oh boy

This is made from a kit I bought on clearance. It turned out better than I expected. I like how the cutouts frame the photos placed behind them.

I use kits to help me get past the initial creative block when I first start cropping. Do a kit, then the creative juices start flowing. +

Grape Jelly Making

First time making grape jelly on my own. :) 
The scallop circle shape in the background is cut on the cricut. The yellow and brown rosettes on either side are cut with the Tim Holtz sizzix dies. The red scallop border at top and bottom are from a border punch.

Click

These pictures of Kevin when he was small always hurt my heart! Mah bebe! That face!

I don't even remember what paper line this is. lol  I threw this together pretty quickly. Pretty straightforward!

Clamlicious

I found these pictures and instantly knew I had to cut out a clam somehow. I was amazed to find just what I needed on the Cricut cartridge Disney Princesses. Who'd a thunk it. lol  Take your cuts to a new, cuter level, by adding googly eyes!

Kevin cracked me up by trying -and liking- clams at the chinese buffet place. It was just a phase, he's since stopped eating them after a few years of liking them. :)

Today

Hello!

I had this scrap, the yellow striped paper, which I had cut out a shape for a background, and I was going to toss it or give it to a friend who likes using up scraps.  But then I had an idea to use it, but I couldn't find a photo(s) to go with it.  So I made the layout anyway. Eventually I'll have a picture that will work. :)

The little hexagons were left over from cutting some beehive backgrounds, and I'd saved them just in case. I also had a strip of printed paper with little circles that I cut out to make the flower. Everything on the page is stash stuff, leftovers.  The sun in the center of the circle flower was one of those canvas covered chip stickers from Studio Calico, painted with Distress paint.

Sometimes I get the urge to make a page design but don't have the photos for it, so I just make the page anyway. I always get the photos eventually. ;)

Thanks for stopping by!

I Moustache You a Question

Greetings!

Yeah, I know, the title is over-used and and cliche. But I couldn't think of any thing else at the time. lol

I think the papers may be Basic Grey, but I don't remember. I just remember that they were very old stash and I wanted to use them up.

My friends and I had gone to a little product party (Grace Adele? a sub company of Scentsy) and the consultant had made these mustache sticks so naturally we had to take pictures. :)

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Katie's Birthday

Hello!

Here's some more old papers! I forgot to check what manufacturer these were but I'm guessing Basic Grey perhaps. :)  Totally old stash.  I also had a strip of velvet border trim that's been in my stash forever. I was very glad to use up stash stuff.

A few friends and I surprised our friend Katie with a little birthday celebration at her work.  Super fun!

Thanks for stopping by!

Pride Day

Greetings,

Well here's another layout from the Bo Bunny collection from my stash. I also found these acrylic embellishments printed with paisleys and the word "dream". I think they might be from an old Prima collection that I'd used up but hadn't used these embellishments. Their colors went perfectly with the papers so I had to use them. I think the colors of the papers went really well with the belly dancer's costumes.

Thanks for stopping by!

Gathering

Hi hi,

So, once I was finally back in the mood to think up pages, I pulled out an old collection of Bo Bunny papers. I bought them a LONG time ago! and I forgot to look at the name of the collection on the manufacturer strip. Loved the colors. :) I still have a lot of it left, since many of the papers I bought 2 of each.

When I was getting ready to write up this post, I realized I've forgotten to add the title. LOL  so now  I have to remember to put the title on before I stick it in an album. 

My friends and I were celebrating a new baby, he's a cutie. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

My Boy

Hi there,

So I was at the Lorado crop, the last day of a 3 day crop. In fact, it was very nearly over, I had maybe a little over an hour to scrap before I needed to pack up. I really wanted to get one more page done if I could. So this is what I came up with!  I used the Echo Park All About A Boy collection, and pretty much just used things as they were.  I had this one-off picture that I'd printed as a 5x7.

I also had those chevron strips left over from the Balloons layout. I saved them all, and thought they looked kind of neat on this page.

Thanks for stopping by!

Sledding

Hello!

