Speed Scrap!

If it is Wednesday, there must be a speed scrap at ScrapOrchard. I love speed scraps, because they lead me down paths that I wouldn't go down by myself. In the case of this layout, it was the doodly swirl and the paint splat.  Here were the instructions for tonight's speed scrap.

1. Pick out one to three photos. Make sure all photos are evenly spaced on your page.
2. Grab three papers. they can be either patterned, solid or a mixture.
3. Use two of your papers to mat your photo(s).
4. You need to use some sort of doodle looking element. It can be a swirl, stitching, an animal, tag, etc. It just has to look doodled or sketched on.
5. Splatters! I love splatters! Get a splatter or two or more on your layout. It can be a glitter, paint or even a stain type splatter.
6. Add some string, ribbon, or both.
7. Make the layout yours! Add whatever to your layout that you think it's missing. You can add whatever but don't delete any of the instructions that have been given.

And here is my layout:

Loretto Chapel

Adore by Designs by Krista; 

Doodle swirl from Mumba Thumba by Irene V. Alexeeva;

Paint Splat from Fries with that Shake by Designs by Angel;  

Fonts: StencilStd

I used a kit by Designs by Krista for this layout. I love her papers. And I really love that scrunched up and stitched ribbon!

Adore by Designs by Krista

A postcard from China

My husband was in China last week. He sent me an electronic postcard on Friday, which I promptly scrapped yesterday:

Shanghai Ocean Aquarium

Beach Breeze Collab by Owl Tree Studios

Font: SeaDreams

I picked him up at the airport last night. Over dinner he told me the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium was amazing, but he didn't get any photos for our scrapbook. And then he added that the page would have to be journaling only. I told him not to worry that we could find photos licensed for re-use on the web and combine those with his journaling. We did that today and here is the companion page to the above layout.

Beach Breeze Collab by Owl Tree Studios

Jellyfish photo by securecato

Shark and lion fish photos by wstay

Font: Century Gothic

And, of course, he did the journaling, as he always does for the layouts of  his adventures and memories.

Inspired by Black and White

One of the reasons I love challenges is that they are so inspiring. The Black and White challenge at Oscraps this month inspired me to make this layout.

I Love Roosters
Interior Chic by Brine Design; 
Cooper Solids by Brine Design; 
Cooper Spotty Dottys by Brine Design; 
Cooper Element Pack by Brine Design; 
Lifted Frames 5 by Brine Design; 
Just Me Collab by Brine Design and Siamese Studio;
Fonts: ArialMT

I love these photos because I love roosters.  These photos are some of my lost honeymoon photos. We went to Key West where roosters run amuck; it was one of my favorite things about that city. I used a new product by Brine Design in this layout called Lifted Frames 5. Here is a preview:

Lifted Frames 5 by Brine Design

I just love those little colored add-ons, don't you? There are two versions of this frame kit, the one I've shown above that comes with layered PSD files and another version of Lifted Frames in png only files especially for PSE users! Isn't that grand?

Black and White Challenge at Oscraps

The Designer Challenge is what originally attracted me to Oscraps and this month they are having a great Black and White challenge. The challenge is to use a B&W quickpage/template and/or B&W kit by Sue Cummings to make a layout with B&W photographs. And if you make two layouts, Sue will send you a coupon for 5 dollars! What a great challenge.  I love using B&W photographs in layouts. I decided to make the two layouts into a double layout. I used the template and kit for this layout (left side):

Simply Quick No. 37 by Sue Cummings
Photographed in Black and White by Sue Cummings

I used the quickpage as is for this one (right side):

Simply Quick No. 37 by Sue Cummings

I think they will look good side-by-side in an album.

Body of Art Challenges

I made four layouts for the Body of the Art Challenge over at DigiScrapConnect today, so now I am all caught up! This is apparently why I didn't do any laundry today. Oh, that and decorating my blog!  My fear now it that I will get busy and somehow forget to do the last week's challenge. That would be a bummer, wouldn't it?

