How Much to Add

I did the following page for this week's Sketchy Thursdays challenge:


When I had misted, put down the circles and the photo, then added journaling and a title, it felt a little bare. I thought my flourish stitching template from Bazzill would add some movement, so I stitched away. Then I wondered if I needed some more "stuff" on the layout, so I played around, adding gems, buttons, etc. I took every last one off. It looked too busy. So here's my quote for the day:

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Antoine de Saint-Exupery

My layout isn't perfect, but it is better with less.

Sketch inspiration

When I first started scrapping, I lived by sketches. Becky Higgins gave me lots of ideas, and I grew a lot from them.

As I progressed and scrapped more, I stopped using sketches. Instead I sketched the layouts myself. What I sketched didn't always end up what I created--I have no sense of proportion, for one--but I got ideas.

Lately I've started using sketches for inspiration again. It's not something regular I use, but using sketches gives me ideas I wouldn't have otherwise thought of. A nice creative stretch.

First, of course, is Becky Fleck. Here's a few layouts I made from the same sketch:




(Side note: when I got the frog paper [Jillibean soup] I had buyer's remorse. I thought, what will I use frog paper for? The answer: with two boys with ADHD, the possibilities are endless.)

Lately Studio Calico has been posting sketches every Sunday. They are very creative, which gives me new ideas.

I also love the book Stretch Your Sketches from Ella Publishing. They've recently had some online sketch challenges, but this ebook is affordable and inspiring.

Lately two sites have also gotten me inspired: Sketchy Thursdays and Pencillines. I just finished this week's Sketchy Thursdays layout, and to be frank, a so-so layout became terrific from using a different idea from the one I had. I'll post the layout tomorrow.

Happy Birthday

Today Dominic turns 6. He's been planning his birthday since last summer. Today we are going here to his favorite restaurant. This weekend we'll go here for his friends party. "Atwitter" definitely describes him right now. (I should mention, the paper thing behind him is an iPhone he made for me.)

Happy birthday, dude.

Lent

Hey, Grace! Thanks for the comment--good to hear you got the box, and I'm glad you got CK working again.

Lent is here. Even though I'm Lutheran, I like the idea of giving something up and dedicating that sacrifice toward something else. Charity, for instance. Last year I gave up scrap shopping...which I am currently doing. But I have to admit, I gave up shopping in January, my birthday month. It took me the month to spend the three gift cards to Archiver's I got, and then my husband gets me another one for Valentine's day! So my sacrifice feels a bit insincere. I want to give up scrap shopping for Lent, but I just got a GC to Studio calico for a layout I had published in Scrapbook Trends magazine last month. Can I use the GC and not have it count? How about the birthday money I got from my grandmother?

Here's the layout published in Scrapbook Trends:


The universe obviously wants me to scrap shop, so I'll use the GC, give up shopping until Easter (which matters--I just reached my 60th layout today, so by the middle of March I should be done with 100 layouts), and give the birthday money to charity.*

And here's the latest LOs:


Another vacation layout. I am loving making this album. My son told his pesky brother last summer, "Let sleeping boys lie." I had totally forgotten that until I made this page!


I got the idea for this layout from Diana, The Lonely Scrapbooker. Every child needs a Just Because page.



These two were for this week's Ella sketch. Fun!

* Minus $20 I'll spend to get a lovely die cut. I'm so bad...

Wants and Needs

Rowan brings home work from school almost every day. We enjoy looking at it and talking with him about it. Most gets recycled, some gets kept, and a few, a precious few, get photographed and immortalized on the web.

Like this one:


Can you see what he colored red for needs? Yep, that would be the basics that a human cannot live without: food, shelter, clothes, TV.

I feel a layout brewing...

This and That

1. Woke up Saturday morning to get the most perfect looking winter landscape. I'll replace my banner photo when I get the photo tweaked. ETA: I changed the banner photo. Isn't it gorgeous?

2. The Olympics are here! We leave the TV on all day, and the boys have become enamored with snowboarding (hasn't been on yet, but OK) and Nordic skiing. I'll post photos later of how they're demonstrating their love. ETA: Here's my athletes. Check out the sign at the end of the kitchen (I'm trying to ignore the fact that Rowan tacked it to the wall. My beautifully painted wall.):


3. Speaking of love, Derick took me to Hell's Kitchen in Minneapolis for Valentine's Day. Wonderful menu. We're going back sometime, though without the boys again; the art is kind of creepy. It is Hell, though. What can you expect? ETA: Here we are at the restaurant:


4. My mom is here visiting. The boys are having much fun producing paper art for her and providing her with many photo ops. Dominic also loved her glasses. He insists he now needs some. He keeps putting on her glasses, then leaving them somewhere else. No wonder she keeps losing them. ETA: Here is Dominic, looking dapper in reading glasses.


