The Stand - Two Page Ice Cream Scrapbook Layout

 I scream. You scream. We all scream for ice cream!! The perfect summer time treat. This place is a favorite here in town. We try to visit at least once every summer, but again, we've not been over there yet this season. Look at these faces! My favorites!

The Stand has a vintage vibe to it, so I played into that theme with my paper and embellishments. The paper is PhotoPlay's "Birthday Girl Wishes" along with some vertical strips of scraps, lined with Paper Studio red chevron washi. 

The ice cream cone, title and stars are from Cricut's design space.

That cone looks pretty tasty. I even found an embossed paper scrap in my stash to use. What are the odds?

Thanks for stopping by my blog today! Have a great week.

Angry Pepper - One Page Layout

 We ate at the Angry Pepper while we were in Florida. What a fun place! We really enjoyed the food and the nostalgic decor.

This is my wonderful husband, enjoying his food. He's the best!! Always up for an adventure with me. 

The paper is again part from a vintage stack from Crate Paper "the Pier". The banner at the top uses tags and tickets from Recollections and the red button from Jillibean. I tied a little red, white, and blue baker's twine in one of the Kraft tags where I journaled.

Just a simple layout, featuring some great memories with my husband while we were off on our Florida adventure. Thanks for stopping by. One more Florida beach layout to come!

Breakfast - Two Page Scrapbook Layout

 Do you scrapbook your food? Food photos are a big thing for some, but not really for me. Unless it is a fun and memorable experience that I want to document!

On our way home from "Up North" we stopped at this wonderful restaurant for breakfast. I loved the yummy traditional breakfast food (including crispy bacon), yummy lattes, and the fun vintage decor.

To fit with the vintage vibe, I used some Ombre geometric paper for the background. So fun! I can't think of a better use for this last bit of paper from Glitz "Finley".  The button is cut like a prism and I'm sure it's going to stick out in my album, but worth it! The little mini alpha stamps are an easy way to add the name of the restaurant as a subtitle - Anna's House, Holland, MI

I love all the little knick knacks on the shelves. No, I wouldn't want them in my own house, but the decor made this place special and memorable. It was a wonderful blend of new and old. Look at "Flo" on the ladies room door. She's perfect!

The Scotch washi tape seems to tie it all together well. I especially like the title and coffee cup cut with images from Design Space. I used my Cricut to journal since I had a rather small space and wanted it to be legible. 😀

Thanks for stopping by my blog today. Hope your week is off to a good start!

Sunset Smiles - Two Page Lake Michigan Scrapbook Layout

 Hello friends! I hope your week is off to a great start! I'm absorbing the sunshine through the window today as I work from home for the week. 

Today, I'm sharing another layout from one of our recent trips to Lake Michigan for a quick family getaway. It was only for a long weekend, but it was so much fun and these photos bring all the great memories back to me.

First let's talk about this fun font with the vintage vibe!!👀 It certainly wouldn't work on every layout, but I love the way this title shines for this particular distressed paper and layout. It's one of the Designers Calendar fonts in Cricut's Design Space. I don't remember the name of this paper stack, but I can look it up for whoever wants to know. I love to design titles mixing fonts and layering with images. It's my favorite! I'm probably in the wrong profession since I work at an insurance company by day. 😂 This is why I love scrapbooking as my creative outlet on the evenings and weekends. 

This is my husband's siblings and our oldest son and his family. I love them all!! Wish the entire family could have been there for this impromptu photo shoot, but we grabbed the opportunity for those of us who were there. 

I cut the sun with my Cricut and let it peek out like it's setting behind the photos. I matted all the photos with a thin white border like I normally do and used two different Washi tapes vertically to offset the horizontal nature of the photos and layout. 

Ninety-five percent of my layouts are two pagers. They are my favorite because I can add more pictures and there is just more space visually for design. I always add some of the same types of embellishments, colors, and other elements on both sides for balance and flow. For this one I added one of the washi's on the right in a different direction and then scattered sea gull silhouettes across both pages.

