Scrapbooking the water with Scrapbook Circle

My younger son loves the water. When we go on vacation, we have to ensure that we get a hotel with a swimming pool; we made the mistake of reserving a room without one once, and never again. It crushed him. He waded and swam in many places this vacation--ocean, pool, reservoir, lake--so I put some photos together on a page to celebrate this love.

I used Scrapbook Circle's August kit Make it Happen. I loved this kit; it's so bright and fun. I (appropriatey) used a lot of Crate Paper's Poolside and Pinkfresh Studios' Happy Things for this page. Here's the details:

 

I made frequent use of the Poolside stickers from the Sweet Details add-on, which is still available.

 

The You Shine add-on, which is also still available, has the wonderful summer chipboard title pieces. I used the word "Splash" and decided it added enough to the piece so that I didn't have to add more journaling, just some place details.

Thank you for visiting my blog today! Now that summer is almost over here in the North, I hope this page gives you something warm to think about once autumn arrives, hopefully not too soon.

Finishing projects day 1: school mini-albums

Hello!The end of summer is around the corner, and I'll be starting a new year with a new teaching prep. My boys will also be in middle school, so I'm anticipating less free time, at least at first. As a result, I'm trying to finish as many projects as I can this summer.

I've actually accomplished quite a bit--I organized the garage, taped and speckled some wall holes in the house, and begun harvesting the garden and cooking (marinara, anyone?). Now here's a list of some of my scrapbooking projects I had to tackle:

1. Finish creating the boys' 5th and 6th grade school album pages
2. Edit and print photos from Custer S.P. (2011)
3. Create mini albums with thank you cards from school
4. Finish the Disney album (2010)
5. Update the Easter mini-album
6. Complete the iScrap class/album
7. Complete the Get Messy class/album
8. Ask Derick to finish journaling his London album
9. Complete 5 Vacation Faves (2015)
10. Create cards for my Dad
11. Rowan school album photos: 3rd, 5th, and 6th; class photo 4th and 6th
12. Dominic school album photos: 2nd, 4th, and 5th;class photo 3rd and 5th

I'm on my way, as you can see. I completed three things on the list, and I'm within a day or two of finishing 3 more. As a motivational push for me, I am going to share my projects as I finish them. First, the mini albums: I had to clean out my office desk last spring at school since the area was being turned into new classrooms. I found 17 years of thank you notes in the desk and decided to make them into mini albums to keep them more solidly. Here they are:

These first two mini albums include thank you notes given out for teacher's appreciation day. Students send them to teachers they want, so I kept the ones that were the most specific. Because they were the same size, they were easy to scrap I used some older Jillibean Soup kraft file folders to house them. For color, I lined the inside with some bright patterned paper (I dug into my scrap piles for them) and used a bunch of bright, non school accents.

Next are some actual cards.They were irregularly shaped, so a little more difficult to fit in mini albums. Here's what I did:

For these mini albums I did dig into my school themed Iris container for products. I pulled chipboard mini album covers from a 7gypsies mini album for the one on the left, covered it with paper using my 5-inch Xyron, and embellished the cover. The cards are not bound in there, by the way: the ribbon is holding it altogether.

On the right I wanted to use the Report card paper for the covers, so I trimmed some spare cardboard to fit, used the Xyron again to adhere, decorated and tied together with the ribbon like I did with the last album.

Finally, I needed something bigger for the actual letters and printed-emails I've collected through the years, so I used an actual manila folder:

Again, I lined the inside with patterned paper scraps, and for the outside, I dug into the school themed Iris container to finish decorating it. (Note: once I got to this point, I realized I had used basically the same design on each mini album. Different products, but same design. Huh.) Like I did with my first two mini-albums, I used a binder clip to close this. Easy-peasy!

Thank you for letting me share some of my projects! I'll share more this month as I complete them. I doubt I'll finish it all, but boy, will it feel good to empty out more project containers that I've been storing the half finished projects!

Scrapbook Circle August pages

Hello! Now that August is underway, I wanted to share the pages I made for Scrapbook Circle using their kit Make it Happen. I loved the bright colors in the main kit, and I especially loved the two add-ons Sweet Details and You Shine, which helped give some wonderful embellishments that meshed perfectly with the main kit.

And here are the pages I made:

First is a page I made about my sons' favorite exhibit at the Landscape Arboretum: the maze. I used a few smaller pictures plus a big one of them at the maze. I used the Fancy Pants alpha in the main kit as the central feature--and I spelled it that way on purpose. :-) Here's some details:

I used asterisks as hyphens, and set them on dimensional stickers to make them stand out. For similar reasons I outlined the letters.

The boys were hard to see in their photos, so I stitched circles around them.

Next was a page I scrapped on a 12x12 photo:

I particularly loved the Elle's Studio die cuts from You Shine and the Crate Paper stickers from Sweet Details on this page. Here's some details:

Next is possibly my favorite page:

I had several photo strips of my son and I, and I also had some notes he had made for me for Mother's Day. They were too big to put in full on the page, so I used my favorite photos from the photo strips and handwrote his notes on the page. Here's some details:

Finally, I got inspiration from the Poolside words "ice cream" from the You Shine add-on and the Studio Calico Seven paper in the main kit. The angle made me think to lay the photos on an angle too. I added the pink paper at the top because it reminded me of an ice cream parlor.