Challenge Four was about the ears. The layout was supposed to be about a sound. I chose my to make a layout about my mother's voice. The photo show is probably predates the memory by a few years, but it was what I had. The required technique was either glitter scatter or torn pages. I glittered the pattern on the paper as well as the title. I love using glitter in this way.

Mother's Voice

Interior Chic by Brine Design

Fonts: MASexy & Century Gothic

Glitter Style from Touch of Spring by Queen of Hearts

Photo Action set 67 - field wanderer by nite-fate

The journaling reads: What sound means more to any person than that of their Mother's voice? One of my fondest memories is waking up every morning to the sound of my mother praying and singing in the kitchen. 

Challenge five was about hands and a decorative edge was required. I loved the tutorials for this challenge. I learned how to make my own stamped frames and I learned how to "hand cut" paper. I've linked the tutorials I loved in case you are interested. 

Hand-y Man
Summers Vintage Mini Kit by Girlboheme Studios;
Pin from Noteset by Kleopatra Scraps;
Font: CKWanted

Challenge Six was a selective recoloring challenge. I think I would have preferred a black and white kit with a pop of red for this layout; but I was really trying to stick with the Design Factor Challenge kits. Only one paper or element from the kits is required for the challenge; but that's not very sporting. Or challenging.  I combined two kits for this layout that had the same color palette. One was about ladybugs and one was about snow cones!

Century Farm
Ladybug by Scrapping Fairytales
Summertime Snow Cones by ScrapN2Nspire

Challenge Seven was about the heart and the required scrappin' technique was to thread elements through string. Someone posted a tutorial on making string and I made my own string for this layout. I chose to make a double layout for this challenge because as you know, I've been trying to make more of an effort to make double layouts for challenges. 

My Sweethearts

Punk Princess by Starving Artists Designs; (Design Factor Challenge Kit)

Glitter paper for title Frolic: Paper Add On by Jennifer Z Designs 

Fonts: ck_redpunch, ck_sketchy

The journaling reads: May 7, 2011

I tried very hard to get a good photo of all the dogs at my favorite spot in Pueblo Canyon. But it was very hot and the dogs were not cooperating and Richard was cranky; so I gave up. 

And finally close ups of the two sides:

Whimsy-a very colorful kit by Designs by Krista

Designs by Krista has recently released a very colorful and very fun product line called "Whimsy". Perhaps whimsical is the best description after all!  I love it.  It has my favorite color combination of lime green, purple and orange.  I made a couple of layouts with it in the last two days. The first is about Blue. The photos are kind of bad because they were taken through a dirty windshield, but I think that I've mentioned my firm belief in scrappin' bad photos if they are the photos you need to tell your story.

Home Please
Whimsy Papers 1 by Designs by Krista
Whimsy Extras 1 by Designs by Krista
Fonts: Georgia and Adler

The journaling reads:  June 11, 2011

We took Blue to the vet this morning and then took him walking around East Park. We stowed him in the car while we went to the dumpster. When we got back he was sitting behind the wheel as he often does. 

This next layout is about a lizard I saw in my front yard. I think I saw him again in the driveway last weekend, but I can't be sure, because I was sitting in the car. (And the windshield was probably dirty again.)

Lizard
Whimsy Papers 1 by Designs by Krista
Whimsy Extras 1 by Designs by Krista
Whimsy Gardenland by Designs by Krista
Font: You Are Loved

And here are some product previews (click the image for a larger view):

Whimsy Papers 1 by Designs by Krista

Whimsy Extras 1 by Designs by Krista

Another Template Challenge at GS

There is another template challenge at GingerScraps. This one is hosted by Unforgettable Moments. I love working with templates in general.  I always feel that as a non-artistic person, page design is one of my weaknesses and while I've been trying to learn it doesn't come naturally to me. I'm always repeating a random series of phrases in my head as I scrap. It goes something like "Visual triangle. Don't fill in the triangle. Use an odd number, 3 or 5 or 1. Find a line and make it stronger.  Make a pattern and then break it." So when one someone else has taken the page design out of my hands, it is somewhat of a relief. The template for this challenge is wonderful. It has that split layered page design that I see so often in the galleries. And every time I see one of those layouts. I think "That looks great! I'm going to make a page like that someday", but I never seem to remember to actually do so. (Probably because it is not in my silent mantra.)

