Back from hibernation

Hello! It's a long time side I blogged, obviously. December has always been busy for me: the normal holiday busyness paired with church music festivals for the family, plus orchestra concert for Dominic, plus finishing grading for first trimester and starting second trimester...and now I'm sick. Gah.

I have been scrapping and blogging, mainly at Write Click Scrapbook and Scrapbook Circle. I thought I'd share some of what I made this month before posting next month's pages for Scrapbook Circle and Simple Scrapper. Here's some of what I did:

This page was for my December Write Click Scrapbook Gallery. It's a page I've wanted to do for a while but never did since I didn't have a good photo for it. My solution? Make a page without a photo. I used a lot of the Scrapbook Circle December kit, plus some OLD Making Memories Christmasy stuff.

The bane of my existence in the winter is the lighting. It starts getting drak around 3-4, and at 4:30 it's sunset. When the tree goes up, there goes all usable light, and I have to photograph in the kitchen or on weekends. Gah again! This page I meant to include at Write Click Scrapbook for a post I wrote about using three photos on a page, but I didn't get it photographed in time. Here's the post if you want to see what I wrote.

I posted again at Write Click Scrapbook on Christmas Day, scrapping about letting go of a tradition and affirming the important ones this holiday season. I'm just now noticing how much I've been lining up photos. Ah, well. I cannot fight who I am. I am a liner-upper.

When my mom comes to visit, she takes pictures and sends them to me after she returns home. A lot of times I make layouts with them and mail them to her for birthdays and holidays. These were photos I've already scrapped for myself, so I made this page for them. Looking at the page again, I wish I'd put the patterned paper strip in between the photos instead of at the bottom. Sigh. Oh well. I love the title block on this page.

This page may be my favorite when it comes to perfect meshing of colors in the photos and the product. Normally I think vibrant when it comes to fall colors, but the subdued hues work really well with these photos, which again came from my mom. (I selfishly kept this page though!) My favorite addition to the page: the wood grain sequins from chic tags, which I got in a kit last summer from Scrapbook Circle. The misted paper, by the way, was a rescue: I'd misted for another layout, but it didn't look good, so I put it aside. My cat then chewed a corner off it. (I don't know why, but she loves chewing paper. This is causing my heart attacks and a investment in Iris containers.) I laid patterned on top of the cat chew and let the misty bottom half shine though. Perfect!

This last one is a re-done page. I'd made this page years ago with product I didn't like for an assignment. I rescued the photo and used a recent kit for this page. And holy heck, I used doilies again. Seriously, doilies are going to be on at least two more pages this week.

Thank you for visiting me again after my hibernation! I am going scrapbooking with girlfriends these next few days and will share some more pages: my work for January's Simple Scrapper and Scrapbook Circle, and a couple boy pages with nontraditional colors.