View from the Top - Two Page Travel Scrapbook Layout

 How do you feel about heights? We rode the Aerial Tram in the Teton Village on my birthday. It wasn't that high, and we loved it. The smoky haze from the wild fires dampened the view just a bit, though.

We caught the tram right in the village, just steps away from our hotel. 

The paper is Basic Grey "Periphery" and Paper House with Zaomo washi and twine. I added some ephemera from Kaiser Craft "Let's Go" collection. I stamped the camera, tag and other doodads  with CTMH "Life in Pictures". I created the tag in Design Space and journaled on it. I also designed the title myself. 

Thanks for stopping by! Have a crafty week! 

Fall Themed Cards

Happy Thanksgiving!! Hope you are enjoying this great day of thanks and praise and are taking time to think about your many blessings.

We had our whole immediate family here today for a traditional Thanksgiving meal with all of the trimmings. Almost 28 years ago, when we were first married, there was just the two of us around the table, and then there were four of us after we had our two boys. Three years ago my oldest son blessed us with a lovely daughter-in-law! Last year, we were blessed by a sweet little granddaughter who brings us so much joy!! And...we are expecting our second grandbaby in April of next year!! We are truly blessed!!

I'm hanging on to this day of Thanksgiving for the entire day today. The hustle and bustle of Christmas will swoop in on us tomorrow, but for today, it's still a day to give thanks to my God for who he is and all that he does. With all the beauty of autumn in mind, I'm posting a few cards that share this theme.

This Thanksgiving card was Pinterest inspired using the SU grunge stamp.

 Another super simple design of layered scraps.

 I dug out my SU layered photo corner punch to make this super simple Chevron design on Kraft.

 This is another Pinterest inspired design that I made into a sympathy card.

 Love the beautiful leaves on this SU set...I'm sad to put it away until next fall. =(

 Another Pinterest inspired Sympathy card.

 This is the birthday card I created for my Mom. She loves all the beauty of autumn.

 Another super simple sympathy card. I love to use texture folders. I can't get enough of them.

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog today! Hope you will find that you have so many blessings, that you can't even count them all. :)

Two layouts - "Brown Bear" and "Birthday Lunch with Dad"

I haven't posted in over two weeks! We just returned from a fabulous family vacation in St. Augustine, Florida. If you've never been, you must go! It's the oldest city in the United States. Awesome beaches, quaint downtown shopping, all kinds of things to do. We rented a beach house for the first time ever, and it was such a great experience. We had the Atlantic Ocean in our backyard!! We took our two adult sons. Our oldest is married with the sweetest little baby girl in the world (our first grandchild), and our youngest son who is in college, brought his girlfriend. It was such a great time, and it's always hard to return to the reality of work and home....but also good in many ways.

So... on with my layouts. The first features pictures from our favorite restaurant in Pentwater, MI taken last summer.

I picked up this map paper from a warehouse here in Fort Wayne called Darlington Farms. They are only open at Christmas time, and oh what treasures you can find! They have a section of scrapbooking supplies including stamps and paper. The map cardstock (green design is on the back) came in a pack of about 20 heavy-duty, two-sided sheets and it was $1.49!! I love the distressed look. The ribbon which I've had stashed forever reminded me of a road. I stamped on each of the banners to add some detail.

 The road sign shape was cut with my Cricut. I saved the paper coaster from the restaurant (bottom right) and cut a couple of mats to frame it, leaving the frame wide enough to journal around.

As you can see from both pages side-by-side, I was able to use a total of eight pictures on this double layout.

This one pager is pretty special. My daughter-in-law took Scarlet to see her Daddy on his birthday last year. They had a picnic outside on his lunch break and a reporter from the local newspaper spotted them! They made the front page. =) Being the proud scrapbooking Mom and Grandma that I am, it had to be scrapped!

I am really not a huge fan of scrapbooking newspaper articles, but I like the way this one turned out. I cut down the front page newspaper article to just under 12x12 in order to frame it with red cardstock. Since I had two copies, I then cut out the actual picture, title, and captions from the 2nd copy and matted it on blue cardstock, and then popped it up over the same picture on the first copy. I had a set of vintage looking office stamps which I used on light blue cardstock as embellishments.

The coolest part of this story, is the follow up letter to the Editor that we spotted a few weeks later. People are apparently encouraged by seeing good news in the paper. It was very kind of her to take the time to write to the Editor and express her appreciation for the "good news" picture of my son and granddaughter!! I cut the 2nd article out, matted it on red, and popped it up over a bad news article about a drug bust....=)

Typically I'm a two page scrapper, but I had a one page 4th of July layout of Scarlet using these colors. Since my son's birthday is right around the same time, I decided to put them together in the scrapbook.

I hope this post will help you venture out and scrapbook a special newspaper article that you might be holding on to. Have a great weekend!!!

2 Double Page Layouts - "Turtle Farm" & "Underwater Views"

What a crazy couple of weeks at work. I'm so excited to take a minute and share a few layouts with you.

I'm still finishing up my album from our 25th anniversary cruise a few years back. This layout features pictures from the Turtle Farm at Grand Cayman. The turtle and title font are cut with Cricut's "Life is a Beach" cartridge.

