Sketch Challenge

Hello everyone,

I recently found out about a blog called The Paper Variety which hosts weekly sketch challenges and offers prizes. Their about page says they offer Prompts, Projects and Products. A new challenge is posted on Wednesday and the submission is due by the following Tuesday. There are a few rules about submissions, but they really aren’t a big deal. The “big” rule is that it must contain paper!

Currently, it looks like a quite blog– a personal feeling blog– which is really what I am looking for. I’ve struggled with online scrap communities because I tend to feel lost in the crowd. In spreading the word about this site I’m sure it will increase traffic, which is good for their viability. That will make their community grow but I hope it doesn’t grow to be so big that it will lose it’s personal feel. Right now, I’m hoping to use this blog to have some fun and get to know some other scrappers. You might check it out too and see if it is something for you.

On to this week’s sketch challenge…

Sketch challenge

And here is my submission. This is my youngest daughter’s calendar layout for the month of December…

Recipe:
pattern paper: DCWV
cardstock, mulburry paper: Stampin’ Up
die cuts: Cricut (Storybook, Plantin Schoolbook & Heritage)
marker: Marvy
alpha: American Crafts, Cosmo Cricket

Now go cook up your own crafty soup using this sketch!

MPS Blog Hop & Challenge

Robyn over at My Pink Stamper hosted her first blog hop last week. The goal was to follow the hop, gather the clues and then post a project based on the clues to her blog. You can check it out by starting at her blog hop post and follow the first link!

It took me a while to get to my project. I decided to use the work that I am doing for my daughter’s 4th birthday. She wants a Spongebob birthday so that is what we’ve been working on. We are transforming the garage into Spongebob land, complete with flower-power background, Seanut Butter and Jellyfish Jam to snack on and other lovely decorations & games. I used my Cricut to make the transformation!

Decisions, decisions

February is looking like a choice filled month in my craft life. I’ve come across at least 4 events for February that have caught my attention.

  1. Big Picture Classes: Embrace Imperfection by Karen Grunberg. Free. I’ve told you all that I already signed up for this one.
  2. Big Picture Classes: Creative Retreat by May Flaum. $25. I just signed up for this one.
  3. Big Picture Classes: Got Paint? by Emily Falconbridge. $25. I have so been wanting to play with more paint. But with what I already have on my plate for February I’m not going to sign up for this one just yet. If I’m feeling energetic by the time the class starts (toward the end of February) then I will likely give it a go.
  4. Layout A Day by Lain Ehmann. I’ve done this one-layout-per-day challenge once before. It was challenging and rewarding all at the same time. I would like to do it again but I’m not sure February is the right month for me this time.

So check out all of these events and see if any of them are right for you. And just so you know, if you visit the Paperclipping website, they currently have a 10% off coupon for BPC classes!

November layouts

Here are my kids’ pages for November in their scrap calendars…

I kept my son’s page super simple. The only thing new I tried on this layout was to do my typed journaling in a circle. I don’t think my copy of Photoshop Elemets 6 allows me to type text on a path. So I just did it manually. If you know of another way to do text in shapes then let me know!

I had fun with this wintry layout. I pulled TONS of snowflake goodies from my stash. There was no way I could use all of that I pulled so I narrowed it down to a few items and went with that. Some of my elements such as the sparkly “ICE” in the title and some vellum snowflakes didn’t photograph well. As I re-do my scrap room I’m going to try and incorporate a photo station so that I can get better pictures of my work. Since I know nothing about lighting it will be a challenge for me!

And last is this layout. Sigh. I don’t like this layout. I wasn’t feeling inspired at all in the beginning. I just slapped down some cardstock and pulled out my markers to add some pizzazz. Didn’t work. Then as I was debating my title I ran into this geometric pattern paper from Scenic Route. It was perfect for making a Lego-like title! Too bad I found it at the very end. Since I don’t believe in going back and reworking pages, I just threw my title onto the already formed page and moved on. I will create something else more eye-pleasing later. Don’t kick yourself for making something less than beautiful. Chalk it up to learning and move on!

Crafting with my son

My son was part of a Lego Robotics team under the parent organization First Lego League. His team won 3rd place in the local qualifying tournament with the opportunity to advance to the state tournament. We went to state this past Saturday. At the tournament, FLL was celbrating its 20th year and the state organization, ORTOP was celebrating its 10th anniversary. They asked the kids to make some kind of celebratory hat for the occasion. After starting one type of hat, my son changes his mind and wanted to make a birthday cake hat. So we pulled out the Gypsy and Cricut and he designed this festive hat. Hope you enjoy.

Recipe

cardstock: DCWV sticky back 12×24 pad, Stampin’ Up, stash
die cuts: Cricut (Plantin Schoolbook and A Child’s Year)
ink: Stampin’ Up

New-to-me Cricut shop

My daughter wants a Sponge Bob birthday party for her fourth birthday. So I sat debating whether or not I wanted to buy a Sponge Bob Circut cartridge to decorate up the house for the party. I looked around to see what deals I could find. And at the cheapest — $40 I decided to skip it. Then that evening I came across a blog announcing a Cricut cartridge sale at CricutMachine.com. I’ve never shopped there so I didn’t know what to expect. The cartridges were $16.95 apiece on sale and they had all of the ones on my wish list on sale too. So I ordered Sponge Bob (and a few others). I placed my order on the 4th and it arrived on the 11th. So that was 7 days (only 5 business days). I was happy with shipping speed, happy with cartridge prices and happy with shipping cost. All in all I will recommend this shop and plan on heading there first for my next Cricut purchase.