I really really love these papers from the Bo Bunny Winter Woodland collection. The colors were perfect for these pictures. I'm glad I bought the chipboard sticker sheet as well, I used as many as I could. :)

Kevin loves sledding! Here, his uncles and step cousin are out sledding. I'm thankful my brother took these pictures!

Thanks for stopping by!

Bald Eagle Days

Welcome!

I have been trying for the last few years to use up my stash. But now and then I go into the scrapbook store and I see a collection that's new to me, and I am in love. I found this winter collection from Bo Bunny (I {heart} Bo Bunny!), the Woodland Winter collection.  I did not buy the whole collection, I managed to restrain myself! But I did buy enough for a few layouts. :)  I love the colors, the blues and browns.

Bald Eagle Days happen in January here. The Bald Eagles migrate here from Canada and stay for the winter, because they can fish the Mississippi river. So there's a big expo where we can see rehabilitating birds of prey, the kids can do activities and local organizations can show what they have. We try to go every year, it's fun. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Balloons

Greetings!

Love these Echo Park papers, from the All About A Boy collection. I saw the balloon sticker and decided to dig out these old pictures from the 80s, when I went to a balloon launch. One of the few times I took a lot of pictures back then! lol

The other balloon is cut from my cricut, but I don't remember what cartridge it's from. Found it on my gypsy when I did a search. :)

Anyway, the zig zag patterned paper was perfect for the pictures, since so many of the balloons had that pattern on them. I also cut the background on my cricut, I think with the new Edge to Edge cartridge.

Going to try to find a balloon launch this year so the kiddo can see them. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Tis the Season to be Jolly

Hello :)

This is the last kit I'm posting for now. I didn't just scrap kits all this time, I alternated with scrapping my own designs, but I just went ahead and posted all the kit layouts first.

This is a Basic Grey kit of the month layout I think. I picked it up at the last Lorado crop in March. The felt ornaments are darling.  I scrapped 2013 holiday pics on it. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

One Fine Day

Greetings!

Here is another older Staackits Scraps kit. I think she's out of this kit now.  Again, another perfect kit for scrapping older pictures.

These pics are from 1991, after my mom and stepdad moved to florida, they came back up later in the summer along with all my stepdad's kids. We rented a houseboat and took it down the river for a couple days. Fun weekend!

Thanks for stopping by!

Celebrate 1982

Hi hi,

This is another kit I bought, super simple and inexpensive. I bought it specifically for scrapping older, uninspiring pics. So all these pics are (hopefully) from 1982. I discovered that many did not have dates written on the back, so I had to guess. I fear a few may actually be 1983... oh well! lol

Thanks for stopping by!

Create Art

Greetings!

I think this kit is a Sweet Tooth kit. I can't remember where I bought it, but I think I got it at Scrapbooking Studio.

The pictures are from Lorado crop, August 2013. such a fun 4 day crop retreat! Hoping I can go again this year. :) 

Thanks for stopping by!

Wonderful Winter

Hi all, :)

Here's another Staackits Scraps kit, I picked it up at the Scrapbooking Studio. I have to admit that after the winter we just had, I wouldn't call any winter, wonderful. LOL

Anyway, these are winter pics from a couple years ago. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Enjoy Family

Hello hello!

I won this kit as a door prize at a crop, and it's from Staackits Scraps. :)

I like general (and easy) kits like this for doing older pictures, where I only have 1 or maybe 2 pics, and they are uninspiring for making a layout. Here I pretty much scrapped all the pictures I had left from 1989!  Perfect kit for that.

Thanks for stopping by!

Little Animal... take TWO

Hello!

So yeah.  I bought the first Little Animal kit from Staackits Scraps and then a few weeks later, I bought another, apparently having forgotten that I'd already bought it. LOL Obviously I liked this kit!  That's ok, we visit the zoo a lot.

So, when I realized this had happened, I chose pictures from a different zoo, at a very different time (so it would be in the books further away from the other one), and then I changed up the design just a little bit. Which was fine since I had more pictures I wanted to put on it and the big giraffe sticker that was intended for the page would have prevented me putting all the pics on it that I wanted.

