SB layout in process: Bach's Cactus Nursery

Making this scrapbook layout is an experiment in (hopefully) streamlining  my process of choosing materials for a SB layout. To that end, I'm sort of 'talking' through my process, here, so if you don't want to read that, you can skip over this post, and wait till I show the finished product! (I won't be offended, I promise!)

Choosing supplies is one of the parts (besides photo editing- but that's a topic for another post) that takes the longest for me, so I want to see if I can speed that part of the process up some. 

I decided I would start this layout 'backwards' from what I usually do: instead of starting with the photos, I started by first pulling together  a bunch of potential choices for embellishments, letter stickers, and papers that I thought might work. The only things I had already decided were: 1) that the background would be cardstock in some darker color- no white or cream, and 2) that it would be a 2-page layout, so I'd potentially be using larger pieces of paper rather than scraps. And okay, I guess didn't disregard the photos altogether: since the photos are of a desert plant nursery I knew I probably wasn't going to be using pastel blue, or purple, or gold, or anything like that- but I wasn't trying to 'match' any specific colors or pull together a 'theme' at that point.  

I rifled through my boxes o' stuff (you can see my current organization method in this blog post), and grabbed anything that caught my eye in colors that I thought might work... I decided to limit myself to items in olive-y greens, orange, golden-yellow, along with some random pieces in red, brown, and blue. 

my pile of potential embellishments, stickers, and borders

Next, I went through my patterned paper and pulled out any pieces that looked like they might work with the same color palette. Again, I didn't make any choices yet, just pulled out colors / patterns I thought might work and set them aside. Lots of yellows, a few greens, orange, red, a couple blue, etc. I probably ended up with, maybe, 10-12 pieces total?

first pass: my potential patterned paper pile
(say that 5 times fast, lol!)

Then I very quickly made a second pass through this entire pile (it only took a couple minutes). Many papers I liked at first glance didn't make the cut (a couple examples:  the too-tropical-looking green pattern, the red paper that turned out to be on the pink side, the blue paper that looked way too much like the other blue one, etc.). I narrowed it down from 12-14 pieces to approximately six pieces that all more or less coordinated with each other in terms of the colors, and set my rejects aside. The picture below is what survived the second pass:

patterned paper + borders, scraps, etc. that made the cut
(at this point there's still no guarantee that I'll use them)

I very quickly did the same process with my cardstock. I knew I needed two pieces (2-page layout), and I knew I wanted it to be a somewhat darker color. This is my first pass, after rifling through the cardstock storage box for only about 30 seconds:

All this cardstock is from the Bazzill warehouse sale, by the way- nothing beats getting a 12x12 pizza box stuffed full of cardstock for a flat fee, even if I did wait in line for an hour to get into the warehouse! And, somewhat embarrassingly, I went to this sale the year before last, I think, and the box is still pretty full. Not much scrapping happened last year, at all. (But, I hope to change that this year in a major way, with some personal goals and challenges posted on the new SB message boards I've been hanging out on.)

I decided to use the very first color of cardstock that I picked out (funny how that can happen, isn't it??) and put the rest of it back in its pizza box. Next, I arranged the photos onto the cardstock, so I could see how much real estate I had to work with for 'decorating' my layout:

the bare bones of the SB layout- photos + cardstock

(I worked out this photo arrangement a couple weeks ago, at the same time I printed the photos so I could decide which photos to choose, and what sizes to print them at. FYI, here's a tip: I worked out the photo arrangement using two 12x12 sheets of white cardstock. Once I had them arranged how I wanted them, I took a picture of it so I could remember it for later! I don't know why it took me such a long time to come up with that idea- it's such a simple one- but I think it's a brilliant one, since 1) I tend to do my scrapping in 'stages' instead of all at once, and 2) my memory is horrible, lol!

So, next up is 'what I did' with all this paper, doo-dads, and photographs. Stay tuned for that! (since I'm still not quite finished with it, lol!)

Thank goodness dogs don't know about the tooth fairy!

Otherwise, we'd be in trouble, lol!! Krista is doing great! The next morning, the nerve block and aftereffects of the anesthesia had all worn off, and she seems mostly back to normal. Here she is, pretty much back to her usual happy self: 

Granted, there are a few empty spots there, so she looks a bit goofy. But she's doing pretty good, even only a day or two after the surgery. I soften up her kibble with water, sort of like Chuck Wagon dog food (remember that stuff? I still remember those commercials!! click here to watch!) so it's pretty mushy, and her appetite is just fine. (as always, lol!)  

Tom pointed out that her snoot looks a bit shorter, which is weird-- till he figured out it's a bit of an optical illusion, because it looks like there's some swelling in her nose and face. I'll be interested to see if her face looks any different after the swelling goes down, because a number of the teeth that were removed were the large molars in the back. (no doggie dentures needed though- the vet said she'll just chew on the other side of her mouth.)

SB page: lunch in Tucson

yay, another completed scrapbook page! (and #2 of 50 in my 50-project challenge.) This page started out pretty simple in its arrangement, but like always, I made it take forever to complete. I really like it, though, which is a good thing, since I'm the one who made it, lol!

