. Yeah, I was one of those mom's that laughed when she started throwing them.

Now that I've uploaded these I see the first one needs either something on the paint swash or it should be removed. I was placing an ornament on it but then decided the ornament banner would work better.  One of the pros of digi is I can rework this layout without ruining the page. Here's the rework.

Took less than 5 minutes.

My layout goal for this year was 48.  ....dramatic pause.....    And my grand total for layouts this year ....drum roll.........   is 53.

Yep, pretty stoked about it. Hubs even let me put photoshop elements on his laptop so that I can create while we're visiting family later this month.  woo hoo.