Playing Catch Up

Well, I started off the year ON FIRE!  Now that I am on vacation, I'm guilty of doing more resting and exercising than creating.  You see, in 15 days I will be FORTY YEARS OLD!  Yes, an official middle ager.  The thought of that is a bit distubing, especially when my mother broke it down for me a few weeks ago.  However, I look good and I feel great so I suppose that's all that really matters!

One of my design teams shut down, so I am still busy designing for Black With 2 and Stick It Down.  Here is my latest work for the Black with 2 Challenge blog:

 

 

I don't think I've EVER used orange and black together for anything other than Halloween projects!  Our inspiration word was Tropicana, and luckily I had some wonderful sunset pictures from our most recent vacation.

Here is the inspiration board:

Pretty neat, huh?  Be sure to play along with us!  There are some wonderful prizes up for grabs.

My last Stick It Down DT submission was a layout of myself!  Very rarely does that happen, especially not one of "Just Me:"

 

I am LOVING the black and white striped papers this summer.  I have used them on tags and ATCs...I think it is so versatile and it looks good paired with ANY color.  I know the mix of papers is a bit risque, but for some reason they all worked!  The doily, I think, really set the entire layout off (in a good way.)  I pulled from random embellies that were laying around on my scrap table.  If you saw my scrap table you would see why that was an easy thing to do.  Can you say S"crap" everywhere???  

Here is my additional guest designer project for the Sketch - N - Scrap Challeng blog:

 

 

This is a western themed layout of my son and one of his very best friends from school.  We are the Wranglers at school so the students get tons of opportunities to dress up in their western wear (Fair Day, Rodeo, etc.)

 

Lastly, I decided to play along with DCWV again for their July Stackaholics Challenge.  Here is my latest layout (finished last night:)

 

 

This is a layout of my cousin and I at my at home wedding reception (we had a destination wedding the week before.)  When I looked at this picture, the first thing that came to my mind was Princess Dollface, so that is what I entitled it!  She is such a ball of sunshine and she danced with me all night!  Here is the sketch I followed:

 

I have a few more projects I have to finish before the end of next week.  We have 3 upcoming trips planned so I need to get moving!

 

SMOOCHES!



The heat is on!

I cannot believe it is already June!  That means summer is very near! Summer is my favorite season of them all.  Besides the fact that it is hot, who wouldn't welcome lounging by the pool, walking around in tank tops and shorts everyday and being off work for a few weeks.  Oh, the joys of working for the school system!

With that being said, I also love summer time because it is the time of year where my family does the majority of our travelling and I get a lot of great pictures out of the deal.  In addition, next month is my 40th birthday and we are planning a trip to Las Vegas!  Can you say fun?

Last month we travelled to Costa Rica for my cousin's wedding in the mountains.  It was beautiful!  The trip also doubled as an early anniversary trip as well.  We will be celebrating our 1 year anniversary on June 22nd.  I think the first year is a paper anniversary so I need to get to work trying to figure out what I am going to gift the husband.  I thought of making him something (easy enough) but now I have something else in mind.  If I can make it happen, he is going to LOVE it!

At any rate, check out some of my latest work:

 

Here is a layout of the husband and I at my cousin's wedding.  Her colors were pink and silver so these pictures were PERFECT for the mood board I had to use for the Black with 2 mood board and sketch.

 

Isn't this an absolutely yummy board?  I was worried at first about using brown on a black background, but I love the way everything turned out...especially after adding the paint splashes.

 

This layout was done for the Sketch N Scrap challenge blog.  Guess what? I am the June guest designer!  Here is the sketch:

Sweet and simple!  I absolutely love working with sketches and am very thankful for the opportunity to work with the ladies over at Sketch N Scrap this month!

Well, off to complete a few other projects.  I've been promising a mini album forever so hopefully I will be able to bring that to you very soon!

SMOOCHES!

Finally...

Friday I came home and went straight to sleep after a fun filled Field Day event at school.  My son won 1st place with his relay team and we had a great group of parents to come out to volunteer!  I wasn't feeling well on the drive home, but just thought it was because I was out in the sun all day.  We couldn't have asked for a better day...weather wise!  I thought I was going to be able to get some projects done this weekend, but it didn't happen.

 

Last week, the hubby and I went to Costa Rica.  OMG!  What an amazing place!  Stay tuned for pictures from that trip to paradise.  Needless to say LAST weekend was also a non-scrapping weekend since I was out frolicking in the mountains!

