Back to School

Ah...school starts next week and so I have been trying to wrap my head around that. It has not worked yet but with a little nudge from Practical Scrappers I decided to finally work on my pages from the Got Sketch School class I took a while back.

My little one is still in pre-school and my game plan is to work on this album so that each year I just have to add photo's. This will be awesome cause my middle daughter is starting her senior year and I was looking through her school album yesterday and I am still way back in middle school - yikes!!! Better catch that up so I can have it ready for her graduation party which will be here before I know it.

Now I normally would have just shown you the one side since I have all the faces blocked out on the other page but I wanted to show you this fabulous pocket! Isn't that awesome - I can put papers or artwork in there.

Here is a close up of the left page. Her photo from the first day of school. I take one of the last day as well. I also wrote about her favorite things and what she is learning. I still need to have her write her name on the space below.

If you need a nudge to get back into the swing of things or if you just want to get some fun back to school ideas head on over to Practical Scrappers where you can get a whole bunch of great ideas today!

Something Old...Something New...

Well even though my page is about a flower girl it isn't about that kind of flower girl. You maybe be wondering where the something old and something new come in? Well I am still working on scrapping my stash and I used one of my favorite older paper lines Mayberry. Practical Scrappers are all about scrapping your stash so I was so happy to be able to use something old for my very first assignment which was stamping on layouts or cards. Make sure you stop over and see what everyone else came up with.

I love these photo's of my youngest on my back deck. I have been stuck on these photo's for a while because they are some of my favorites I wanted to scrap them in a way that they really stood out. As I was getting ready for my assignment I flipped though a few idea books and then I flipped though my sketches. I cam across this great sketch from one of my favorite sources - Valerie Salmon over at Got Sketch. 

I decided to stamp on pattern paper. This is a technique that I love but I often forget about. It is fun it is simple and it is adorable. 

Here you can see them close up. You can also see these cute felt letters that I love so much. 

I also stamped some words and cut them apart. This is a great way to add journalling exactly where you need to without worrying about it being the wrong size.

Here is a last look.

Supplies*

Cardstock - Olive, Cocoa

Pattern Paper - Mayberry

Stamps - Card Word Puzzle

Ink - Cocoa

Embellishments - Evergreen Cork Shapes, Pearls, Keepsake Felt Alphabet

Other - Martha Steward Punch, Paper Snips, Glue Dots

*all supplies CTMH unless otherwise noted

Super Cute

We say this a lot at our house as we have a toddler and almost everything she does is super cute. I also say this all time to my older to girls as they really are both super  cute as well. A few months ago I realized I have tons of photos of them but not a ton of them together. Shortly after this we had a few of those for mentioned super cute moments as you will see in a moment.

I recently signed up for Club Got Sketch I love Valerie's classes. They are always amazing and full of details and great ideas. Here is one of the sketches from the week.

Papers used are the Stella and Rose line from my March 2011 Personal Scrapper kit.

Doing the Dora Dance

Well my little one turned 3 in December I was super happy to learn that my mom got her a Dora cookie bouquet as Maizie is all about Dora. I love me some cookies and Maizie was not to interested int he big one so I decided to eat that one. Well they are on a stick and so naturally it was off with her head. The funniest thing happened though as we were sitting around the table I looked at Savannah, who is just as silly as I am, and looked at my mom who was in some deep important conversation and I took the headless Dora and put her in position so it looked like my mom was her head. Savannah and I were laughing so hard and so we started trying to take photo's it was forever before my mom even knew what we were doing. Ha! Anyway after we composed ourselves a little we had to make everyone "Dora" and thus we were all doing the Dora dance. I found this sketch over at Got Sketch it is an older one #76 but I love it. Since I needed a two pager I just turned the photo's for the second page. I am really enjoying how this turned out.  So now that you know how we all ended up doing the Dora dance here is the layout I created. These papers are again using the fabulous February Kit from Personal Scrapper.

 

I love making these rosette flowers. I also trimmed out a conversation heart and added them to the middles.

Some sparkle brads and my favorite new Fiskars punch.

These letters are foam and have the perfect playful feel to them.

Close up of the journaling.

and the two pages together

More to share soon!

