Inspired by sketches

The pages I made this month for Simple Scrapper used sketches and a story prompt to tell stories from my past and my son's present. Here's the results:

This page, which I made with a recent Studio Calico kit,  is one of my 100 moments. I tend to do those pages in a certain way--kraft paper, hand stitched border. I broke both of those rules to make this page. I like the result, though I wish I'd gone with kraft. It's more delicately colored than a lake page is typically, but the page is about me, and I'm a girl, so there it is. Here's some details:

The next page I made for my son with his new hobby basketball:

I used an old Studio Calico kit for this--remember Yearbook?--and added few embellishments, different from my normal MO. Here's some details:

It was a little difficult to make the page on a slant. I scrap with paper, and 12x12 paper won't stretch across a page diagonally. Here's my solution:

I cut the paper 12z12, then trimmed a gap around where the photos would go. I made sure to fill the space when I added the photos.

Thank you for looking at my pages! Be sure to check out Simple Scrapper for additional inspiration.

Left brain photo selection

I'm taking the class The Art and Science of Scrapbooking at Big Picture Scrapbooking right now. I knew before taking the class that I was left brained, but I was surprised to see how I am 60/40 left brained/ right brained. I thought it would be more extreme.

My first project for the class involved photo selection. I started with the left brained challenge, which I figured to be more comfortable for me. Here's my page:

I decided to enlarge the photo to 8x12 because it was so dramatic. The bright colors in the September Studio Calico kit worked very well with the bright ride at the fair. Here's some details:

The acetate frame was an easy pick to highlight my son in the swing, who of course has his hands in the air, making him easy to find. I've been using a lot of frames on big photos lately to draw attention to the subject. And I was surprised at how much I loved using the sequins on this page. I'm not much for sequins, but the color and cheer of the sprinkles seemed the fit the mood.

The kit came with a vintage ticket--how perfect was that?

Thanks for looking at my page! Tell me: how often is your starting point for a page a photo?

Get ready for weeks of inspiration

Labor Day is the last day of summer in the US, and I head back to school to teach tomorrow. I'm getting ready for a whole new schedule--I'm teaching an extra class to allow a colleague a smaller schedule and more time with her toddler, so I have no prep period until spring. This means I will be extra busy this year, so I will be working hard to be even more organized to manage. I'll keep you posted on that.

This week all the stars aligned to create a week filled with online inspiration! Here's some of the places you can find inspiration:

1. I will be blogging all week at Write Click Scrapbook. The theme is Inspiration based on school subjects, and today is English. Stop by WCS all week to get ideas on page topics and design. Here's a project I did that fits the category of English:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. I have blog posts coming up at Fancy Pants Designs in the upcoming weeks. Here's a sneak of something coming up next Monday:
   
3. Tombow and Fancy Pants Designs are having a blog hop with giveaways all this week! Here's a link to the first stop at Tombow that explains it all, and here's a link to the first post at Fancy Pants Designs. Stop by for inspiration and giveaways of both companies' products!
   

That's just a bit of what's to come! Happy scrapping!

The life and death of creative ideas

I have a notebook with pockets that I bought at Target where I keep track of my creative ideas. I like the pockets so I can keep memorabilia or master lists I might need; I can also keep photos in them to plan pages if I'm going somewhere (like taekwondo to watch the boys). I post some sticky notes on the inside cover and list page ideas when I get them, either spontaneously or when I'm browsing photos on PSE, deciding what to print. 

I did that with the following page:

I was poking around an iPhone app I use when jogging, MapMyRun, and discovered I could find out how far I'd run this past summer. When I added it all up, I was surprised to find I'd run 131.27 miles. (Somewhere on the trails by my house I'd left 12 pounds behind.) I needed to make a page about this accomplishment, so I printed an iPhone photo from a 5K my family ran in August (I didn't want to take a photo special) and made the following.

I had these big numbers in a Studio Calico kit and decided to use them for this page, along with the map and number paper. (Note: I rounded down because the big numbers only came with one digit. Guess I should have run another mile!) Here's some details:

 

I used this page on the Thinking Through Design lesson on adding dimension to pages. You can see how many accents I popped with Dimensional stickers. Even the photo!

Back to the creative journal: When I finish pages I've logged in my journal, I cross them off the list. But some ideas stay on that list for a long time. A loooong time...

What happens with those ideas? Sometimes I just let them go. I had been excited to do them once, but not anymore. I might even have printed photos for them, but I think it's OK to let creative ideas die. They die a good death. It's OK.

