More Birthday Fun

Another birthday celebration!  These layouts are some I did over a year ago, I believe for last summer’s PSL at ClubScrap.  They are pictures of Will’s sixth birthday; he woke up to an amazing display of decorations, gifts, and a Sponge Bob cake that Crystal spent time preparing after he went to bed the night before.  Not only is it hard for me to imagine trying to keep everything hidden, but to have worked all day long, then come home to regular evening chores, then wait for the little guy to go to bed and be soundly asleep before beginning to prepare the decorations and presents…whew, I get tired just thinking about it. 

All I can say is that both my Daughters-In-Law are amazing, wonderful women for whom I am immensely grateful and am proud that my Sons chose them as Wives and Mothers to my Grandsons!  They both go out of their way to make my Sons happy as well as giving my Grandsons wonderful childhoods.  I could never repay them for the happiness they give me by being who they are and for doing what they do for the men in my life!

Now, back to the layouts…all papers, embellishments, and supplies are from the July 2008 Matrix kit from ClubScrap.  The color palette worked well with the pictures.  Everything seemed “neutral” enough to allow the photos to be the focal points; allowing them to not getting lost on the pages because there were so many embellishments.  Most of the designs you see are actually stenciled onto the paper using a sponge and ink, even the circuit like design on the white papers of the middle spread..  One of the many things I like about ClubScrap is that every month provides at least one new stencil.  Stencils are quite versatile…give one a try if you haven’t before, I think you too will be pleased.

I just had to include the single page layout of Nick helping Will build Legos.  Every time I look at these pictures I chuckle.  I cannot tell you now many hours I spent putting together Lego sets (especially putting on stickers) for Nick when he was a boy.  It’s so rewarding to see history repeat itself in this way!

I’d like to add that in lieu of a party with friends, Will chose to go to the circus for his birthday…smart and lucky boy! 

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Birthday Fun

I think everyone had a good time at Izzy’s fifth birthday party, I know I did!  Chuck E. Cheese is a great place any time but especially for a birthday.  I was  impressed at how attentive the staff was to the honoree as well as his guests. 

In the top spread…the left page, Izzy is eating his cake…the right page shows Izzy playing air hockey with his Daddy and Will.  It didn’t seem to matter if he won or lost, he just had a good time as did his opponents.  I love the upper right-hand picture showing Will trying to see where the puck went…boys are such fun!

The bottom spread shows a big ol’ birthday kiss Grammy planted on Izzy’s cheek…I’m so glad it showed up in a picture I took much later in the event.  The right-hand page of that spread features Izzy opening gifts…he got some good stuff! 

These pages were contributions to my ClubScrap PSL team last week.  All supplies are from their June 2009 Concrete Jungle kit.  I have more birthday pictures to add to other Concrete Jungle pages I pre-made but haven’t taken the time.  I need to get in my studio and work on some pages to contribute for this week…that domestic stuff keeps getting in the way…although I am proud to say half of the dining room flooring is down!

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Always havin’ fun!

My studio is a mess!  Between moving most of it’s contents to another house and back last year as well as doing some rennovating in this house, the space is just a mess.  So last weekend I decided to clean up a shelf in my studio…baby steps.  I knew there were pictures on the shelf…among other things.  So I put the envelopes of pictures into a photo box and sat it aside.  Then I picked up a file folder wondering what was inside.  Pay dirt!  There were more pictures!  Woo-Hoo!!  Pictures my kids gave me a year or so ago that I sat aside and, unfortunately forgot about.  After discovering them, I couldn’t wait to make pages with them.  Today’s spread uses some of those pictures.  The pages are fairly unrelated, meaning they’re not of the same event.  However, because the colors matched well, they will rest in an album side-by-side.

The left-hand page is obviously Izzy with his Easter basket and eggs and is fairly self explanatory.  The right-hand page, however, may require a little explanation.  Izzy is a happy little boy.  He easily entertains himself.  One of his favorite things is bowling…which he comes by naturally, his Mommy is an avid bowler as is his Great-Memaw.  Quite some time ago I found some very small bowling pins with marbles as the balls…a table top type bowling game.  Izzy loved it!  In these pictures you can see he’s placed the pins between his toes…I can practically hear him laughing in the upper right-hand picture.  The lower right-hand picture is of him dressed as a guitarist.  He loves guitars maybe as much as bowling.  I just love these silly, candid shots and am so glad I found them.