I used the template to make a layout about one of the dogs. I know, you are shocked that I am scrappin' about dogs. This layout is for my husband. He's always asking me to get a photo of the German Pinschers with their lips curled. They do this because my husband is trained to give them food when they curl their lips. Unfortunately, most of time I miss the photo. This time I actually got the photo of the lip curl. Unfortunately, I was on the wrong side of the dog. But if you look carefully you can see that his left lip is curled up.  The journaling reads: Blue loves going to the vet because they have those special treats that taste like super-delicious heartworm pills in all the exam rooms. And we always give him some while we wait for the doctor. On this day, Blue was doing the "Ly lip curl". Ly always curls up one side of her lip when she wants food and Richard adores it. And he usually gives her food in response, so Blue has begun doing it too. Anyone that believes that dogs can't train people has never lived with a German Pinscher. 

July 22, 2011

Lip Curl

Template by Unforgettable Memories (GS August 15-31 Template Challenge)

Mommy's Little Monster by Unforgettable Moments

Stitches from Urban Daze by Wyld Web Designs

Ric Rac from Thoughts of You by Unforgettable Moments, and from Because {I love U} by Pretty in Green

Fonts: VNI Thufap2, Twelve Ton Sushi, You Are Loved

Double page layouts?

I've been thinking about double page layouts a lot lately, especially as I had planned to send pages to print in July, but didn't. "Why not?", you ask. I didn't send pages to print in July because I joined my first creative team in late May and while I love it, it seems to have put a crimp in my regular scrappin'. When I began digiscrapping I only did two page layouts because that is what I want to see in my album.  (I began my blog with some of my all time favorite 2 pagers, here.)  And I do print my layouts and put them in our annual album. Every year I make an annual album with a 2 page layout overview of each month, followed by detailed pages from that month about our everyday lives.  

But back to the current quandy: Earlier this year, I fell in love with store challenges.  They are so inspiring. And at first it was easy to go back and make every one-page challenge layout into a two-pager. (I have blogged about that in depth here.) But then I started CTing. And now my hard drive overflows with one-page layouts.  And at this point, I don't see how I find the time to turn them all into two page layouts for my scrapbook unless I quit my job. And some just don't seem amenable to two page layouts. So I am thinking (gasp!) of printing one-page layouts and putting them in albums. How horrible would that be, dear bloggy readers? How horrible would it be? (I am really asking, feel free to answer in the comments.)

The good news is that all this thinking about my double spread quandary has caused me to try to make more double layouts for both store challenges and CT commitments.  After all there is no rule that they have to be 12" x 12", it's just a habit I've somehow fallen into. For example I recently made this layout for a challenge at ScrapOrchard. (My apologies for showing this layout again, but it is central to this post.)

This "Polar Coaster" layout is from a day I call "Angel Fire Fun Day" (My husband and I go to Angel Fire once a year, every year, so why not give it a name?) The following two layouts are also from Angel Fire Fun day and they are both about my niece, Zoie. The green one was made in late May for a scraplift challenge at Gingerscraps and the white one was made recently for a CT commitment.

Lifted from "In My Heart" by ktkadoo
Kit used: U Made me Wub Ewe by Pretty in Green
Individual Elements:
Black corrugated paper, black lace flower border and heart beads from So Girl by Craft-tastrophic Designs
Textured cardstock (recolored) from CU Textures Vol 01 by Captivated Visions
Scatter from Everyday Blessings by Ellie Lash
Fonts: Century Gothic and My Own Topher

(You want to hear something funny? I just realized that I lifted this page from Key of D Designs, who I now create for. Back then I had no idea whose layout I was using for the lift challenge. This digital scrapbooking community is a small world, no?)

