a few more layouts to share

It seems like I always have more ideas for SB pages in my head than I can ever get completed (that darn job, and having to make a living, lol!) but Calvinball has been the kick in the pants I've needed to actually make some of them and get them completed.

Home Improvement- my house in Round Lake, IL
These pics are from 2003, and I have had this layout idea
in my head for at least 5-10 years. 

 I have been carrying that paper-pieced dump truck around with me for at LEAST the past 8 years; I made it myself, from scratch, a loooong time ago. I'm pretty amazed I still knew where it was!

My Scrapping Essentials-- a visual representation of all the things I
need (or like to have, anyway) for scrapbooking.

 This page is another one that I started at least 5-7 years ago- I drew and cut out the pie chart by hand, and never got any farther than that. I finally finished it! My Scrapping Essentials include: snacks and soda (Diet Dr. Pepper, Raisinets, and Hot Tamales are my current faves); space to work in; stories and photos; paper (I looove patterned paper, and have more of it than I will ever use- it's just so pretty!); music or TV to listen to; inspiration; and embellishments. That's the fun stuff- glitter, brads, sequins, punches, enamel dots, etc.

The 'embellishment' section of the pie chart-- I kinda went overboard
when I decorated this piece, but I do like the entire page.

Quite often, I have photos that don't really 'fit' in with anything else to make an entire page or layout about... I decided to make a page that was just 'random' photos that I like for whatever reason. 

Close-up of the 'caption' section of the page- typed with my estate sale typewriter.
(See below for the entire page.)

Random Snaps, entire layout--
another one that I started ages ago.

I cut the glittery polaroid-style frames from a patterned paper and temporarily stuck them (empty) to a background paper when I first got the idea. The page stayed like that for about 2 years, till I finally decided I was going to make this page no matter what, so I added more papers, and chose photos for it. I do quite like it-- there's plenty more 'randomness' in my photo files, so I'll probably make a page like this occasionally from now on.

The photos on this page truly are random-- a rooster I saw when I was bird-watching at the Riparian Preserve (you can't get much more random than a rooster at a wildlife preserve, right??); a snail I saw right outside the front door where I work in Phoenix (snails living in the desert somehow still seem 'wrong' to me); us up in the hot air balloon; the restroom sign at the Honolulu airport (I loved that that they have the symbol wearing a dress and lei); and a 'shadow selfie' I took a few years ago at Mom and Dad's garden.



I've got more pages done that I'll post soon, but right now it's getting hot out here on the patio (it's supposed to be in the mid-upper 90s all week- yuck!), and there's scrapping to be done!

a quick post-and-run!! Calvinball 2015!!

I apologize for the crappy color quality of these photos- they were all taken pretty late at night in my scrap room. Yes, I still do scrap (occasionally), and hopefully I will be scrapping a lot more in the next month or two! I signed up to take part in a fun month-long scrapbooking challenge called Calvinball, on a scrapbooking website. 

Do you remember the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes? (I do, since I grew up in the 1980s... it was one of my favorites). Calvin and his stuffed toy tiger/best friend Hobbes  would play Calvinball, a game where the rules were made up as you go along. This scrapping contest is for the entire month of March, to encourage fun, a bit of smack-talking, and scrapping. The rules change as you go, and you get points for making layouts, cards, posting about Calvinball (one point for me, haha!!), and bonus points for meeting scrapping related challenges- like a page with more than 3 photos, for example, or a page using specific supplies. 

If you'd like more information about Calvinball, you can go to the Get It Scrapped website and read more about it-- click here. Come join in! Anyway, to the layouts-- they were photographed late at night, hence the crappy colors. I did what I could to fix it, but really would like to re-take them sometime. (after Calvinball ends, when I have more time, lol!) 

