Friday, September 28, 2012

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

2 Girls.....

Just wanted to do a quick post sharing my first layout completed with the September kit from Gossamer Blue.....


And a close up......



Seriously lovng the mix of blues and pinks in this kit!  Also I got out a stamp!  Woo hoo!!  I am trying more and more to bring other techniques into my scrapbooking and so far I think I am being pretty consistent at doing this! 

Hope everyone is having a great Wednesday!

Michelle

P.S.  JK Rowling's new book The Casual Vacancy is out tomorrow!!  So excited to get this!

Friday, September 21, 2012

Sweet Girl.....

I am ALWAYS up for a Scraplift challenge.  I find that lifting a project or a specific design element from another scrapbooker is a great way to improve my own scrapbooking.  This is especially helpful when it comes to trying a new technique or trend.

For this layout I participated in 2Peas' Scraplift a Pea Challenge.  I chose to lift this project by treezy. 



I really took the challenge literally and stayed super close to the original because I just flat out loved hers!  What really popped out at me in treezy's design were the chevrons made with triagles.  I don't have a Silhouette yet, so making my own chevrons from scratch can be pretty tedious.  However, by using triangles this task becomes super easy and quick. (I punch square and then cut them in half--takes no brain power what so ever which is just how I like it!)

When it came to product choices I used a mix of Crate Paper's Little Bo Peep and MME's Miss Caroline which I think were made for each other!  The two lines compliment each other so perfectly and they really fit my need for all things little girly!  And the glittery alphas from Crate are my new favorite.

Michelle

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

1st Day of Middle School....

Yes, I am officially the mother of a middle schooler.  Where in the world has the last 11 1/2 years gone???  Aack!  That makes me feel really old.





 Here are some closeups......


   



On this layout I embraced the arrow trend!  LOL.  Count them--there are 2!  Arrows are super cute, but I can not seem to add more than one or two at a time.  I have seen people do lots of great things with arrows, but I am at lost as to what to do with them.  Oh well, maybe I will get it someday! 

Michelle





Monday, September 17, 2012

Wishing For Rainbows.....

I have fallen in love with Lily Bee's blog.....I find so many inspiring projects and challenges there that I look forward to reading it on a daily basis.  This next layout is based off of one of their recent sketch challenges for September.....



I am absolutely an amateur at photography, but every once in awhile I get  a picture I am so proud of--this is one of those.  There is just something about the sunshine bouncing off her face that I love. 


Here I wanted to highlight the sunburst--it is made out of twine!  I had recently pinned a project where this had been done and knew, when I saw the sketch, I wanted to try it out.  Seriously the easiest sunburst  to make :-).

Happy Scrapping!

Michelle
 
 

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Scraplift A Pea....

A few weeks ago I recieved an email from  Garden Girl Shannon Tidwell asking if she could use my layout You {Heart} Bubbles for a project she was working on at 2Peas for a Scraplift a Pea Challenge.  Of course I said yes!  Since then, I have been stalking the 2Pea blog to see what she did and today I was rewarded!

Shannon took inspiration from the bubble garland I made here:



And used that element as a basis for her own layout which you can see here.

So super duper extremely excited and motivated to know I inspired a fellow scrapbooker!  I know I draw inspiration DAILY from the scrapbooking community and it is so great to know that I too provide a little bit of inspiration for others :-). 

Happy scrapping!

Michelle

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Allora....

Occasionally I will print a photo and it will lay around because I am not quite sure what to do with it.  Usually this occurs because I am lacking the colors to coordinate with a photo.  Now I am not too entirely anal about being matchy-matchy, but I like for there to be some cohesiveness between the colors in the pic and the colors in my products. 

This next pic I scrapped was one such case.  Allora was conveniently dressed in a very neutral white, but the red in the blanket threw me--I have very little red in my stash.  (Now if I hit my Christmas past stash, I would be overwhelmed with red!). 

This pic has sat sadly waiting since May, until I got a hold of some Basic Grey Paper Cottage from the August Paper Posies kit.   Now, I was very wary of this line at first glance.  I find a lot of the bigger patterns from Basic Grey to be hard to work with.  But when I flipped the papers to their B side, I found the patterns delightfully easy to work with.  So, along with the help of  Jen Jockish's Pop Off the Page class at Studio Calico, I created this:






Here is a close-up of some of my layers and some misting done using the hexagon mask from Studio Calico.....




Let me say, I am in love with this layout and the little girl it highlights! 

Michelle

Monday, September 10, 2012

You {heart} Bubbles....

This layout was inspired by bubbles......literally.



When I set out  to scrap these fave pics of Maleia I knew I somehow wanted to attempt to create something that mimiced the bubbles in the photo.  To do so I decided I wanted to make a banner using circles.  I tried using various sizes but settled for using the same size "bubbles" for the banner.  Next I sprinkled on some confetti---I get a handful of confetti shapes, hold it above the spot where I want them to go, and let them fall--and glued them down.  And that is how I achieved a bubbleicious look to the page!   

Happy Scrapping!

Michelle

P.S.  I used Echo Park's Everyday Electic and it has become my new fave from the company!

Saturday, September 08, 2012

Shadow of Night.....

I finished this a few weeks ago.....


Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy #2)


Seriously loved it.  Awesome.  And it was long.  Which is so great because I never want good books to end :-).  

In the second installment of the All Soul's Trilogy, Matt and Diana timewalk to Elizabethan England where they meet a wide aray of well known historical characters from the era, including Sir Walter Raleigh.  So, what's the big deal about Raleigh??  Well, to go completely off subject, Raleigh is played by Clive Owen in the movie Elizabeth The Golden Age, and everytime he entered a scene in the book this is what flashed through my head......


I have a bit of a crush on the man for awhile........

But, back to the book, the story line was full of intrigue, action, interesting characters, and left me hungry for the final book.  Really can't ask much more from a book than that.

Michelle


Friday, September 07, 2012

Exploring Sonora Pass......

I have loads of photos from our week long vacation in Bridgeport, California and I keep pushing them back because I am slightly a bit overwhelmed with what to do with them all.  This is NOT like me at all.   I am a very prompt scrapper.  I like to scrap the now.  And the pics are driving me nuts--it's like I can't mentally move on until they are done and in my album.  My mojo for the pics were simply lacking....until, I saw the featured layout at Studio Calico and decided to participate in the challenge to scraplift it.  Here's my finished project and FOUR vacation pics......


It was so refreshing to scrap a multi-photo layout that had more than two pics!  Maybe if I scrapped more like this I would not be so back logged!  LOL. 

Anyways.....I {heart} these pics!  We had such a fun time driving up the Sonora Pass and stopping to look around.  The only downside to the day was that it really showed how dry of a winter we had.  There just was not a whole lot of water flowing, only some snow, and everything looked parched.  Hoping for a nice, wet winter this year.  

Michelle 

Monday, September 03, 2012

Family

It isn't often that I allow myself the option of re-doing a layout.  However, there was a layout I did last year that I did not like at all.  I would cringe everytime  I looked at it.  And the funny thing is that it wasn't all that bad, BUT it was not me. So, I finally decided to end my misery and came up with this.....



Now this is a scraplift of a layout featured in the June issue of Scrapbook Trends.  I did change up the number of photos, added a doily and some arrows, and dropped the journaling and banner.  What I did keep was the grid design which is something I have been attracted to recently. 

And now, I have something that I am happy with :-)

Michelle