(P.S. Rumor has it that this shop and one or two others are actually run by Provo Craft and operate on Ebay under yet other names. With the prices they have on cartridges I can’t imagine a separate business being able to pull a profit. After doing a little research, I’ve seen the “they definitely are Provo Craft” and “they definitely are NOT Provo Craft.” So, who knows.)

September & October

I’ve been sitting on these photos for a while. I wanted to finish off my kids scrap calendars before I stared posting my final layouts. But I’m still not done. So I’ll just go ahead and post what I have. Besides it is a long enough post with what I have that I don’t really need to add more!

Oldest child… September. This layout came from a class that I took at a Creating Keepsakes Convention. I have a bunch of finished pages from classes sitting around that I haven’t figured out what to do with. I love taking the classes every year but every year I know I don’t really use the pages. I work by fitting my layout to my photo/story and have a really hard time fitting a photo to a pre-made layout. (Especially when the colors are not my favorite, as is the case here). I added a few extra touches and a jumbo vertical title to this page to accommodate my one photo, instead of the multi-photo layout it was designed for. I do think the color scheme makes the flowers work for a boy layout.

Oldest child… October. I kept the journaling minimal on this one because most of the story is written over his calendar companion page for both September and October. (If you are new to my blog you can see how I do my calendar pages in an older post and then this year’s version.) Because the page is about his Lego robotics team I played with wire to represent a electronic circuit type look.

Middle child… September. You guys have seen this one before when I talked about the technique of cutting a mask using the cricut and a page protector. So here is the rest of the story behind this layout. I had one photo that fit with a story to tell for the month of September. And this isn’t even a good photo. It is small, and it is only the back of my daughters head sitting with her friends (and the backs of their heads!). But it was a story I wanted to tell. So I went with it. With such a small photo I knew I would need a minimalist layout so the photo wouldn’t get lost. I really like how it came out.

Middle Child… October. Okay I admit it. I just wanted to play with my Martha Stewart bird punch. I fell in love with the punch when I saw it used on someone else’s project. I went out and bought it and it has been sitting in my drawer. Hmmm. What to do with it? So I made my title fit a birt theme and went with it. Sometimes I just like to play with product and that is okay too.

Youngest child… September. This story has it’s own story! My daughter’s first preschool didn’t work out. So we tried a second preschool, which we just quit because it didn’t work out for another reason. And so we are on to another care situation. We’ll see if I need to make a scrapbook page about that one too.

Youngest child… October. This is another layout that I did not create. It is one from the convention. This was another month that I didn’t have a great photo for. Hmmm. Think I gotta get my photo act together a little more.

Rolling with the MPS challenge

(NOTE: My entry for the MPS DT challenge is 2 posts down.)

I wanted to make a thank you card for my daughter’s preschool teacher. Even though she was a very nice person and really easy to talk to, my daughter did not like preschool. She was “fine” during school, but at home she would hide under the bed on mornings it was time to go. All the rest of the days she would worry about when the next preschool day was. So after a couple of months of trial, we decided to pull her out. I just wanted to let her teacher know that I appreciated her trying to make my daughter feel welcome at school.

When I started this card all I knew is that I wanted an image of holding hands, partially because it shows the caring relationship and partially because the preschool is called Hand In Hand. In flipping through A Child’s Year Cricut cartridge I found what I was looking for. At first I tried to just blow up the hand holding (on my Gypsy) to put just that extra large image over the entire card front. But at such a large size, the image lost it’s context. So I went with using the entire image (after trimming of the grass from under their feet) and highlighting the hands with a “spotlight” circle punch. When I chose colors, I decided to keep up the color challenge from the design team call from Robyn over at My Pink Stamper. I think it turned out sweet. Enjoy!

Recipe

precut card: The Paper Company
pattern paper: DCVW
carstock: Stampin’ Up, Bazzill
spray Ink: Tattered Angels
die cutting: Cricut (w/ A Child’s Year)
stamp, ink, ribbon, punches: Stampin’ Up
bling: Want 2 Scrap

Looking Forward, Looking Back

A frozen fountain near home.

The new year is traditionally a time to look forward and to look back. I don’t personally find the New Year a magical time to follow this process. I think change & reflection can happen at any point in your life, and in fact should happen often! But since it is on my mind and since many find this the season for reflection, I thought I would go ahead and share my thoughts.

Last year I posted a list of my scrapping goals for the year. I accomplished every one of them (well, except #5 really, but that is a tall order). They were little goals. Goals to push myself and my boundaries. They were goals to try something new and different. And I did that. No real big consequence came of them, but that is not the point really. The point is to try, to reach and to grow. And I did that too.

I’m a person who believe that learning is critical. If you aren’t learning, then you might as well be dead! Of course, this year is no different! I have things I want to work on.

  1. I’d love to improve my photography. I’m largely still in point and shoot land. I’ve been experimenting with the manual settings on my camera and feeling confused by it all. I consider myself a person who learns new things quickly, but this one is taking me a long time here.
  2. More videos! When I am looking for info out there in blog land I am drawn to the videos. I’m very much a visual person and the still photos & text, while informative, don’t do it all for me. And if that is what I am seeking, I’m sure others out there are too. I’d love to be a contributor to that pool of info and not just a consumer!
  3. Live in the moment more. I scrapbook because I have such a horrible memory. It seems to me that as soon as something happens, I’ve forgotten the details. But I wonder how important it is to remember those things for later. I wonder how important it is to really exist in the now. This seems to be the opposite of what scrappers try to accomplish but I think there should be a little bit of balance on that one!

So that is what is on my mind as I start this New Year. And since my 3, almost-4, year old is begging me to come upstairs now, I think I’ll go live in the moment.

Happy New Years to all of you!