 The background paper is pretty cool. The aqua stains and faint writing adds to the pretty/grungy look. I did add a strip of solid aqua to break up the pattern, but then decided to add a faint script background stamp to match the grungy look.

 I added the title to the right side and wrapped it around a picture with the turtle diecut. I inked it up with a little more aqua ink to make it look a little watery. The idea was to not add too much contrast to the page, but to allow the title to blend in a bit.

 Here are both sides together. These turtles are so cute. It was fun to actually hold some of the smaller ones.

Here's another layout from our Grand Cayman excursion. Again, the grungy paper...I can't help myself. =) The friendly fish and cute crab are also cut from Life is a Beach cartridge. The layered circles reminded me of bubbles. I added a bit of Stickles to the fish and crab just for fun.

 The antique boat we were in was really interesting, and we were able to see many different types of fish.

Here is the whole layout, side by side. I still have a few more cruise layoutos to do. My album will be bursting out of the binding!! Such great memories! It's hard to not scrap them all!

Pinterest Inspired Cards

Any Pinterest lovers out there? Oh my...I probably spend way to much time pinning. I've found some great ideas and it's an awesome thing to sort through all the great ideas when I'm ready to make a card.

1) Butterfly Love

This one caught my attentenion because of the pretty butterflies that popped off the white on white layers. This was the first time I'd stamped first, then dry embossed the stamped image. It's a great effect. Thaks for the inspration: http://www.bellarosecards.com/2013/02/bright-butterflies.html

2)Horizontal Pennants

I changed this one up with the colors, and the punched butterfly, but the inspration came from
http://caline-paperwitch.blogspot.de/ I love the way this turned out and I'll definitely make something similar again some day soon. Pretty simple and lots of fun with layering stamps and pennants.

3) Hello Cut Out

I've been wanting to try using the negative image on a card, and when I saw this one on Pinterest, I definitely had to give it a try.  http://noonuh.blogspot.com/2012/04/its-been-so-long.html . I couldn't find the actual post for this card because the pin was tagged to the home page of the blog. I practiced with a scrap first to know where to set the size dial on my Cricut. I popped up the negative, and punched a layered flower for the embellishment. Fun!

4)Distressed Sun Burst

The inspiration for this came from the printed paper and the sunburst die cut. I didn't follow the technique linked to the Pinterest image. Instead I tore the hymnal page to be smaller than the card face, attached it to card stock, inked my embossing folder, then ran the hynmal page through the press in the inked folder. The scalloped circle punched from glitter paper, gave it a little girly touch. Thanks for the inspiration: http://scrapperia.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/jetzt-muss-es-aber-reichen.html

Christmas Cards

Merry Christmas week to everybody! Are you ready to celebrate?? I'm getting a little bit more done every day. I can't wait!!
I was not able to make all of my Christmas cards this year, but I did crank out some multiples of a couple of designs. They are so much fun to make, but always more time consuming than it seems like they should be. =)

This card was inspired by a design for an invitation that I saw recently.

Most of the patterned paper is My Minds Eye, Laundry Line. It's all glittery and shiny! Perfect for standout trees. The sentiment is from Technique Tuesday. I splurged on theTPC Studios metal accents with glitter. =) Love the way they added some additional bling to my card.

The second card was inspired by Scrapbooks, Etc. I used a couple of different kinds of scrap paper. These are both from Echo Park.

 

I added a dry embossed background and used glitter paper for my snowflakes, along with the remaining TPC Studio metal snowflakes used on the previously shown card. The sentiment is one I got on clearance last year from Michaels.
And last, but not least is my own design. I was inspired by a tee-shirt! Do you ever get weird inspirations like that? It happens to me regularly, but I don't always have time to follow through on the idea.

Obviously, a very non-traditional color scheme, but I think it worked nicely with the retro look I was going for. I used glitter paper for the dove, which was cut from Sweethearts cartridge (Cricut). The peace symbol stamps are Inkadinkadoo and heat embossed with holographic embossing powder. The retro "peace" sentiment is Close to My Heart. I sponged some pink and green ink around the embossed peace symbols.

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I just noticed on my blog stats page that I have surpassed 10,000 page views on my blog!!! Wow! Thanks for all of the views. I believe this deserves a nice giveaway after the holidays!!! =) Hmmmm.... What shall I give away?

Double layout - "Inside the Walls of Cartagena"

What a blessed Thanksgiving holiday it has been. Two separate Thanksgiving meals with loved ones! I am full to the brim with blessings!


Today has been a relaxed day of cleaning and catching up on all things domestic. It's been nice to have the day to myself as my Hubby and boys went to the UofM vs. Ohio game! They had a blast, and I enjoyed the peace and quiet...just me and the dog. Here's a picture of the newest addition to our family. We got him in August and he's settling in nicely. He's a retired racing greyhound from a track in Alabama. He is pretty laid back, except when he decides to race around and around our backyard. He's my buddy. =)

On to the scrappy side of life! I'm getting excited to try some Christmas ideas that I have, but I'll need to wait until my son heads back to college, so I can borrow his room and put up my craft table. In the mean time, I really enjoy him being home. He's such a good kid and he lights up our home.

