Scrap retreat: finished pages

I may be insane. This must be noted immediately, because three days after returning from our vacation to Glacier, I went on a scrap retreat at the Nowthen Getaway with my girlfriends, the Scrappin' J's.

I didn't plan pages, really. I didn't pull photos and coordinate supplies to make the pages and pre-cut titles and pre-print journaling. I packed a bit of everything I like to scrap with and went--and amazingly, I use everything that I brought! Wow.

It was a blast. We go on a few retreats a year in addition to scrapping occasionally at Archiver's, and the company was just so much fun.

I made about 13 layouts and 2 minis (some I made and finished, some I finished except for titles/journaling, and some I'd already started and finished). I'll share what I made through the rest of the month. Here's what I did completely at the retreat, from start to finish:

This was our first challenge. We like to do timed challenges to encourage us to design without overthinking (plus, it's fun!). This was an open 30-minute challenge. I used older photos of my son with a garden statue I got for Christmas a few years ago. I'm not sure of the date, but I wrote 2012 on the page, so that's what it was. I used Studio Calico's June kit Roundabout with this page. (Note: after our challenges, we always tweak the pages. I added stitching and the confetti.) I really love using products humorously. This sticker that says "Get Away!" means something totally different (it's from the Travel Girl line), but it makes sense in the context of the story I scrapped. I love doing that.

I made the next page with Studio Calico's July kit Valley High with this page. It's pretty simple. I have used this idea before: cutting circles to use as a photo mat, then adding a few stitched circles with my Bazzill stitching template. I decided to make an 8.5x11 page because the photos were so small. The photos, BTW, were left over from a project that I didn't use them on.

This is a good example of my starting a page with something random on my scrap table. I had these Mason jars lying around; I'd planned on using them for an American Crafts page when I was a guest designer this year but didn't. Since they were sort of girly and present-like, I decided to use them as the starting point for this page. I decided the jars should sit on a "shelf," so I went through the patterned paper I'd brought and picked matching shades. Then I put the photos below after some stitching (of course) and added journaling and title. Easy peasy!

The final page was another challenge, this one more difficult: we had an hour but had to include 4 things we all decided individually: Journaling, something black, stitching or misting or stamping, and washi. (Bonus is you guess which challenge is mine!) I again used the July Studio Calico kit to make this page:

 

 

Right now I am enamored with photos along the top or bottom of the page. I was also impressed at how nice the letter stickers worked with a page about a Children's Museum. Fun fun fun.

Thanks for sharing my pages! I'll be sharing the remaining pages I made over the next two weeks. Tell me: do you have a scrapping group? And how do you feel about going on crops?