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.

My December pages for Scrapbook Circle!

A very busy month is almost done, and it's time for me to share the pages I made for Scrapbook Circle's December kit We Are Made of Stories! (Be aware that there is also a special on past kits right now for $15; have fun shopping!) Here's my first page for December:

This first layout is one I tend to do every year, a page about December with representative photos of the month. I used the main plus silver word stickers and die cut bits from the add-on Favorite Elf. The page design is usually a grid for me when I have this many photos; the Elle's Studio diamond paper called Holiday Quilt; I cut it to randomly cover some of the photos. I like the look.

(Embarrasssing note: I'm pretty sure these photos are from 2012. Sigh. I'll have to change the date.

 Next I used my FAVORITE paper from the main, the Elle's Studio Star of Wonder paper. The circles inspired me to use circles on this page. I used the Favorite Elf add-on for the 6x6 pad, which is perfect for punching embellishment circles and getting small strips without cutting into bigger sheets of paper. The wood snowflakes also came from the add-on. Just lovely.

(Interesting note: I design the page before I picked the photos for it. Then when I went to pick the unscripted sledding photos from last year, I found that it had been too cold to go sledding! We had only gone once, and those were scrapped. This was a good enough excuse to go sledding for us, what with this early winter!)

Any time I have Holiday papers and products, I try to make pages that are not holiday based. I made two, including this page about my son, who stood so still the birds docked to him, no small feat with his ADHD. I love the mix of aqua and gold and wood.

Finally, another page made with the kit and not about the holidays. The deer paper made me think of Renaissance hunting parties in England, which inspired this page about this autumn's Renaisaance family feast. I mainly used the main kit, plus silver word stickers and the 6x6 paper pad for banners from the add-on. I also used the stamps (the stamped images I trimmed and adhered them with dimensional stickers) and the tags from the main.

Thank you for checking out my pages! I had so much fun playing with this kit. So versatile and fun! Please check out Scrapbook Circle for the kit and add-on, and have fun scrapping!

Pages that are for the birds

The pages I did for Simple Scrapper next month interestingly both involve birds. Here they are:

This first page I did used a sketch from December and a Story Starter from August. I loved using so many Project Life cards on the page. (The grey card, by the way, is the one I cut from the photo real tree paper I blogged about last week.) Here's some details:

 

Again, I used a doily on a page! Whoa. I liked how the bright aqua popped on the yellow background.

 

I made this page cropping with a friend at Paper Made, a new scrapbook store in Apple Valley attached to the October Afternoon warehouse. It had a great scrapping space, and I loved their product selection, which was a lot of OA plus other stuff. That's important because of the shot above: making this page I remembered I had wood veneer feathers that I could (finally!) use on this page. But they were at home. So I went to the store and found a piece of OA paper from their Girl Talk line I remembered had feathers, cut out the feathers, and adhered them in a little tied bouquet. I like it!

Here's the next page involving birds, or a bird, actually:

For this page I used a story starter from December, the theme of which is Magic, and a sketch from June.

I had the interesting phenomenon of wanting to tell a story about which I didn't have photos, so this page is very journaling-heavy to make up for the lack of photo. I got the idea of selecting a landscape photo that looked a lot like the exact scenery I had been looking at when the bird flew in, so I searched through my photos at the time until I found one that looked similar. I printed it 8.5x11 and planned on using it on its own page.

I added the paper to the journaling-page, then the title, then stepped back. It looked unfinished. I wanted to represent the bird somehow, so I stitched the swoop, which I hand drew before punching holes and sewing. I knew I had to add something to the swoop and played around with different jewels before deciding on the stars and white jewels. And check it out: I finally used the wood veneer feather!

Thank you for checking out my pages and reading a little about my design process! I'm in the last week of the term, so I have a lot of grading, but I should be able to get back into the scrapping groove with the start of the new term!

Winner!

I used random.org, to draw number 15 for the paper pad:

 Heather Adams said...

I love November just because it means that Christmas is coming!! I love making Christmas-y crafts! :)

November 15, 2014 at 5:26 PM

 

Congratulations, Heather! And for the box of goodies, random drew #8:

 Gina200 said...

HI, I'm Gina from Massachusetts and my anniversary is 11/21 - the day your giveaway ends! Looking forward to Thanksgiving here!

November 15, 2014 at 10:47 AM

 

Congratulations, Gina! (And happy anniversary!) Ladies, please email me with your snail mail address to jennyrahnlarson at yahoo dot com (there is also a link to the right). I will get the prizes out before Thanksgiving!

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!

Scrapbooking giveaway!

I purged my stash recently and found a few things I LOVE but I either no longer use or have doubles of. I put them together and would like to give them away! Here it is:

I have a box fill of random goodies and a pad of October Afternoon's Public Library 8x8 paper. If you would like a chance to win one of these, eave a comment telling me something about you and November. I will draw TWO winners Friday, November 21 at 8 P.M. CST. Have a great weekend!

Two more pages for November's Scrapbook Circle

One week is down already, but I wanted to share two more pages I made for Scrapbook Circle's November kit Little Moments:

This first was a favorite photo I took walking the local arboretum. This bridge, which connects a neighborhood to the arb, is exquisite. I love this shot, and I loved using the embellishments from the November add-on Home Sweet Home as a border. It's like cascading leaves to me.

This next page I made for Write Click Scrapbook's November gallery. I love the shine in the photo, the theme for the gallery, and I added some gold stickers for even more shine. The page is for my mother's birthday this month, which is why I added the quilted background. She's a big quilter, and I wanted the page to look pretty like she is. I used more of the add-on Sweetness for this one, including cutting up the 6x6 papers into 1-inch blocks for the quilt.

Thank you for checking out these pages! I have a giveaway planned soon, so come back next week for a chance to get some Happy Mail!