Scrapping challenges

Sometimes I get inspiration from challenges. One of the first sites I frequented for challenge inspiration was Simple Scrapbooks; now I stalk Write.Click.Scrapbook, its legacy site. Every week designers there generate techniques and ideas and sometimes challenges. This past week one challenge involved using a blog post. Since I'm a blog newbie, I didn't have much to go from, but my husband has been blogging for a while, so I got inspiration from him. When he blogged on August 31, he had posted this photo of my son and titled it "Never Take the Easy Route." (It actually said "path," but I had an idea about using a rub-on from the brand name "Scenic Route," so I changed it.) When I saw his post, a page was born:

(This is the layout I blogged about yesterday; I found it easier to create then search for a sketch. And I should mention: those little charms were clipped from a metal bookmark I have. I thank my bookmark for the sacrifice it made in service of my page.)

Another site I get inspiration from is One Little Word. I have been playing along for about a yer, drawing inspiration from the words they post. I was lucky enough to be a guest designer on the blog in June this week and this week. The week's post was Beauty. As summer winds down, I have been taking pictures of everything beautiful, so they worked perfectly on a layout about beauty. Here's my take on the word:

This is the first time I used Core-dinations paper. I sanded to reveal some orange, which the photo doesn't show well. I thought I got a nicer effect when I sanded lightly in circles and also sanded the edges of the paper, which doesn't show well on the photo.

Design-wise, it took me a while to get the right combo of accents. I really wanted to use flowers on this layout sort of about flowers. Think about that: it's like saying, "We need something to go with steak tonight--let's have steak--that'll go with steak!" Insane. I removed all flowers but one, which worked much better.

There are many more wonderful challenge sites out there. I hope to explore them more and draw inspiration from them, but I fear that will have to wait until we get one more hour in each day!