Wednesday, May 28, 2014

I'm Almost Done!

The month is almost over, and - so far - I've kept up with a layout a day.  I can't wait to take a picture of the entire stack this weekend!  I'll be sure to share it with y'all next week.

Today I want to get you caught up on my layouts from the past few days.  When I last posted, I had made it through day 21.  So here is the page for day 22:



When my Dad saw this layout, he protested a bit at the last sentence.  And then I pulled out my college graduation photos that he took.  


I love those little Studio Calico wooden letters + alphabet.

For the next day, I created a layout with some older pictures of my eldest son (he'll be 12 in October).  These are not the greatest pictures in the world, but I absolutely love the look on his face.



 After I had attached the wood veneer accents onto the page, I decided to paint them.  If you look closely, you'll see a bit of the paint ended up on the picture.  I kinda look the look of my mistake, though, so I kept it.


For my next layout, I went way back to my college days.  I wanted to use fun colors to help tell my story.


I love the little die-cut star vellum piece:


The one really fun thing about LOAD is that I've been bouncing around with photos...I've got pictures from 1977 up to more recent ones.  The next layout features pictures of my boys from this past December:


 I couldn't completely forget my border punch.  :)


This next layout took forever to finish (no pun intended).  My in-laws were in town, and it was hard finding time to complete my page.  


I smartened up yesterday, and went with a super quick page:


Finally, here is today's page:


This is a horrible picture of me, but when I heard today's prompt (bed-time rituals), I knew I wanted to use it.  In case you're wondering, this was not a staged photo...my roommate really took a picture of me napping.  At least my bed was made.  :)


These layouts bring my grand total to 28.  Even my husband is now checking to see if I've got my daily layout finished.  I think he's more proud of my pages than I am!

I'll be back next week with the last three layouts from this LOAD challenge.  And then, if I'm totally honest, I'll probably take a bit of a break.  We're making a few renovations to our home, and my craft room will be moving, so I'll be busy with that.  I'll post about the new room (which I'm sharing with my boys) as soon as it's done.  

Happy scrapping!

Thursday, May 22, 2014

The LOAD Layouts are Still Coming!

Howdy Nesters!  Dawn here with more LOAD layouts.  I'm still a bit shocked that I've kept up with a layout a day for just over three weeks now!  

I left off at the halfway mark.  Today, I'm going to share six additional pages - including a page that I really dislike, but more on that in a bit.

First up is this one from Day 16:



(If you enlarge the photo, you should be able to read the journaling.)  The prompt had to do with getting into trouble...since we call our youngest "Trouble", it led to this page.

I've been loving the extra dimension of foam lately, though midway through cutting foam tape to put behind that title I was having second thoughts.  I like the look of the finished product, so it was worth it.  :)


And here is the next one.  This layout was really quick for me (yay!) and I love the fun colors.  The prompt had to do with television (which we don't watch much), but it got me thinking about movies, and then 3-D movies, which led to Disney (yes, this is how my brain works!).  :)


I used orange ink and then Glossy Accents on the wood veneer glasses to get a similar look to the 3-D glasses in the photos.


And it's not a Disney page without a little Mickey.


The prompt for Day 18 was the dentist.  And I ended up with Goofy.  It made sense in my head.  :)


 Once again, I couldn't forget the mouse:


Here is Monday's page.  Originally, the journaling was supposed to go directly onto the craft cardstock, but I made a typo.  I think it works with the yellow polka-dot paper too.


This page is near and dear to my heart because I've had very well-meaning people question my decision to be home with my family.    


As you can see, this is an older photo, but it's one of my all-time favorites.  I have another picture from that session next to my computer.  It makes me happy.

You know what else makes me happy?  Stars.  Lots and lots of stars.



You know what makes me unhappy?  This page.


I've been working hard to use up the last few scraps from those original two kits, and I think it may be time to add the rest of the remnants to some other kits.  I just wasn't feeling this page.  I like the story, and I like the picture, but the layout as a whole doesn't work for me.  However, I dislike the idea of recreating the page way more than I dislike the page, so it stays.  

But on to happier pages.  This was yesterday's layout:



I actually scrapped earlier this month about his stay in the hospital, and yesterday I took a much more light-hearted approach to some of the photos from that time.

