I designed a page to cover a hole in the paper

(A reminder: you can still leave a comment for  chance to win one of two prizes from my stash go back to this post and leave a comment by 8 P.M. CST Friday!)

When my mother was here for October, we visited the local arboretum. The colors were stunning, and we had a wonderful time. I printed the photos and looked for papers to use and found this black and white photo real tree paper. Perfect! Except I had cut a 3x4 corner off it to use for another page. Insert mild swear word. As a result, I had to design the whole page around that missing piece. Here's what I did:

Since I printed most of the photos in 2x3, the logical way to cover the hole was with a line of those photos across the top of the page. Here's what I did with the rest of the design:

I had a focal point photos in 5x7. I used that photo on the gray cardstock on the left, filling in with embellishments.

I left most of the right side empty to show off the trees, using journaling strips to allow more of the design to show. I inked the edges with orange to make them pop.

Another design note: That stitch line exists because I cut the plaid paper too short. I had to add the mini strip underneath to fill the space. The cut line looked funny, so I stitched to mask it. I had to stitch twice to make it visible. Note: the stitch line on the right side exists to balance out this line.

Just a note that punches are still a scrapper's best friend when it comes to balancing out a layout without having to trek down to the Cameo to cut circles.

Thank you for checking out my page! Stop by tomorrow to see if you won!

Fun with leaves

A few weeks ago the boys took the rakes out to rake leaves. Mind you, I didn't ask them to; there were barely any leaves on the ground. A while later I went out to check on them, and they were lying on top of the leaf pile. I asked my son if he was done and ready to bag them, and he said, "No, there's still fun to be had." And so I needed to make a page. Here it is:

If you look at the top of the page, you can see I clipped paper clips on top; to photograph it, I had to cut it off. Alas! I used Fancy Pants Designs Happy-go-lucky, which is the perfect all-season collection. It looked great on my page about Glacier N.P., and here it looks pleasantly like autumn too.

Here's the details:

I lightly misted the background with yellow just to tone down the white a bit.

Right now I'm loving tucking tags under photo mats and making bows out of the string.

Here's the pins at the top. I display my pages for a while, and when I put them in the album, it's usually OK if something sticks out of the top. If not, I can take them off!

Thank you for checking out my page! And Happy Halloween!

Elle's Studio blog hop!

Welcome to the blog hop! If you've been following the hop in order, you just got here from Jenni Hufford, and you are now at my blog (Jennifer Larson), and I'm so excited to participate in the release of Elle’s Studio’s two new lines for Autumn and Christmas: Spooky Tales and Be Merry! They are hitting the stores this week and you can also get them at their website now!

 

I really loved The Spooky Tales because it was so versatile--it contained both Halloween and fall images. And Be Merry will work for whatever Christmas or holiday project you have planned! And for those of you who do Project Life, both lines contain tons of tags that are perfectly sized for PL!

 

I loved working with the Halloween/fall tags especially--they have the traditional colors of the holiday, plus some unexpected color twists, and the fonts are just adorable. They were perfect for layering and creating embellishments for the page.

 

Here’s an example of how I layered those tags on a page for the October gallery that is debuting on October 1st. 

Supplies I used in this sneak peek are: 

• Spooky Tales Tidbits
• Thankful pennants

Making the "award" ribbon with the tags was so easy and fun. It matched the playful feel of this whole page.  I also used the following products in the rest of my page:

• Spooky Tales Large Journaling Tags
• Spooky Tales Note Tags 

I trimmed the note tags up to fit my page better.

Today I get to giveaway two of my favorite items from the new release to one lucky winner! 

Leave a comment to be entered to win the Spooky Tales Tidbits and Thankful Pennants. I’ll draw one winner on Saturday, September 29^th at 10 A.M. CST, so make sure you check back to see if you’ve won!

 

And don't forget to check out the rest of the hop! There are different prizes and winners at every stop in the hop - you have 13 more chances to WIN:

Elle’s Studio

Angela

Becky

Diana

Jill

Jen

Jenni

Jennifer (That's Me! You are here)

Kay

Linda

Michelle

Sophie

Valerie

Waleska

 

Have fun on the rest of the hop! And good luck! Don't forget to go to Elle's Studio for the gallery reveal on October 1st.

Black Friday tradition

The Mall of America is a special spot for my family, most especially because my husband and I first met there. Every year we go to the Mall of America on Black Friday. It's honestly not as crazy as it sounds! We went again this year; I'll post that story soon.

I took our pictures from last year and made a mini album using the following color combo as inspiration:

The desaturated colors are warm but not to showy, perfect for my bright photos.

Here's the mini-album:





I used paint on my stamps to make the images stand out on the black paper. I also used some gems and baker's twine to add some texture to the pages.