 

Today I came home sick with strep and an ear infection.  Bummer.  What grown woman gets ear infections still??? Right???  My son wasn't feeling so well either.  I am guessing he is having some sinus issues, so it probably was a blessing in disguise.  We both got to come home and lounge around.  I took a long, much needed nap AND I was able to get some DT work done:

 

Done for Stick It Down, here is a layout of the husband and I in Costa Rica.  We've become pretty good at taking these selfies!  It's a sure way to get myself in the pictures, that's for certain!  I'm usually always on the other side of the camera.  By the way, Stick it Down is currently holding a DT call!  I know I have a lot of talented friends, so be sure to go over and check it out and apply, if you can!

 

OH YEAH!  I completely didn't mention in a seperate post that I am on a new design team!  I added it to my blog, but never officially announced it!  PLEASE go over and check out Black With 2.  OMG!  This challenge blog is absolutely amazing!  The sketches and the mood boards are gorgeous and so inspiring!  The challenge?  We work on black backgrounds.  Sounds easy enough, right?  You have to see it to believe it.  There are some amazing designers over there and and some stunning submissions monthly.  I've been playing along since February!  I just had to keep it a secret.  I really enjoy the ladies on the DT team, especially the blog creator, Eve Rae...she is hillarious!  I hope you can come over and play with us! 

 

Well, off to finish some other projects!  I have a few swaps and 2 DT layouts I have to complete this week.

 

SMOOCHES!

 

 

Triple Threat!

Today was a good scrapping day!  Why?  Because I was able to churn out ONE layout motivated by 3 different challenge blogs! 

The first inspiration was from 1 2 3 Get Scrappy.  From the April board, I decided to use clouds, yellow background and squares on my layout. 

Over at Punky Scraps I decided to use this whimsical, fun mood board.  I was thrilled that some of the inspiration overlapped with the components of  the 1 2 3 challenge, but I also decided to use the color scheme as inspiration (orange, blues, yellow, white) in addition to the clouds.  I've been scrapping with lots of blues and blacks lately, so the opportunity to to use vibrant colors was a welcomed one, for sure!

Lastly, I decided to use this sketch from Stuck?! Sketches.  It's a really frilly and fun sketch, but I decided to make it masculine, using pics of my son from 4 years ago.  It was a bit challenging to find 3 pictures that I could cut down so much, but as I dug in my picture bin, the ones used couldn't have been more perfect! 

Isn't that amazing?  I love when I am able to knock out "3 birds" with one stone!  Thanks so much for stopping by!

SMOOCHES!

This was definitely the plan!

For the past 3 years, I've selected a goal of 52 layouts to complete for the year.  That amounts to roughly one layout a week.  Surely, despite my demanding job, busy schedule and sleep needs, I could get a measly one layout a week done, right?  RIGHT!  Not only does my design team obligations require me to complete a total of 5 layouts a month, but playing along with different challenge blogs and with various challenges on SB.com certainly make that a piece of cake.  Take a look at my latest creation that can be found over at the Stick It Down challenge blog.  Here is the sketch:

and here is my creation:

More pictures of myself and my husband the day after our wedding in the Riviera Maya, Mexico.  I absolutely loved working with the DCWV Burlap stack.  It is ACTUAL burlap in a stack!  I was too excited to find it at Michael's.  I also used DCWV papers for everything else as well, including the sun that I fussy cut from an elements page.  The peacock was cut on my cricut machine.

Here are 3 other layouts I completed based on sketches:

This one was done for the March Page Draft Challenge on Scrapbook.com.  I used scraps of paper to complete this layout of my son.

This one was done for the March Stackaholics Challenge over at the DCWV blog.  These are 3 cousins and my son at a birthday party years ago.  I never scrapped these pictures because on each one someone wasn't looking.  Years later, I can appreciate the imperfection of these pictures and took the liberty of writing directly on the pictures...something new for me.  I love the way this page came out.

Lastly, here is another throwback layout of my son, done for this week's sketch at Unscripted Sketches.  This was on our way to our very first Mother/Son dance at my school.  He wasn't yet a student there.  I used component from the Swagger kit, as well as a Heidi Swapp mask to add some "umph" to the gray page.  Lately, I've been scrapping on a lot of neutral/muted color.  Be sure to check back for some very COLORFUL pages...I promise!

SMOOCHES!



Wednesday's Project

While my husband packed for his weekend trip and mouthed, "I see where I stand," I worked diligently in the scrap spot on this project:

 I used the March sketch from the Black with Two challenge which requires you to 1) use a black background, 2) follow the sketch and 3) use a mood board for additional inspiration:

Here is the mood board which required the use of the colors lemon and thyme.  Doesn't that sound yummy?