This layout is 2 and a half years old. Had I done it today, I would have written out my journaling with the Cricut. It's an obsession now. But I still love the vibe of this layout. I hope that you do too!

Thanks for stopping by today!

Sawyer Turns Five - Two Page Birthday Scrapbook Layout

Time sure does fly, even when we're "staying at home". Many have had more time to craft during this time, but we are actually working full time from home. This is such a unique time, but I must say that I love working from the comfort of my own home. I've been really productive and can do 98% of my job from here.

All of that to say, I'm so very thankful for my employer! They worked fast and hard to get more than 500 employees set up with all they need to work from home. Kudos to them!!

Now on to the point of my post today. My grandson's birthday is coming up quick!! Poor guy...quarantine birthdays are not ideal, but I know we will all do what we can to make the most of it. It may end up being one of the best!

Today I'd like to share the layout from his fifth birthday!

I love this boy paper pack from My Mind's Eye "Boy Crazy". The colors are so vintage and it's easy to mix and match the different patterns.

Stars and stripes, rockets, robots, and tennis shoes. What else could you need? Since he received stomp rockets for his birthday, I found a rocket image in Design Studio and added it for journaling.

There's a lot going on in this layout, but I love the way it turned out. It totally suits his fun personality. 

Thanks for stopping by my blog today!! Stay home and stay safe.

Two Page Layout - "Crafty Crop Inn"

Have you ever scrapped a scrapbook event? Once a year, I get together with a close group of friends and rent a retreat house. It's such a great time scrapping together for an extended period of time. We spend a lot of time just catching up, laughing, scrapping, preparing meals, and eating together. What a great time!

 This was our first and only time at this particular retreat house. We had fun, but since then, we tried out a few other retreat houses that ended up being closer and we liked them better.

 We try to get a picture of us all together each year! This summer,  we'll be adding a few more to our annual group retreat weekend. Can't wait!!

That sunset, though!! 😍😎😲

Hope you are able to work in some crafty time this week and thanks for stopping by my blog today!

Two Page Scrapbook Layout - "Sweet Treats"

There's a cute little old fashioned ice cream shop in Upland, IN where we occasionally stop when taking my son to or from Ball State. This time, we shot a few pics and it turned into a pretty cute layout.

 We look a little tired after packing up my son and all of his school belongings after his summer session. It's so much work! I'm so glad that he's now graduated and we're done with the twice a year manual labor of moving him. Plus it's so great to have him home!!

 I love this vintage look striped paper from Crate Paper "The Pier" collection, and Fancy Pants "Summers End". The wood grain circle banner is Studio Calico, and the red ribbon is Paper Studio. Most of the buttons are StampinUp plus a few miscellaneous buttons from my stash. The cute big mouth journaling tag is from Smash! It seemed appropriate for filling our faces with ice cream. I failed to make a note of the cartridge for the bowl of ice cream and the title.

Hope you like the vintage vibe of this little layout. Now I'm hungry for ice cream! Thanks for stopping by today!

One Page Layout - Happy Birthday Gramma

Birthdays are so much fun! Grandchildren definitely make getting old so much more worthwhile. Here's one of my favorite little one-page layouts from my birthday a few years back.

This vintage paper is from Echo Park "This & That" along with all of the stickers and die cuts. I felt it was pretty appropriate (given my age...lol). The title font is from Cricut's Jubilee "stilts" and the lovely pink brackets are cut with Cricut's Art Philosophy cartridge.

I apologize the pictures are a bit smaller than I normally post. Blogger is being dumb and not letting me change them to a large size. Not sure what is going on...but it looks like I need to live with it for now.

Hope your week is starting off well. Thanks for stopping by my blog today.

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!!!

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

Vintage Wedding Album - FINISHED!

I had such a great time scrapping this past weekend. Always great to getaway and enjoy some friends, and get some layouts done!!! I can't wait to share them. One of the things I finished up was the album of my parents wedding photos. If you haven't seen the past layouts, you can see all of them here.

 Here's the remainder of the double layouts. Hope you enjoy checking out these old photos! You can click on any of these pictures and it will enlarge for you, then just hit your back button to come back. I tried to keep them fairly simple so the project wouldn't overwhelm me, and so that the photos would be the center of attention.

