Nontraditional colors

Hello! January has started, and started COLD. We had a day cancelled due to cold already, but the next week is looking up, temperature-wise. So there's that.

I have a post up at Scrapbook Circle on how to use a mask to add glitter to a page--please visit and get an idea for using your mask in a way other than misting! Tomorrow I will also have a post up at Write Click Scrapbook to give you journaling ideas for year-in-review pages I hope you go there too and get inspired!

Today I wanted to share a couple pages I made last month about my boys using nontraditional colors. I know most people think brown-green-blue when it comes to boy pages, but I love color, period, so I don't like certain colors of the rainbow being under a padlock for boys. When I got some heavy duty pinkish-coral in a kit, I decided to use it on a page about my son overcoming his fear of bees.

Here's the page:

(Quick side note: I had to take these photos about 3 times in December, it was so dark! I just could not get it white enough for the background paper.)

I started with the picks on the white paper, then dug around my stash for some yellow and red to add some warm joy. Again, I used a frame to draw attention to my son in the glorious flower field.

This next page celebrates my other boy's favorite event last summer: riding the high-speed boat across Lake Michigan. My husband had taken a pretty good photo of Milwaukee at dawn with his phone, so I blew it up for the background. It had lots of violet in it, so I pulled a lot of the violet and pink products in another kit:

I added the sequins to sort of draw together the top and bottom of the page. Plus they were sitting on my scrap table and seemed to go color-wise. More on that later this week.

I've been using a lot of Project Life cards on my layouts recently.

Finally, my younger boy also visited the bees at the same time as my older boy. His story was a little different, so I focused on his overall love of nature. Here's the page:

I used Scrapbook Circle's January kit for this page. I loved the add-on Shine Bright for this page; the 6x6 paper was just enough to frame the photo and create the tag banner.

Thank you for checking out these pages! I hope it inspires you to explore some nontraditional color palettes.

It was a dark and scary decade...

Hello, and Happy New Year! The start of a new month is the start of a new gallery at Write Click Scrapbook. The theme for this month is Decades, and my page shares a story that took me back to a favorite pastime growing up in the 80s: watching horror films.

I used some Project Life cards, which I've been using a lot on my scrapbook pages for journaling and decoration.  Here are some details:

Thank you for checking out my pages! Go visit the gallery at Write Click Scrapbook for further, less scary inspiration!

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.