There are more pictures in the file so I’ll be able to make a few more pages in the near future!  Oh, these were part of my contribution to last week’s PSL stamping challenge; there are two stamped sentiments, one on each page; and the ClubScrap kit is from November 2009, Solstice…a very versatile kit.

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A trip to the fire station

Will's Cub Scout Troup went to the Fire Department on a field trip!

OK, all I can say is these two spreads are proof that the ClubScrap method of ALSB (Assembly Line ScrapBooking) works.  Remember all those pages I shared yesterday?  Well, the base pages for these two spreads are done using pre-made ALSB pages that used a CHRISTMAS theme paper pack!  In the end, as Tricia Morris always says, “it’s all about color”.  From time to time, we may get a kit with a theme we might not choose if we had the choice, but when we look outside the [pizza] box and see the color theme, amazing things happen…like these two spreads. 

In these two “Christmas” spreads, I was able to camouflage any holiday sentiments with embellishments specific to my photographs.  For instance, in the top spread, the upper left-hand corner of the right-hand page you’ll see a small white square encircled with a gold frame.  I added a stamped image over the holiday sentiment.  At the top of the left-hand page is a diamond plate dry embossed black strip of paper; if you look closely, the gold paper that strip is attached to has a pattern…that pattern is a repetitive and fairly festive diamond image.    In the bottom spread, the upper left-hand corner of the right-hand page you’ll see the word “Happy”  but what you DON’T see is under that photo is the word “HOLIDAYS”. 

I believe the addition of black accents throughout both spreads help to unify the traditional Christmas colors, tone down the brightness of those colors, and simply unify the entire composition.  To replicate the diamond plated areas of the fire engines and equipment, I ran some strips of black cardstock through my Cuttlebug using a diamond plate embossing folder; that pattern added more unity between the pages and pictures.

Lastly, I’d like to say that I created these pages for last week’s ProScrapbooking League on the ClubScrap site.  I contributed more layouts but decided to share a few at a time rather than all at once.  The challenge for the week was to use stamped images on the pages which was easy for me as I was a stamper before becoming a scrapbooker.  This week’s challenge is to use February kits…the February 2010 kit (Castaway) is gorgeous.  I can’t wait to work with it…but there are some domestic chores I must complete before I can play…yuck!  (Housework makes you ugly!)

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74 Pages At One Time?

I made all of these pages at one time.

That’s what I did!  I went to an all-night Crop For A Cure and managed to make 75  scrapbook pages…actually I only made 74 ALSB pages and took a class from my dear friend Diane in which we made a heavily embellished page which I will share at a later time, so it really was a total of 75 pages.

I was impressed with how many pages I could get done at one time.  I started around 7:00 p.m. or so and worked through the night, stopping at 4:00 p.m. the next day.  I did take breaks and several classes through the crop, but I’m very proud of all I was able to accomplish.  My picture isn’t the best, the sun was shining through curtains and made the picture looked streaked, still you get the idea.  I recommend the ClubScrap ALSB method to anyone planning sleep deprivation; all the work is done for you, all you need to do is follow simple cutting directions and place the pieces according to a diagram.  My favorite part about ALSB is that you end up with almost no scraps when you’re done…it has to be the most efficient way to scrapbook out there!

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Scrapbooking On The Wall

Altered Mah Hong tiles and photos added to a small gallery wrapped canvas.

We made this project at a ClubScrap Retreat

 Scrapbooking ON the wall?  Have you tried it?  If not, do so!  There are so many alternate forms of scrapbooking yet we often limit ourselves to what we know or are used to…but why not venture out and do something just a little different?  For about a year now, I’ve been saying I was going to create a “page” using a piece of corrugated cardboard as the base…my vision is to peel away some of the smooth surface paper to reveal the corrugated inner paper…THAT would be different!

I will say that I prefer using “safe” products IN my albums, but in this day of digital photography and scanners, reproducing photographs is not only easy but convenient, we can have lots of fun without fear of damaging or destroying valuable photos.  In fact, very rarely do I use an original photo when making a project; if it’s not already digital, I scan it (taking the opportunity to restore it if it’s an older picture) and print it as many times as I want.  These two little canvases were a lot of fun to make. 