Anyway, I need to keep better track of my kit buying! lol

Thanks for stopping by!

Little Animal

Greetings!

Here's another Staackits Scraps kit.  It's an easy one, just papers and stickers. What caught my eye was the 9 picture grid on the right. I always have so many pictures when we go to the zoo, even though they are often pictures of the same thing.  I do try to get pictures of different things. The special pics in this visit are the elephants, who have been moved to another state now. And the baby giraffe. We've had several baby giraffes in the last few years, but this one is probably only a week old at the time of this visit. He or she was still staying in the shelter, and looked a little lonely! Poor baby.

Anyway, super cute kit, but just you wait... lol

Thanks for stopping by!

Friends

Greetings!

Here is another Staackits Scraps kit. This one is exclusive to Scrapbooking Studio in Moline. I thought it was really pretty, and the crop following the one that I put this together at, I put pictures on it of me and cropping buddies at a crop. :)

I didn't realize till I was putting this together that she had included washi tape, something I have refused to buy (I have enough scrapping supplies!). She put the tape on wax paper so I could peel it off and stick it on the page, a great idea!

Another thing I like about her kits is that there has never been anything missing. I know from making kits myself it's not easy making sure of this, and it's something I work really hard to avoid. She does too, it seems! :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Perfect Autumn Day

Hello!

I loved this kit as soon as I saw it. I made it but realized that I didn't have any pictures for it, lol. So this coming fall I will have to do a photo shoot just for it. :)

This kit is from Staackits Scraps. I like her style of some of her kits, this one was easy, since it's mostly just placing stickers.

Thanks for stopping by!

Merry Go Round

Hi all!

Here is another kit from my friend Irene of Little Masterpieces Kits, the last of it's kind. This one is unusual in that it does not have any flaps or fold outs for extra photos! So I had to make one myself lol, which is why my finger is in this picture, holding the accordion fold-out of extra pics.

These pictures are from our county fair, 2012. It was the first year that Kevin joined me on many non-kiddie rides! This was a special day for me, as I love rides, and my hubby does not. I've been hoping and hoping my son would enjoy rides as well, and while he's not ready for the really scary ones, that's totally fine as I don't need to ride those that much, I just wanted something more than the carousel or kiddie cars that I can't fit in! lol  This was a fun day.

Thanks for stopping by!

Boo!

Greetings!

So, I mentioned a few posts ago that after I finished working on wedding layouts that I was kind of burned out on thinking up inspiring page designs. I had the strong urge to just work on kits for a bit, so I bought several and they will my next several posts.  This one was designed by my friend Irene of Little Masterpieces kits, and it was the last one and she'd put the last ones of several kits on sale. As usual, she had flappies for adding extra pictures. :)

These pics are Kevin's halloween from 2013. It was rainy and chilly, so instead of walking a neighborhood, we hit 3 of the HyVee stores. They had treats and games and activities, and Kevin was perfectly happy. We also swung by his great-grandma's, and a few houses around her (as the rain paused for a bit), and then last we stopped at grandma's.

Thanks for stopping by!

Scrapopoly!

Hello!

So my friend Irene holds a big crop once a year. She goes ALL OUT to make it super fun, with a theme, games and prizes. This years theme was Monopoly or, Scrapopoly. She had huge game props, dice taller than me, a Jail prop, game piece props. Table centerpieces were dice and a top hat. She had a caterer that made AWESOME food in spite of the fact that the site's kitchen was under renovation and not available. She also had someone design the kit that was part of our goodie bag.  So I made the kit at that crop and then printed the pictures from the crop as soon as I could to put them on the layout at the next crop. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

A Sparkling 4th

Hey all!

