Author: Misty Murphy

Father’s Day

Whew, it has been a very busy May and June here. I haven’t been able to get as many posts in as I wanted. I am lining up some new posts for the coming weeks. I will have some book reviews and some product reviews as well as a few layouts for you.

This past weekend we were camping with 5 other families in the woods. It rained and was cold and muddy, but we had a great time anyway! Since I knew we would be camping on Father’s Day I prepared some goody boxes for all the Dads to enjoy. These boxes were really quick and fun to put together — and my girls helped me out. You can adapt these boxes to any event. Use a different stamp saying, cut an appropriate image, like a cupcake, some balloons, or a graduation cap, fill with treats and make someone smile.

Recipe:

Pattern papers: Scenic Route
Cardstock, stamp, ink: Stampin’ Up
Cricut cartridge: Tags Bags, Boxes & More*; A Child’s Year**

*The box and the black background shape are from TBBM. The orange foreground is the same cut as the black background. I simply stamped my greeting, trimmed away the excess cardstock and adhered it to the project to line up with the edges of the background.

** The father holding the baby is actually an image from A Child’s Year of a mother holding a baby. I simply trimmed off the mother’s long hair and it substituted for a father just fine!

Final LOAD posts

Okay, after a very busy weekend and then the stomach flu, I am finally feeling up to getting the last of my LOAD layouts posted. I’ve got all digital layouts for you this post.  Four of the 5 are duplicate layouts in a series and are easily reproducible in paper form. Hope you get some inspiration. Enjoy.

Day 27, 28, 29, 30. A series from our unschooling conference. It was four days of joy, thoughtfulness, activity, exhaustion, connections, energy, learning and so much more. It really is an emotional ride that extends beyond a learning philosophy and into a living philosophy.

Day 31: And at the end of the weekend this was how I felt.

LOAD Day 24 to 26

I’ve got a very busy weekend ahead of me. Our family is going to our annual unschooling conference. It is an exhilarating and exhausting 5 days! I thought I would post the last few days LOAD project before all the activity gets under way for us tomorrow.

Day 24: Our homeschool science fair. This was the first one and we hope to make it an annual event.

Day 25: A camping trip from last fall. I made my own photo collage template and fit 34 photos on my layout!

Day 26: I’ve had these duck stickers for a long time and finally had a chance to use them. I used the cricut with center point function turned on to cut circles out of my photos and matted with circles 1/4″ larger. I paired some more elegant paper with the cuter duck stickers. I think the balanced worked well.

LOAD Day 19 to 23

I think I’m in the home stretch now. I have a weekend event this last weekend of LOAD, so I am a bit worried about getting the last few days in on time. I’m hoping to plan some of my own digital templates by Thursday so that I can just throw in my photos from the weekend event and get them posted. We’ll see how it goes! And now for the last few days’ layouts…

Day 19: I was hoping with LOAD to get a slew of older project ideas completed. Alas, I’ve found myself immersed in the present. I did manage for day 19 to get an old Christmas story told. I’m hoping these last couple of days will bring more older stories.

Day 20: Digital layout. (Recipe: stitching: Michelle Coleman (Bohemian Summer); bow: Carrie Stephens (Gypsy Dancer); metal circles: Misty Murphy (I’ll post them to the freebies section later)). I used some scans of my baby stuff that my parents sent me for my birthday. I’m so very happy to have these things.

Day 21: I just love the angle of this photo. It pretty much speaks for itself. I didn’t have to do too much extra to this page.

Day 22: Digital (Recipe: fonts: Stampin Up (Girly Girl), Desdemona; ribbon, pattern papers: Atomic Cupcake; flower: Dani Mogstad; photo frames: Misty Murphy (I’ll post these to the freebies section as well)).