The first one features photographs hanging off the edges of the base surface, which I find to be quite fun and interesting.  The black letters were cut using a QuicKutz squeeze tool and alphabet dies.  By the way, when I use my squeeze tool for cutting dies, I cut pieces of cardstock into approximately 1 1/8″ long strips, then run them through the Xyron Sticker Maker to add adhesive BEFORE I cut the shapes/letters.  The Mah Jong tiles were altered with Alcohol Ink on the back (which is the part you see); when the ink dried I used a gold leafing pen around the edges and when that dried, I added the die cut letters.  Some of the tiles were elevated from the base surface with foam tape…this is a great way of using more letters than will fit on your base surface when placed side-by-side.

The surface of both canvases were colored with pigment ink, directly from the ink pads; because pigment ink takes longer to dry than dye or alcohol inks, using them allows you time to blend colors and achieve some nice effects.

The second canvas was made at a ClubScrap Retreat I attended a few years ago.  It features the ink dyed canvas with printed vellum, artist tape, rubber stamping, printed “B” (for Bermuda) cut-out, Asian coins, clippiola, twill tape and beads, and a punched shape from a playing card…WAY FUN!

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Cousins & Friends

Playing with trucks

Enjoying a day of playing with trucks

Aaaaaah, my favorite subject material…my two wonderful Grandsons!  They always make me happy so creating pages with pictures of them is not only easy but fun.

These pages were purposely created with predominantly primary colors…inspired by Will’s knee pads that Izzy was wearing (aren’t little boys fun?).  Among other things, I used clear plastic “paper” (whose manufacturer I cannot remember, sorry) and stamped, embossed images throughout.  Some elements were raised from the surface using foam tape, and I used miniature alphabet tiles similar to those used in the game Scrabble. 

For a while, I worked for a stamp/scrapbooking store.  For a while, it was a dream job.  Unfortunately, the ugly true personalities of management rose above the facade they portrayed of being overly nice and friendly so things didn’t work out and I returned to working in the insurance industry…I’ll probably say it from time to time, but I loath phoney people, double standards and manipulation…I have no need for those who practice such behavior and once I realize that’s what is going on I eleminate it/them from my life…it greatly reduces stress.  Life’s too short for needless behavior such as that!

So, back to the pages…these were created for that store (which, incidentally, closed a few months after I left).  They are some of the first pages I made there.  The clear “paper” had been ordered and received prior to my working there, but no one else knew what to do with it…neither did I!  I decided to use it like any other paper and cut it into design elements…in these pictures, it has words printed on it and small white dots.  In the over-abundant stash of class/project left-overs, I found scraps of printed paper to coordinate and other embellishments to use.  I was able to find enough alphabet tiles to spell out “cousins” and “friendz” as well as buttons…I love buttons!  The red words and yellow car were rubber stamped images; I stamped in colored pigment ink, then embossed with clear embossing powder which gives a very shiny appearance.

I created several very creative and beautiful pages for that store; I wish they would have offered them to me when they decided to close, I would have gladly paid for the supplies.  It was repeated to me countless times that anything I made there was the “property” of the store…the photographs, however, were mine…they didn’t pay for those, I’m confident they were thrown away.  I suppose I could try to recreate these for my own albums…I’ll have to consider that.

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Priceless Remberances

Remembering time spent in the woods

This page was done some time ago; my first Design Team assignment!  I was so pleased with it that I truly had a hard time sending it to PennyWiseArts, but I did.  I always planned to recreate it for myself, but haven’t yet, I should…soon.  If you’re not familiar with creating for a Design Team, often you’re provided certain products to use and before hand you don’t always know what those products will be.  It makes the creative process challenging but in a fun way.  In addition to the papers, cardstocks, and stickers that were provided for this project, there were glassine envelopes.  Now, just what would I use one of those for?  I decided to put most of the journaling on a tag and made a pocket for that tag out of the glassine envelope.  That worked!  I received fibers…that was easy, put some fibers on the end of the tag that stuck out of the glassine envelope.  And if you don’t know, or haven’t already linked there, PennyWiseArts supplies micro beads…teeny, tiny little beads that have no holes.  They’re fun to use and much less messy than glitter; because they are glass, they reflect light and provide beautiful shine and accents to any project.  Since this page was made for PennyWiseArts, I had to use micro beads somewhere…but where?  You probably can’t see, but I used liquid adhesive and added them on top of each letter sticker.  I didn’t want too much shine or glimmer because I was trying to achieve a moderately masculine feel to the page as well as use an autumnal color palette so too much shimmer wouldn’t do, I used translucent brown colored beads.