So, after I decided to stop working on wedding layouts, I found myself feeling somewhat burned out (just on the thinking part of scrapping, not on the doing part).  So, I dug through my stash, but I didn't actually have very many kits. I really wanted to work a little mindlessly, just on kits. I did find this kit, one of the very first ones I ever purchased from my friend Irene of Little Masterpieces Kits. I had started making it but had stopped working on it since I didn't have pictures to fill it. You see, Irene specializes in kits with flaps and booklets that allow for LOTS of pictures. This layout opens by lifting the 6x12 sections where "sparkling" and "4th" are, to reveal enough space for another 12 or more pictures! I didn't have any July 4th pictures that could fill this layout.  I had printed some pics from 2013 but went back and printed some more so I could finish this layout. So that meant that some of the pictures on it were less than the best prints but that's ok! It turned out that this layout was perfect. I put all of Kevin's "I'm super cool with my big sparklers" pictures on the front, then inside I put the rest of the pictures of Kevin and my friend Katie's daughters, as well as some fireworks pics. I left a couple photo mats open for journaling.

Thanks for stopping by!

Gifts - wedding layouts

The last wedding layout that I'll be posting for a while!

These pictures were taken after the honeymoon when we'd gotten home and I set the gifts up on the table to take pictures.

I had been living on my own for years, so when hubby and I moved in together, we really had everything we needed. So in my wedding invites, I included a statement saying that we'd been on our own for a while and needed nothing for our home, so gifts were not necessary. But if people were inclined to give, we were saving up to buy a house.  Hubby's gift to me was a lovely "treasure" chest that I asked for, and we used that as our card box at the wedding. A lot of people gave us cards with money to go toward our house savings. But we received a lot of lovely unique gifts as well. Many friends knew of my love for all things Egyptian, and a few friends got together and bought me the large Egyptian "coffin" which is actually a CD storage unit. I love that thing!!! Another friend gave me a Bastet vase (the blue thing in the pictures).

I had bought some Egypt themed stamps so I used those to stamp some embellishments, and put the title on a tag, which seemed appropriate for the layout. The background die cut is from my cricut.

Oh, and we did buy our house the following May! :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Henna - wedding layouts

I think I mentioned before that my "bachelorette party" was actually a henna party, where the ladies all applied henna to my arms, hands, feet and legs, and to each other (and to my moms). This was a super duper fun time! I still have to scrap the pictures of that party itself.

These pictures are while hubby and I are on honeymoon, the day after the wedding. This henna was pretty for about a week, then as my skin sloughed away, the henna began to fade. Here are some pictures for a close-up view:

To the left is one of my hands at the party, when the henna was being applied.

To the right here is one of my hands the day of the wedding, with the henna paste scraped off, so you can see the color vividly.

For those that might not know, Henna on hands, arms, legs and feet is a wedding tradition in hundreds of countries, from India in the north and spreading through out the middle east and northern africa.  Some traditions have the henna being applied to the bride every day for 3 days, to get it as dark as possible. And as long as the dye is visible on her skin, she is not allowed to do any work!!! (their version of the honeymoon perhaps?).  I wish I could have done that, I'd have made sure my henna stuck around for at least a month! lol  as it was, I had to go back to work a few days after the wedding. lol

Thanks for stopping by!

Altar - wedding layouts

The altar at our wedding. I have had those Prima butterflies for AGES, finally used them. lol

Thanks for stopping by!

Family - wedding layouts

I kept this pro-pictures layout of my hubby with his mom and grandma simpler and tried to give it a more masculine feel.  The black flower border strip is actually a faux leather flower trim I found at the fabric store. I loved it because the men in the wedding party all wore leather pants, and the faux-leather flowers seemed to "go" with the theme, though you can't see the men's pants most of the time. lol

Anyway, I liked the simplicity just as much as I like my more embellished pages.

I have a few more wedding pages to post but this one was the last I made. I'm pretty much out of red printed papers and that appears to not be the color of the season right now, so I haven't been able to find any that I like at the scrapbook store. I'm also kind of tired of scrapping the wedding. *gasp!* lol
It might be a while till I can get the rest of the pro photos scrapped. LOL

Thanks for stopping by!

Mom and Me - wedding layouts

I have 5x7s of the professional photos. Some will be scrapbooked, and I'm not completely done scrapping them, but I'm nearly out of papers appropriate for my wedding color scheme!