This page documents the day in February when we drove to Tucson to have lunch at Mi Nidito restaurant. We also did a very small bit of sightseeing while we were there, and went to Bach's Cactus Nursery (which I'm going to do an entire 2-page layout about, in addition to the photos I included here). The overall page layout is a grid, one of my favorites arrangements. The three large photos were printed at 3.5 x 5, and the other three spaces were built on top of 3.5 x 5 pieces of patterned paper. The plant photos were printed at 2x2, I think, then I trimmed them down a bit to fit better- the restaurant photos were printed at, maybe, 2x3? I think I trimmed them down, too, so the patterned paper would show  a bit more around the edges.

This photo doesn't look like anything much, but I wanted to include it to show the background cardstock I used for this page... no, it's not a Christmas layout. The holly pattern, while it's technically the 'front' of the paper, was used as the 'reverse' on this layout. I got this paper at the Bazzill warehouse sale a couple years ago- I don't scrap a lot of Christmas pages, but I really liked the color of the cardstock. So, I bought some of it anyway, knowing I was going to use the reverse. Nobody said that just because it has a pattern that you have to use that side of it! :D

Here's a close-up of the flower section: this section was sort of an accident- the green polka-dot paper wasn't quite 3.5 x 5, so I added another piece of patterned paper to it to make up the difference, then covered the seam with some (new) Prima washi tape. Necessity is the mother of invention they say, right? Sometimes in creative endeavors, too! And I actually like it better than if I had just used one piece of patterned paper- interesting how that works out, isn't it??

  

A close-up shot of the title / journaling block. I knew I had quite a bit that I wanted to write (I usually do, lol!), so I typed the journaling on my typewriter-- I could never write neatly enough to fit all of that onto this layout writing by hand. Unfortunately with this much journaling, most of the pattern on the yellow patterned paper is now hidden, as are the three pieces of colored washi tape I put on the lower right side of the space.

here's one of the photo blocks, embellished pretty simply with a journaling tab punch (edged with ink to make it stand out against the cardstock background) along the edge of the block, a stamped/cut-out word embellishment, and a bit of typed journaling glued right onto the photograph. (I was really intrigued by these mosaic decorations that were all over the neighborhood around the restaurant, so I googled 'mosaics in Tucson' to find out more information about them. Turns out they were made by students at an alternative high school and Tucson has won some awards for this program, which I think is very cool!! Thank goodness for the internet, right??)

A close-up of the title area: the tag is a Cosmo Cricket tag sticker I thought matched the colors, and the letter stickers are some of my stash of beloved Sassafras Lass supplies (I'm still sad that this company went out of business, and I sort of hoard my stash of their stuff). The baker's twine was arranged into the perfect loopy arrangement, then I carefully glued it into place with my fabric/ribbon adhesive. (see what I mean about it taking lots longer complete this page than it could have?? lol!)

Here's a close-up of more of the small details that I kept adding to the page-- these details 'make' the page, in my opinion, but they also made the page take a lot longer than it might have otherwise taken! There's a few different types of stickers here (Jillibean soup brand, as well as October Afternoon, I think), and I added 3-D foam tape to give them extra dimension. You can also see here that I added some glitter glue to the striped paper to make it a bit more interesting. (there really wasn't much else I could do to decorate that space, since the photos covered most of the paper). 

One last close-up view of one of the stamped embellishments: I stamped the word onto white cardstock with chalk ink, trimmed around the stamped image, then attached it to the page with 3-D foam tape. A nice detail, even if it did take a bit of time to do! (I've seen people do this on their SB layouts for years, but never did it myself till now- I quite like how it turned out, and I'm definitely going to do more of it.)

poor Krista!!

yesterday was a long day for Krista (and for us, too). We went to the vet at 7:00 am, so I could drop her off... she got her teeth cleaned, polished, and also, unfortunately, needed a couple (we thought) extracted. This is her 'before' picture, while we waited for her to be checked in:

She has a weird sort of underbite going on where you can see her bottom teeth when she looks at you. Turns out, those bottom teeth were  moved out of place because they were loose! She also had some pretty bad breath going on, apparently due to lots of gum disease, and even had some abscesses and  quite a bit of bone loss in her jaw. So, instead of just a few teeth being removed like we had expected, after about 6 hours of work altogether between the cleaning, all the X-rays, and the extractions, Dr. V. ended up extracting a total of 15 teeth. (dogs have 42 teeth total, but still, 15 is a lot!) I guess the same thing could happen to us, if we never brushed our teeth or saw a dentist regularly until we were middle-aged? 

Here she is last night after bringing her home from the vet's office. She was still pretty loopy from the morphine, and didn't even move after I got her comfortable on the floor. (poor thing!) When she did finally try to get up, she got to the tile floor and went straight down, sort of like that scene when Bambi tries to walk on the ice for the first time... 

This morning, she's doing much better, already! She ate all of her breakfast (mashed up with some warm water), and is much steadier on her feet. Now, she just has to chill out and heal till her 10-day checkup. (no problem, there, at all- her favorite activity is chilling!) Hopefully, she'll feel even better than she ever did before, considering that she's probably had these problems  accumulating for quite a few years. 

And as soon as I can, I'm going to start brushing her teeth, so we don't have to go through this again! :) (and brush the other dogs' teeth, too!)