For my title work, I focused on the prompt challenge over at Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge where you were required to scrap about a favorite song from your teens...title, lyric or photo of the band.  For me, that was hard because I am a lady who has roughly 7,000 songs on her iPod!  However, I thought the title "Caribbean Queen" was fitting for the picture I chose.  I love that song by Billy Ocean.

In addition to these 2 challenges, I am also entering this layout in the March Cricut Challenge, the Girl's Challenge, Project 52, the Volume Scrapping Challenge and the Creative Titles Challenge (along with a few others) on Scrapbook.com.  I am PUMPED on the fact that I was able to integrate so many challenges!

Until next time, which should be very soon...SMOOCHES!

To Have and to Hold.

I recently held a swap on Scrapbook.com called the Wedding Splendor swap.  For this swap, each lady signed up for a certain wedding related category and created an embellishment that was true to theme.  Here are a few of the items I received:



Aren't these amazing?  I think they are better than any embellishment I could buy in the store!  Put some pop dots on it and you have INSTANT dimensional embellishments. 

I absolutely love swapping with the ladies on sb.com.  Not only do they take pride in their work, but they are SO creative!  I would have NEVER thought to do some of the things they did on these pieces...and I own a lot of the cartridges that these were cut from!

I am currently hosting an altered bingo card swap at sb.com!  The more participants the merrier, so if this is something you would be interested in, we would LOVE to have you!  Check it out here.

Here is a layout I did for challenge using some of my swap embellishments:

Again, these embellishments are so amazingly beautiful, don't you think?  They really are the perfect finishing touches this page needed.  As a result,  I came in second place in the challenge I completed this layout for!  WINNING!  Be sure to check back for more projects.  I feel a mini album coming on...it's been a while!

 SMOOCHES!

4 Days Left.

There are only 4 days left in February and I am desperately trying to get a few more projects done before I run out of time!  I decided to play along this month over at Let's Get Sketchy.  My scrappy sister and fellow Stick It Down Design Team 2 member, Brenshevia, is the creator of the sketch challenge blog.  There are some amazing sketches over there, including this one that I decided to try:

Easy enough, right?  Wrong...it took me quite some time to find the perfect papers that would work with the pictures I knew I wanted to use.  I decided to use the DCWV Ultimate Sports Stack to create this clean and simple layout:

Here is a layout of my son the day he got his jersey with HIS last name on it.  To make a long story short, we registered for flag football after uniforms had been ordered and it took the organization virtually all season long to get his name plate for his jersey.  How proud he was on this day!

For this layout, I wanted to keep it pretty simple & subtle with the patterned paper, but still incorporate orange and blue, the team colors.  The MAMBI football play stickers did exactly what I wanted...added life and "action" to the layout!  I really wanted to add stitching to this layout as well, but unfortunately I couldn't find "C" batteries for my little machine.  Who uses C batteries anyway, right???  Couldn't find 2 around here for nothing!  Maybe next time.  LOL...thanks for looking!

SMOOCHES!

Getting It In...

February is probably the busiest month of the year for me.  I typically have 3 big events I have to attend...one being my boy's birthday.  Last year we had a slumber party with 12 boys ranging in age from  5-9 years old at our house.  It was the most work I had ever done for a party and I vowed never to do it again!  Boys who attended this party were so impressed that we were invited to 3 slumber parties this year.  I bow down to those moms.  It is ALOT of work.

  This year his request was a movie party for 6 friends.  Sounded easy enough...The release of the Lego Movie was perfect and that is exactly what we did!  Afterwards we went to GattiTown for some impromtu fun and pizza.  He was then allowed to have ONE friend spend the night...he chose his cousin.  SWEET!

With February being the shortest month of the year as well, it seems as though you blink and it's over.  I had quite a few projects I needed to get done this month, and because my first 3 weekends were consummed, I am now hustling to "get it in" and get them done.  Thank goodness I worked ahead for my DT projects this month:

For my Unscripted Sketches DT project, I did a layout.  There are only 2-3 ladies on the team that submit layouts over at the blog so I am often really proud to have a different type of project highlighted.  Check out everyone's work for the week here.  I used my cricut and the Robotz cartridge (which you HAVE to own if you have a boy) for my title work.  Not only does it have amazing robots, but the fonts is super cute!  If you don't already follow the Unscripted Sketches blog, be sure to do so!

For my Stick It Down DT work, I was able to churn out another wedding layout (I still have a lot to do, so bare with me, please!)  I loved being able to use paint and chevron together.  You would think that would be a bit busy, but it wasn't!  I absolutely LOVED the way it turned out. Check out the other submissions here.  Stick it Down is fast moving blog that is FILLED with different weekly challenges.  From 2 page layouts to cards and then the single page layouts, of course, I am postive you will find some motivation!  Be sure to follow the Stick It Down blog and play along with us!  There is an opportunity to be a guest designer weekly!