It's hard to see but my medieval turkish inspired wedding gown has a pattern of peacock feathers in gold and silver, so I used my cricut to cut a peacock feather, then stickled it with gold and silver. The flowers that are on it are a from a flower sprig swap I participated it where we made flowers and wired them into a sprig with beads. I was thrilled to get one back that was perfect for my wedding album.

Thanks for stopping by!

Reception 3 - wedding layouts

The third and final random reception photos layout. :) 

Nearly done with the wedding!

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Reception 2 - wedding layouts

Here's the second layout of random reception pictures. Again the design is almost the same as the previous layout, with just a few differences. Though the layouts are simple, I really liked how they turned out.

Reception 1 - wedding layouts

Woops! Forgot to get my comments in before this posted! lol

I had lots of random pictures from the reception and had to limit just how many I would be scrapping. I managed to sort down to 3 layouts worth, and this is the first layout. I decided to go with a simple page design that I could repeat with all 3 layouts of random pictures, and it worked very well for me.

The background banners are just simple strips that I snipped the ends of. This was handy for using up leftover papers where I had just enough for a strip or two for every layout.

Thanks for stopping by!

Reception Dance - wedding layouts

Greetings!

Here's another layout from my wedding.  After my dance teacher performed, she got me up to dance on my own, and then with my hubby (this was belly dancing mind you!) and then everyone else that wanted to shake their hips got up as well. :)  I did some other pages of reception pics but this one is devoted to just the belly dancing.

I scraplifted a friend of mine, she used almost all  patterned papers for everything. It was really out of my box to do that, but I gave it a shot and I rather like the layout design.  I think the key is to strategically use the plain cardstock to separate the patterns from each other.

Thanks for stopping by!

Toss The Garter - wedding layouts

Hi there!

Here's a layout of the garter toss. I kept it fairly simple, mainly because that day I was feeling sick and getting too tired to scrap anymore. That's okay though, I really only had a couple pics worth scrapping and didn't need a bunch of stuff on the page.

My mom made the garter herself, and it was blue for that "something blue" part of the wedding. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

The Cake - wedding layouts

Hello hello!

Here's a wedding layout of our cake.  I didn't want to spend huge amounts of money on stuff, especially the cake. A friend of mine volunteered to make the cake for me, and I asked if she could make a Moroccan style palace.  I loved the cake she came up with, and it tasted yummy!  The hubby and I did NOT smash cake into each others faces, either!

Thanks for stopping by!

Maleeha - wedding layouts

Greetings,

 Another wedding layout, and also another layout of my dance teacher performing at our wedding. This is actually the first dance she did. I kept both of the layouts of her simple, because I had TONS of pictures of her both dances and I wanted to feature those pictures rather than put a ton of product on the pages.

Like the other page of her dancing, I used my 3rd party software on my primary electronic cutter to cut out the dancer silhouette. Both cutouts were stickled as well, to make them sparkly. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Cane Dance - wedding layouts

Hello all!

I hired my own belly dance instructor to dance at my wedding. In Egypt, it has always been traditional that a belly dancer perform at a wedding. Supposedly it has to do with ensuring the fertility of the marriage! lol  Anyway, my teacher is an awesome dancer. The "Raks al Assaya" or "cane dance" is one of my favorite dance styles, so it was top of my request list.

The trim at the bottom of the layout is some trim I found that I just knew I had to use on a wedding layout. The dancer cut out on the left is cut with my primary electronic die cut machine and 3rd party software that was not made for that machine. haha! but I own the machine and the software and I can do what I want with things I own.  *evil grin*

Thanks for stopping by!

Rehearsal - wedding layouts

Hello!

Here is another layout for my wedding albums.  No fancy title, just Rehearsal, as that is exactly what it is. lol

At the time I was teaching belly dance, so we used the huge hallway that was my "classroom".  It was rather convenient to have that space to use!  My wedding and reception were in a banquet hall that was not available (or too costly) to rent for just rehearsing the wedding.

I like the effect of the layered, border punched borders. If you haven't noticed by now, my basic wedding color scheme was black, white and red (a sort of ivory white, and a dark red, almost maroon). :)  oh and gold and silver as well.