--click on any of the photos to make them larger--

A layout about my scrapping essentials, which include patterned paper, inspiration, photos and stories, and Diet Dr. Pepper! This page has been partially finished for at least 1 1/2 years, and I never would have finished it without this contest. yay, me!! :D

A page with a pretty nice photo of Ariel, hanging out on 'her spot' on the back of the couch, looking out the window. I always wonder what she's thinking, if anything... watching the birds (does she think she can get them?), or is she just wondering when dinner will be served?

The  embellishment area at the top right- sorry for the glare; that banner is made of plastic. The letter stickers are teeny, and have to be at least 2-3 years old. (yay, me!! for finally using up some of my older supplies!)

This layout showcases photos of our Saguaro cactus's very first flowers!! We wondered how many years it would take; we bought it in 2006 when it was 5 feet tall, and in June 2014, it got its first flowers! (a whole three!) I did the best I could trying to get pictures of them, but the Saguaro is at least 10-11 feet tall, so it was kinda difficult-- I didn't want to fall into the cactus while I was doing it. 

larger photo, left-hand page

larger photo, right-hand page

and with that, I'm off... I want to see if I can sneak in at least a few minutes of scrapping before I head to bed! I'll be back soon, with more photos.

(and sadly, we haven't seen the owls anytime recently... Tom says he's heard them occasionally, so maybe they're still in the neighborhood- I hope so!)

SB Layout: Captured (by US Marshals)

For the last couple weeks I haven't done any actual scrapbooking- I've done lots of photo editing and printing, and designed SB page layouts, but hadn't made any actual pages with those photos. (I did make Easter cards, though- last minute, as always, of course- hopefully they made it to their destinations on time!) I've been hanging out on a new scrapbooking forum on the internet, and there's a couple challenges going on right now which got me back to my scrapping desk. The biggest challenge I've signed up for is to make 50 projects (with no time limit)... this layout is #1 of fifty!

This scrapbook page was based on a sketch from Shimelle Laine's blog. (you can see her sketch, and video, here.) Shimelle's sketch focuses on using triangles to draw your attention to the photo... my layout doesn't exactly use triangles, nor does it use an actual photo! The page topic idea came from another scrapbooking challenge (by Kathryn Scraps, from her blog Life on the Scrap Beach: the post is here) to scrap a 'pop culture' topic. My SB page is about our love for the television show Justified-- instead of using a photo, I used the insert flyer from one of the DVD box sets (since we really do love the show, we own every season-- and we've watched every episode more than once). 

My page title is kind of cheesy, but I think it fits with the page topic. The title is "captured by US Marshals" which is a play on the fact that the show really captured our attention when we first started watching it. It's really the only show we make a point of watching every week, and have bought every season when it came out on disk. (the season isn't even over yet, and we're already antsy to buy this season on disk so we can re-watch them all again!) 

For this SB page, I had to work with the colors in the DVD flyer image so I was sort of 'stuck' with the blue and red- but it turned out working pretty good, I think. I used a couple older pieces of SB paper from my stash that have a distressed, 'cowboy' sort of feel to them.  

I stamped some of my Tim Holtz 'Bitty Grunge' stamps (the two styles of stars) onto light blue woodgrain paper, then punched them out. The imperfect stamping adds to the distressed feel of the page, and in addition, I inked the edges of pretty much every piece of paper I used on this layout. (it took forever, but it really looks nice, even if I did maybe over-do it just a little.)

More inking and distressing- I distressed the edge of the light-colored paper using a paper-distressing tool, which sort of chews up the edge of the paper. Then (of course!) I inked the edges to cover up the white paper core. The letter stickers have a fabric look to them, but were a bit too light, so I also colored them with brown ink to match the layout. (this fits in with yet a third challenge on the SB forum, which involves making layouts using a number of different techniques on your pages- all the inking on this page meets one of those requirements.)

 

This layout took forEVER to finish due to all the inking, distressing, and futzy details I included. I even trimmed skinny red and brown stripes (and inked them, of course) to match the look of the rest of the colors. But, as long as it took, I really do like the final product. So: 1 down, 49 to go!! :D