I went a little crazy with the foam dots again on the title.  And I love the little yellow frame. 



This was another layout where I flubbed the original journaling.  I cut this piece of paper to cover my mistake, and I like the end result much better than the original.  


I have today's layout finished, but I'll wait until next week to share it (just because I need better lighting for the photo).

So that's it - whew!  I'm curious, though...what do you do with the layouts that you don't love?  Anyone take the time to redo them?


Thursday, May 15, 2014

I've Reached the Halfway Mark (More LOAD Layouts!)

Hello, Nesters!  I've got a long post for you today, with almost a week's worth of layouts!  My 14th wedding anniversary was Tuesday, and my husband took some vacation days for a long weekend, so I missed posting earlier this week.  I'm hoping to make up for it now.  :)

When I last posted, I shared through Day 9 of the Layout A Day challenge.  Today, I'll start with last Saturday's layout:



This one is very different from my normal style, but it was really fun to make!  Here's a close-up of some of the embellishments on the right-hand side of the page:


I fussy cut the camera from a piece of patterned paper (it was Amy Tan, but I'm not sure which line).


On Sunday, I made this page, which focused on my cat when she was just a tiny kitten:


I love this die from Studio Calico...isn't that bow adorable?  Unfortunately, I think it's sold out right now, but maybe they'll bring it back in stock.


I also did some hand-stitching  - and pulled out the border punch again:


Here's that same cat, Gracie, now grown.  She likes to help me photograph my layouts.  :)


And here's the page Gracie was sitting on.  This was another layout that departed from my normal style.  I'm almost done with the original two kits that I started out with (this is actually the last layout I've created with them...there may be enough scraps for one more page, though).  I made it a challenge to use up the speech bubbles...I used up all but one!


If you could see underneath this photo, you'd see how creative I had to get with some of the scraps of paper!


Tuesday was my anniversary, so I made a very quick and simple page.  I like it though:


The longest part of this page was cutting and placing the foam dots to raise the word "best" in the title!  :)


Yesterday's prompt had to do with being sick, and I scrapped a photo from 2005.  It felt really good to get this story down on paper:


I apologize for the poor lighting on this page; it was really overcast here yesterday.  This is a close-up of the flair.  Does anyone else cry after reading that book?


For this page, I pulled out an older kit and add-on from Scraptastic Kit Club...I've been a subscriber for just over a year now, and I really like the kits (if anyone is looking for a club, I'd highly recommend Scraptastic).


Finally, today's page.  For this one, I used an older Studio Calico kit (I also subscribe to Studio Calico...this is part of the reason I'll never run out of supplies!).  The hardest part of this page was finding papers that would match the crazy colors in the photos:


Here's a close-up to show how shiny the sequins are:


I was actually torn about including the sequins, but they made me think of disco, and that seemed fitting for a page about the '70's.

And now we're all caught up!  I hope you have a great weekend, and I'll be back next week with more layouts!

Friday, May 9, 2014

More LOAD Layouts

Happy Friday, Nesters!  I'm happy to report that I'm still on pace for the layout a day challenge that I'm undertaking this month.  When I last posted, I had completed six pages, and today I have three more to share with you.

On Wednesday, our prompt had to do with seasons...I went off-prompt and created a layout about my favorite time of day:



I've been a bit obsessed with my border punches lately...you'll see them make an appearance in all of my layouts that I'm sharing today.  Also, I kinda love that gold paper...it's almost overwhelming as a whole sheet, but I think it makes the perfect accent.


Yesterday, I made this page:


The color is a bit off in the photo above, but the bottom two are more accurate.  When I finished the page, I knew it was missing something, so I hand cut these little pennants for the corner.  I think they're cute.  :)


I also did a bit of fussy cutting.  I used the stamp set from the Studio Calico kit that I've been working with to create this layered embellishment:


And here is today's layout:


See that border punch make another appearance?


I have a hard time with speech bubble embellishments, but I'm working hard to use the ones that came in the kit I've been working with.


Well, that's it for me today.  I'll be back next week with a few more layouts.  Have a great weekend, and Happy Mother's Day to all the momma nesters!
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