Thanks for stopping by! 

Mani Pedi - wedding layouts

Greetings!

Here's another wedding layout for my albums.

My friends surprised me by throwing a manicure/pedicure party before the wedding, so that everyone that wanted to could get their nails done. We had so many of us that the mani salon closed to other people and only did us. That was when I discovered I LOVE spa pedicures. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Henna Practice - wedding layouts

Hello all!

Here is another layout for the wedding albums (I ended up with 3 albums!)

Rather than ask for a bachelorette party, I asked my friends/attendants if we could have a big henna party the night before, and all the women would henna me and each other. Henna is a way to put body art on that won't wash off but also isn't permanent. So we got together and had a few practice parties so people could get comfortable doing it. The official party from the night before the wedding is one of the few pages I haven't scrapped yet! I'll get on that. lol

Thanks for stopping by!

Invited - wedding layouts

Hello crafty friends!

Here is another layout for my wedding album(s).

Remember, I had not started scrapbooking by this point so when I decided to make my own invitations, they were not at the "pro" level of invitations I could have bought. ;)  I don't care what anyone thinks though. I loved everything about my wedding!

It was a themed wedding since at the time I was a belly dance teacher. My invites had a love poem by Rumi on the front, and I had used the lovely historical art of the lovers on the "programs" and such at the wedding. So I had a few invites left over from when I made them and printed off 4 of the pictures to use as embellishments.

Thanks for stopping by!

Flower Building - wedding layouts

Greetings!

Well, my hubby's and my 10th Anniversary was this past November. I started scrapbooking 5 years after our wedding so I had told my hubby that I'd try to get our wedding scrapbooked by our 10th anniversary.  I had done several pages but really was nowhere near finished. So, in October I decided to "git 'er done!" LOL

So, my next several posts will be all wedding layouts that I have completed since October. I am "done" sort of... I have a few more pages I'd like to do but I don't feel the pressure anymore. lol

The layout above was actually "scrap-lifted" from one designed by my boss at Scrapaganza when I worked there, and I took her class.  I loved that layout so much that I bought more of the papers that had the fussy-cut red flowers on them to do more pages with. I followed the design mostly, just switched directions and a few other minor details. The photos are of the "flower party" I had where my friends helped me put together bouquets for decorating and carrying. I saved one flower project for my mom to do when she got into town so I could have a pic of her helping. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Fall

Greetings all,

Here's another layout with an Echo Park mini collection from last fall. SUPER CUTE. I love this collection. I actually really love the mini collection idea. This is the 2nd or 3rd one I've bought, and I hope to buy more.

When I made this, I didn't have any fall pictures with me. But I was so inspired that I just went to town on it. I have no doubt I can get pictures for it. ;)  Everything on this layout is from the collection. I used Artbooking to die cut the wood grain paper on my cricut, and I can't find the cartridge I got the sun border from.... I do know there were 3 suns per section, and I cut 3 and just glued them along the edge together so it looks like a solid 12" long border.

Thanks for stopping by!

Sizzlin' Summer Days

Hello all,
Here's a layout I made as a kit. I was able to use some My Mind's Eye stash for it. Then I used lots of cricut of course. ;)  The grill is from Summer Celebrations cartridge. The sun is from Just Because Cards. Unfortunately I mixed up the title letters so I don't remember all the cartridges the words came from.

Thanks for stopping by!

Pick of the Patch

Hello everybody!

So every once in a while I allow myself the treat of getting new printed papers, if I just can't resist them. I'm trying to use stash only but now and then one just HAS to try some new stuff. ;)  In this case, this Echo Park mini collection was given to me free, so what was I to do? say no? lol
Pretty much everything on the page is from that kit, though I did cut the title on my cricut, from the Mini Monsters cartridge. Oh, and I cut a huge oak leaf as a background in the middle, if you can tell that's a leaf since it's covered up. LOL  There also happens to be a pumpkin button from Charlene's Button Box. :)

Thanks for stopping by!