Off I go to finish up some other projects February projects!

SMOOCHES!

OOPS! I did it AGAIN!

After seeing my layout amongst the DCWV top 10 in December, I decided to give it another try for January.  Here is what I came up with: 

...And wouldn't you know it!  My layout was selected again!  You can't even begin to imagine how very excited I was!  I spent 2 weeks off and on working on this layout.  I knew I wanted to make it a masculine layout, but sometimes masculine layouts can appear "plain."  The challenge with masculine layouts is trying to embellish them without flowers and fru!  I think I did a pretty decent job of using The DCWV Guy Stack on this layout!

For the February Stackaholic challenge, I decided to go WILD:

There was no second guessing the use of the DCWV Gone Wild Stack for this layout of myself and my girlfriends at my wedding in the Riviera Maya, Mexico.  I love all of the vibrantly colored animal printed papers agains the all black zebra printed paper from the stack as well.  Fingers crossed for the 3-Peat!

Here are a two other layouts I worked on this month:

This one was inspired by a layout that I had filed away in my favorites over at Scrapbook.com.  I created this for the Scrap Your Favorites Challenge and the Use Your Scraps Challenge.  I LOVE the way this turned out...bright and full of personality, just like the subject!  He has a birthday this week, by the way!

 

This one was done for the Round Robin Challenge over at Scrapbook.com.  Even though it is a Christmas picture, I totally gave it a Valentine spin!  I used my Cricut to cut the word LOVE, utilizing hearts as the "O."  I've gotten very comfortable with tearing papers...here I layered it on top of a sheet of printed paper from one of my K & Company stacks that I've hoarded for some time now!

Be sure to come back to check out some of the FABULOUS swap items I received.  I am in the process of closing out 2 swaps on sb.com, then I am going to take a bit of a swap sabatical, to focus solely on my layouts and mini albums.

SMOOCHES!

Circlemania?

Happy New Year, everyone!  I've been busy "winter cleaning" and purging this week.  It is my last week of "vacation" and I wanted to feel like I accomplished a lot while I was off.  The result?  A cleaner house and TONS of things to donate to Goodwill!

I've also been busy scrapping.  I set my layout goal for the year as 52 again.  Even though it seemed as though I did a lot of scrapping and creating in 2013, I did not meet my goal. Enter sad face here.  However, there is no doubt in my mind that I will exceed my goal this year.  All I have to do is commit to doing a minimum of 1 layout a week and I am in there!  Now that I am on 2 design teams, that is going to be a breeze for me.

In the meantime, I've been sharpening my sketch skills.  Not creating sketches (which I must admit, I'm becoming more and more interested in that,) but following them to produce layouts like this:

Here is a layout of my son and I on my wedding day.  He is walking me down to the cart that whisked us away to the wedding destination.  I absolutely love this picture, so when I came across the perfect sketch, I jumped at the opportunity to use it...along with this paper from MAMBI.  It's perfect!

Then there is this one.  Aren't those pictures hillarious!  My husband had been drinking since early that day.  I didn't realize it until the reception.  He was definitely on "10!"

As you can see, I had a little bit of the circle fever this week.  LOL...banners as well, apparently.  I was too excited to be able to use my "old school" Creative Memories circle punches, blades, self healing mat and templates to make these circles!  That just goes to show, a combination of "old" and "new" techniques can definitely manifest into masterpieces!  OH, and a great sketch is just the beginning!  Like this one:

This is the starting sketch being used on Scrapbook.com for JusLyn's Round Robin Challenge.  We are supposed to take our inspiration from this sketch.  I interpreted that as not having to use the entire sketch, which I didn't want to do because I had already created a sketch using a lot of trees.  Instead I decided to use the top right hand corner of the sketch to create this:

This is my first layout for 2014.  It is a layout of my son and my husband's best friend at the reception.  He had obviously had enough!  He slept through the final 2 hours of the reception on two chair put together and a suit jacket over him.  That is one of the things I love about this child...when he is sleepy, he goes to sleep AND he can sleep through anything!  The sketch had just one circle and one banner, but as you see, I went nuts with it!  I also accidently tore my paper when I was distressing it, but fixed it easily by tearing it all the way out and adding little "peeks" of lighter color there.  I absolutely LOVE how it turned out.

Look for more circles and banners in my layouts as I follow more sketches to create.  It does seem to be the craze, doesn't it?  Be sure to catch on!

SMOOCHES!