Category: Layouts

Upswing

So my scrapbooking process has been taking large fluctuations this past year and half or so. I will be “on” for a few months in a row and just cranking out projects and then I will go into “down” mode where I’m not making layouts at all. When I am down I find I am still compiling ideas, organizing photos, and getting my creative output in cards instead. I find that when I come back to creating layouts I can hit the ground running since I have organization and ideas already waiting for me. Here are the two of the four layouts I got done this week. (Photographing my projects is still a step in my  blogging that trips me up. I’ve talked about it before.)

I’m working from my backlog of kit club materials. I made myself cancel my club subscription since my file of kits was full. This is one thing I’m trying hard at… not bringing in new things when I still have old things here. I’m hoping to get through my supply backlog and go back to my kit subscription. I miss getting fresh new goodies in the mail every month. With the kit I can try a little of everything and know what things I really love to use and what things I’m finding I don’t really like. For instance I’m not really a fan of the ephemera packs that are full of text. I think it distracts from the title and journaling too much.

I’m hoping to be back often with more projects!

Contest entry

Just a plain simple contest entry for a recent Scraptastic Club blog post. I wasn’t that trilled with the lucky theme of the May 2014 kit and wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it. Best idea? Use up all the specifically lucky themed items in one big embellishment grouping. Since I spent this past weekend feeling very lucky about how our family makes its way in this world, I chose that topic to write about. I left it without a photos to just let the words speak. And that works well for the challenge.

Layout Roundup- Oct STC kit

And the roundup of layouts I made with the October Never Tear Us Apart STC kit. I had the kit plus the pattern paper add-on. Another 8 layouts for this one. I had 2 full sheets of pattern paper still left over so the extra paper did help some, but not as much as you might think. I did struggle a bit with the alpha included. I didn’t have enough letters to make most of the titles I wanted so I turned to adding hand lettering, abbreviations and even my Cricut for title boosts. I’m not really a fan of hand titling, though hand journaling feels just fine. I want my titles to more clean and formal than what I can do by hand most of the time.

These first two here you haven’t seen before and they were the first two layouts I made with this kit way back when the kit was fresh in my hands. Fresh kits are so inspiring, yet hard to cut into those whole sheets of paper for fear they may be better used in some future way. I’m trying to get over that! Having a second set of pattern paper sure helped with that feeling.

The next 3 you’ve seen the layouts before even if in slightly different photographs. Using the same personally made sketch to repeat the same subject layouts for different people is one of my time-saving go-to tricks. More details on these here.

And finally 2 of the most recent from this kit. Using up some of the last of the kit. Remember in my card post yesterday that I mentioned how much I like the chevron paper? Well here it is again! (Inspired by this sketch.)

Working a backlog

With holidays, illness and injury I have a backlog of Scraptastic Kits sitting on my desk. I started the club in September of ’13 as I talked about here and here. I’ve been really pleased with the usability, trendiness and quality of the kits that have come in the mail, even though I haven’t touched most of them. Well, the past two weeks have changed that! I worked a little bit from each of the backlogged kits and I have to say that I’ve loved most of what I used. Let me show you a sampling.

This one cam from the December Just Breathe kit + extra wood veneer + extra cut apart sheet. I used the sketch featured in Scraptastic’s blog about teaming up with Page Maps to provide a sketch challenge. I really enjoyed using the sketch. My process usually involves drawing up my own sketch before I start a page. But for these photos I had a really lackluster idea. This Page Maps sketch fit my two small photos perfectly and added some pizzazz to my layout that I don’t think I would have come up with on my own.

Then from the October Never Tear Us Apart kit, I made two layouts using the same basic sketch (my own). I don’t mind making very duplicate layouts when they are stored in separate albums. I’ve done this before and I’m sure I will do it over and over again. It saves me energy and I can get more scrapped! I just made slight adjustment to accommodate different numbers and sizes of photos. When I use lots of pictures I keep the layout very simple to let the photos and story stay central.

Here is one more set of duplicate layouts using the October Never Tear Us Apart kit. I was running low on the large alpha stickers for titles in this kit so I used them to emphasize the date and made a more detailed title on the Cricut and cut it from some of the colorful chevron paper for more interest. On the second layout I added in scraps of pattern paper on the left hand side to add more detail and to fill in the “gap” that was used for extra journaling on the first layout. Plus using bits of pattern paper helped me use a sheet of pattern paper (the blue and pink stripes, reverse side is pink and white scottie dogs) that I really didn’t like at all, neither a nor b sides. I can throw in bits of my less favorite items to still use up the whole kit without feeling like the “ugly” product is ruining my page. (I have to say this is the ONLY thing so far I have really disliked in a kit.)

Hope you enjoy.

Thursday Challenge 1/2/14

Over at the Scraptastic Blog, they post a challenge each Thursday. I’ve been meaning to jump into their challenges but life has been crazy. But I managed to get this one done using my December Just Breathe Scraptastic Club Kit + extra wood veneers + their Awake My Soul stamp set. The challenge was to look back at posts from 2013 and scrap-lift one of the mentioned designs. I chose the first one listed since it is a design style I used often. Not necessarily a challenged but it certainly inspired me to make something when I haven’t scrapped for a few weeks!

New scrap kit club

I tend to shy away from buying all the latest and greatest embellishments since they seem too pricey for a package to me. And when I look at new pattern papers I just can’t decide what to buy. So, I looked to a new kit club to bring me a little of the newest and coolest items at an affordable price. Plus, who doesn’t love getting a wonderful box of goodies in the mail each month?

I chose Scraptastic Club. I saw a preview video of their items and liked what I saw. I will go over their club more in another post. For now I wanted to share a few layouts I made as I busted into my first kit.

For this layout, I wanted to get A LOT of photos on one page to document my daughters love of crafts. Everything except the bakers twine comes from September’s We Are Family kit.

And for layout number two I used September’s This Life Noted stamp set (available to purchase separately) as well as some ink, embossing powder and punches from my stash.

My first thoughts on this kit: I don’t normally use such small alpha stickers for my titles but the smaller letters gave me a chance to spell out longer titles. While that small size isn’t my favorite, I certainly found it a challenge and used it to my advantage. This is also what I was hoping to get out of a kit club… to be presented with items I might not normally use and to come up with ways to incorporate them! I feel I’m off to a good start with my new club and I look forward to posting more layouts.

P.S. Another one of my goals is to get as many layouts out of a kit as I can. With a kit membership being $25 a month (plus shipping) I hope to get plenty of layouts done so I feel like I am stretching my dollars really far. I will post a video at the end of the kit to show all the layouts (and probably a few cards) that I get out of the kit.

NSD 2013 #5

And for this challenge I was again at Shimelle.com. I used challenge #5 (use brads or eyelets), challenge #15 (add embellishments in rows) and #23 stretch your supplies. All the pattern paper strips came from sheets of pattern paper that I had just about used up. Most of them were punched in odd area. Instead of recycling the punched up pieces I was able to cut around the punches to salvage some nice strips of paper.

Sorry about the glare. I was sure I was in a good spot when I took this photo! I am just pushing through all my backlogged projects so retaking photos of things is not a priority for me right now!

NSD 2013 #4

Okay, I wasn’t sure how I was going to tackle challenge #7 over at Shimelle.com, which was to use unexpected supplies. But when I found the photos of my daughters apple art, I decided to raid the kitchen for little tidbits to add to my page. Natural embellishments! I combined this with challenge # 19, use paint, and came up with this page. I used a grocery bag to stipple paint onto the page, then used a slice of apple to dip in the paint and stamp on the page.