Now a little about who is in these pictures.  It’s my Father-In-Law, my Husband, and my oldest Son.  Bill (my Father-In-Law) loved being in the woods more than anything.  He was a hunter through and through.  He taught machine shop at a vocational school and I remember most days he’d come home from work/school and grab his gun and go hunting for a few hours…he’d hunt on the weekends and any holiday.  The woods where these pictures were taken are some of the woods he hunted most.  When our sons were small, we would hike through the woods whenever we would visit.  I have to say that I always envied the close relationship my Husband had with his Dad, it was truly special.  Bill passed away within the following year after these pictures were taken…he is still missed.  I know no one who would have been more proud of the two boys his Grandsons had, his Great-Grandsons (one of whom was named after him)…I remember how proud he was when our boys were born.  He had a thing about male offspring to carry on the family name, and now there’s another generation.

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Dad and Junior

This picture was taken around 1930, give or take a year or so

I previously mentioned my desire to work on a tribute album for my Dad and how difficult it was to accomplish so I sat it aside and have looked through the photos from time to time but haven’t done more.  The previously posted pages of his parents and the home where he grew up along with this page are all that I accomplished.  I will get back to it and believe I’m closer to that happening than ever before.  In the meantime, I thought I’d share this pitiful page…

I know I have grown exponentially as a scrapbooker since attempting this page, and I know I could have done better on it than I did; I’m tempted to take it apart and re-do it but for now I’m going to leave it as it is…

The two boys in the picture are my Dad (on the right) and his brother who died when he was nine years old.  As a child I always knew Daddy had a brother who died, but I didn’t know much about him nor why he died.  So one day I was brave enough to ask…I’ll never forget how terrified I was when Dad told me how old Junior was when he died…I had just turned nine myself!  Then I couldn’t understand how he could die from an absessed tooth, wondering why he didn’t go to a dentist.  As I grew older I realized just how poor the family was and that where they lived, going to a dentist wasn’t an easy task to accomplish.  The Kennedy home place was located at the very top of a mountain in rural, southern West Virginia…and this was back in the 1920s & 30s.  Still unimaginable to me…

Now, a funny story about making this page.  I recall being at a crop where I knew only one person…and I didn’t know her very well.  I’ve never admitted to being a conformist, but don’t consider myself a rebel either.  It was a small gathering of people…rather quiet in fact.  I decided the page needed a masculine touch and just happened to have some eyelets that matched the color pallette…so I got out my self-healing mat, hole cutter/setter, and little hammer…this was long before Crop-A-Dile’s were the main-stay.  Well, the first time I hit the hammer onto the end of the cutter/setter, I thought time stood still…every head in the place turned and looked at me, jaws gaped opened.  What did I do wrong?  Then it clicked…these people were supporting a company who uses only [very basic] stickers and geometric shaped punches…no ink, no stamps, no altering of any kind…oops!  So I sat my few eyelets and put away my supplies…and departed.  They weren’t a group for me…maybe I’m a rebel after all!

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Heritage

The Kennedy Home Place

My Father's Parents

I made this layout many years ago.  After my Father passed away, my intentions were to make a tribute album.  Simply put, it was too painful to do.  I thought I might be able to proceed if I started by creating pages that didn’t include him but that was naive, there was a little of him in each photo I chose.  So, I managed to squeek out this spread and one pitiful page using a childhood photo of him with a brother who died as a child.  It’s now been seven years since he passed away…I’m finally beginning to think I might enjoy working on that album.

Just so you’ll know, the flower elements on these pages were done using a Technique Junkies technique (see HERE).  Two sides of a page protector were trimmed so that it was “hinged” only on one side.  Then it was opened and a few drops of several different stamp pad ink refill were dropped on one side; a piece of white (or cream colored) cardstock was put inside the page protector allowing the ink to spread onto the paper; the cardstock was removed and allowed to dry, then the flower image was stamped onto the color.  They were trimmed, layered, and adhered onto a strip of torn cardstock…I love the look of the raw edge of torn cardstock!  A very easy and fun technique.  Technique Junkies is an awesome site from which to learn as well as providing unlimited inspiration.

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