Template is Spending Time with You by Unforgettable Moments
Kit is Midsummer Sunset by Unforgettable Moments

Now, I had half-way convinced myself that these two layouts were similar enough to not look terrible side by side in an album, especially if they followed the coherent "Polar Coaster" double-page spread. And besides, I really love both pages.  But then, a couple of weeks ago the creative forum discussion at DigiShopTalk (DST) was all about two page layouts and we were challenged to make a two-page layout.  I posed these three layouts and the questions above to the people at DST and then I decided to morph the two layouts into one coherent double-layout in response to the challenge. I thought it would be easy. In my mind, I was swishing papers back and forth easily. It was more time consuming than I thought, mostly because there were so many layers. And all the background papers for half of the layout were mid-way through the layer stack. (I began by dragging both layered layouts onto a 12" X 24" canvas.) Here's the final product:

Zoie

(Click image for larger view)

Do you want to hear the bad news, dear bloggy readers? I have 4 other single page layouts from this day.  Sigh. I do believe I made all these layouts when I began re-taking the basic digital scrapbooking classes at Jessica Sprague when I moved from PSE to to PS CS.  This is by far my favorite of the four:

You
You and Me Quickpage by Jessica Sprague

I guess the only thing to do is to keep on scrappin'.

Hurt doggie

Two weeks ago, I got out of the shower late in the morning. Ollie yelped in pain as Ly rushed passed him, so I picked him up and was horrified to see that his ear leather was almost cut in half! I yelled for dear husband and he took him off to the vet.  The air conditioning men had been over the day before putting in our new furnace and AC and I have no idea if he was somehow injured by nosing around their things or if Ly is responsible. Poor baby. He hates his cone.  He is truly miserable. The good news is that his stitches come out and his cone comes off today. 

Miserable Ollie

Brave Little Patient by Unforgettable Moments

Frame from Brave Little Patient Add On by Unforgettable Moments

Font: Adler

Isn't that little blue frame adorable? It's from a add-on kit that Unforgettable Moments is giving away on her blog. Here are some close-up photos showing his sad, sad face and his poor, poor ear.

Ollie

Brave Little Patient by Unforgettable Moments

Fonts: Rough Typewriter and Rubber Stamp

I used this great new kit by Unforgettable Moments to make these pages. Here is the kit preview for Brave Little Patient:

Brave Little Patient by Unforgettable Moments

The kit comes with this word art package:

And Unforgettable Moments is giving away a free mini kit on her blog:

14 K-Another Restaurant layout (and a template challenge at GS)

I think this is the third layout that I've made about restaurants this week! Isn't that funny? Any one would think that my full time job was as a food critic or something. This one is yet another July vacation layout. (I told you, almost 900 photos!) While we were in DC last month, dear hubby downloaded a cool restaurant app for my iPhone. It's called MenuPages and while it only works for certain cities (8 major cities in the US at this point) it sure is handy if you are stranger in one of those cities. You can search for restaurants close to you by type of cuisine and it had menus and reviews and price ranges. We used it a lot that week. We used it to find this great breakfast buffet just down the street from our hotel. Look at the size of those blackberries! Do they grow them in DC or something? We had similar sized blackberries in our blackberry crêpe at Point Chaud. I loved this place so much that I posted a facebook status update about it.

14 K

French Bistro: Bundle by Pixels by Jen and Lilacs in Bloom

Fonts: LB Sharpy, KissMeKissMeKissMe and I hate Comic Sans

I used a really unique and nifty template by Pixels by Jen from the template challenge at GingerScraps. The challenge only runs for the first half of August, so you should rush over and check it out. I also used the nifty collab that I blogged about the other day. It is called French Bistro and it is gorgeous. This collab has a set of those pre-made paint splatty/glittery things. I love those things. And it comes with glitter styles. That's right you can make your own glittering things!  I love glitter styles.  But you don't have to take my word for it; here are the product preview for the bundle:

And here is a closer look of everything that is included.

