Owl birthday card

Hope everybody is starting off their New Year in a positive way! All I can say about mine right now is that I'm really busy at my day job. No complaints, though. I'm so happy to have a job that I love at least 9 days out of 10. =)

Today I have a cutie owl birthday card to share with you.

I made this for my Dad's birthday in December. The stamp is from Tattered Angels. I'm not a huge fan of coloring stamps, but I like the way this one turned out. The edges are all distressed and inked with Tim Holtz pumice stone ink. I cut the sentiment banner freehand. The sentiment stamp is from StampinUp! The patterned paper scraps are My Minds Eye "Bohemian". I used Kraft for the base.

Thanks for stopping by today!

"Senior Smiles" layout #1

I'll take a little break from the birthday layouts and share some special layouts of my son, Jacob. Erin Hoffman of Erin's Photography in Decatur, Indiana, shot the pictures and I want to give her all the credit for the totally awesome photographs you see here! Jacob was pretty excited to get his senior pictures done and he had a lot of great locations picked out here in Fort Wayne.

This first layout is for his photo album. I used a Creative Keepsakes sketch. I love that it allowed for so many pictures, because I had such a hard time deciding which ones to use!

Here's a close up of the corrugated alpha. I wrapped some knit fiber around it because it reminded me of the knit hat that he was wearing. I inked around the edges of the letter for definition. The BoBunny background paper was already distressed and perfect for Jacob's personality. Not that he is distressed or anything, LOL but he loves the grungy look. =)

Right side: 

Check out the distressing I did on the title consisting of dry embossing, inking, and heat embossing on Kraft paper, cut with my Cricut. The idea for this technique belongs to Angie Leach. You can check out the examples and directions here on her Too Cool Stamping blog.

Here's another angle. It's a little hard to capture with my camera.

Here's the whole layout. You can double click any of these pictures if you want to enlarge them.

I finished another layout of his senior pics for the family album which I will post at a later date.

Have a wonderfully scrappy week. Hope that you are able to enjoy the sunshine that Fort Wayne is enjoying today. Spring may be here...at least for today.

Baseball - 2 double layouts

My son, Jacob, played baseball for the first time this year. He didn't get a lot of playing time, but he was happy to be on the team and with his friends. Keystone was such a small school and a lot like a family in so many ways.

This layout includes some random photos taken during the season. It shows some pitching sequences too. I embellished it with a handsewn mitt cut from the Sports Mania Cricut cartridge. I hand-stitched along the pocket of the glove with embroidery floss and I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. I also used some distress ink to get it the color I wanted. (Double click on the photos to enlarge.)
This one is my favorite of the two baseball layouts. Most of the random shots are from the end of the season baseball picnic at the coaches house. Of course, the kids are being silly and that why I love it! The other side features the individual and team professional photos. I cut the 8 x 10 size memory mate photo in half so I could put the title in the middle. I drew attention to my favorite photos with the red matting.
Here's a close up of my faux stitching down the right hand side. I used the piercing tool and then a pen to draw the fake stitching between the holes.

I used real stitches to stitch up the tear on the upper left. This page is just so symbolic to me. I've mentioned on the blog before that the school closed due to lack of financing and it just tore everybody up and left a hole in our hearts....hence the stitching. We tried really hard and raised a lot of money, but it just wasn't enough....

Enjoy and be inspired to scrap your memories too!

Great Idea for Titles

(Layout by: Jenny Dammann, Creative Memories)

I found this nifty idea for a creative title on the Creative Memories blog posted by Jenny Dammann. This looks so great and seems simple enough. I will definitely have to try this. What I love is that the letters you use behind could be reused in another layout since only the impression is being used. http://blogs.creativememories.com/ideas/2010/02/heres-a-cool-little-titlemaking-technique-for-ya.html