Hot Shot - Two Page Travel Scrapbook layout

 Here's another fun layout from our trip to see Old Faithful. There was a ton of people there and the traffic and parking was crazy, but totally worth fighting the crowd to see this great icon of Yellowstone National Park. Definitely one of those bucket list destinations!

If you follow me, you probably know that I like to have fun with titles and typically create my own layered designs. I found the words separately and picked them out of other Design Space images by using the contour feature. Then layered them and played with the size/scale to see what it would look like on my page.

The paper is Photo Play "Old Faithful"...seems appropriate, right? I bought two or three sheets of this so I could use both sides. One side is the all over map of Yellowstone, and the other is the card embellishments. The Kraft flowers are Recollection brand. I even added a few to the left side to embellish the bunch of flowers that were printed on the map paper. The simple arrows are from Close to my Heart "Aurora". I was too chicken to stamp it right on my page, so I used a separate, matching sheet of cardstock. I don't love that look, but I didn't want to redo my page if I messed up. The extra wide map decorate tape is from Zaomo. I never heard of this brand, but I love it.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week!!

Rough Water- Two Page Vacation Layout

 Pointe Betsie Lighthouse on Lake Michigan used to be one of my old hangouts with the guy I dated previously to my husband. His family had a lake cottage near here and the whole family would come and watch the sunset.  My husband and I stopped there a few years ago when we were passing through the area. The water was crazy!! I love watching it crash in on the breakers! It was surprising how much of the beach had eroded in the last 35 years or so. 

I used three different strips of coordinating patterned paper across the page. Oh...I see my little strip of ruler paper on the right has slipped. Ooops! Why don't I see those things when I'm taking my pics. I wanted the little Frankfort MI tag to be at an angle but not the ruler piece. You'll have to use your imagination.

I matted all the pics in light blue to pop them off the green. I created the title and welded it all together on my Cricut. I cut a lighthouse similar to the one at Pointe Betsie and wrapped some black and white Baker's twine around it. I added some washi and some patterned Kraft flowers from my stash and used  my Cricut to journal the story.

I hope you are inspired to do something crafty!! I've had ZERO motivation over here lately. I'm going to be scrapping for 5 whole days with my friends next week so I need to find my creative juices soon!! Hope you all have a great weekend.

Waiting for Sunset - Two Page Summer Family Layout

 I've had a crazy busy summer. I've been away on business for two separate weeks, followed by some vacay days. It's been crazy, but mostly good! Hope your summer is going well.

So many fun summer layouts to share with you, so I'm going to get right to it. We had a long family weekend in Holland, MI on Lake Michigan four years ago! I can't believe it's taking me so long to post, but hey...you're probably not shocked.

Ugh...I didn't put the date on here but it was summer of 2018 based on the other layouts I will be sharing later. This paper and journaling tag came from a really cool distressed pack of paper from We R Memory Keepers. The scalloped yellow chevron banner is a paper banner by Heidi Swapp. I love how they match perfectly even though they are different brands. In addition, I added some random paper flowers from my stash.

I love all the people in these photos and the wonderful memories they bring back. Our family dynamics have changed dramatically since then. Sometimes that makes it very hard to post my layouts, but I'm choosing to dwell on the happy memories that I've documented with love. The photos of the kids playing on the beach and the anticipation of the beautiful sunset makes me smile.I really like the way it turned out and seeing all of the smiles of my beautiful family.  

 I have not felt very productive or motivated lately. I need to break that trend! When I get home from work, I make so many excuses to just not do anything, "I'm tired", "My eyes are stressed", "I need to make dinner"...you name the excuse and I've probably used it.  Then I end up doing basically nothing. Tell me all your secrets to change my lazy habits!! :)

Blessings and Toasts - Two Page Wedding Layout

Yes, I even scrapped the blessings and toast. The photographer captured their reactions in these photographs, but I wish could scrapbook videos as the toasts were quite funny.