Make It Snappy

Last night was the weekly speed scrap at ScrapOrchard. It was a really cool speed scrap. The directions were:

1. We are going to start with photos today!! Choose 3 photos, 2 of the photos must be square and different sizes. We'll get to the third photo in instruction 3.
2. Now choose 3 papers. They can be solid, patterned or a mix. Use one for your background and then stack/layer the other 2 any way you wish. Don't put your chosen papers away yet though as we are going to use the same ones again.
3. Remember that third photo? Well I want you to blend it somehow on your page. Feel free to use a mask of some type if you like. This third photo must be larger than your other two.
4. Place your 2 square photos on you page if you haven't already and make sure these 2 square photos are touching in some way. The blended photo may be anywhere on your page you like.
5. Our 3 papers are going to come in to play again right now. Take 2 or all 3 and create either some paper strips, blocks or a frame. Place them anywhere on your page that you like but they have to be the same 3 you used at the beginning.
6. Wondering about elements were you? Well no fear as we are that part of our page. I want you to use as many as you would like. Yep, all your choice BUT I want to see a little bit of sparkle somewhere. That can be glitter, metal--anything shiny.
7. Add your date, you may also add a title and journalling if you wish.

It was interesting to start with photos. I decided to scrap our recent trip to one of our favorite restaurants. When we got to the third instruction I thought, actually I said (it was a chat after all), "I can't blend Mexican Food!", but as it turns out, I found the perfect paper to use as a background for blended Mexican food.

I also learned how to make frames from paper during this speed scrap! Here is my layout; I actually like it quite a bit:

Gabriels
Sunkissed by Captivated Visions
Font: Bradley Hand ITC TT & CK Newsclips

What?! No products?!

Sometimes I like to make layouts without products. Here is one of my all-time favorite layouts. I really wanted to focus on the journaling and the photo, so I used nothing but a photo, a couple of fonts and Photoshop Elements. As you might expect, it is a two-page layout.

Blue
(click image for larger view) Title Font: CK Elusive, Journaling font: CK Journaling

The journaling reads:
This is a photo of Blue taken at a dog park at the Alamogordo shows. He is so happy to be running and playing. I love my Blue. He is getting older; he’s 12 now and I know his days are numbered. He’s also getting harder to live with as he ages. He hasn’t aged gracefully; he’s now easily stressed. We know he’s stressed by noise; and we’re not talking thunder, although that bothers him as well. He’s bothered by the beeps of cell phones, pagers and smoke detectors. We’ve picked ring tones based on how much they disturb The Blueser. He was such a good puppy, so easily housetrained. He only had two accidents in the house as a puppy. I tried to get him to pee outside the Hartford airport after meeting him for the very first time. I rmember how the airport workers let him out of his crate and he ran to me happily when we met for the very first time. The workers made a comment about how he knew me and was so happy to see me, but it was the very first time we met. At any rate, I digress. I tried to get him to pee once we got home, but the excitement didn’t wear down enough for him to pee until after we got into the house. I was actually on the phone with his breeder, Joy, telling her that he arrived safely when he started to pee on the floor. I remember telling Joy, “I’ve gotto go, he’s peeing on the floor and her shouting helpfully back ”Don’t let him!” The second accident was the fault of my stupid dog book, which told me that puppies had to go the bathroom 15 minutes after eating. Blue had just had his first breakfast in his new home the morning after arriving, and as I marked the time on my watch so I would know when the “15 minutes” were up, he began peeing on the floor again. That was his last accident in the house (other than those cauced by illness). I’ve always taken such joy in telling people that Blue was reliably housetrained with 12 hours of arriving, but that was due completely to Blue and his iron bladder and had nothing to do with my skill as a dog trainer. He was such a good dog. It makes his current destructiveness particulary frustrating. We had to replace the bathroom door downstairs after he destroyed it. Lucklly we’ve discovered that he will happily destroy carboard boxes when stressed, so we try to leave some out for him. We also think that his deteriorating eyesight causes Blue to stress. Dogs are supposed to be far more adaptable than humans when it comes to losing sight or limbs, but not Blue. His opthamologist says it’s because Blue is an active alpha dog with lightning fast relexes who is used to moving quickly. Poor Blue. It is so hard to see him get old. And within the last month he’s become clingy. In his entire life he’s only wanted to cuddle with me when he was ill. So off we went to the vet to report that Blue was not being his normal independent self. (I almost wrote confident as well, but his confidence deteriorated with his eyesight.) His kidney levels are high, so we’ve reduced his protein. Oh my Blue, it so hard to see you get so old. (Journaled by Angela 2-26-11)


