January pages for Scrapbook Circle

The Scrapbook Circle kit All You Need is Love is up for sale! Here are my pages with this kit:

I used a lot of add-ons for this page, since the main kit is about love and is all pink and delicate. I mainly used the add on Shine Bright, plus a lot of printables.

And then I used a lot of the main:

This date with my husband fit perfectly in a Valentine's Day/Halloween mash-up. I also used a lot of printables and tags. Next, a more traditional page:

I do this page a lot, every year. The kit fit perfectly for my traditional design.

And then a more traditional love page:

This page was a little more experimental. I used glitter. Enough said.

The gorgeous Word stickers come from the kit Hello Love. A good get, I think.

Next was  a page about my boys' yearly insect/butterfly fair:

I loved that the add-on Hello Love had butterfly paper in the 6x6 pad. I didn't want to make it really frilly for my boys, so I kept the strong lines and just added a few butterflies in a graphic manner.

Finally, my last page:

My son loved spending time in nature, so I made this page to commemorate it.

All in all, this kit has a romantic name, but I hope I showed how versatile the kit and its add-ons are! Thank you for checking out my pages!

January layouts for Simple Scrapper

Here's a couple pages I made for next month's Simple Scrapper gallery. I used both old and new sketches and story starters as inspiration. Here they are:

This first page used a January story starter. The theme is New Beginnings, which is perfect for this page about my son's terrific start to his final year in elementary school. With his autism, new beginnings can be tough, which is why this year merits celebration in particular. I chose neutral and natural colors and images to reflect the tranquility of the year.

Here's my next page:

I used a January sketch and an old story starter to inspire me here. The photo I love, though it's not a great photo, indoors with a busy background. Still, it represented something wonderful to me--my son's love of reading and his affection for certain series--so I chose playful colors and products for this story.  I did one of my favorite things on this page: using a frame to draw attention to a small field of the photo.

Thank you for checking out my pages! Please visit Simple Scrapper for a peek into what's coming up and some daily inspiration.

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!