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!