And here's the GCD Studios products I used:


Animal Crackers for boys Cube Leaf


Animal Crackers for boys Wallpaper Stripe


Animal Crackers for boys Fauna Stripe


Animal Crackers for boys Quirky rub-on letters


The Great Outdoors Trail Blazer


Chip Art Stars


Chip Art 5x7 mini album kit

Enjoy these muted hues, even when scrapping a bright and wild event!

Warm colors

Now that autumn is fully upon us here in Minnesota, I am fully ready to scrap the lovely rich colors of the season, not just on outdoors layouts, but anything that makes me feel warm and cozy.

Here's one of those subjects: my husband. We've been together for many years now, and he is my rock.

The other day I noticed we were both wearing similar shirts that reflected our interests, in his case his favorite activity, Dungeons and Dragons, and in my case the best TV show ever, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That inspired me to take some photos of ourselves, which my husband tried to sabotage a bit (see photo three below).

I used a digital photo strip frame from Fei-Fei's Stuff to house all the photos we took, and then I made this layout:

I was inspired by this color combo:
The bit of rich blue makes the typical autumn color combo fresh to look at.

I used the following GCD Studios papers:

Bandana from The Great Outdoors

Garden Mix from Animal Crackers for boys

Trick Pony from Funhouse

Lovely Garden from Soul Food

And just for fun, I stamped and embossed part of my title and painted behind the die cut letters:


Enjoy using this cozy color combo to scrap something that makes you warm inside!

Goodbye fall

I don't know that I can honestly say goodbye to fall on the winter solstice, seeing as how it's been snowing nonstop since November 13. Well, maybe not nonstop, but that's how it's felt. I was going to tweet today that it was snowing again, but it felt too passe. More notable if it's NOT snowing, ya know? Ah well. It's pretty..

In honor of an autumn that seems SOOOOO long ago, I did a two-page layout celebrating some of the beauty of fall here in Minnesota. I was inspired by a sketch in the tremendously awesome Ella book Double-Page Design:




(Forgive the bad photo. Remember, darkest day of the year.)

Here's a true confession: the sketch has a 12x12 photo as one full page. That made me think of this left photo, which I thought would do nicely. However, it's vertical in orientation, so it didn't do so nicely squared. So I decided to make the LO an 8.5x11 spread. To make it happen, I printed and 8x12 photo to fill the left side of the 8.5x11 inch spread.

If you do the math, you can see my problem. It's a good thing I never became a math teacher.

Rather than reprinting the left side photo, I decided to make do, coming up with the above spread, which I like. (The color is even, BTW. The lighting is not. Sunset at 4:15, #&@*!)

I did less embellishing, depending instead on the pretty photos for the visual interest. I added some flourish stitches using my Bazzill stitching template. Love that baby. And I LOVE the gorgeous autumn background paper from Crate Paper. Only it's not autumn: it comes from their Snowy Days line, the B side of a piece called Flakes. What does the A side look like?


It's very pretty, but in this house of Y chromosome (sans moi and my cat), I would never use it.

Full fall weekend

October is a full month for our family: a visit from my parents, visit to my grandmother, a mini-vacation with my husband over MEA weekend, and Rowan's B-day, not to mention Halloween. This first weekend was a busy start to the busy month.

First we drove up to Two Harbors to visit my grandmother. The weather people have been saying we've had ripe weather conditions for a colorful fall, and they did not disappoint. I cannot recall the colors being more beautiful:


We always stop at the rest stop right when we get to Duluth to let me take pictures. What gorgeous weather. We also like going outside in the woods when we get to Two Harbors. My aunt has a lovely property, as you can see:



I didn't mess with the saturation on these photos; it really was that stunning! The last photo, BTW, is my new favorite. Something poignant about it. I think I shall enlarge it to take up a full page when I scrap our visit.

We also took our traditional four generation shot.


If over 3/4 of us are looking at the camera, job well done.

Today we went to the Renaissance Festival. Had to take a new route because of flooding; we could see the floods from the highway as we drove down. Egads.

We only managed a few hours at the fair; nice food, fun, and swordplay:

Note to self: Next year the last thing we do is go on rides. Once the boys did it right away this year, they were ready to go.

In honor of Ella publishing, I took the boys on an elephant ride:

Here's to fall and making beautiful new memories.

Over the pig

I am just about totally well. Dominic got a bout of something, maybe flu, so I stayed home with him today, but he seems better now.

The weather is gorgeous, and the sun is shining. I can't tell you how happy I am for that. I was starting to think the vampires were leaving Forks and coming here to Minnesota because we have had so little sun this October. This afternoon I went outside to cut down more of my gardens, and Dominic went outside to play with a ball he got at Rowan's birthday party.

Happy fall.