Scrapbooking many photos

I have some exciting news for today: I was asked to design some projects for the American Crafts blog, specifically highlighting how to scrapbook many photos! If you've followed my blog for a while, you know I love putting many photos on a page. Here's the projects I made, mostly using the My Girl, Amy Tangerine, and Dear Lizzy Colections:

As you can see, I like using smaller photos on one-page layouts if I use many photos on a page. I tend to go to town when I use many photos on a two-page layout, but still, shrinking the size of the photos to get a lot on the page.

Please go visit the American Crafts blog--I shared some design tips on the pages I designed. and thank you, American Crafts, for creating such inspiring products!

Scrapbooking as Therapy

*Don't forget to leave a comment on this post for a chance to win one of THREE copies of any List It! of your choice. Comments are open until Friday at 9 P.M. CST.

My guest blog post is up at Simple Scrapper today. I wrote about using scrapbooking as therapy, specifically as a parent. Please go visit and read and explore the site, which is wonderful.

Here's one LO I included:


I used Studio Calico's July kit Mind the Gap, which is still available here. This topic is appropriate because I have yet again overbooked myself and my sons. When will I learn??? At least I'll get a lot of grading done.

First Sketchy Thursdays page

While I was at Disney, I received the sketches for this month that I get to play with this month as Guest Designer for Sketchy Thursdays. When I got back from Disney, I also got a box of goodies to play with from Scrap Attack Scrapbooking--thanks, Diana and Heidi!

Here's my first page:


I played around a lot with paint and glitter on this one, trying to evoke something a little mysterious, seen though the clouds of memory. I used Studio Calico's July kit Continental for this.

I just finished the next one--you'll see that one next Thursday! That sketch was super easy and fun for me to play with. I'll give you a hint: bright colors.

Thank you again for everyone who voted for me!

Vote!

I am up for Guest Designer at Sketchy Thursdays--if possible, I would really appreciate your votes! Here's my project:

And here's the link to vote:

Sketchy Thursdays design team vote

Voting is through this Tuesday.

Thank you!

Scrapping challenges

Sometimes I get inspiration from challenges. One of the first sites I frequented for challenge inspiration was Simple Scrapbooks; now I stalk Write.Click.Scrapbook, its legacy site. Every week designers there generate techniques and ideas and sometimes challenges. This past week one challenge involved using a blog post. Since I'm a blog newbie, I didn't have much to go from, but my husband has been blogging for a while, so I got inspiration from him. When he blogged on August 31, he had posted this photo of my son and titled it "Never Take the Easy Route." (It actually said "path," but I had an idea about using a rub-on from the brand name "Scenic Route," so I changed it.) When I saw his post, a page was born:

(This is the layout I blogged about yesterday; I found it easier to create then search for a sketch. And I should mention: those little charms were clipped from a metal bookmark I have. I thank my bookmark for the sacrifice it made in service of my page.)

Another site I get inspiration from is One Little Word. I have been playing along for about a yer, drawing inspiration from the words they post. I was lucky enough to be a guest designer on the blog in June this week and this week. The week's post was Beauty. As summer winds down, I have been taking pictures of everything beautiful, so they worked perfectly on a layout about beauty. Here's my take on the word:

This is the first time I used Core-dinations paper. I sanded to reveal some orange, which the photo doesn't show well. I thought I got a nicer effect when I sanded lightly in circles and also sanded the edges of the paper, which doesn't show well on the photo.

Design-wise, it took me a while to get the right combo of accents. I really wanted to use flowers on this layout sort of about flowers. Think about that: it's like saying, "We need something to go with steak tonight--let's have steak--that'll go with steak!" Insane. I removed all flowers but one, which worked much better.

There are many more wonderful challenge sites out there. I hope to explore them more and draw inspiration from them, but I fear that will have to wait until we get one more hour in each day!