Sketch Talk

So here is an oldie but goodie. I did this page about 6 years ago when I first changed from CM style. Now it seems to me that CM styles have changed too but I am not so sure and I have moved on from them. I mention that because I was so trilled at this time to be using color for my base pages! This was also a new time in the world of "sketching" I love sketches and simply cannot get enough of them. I have always been artistic but I never felt I could get things to come together. With a sketch I have somewhere to start and sometimes it ends at the same place with my things and sometimes it takes me in a totally different direction. Another thing I love about it is once I do a few pages with some sketches then I branch out on my own as the creative juices just take me away.

Actually this is one thing that I love about CTMH they have great books that have sketches the new Wishes card confidence program, Originals card confidence program, Reflections scrapbook program, Cherish scrapbook layouts, and Imagine scrapbook layouts. These books let me enjoy my hobby...my passion without getting caught up in the design aspect. They let me focus on the photos, the papers, the embelishments, and yes even the journaling. I also love to hop on-line and go to fun sketch sites or over to a friends blogs for sketch challenges. Another place I get ideas from is well idea books! The CTMH catalog, Scrapbooks etc., Creating Keepsakes the list just goes on and on. How about this though...a Pottery Barn Catalog or a Better Holmes and Garden magazine? These are also great places to get ideas! As you are flipping through if something catches your eye mark the page or tear it out. Perhapse it is a color combination or a design layout. Inspiration is everywhere...art is everywhere.

In the next few weeks I will do a card or a page based on a non traditional idea source and post it here. I would love to see what you came up with too!

Perfect Day's

So it is raining again here in the midwest and so I wanted to share with you a few pages featuring the Perfect Day paper pack. I think when it is gloomy outside it is so nice to grab a scrapbook and flip through the pages and laugh and remember the fun, silly, exciting things that you or your loved ones have done.

For this reason alone I thought ahhh that is a perfect day and so here I share some of my memories. Here is one of my favorite pages of the girls as it shows them just being themselves and having fun. I love it when I capture them acting like sisters. Let me rephrase that sisters who like each other! :)

These pages are about Dodgeball as you can surly see. I love the way the title turned out and I also love my button groupings. I am not always sure what to do with buttons so when I tried this I was so happy to discover how much Iliked it.

Where I've Been...

Celebrating Birthdays...

Flying on airplanes

Playing in the ocean....ahhh bliss

Celebrating a 8th grade graduation...

and a high school graduation!

Planning and throwing a threw a party.

So not much scrapbooking or stamping but soon! I am working on a project for club so I will share that soon. I hope everone has had a great month.

Pirate Talk

So a few years ago my daughter was a pirate for Halloween. I always want my girls to be something fun and sweet and they always pick something not so sweet. A pirate was a nice middleground.

Here is a close up of the buttons and the chipboard letters. I had to get creative as I had no t or y. I needed TWO y's.

I love waxy flax as you know I absolutly think this is a must have for every single crafter.

Here is the "journaling" I know itis not much but it is a tiny bit.

I hope you had a great day.

Down by the seashore

Many moons ago I drove all by myself from Chicago to the Atlantic ocean with my girls. It was a huge thing for me at the time and I think it still would be today. It was amazing and wonderful I had them convinced that they would see blue grass in Kentucky, we stayed with a friend in North Carolina and then on the way home we went into a cool cave. It was an awsome vacation! I had always wanted to dip my toes in the Atlantic as I had never been to the east coast. It was very pretty and so much fun. The waves are so much smaller than they are in the Pacific.

Anyway you want to know about the scrapbook pages not my vaction. This is from a on line crop challenge over at Personal Scrapper. The task...do a black and white page and use either color or black and white photos as well. Originally I was going to do color photos but then I ran across these as I was getting together photo's for my 8th graders recognition night. I knew right away that I wanted to use these photos of my girls on the beach!

I loved the polka dots from the get go but struggled with the flowers and the rub ons...did I want buttons, did I want rub ons, journaling space, something else? I decided on the rub ons as they are cute and fun!

The flowers came to me at the last minute and then I decided to do the black brads in the middle and oh...so cute. Just like my little girls in their matching suits.

Oh how I miss those days when I could get away with matching outfits. These are very pretty to with fun bright colors. Perfect for a day at the beach.

I love the simplicity and the pure wonder that is caught in these photos.

I can't wait to get that new baby girl to the beach and man oh man I need a family vacation as the last one was apparently durring the summer of 2000. Yikes!

The paper is from the Silhouette level 2 paper pack and then you have the colonial white flowers and black brads and My Stickease letters.

Scrapbook and Share contest

Hi everyone, I just wanted to remind you to enter into the Scrapbook and Share contest with CTMH during the month of May. You can enter more than once and your pages will be fetured on the blog. It does not have to be CTMH but of course it would be great if it were. There are different categories that you can enter into and you can win $150 worth of free product!

Life is good...

So I got this new stamp set Treetops and I think it is so much fun I had big plan for it. I thought oh...these trees would look so cute if they had a few layers on them.

I was looking at my friend Debra's blog last week and she had the most adorable postage card. I have not made one of these in years and I have always just loved them. She also has a template that is available.

So here are the layers up close

I used Sweet Leaf, Chocolate, and Hollyhock. I also sponged the sky with Crystal Blue. The patterned paper is from Boom-D-ada.

I waned to make a card that was fun and pretty. I spent the morning going to garage sales with my three girls. It was so nice out and there were so many that we just put the baby in the stroller and found all sorts of good stuff. My mission was to find baby clothes. My little one wore 12 months for about 2 seconds and is now in 18 months. At first it was all about the boy clothes and I was starting to think that maybe their were no boys in the town. Then I found it...a garage sale with adorable girl clothes yeah! We went to a ton more of them and found super cute stuff and then we went to lunch. As I was sitting there with my girls I thougth...life is good.

That is why I decided to work with this set when I got home cuae life is good. When I look at this card it makes me smile. Spring is here and it also makes me smile. My girls make me smile. My husband makes me smile. Blue skys and flowers make me smile...

I hope you tood time to smile and I hope you think life is good too!