5. Friday night Derick and I went to a Minnesota Wild game, our first hockey game. Tons of fun. We were very close to a goal, so saw some nice action. Alas, the Wild lost. Two dates sans kids in one weekend for us, though, so Derick and I won. Thanks, Mom, for babysitting!

6. I've made more than 50 layouts on my road to completing 100 without new product (except adhesive and basic cardstock, both of which I need to replenish). LOAD is helping a lot. I'll post layouts here later. ETA: Here's the layouts from the last few days:

This last one is based off this week's Sketchy Thursday sketch.

7. Why not post now? We are in the midst of changing computers. My old PC was so full of photos, it w o r k e d s o s l o w l y . . . So we replaced it with a Mac. After leading me through many Socratic dialogues to help me understand how he was right, Derick has purchased software to migrate our old files onto the new computer. The problem may be Windows: the newest form (the only one we can buy) may now work with PSE 7, which I'd just bought last year. We just tried installing the old PSE on the Mac, so I'll see later today if it works.

What this means for me...I'm using the new computer for writing and surfing and posting, but I'm using the old computer for editing. Twice the process means twice the time. Ergo, I will post photos to accompany this post later today!

ETA 8. Rowan lost another tooth randomly yesterday. So this is what he looks like now, post-haircut:

Narnia

So the snow we'v gotten over the past week makes it look like Narnia. I thought that this morning as I packed the boys into the car to go to school...and the snowplow went by at that moment, dumping 2 feet of snow at the end of our freshly shoveled drive. !@#!% If Minnesota is Narnia right now, then the snowplow is the White Witch. I had to shovel before I could get out the end.

Here's my LOAD for the day. I used a Studio Calico kit for it. And I regret the sewing; I was beat when I finished it.

Busy Sunday and Monday

I did a super amount of scrapping while Derick was gone. Here's my production:

More vacation:


Some use of Studio Calico's newest kit:


(The second layout was based on last week's Sketchy Thursday sketch.)

A couple layouts from past Studio Calico kits:


(The second is my Project 12 layout.)

I'm discovering that using sketches and kits is speeding me up.

More snow here--I'll take photos tomorrow.

Spring, we miss ye...

On Groundhog's day we had an interesting conversation, the boys and I. They asked what it meant if the groundhog saw its shadow and I told them the tale: 6 more weeks of winter. Then they asked, what if it doesn't see its shadow? That one stumped me, until I thought about it and told them the truth: 6 more weeks of winter. I explained to them that spring starts the middle of March, which is about 6 weeks after Groundhog's Day. No matter what, we are in for six more weeks of winter. (Truth be told, here in Minnesota, winter will last for another month after that.)

Dominic got especially frustrated; he wants to use the fishing rod my parents got him for Christmas (no way am I taking him ice fishing). I told him that once spring arrived, he'd have to wait another two months for the fishing opener.

I mention this because we've had pretty consistent snow this week, so my front yard looks like this:


Can you see how the snow banks reach the mailbox? It's not that deep in the yard, but it has to be at least 6-8 inches deep all around. I can tell because that's how deep my garden implements like my baby's breath rings are buried. (I use some small peony rings to rein in the baby's breath.) I had to go out and shovel the wettest snow since Christmas, only a couple inches, but Derick wouldn't have been able to drive up to the garage Friday if I hadn't. Every shovelfull felt as heavy as water.

I've been busy with conferences and LOAD this week. Here's some of what I scrapped. More pages from the vacation album:


Some more kit and stash pages:




And the boys got into the art too. Here's a drawing Dominic made for Grandpa L's birthday yesterday:

He thinks they live in the RV, since that's where they are every time he's seen them.

New LOAD and weekend scrapping

I made my new LOAD. Totally inspired by this show.

I wanted to capture the latest catchphrase in the family.

Last weekend, before LOAD started, I did some layouts at a crop my church held. The first one is the replacement present I made for my FIL's birthday:

I used the ella sketch for this.

The next layouts are the start of my vacation album last year. I use the same design for every vacation album I make. Only the products and photos change. It makes it a lot easier to create.

Someday I will make a photo collage (now that I know how to do it, thanks to Jessica Sprague and Cathy Zielske) rather than printing and trimming photos. However, I LOVE getting a pile of fresh photos newly printed in the mail. Not much better than that!

A new LOAD

Today LOAD (layout a day) started. It's a challenge done by Lain Ehmann to help motivation and perhaps win some prizes (plus nice pictures of him that get emailed us). Here's my first layout:


I used the Sketchy Thursdays sketch this week for it. Here that is:

Onward!