I do have a layout to share with you today. I'm still working on our 25th anniversary cruise pictures from last December. Yes, I know, it's almost our 26th anniversary and it would be so great if these pics were all scrapped and in the album. It will happen...

These are some random shots on our city tour of Cartagena, Columbia. It's a beautiful place to visit.
I love the lined blue paper with the decorative borders, with matching journalling card.

I used solid blue on the right and mimicked some of the borders with my own stamps and ink.

Here are both pages together.

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog today. Happy scrapping!

"Enjoy Life" summer layout

Ah....the weekend, finally! Hello Friday!

Today, I want to share a fresh summer layout of our vacation last year. I added it to my son's album just last week before his party. I've scrapped some of these pictures for our family album, but Jacob wanted last summer represented in his album too. I love that he cares!

 I love the bright green cardstock and the way it makes the pictures pop. I also matted each photo on white for even more definition. The patterned paper is from the Teen Angst collection. It has a little shiny stripe in it. I've had this orange felt "laugh" sticker in my stash for probably close to a year! So fun to finally use it! The circular stamps were purchased on the clearance rack at Michaels. This was the first I'd used them, but so perfect for the layout. Also cool that my scrappy friend had a circle punch the perfect size to punch them out! I love it when that happens!

 I used the Notebook punch to put a little detail on the edge of the strip going across the middle. I cut the sun with my Cricut and layered it on another patterned paper cirlce behind the title (Graphically Speaking). Again, I used some smaller wallet pictures in order to pack them in (11 pics) and still have the space to get a little creative.

Here's a closeup of the journallng and layering. I mounted the "Be You" stamped cirlce onto a larger patterned paper cirlce and fringed the edge all the way around. It turned out kind of cool!

Thanks for looking! Have a wonderful weekend!

"School Days" scrapbook layout

Hope you're all enjoying a wonderful weekend. Today is my son's graduation open house. I'm probably running around like a crazy person right now, so thankfully I scheduled this post in advance!

Today, I'm sharing a recent layout that I completed showing my son from Kindergarten through his Senior year. The intentions were to include only pictures taken on his first day of school. We actually did take their picture every first day of school. However, we had a killer computer virus last fall and lost several years of pictures, so I had to make due. The moral of the story is ALWAYS back up your digital photos!

Here's a closer view of the left page. It's so funny to look at these. Jacob (the blonde) typically has a smile on his 1st day of school photos. However, Joel, usually looks much less than excited. There wasn't a whole lot of room for embellishments, so I simply cut out a bunch of apples with my Cricut, inked them up on the edges and used a number sticker to identify the year. You can see a little bit of the background stamping I did with white ink to give it a more distressed look. The penmanship stamp is from Glitz Design and the texture stamp is StampinUp!

I cut a tree and used my scallop punch to create bunches of leaves in the tree top. The tree bark look was created with VersaMark on Kraft paper and the same StampinUp! texture stamp. Oh....make sure you take a close look at grade 10! Don't you love the super long hair? I didn't actually mind it at the time, but I much prefer the short clean cut look they have now.

Here's a little closer view.

Have a great weekend and thanks again for stopping by my blog today!

Father's day cards to share

While I was making my graduation cards, I  decided to go ahead and make Father's Day cards while I had my mess scattered around. Here's what I made.


The stamps are all brand new from Stampin Up! I had the paper in my stash. I cut the letters and the penants with my Cricut cartridge "Birthday Bash" and bakers twine to string it all up. If you look closely you will see the embossing on the sides created with VersaMark ink and clear embossing powder...an easy subtle effect.


I made a black style and a brown since we are blessed enough to still have both of our Dads!

Hope you're having a wonderful weekend. I'm personally not ready for Monday yet, but am very thankful for a good job that I love that helps to pay the bills and support my obsession...=)

"Paradise Found" - Port Labadee, Haiti

My day has been a wild one...in a good way, though. I'm hoping for a night to chill and put my feet up. It will be a busy work week for me.

I've been looking forward to blogging a little and sharing my second cruise layout of Port Labadee, Haiti! We had so many pictures, it was really hard to narrow them down for scrappy purposes. There is only so much space in one album, right?

Oh man...I look at these and just want to go back! The title font is from Lyrical Letters Cricut cartridge. I used the SU bracket frame punch to journal some of the pertinent details. The detail in the center is ribbon wrapped with twine. The ribbon was stapled on first, then the twine is wrapped and knotted on each end of the ribbon.

Loved this palm tree from the Dudes Lite Cricut cartridge. It was a little tricky to figure out all of the layers involved, but I love the detail! Wallet pics made it easy to show the sequence of the zip line. We didn't ride it, but we had a great time watching everybody and got some great shots from the starting point high on the hill (top pic), all the way down to bottom when they splash through the water. The journalling block was stamped in brown (StampinUp!). The lines really help me keep my journalling straight!! 

Here are the two pages togehter. I hope the warm, sunnyness encouarages and inspires you in some way today! Have a great evening!