Other times I leave them on there and the page eventually gets made. Here's one of them:

 

 

 

I went to CHA Winter and Summer in 2011 representing Ella Publishing and had printed photos, intending to make a page about each event. I never did, though I made minis of both. That will usually make me abandon the idea, but this one kept nagging at me. I wanted to make the page! So I pulled out some Jillibean Soup papers I'd pulled when I intended to apply for the design team( I never did--regrets! Ah well, next year) and got to work.

Here's some details:

Please know I corrected that errant gem!

The Studio Calico word bubbles I backed in pink paper.

I liked using the photo for part of the title and the calendar for the journaling. By the way, those were mistable Thickers. I bent them prying them off my cardboard box I mist in. Next time I'll put them on wax paper in the box. Hopefully they'll bend less.

So here's my question to you: how do you keep track of ideas? How do you plan? And how about letting creative ideas die--do you? Or do they get life support? :-)

Sneakerooni!

The layout I made for Write Click Scrapbook's gallery next month was so much fun to make. Seriously. I'm not going to reveal the theme, but click around some WCS members' blogs and see if you can guess the theme from any sneaks you see!

Here's a couple sneaks from me:

 

Please visit Write Click Scrapbook October 1st to see the whole shebang, and lots more inspiration!

A Black Belt, a 5K, and Queen

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about inspiration. After jogging with my boys to train them (and me!) for a 5K, I came up with a title for a layout. I then took a photo (well, my husband did), and I printed it out and made this page:

I used Studio Calico's Handmade kit for this.

The journaling came directly from my blog, a first for me. It made it so easy to just copy and paste. Wowza.

I stitched some photo corners around the photo, something I have really liked doing lately:

As usual, I did a little stripping. The top strip of paper I hand cut from this piece of October Afternoon paper. I stitched over it and added buttons just for fun.

I had a Fancy Pants chipboard flourish that had been lying around for a while, so I decided to use it as a misting mask. I didn't want dramatic mist, so I used yellow and Mister Huey's Shine. I also punched some patterned paper circles and stitched them down with cross stitches, another thing I've liked doing lately.


Thanks for looking at my project! I'm very pleased with how it turned out, even though I'm red as a lobster in this picture while my boys don't even look like they ran at all.

What have you done lately that you are proud of but haven't scrapped?

CHA faves: take 2

This will be my last post for CHA this year; I'll be posting this week at Ella another time for CHA.

A note about the above photo: To honor Sasparilla, October Afternoon set up their booth like a Wild West Saloon. I think every female at the show took their pictures next to this rowdy girls sign.

Here are a few more of my favorite projects:

Epiphany Crafts again had an amazing booth. Other companies should take note: products look infinitely more desirable when the booth is attractive and has lots of samples. I love this frame, which has decorated tags.

And this frame, which has buttons made with their button maker on a neutral patterned paper.


Fiskars didn't have a booth, if I recall correctly, but they did have two Fiskateers walking around in dresses made of paper. I took their picture here with Cindy Liebel. The one on the right is sewn; the left is constructed with hot glue. Both women said it wasn't hard or time-consuming, and said that making a dress for a little girl would be easy and fun. They also said they needed help getting out of the dresses to go to the bathroom. Here's why:


She's tied up the back. But hey, if you have lots of eyelets you never use, you obviously need to make a dress using the eyelets to lace up the back.

Harmonie had those terrific wood and acrylic shapes for misting or painting, and the layouts used them well. This one used the tree branch as an accent; see the snow on it?


This LO at the Jillibean booth is also terrific. I love the blue paper frame, and the dimensional diamond part is incredible.


This LO by Cindy Liebel at Lily Bee is terrific--the accents are punched hearts attached with dimensional stickers. Evidence that you don't need a lot of embellishments for a fine looking page.


Nikki Sivils had some nice pages with white space. To be honest, I appreciated the LOs with white space because many of the pages had a ton of product on them. I understand why, but the ones with purposeful white space, like this one, were great.

You say you didn't buy Rocket Age because you don't have boys or can't use space stuff? Look at how clever these cards use the themed products.


Boarding Pass was only hinted at during Winter CHA, so I was happy seeing it in person. But check out these clever LOs using the line! I am having seriously lustful thoughts about that map paper.


White space. *Sigh!*

A cute frame at the Pebbles booth, this one for girls:


And this one for boys.

This is a cool frame with no backing at the Pink Paislee booth.


Multiple cute LOs with lots of good ideas.


Simple Stories had TERRIFIC LOs. I loved this one in particular. Note to self: dig out my Polaroid stamp.


Studio Calico also had terrific projects. I loved this one, I think by Emily Pitts? The quote had me at hello.


And this charmer is by April Foster, and it is so cute, starting with that photo. Aw!

Thanks for seeing my favorites, and I hope that you have a great rest of weekend!