Here are the left and right sides:

Blue's health has actually improved slightly since I poured out my feelings on this page.  We finally realized that he was having a weird type of seizures. He went almost a blissful month without any seizures, accidents or weird behavior after beginning anti-seizure medications. He did have a breakthrough seizure just before our wildfire and evacuation and we had a hard time controlling the seizures while we were evacuated. But things seem to be OK for now. We'll just keep him on his meds and hope for the best.

Point Chaud-yet another vacation layout

Dear Bloggy friends,

You might be thinking, "What? Another 4th of July vacation layout?" Well, my husband and I took almost 900 photos during our vacation last month, so there are going to be a lot of layouts. I'll probably be making 2011 July vacation layouts at this time next year. On our first morning in D.C. we left our hotel in the morning and headed in the general direction of the Mall while looking for food. We spotted an Au Bon Pain after we had wandered a few blocks and since:

a) I was starving

b) I love Au Bon Pain, and

c) I'm pretty sure I haven't been to an Au Bon Pain since I left the East Coast 11 years ago,

we stopped there. After breakfast, we walked about another block and spotted a crêperie; a crêperie with gelato. I was sooo disappointed. But in the afternoon, after our exhausting morning of being in the parade, my darling husband led me back there and fed me gelato and cappuccino. He had a crêpe, and it was so awesomely good that we went back there for breakfast the next day. Here is my layout celebrating our favorite crêperie in D.C.

I made this layout with an awesome new collab that is being released by Pixels by Jen on Friday. Here is a sneak preview of the bundle. Neither my layout nor the sneak peek preview do justice to this bundle. It is awesome and it will be available at GingerScraps on Friday, August 12th. 

Nosework for dogs

If you've been reading my blog, you may have noticed that I like dogs. Earlier this year, I took a nosework class with my youngest dog, Lylah. It was loads of fun.  She was really good at it. This was simply an introduction to nosework class that began with finding food in boxes and advanced to finding food in lots of places. All these photos were taken on the last day of class. I made these layouts in one of my minimalist product moods. (Sometimes I challenge myself to make a layout with just the photos and Photoshop.) Although in this case, the layout seemed to need some pizazz, so I used some fancy stamps and some doodled photo corners. (Credits: Photo corners from You Are My Sunshine collab by Studio Basic and Twizzles Photoshop Brushes by Carrie Stephens)

More July Vacation Layouts

I got a two page spread of some of our Independence Day Parade photos done. If you've been reading my blog for a while, then you might remember that we were actually in this parade. If you're new, you can read about that here. Some of these photos were taken by me while I was carrying the flag, like the one of those poor girls in the southern formals. They were marching behind us in the parade. I felt so sorry for them. It was hot and humid on that day and those girls must have been miserable. Other photos were taken after we were finished carrying the flag. We stood at the end of the parade route and watched for a while.

Independence Day Parade

(click image for larger view)
Template: Circle and Square Templates by Key of D Designs

Kit: Patriot by Key of D Designs 

Glitter splats: Bursting in Air by Key of D Designs

Leaf: April Showers (Design Factor Challenge Freebie) by Key of D Designs

Alpha: Stars and Stripes Shimmer Alpha by Key of D Designs

Here are close-ups of the left and right side. 

I started with some great templates by Key of D Designs that are releasing today at DigiridooScraps.

Circle and Square Templates by Key of D

I just had to add in the larger photos because I've always loved the Anheuser Busch and Wells Fargo wagons.

I used the following Fourth of July Products from Key of D Designs for this layout. (These products were released in early July for the on-top-of-things scrappers. Does anybody know any of those scrappers?)

Stars and Stripes Shimmer Alpha by Key of D Designs

Patriot by Key of D Designs

Bursting in Air by Key of D Designs