I really enjoyed this project and felt honored to do this for my parents. They are such great people. They are still together after all these years....unfortunately, they are both dealing with some health issues, but I'm praying to have them around to see lots of great grandchildren!

Two double Scrapbook layouts - Vintage Wedding

Hello! Hope you are all doing well today. I'm in upstate New York getting some continuing education credits for my daytime paying job. It sure is beautiful here! We're in Lake Placid in the Adirondacks. Perfect weather. I'm so glad my hubby can be here with me enjoying some time away from the grind.

Today, I have a few more vintage wedding layouts to share with you. I took it upon myself to redo my parents' original wedding album because it was fallling apart. They have now been married 56 years. Quite an accomplishment in this day and age!! They have stuck it out through thick and thin and especially through long term health issues. I love them dearly and am proud of the heritage they have given to me and my family.

So I will admit I missed the mark on this page. =( All the way through on this album, I've been using black for the title, and I didn't do it here....Not sure what I was thinking, but after seeing it here, I will be redoing it in black. It just doesn't pop off th epage the way that it should.

The hearts were cut with my Cricut and the Sweethearts cartridge. The color is just enough darker that it shows up fine. I used the photo matt to journal some details. 

Here are the two pages together. I'm definitely going to fix the title on the left. I guess sometimes you can't see an error until you photograph and post it. LOL!  Also, I think some of the pictures I found were not the best shot. of the two of them. I used some of the better ones previously in their 50th anniversary album. But, I love these shots anyway and they were too good to just let deteriorate and turn yellow. 

Here's another layout of them walking back down the aisle after they became man and wife. Aren't they cute? I used the Stampin Up triple flower punch for all of the flowers on this page. I layered them up and topped each one with a pale blue pearl gemstone. Again, I went back to the black title (yay me!) and cut it with Quarter Note cartridge. I used my Fiskars border punch on some tone on tone patterned blue paper to edge the photograph.

Here they are with their first bite of cake.  

I scattered the flowers from top left diagonally down to the bottom right on this one. I like how it seems to draw the eye across the layout.

Thanks for stopping by today. Enjoy your week! Be sure and leave me a comment. I love to hear from you!

Double double vintage wedding layout - "Family" and "The Bridal Party"

Hello! Happy Monday, if there is such a thing. =) My heart goes out to you east coast followers who may have experienced storm damage and/or power outages. Wow! The U.S. has definitely had their share of natural disasters this year! My thoughts are with you.

With my father-in-law's death and my son off to college, my husband and I are still trying to find our new normal. I've had zero time to scrapbook lately. What a whirlwind of emotions and activity!

I want to take a few minutes, though, to post another vintage wedding layout. Still working on my parents' wedding photos. I really hope to be able to work on it again soon!

Left side pictures my Mom's parents. I like the way the flowers match the matting and really help the picture pop.

Right side pics are my Dad's parents. The blue base of the flowers is punched with a SU punch and the store bought flowers are layered on the top with a pearlized blue gem for the center of the flower. The leaves are hand cut and inked around the edges.  

I like the way it turned out. It's difficult to deal with all black and whites, but throwing in bursts of color seems to help. The title again is cut with the Cricut Quarter Note cartridge.

 The second layout is the bridesmaids. The newspaper article that my Mom saved described the wedding in great detail. It's been really helpful picturing the colors in my mind. I journaled arouond the yellow matting, describing the colors the bridesmaids wore. The bridesmaids on the left are my Mom's sisters, and her maid of honor is actually her then future sister-in-law. I thought that was interesting, but most likely she chose my Dad's sister so she didn't have to choose between her own 3 sisters for a maid of honor.

Her colors were all pastel. I used some small polka-dot ribbon with the same pastels and gathered it up a little on one end. The flowers are punched with the SU three flower punch and topped with a tiny gemstone. 

The title which is split between the pages is also from Cricut's Quarter Note. 

Thanks for stopping by. Blessings to each of you!