Day 23: And today’s layout… This layout was bombing big time when I started it. I had stamped the squares around the edges and meant to evenly space them to fit all 25 on the border. Didn’t work. Then my advent title was small and very blue all by itself. When I was sorting through my stash I dropped some photo corners and a light bulb when on. I could use those corners as arrows to spruce up my title block. That lead to more arrows through the page and I pulled in the blue from the title to carry it through the layout better. Then threw in some other embellishments to support the theme a little more. I was pleased it ended up looking like a game board, say a version of Candy Land. And I saved a layout from what could have been a tragic end.

LOAD layouts Day 10 to 18

I thought I would get these posted sooner, but again no such luck. Just getting in a layout everyday is proving challenging!

LOAD Day 9: Worked on the Week In The Life project put on by Ali Edwards.

LOAD Day 10

LOAD Day 11

LOAD Day 12

LOAD Day 13

LOAD Day 14: I worked on both Day 6 and Day 7 on this day and only uploaded Day 7 for LOAD.

LOAD Day 15

LOAD Day 16: A challenge — to do something you never do. For this page I did the things I never normally do, like…

  • printing photos straight from my printer without being edited and cropped
  • use bold color schemes
  • use tons of embellishments

LOAD Day 18: Reflecting on becoming one year older and what it means to be a “grown up.”

Final NSD & LOAD Day 3

Okay, so I finished up my challenges for NSD today finally! And I worked on my LOAD layout for the day. Check them all out.

This was a NSD challenge to create a shaped object. It is a card I made for my SIL for Mother’s Day. I really had fun with this one. Making a card in the shape of a letter? It was great. Try it using the recipients initial.

The NSD challenge here was to create something with or for a child. Since my 3yo scraps with me all the time, this was a breeze. I mentioned the word Cricut and she came running. She decided she wanted to make a princess and viola.

Final NSD challenge was to create a monochromatic plus flower project. A Mother’s Day card for my MIL in her favorite color.

And my LOAD project for today…

Recipe:

  • pattern paper, rubons, stickers: Piggy Tales
  • cardstock: Stampin’ Up
  • punch: Fiskars
  • monogram letter: Circut (Opposites Attract)
  • brads: from stash
  • font: Times New Roman

NSD recap

So I had a great time celebrating NSD with a couple of friends. We chatted, listened to music, snacked and learned things from each other. It was a good day. I’m looking forward to working on more projects here in a few minutes. Today I am going to focus on challenges put out by blogs and community sites that I follow. I am also going to work on my layout for LOAD. More about that next post. For now here are the things I completed for NSD.

This one you saw as my last challenge post yesterday. While I completed all the other NSD challenges before hand. This one I did day of. It was also my Day 1 entry for LOAD.

A no photo layout using saved items.

And Pages from the class I am taking at Big Picture Scrapbooking called Everyday Adventures. I posted about this class in an earlier post as well. The first layout was to create a page about things you buy, the second page was to explore type and the final was to think about the things you throw away. My daughter played along with that one and her interpretation is on the right of the photo.

NSD Challenge 8: Circles

Final challenge of the day! Okay, I love circles. I guess I have been on a circle kick for over a year now. Because I love circles, you should love circles too! Ha Ha! So here is my challenge for you. Use a circle, big or small, one or many, as a mat. Mat a photo or an embellishment. Doesn’t matter how you use it, just use it.

Remember to post your project to your favorite online gallery and leave a comment here with a link to your post. I’d love to see your project!

NSD Challenge 7: one large photo

I don’t enlarge photos very often, mostly because it is just so easy to print regular photos off on my photo printer. But every once in a while, I will actually get up and change the paper in my regular printer over to photo paper and enlarge one great photo. Now you go do it. Put some photo paper in your regular printer and pick one photo that speaks to you. Make it big, make it speak louder!

Remember to post your project to your favorite online gallery and leave a comment here with a link to your post. I’d love to see your project!

Recipe

  • pattern paper, cardstock: from stash
  • alphas: Scenic Route
  • journaling tag: Luxe