And here's some details:

The Elle's Studio tags from the You Shine add-on were perfect for this page.

Thank you for checking out my pages! This kit was so much fun to play with in the summertime. I have another page I made that I will share later this month.

August scrapbook pages for Simple Scrapper

Hello! I have some pages to share using August inspiration from Simple Scrapper.

This first  page uses a new story starter and an older sketch, telling the story of my childhood love of fishing with Grandpa and how my boys are following suit. (The title rhymes with "history.") It also uses some old products--the My Mind's Eye kraft patterned paper, an old Jillibean tag, and some Studio Calico Atlantic and chipboard photo turns. Here's some details:

Next is another new story starter and old sketch. That's me in 3rd or 4th grade in the Azores, stomping grapes on a school field trip. I used a lot of Project Life cards on this page instead of cutting up patterned paper.

Finally, using a new sketch and old story starter, is a page that pairs some photos of my husband as a child with current photos of him and our boys. I mostly used October Afternoon on this, mostly vintage Road Trip products. I loved that line. I also used some vintage Simple Stories.

 Instead of cutting up paper for the circles, which were in the sketch, I stitched.

Thank you for checking out my pages! Please visit Simple Scrapper for more inspiration and consider a membership, where you'll get even more inspiration.

Vacation!

Hello! I have been such a miserable blogger this month, I am wearing the cone of shame. In my defense, I spent the first half of the month on vacation, so I thought I'd share some photos of what we did. Here's the photos of the trip:

Of course, the main reason we went was to visit my parents in Maine. We had a wonderful time that involved LLBean, Popham Beach, blueberry picking, fishing, and lobster. Here we are eating ice cream in Freeport:

Next, we went to Boston to spend the 4th of July weekend with Derick's siblings and their families. Here's Derick and I at Quincy Market:

We were fortunate enough to watch the Boston Pops 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular. The music was awesome, a highlight. If you are in the Oval like we were, you can't see the fireworks well, but that was OK.

Here and there we hiked the Freedom Trail. We also visited the aquarium, which offered multiple opportunities to quote Finding Nemo, and the Science Museum, which was having a special Science of Pixar exhibit. Here's a shot of most of us at the top of the Bunker Hill monument after climbing almost 300 steps:

What you can't see: on the back of Rowan's short is a sweat stain in the shape of my face, which I had wiped right before this picture was taken. By the time we got to the bottom, my legs were Jello. It took days for them to recover.

Later that day we saw a game at Fenway Park:

And the next day we went camping in Vermont on our own at a lovely campground called Townshend S.P., which had a gorgeous CCC-built ranger station and traditional CCC platform text sites. I don't think we've ever stayed at a lovelier campsite.

Camping food was a highlight, of course:

We hiked to the top of Bald Mountain, where I got the only signal I ever got camping at the peak, a text message from a friend of mine. Lola our dog hiked off leash and had to overcome her fear of crossing streams. It was pretty muggy, as you can see by how much I am sweating (check out the finger marks on the bottom of my shirt from where I kept wiping my face):

The men, looking noble at the actual peak:

This was the trip we taught the boys cribbage. In this game  Rowan finally beat me, after numerous skunkings of him by me:

Vermont was mostly muggy with periodic rain, One afternoon was gorgeous, though, so I took the boys swimming at a reservoir. The reservoir was oddly made--a truly slimy bottom made it uncomfortable to walk in, and the bottom was interestingly uneven. Look how far out the boys are yet how shallow it is. I call this the boys walking on water like Jesus photo:

After camping we went to Herkimer, New York, for a day visit to Cooperstown:

And then we drove to St. Ignace, Michigan, for a couple days, one of which we spent at Mackinac Island. We hiked a good part of it.

Rowan obviously forgot to wear his red shirt. LOL

After Mackinac Island, we drove home.

Thank you for letting me share my vacation photos after my pathetic blogging this month! Please visit Write Click Scrapbook this week for a few days where I share how I go about scrapbooking my vacations--click here to read about how I organize the album, and click here to see how I create multiple photo templates. Tomorrow I'll post about how I design the album, and later this week I will post the pages I have been working on in this compressed month for Scrapbook Circle and Simple Scrapper!

New gallery at Write Click Scrapbook

Hello! It's time for a new gallery at Write Click Scrapbook, and the theme this month is SEVEN. It's the seventh month, of course, and this inspiration can apply in many ways: stories about 7, using the number 7 on the page, and so on. I used 7 different products. Here's my page:

If you follow me on Instagram, you have seen this photo. I love it! I chose to use the following seven items (the pen was free):

1. The cloud paper
2. The pink tag
3. The yellow tag
4. The phrase die cut
5. The yellow Thickers
6. The pink letter stickers
7. The pink epoxy sticker

I love the combo of aqua, pink, and yellow. I think they are joyous, which reflects the boys here.

Thank you for checking out my page! Please go visit Write Click Scrapbook and check out the new gallery--and challenge yourself to scrapbook by number of products. It can be inspiring!