Finding Focus

with scrapbooking. You know I spend a lot of time dreaming about paper and how to use it. I decided that I need to stop dreaming so much and just do it. I finally chosee my word of the year and that word is Transformation. I want to transform my body, my house, my fiances, my time management, my routine. Pretty much everything. I just need a major overhaul. Sometimes it is good just to take a step back and re-focus. Anyway this is a blog about paper crafts right? Yep so lets get to it. I had a busy weekend but still managed to get a few pages done. I ran across this sketch a few weeks ago and then I couldn't remember where I had seen it! It looks so similar to this sketch that I kept seeing everywhere. I finally found the one I had seen when looking for other ideas over at Got Sketch, I just love Valerie's style. Here is my take on Sketch 110

as I was searching for my sketch I noticed a few things at my favorite scrapbooking blogs

It's all in the little details like layers

and the dimension

and the details

and the story

then it all comes together!

The crazy thing is I know all this. I have been scrapping for years but sometimes it is easy to lose your focus.

{My Corny Girls}
Cardstock - Bazzil and We R Memory Keepers line Be My Valentine line from the February Kit at Personal Scrapper
Thickars (also in kit)
Dear Lizzie glitter brads (also in kit)
Waxy Flax from CTMH
Pop Dots
Fiskars boarder punch

California Dreaming...

Scraptivations is having a really cool challenge that is called

Would you rather...

• use a die-cut/punch or fussy cut something?
• scrap something hard to scrap about or hardly ever scrapped about?
• use a music title or a movie/TV title?

My hardly ever scrapped - my childhood. I always scrap my girls childhood but never my childhood or my brother either. I am actually not sure that I have ever scrapped about my childhood. Here is my die cut...two actually the boarder and the journaling box.

Here is a close up of my flowers and my hand stitching. Fancy huh? This paper with the tree's remind me of some shirts we had when we were little and living in California.

Here is my movie title: Club Paradise

Here is what the journaling says:

When we were young we were so creative! We loved to spend time out in the world collecting things...from the trash. We finally had enough to make an awesome fort. Some of my personal favorites are the stools, his is broken and mine is an over turned crate. We also seem to have a lot of books for me!

 

{club paradise supplies}

April 2008 Personal Scrapper Kit

Crate Paper Static Collection Road

Felt Flowers & Brads from Kit

Twill from Stampin' Up!

Buttons Chocolate collection from Papertrey Ink

Waxy Flax from Close To My Heart

Die-a-namics scallop die from My Favorite Things

Mat Stack 5 die from Papertrey Ink

Mini Scrapbook Series: Library Ledger stamp

Cocoa ink from Close To My Heart

Got Sketch # 65

School is in session...

well not for a while for my toddler. However I found that I could not resist joining in the Got Sketch - Ultimate School Album class. I have been working on the older girls' books for ever and have kept up pretty good for the most part.

In the past I have created a page for the first day shot, a few pages for parties or school activities, as well as extracurricular stuff like girls scouts and sports. This can really add up with parades and stuff.

Danielle who is a sophomore in college has a book up though 8th grade - once she was out of middle school she just didn't do as much that I was able to take photo's of so it was hard to keep the same format.

Savannah who is a sophomore in high school has a book up through 5th grade - she does everything and it is hard to keep up with out making her a book a year.

I thought I would be ahead of the game for Maizie...who has not even started pre-school yet.

The first assignment was to make a title page and this page is so cute. I have something similar in the older girls books and really really tried to maybe redo one for them but...I didn't have all of their old school photo's as I have mailed them off or used them in different project so I decided I would just pick up where am at with them. Danielle will start this class once I get to 9th grade and Savannah once I get to 6th.

Now that you know entirely too much about my school albums you probably want me to share what I have done right?

Well hold on let me start with this cute apple...adorable don't cha think? It has many layers and I embroidered the stem. For the seeds I just cut some thickers ' and it made the perfect size seeds for my apple. The paper for this project is called All Fall. I thought about buying the paper that was on the supply list but since I have tons of cute paper already...I behaved.

Here is another view of the apple with a little more of the page. You can see the layers and stuff. Now I normally do not get so fancy but since it is the title page and it will have her age progression on it I thought it would get a lot of action and so I thought I may as well make a good first impression ;)

As you can see it has a torn out of a notebook look along the side...I just love that SU punch. I also love love love the paper that I had in my stash that is learning to write. I added some green thickers and wala...super cute fun fresh page.

Here is the completed page. I can't wait to start taking photo's of Maizie starting in Pre-school and going through senior year and even has a place for a graduation photo.

Anyway we are having tons of fun and are just a few weeks in there is still plenty of time to join us.