 On top, we have the bride who's changed into her dancin' shoes! So fun!

 On the right side (above) my oldest, roasts/toasts his baby brother (the groom). As always, he was quite comical and had the place rolling. I love these boys together!

There were so many moments to capture, so I added a few wallets to tell as much of the story as possible - 9 pictures total. Again, I tried not to go overboard with embellishments to let the pictures steal the show.

Thanks for stopping by and hanging in there through all the wedding layouts. Even if you never plan to do a wedding album, these layouts can be used to inspire you with photo placement on a page. Sometimes that is the hardest part for me. Think of it as a sketch. 

Have a great week!

"Walk this Way" - Two Page Wedding Layout

Sorry for the recent delay in posting. We've been busy hosting Christmas gatherings and putting away all the decorations. It's such a big job! I'm so thankful that my husband is so patient and proactive with it all. I'm not sure what I would do without him. 😍

Now it's time to get back to some more of my son and daughter-in-love's wedding layouts!

 As each beautiful pair walked through the doors, I remember the excitement building as everybody waited for the bride to enter!! Oh the feelings I had that day! There was excitement and joy for my son marrying the love of his life, there was shock and amazement that this day could be here already (wasn't he still 5 years old??), and there was raw grief from the loss of my Mom the day before. So many feelings from one end of the spectrum to the other. The joy of the wedding won out for most of the weekend, but I sure had my moments trying to pull myself together.

 I had a little fun with the title as I did with many of the layouts from their wedding album. For me, titles add so much, but I know many don't do the title thing. That's okay too.  I matted all of the photos in a crisp white to break up the gold on the page. The strip along the bottom in the color of the the bridesmaids' dresses helps anchor the page. I added some additional banners to bring in the color of the groomsmens' suits, and a few strips of plaid patterned paper to tie it all together. 

Thanks for looking! More to come!!

"Team Bride" - Two Page Wedding Layout

Hope you all had a fun Halloween. It's not my favorite holiday of the year, but I do enjoy seeing it through the eyes of my grandchildren! We had a fun time trick or treating the neighborhood together. Scarlet was a hippy and Sawyer was a lego, but he already took off his costume before I snapped the pic. Somebody told him Legos can be pretty scary when you're barefoot in the middle of the night.😂 Oh, how I remember....

Fall is slipping into winter so quickly! Yikes! I'm not ready to give it up yet.

Thought I'd share some more of my son and DIL's wedding layouts. Here's a layout featuring the lovely "Bride Tribe". They were so photogenic, it was really hard to choose what pics to feature on the layout.

 Above is the right side of the layout. Apparently, I forgot to snap a picture of the left side. Sorry about that, but you can zoom in on the pic below if you want to see it more closely. I used a mixture of both black and white and color photos on most of the layouts in the album. I like the contrast of the black and white!

I kept it simple with 3 banners of different lengths going different directions from my scraps. I used the largest banner on the left to balance out the fewer pictures and to highlight the title. The title could have been a bit bigger, now that I look back at this.😞 The antique round brads are from StampinUp! The paper flowers have been in my stash forever and helped to make the page look more feminine along with the blinged up little bitty butterfly.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today! Stay warm out there! 

two page scrapbook layout - "Celebrate Love"

Here's a fun layout from the night my son and daughter-in-love got engaged. They're pretty cute!!!

 My son bought them a photo shoot for Christmas, and then planned out the entire proposal with the photographer. We weren't a part of all of that, but we met them later for dinner with both families.

 These two make a great pair and we're so excited that they found each other!

 It's impossible to see the sheen here, but I used Wink of Stella on the heart banner to set it off. The photo just made it look muddy.

 I probably should have added another wallet size photo to the right, or some additional journaling. I'm trying to make peace with the white space...lol.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today. I think I have some layouts from the actual photo shoot. I'm not sure I've photographed them yet, but I'll be sharing them here at some point.